“We Must Speak for Ourselves”: The Rise and Fall of a Public Sphereon the South African GoldMines, 1920 to 1931

Extract

On the evening of March 17, 1940, about 600 workers gathered together inside the Marievale Consolidated Compound on the far southeastern tip of the Witwatersrand goldmining crescent (see Figure 1). The workers demanded that the gates of the compound be opened, as they intended to march the forty miles to Johannesburg to present their grievances to Henry Taberer at KwaMzilikazi, the headquarters of the Native Recruiting Corporation. At about 8 pm, thirty-five policemen arrived from the nearby towns of Nigel, Springs, and Brakpan and demanded to know what was troubling the workers. After considerable discussion, the policemen discovered that the Marievale mine had run out of the regulation shift tickets normally used to record the labor of African workers and that older tickets were being used in their place. These tickets were printed with the higher wage rates received by workers during the early development of the mine: The mine officials had simply crossed out the 2 shillings and 6-pence rates and stamped the standard minimum of 2 shillings onto each slip of paper. The workers were suspicious about this conspicuous reduction of wage rates, arguing that they were due the original rate established by the Native Recruiting Corporation.