Of Compounds and Cellblocks: The Foundations of Violence in Johannesburg, 1890s–1950s

Abstract

The brutalising nature of the gold mining industry that employed the majority of black male workers, in concert with the incarceration of African men on a massive scale, established the foundation for a violent society in Johannesburg's early decades. African mineworkers were exposed to and participated in supervisory abuse, faction fights and gang activity. The enforcement of racial legislation that cycled hundreds of thousands of men through the prison system further cultivated the violence that plagued Johannesburg's townships. In addition to the routine deprivation of prison life, inmates were housed in communal cells dominated by predatory gangs. African men moved regularly between the mine compounds, penal institutions and residential areas. This article utilises the stories of two men active in criminal societies to explore the dynamics of violence in this interlinked world.

Notes

¹ I have no wish to cast Johannesburg's townships as sites of mayhem in which residents lived in continual fear. Jacob Dlamini's memoir of growing up in Katlehong on the East Rand during the 1980s is a conscious illustration of the richness of township life despite the myriad repressions of apartheid and this same lesson applies to the impact of state violence, crime and communal conflict. At the same time, every conceivable historical source – archival documents, newspapers, biographies, oral testimony, fiction and the academic works that draw from this material – confirms that different aspects of violence were a consistent and grave concern for generations of township residents. J. Dlamini, Native Nostalgia (Johannesburg, Jacana Media, 2009).

² For a comparison of violent crime between Johannesburg and other colonial cities see G. Kynoch, ‘Urban Violence in Colonial Africa: A Case for South African Exceptionalism’, Journal of Southern African Studies [hereafter JSAS], 34, 3 (2008), pp. 629–45.

³ See J. Steinberg, The Number (Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball, 2004) for the contemporary Number gangs’ identification with the original Ninevites. Also see N. Haysom, ‘Towards an Understanding of Prison Gangs’ (Institute of Criminology, University of Cape Town, 1981).

⁴ C. van Onselen, The Small Matter of a Horse: The Life of ‘Nongoloza’ Mathebula, 1867–1948 (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1984). Note and the Ninevites also feature in van Onselen's Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886–1914, Volume 2, New Nineveh (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1982), Chapter 4. Derrick Thema's Kortboy: A Sophiatown Legend (Cape Town, Kwela Books, 1999) is a valuable, if romanticised, biography of the notorious gangster. See also D. Mattera's autobiography, Gone with the Twilight: A Story of Sophiatown (London, Zed Books, 1987) and G. Moloi, My Life: The Godfather of Soweto (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1987).

⁵ J. Guy and M. Thabane, ‘The Ma-Rashea: A Participant's Perspective’, in B. Bozzoli (ed.), Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1987).

⁶ For these details of Note's life and criminal career see van Onselen, The Small Matter of a Horse.

⁷ LTG 170, Statement of Natives Holding Passports and Employed in Proclaimed Labour Districts of the Transvaal, January 1907. All archival references are to the National Archives and Records Service in Pretoria.

⁸ P. Harries, Work, Culture and Identity: Migrant Labourers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860–1910 (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 1994), p. 196.

⁹ NTS 7721 132/333, Director of Native Labour, Johannesburg, to Secretary of Native Affairs, Pretoria, 14 August 1941.

¹⁰ Bonner reports that continuing poor wages in the mine industry led many workers to desert mine jobs for secondary industry and the commercial sector where pay rates tended to keep pace with inflation. P.L. Bonner, ‘African Urbanisation on the Rand between the 1930s and 1960s: its Social Character and Political Consequences’, JSAS, 21, 1 (1995), p. 119.

¹¹ Bonner reports that continuing poor wages in the mine industry led many workers to desert mine jobs for secondary industry and the commercial sector where pay rates tended to keep pace with inflation. P.L. Bonner, ‘African Urbanisation on the Rand between the 1930s and 1960s: its Social Character and Political Consequences’, JSAS, 21, 1 (1995), p. 117.

¹² AMPT PUBS 6/36 UG44/19B, Department of Justice Annual Report 1912, p. 290.

¹⁴ GOV 148 GEN 128/04, 2 April 1904, Governor's Office, Johannesburg, to Alfred Lyttelton, Colonial Office, London.

¹³ K. Breckenridge, ‘The Allure of Violence: Men, Race and Masculinity on the South African Goldmines, 1900–1950’, JSAS, 24, 4 (1998), pp. 669–94; D. Moodie, ‘Maximum Average Violence: Underground Assaults on the South African Goldmines, 1900–1950’, JSAS, 31, 3 (2005), pp. 547–67.

¹⁵ Breckenridge, ‘The Allure of Violence’, p. 686.

¹⁶ Moodie, ‘Maximum Average Violence’, p. 547.

¹⁷ Breckenridge, ‘The Allure of Violence’, p. 688.

¹⁸ For accounts of faction fights see: Harries, Work, Culture and Identity; K. Breckenridge, ‘Migrancy, Crime and Faction Fighting: the Role of the Isitshozi in the Development of Ethnic Organisations in the Compounds’, JSAS, 16, 1 (1990), pp. 55–78; G. Kynoch, ‘Marashea on the Mines: Economic, Social and Criminal Networks on the South African Gold Fields, 1947–199’, JSAS, 26, 1 (2000), pp. 79–103; K. McNamara, ‘Black Worker Conflicts on South African Gold Mines, 1973–1982’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1985).

¹⁹ D. Moodie, Going for Gold: Men, Mines and Migration (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994), p. 181.

²⁰ Harries, Work, Culture and Identity, p. 122.

²¹ Moodie, Going for Gold, p. 181.

²² Moodie, Going for Gold, p. 182. Dozens of others appear in the archives both before and after Moodie's period.

²³ Guy and Thabane, ‘The Ma-Rashea’, p. 442.

²⁴ Guy and Thabane, ‘Ma-Rashea’, pp. 189–91.

²⁵ SAP 89, 15/48/17, Deputy Commissioner, C.I.D., Pretoria, to the Secretary, Transvaal Police, Pretoria, 28 August 1912, Re: Native Criminal Organizations and Dangerous Criminals. The movement into the compounds is noted in several police and government reports.

²⁶ JUS 144 3/778/12, Statement of Johannes Johnson, 19 June 1912.

²⁷ JUS 144 3/778/12, Statement of Kleinbooi, 19 June 1912.

²⁸ JUS 144 3/778/12, Statement of Detective Boy, 19 June 1912.

²⁹ NTS 7723 153/333, Memorandum prepared by Ex-Detective Head Constable Boy of the SAP, Johannesburg, 1939.

³⁰ NTS 7723 153/333, Chief Compound Manager, to the Manager, East Rand Proprietary Mines, 4 October 1929.

³¹ NTS 7723 153/333, Compound Manager's Association Meeting, Re: Secret Organisations Among Natives, 3 December 1929; Crown Prosecutor, Johannesburg, to Attorney-General, Pretoria, Re: The Isitshozi gangs, 10 July, 1939.

³² NTS 7723 153/333, Deputy-Commissioner, SAP, Johannesburg, to Crown Prosecutor, 2 February 1939; Memorandum prepared by Ex-Detective Head Constable Boy of the SAP, Johannesburg, 1939.

³³ Breckenridge, ‘Migrancy, Crime and Faction Fighting’, p. 63.

³⁴ NTS 7723 153/333, Report of Charles Howe, Compound Manager, C Compound, Crown Mines, January 1930.

³⁵ NTS 7723 153/333, Report, Inspector (Mines), Johannesburg, to The Director of Native Labour, 30 January 1930.

³⁶ NTS 7723 153/333, Detective Head Constable Boy to Divisional C.I.D. Officer, Witwatersrand, Re: Secret Society of Pondo Natives known as the Isitshozi Gang, 8 January 1930.

³⁷ NTS 7723 153/333, Memorandum prepared by Ex-Detective Head Constable Boy of the SAP, Johannesburg, 1939. See, for example, NTS 7723 153/333, Compound Manager's Association Meeting, Re: Secret Organisations Among Natives, 3 December 1929. The Manager of Randfontein estates related an incident in April 1929 in which an Mpondo gang ‘started cutting down curtains from boys’ bunks’. Presumably this was an attempt to assert control over sexual activity. The ensuing fight resulted in one death and the arrest of 26 Mpondo.

³⁸ Breckenridge, ‘Migrancy, Crime and Faction Fighting’, p. 75.

³⁹ P.L. Bonner, ‘The Russians on the Reef, 1947–1957: Urbanisation, Gang Warfare and Ethnic Mobilisation’, in P.L. Bonner, P. Delius and D. Posel (eds), Apartheid's Genesis, 1935–1962 (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1994), p. 175.

⁴⁰ See G. Kynoch, We are Fighting the World: A History of the Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999 (Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 2005), for more on the Marashea.

⁴¹ NTS 7722, 145/333, Director of Native Labour to the Agent for High Commission Territories, 5 June 1950.

⁴² P.L. Bonner, ‘Desirable or Undesirable Basotho Women? Liquor, Prostitution and the Migration of Basotho Women to the Rand, 1920–1945’, in C. Walker (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (Cape Town, David Philip Publishers, 1990), p. 231.

⁴³ Bonner, ‘The Russians on the Reef’, p. 166.

⁴⁴ JUS 1, 1/3/1910, Department of Native Affairs, Pretoria, to Lord Selborne, 18 December 1907.

⁴⁵ M. Chanock, The Making of South African Legal Culture 1902–1936: Fear, Favour and Prejudice (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 411.

⁴⁶ AMPT PUBS 6/36 UG 44/19B, Department of Justice Annual Report, 1912, p. 242.

⁴⁷ Chanock, The Making of South African Legal Culture, p. 422.

⁴⁸ JUS 1555 1/148/42, Report of Committee commissioned by Department of Justice and the Department of Native Affairs, July 1942, to investigate the alleged wave of crime on the Witwatersrand and in Pretoria, p. 38.

⁴⁹ For example, in 1942, of 178,536 prosecutions of African men on the Rand, 162,975 convictions were registered. In 1943, the figures were respectively 189,813 and 174,673. NTS 7721 132/333, Native prosecution and conviction figures for the Witwatersrand, 1942 and 1943.

⁵⁰ Chanock, The Making of South African Legal Culture, p. 423, reports that in the 1930s the average fine was the equal of three to four months' wages for most working men. Prison records confirm that non-payment of fines was a significant factor determining incarceration. Of some 160,000 sentenced prisoners admitted throughout the Union in 1936, 68 per cent received a sentence of one month or less. ‘In the majority of these cases the sentences of imprisonment were alternative to a fine’. AMPT PUBS UG 42–1937, Annual Report of the Director of Prisons for the Year 1936.

⁵¹ LD 1109 AG 3320/05, Statement in reply to Minute from the Secretary to the Law Department, 23 June 1904; AGT 142 775/08, Governor, Johannesburg Gaol, to the Director of Prisons, undated 1908.

⁵² AMPT PUBS 6/36 UG44/19B, Department of Justice Annual Report 1912, p. 241. Inmates with a sentence of one month and less averaged between 60 to 70 per cent of penal admissions nationwide from the 1910s to the 1940s. Department of Justice Annual Reports and Director of Prisons Annual Reports.

⁵³ NTS 7721 132/333, Secretary for Justice to the Secretary for Native Affairs, 1 October 1929, Discharge of prisoners on the Witwatersrand.

⁵⁴ SAIRR AD843/RJ/G3 File 7, Analysis of Relations Existing Between the Police and Africans in the Pretoria Urban Area, 1946.

⁵⁵ As the principal brewers, African women were consistently persecuted for liquor offences, but even when convicted relatively few ended up in gaol. And, partially because women were largely exempt from the pass laws, the African prison population was overwhelmingly male. For example, in 1947 205,327 African and coloured men were admitted to prison in South Africa compared with 26,251 women. AMPT PUBS, U.G. No. 53/1949, Annual Report of the Director of Prisons for the Year 1948.

⁵⁶ AMPT PUBS, Annual Report of the Director of Prisons. These figures are drawn from reports covering the years 1938 to 1950.

⁵⁷ AMPT PUBS, Annual Report of the Director of Prisons, 1912–1950.

⁵⁸ Van Onselen, The Small Matter of a Horse, p. 32.

⁵⁹ Guy and Thabane, ‘The Ma-Rashea’, pp. 440, 437.

⁶¹ AMPT PUBS 6/36 UG44/19B, Department of Justice Annual Report 1912, pp. 235–6.

⁶⁰ Van Onselen, The Small Matter of a Horse, p. 31.

⁶² SAP 89, 15/48/17, Deputy Commissioner, C.I.D., Pretoria, to the Secretary, Transvaal Police, Pretoria, 28 August 1912, Re: Native Criminal Organizations and Dangerous Criminals.

⁶³ LD 1056 AG 1564/05, Inspection, Johannesburg Prison, 30 June, 1 and 5 July 1910.

⁶⁴ JUS 1555 1/148/42, Report of Committee commissioned by Department of Justice and the Department of Native Affairs, July 1942, to investigate the alleged wave of crime on the Witwatersrand and in Pretoria, p. 26.

⁶⁵ Thema, Kortboy, pp. 9, 82.

⁶⁶ For example: ‘Suspected infiltrators were made to endure ritualised beating of the chest with clenched fists — Ukushaya isigubhu. Others were forced to eat large quantities of porridge before being subjected to painful blows on the abdomen — the so-called “beating of the drum” — while yet others were tossed into the air by means of a blanket before being allowed to plummet to a concrete floor; and the more fortunate were sentenced to having their two front teeth removed’. Van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886–1914, pp. 182–83.

⁶⁷ JUS 144 3/778/12, Statement of Office Josimale Coy, 17 June 1912.

⁶⁸ JUS 144 3/778/12, Statement of Kleinbooi, 19 June 1912.

⁷¹ Steinberg, The Number, p. 7. For the links between prison gangs and gang activity on the Cape Flats see S. Jensen, Gangs, Politics and Dignity in Cape Town (Oxford, James Currey, 2008) and K. Gillespie, ‘Bloodied Inscriptions: The Productivity of South African Penal Institutions’ (MA thesis, University of Chicago, 2002).

⁶⁹ LD 1056 AG 1564/05, Inspector of Prisons to Acting Secretary for Justice, Report on Boksburg Prison, 19–22 July 1910.

⁷⁰ AMPT PUBS 6/36 UG44/19B, Department of Justice Annual Report 1912, p. 237.

⁷² M. Epprecht, Hungochani: The History of a Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa (Montreal and Kingston, McGill-Queens University Press, 2004). Epprecht cautions against stereotypes that automatically assume the violent nature of prison sex. It is not my intention to pass judgement on same sex practices behind bars – no doubt there were and are consensual relationships. My point is simply that much of the sex in prison, especially for youngsters and vulnerable newcomers, involved coercion and force.

⁷³ Other former prisoners of Number Four have also commented on the Number gangs. Mabana Nene remembers that the space in the cellblocks was partitioned by the gangs who also classified the different prisoners with gang leaders in control and the various ranks enjoying privileges. At the bottom of the hierarchy were the Mgwajas (underlings, sardines) who did not belong to a gang. ‘These guys receive the worst treatment in prison’. Muthuphei Mudua reported, ‘that if there are little boys in the gwaja's section, they will be taken by the bosses and be made their wives and they would enjoy their life during the day but at night there would be trouble and screams’. L. Segal, C. van den Berg and C. Madikida (eds), Mapping Memory: Former Prisoners Tell Their Stories (Johannesburg, David-Krut, 2006).

⁷⁴ GOV 755 PS 50/04, Johannesburg Native Pass Office, Return of Natives Discharged from Gaol During the Period 1 January to 31 May 1904.

⁷⁵ NTS 7721 132/333, Secretary for Justice to the Secretary for Native Affairs, 1 October 1929, Discharge of Prisoners on the Witwatersrand.

⁷⁶ According to prison department records, recidivists consistently constituted around 20 per cent of African and coloured male prison admissions in the 1920s and 1930s. However, these figures mask the fact that prisoners with previous sentences of one month or less were recorded as first time offenders. Thus, ‘the proportion of recidivists is, therefore really greater than would appear from statistics’. AMPT PUBS, UG 35–1935, Annual Report of the Director of Prisons for the Year 1934.

⁷⁷ SAP 89 15/48/17, Rex versus Joseph and 15 others, R.C.A. 45, 7 September 1911.

⁷⁸ SAP 89 15/48/17, Deputy Commissioner, C.I.D. Pretoria to The Secretary, Transvaal Police, Pretoria, 28 January 1913. Re: Native Criminal Organizations.

⁷⁹ JUS 1555, 1/148/42, Report of Committee commissioned by Department of Justice and the Department of Native Affairs, July 1942 to investigate the alleged wave of crime on the Witwatersrand and in Pretoria, p. 10.

⁸⁰ JUS 1555, 1/148/42, Report of Committee commissioned by Department of Justice and the Department of Native Affairs, July 1942 to investigate the alleged wave of crime on the Witwatersrand and in Pretoria, p. 25.

⁸¹ Guy and Thabane, ‘The Ma-Rashea’, p. 437.