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RURAL MASTERS AND URBAN MILITANTS IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY SOUTH AFRICA
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2017
Abstract
White farmers in South Africa, a landowning class that subordinated black tenants and workers, also participated in the suppression of white workers’ movements before and after the First World War. This article explores how class interest limited and then overrode the farmers’ expected ethnic and political solidarities. It focuses especially on the contradictory ways in which farmers related to the great mineworkers’ strike and rebellion of 1922. Some contemporaries expected that racial solidarity, Afrikaner nationalism, and familial links would lead landowners to side, even militarily, with the white workers. Appeals were made to farmers by both sides of the struggle in 1922, and there was some significant support for the strikers from them. But the upheaval ran counter to landowners’ interests, notably by dislocating their primary urban market at a time of severe economic difficulty. In the end, farmers rode once more into the towns against the workers.
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References
1 For the use of commandos from the countryside (which the Afrikaans term burgerkommandos would generally denote), see – for example – Oberholster, A. G., Die mynwerkerstaking: Witwatersrand, 1922 (Pretoria, 1982), p. 31 Google Scholar; Yudelman, David, The emergence of modern South Africa: state, capital and the incorporation of organized labor on the South African gold fields (Westport, CT, and London, 1983), p. 109 Google Scholar.
2 See Oberholster, Die mynwerkerstaking, ch. 6; Krikler, J., White rising: the 1922 insurrection and racial killing in South Africa (Manchester, 2005), ch. 9Google Scholar; and the source cited in the next footnote.
3 Secretary of Defence (Group 2), box 1378, file DC 30433B, vol. ii, ‘Moblization scheme strike 1922’, loose documents. See ‘Summary of forces’, 18 Mar. 1922. The figures provided for various areas suggest a total of 3,668 commandos in the government forces. Total military (as opposed to police) forces mobilized were around 9,600, so the burger commandos amounted to over a third of these. The police force deployed amounted to over 7,000, although this included more than 3,000 unarmed civil guards, who cannot be considered a military force. This source is part of the Archives of the Secretary of Defence, now part of the South African Defence Force Archives, Pretoria.
4 See Krikler, J., ‘The commandos’, Past and Present, 163 (1999), pp. 202–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 219–20, where the important findings of Sandra Swart are alluded to.
5 For a superb account of the political developments referred to, see Hancock', W. K.s classic Smuts: the sanguine years, 1870–1919 (Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar and Smuts: the fields of force (Cambridge, 1968)Google Scholar.
6 See O'Dowd, C. E. M., ‘The general election of 1924’, South African Historical Journal, 2 (1970), pp. 54–76, at pp. 72ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 See Bouch, Richard, ‘Farming and politics in the Karroo and Eastern Cape, 1910–1924’, South African Historical Journal, 12 (1980), pp. 48–64, at pp. 62–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which focus on the importance of rural constituencies that the Nationalists either lost or were unable to take from the SAP in 1924.
8 For this last point, see O'Dowd, ‘The general election of 1924’, pp. 72–3. See also Bouch, ‘Farming and politics’, p. 63, where the Nationalists’ ‘decisive swing’ in 1924 is identified as having occurred in the Transvaal. This would have been the rural Transvaal, as the party did not fare so well in its urban constituencies.
9 Archives of the Governor-General of South Africa, 1905–74 (GOV), vol. 965, file 19/640, governor-general to Winston Churchill, 31 Jan. 1922. These archives are held in South African National Archives in Pretoria and are part of the Sentrale Argiefbewaarkblek/Central Archives Depot, the archival designation of which is SAB.
10 See Archives of the Special Criminal Court, Johannesburg, 1922–3 (SCC), case no. 59A/1922, Rex v. R. K. de Boer et al.: testimony of Clifford Ferreira, striker; and case no. 3/1922, Rex v. M. Olivier et al.: preparatory examination testimony of Frans Werner, mineworker. This archive is held in the South African National Archives in Pretoria. It is part of the Transvaal Argiefbewaarplek/Transvaal Archives Depot, the archival designation of which is TAB.
11 See SCC, case no. 62A/1922, Rex v. D. van Zyl et al.: testimonies of Sergeant Edgar Holmden and Henry Boy, a detective.
12 For the strike commando movement, see Krikler, ‘The commandos’, pp. 202–44; and – generally – Krikler, White rising.
13 University of the Witwatersrand Library Historical Manuscripts (UWL), AH646, Records of the Trade Union Council of South Africa (TUCSA Records), South African Industrial Federation papers (SAIF papers), Bd6.2.1, file 3, case concerning Primrose Mine shooting: statement (Afrikaans typescript, 3pp.) of Gabriel Mare of Germiston, p. 3, crossed out portion. (Note: this statement is distinct from a two-page typescript statement of Mare's in this file.)
14 See Macmillan, W. M., Complex South Africa (London, 1930), pp. 85–6Google Scholar, with respect to urban Afrikaners’ desire to return to the land.
15 For the context and nature of the company drive against the conditions of white labour, see Krikler White rising, ch. 1; Johnstone, Frederick, Class, race and gold: a study of class relations and racial discrimination in South Africa (Lanham, MD, 1976), ch. 3Google Scholar; Yudelman, Emergence of modern South Africa, chs. 4–5; Oberholster, Die mynwerkerstaking, ch. 3; Jack and Ray Simons, Class and colour in South Africa (International Defence and Aid Fund edn, 1983), ch. 13Google ScholarPubMed.
16 See Die Burger, 17 Feb. 1922, p. 5, ‘Boere steun stakers’ for evidence of farmers supporting the racial demand of the strikers.
17 GG, vol. 965, file 19/640, governor-general to Winston Churchill, 31 Jan. 1922.
18 Rand Daily Mail, 25 Jan. 1922, p. 10, ‘Protracted struggle expected’.
19 See Argief van die Sekretaris van Landbou (LDB)/Archives of the Secretary of Agriculture, 1896–1969. It is part of the SAB collection of the South African National Archives. In 2013, I fruitlessly searched the LDB archive for material on the farmers’ relationship to the strike and came up with nothing. I searched consecutively through correspondence files that comprehended 1922 – for example, those in correspondence file volumes 2–7 and 9–13. After searching all volumes up to volume 34 that contained any material relating to the year 1922, I ceased my consecutive trawl since the files were yielding nothing of relevance. I drew a blank also in my study of the Register of Outgoing Letters, vol. 5065, as also in my study of the following volumes of the Registers of Incoming Letters (individuals): vols. 4997, 4998, and 4999. All volumes of registers mentioned cover the period of the strike.
20 A guide to sources regarding the 1922 strike in the Archives of the Secretary of Defence was compiled by M. Fraser and is held in the South African National Defence Force Archives, Pretoria.
21 See Oberholster, Die mynwerkerstaking.
22 See The story of a crime (Transvaal Strike Legal Defence Committee, Johannesburg, 1924), p. 9 Google Scholar.
23 Rand Daily Mail, 12 Jan. 1922, p. 7, ‘Why farmers go bankrupt’, recounting views of the head of the Crown Mines complex.
24 Ibid., 20 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Farmers in grave difficulties’: an extensive report of the views of ‘a member of the Chamber of Mines’.
25 UWL, AH646, TUCSA Records, SAIF papers, box Bd1–5 (SAI F memoranda), document Bd3.11, J. Boyd (assistant secretary, Dept of Labour, Chamber of Mines) to general secretary, SAIF, 1 June 1921, which admits that in October 1920 the cost of living was ‘practically 57 per cent above the 1914 level’. For a broadly similar increase in wages over the same period, see Johnstone, Class, race and gold, p. 100.
26 Rand Daily Mail, 20 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Farmers in grave difficulties’.
27 SCC, case no. 77/9/1923, Rex v. William Fraser and E. W. Gibbs: testimony of Edwin Gibbs, chairman of the Brakpan Strike Committee. See Die Burger, 25 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Die saak aan boere verduidelik’ for a trade unionist addressing a meeting in Colligny, Orange Free State, in which the strikers’ cause was held to be in the economic interests of farmers.
28 Archives of the Secretary to the Prime Minister (PM), vol. 1/1/422, file 3/22, vol. iii, ‘Industrial Situation. Strike. January 1922’, leaflet entitled ‘Die volksiel word geskend!’: enclosure of J. van der Merwe [?] to Captain Lane (PM's private secretary), 1 Feb. 1922. The leaflet reproduced at length the views of General J. J. Pienaar which had appeared in Ons Vaderland newspaper. These archives are held in the South African National Archives in Tshwane/Pretoria and are part of the SAB collection.
29 Rand Daily Mail, 7 Jan. 1922, p. 9, ‘Nurahs and the colour bar’.
30 Ibid., 21 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Advice to farmers’.
31 Die Burger, 24 Feb. 1922, ‘Boer en werker een belang’.
32 Rand Daily Mail, 2 Feb, 1922, p. 5, ‘Withdraw the ultimatum’; and 1 Feb. 1922, p. 8, ‘Political fighting foreshadowed’. See also the reference to the farmers’ solidarity as conveyed to workers in the Johannesburg Town Hall: Rand Daily Mail, 3 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Distress owing to strike’.
33 Ibid., 3 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Distress owing to strike’.
34 SCC, case no. 1/22, Rex v. R. P. Erasmus: testimony of Rasmus P. Erasmus, commandant of a Johannesburg strike commando.
35 Rand Daily Mail, 16 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Thompson's message’.
36 GG, vol. 966, file 19/646, governor-general to Winston Churchill, 24 Feb. 1922, citing comments of the parliamentarian, T. Boydell.
37 Rand Daily Mail, 18 Jan. 1922, p. 7, ‘Making or marring the country’.
38 GG, vol. 965, file 19/643, governor-general to Winston Churchill, 7 Feb. 1922; quotations from this letter. A report of the meeting between the National Party and the union representatives may be found in Rand Daily Mail, 2 Feb. 1922, p. 5, ‘Give strikers rations’.
39 Rand Daily Mail, 3 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Distress owing to strike’. See Die Burger, 16 Feb. 1922, p. 3, ‘Nasionale Party’ for mobilization in support of the strikers by the party's Marico branch.
40 Rand Daily Mail, 23 Jan. 1922, p. 7, ‘Helping distressed strikers’; 1 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Meeting at Alberton’; 24 Jan. 1922, p. 5, ‘The workers’ propaganda’; 30 Jan. 1922, p. 10, ‘Strike relief work’.
41 Ibid., 3 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Distress owing to strike’; 1 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Gifts from Jackson's Drift farmers’; 17 Feb. 1922, p. 10, ‘Events on the East Rand’.
42 The newspaper was Ons Vaderland, which was cited by Die Burger, 18 Feb. 1922, p. 8, ‘40,000 mense per dag gevoed’.
43 See The Star, 17 Feb. 1922, ‘Feeding the strike’: cutting to be found as enclosure 29 of GG, vol. 965, file 19/645. Further information on the organization of relief may be found in Rand Daily Mail, 3 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Distress owing to strike’.
44 The Star, 17 Feb. 1922, ‘Feeding the strike’: cutting in the GG source cited in n. 43.
45 See Archives of the Municipality of Brakpan (MBP), vol. 219, file S 51, ‘Strike papers. 1922 STRIKE’, extract from minutes of the Finance and General Purposes Committee meeting of 7 Mar. 1922. The extract quotes both the resolution of the mass meeting referred to, and a resolution of the committee itself. This archive is held in the South African National Archives in Pretoria and is part of its TAB collection.
46 Ibid., letter from secretary of the Strike Distress Fund (of the SAIF, Johannesburg), 24 Feb. 1922; and acting secretary, Town Clerk's Office, to secretaries, English and Afrikaans Medium School Committees, 1 Feb. 1922.
47 Rand Daily Mail, 16 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Farmers and state interference’.
48 Ibid., 17 Feb. 1922, p. 10, ‘Farmers and Rand crisis’.
49 See Archives of the Government Native Labour Bureau (GNLB), vol. 312, file entitled ‘Papers in connection with industrial trouble…1922’, ‘Circular to inspectors’ (rough draft), no date but it refers to an earlier ‘Circular minute…of the 12th [presumably January]’. These archives are held in the South African National Archives, Pretoria.
50 Ibid., table headed ‘Strike: January 1922. Suspension of recruiting and repatriation of native labourers’.
51 GG, vol. 965, file 19/645, enclosure 36: newscutting (‘Steady drain’) from Sunday Times, 19 Feb. 1922. It is possible that some of these workers were not employed on the mines since the men referred to were ‘time-expired mines and works labourers’.
52 See Rand Daily Mail, 2 Mar. 1922, p. 6, ‘Recruiting to start again’.
53 Ibid., 13 Feb. 1922, p. 8, ‘Smaller food bill’, sub-section of ‘Biggest exodus yet’.
54 Die Burger, 13 Feb. 1922, p. 6, ‘Slagters in Benoni stop krediet’ (sub-title).
55 Ibid., 14 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Rouxville’.
56 The Rand Daily Mail itself was owned by the South African Mails Syndicate, which was led by a businessman with mining interests, Abe Bailey: see Fraser, Maryna and Jeeves, Alan, eds., All that glittered: selected correspondence of Lionel Phillips, 1890–1924 (Cape Town, 1977), p. 359 n. 1Google Scholar.
57 Chamber of Mines Archives (Johannesburg), Transvaal Chamber of Mines, Executive Committee Minutes, minutes of meeting, 27 Mar. 1922.
58 See Chamber of Mines Archives, 42/1922, ‘Strike propaganda 1922’. A content list of ‘Draft strike propaganda 1922’ has 153 entries: nos. 52, 63, 73, 79, 82, 84, 149 seem to have been of particular relevance to farmers.
59 Rand Daily Mail, 24 Jan. 1922, p. 3, ‘Farmers and the strikers’; 26 Jan. 1922, p. 5, ‘The backveld view’; 30 Jan. 1922, p. 3, ‘Farmer and the strike’. The quotation in the text is from the letter published on 26 Jan.
60 Note how the anonymous letter in the Rand Daily Mail (24 Jan. 1922, p. 3, ‘Farmer and the strikers’) counters the assertion by W. Madeley of farmers’ support for the strikers (Rand Daily Mail, 18 Jan. 1922, p. 7, ‘Making or marring the country’).
61 Rand Daily Mail, 2 Mar. 1922, p. 5. The report came from Kimberley; the farmer – unnamed – was held to come from the Herbert district.
62 Rand Daily Mail, 7 Jan. 1922, p. 7: ‘Power station to be rationed’.
63 Ibid., 14 Jan. 1922, p. 5, ‘The Johannesburg markets’.
64 Ibid., 16 Feb. 1922, p. 5, ‘The Johannesburg markets’. The article offers much evidence of sales, prices fetched, and so on. One is not denying sales, but these were clearly taking place in the context of a dislocated and depressed market.
65 Note the commentary with reference to the Newtown stock yards in Rand Daily Mail, 18 Feb. 1922, p. 5, ‘The Johannesburg markets’.
66 Ibid., 28 Jan. 1922, p. 8, ‘Apples 1d. per 100’. The article dealt with much more than apples and it flagged the impact of the strike: one of its headlines was ‘Effect of the strike’.
67 Not the plummeting of prices in 1920–1, the years before the strike, as graphically illustrated in Bradford, Helen, A taste of freedom: the ICU in rural South Africa (New Haven, CT, 1987), p. 28 Google Scholar.
68 De Volkstem, 10 Jan. 1922, ‘Spoorwegtarieven en kosten’.
69 Die Burger, 17 Feb. 1922, p. 4, ‘Die nood van die Boer’; 17 Jan. 1922, p. 8, ‘Die kans vir die veeboer’; and 13 Feb. 1922, p. 7 (for the advertisement).
70 Rand Daily Mail, 19 Jan. 1922, p. 7, ‘No sympathy with miners’.
71 Ibid., 24 Jan. 1922, p. 3, ‘Farmer and the strikers’.
72 De Volkstem, 10 Jan. 1922, ‘Die landbouer en mijnwerker’.
73 Rand Daily Mail, 23 Jan. 1922, p. 5, ‘Racialism dead on Rand’.
74 Ibid., 18 Feb. 1922, p. 6, ‘Farmers and Rand crisis.
75 Die Burger, 17 Feb. 1922, p. 4, ‘Die nood van die boer’.
76 Rand Daily Mail, 8 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Support for the government’.
77 SCC, case no. 1/1922, Rex v. R. P. Erasmus: testimony of A. Trigger, divisional criminal investigation officer; my italics. The quoted words are those of the lawyer questioning Trigger, who endorsed them.
78 The declaration is from Ons Vaderland, cited in Die Burger, 18 Feb. 1922, p. 8, ‘’N vervalste vlugskrif’ (sub-heading). It is not clear if the words are a quotation.
79 Rand Daily Mail, 17 Feb. 1922, p. 10, ‘National White Labour Party’. The article reproduced the leaflet and the federation's response.
80 Die Burger, 20 Feb. 1922, p. 7, ‘Ventersdorp (Tvl.)’.
81 SCC, case no. 1/1922, Rex v. R. P. Erasmus: testimony of George Thompson, leading trade unionist. Insofar as I discerned places of birth of those charged before the Special Criminal Court, I frequently came across men who were from the Orange Free State.
82 See Die Huisgenoot, issues for January, February, and March 1922. This was primarily a women's magazine, but the 1922 strike movement was one in which women were very involved: see Krikler, White rising, ch. 3. There is a glancing mention of the strike and mineworkers in the March issue of Die Huisgenoot (pp. 463–4) in an article on ‘Afrikaans in Johannesburg’.
83 See the cartoon (‘’N mislukking’) published in Die Burger, 11 Feb. 1922, p. 6.
84 For examples of such references in speeches, see Rand Daily Mail, 7 Jan. 1922, p. 9, ‘Nurahs and the colour bar’; and 12 Jan. 1922, p. 10, ‘Arbitration the solution’.
85 I explore the discourse of the strike in Krikler, White rising, ch. 4.
86 De Volkstem, 10 Jan. 1922, ‘Die gesag kan maar ophou!’.
87 See Hyslop, Jonathan, The notorious syndicalist: J. T. Bain: a Scottish rebel in colonial South Africa (Johannesburg, 2004), pp. 230, 232, 240Google Scholar (in the context of chs. 19–20); and Simons and Simons, Class and colour in South Africa, pp. 167–70.
88 Die Burger, 24 Feb. 1922, ‘Boer en werker een belang’.
89 PM, vol. 1/1/423, file 3/22 (vol. vii), telegrams from General Smuts to De Wet, 23 Feb. 1922, and to the minister of justice, 9 Mar. 1922. For a public acknowledgement by Smuts of his confidence in the burger commandos to do their duty by the government, see his comments as reported in Die Burger, 20 Mar. 1922, p. 5, ‘Genl. Smuts en die burgers’.
90 SCC, case no. 1/1922, Rex v. R. P. Erasmus: testimony of George Thompson, president of the South African Industrial Federation in 1922.
91 De Volkstem, 10 Jan. 1922, ‘Sit maar stil!’.
92 SCC, case no. 67/1922, Rex v. J. Garnsworthy et al., testimony of Christiaan C. van Vuuren. The words quoted were allegedly said by another man at the meeting. My research has established that Van Vuuren was a strike commando leader of some kind in Brakpan but that he turned state witness. One might be sceptical of some of his evidence because of this; however, evidence from elsewhere also points to a belief in military aid from the countryside.
93 SCC, case no. 1/1922, Rex v. R. P. Erasmus: testimony of Benjamin Fouche, striker. See also – for corroboration – the testimony of Anneas Balt, mineworker, in this case. Erasmus denied having made the comment about the force of 17,000: see his testimony in this case. However, given that he was being charged with treason, one would expect him to deny this. The judge found the testimony of Fouche and Balt compelling: see judgement in this case.
94 SCC, case no. 11/1922, Rex v. Jan van den Berg: preparatory examination testimony of Pieter de la Rey.
95 See Secretary for Defence (Group 2), box 1378, file DC 30433B, vol. ii (‘Mobilization scheme strike 1922’), loose documents, ‘Casualties to government forces 10th to 24th March, 1922’. For the point regarding the East Rand, see Oberholster, Die mynwerkerstaking, p. 177.
96 GG, vol. 966, file 19/652: cutting from the Cape Times of 16 Mar. 1922. See the sub-section ‘Arrival of burghers’ in ‘Scenes and incidents at Fordsburg’.
97 See Oberholster, Die Mynwerkerstaking, p. 177.
98 PM, vol. 1/1/423, file 3/22 (vol. v), ‘Industrial situation. Strike. 1922’, telegram from Colonel Mentz to PM, 1 Mar. 1922.
99 PM, vol. 1/1/422, file 3/22 (vol. iii), ‘Industrial situation. Strike. January 1922’, S. P. Kloppers to General Smuts, 27 Jan. 1922.
100 Die Burger, 11 Feb. 1922, p. 3, ‘Genl. Kemp se houding’.
101 See Secretary for Defence (Group 2), box 502, ‘Declaration by Mr. M. J. Marais regarding statements by Rev. van Schoor’, various documents. The farmer – who proved himself loyal – came from the far northern Transvaal, and the authorities did not anyway need in the end to mobilize farmers from so far away.
102 PM, vol. 1/1/423, file 3/22 (vol. vii), Colonel Mentz to General Smuts, 9 Mar. 1922.
103 Ibid., Mentz to Minister Malan, 11 Mar. 1922. Although Mentz here spoke only of ‘commandos’, it is obvious that it was the burger commandos (not the strike commandos) to whom he referred because he was referring to state forces being mobilized.
104 Die Burger, 16 Mar. 1922, p. 5, ‘Pragtige opkoms van burgers’. The paper was citing an article from De Volkstem.