Hammer and Sickle
A Distant Clap of Thunder Book issued to mark the Fortieth Anniversary of the 1946 Mine Strike <http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=4727> A Salute by the South African Communist Party to South Africa's Black Mine Workers Published by the South African Communist Party, 1986 Part 4 >From sporadic action to united demand: Ten Shillings a Day Against the background of government and employers' resistance to any change, discontent built up on the mines and began to spill over in sporadic action. On several mines, disputes over treatment by mine officials and over food and conditions sparked off a growing wave of minor - unorganised - strikes and stoppages; demonstrations in compounds and dining halls erupted into riots, with the vandalising or burning of kitchens and other mine buildings. Police and company reprisals against the offenders failed to stem the tide of miners' anger. The pressure either had to be headed off, or an explosion on the Reef would almost certainly erupt. The government chose to try and head it off. Probably on the initiative of the Chamber of Mines - though this was never admitted - the government announced the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry into the wages and conditions of the black miners. It was hoped that this would signal to the miners that their grievances were going to be remedied if only they would be patient and go quietly on with the work in the old conditions. By the time the Commission reported it was thought the 'troublesome' generation of miners would have ended their contracts and been sent home; and a new, hopefully more tractable, group would be installed to replace them. History and the Mine Workers' Union frustrated those hopes. As soon as the appointment of the Commission under the chairmanship of Mr Justice Landsdowne was announced, the Union seized the opportunity it presented. Meetings of miners were held up and down the Reef to tell the miners of the Inquiry, and to ask them to collect and formulate grievances and demands which the Union would take to the Commission. The idea caught on; the state's safety fuse was grasped and turned against its makers. As the idea spread, meetings of miners grew from small group affairs to mass gatherings at which the men 'spoke bitterness' - as the Chinese say of public denunciations of conditions of life. Every weekend in central Johannesburg, large gatherings of articulate miners from every Witwatersrand shaft gathered to give the Union organisers chapter and verse of the day to day detail of life and conditions of work on every part of the Reef. From these meetings came a massive, detailed and fully documented memorandum from the AMWU to the Commission. The miners unions turned the Lansdowne Commission on its head. What had been designed to be a full justification of the policy of the Chamber of Mines became instead a massive public denunciation. The Chamber's legal representative, who had taken the front seat at all sessions of the Commission, cross examining and contradicting witnesses, found his starring role eclipsed by the deep and detailed evidence presented by the Union. Against the Chamber's claim of its inability to afford anything more than the existing rate of between 2 shillings/ld and 2 shillings/3d per shift, the Union demanded a minimum wage of ten shillings (one rand) per day, and sweeping improvements in conditions generally, including paid holidays and overtime working, clothing and boot allowances, and improved feeding. The demand for ten shillings a day minimum wage - by today's standards so paltry as to be laughable - was treated by the Chamber and its supportive national press and Parliament as a fantastic and irresponsible dream. The men's wages, the Chamber argued repeatedly, were really only part of the family income; the main part of that income was derived from family crop and livestock production in the reserves. The Union challenge to the Chamber thus had to deal not only with the conditions on the mines themselves, but also with the alleged farming incomes of the miners' families in the reserves. Prompted by the Union, other organisations and experts came forward to testify about the conditions of the people in the reserves; and a formidable body of health and social researchers exposed the reality of starvation and near-starvation in almost all areas; of soil erosion and falling productivity which had made the reserves net importers of food from outside; of large and growing numbers of totally landless families; and of alarming levels of malnutrition and infant mortality rates. In the face of desperate efforts by the Chamber of Mines to present an alternative picture, the real face of the mining industry and of its impact on the lives of 340,000 men and hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of their dependants, was systematically exposed to the public gaze for the first time in South African history. Where the Chamber attempted to paint a picture of higher wages leading only to steep decline for all the Reef towns and all the service industries and the farmers who supplied their needs - thus a real national and near fatal disaster - a new picture emerged of an actual disaster, already coming into being and built on the gross exploitation of the miners. From: http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2626 -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. 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