Category Archives: history

Colonial Present: Legacies of the Past in Contemporary Urban Practices in Cape Town, South Africa

by Faranak Miraftab, 2012

This article historicizes the contemporary urban development and governance strategies in Cape Town, South Africa, by focusing on two periods: the British colonial era (mid to turn of the nineteenth century) and the neoliberal postapartheid era (early twenty-first century). It reveals the keen affinity between a contemporary urban strategy known as Improvement Districts for the affluent and the old colonial practice of ‘‘location creation’’ for the native. Discussing the similarities and differences in the material and discursive practices by which urban privilege is produced and maintained in Cape Town across the two eras, the study brings to light the colonial legacies of the neoliberal municipal strategies for governance of urban inequalities. This insight is significant to the citizens’ resistance against exclusionary redevelopment projects that claim ‘‘innovation’’ in urban management.

Amandla: Echoes of the Past: Marikana, Cheap Labour and the 1946 Miners Strike

http://www.amandlapublishers.co.za/blog/1534-echoes-of-the-pastmarikana-cheap-labour-and-the-1946-miners-strike

Echoes of the Past: Marikana, Cheap Labour and the 1946 Miners Strike

by Chris Webb

On August 4, 1946 over one thousand miners assembled in Market Square in Johannesburg, South Africa. No hall in the town was big enough to hold them, and no one would have rented one to them anyway. The miners were members of the African Mine Worker’s Union (AMWU), a non-European union which was formed five years earlier in order to address the 12 to 1 pay differential between white and black mineworkers. The gathering carried forward just one unanimous resolution: African miners would demand a minimum wage of ten shillings (about 1 Rand) per day. If the Transvaal Chamber of Mines did not meet this demand, all African mine workers would embark on a general strike immediately. Workers mounted the platform one after the other to testify: “When I think of how we left our homes in the reserves, our children naked and starving, we have nothing more to say. Every man must agree to strike on 12 August. It is better to die than go back with empty hands.” The progressive Guardian newspaper reported an old miner getting to his feet and addressing his comrades: “We on the mines are dead men already!”[1]

The massacre of 45 people, including 34 miners, at Marikana in the North West province is an inevitable outcome of a system of production and exploitation that has historically treated human life as cheap and disposable. If there is a central core – a stem in relation to which so many other events are branches – that runs through South African history, it is the demand for cheap labour for South Africa’s mines. “There is no industry of the size and prosperity of this that has managed its cheap labour policy so successfully,” wrote Ruth First in reference to the Chamber of Mines ability to pressure the government for policies that displaced Africans from their land and put them under the boot of mining bosses.[2]

Masters and Servants

Mechanisms such as poll and hut taxes, pass laws, Masters and Servants Acts and grinding rural poverty were all integral in ensuring a cheap and uninterrupted supply of labour for the mines. Pass laws were created in order to forge a society in which farm work or mining was the only viable employment options for the black population. And yet the low wages and dangerous work conditions kept many within the country away, forcing the Chamber of Mines to recruit labour from as far afield as Malawi and China throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sordid deals between Portuguese East Africa and Apartheid South Africa ensured forced labour to be recruited for the mines and by 1929 there were 115,000 Mozambicans working underground. “It has been said,” wrote First in her study of migrant Mozambican miners, “that the wealth of Reef gold mines lies not in the richness of the strike but in the low costs of production kept down by cheap labour.”[3]

When AMWU was formed in 1941 black miners earned 70 Rand a year while white workers received 848 Rand. White miners had been organized for many years, but there was little solidarity between the two groups as evidenced by the 1922 Rand Rebellion led by the whites-only Mine Workers Union. White miners went on strike against management’s attempt at weakening the colour bar in order to facilitate the entry of cheaper black labour into skilled positions. Supported by the Communist Party of South Africa under the banner of “Unite and Fight for a White South Africa!” the rebellion was viciously crushed by the state leaving over 200 dead. The growth of non-European unions in the 1940s was dramatic and for the very first time the interests of African mineworkers were on the table. Their demands threatened the very foundations of the cheap labour system, and so in 1944 Prime Minister Jan Smuts tabled the War Measure 1425 preventing a gathering of 20 or more on mine property. Despite these difficulties the union pressed on and in 1946 they approached the Chamber of Mines with their demand for wage increases. A letter calling for last minute negotiations with the Chamber of Mines was, as usual, ignored.

By August 12th tens-of-thousands of black miners were on strike from the East to the West Rand. The state showed the utmost brutality, chasing workers down mineshafts with live ammunition and cracking down on potential sympathy strikes in the city of Johannesburg. By August 16th the state had bludgeoned 100,000 miners back to work and nine lay dead. Throughout the four-day strike hundreds of trade union leaders were arrested, with the central committee of the Communist Party and local ANC leaders arrested and tried for treason and sedition. The violence came on the cusp of the 1948 elections, which would see further repression and the beginning of the country’s anti-communist hysteria.

National Union of Mineworkers Poster on Fortieth Anniversary of 1946 Strike.

While it did not succeed in its immediate aims, the strike was a watershed moment in South African politics and would forever change the consciousness of the labour movement. Thirty years late Monty Naicker, one of the leading figures in the South African Indian Congress, argued that the strike “transformed African politics overnight. It spelt the end of the compromising, concession-begging tendencies that dominated African politics. The timid opportunism and begging for favours disappeared.”[4] The Native Representative Council, formed by the state in 1937 to address the age old ‘native question,’ disbanded on August 15th and ANC president Dr. A.B. Xuma reiterated the demand for “recognition of African trade unions and adequate wages for African workers including mineworkers.”[5]

The 1946 mineworkers strike was the spark that ignited the anti-apartheid movement. The ANC Youth League’s 1949 Program of Action owes much to the militancy of these workers as does the Defiance Campaign of the 1950s and the emergence of the ANC’s armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) in the 1960s. It is too early to say what sort of impact the current Lonmin strike will have on South African politics, but it seems unlikely that it will be as transformative as those of the past. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), arguably the heirs to the 1946 strike are currently engaged in a series of territorial disputes with the breakaway Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). Meanwhile COSATU’s muted response has echoed the ANC’s line of equal-culpability and half-mast public mourning. The increasingly incoherent South African Communist Party has called for the arrest of AMCU leaders with some of its so-called cadres defending the police action. Former ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema’s plea for miners to hold the line and form a more militant union reek of political opportunism.

Still Dependant on Cheap and Flexible Labour

What no one has dared to say, aside from the miners themselves, is that the mining industry remains dependant on cheap and flexible labour, much of it continuing to come from neighbouring countries. This has historically been the source of most miner’s grievances. A recent Bench Marks Foundation study of platinum mines in the North West province uncovered a number of factors linked to rising worker discontent in the region. Lonmin was singled out as a mine with high levels of fatalities, very poor living conditions for workers and unfulfilled community demands for employment. Perhaps most significant is the fact that almost a third of Lonmin’s workforce is employed through third party contractors.[6] This form of employment is not new in the mining industry. In fact, since minerals were discovered in the 19th century labour recruiters have scoured the southern half of the continent for workers. The continued presence of these ‘labour brokers’ on the mines and the ANC’s unwillingness to ban them – opting instead for a system of increasing regulation – is the bloody truth of South Africa’s so-called ‘regulated flexibility.’

There are a number other findings from the Bench Marks study that are worth mentioning as they illuminate some of the real grievances that have been lost amid photos of waving pangas. The number of fatalities at Lonmin has doubled since January 2011, and the company has consistently ignored community calls for employment, favouring contractors and migrant workers. A visit by the Bench Marks Foundation research team to Marikana revealed:

“A proliferation of shacks and informal settlements, the rapid deterioration of formal infra-structure and housing in Marikana itself, and the fact that a section of the township constructed by Lonmin did not have electricity for more than a month during the time of our last visit. At the RDP Township we found broken down drainage systems spilling directly into the river at three different points.”[7]

In fact, the study predicted further violent protests at Marikana in the coming year. The mass dismissal of 9000 workers in May last year inflamed already tense relations between the community and the mine as dismissed workers lost their homes in the company’s housing scheme.

Once again, these facts are hardly new in the world of South African mining. Behind the squalid settlements that surround the mineshafts there are immense profits to be made. In recent years the platinum mining industry has prospered like no other thanks to the increased popularity of platinum jewellery and the use of the metal in vehicle exhaust systems in the United State and European countries. Production increased by 60 per cent between 1980 and 1994, while the price soared almost fivefold. The value of sales, almost all exported, thus increased to almost 12 per cent of total sales by the mining industry. The price rose so dramatically throughout the 1990s that it is on par with gold as the country’s leading mineral export.[8] South Africa’s platinum industry is the largest in the world and in 2011 reported total revenues of $13.3-billion, which is expected to increase by 15.8% over the next five years. Lonmin itself is one of the largest producers of platinum in the world, and the bulk of its tonnage comes from the Marikana mine. The company recorded revenues of $1.9-billion in 2011, an increase of 25.7%, the majority of which would come from the Marikana shafts.[9]

For risking mutilation and death underground workers at Marikana made only 4000 Rand, or $480 a month. As one miner told South Africa’s Mail and Guardian newspaper that, “It’s better to die than to work for that shit … I am not going to stop striking. We are going to protest until we get what we want. They have said nothing to us. Police can try and kill us but we won’t move.” These expressions of frustration and anger could be from 1922, 1946 or today. They are scathing indictments of an industry that continues to treat its workers as disposable and a state that upholds apartheid’s cheap labour policies. •

Chris Webb is a postgraduate student at York University, Toronto where he is researching labour restructuring in South African agriculture.

Endnotes:

1. Monty Naicker, “The African Miners Strike of 1946,” 1976.

2. Ruth First, “The Gold of Migrant Labour,” Spearhead, 1962.

3. Ruth First, “The Gold of Migrant Labour,” Spearhead, 1962.

4. Monty Naicker, “The African Miners Strike of 1946,” 1976.

5. Dr. A.B. Xuma quoted in Monty Naicker, “The African Miners Strike of 1946.”

6. The Bench Marks Foundation, “Communities in the Platinum Minefields,” 2012.

7. The Bench Marks Foundation, “Communities in the Platinum Minefields,” 2012.

8. Charles Feinstein, An Economic History of South Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 211.

9. Marketline Advantage Reports on South Africa’s Platinum Group Metals, 2011.

Turning oppression into power

http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=75105

Turning oppression into power

by Mwelela Cele

THE Durban Bantu Social Centre, like its predecessor and counterpart the Bantu Men’s Social Centre in Johannesburg, was meant to be a social, educational, recreational and entertainment venue for blacks — a place where according to its founding aims “… worthy character may be encouraged and developed. Bantu men may spend leisure time instead of roaming the streets.”

When the Durban centre was officially opened on October 21, 1933, in Victoria Street (it later moved to Beatrice Street, near the popular American Board Congregational Church), the Natal Mercury proclaimed: “Bantu centre­ opened: native praise of Durban­ venture ‘will reduce the number of skebengas’”.

The newspaper noted that a distinguished gathering of Europeans were present at the opening ceremony, where the mayor of Durban, Percy Osborn, was introduced by the chairperson of the Bantu Social Centre Executive­ Committee, D.G. Shepstone. In his speech, the mayor said: “The need for a club of this sort had long been felt in Durban.” He was followed by Harry Camp Lugg (Gwaza­ AmaZulu), the chief native commissioner for Natal, who spoke in fluent Zulu: “It was desirable that as the native had come into contact with the European a place like the Bantu Social Centre should be created.

“Your original customs are dying away in the towns and it is desirable that some form of recreation should be provided for you when you have finished your work. You may come here instead of roaming the streets. It will, I hope, reduce the number of skebengas. If such places do not exist you may go down into the mud and drag the European with you. We want the native people to rise.”

The next speaker, John L. Dube, a founding member and first president of the ANC, added that “wherever there is identity of interest there must be co-operation”.

Dube was a paid-up member of the centre as was Frank Caluza, W.F. Bhulose, Ngazana Luthuli, Jack Malinga, William Mseleku and Benedict W. Vilakazi. They would be joined by brothers Herbert Dhlomo and Reginald Dhlomo, Reverend Posselt Gumede, Albert John Luthuli, Innes B. Gumede, A.W.G.Champion, Ruben Caluza, C.J. Mpanza, Jordan K. Ngubane, Charles Dube (United States-educated teacher and trader) and Martin L. Khumalo.

The centre opened after a period of massive black urbanisation. In 1900 there had been about 55 700 people in Durban, of whom 14 600 were black Durbanites. By 1921, the total population in Durban had risen to 90 500, of whom 28 400 were black people and predominantly men.

The Durban Municipality established a structure to control black people in Durban, built on the revenue generated from the municipal­ beer monopoly. This monopoly generated significant revenue for the municipality­, which, in turn, was used to finance­ the development of the local state apparatus of control. Profits from beer halls made possible the founding in 1916 of a Municipal­ Native Affairs Department.

Before 1933, with the exception of the Lutheran­ Church (Emaplangweni) in Milne Street, the American Board Congregational Church (Ezihlabathini) in Beatrice Street, hostels, beer halls, the Industrial Commercial Workers’ Union Club and the Catholic Thrift Club, there was no place for social activities for black people in the city of Durban. This caused concern among city fathers with regard to how black urban labour was going to be kept occupied and under control, when not at work, in order to avoid political and social unrest. This concern was so serious it gave birth to the idea of the establishment of the Durban Bantu Social Centre.

The centre was established through the efforts of white members of the Rotary Club with the assistance of the Durban Town Council. In 1929, Rotary advised the council to develop native recreation on a structured basis and offered financial assistance both for this and for the appointment of a native welfare officer. At the beginning of 1930, the council formed a native welfare committee to deal solely with issues relating to black South Africans and appointed a native advisory board consisting of four city councillors and 10 black South Africans drawn as representatives from Durban’s political and church organisations as well as the barracks. The city council also appointed a welfare officer whose responsibility included investigating complaints, grievances and organising social entertainments, sports and recreation. Sports and recreation became the main part of the strategy for diffusing unrest.

The Bantu Social Centre was used for committee meetings of the schools’ football clubs, the Durban Bantu Football Association and other football bodies, the Durban and District Cricket Union, the Co-operative Society, the Joint Council of Europeans and Bantu, the committee controlling Ingoma dances, Boxing Club, Natal Native Congress, Pathfinders, Wayfarers, and the Native Temperance Union. The centre also provided an unemployment bureau and evening educational classes. Choral music concerts and Ingoma music concerts were held at the centre. There was also ballroom dancing and films were screened. All these social­ activities contributed to the consolidation of common interest among black people, but this interest did not lead to the social control that white elites had wanted.

Contrary to what the creators of the centre had imagined, the educated black African elite used the centre to interface with working-class people and it became a platform for political meetings, giving impetus to the political objectives of the educated black political­ elite.

According to literary historian Ntongela Masilela, “the social centres were intended equally and simultaneously to control and yet enlighten the African imagination by the powers that be … the genius of H.I.E. Dhlomo, R.R.R. Dhlomo, Jordan Ngubane, B.W. Vilakazi, Charlotte Manye Maxeke, Bertha Mkhize, Selope Thema, Ruben Caluza and many others was to quickly unravel this great enigma and thereby completely confound the oppressors, who still talked about ‘natives’ and ‘kaffirs’ while these new African­ intellectuals were inventing African nationalism and new African modernity in order­ to overthrow oppression.”

The Durban Bantu Social Centre played a critical role in creating a space for Africans to read and debate the issues of the day. It was also the site of the first public library for black people in Durban, under the charge of Herbert Dhlomo. Dhlomo had been closely associated with the Johannesburg Bantu Men’s Social Centre and he was appointed librarian — organiser under the Transvaal Committee of the Carnegie Library Service for Non-Europeans. The Bantu Men’s Social Centre Library was a receiving depot of the Carnegie Non-European Library.

In 1941, leaving behind his family in Johannesburg­, Dhlomo moved to Durban to become the librarian of the Ndongeni Bantu Library at the Durban Bantu Social Centre, also a Carnegie depository. This library was named after Ndongeni, who rode with Dick King to Grahamstown to get help for the besieged troops in Durban in 1842. For Dhlomo, Ndongeni was a symbol of allegiance and courage that had been betrayed, and a symbol of unity that the Ndongeni Bantu Social Centre Library hoped to cultivate. Dhlomo organised and gave lectures at the Ndongeni Bantu Social Centre Library as did Don Mthimkhulu, headmaster of Adams College; Jordan Ngubane, editor of I nkundla ya Bantu­ and assistant editor of Ilanga Lase Natal­, and W.?Mseleku.

The centre also became a centre of political activity. In 1939, Dhlomo, Ngubane, Manasseh­ Tebatso (M.?T.) Moerane (former president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki’s maternal­ uncle and editor of The World), Ashby Peter (A.?P.) Mda, and other activists established the National Union of African Youth (NUAY), a forerunner to the ANC Youth League which was launched in Durban at the Bantu Social Centre in 1944.

In 1951 another crucial meeting took place at the centre that crafted a new political direction for the ANC. Following a meeting of the young back-room intellectuals of the ANC in Natal such as Dhlomo, Ngubane, and Masabalala Yengwa, Albert Luthuli was elected Natal provincial president of the ANC.

The turning point of the struggle for political liberation in South Africa was the Defiance Campaign of 1952. In Natal, most preliminary meetings for the preparation of the launch of the campaign were held at the centre­ and it was from there that the Defiance Campaign was launched. At the end of 1954 a national conference of the ANC was held at the centre.

The Durban Bantu Social Centre played a pivotal role in integrating black intelligentsia and black urban labour drawn from the rural areas. This harmonised black social relations, diffused black class tensions, and fostered a much-needed unity against the colonial state and later the apartheid state. Because of the centre’s role in the consolidation of common purpose among black people­, it should go down in history as a place that contributed to the end of oppression in South Africa.

The Life and Death of Dr Abu Baker ‘Hurley’ Asvat, 23 February 1943 to 27 January 1989

The Life and Death of Dr Abu Baker ‘Hurley’ Asvat, 23 February 1943 to 27 January 1989

Jon Soske

At the time of his murder in 1989, Dr Abu Baker ‘Hurley’ Asvat was widely revered as ‘the people’s doctor’ based on almost two decades of medical work in Soweto and health projects initiated across the Transvaal as Azapo’s secretary of health. Despite his close relationship with leading African National Congress (ANC) figures and his major role in anti-apartheid medical activism, Asvat’s name rarely appears in histories of the liberation struggle and his life’s work has been almost completely overshadowed by the controversial circumstances of his death. This article reconstructs Asvat’s biography from his childhood in the multiracial Johannesburg neighbourhood of Vrededorp to his medical study and political activism as part of a Pan Africanist Congress (PAC)-aligned student group in Pakistan; from his significant role in non-racial cricket to his emergence as a central figure in Soweto’s life and politics. This article also reflects on the relationship between Lenasia and Soweto as social spaces during the years of apartheid and interrogates the ways in which apartheid racial categories – particularly ‘African’ and ‘Indian’ – continue to structure how historians represent the recent past.

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