Lost Causes of the Rand Revolt

Abstract

This article takes up some of the key issues raised in response to the author's work on the Rand Revolt of 1922. It begins by interrogating the idea, advanced by a number of scholars, that the employers’ offensive against white labour in that year was linked to a need to provide opportunities for black mineworkers who had recently engaged in an historic strike of their own. The article then moves on to consider aspects of the racial killing by whites that emerged on the Witwatersrand during the strike and rebellion of 1922. It warns, inter alia, against explanations of this violence in overly general terms that gesture at the obvious, i.e. the mere presence of white working class racism. It suggests that historians would do well to explore the relationship of the violence (and the racial fears associated with it) to a somewhat delirious attempt on the part of the white working class to avoid an impending test of arms with the state. For the violent racial hysteria of this time betrayed a desire by white workers to assert their community with the established order. Paradoxically then, racial fear and violence were – in part – an unsuccessful attempt to overcome extreme antagonisms amongst whites. At the same time, the article stresses that this ‘attempt’ should not be seen as part of a conscious plan. Nevertheless, following the classic work of Henri Lefebvre, it emphasises that hysterical fear can fulfil a decisive function for those caught up in it.

Keywords:

• racial violence
• mineworker strikes
• Rand revolt
• labour history

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Eliza Kentridge for her helpful comments, and the Leverhulme Trust for funding much of the archival research on which this article is based.

Notes

¹J. Krikler White Rising: The1922 Insurrection and Racial Killing in South Africa (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2005) and J. Krikler The Rand Revolt: The1922 Insurrection and Racial Killing in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2005).

²P.Maylam, ‘The Rand Revolt’,Journal of African History, 47 (2006), 343.

³K. Breckenridge, ‘Fighting for a White South Africa: White Working-Class Racism and the 1922 Rand Revolt’,South African Historical Journal, 57 (2007), 230.

⁴K. Breckenridge, ‘“We Must Speak for Ourselves”: The Rise and Fall of a Public Sphere on the South African Gold Mines, 1920 to 1931’,Comparative Studies in Society and History, 40 (1998), 75. For the long-standing view referred to, see p. 94.

⁵See P.L.Bonner, ‘The 1920 Black Mineworkers’ Strike: a preliminary account’ in B. Bozzoli, ed.,Labour, Townships and Protest: Studies in the Social History of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1979), 281–2, 285, 288.

⁶The quotations are from a press release of the Chamber, cited in F.Johnstone,Class, Race and Gold: A Study of Class Relations and Racial Discrimination in South Africa (New York: University Press of America and Dalhousie University Press, 1987), 183.

⁷For Johnstone's argument regarding the fundamental concerns – wages, prices and the pass laws – of the great bulk of the mineworkers and other black workers on the Rand, see Johnstone,Class, Race and Gold, 172–182. For the disjuncture referred to, see p. 183 and, to some extent, p. 176.

⁸This is the essential finding of much of the analysis presented in great and convincing detail in chapter 4 of Johnstone's book, a chapter that is careful – as in pp. 196ff. – to note the grievances of black workers against white workers.

⁹Bonner, ‘The 1920 Black Mineworkers’ Strike’, 273, 278–279; Breckenridge, ‘“We Must Speak for Ourselves”’, 78–79, 80, 81, 83.

¹⁰Bonner, ‘The 1920 Black Mineworkers’ Strike’, 282; Breckenridge, ‘“We Must Speak for Ourselves”’, 77.

¹¹An illuminating discussion of the wage concessions made by the companies, their policies regarding trade goods, and the significance of the rise in wages for black workers as a result of the protests of 1919–1920 is to be found in Breckenridge, ‘“We Must Speak for Ourselves”’, 83, 84–85.

¹²An illuminating discussion of the wage concessions made by the companies, their policies regarding trade goods, and the significance of the rise in wages for black workers as a result of the protests of 1919–1920 is to be found in Breckenridge, ‘“We Must Speak for Ourselves”’, 83.

¹³Bonner, ‘The 1920 Black Mineworkers Strike’, 289.

¹⁴Lionel Phillips to R.S. Holland, 9 February 1920, cited in Maryna Fraser and Alan Jeeves, eds,All That Glittered: Selected Correspondence of Lionel Phillips 1890–1924 (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1977), 322.

¹⁵Breckenridge, ‘“We Must Speak for Ourselves”’, 84, 86.

¹⁶See Johnstone,Class, Race and Gold,183, where the employers are shown to have called for a reinforcement of the mounted police. This would have referred to the South African Mounted Rifles, then armed with the Lee Enfield rifle, a weapon that accounted for many fatalities amongst white and black workers in the first decades of the existence of the Union of South Africa.

¹⁷Lionel Phillips to R.S. Holland, 25 October 1921, cited inFraser and Jeeves, eds,All That Glittered, 327–328.

¹⁸ Lionel Phillips to R.S. Holland, 25 October 1921, cited inFraser and Jeeves, eds,All That Glittered, 328.

¹⁹BA [Barlow Archives, Johannesburg], Archives of the Central Mining and Investment Corporation Ltd, Letter Book December 1917 to May 1924 containing letters from Sir Evelyn Wallers and Frank Phillips, Evelyn Wallers to Sir Sothern Holland, 14 December 1921.

²⁰BA, Archives of the Central Mining and Investment Corporation Ltd, Letter Book December 1917 to May 1924 containing letters from Sir Evelyn Wallers and Frank Phillips, Evelyn Wallers to Sir Lionel Phillips, 31 January 1922.

²¹See Lionel Phillips to R.S. Holland, 9 February 1920, cited inFraser and Jeeves, eds,All That Glittered, 322.

²²For which, see for example, P.Harries Work, Culture and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860–1910 (Portsmouth: Heinemann; London: James Currey; Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994), 131 ff, 137 ff, 140, 181–182.

²³Johnstone,Class, Race and Gold, 168–171, 172, 174.

²⁴I must acknowledge the importance of Phil Bonner in bringing this home to me in a discussion some years ago after a paper I gave on the Rand Revolt at the University of the Witwatersrand.

²⁵Breckenridge, ‘Fighting For A White South Africa’, 232.

²⁶E.H.Carr What Is History? (London: Penguin, 1990), 97.

²⁷Maylam, ‘The Rand Revolt’, 343.

²⁸J.Hyslop, ‘Social History at its Best’,South African Historical Journal, 57 (2007), 221.

²⁹S.P. Bunting,“Red Revolt”: The Rand Strike January–March, 1922 (Johannesburg: Communist Party [S.A.], 1922). The quote is from the epigraph placed on the cover of this booklet. For Bunting's role in the turn to black labour prior to the Rand Revolt, see A.Drew,Between Empire and Revolution: A Life of Sidney Bunting, 1873–1936 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2007), 95, 96, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 111, 113, 115, 117.

³⁰CAD (Central Archives Depot, National Archives, Pretoria), K4 [Unpublished Minutes of the Martial Law Commission,1922]: pp. 1702 and 1705: part of reproductions of letters fromW.H. Andrews to one Backer, no date, and to J. Howie (at the Trades Hall, Sydney Australia), 25 February, 1922.

³¹SeeW.H. Andrews,Class Struggles in South Africa (Stewart Printing: Cape Town, 1941), 56–57.

³²See the 1941 recollection of the garment workers’ leader, E.S. Sacks, of the speech delivered by Andrews to thousands of workers in 1922 just before they went on to demand a general strike: ‘Foreward’ by E.S. Sacks in SeeW.H. Andrews,Class Struggles in South Africa (Stewart Printing: Cape Town, 1941)., 5–6.

³³See Breckenridge, ‘Fighting for a White South Africa’, 236, where the employers’ ‘arbitrary decision making’ is dismissed as a cause of the workers’ militancy.

³⁴See Krikler,White Rising/Rand Revolt, 120–121.

³⁵See the reproduction of the ballot paper inReport of the Martial Law Inquiry Judicial Commission . U.G. No. 35, '22 (Pretoria: Government Printers, 1922), 3.

³⁶See Krikler,White Rising/Rand Revolt, 168ff.

³⁷I have offered an extended analysis of Macmillan'sNew Statesman article in J.Krikler, ‘William Macmillan and the Working Class’, in Shula Marks and Hugh Macmillan, eds,Africa and Empire: W.M. Macmillan, Historian and Social Critic (London: Temple Smith, 1989), 65–68; quotation from p. 67.

³⁸K. Breckenridge, ‘Fighting for a White South Africa: White Working-Class Racism and the 1922 Rand Revolt’,South African Historical Journal, 75 (2007), 240.

³⁹Breckenridge, ‘Fighting for a White South Africa’, 239.

⁴⁰Krikler,White Rising/Rand Revolt, 147–148

⁴¹Breckenridge, ‘Fighting for a White South Africa’, 239–240.

⁴²The idea is fully explored and illustrated in D.Roediger,The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1990).

⁴³Breckenridge, ‘Fighting for a White South Africa’, 239.

⁴⁴Breckenridge, ‘Fighting for a White South Africa’, 238.

⁴⁵See J. Krikler, ‘Constraints Upon Popular Racial Killing: A South African Case’,South African Historical Journal 58 (2007), 203–225.

⁴⁷CAD, K4, Unpublished evidence of the Martial Law Commission, p. 562: testimony of Colonel S. Pritchard.

⁴⁶ Report of the Martial Law Inquiry Judicial Commission, U.G No. 35, ‘22 (Government Printing and Stationery Office, Pretoria, 1922), 13.

⁴⁸Given that on its p. 13 theReport of the Martial Law Judicial Commission was presumably basing its statistics on evidence provided to it in the unpublished minutes by the Director of Native Labour (CAD, K4, Unpublished Minutes of the Martial Law Commission, p. 562), it is possible that an error transposed 24 for 44 as the number of fatalities. The total number of casualties (i.e. killed and wounded) given for black people in the two sources is almost the same (153 as opposed to 152).

⁴⁹I have compiled these casualty figures for each area from the following sources. For Vrededorp, CAD, K4, Unpublished evidence of the Martial Law Commission, p. 290: testimony of Constable P.J.L. du Toit; and p. 292: testimony of Constable Johannes Bezuidenhout. For the Salisbury and Jubilee compound, CAD, K4, Unpublished evidence of the Martial Law Commission, p. 68: testimony of Lt-Col. R. S. Godley; and pp. 492–493, 494: testimony of David Swan, manager of the Salisbury and Jubilee municipal compound. For Sophiatown, see UWL [University of the Witwatersrand Library, Historical Manuscripts], AH646, TUCSA Records [Records of the Trade Union Council of South Africa],Papers of the South African Industrial Federation, Bd. 6.2.6, Case concerning C. Stassen, Special Criminal Court charge sheet. For Ferreirastown, UWL, AH646, TUCSA Records,Papers of the South African Industrial Federation, Bd6.2.57, Case concerning A. Kruger, statement of A.J. Hoffman, Detective Head Constable CID Marshall Square; andCape Times, 9 March 1922, ‘Ferreirastown Fight’, cutting in GG [Archives of the Governor General of South Africa,1905–74: held in the Central Archives Depot of the National Archives, Pretoria], Vol. 966, File 19/650. See also SCC [Archives of the Special Criminal Court, 1922: part of the Transvaal Archives Depot of the National Archives, Pretoria], Case No. 13/1922, Rex v. Nathan Shore, prep. exam. testimony of Whelehan. I am aware that some testimonies imply three or four dead from the fighting in Ferreirastown (see CAD, K4, Unpublished evidence of the Martial Law Commission, pp. 394, 399: testimony of Captain Whelehan; and p. 64: evidence of Lt-Col. R. S. Godley). However, the balance of the evidence suggests two dead.

⁵⁰This clearly emerges in the evidence in SCC, Case No. 4/1922, Rex v. C.C. Stassen.

⁵¹For the number of dead, see SCC, Case No. 3/1922, Rex v. M.J. Olivier et al, Special Criminal Court charge sheet. See the case generally for the context of this violence.

⁵²I derive this figure by subtracting 20 (the number of people who died as a result of the violence of 7–8 March) from the total figure, given by the Director of Native Labour, of 44 black fatalities during the strike and rebellion. Sources have already been provided for these figures.

⁵³For this murder and its context, see generally SCC, Case No. 5/1922, Rex v. J. Brussouw and G.J. van Wyk, and UWL, AH646, TUCSA Records,Papers of the South African Industrial Federation, Bd 6.2.9, Case concerning Gert Johannes van Wyk and Johannes Brussouw.

⁵⁴See Krikler,White Rising/Rand Revolt, 137.

⁵⁵SCC, Case No. 74 (6/1923), Rex v. John Henry Newton, testimonies of Constable Carel v. d. Westhuizen, and John Keller (railway worker).

⁵⁶See SCC, Case No. 48/1922, Rex v. S.A. Long: Exhibit A (both in typescript and holograph original) of the deathbed statement of A.P. Marais, dated 12 March 1922. Both this case and an earlier trial relating to the same accused man ( SCC, Case No. 18/1922, Rex v. S.A. Long) deal with the murder and its context. There was enormous controversy over whether or not the accused was in the firing party, but the fact of the execution was not in doubt.

⁵⁷CAD, K4, Unpublished evidence of the MLC, 335: testimony of Major Ernest Hutcheons.

⁵⁸UWL, AH646, TUCSA Records,Papers of the South African Industrial Federation, Bd6.2.33, Case concerning John Wales, undated typescript statements of Francis George Woolley and J. Hardman.

⁵⁹See Krikler,White Rising/Rand Revolt, 262

⁶⁰See SCC, Case No. 54A/1922, Rex v. John Homan and Daniel Coetzee: preparatory examination testimony of Frank Makubana, detective.

⁶¹See CAD, K4, Unpublished Minutes of the MLC, 469: testimony of Dr. Ray.

⁶²For the machine-gunning, see GNLB [Papers of the Government Native Labour Bureau: held in the National Archives, Pretoria], Vol. 311, File No. 125/19/48 (‘Manuscript papers – reports from Inspectors etc. during the Strike, 1922’), ‘Fulford's report’ (in pencil, relating to Benoni during the rebellion). For the bombing, see SCC, Case No. 62A/1922: testimony of Johannes Myburgh, miner.

⁶³See KriklerWhite Rising/Rand Revolt, 294–295

⁶⁴Breckenridge, ‘Fighting For A White South Africa’, 240.

⁶⁵CAD, K4, Unpublished Minutes of the MLC, 562: testimony of Colonel S. Pritchard. He may have failed here to detail a few instances of such harm but this would not negate the general point made in the text.

⁶⁶There is a mass of evidence relating to the men killed, their movements prior to their demise and the context of the killings in CAD, K4, Unpublished Minutes of the Martial Law Commission, 506–510, 783–795, 803–808, 851–854.

⁶⁷There is a mass of evidence relating to the men killed, their movements prior to their demise and the context of the killings in CAD, K4, Unpublished Minutes of the Martial Law Commission, 508: testimony of Petrus Olivier, butcher.

⁶⁸CAD, K4, Unpublished Minutes of the MLC, 561–562: testimony of Col. S. Pritchard.

⁶⁹For some evidence of the Black Peril at this time and the entreaties to the police, see Krikler,White Rising/Rand Revolt, 143–146.

⁷⁰This theme of ‘negative integration’ is remarked upon in H-U.Wehler, ‘Bismark's Imperialism, 1862–1890’,Past and Present, 48 (1970), see, e.g. 122, 141–142, 145.

⁷¹G.Lefebvre The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France (London: New Left Books, 1973). This classic work was first published in French in 1932.

⁷²K.Grundy's review ofWhite Rising inInternational Journal of African Historical Studies, 40, 1 (2007), 180.