Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T21:34:13.778Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Worker consciousness in black miners: Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Charles van Onselen
Charles van Onselen
Affiliation:
Oxford University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It has become accepted by historians and social scientists alike that African workers in Rhodesia were slow to demonstrate resistance in the industrial setting of the economy. This tardiness is attributed to the dominance of the migrant labour system or the achievements of the settler administration. This view is challenged by a detailed study of African responses in the mining industry. Here geological factors led to profitability constraints which led to extensive exploitation of African labour. This in turn manifested itself in the appalling conditions in the mine compounds. In these circumstances, the choice of employer was of vital importance to Africans, and they developed a rapid and efficient system of market intelligence about employment prospects throughout southern Africa. African worker consciousness was evident in patterns of avoidance of, selective participation in, and desertion from, mines. In addition, worker consciousness and resistance manifested themselves in day-to-day work situations, and in strike action. All of these activities suggest a well-developed worker consciousness which pre-dates the more familiar organizations of the 1920s such as the Dance Societies, the Watch Tower Society and the I.C.U. These patterns further suggest that worker strategy in Rhodesia can best be understood within the context of the functioning of a regional economic system embracing all of southern Africa.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , April 1973 , pp. 237 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Gann, L. H. and Gelfand, M., Huggins of Rhodesia (London, 1964), 76.Google Scholar

2 Hooker, J. R., ‘The African Worker in Southern Rhodesia: Black Aspirations in a White Economy’, Race, VI (10 1964), 142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Mlambo, E., Rhodesia the Struggle for a Birthright (London, 1972), 186.Google Scholar

4 Ranger, T. O., The African Voice in Southern Rhodesia, 1898–1930 (London, 1970), 141.Google Scholar

5 Shamuyarira, N., Crisis in Rhodesia (London, 1965), 51.Google Scholar

6 Mitchell, J. C., ‘Wage Labour and African Population Movements in Central Africa’ in Barbour, K. M. and Prothero, R. M. (eds.), Essays on African Population (London, 1961), 234.Google Scholar

7 Gann, L. H., Central Africa (New Jersey, 1971), 119.Google Scholar

8 Kirkwood, K., ‘Rhodesia’ in The Cambridge History of the British Empire, 111, South Africa (2nd edition, 1963), 695.Google Scholar

9 Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Mining Industry of Southern Rhodesia (1945), 21.Google Scholar

10 Ibid. 3.

11 A number of attempts were made to reduce African wages. The most important of these were made in 1898, 1901 and 1906. See, for example, Rhodesia Chamber of Mines Annual Report (1906), 28.Google Scholar

12 Gann, L. H., A History of Southern Rhodesia (London, 1965), 173.Google Scholar

13 Based on calculation derived from data in Reports on the Public Health covering the period 1911 to 1920.Google Scholar

14 Gann, L. H., A History of Southern Rhodesia, 180.Google Scholar

15 Figure based on data in Reports on the Public Health and other sources.Google Scholar

16 Gann, L. H., A History of Southern Rhodesia, 180.Google Scholar

17 Report of the Committee appointed to enquire into the prevalence and prevention of Scurvy and Pneumonia amongst Native labourers (1910), 1.Google Scholar

18 Gann, L. H., Central Africa, 112.Google Scholar

19 Report on the Public Health (1925), 8. (My emphasis.)Google Scholar

20 Report of the Native Affairs Committee of Enquiry (1910–1911), 6.Google Scholar

21 For an excellent account of this process of proletarianization in Rhodesia see, Arrighi, G., ‘Labour Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of the Proletarianisation of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia’, Journal of Development Studies, VI, 3 (1971), 197–234.Google Scholar

22 Rhodesia, no. 171 (16 February 1901), 92.Google Scholar

23 Rhodesia, no. 170 (9 February 1901), 82.Google Scholar

24 Report on the Administration of Rhodesia (1898–1900), 27.Google Scholar

25 Rhodesia Chamber of Mines Annual Report (1901), 35.Google Scholar

26 Public Record Office, London. C.O. 417/311, Annexure 19 to the British South Africa Company Minutes of 11 Oct. 1900.Google Scholar

27 The Labour Problem in Rhodesia (Bulawayo, 1901), 20.Google Scholar

28 Chinese Question in Rhodesia (Bulawayo, 1901), 6.Google Scholar

29 British South Africa Company, Mining in Rhodesia (London, 1902), 49.Google Scholar

30 For a general statement on the over-capitalized state of the industry see Hole, H. M., Old Rhodesian Days (London, 1928), 40.Google Scholar For low productivity at the Bonsor, mine see, Rhodesia, VI, 145 (18 08 1900), 611.Google Scholar

31 C.O. 417/387, Annexure 18 to British South Africa Company Minutes of 4 Nov. 1903.Google Scholar

32 C.O. 417/387, Annexure 1 to British South Africa Company Minutes of 29 Oct. 1903.Google Scholar

33 Rhodesia Chamber of Mines Annual Report (1901), 19.Google Scholar

34 Ranger, T. O., The African Voice, 141.Google Scholar

35 Rhodesia Chamber of Mines Annual Report (1902), 64.Google Scholar

36 Ibid.

37 Rhodesia Chamber of Mines Annual Report (1902), 73.Google Scholar

38 Rhodesia Chamber of Mines Annual Report (1908), 58.Google Scholar

39 C.O. 417/628, ‘Memorandum. Labour and Mortality Returns, October 1918’.Google Scholar

40 Gann and Gelfand, op. cit. 50, suggest that ‘Many Africans seized with panic, fled from the European settlements and died miserably along the roadside or on the veld.’Google Scholar

41 The Rhodesia Herald, 8th November 1918.Google Scholar

42 Rhodesian Native Labour Bureau, Proceedings at the Annual and Quarterly General Meeting (26 May 1910), 10.Google Scholar

43 Rhodesia, VII, 159 (24 November 1900), 810.Google Scholar

44 Southern Rhodesia, Debates in the Legislative Assembly, IV, 2, col. 57.Google Scholar

45 Rhodesia Chamber of Mines Annual Report (1909), 65.Google Scholar

46 Genovese, Eugene D., The Political Economy of Slavery (New York, 1967), 74.Google Scholar

47 Rhodesia Chamber of Mines Annual Report (1905), 55.Google Scholar

48 Rhodesia Chamber of Mines Annual Report (1909), 65.Google Scholar

49 Report on the Public Health (1972), 32.Google Scholar

50 C.O. 417/613, Telegram. Chaplin to B.S.A.Co. Board, 24 August 1918.Google Scholar

51 Mitchell, J. C., ‘Race, Class and Status in South Central Africa’, in Tuden, A. and Plotnicov, L. (eds.), Social Stratification in Africa (New York, 1970), 325.Google Scholar

52 In 1909 it was estimated that there were 4,000 such workers out of 32,000 that were fully proletarianized. See British South Africa Company, Directors' Report and Accounts for the year ending 31st March 1909, 40.Google Scholar

53 Rhodesian Native Labour Bureau, Proceedings at the Half Yearly and Quarterly General Meeting (8 December 1910), 13.Google Scholar

54 See for example, Mlambo op. cit. 186 or Ranger op. cit. 343.Google Scholar

55 See, Mackenzie, J. M., ‘African Labour in South Central Africa 1890–1914’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1969, 315.Google Scholar

56 Ibid.

57 British South Africa Company, Reports on the Administration of Rhodesia 1900–2, 175.Google Scholar

58 Ibid.

59 Report of the Native Labour Enquiry Committee (1906), 5.Google Scholar

60 Correspondence Relating to the Regulation and Supply of Labour in Southern Rhodesia (1902), 11.Google Scholar

61 Ibid. 15.

62 This type of evidence continues to be rejected or ignored by social scientists. For example, ‘wages were not an effective incentive and general wage increases would not have improved the supply of labour; they might have depressed it’, Kay, G., Rhodesia: A Human Geography (London, 1970), 55.Google Scholar

63 Gelfand, M., ‘Migration of African Labourers in Rhodesia and Nyasaland 1809–1914’, The Central African Journal of Medicine, VII, 8 (08 1961), 298.Google Scholar

64 C.O. 417/461, Telegram. Milton to High Commissioner, 17 January 1908.Google Scholar

65 Report of the Native Labour Enquiry Committee (1906), 4.Google Scholar