The mining of gold involved many hazards. A large number of men died from injuries, silicosis or kindred diseases; many more were maimed. Of the eighteen men who formed the miners' strike committee of 1907, thirteen died from phthisis and one from a mining accident before the war. The four survivors, including Tom Mathews the union's general secretary, suffered from the disease. The work underground was rough and hard. It attracted a corresponding type of white worker Miners in the early days tended to live recklessly and extravagantly on a high rate of pay. They earned ten times as much as the African miner, who did all the labouring work under their supervision, though he often knew more than his supervisor. White miner and African worked closely together within narrow confines underground and lived poles apart upon the surface.
The miners' union was the oldest and usually the most militant union in the Transvaal. Loosely organized and with a fluctuating membership, it was often heavily in debt. 1 Three generations of miners passed through its ranks. First came the men from Cornwall and the north of England; then a variety of nationals from Europe; and finally Afrikaners, who constituted seventy-five per cent of the miners by the mid-twenties. The socialists thought it a triumph when Afrikaner miners on the Simmer Deep struck work in 1919 against the dismissal of Krichker, a German miner, at the instance of patriotic members of The Comrades of the Great War. This was a 'truly amazing' demonstration of international working solidarity, said the ISL. Afrikaners had become 'for the first time the motive force of the movement'. They were 'learning the meaning of Industrial Democracy and the power of Labour, and the Red Flag'. 2
The miners, if class conscious, were also colour conscious.
Left militants, like the union's general secretary Tom Mathews and his successor J. Forrester Brown, were sympathetic to the organization of Africans in the industry. The general body of members insisted on a strict colour bar. When the SAIF agreed in 1921 that its affiliates should enjoy the right to admit Coloured members, E. S. Hendriks, the acting secretary of the miners' union, said that it had instructed him to withdraw its representatives from any conference attended by Coloured delegates. 3 The union steadfastly opposed the entry of Coloured and Africans in what it claimed to be the white worker's preserves. Mine owners and government were fully aware of this attitude. Sir Evelyn Wallers, the Chamber of Mines president, told the Moffat commission in 1918 that any attempt to substitute Africans for whites in mining work would cause a strike which would have the backing of the great bulk of white people on the Rand. 4 Smuts admitted to an APO deputation in July 1921 that the industrial colour bar had become more pronounced since Union, particularly on the railways. The government feared that any attempt to do away with it in the mining industry would precipitate an upheaval on the Rand. F. S. Malan, the minister of mines, added that the colour bar in the mining regulations was probably ultra vires. He, too, predicted that its elimination would involve an industrial upheaval. 5
The mine owners nonetheless maintained a steady pressure for some relaxation of the colour bar. It was, they declared, unjustifiable on both moral and economic grounds. Africans had awakened to a sense of its injustice. They demanded responsible work consistent with their ability, experience and education. The economic reasons were dictated by the fall in gold prices from the maximum of 127s. 4d. a fine ounce in February 1920 to 97s. 7d. in December 1921. This was fifteen per cent more than the price in December 1914; but production costs had risen since then by forty-four per cent. Three mines had closed down, and twenty-one were working at a loss or at a profit of less than 2s. a ton milled before July 1919, when the buyers began to pay a premium on the 'standard' price of 85s. a fine ounce. The owners contended that these twenty-one mines would also have to be closed if the price reverted to the standard figure, unless costs were correspondingly reduced. The argument was driven home at one conference after another between the Chamber and the miners' union. The union, though prepared to consider economies in the organization of underground work, emphatically rejected any proposal to modify the colour bar.
Crawford, negotiating for the AEU, conceded in February 1921 that many miles were in a precarious condition. He proposed a wage cut of five per cent from October to prevent unemployment, provided that the owners-granted an immediate rise of five per cent for three months to save the union's face. Though it had no objection, the Chamber doubted if 'responsible craftsmen' would agree. The engineers had previously voted in favour of a strike for a forty-four hour working week and a wage increase. They now agreed by a three to one majority to accept the Chamber's counter-proposal of a reduction in wages at the end of the year. Crawford was severely criticized, and the AEU broke away from his industrial federation. 6
At the time of the engineers' dispute in February, men on twenty-three mines came out in sympathy with a strike on the Consolidated Langlaagte mine against an obnoxious shift boss. When a ballot was taken 4,743 miners voted for the strike and 2,820 against. Their union's executive refused to sanction the strike, since the required two-thirds majority had not approved, and ordered the men back to work. A disciplinary committee appointed by the executive punished twenty-seven of the leaders. Hendriks was fined £60. Ernie Shaw, the general treasurer, Percy Fisher, D. Taylor and J. L. Mare were each fined £50 and banned from holding office in the union for three years. H. Spendiff. J. Wordingham W. Richardson, A. McDermid, K. J. van Coller and others were barred from office for one to five years or punished in other ways Crawford explained that the union had taken this severe action so as to forestall punitive measures by the Chamber, which nevertheless served notice that it would cease to collect subscriptions on the union's behalf. 7
Some of the men penalized took a prominent part in the strike of 1922. The martial law commission which inquired into the strike found that Shaw, Fisher and Wordingharn were communists, but the party acknowledged only Shaw as a member. 8 A former member of the SDP, he was an industrial unionist who preferred direct action to parliamentary elections. Fisher, on the other hand, had refused to join the miners' union in 1917 until forced to do so by the management in terms of the closed shop agreement. 9 The two men led an unofficial and successful strike on the City Deep mine in November 1920 over a breach of the eight-hour working day rule. Shaw stood for election to the secretaryship of the SAIF in January following, 10 and polled 3,254 votes against Andrews' 2,309 and Crawford's 6,899. Fisher was elected secretary of the SAM W U in the same month but the executive annulled the election because of alleged irregularities. He lost the new election by a narrow margin. These struggles in the union and against Crawford's leadership strengthened Andrews in his efforts to promote a rank-and-file movement.
A right-wing faction of Hertzog's followers made an unsuccessful bid to organize a separate mynwerkersbond. Militants on the left, now isolated from the official leadership, also contemplated a breakaway union. The communists held that this was contrary to the Comintern's policy. Article g of the twenty-one points instructed them to carry on systematic work through party cells in the existing unions, which should not be antagonized, but won over to the communist cause. The militants thereupon set up a Miners' Council of Action. Fisher made the announcement at a meeting in the Johannesburg town hall on 24 July 1921. The council reported in November that it was gaining ground, and recommended the formation of a new body to coordinate the activities of militants in all trade unions. This step was taken in January 1922, when the left trade unionists met in the Trades Hall to inaugurate a Johannesburg section of the Red International of Labour Unions, with E. J. Brown as its secretary. The struggle had reached a critical stage, they declared. The working-class forces should be consolidated in a revolutionary trade union organization. 11
'Be with the workers WHEREVER THEY ARE' - in struggle, victory or defeat, appealed the communists. success has bred defeat,' said Bunting, referring to Labour's setback in the parliamentary elections; 'defeat may breed success.' When workers had been 'really oppressed really whipped, not to say shot down', the unions would acquire a fighting spirit destined to blow the Chamber into air. 'Let it be a fight between the workers and the shirkers,' declared the ISL in March 1921. 'Forward to the assault on the citadel of capitalism.' If the Chamber took up the challenge, the fight would turn into a revolutionary struggle for the control of industry. The alternative before white working men was to be driven with the African into helotry or to advance with him to freedom. 12
The African miner's wage had risen by only nine per cent since 1913, and the white miner's by more than fifty per cent. 'Clearly,' argued the Chamber, 'the reduction of the excessive cost of European labour is the line along which the mines are bound to look for relief.' 13 The owners opened the attack in November by giving notice of their intention to modify the 'status quo agreement' of 1918, do away with the contract system, and reorganize underground work. The only point on which owners and miners agreed was to change work patterns in such a way as to extract more labour from Africans. Leaving the compounds from 4 a.m. onwards and returning between 2 and 6 p.m. they usually spent twelve hours or more underground without food. The number of hours spent in actual work depended on the white ganger, who was required by regulations personally to inspect every working place before mining operations could commence. Miners and owners held conferences in November under Smuts's chairmanship to discuss the Chamber's proposal. The effect of their decision was to reduce the number of supervisors and add at least an hour to the time worked by African drillers in every shift. 14
Africans were neither present at the conference nor consulted. They themselves were chiefly to blame, remarked the International, since they had failed to form trade unions on the Rand, where the 'bourgeois' National Congress held the field. 15 Disregarding statements to the contrary by spokesmen of Congress, the ICU and the African miners, the writer claimed that they had no desire to do skilled work. All they wanted was more pay for the work they did. The white unions were admittedly confused and mistaken in opposing the African's advance, and would obtain his backing if only they helped him to demand higher wages and better treatment. At the same time, they were ' perfectly justified in fighting to keep up the numbers and pay of holders of blasting certificates'. This unqualified approval for the oldest and most significant colour bar on the mines revealed the decision of the communists to back the white worker against the Chamber in all circumstances.
They condemned the unions, now a chief prop of capitalism, for assisting the owners to exploit Africans more intensively. Circumstances would yet force African and white miners to recognize their identity of interests, wrote the editor of the International.16 Though the day for this might seem far distant, when it came it would put an end to capitalist exploitation. The changes in underground work schedules would lead to the substitution of 'cheap native labour' for the more costly white, and pave the way for a general attack on wages and working conditions.
The abolition of the colour bar, according to this hypothesis, would benefit the owners and also lay the basis for workers' unity by depriving the white worker of his privileged status. This being so, it might seem that the proper course for radicals was to back the owners on grounds of both expediency and principle. For, Jones had argued in 1919, the owners represented the forces of progress, precisely because they clamoured for ' cheap labour '.
There was, however, an opposing tactical principle. It prescribed support for workers engaged in struggle, right or wrong. The men who defended the colour bar might be Luddites, but they formed the vanguard of revolution. The communists held in effect that a strike to maintain the colour bar was reactionary in form and progressive in content. Their theory led them to suppose that the white worker would develop a class consciousness during the struggle.
A closer analysis might have persuaded them that his interests and those of the African were incompatible, or contradictory in the Marxist sense. The social basis of class consciousness was smaller in white workers than the communists supposed. White miners were both contractors and wage earners, exploiters as well as exploited.
Shaft sinkers and developers were the direct descendants of the contractor who in early days on the goldfields had developed, stoped or trammed* for a fixed price per unit of work done. He bought his tools and stores from the company; recruited, housed and fed his African helpers. The system had given rise to a partnership between skilled immigrant miners from Cornwall or elsewhere and white South Africans, usually Afrikaners, who hired and supervised the gang of African helpers. In later years the companies took over responsibility for recruiting and paying the African, partly to stop crimping and to peg his wages at a figure acceptable to all owners. The principle of relating the white miner's earnings to the amount of work extracted from his gang persisted. 17 He was paid both a minimum daily wage for stoping and developing and an amount determined by the area of ground broken or excavated. As an official of the Krugersdorp branch of the miners' union explained, his earnings depended on 'the efficiency per boy per fathom per day'. 18 The harder the African worked, the greater was the ganger's income.
Africans were paid a flat rate of 1s. 6d. a shift for shovelling, 1s. 8d. for tramming and 1s. 9p. or 2s. for drilling. A driller who completed more than two hours of shovelling and drilled more than thirty-six inches in the same shift was paid two-thirds of a penny per inch drilled instead of the 2s. He received no pay for the day's work if he failed to complete a specified norm. His shift was then held to be incomplete and did not count against his period of service under contract. The decision lay with the ganger, before he lost his power after the war to issue the 'loafer ticket' that deprived his helper of a day's pay. Mining authorities urged that Africans also should be put on piece work so as to provide an incentive and the opportunity to earn wages related to capacity and experience. White miners wished to retain their right to issue 'loafer tickets'; and never advocated incentive schemes for their helpers Since the supply of African labour was constantly renewed, a ganger had no material interest in conserving the strength or promoting the well-being of the men under him. He did not regard them as fellow workers. He was their 'baas'. and so they addressed him.
The changes proposed in the contract system might reduce the miner's earnings, but not the number of men employed on work reserved for whites by the mining regulations. Any displacement or retrenchment would affect other workers, to whom the 'status quo agreement' applied. It pegged. the demarcation of jobs between whites and Africans by stimulating that no member of either racial group would be allowed to encroach on the other's field of employment as defined on 1 September 1918. If the owners had their way, Africans could take the place of whites in twenty-five semi-skilled occupations in which some 4,000 men were employed. 19 The owners said that not more than 2,000 would be retrenched, and then only as a temporary measure pending the return to the former level of profits. When this happened, expansion would follow, bringing with it a rise in the number of employees, including whites. On the other hand, according to the Chamber, retrenchment on an even bigger scale would be unavoidable if the desired' economies were not achieved.
Labour leaders were concerned less with the hardships of 2,000 men retrenched out of a working force of 21,000 than with a racial or national ideology. The SAMWU and the SAIF declared that they were fighting 'to protect the White race', or 'to maintain a White standard of living', or 'to preserve a White South Africa'. 20 This was not a question of wages, said Sampson and Creswell, but a 'great national issue' of breaking down or maintaining the colour bar. 21 Nationalist politicians and predikants harped on the same theme. 'The Chamber of Mines had declared there should be a black South Africa,' the Rev. Oosthuizen told Brakpan strikers; while dominie Hattingh thought that the souls as well as the bodies of the workers would be murdered if the colour bar were abolished. 22 Though disapproving of strikes generally, said Dr. A. M. Moll, the Nationalist party supported the miners' fight against the removal of the colour bar. 23 Tielman Roos was all for a white man's country, and Hertzog claimed that ninety-five per cent of the people were behind the strikers' demand for the colour bar. 24 Wages were never an issue in the strike, declared the legal defence committee formed after the strike.' The Strike was fought throughout on the question of the Colour Bar, including the Status Quo Agreement.' It was the same vital principle of 'National life and character ' as in the Chinese labour dispute or as in the American civil war. Was free European labour to be displaced by Negro slave labour? 25
The northern states of America made war on the south to liberate the slaves and establish the rule of equality before the law. The strikers of 1922 paralleled the south, and not the north, in their attitude to African rights. 'When Mine Negro labour is free labour it will be time enough to decide what our attitude shall be towards it,' the defence committee explained; 'but that is not the present position or question. We are not even expressing any opinion about the compounded Native Labour system for unskilled work on the Mines, since we have no desire to encroach on it.' 26 The strikers protested against the 'extension of the slave labour system' and not against its existence. In reinforcing the colour bar, they perpetuated the African's economic and social inferiority. White workers, one must conclude, would rather boss indentured Africans than compete with free Africans on an open labour market.
The dispute began on the coal mines. British coal miners had taken a big wage cut after the abortive general strike in 1921. South African colliery owners said that they could not compete on the world market with British coal at its reduced price, and asked their white employees to accept a smaller wage as well. After fruitless negotiations, a deputation from the SAIF met Patrick Duncan minister of the interior, on 28 December and agreed on arbitration. The owners refused and gave notice of their intention to reduce the standard wage of 30s. a shift by 5s. Engineering firms had previously notified their skilled employees of a wage cut from 1 January; the Victoria Falls and Transvaal Power company rejected a demand for a wage increase; and the mine owners announced that they would replace contract and piece work rates by a daily rate of pay. This amounted to a general assault on living standards, said the trade union leaders, and they made up their minds to resist.
The coal miners decided to strike work on 2 January. A meeting of trade union delegates held on 31 December approved the strike; agreed to ballot miners, engineers and electric power workers; and formed an 'augmented executive' of members of the SAIF and unaffiliated unions. The ballot paper, which was drafted by the augmented executive, urged the workers affected to vote in favour of a strike against four 'ultimatums': the 'refusal of the Coal Owners to arbitrate'; the 'Chamber of Mines' threat to substitute cheap black labour for white'; the refusal of the power company 'to continue to negotiate' for higher wages; and the 'threatened wrecking of agreement and reduction of wages' by engineering firms. 27
Only the colliery owners could be said to have delivered an ultimatum. Although the other issues were still open to negotiation, of the 24,000 workers concerned nearly 14,000 voted for a strike and 1,336 against. The coal miners came out on 2 January, and the rest on the 10th. Joe Thompson, chairman of the SAIP and the augmented executive, opened negotiations on the same day with the Chamber. The two sides conferred from the 15th to the 27th under the chairmanship of Justice Curlewis, and failed to agree. The Chamber issued a statement on the 28th recognizing 'the utmost importance' of preserving the Rand's white population. To safeguard the whites, the owners offered to guarantee an average ratio of one white worker to 10-5 Africans, as compared with the existing 1 to 8-5 ratio, on producing gold mines for the next two years. The ratio would place a ceiling on retrenchments due to any departures from the status quo. The owners undertook further to respect the statutory colour bar and existing agreements on hours and basic wages. In return, the men would lose their cost of living allowance and two paid holidays, May Day and Dingaan's Day.
The militants attacked the negotiators. 'The side which calls for a truce, especially when the fight is barely begun, confesses defeat,' wrote Andrews, and advised: 'Hit as hard and as quickly as possible.' Harassed by the police, the Council of Action ceased to function as a group soon after the strike began. Therefore, wrote Ernest Shaw 28 in later years, 'all the elaborate "fudge" about the Council of Action being engaged in creating fighting commandos and formulating a "red revolution" is so much "moonshine".' Individual members, acting on their own initiative, worked closely with Andrews and made his office in the Trades Hall, which was also the Communist party's headquarters, the centre of their activities. 'Our opinion,' added Shaw, 'was that the strike would end as it did.' This was also the opinion of Andrews.
Cheap labour, he argued, would drive out dear. The only solution was to narrow the gap between white workers and Africans. This the capitalists tried to do by bringing the whites down in numbers and pay. Their proper answer was to insist on civilized wages for all. 29 In a private letter, which fell into police hands, he confessed that the prospects were unfavourable. The strikers, in his opinion, were fighting for a lost cause. It was impossible to keep Africans out of industrial employment for which they were capable. But white working men would listen to reason only after bitter experience had taught them the futility of colour bars. 30
The fight was on. The duty of communists was to guide it correctly, instill a revolutionary consciousness in the strikers, and lead them to victory. None of these aims would be attained if the strike degenerated into a race war. The party must therefore stress the common interests of all workers, develop a spirit of inter-racial solidarity, and turn the strike into a crusade against capitalism. 'What to fight for?' asked Bunting, and answered: ' Wages, then, not colour. is the point to strike about and so far as this is a strike to maintain wages, it deserves the wholehearted support of all Labour, including the coloured and native workers themselves.' The supporting arguments were addressed to both groups. Colour bars were 'of course unfair', yet served the interests of all workers 'to the extent' that they helped to keep up higher wages and the number of those drawing on them. The abolition of the colour bar would benefit only a small handful of Africans, and leave the great bulk in the same lowpaid position as before. Security for the white man, on the other hand, lay not in retaining the colour bar but in raising the wages of Africans. 31
The communists never deviated in principle from this line. Their manifesto of 30 January gladly offered the party's services to the Strike Committee. Its fight, in spite of some questionable slogans, was essentially a fight against capitalist rule. For it was impossible to maintain the 'white standard' or build a 'white South Africa' under capitalism. 'Then away with it!' The means would be found in the utmost solidarity of all workers, irrespective of race or colour, 'as this strike is plainly teaching'. 32
If that was the lesson, it made no impact on the strikers. They ignored the appeal for solidarity and continued to fight under the banner 'For a White South Africa'. In the event, communists also participated in the strike on terms dictated by the workers' 'deficient class consciousness'. 33
Even Jones, observing events from the Comintern's headquarters in Moscow, found some merit in the colour bar. He conceded that it put the white labour movement in the false position of resisting 'the undeniable justice of the capitalist plea for native advancement'. Yet, he claimed, the barrier provided 'the best possible condition for cooperation of white with black'. Their functions were complementary. They got on 'very happily together at the place of work'. The white workers would honestly like to do justice, without 'social contamination', to Africans. The attack on the colour bar threatened to put an end to this idyllic state. Competition, he warned, would lead to the introduction of the ugly forms of race hatred prevalent in America. 34
Hertzog argued in the same strain that whites would never do justice to the African until they had lost their fears by taking sway his vote. But no Marxist should have entertained the notion that absolute white power would guarantee justice and fair play. No patriot would buy harmony and solidarity at the price of his people's subservience.
Abdurahman, for one, did not share the communists' illusions. His petition to parliament, issued during the strike, urged the removal of the colour bar for the sake of even-handed justice, peace, harmony, goodwill and respect among all sections. Africans, Coloured and Indians in all provinces should be given the right to vote and to stand for parliament. 35 Abdurahman poured scorn on the white miners. Sheltered behind the colour bar, he said, they lived on the labour of the black man, scabbed when he struck work, and forced him to put up with the miserable wage of 2s. a day. Twenty thousand white men on the mines drew wages amounting to £10.5 million a year. Ten times that number of African miners received only £6.5 million. The whites were parasites, bloodsuckers and drones. They had exploited the 'White South Africa' policy to such good effect that they now filled the position of mere overseers. As experience on the coal mines had shown, Africans could manage well enough without the supervision of the white parasites. 36
The communists viewed with gloom the continued flow of coal from the collieries. Six hundred white miners sat idly on the surface while 20,000 Africans kept up production with the aid of a handful of officials. One mine claimed record outputs; the others were scarcely affected. Andrews complained that the colour bar had disappeared from the coalfields. 'It is probably too late to rectify this grave blunder now, and it is extremely likely that the ratio of whites to blacks in the coal mines has permanently been lowered.' The moral, he added, was that all men, black or white, official or wage earner, who worked during a strike were scabs. The African had never been asked to help. Given any little encouragement by recognizing his rights to better conditions, he would strike solidly. This is what the capitalists feared. 37 So, it seemed, did the strikers. They made no effort to enlist the African's backing, yet wanted him to wait idly until the strike was over. When the Chamber announced that it had sent 28,000 men back to the reserves, Benoni strikers called on the government to nationalize the mines in view of the threat to close them by repatriating Africans. 38
Signs of a decline in morale appeared at an early stage. The Germiston strike committee stirred turbulence on 1 February by calling for a settlement and asking Smuts to intervene. Creswell pleaded for a 'reasoned adjustment and compromise'. Crawford, back from Geneva, claimed that the augmented executive, being unconstitutional, had no authority to call a strike. The communists complained of having been excluded from the 'guiding councils in the fight', and rejected any compromise. War to the knife was the only method. 39 The strikers' leaders tended to look for a political solution. Hendriks, the miners' secretary, told demonstrators in Johannesburg on 21 January to vote for Hertzog or Creswell and not for Smuts. The augmented executive accused Smuts of backing the owners and invited negotiations with the Nationalist party. A meeting held in Johannesburg on the 29th urged workers to substitute a government pledged to support the white race. Labour and Nationalist party spokesmen appeared on the same platform in Pretoria on the 30th. Two Labour party members of parliament, Sampson and Madeley, were deputed with two Nationalists, Tielman Roos and Pretorius, to ask the governor-general to summon parliament to meet in the Transvaal. He refused. 40
Tielman Roos, the Nationalist party leader in the Transvaal, used the occasion to gain a foothold in the labour movement and conduct a campaign against the government. He issued a pamphlet accusing Smuts of having conspired with the Chamber of Mines to make war on the workers, and advised them to settle the dispute at the next elections. Speaking at Fordsburg on 3 February, he suggested that the state should take over the mines. Only a government sympathetic to the whole of South Africa, and not to the Chamber alone, he added, could be expected to take this step. Two days later a big meeting of strikers adopted a resolution moved by Waterston, a Labour M.P. and leader of the Brakpan commando, calling on Nationalists to join with Labour in proclaiming a republic outside the empire. A delegation, which included Shaw and Fisher of the Council of Action, put the proposal before Nationalist and Labour leaders at Pretoria, and met with no encouragement. They rejected 'the treasonable proposal', commented the martial law inquiry commission. 41
Abdurahman reacted strongly against what he thought was an unholy alliance between Labour and Nationalists - those 'antediluvian obstructionists' encrusted with 'narrow prejudice and hoary out-of-date love of serfdom'. White workers had little, the Coloured and African far less, to hope for from the Nationalist party. It was out to exploit a national disaster for party political ends. 42 Bunting also warned against Nationalist influences. The White South Africa slogan had become the strikers' chief motif ' It supplied the steam and ginger, even to the extent of bringing the strike to a 'revolutionary situation'. But it was a two-edged cry. In the mouths of the farmers' champions, it meant only 'cheap and servile black labour'. Indeed, it came close to a demand for the ' black labour country' that capitalism had made of South Africa. Communism alone, he argued, could make it a 'white man's country' in the sense of securing to all the full product of their labour. 43
The attempt by the communists to infuse a radical content into a racial slogan followed from their unqualified support for the strike. They even justified the legend 'Workers of the World, Fight and Unite for a White South Africa.' It appeared on a red banner carried on 7 February at the head of the Fordsburg commando on its daily march with cycle outriders, advance guard and band playing the 'Red Flag'. 44 'On the face of it,' explained Bunting, ' such a motto is a grotesque travesty of the words and meaning of Marx, but the matter must not be dismissed so hastily.' Cynicism at this muddled thinking would get them nowhere. The cry to maintain the colour bar was really a fight for civilized standards. It brought into the struggle sections of the population that would not normally be on the side of a strike for wages. In spite of appearances, there was no hostility among the strikers against African workers as such, though they loomed as a frightening spectre behind the strike. What was important was that town and country had united for the first time against Big Business. The rest would follow. The workers would yet learn that the true remedy lay not in colour bars but in solidarity against the capitalist class. 45
The leaders of the strike were more reactionary than Bunting would acknowledge. They feared a repetition of 1914, when Smuts had rushed the commandos to the Rand. To obviate the danger, and cement the alliance between 'town and country',they tried to neutralize the farmers by hoisting the race and colour flag. A pamphlet went out from the miners' union before the strike began, with an appeal to Afrikaners to stand aside rather than assist the government to defeat the strike. In the event of a defeat, 'the Kafir in future will take up the place of the white man, and then we are doomed to national annihilation'. The quotation, and much more to the same effect, came from the Nationalist party press, which never hesitated to inflame race prejudice. As 'the Kafir' got higher wages and social status, the public were told, 'many white girls, embarrassed by the removal of the colour bar, will enter into marriage with Coloured people - a danger against which the Afrikaner is always fighting'. There was no need for farmers to come to the Rand to defend it against an African rising. Hendriks, the union secretary, gave the assurance that the miners would be able to cope with it on their own. 46
The strike, Smuts told Africans in a special message, was no concern of theirs. stay quietly in your compounds, obey orders, and you will be protected.' Any act of disobedience or disorder, he threatened, would be put down at once and by force. With this spectre before them, the strike committee agreed with the police on 10 January to help in keeping order so long as this did not encourage scabs. The police expressly encouraged the strikers to form commandos so as to have an auxiliary corps of disciplined men on hand if Africans revolled. 47 When the Putfontein commando on the East Rand raided a police station for rifles, the police took no immediate action other than to obtain their return. The commandos exercised, drilled and paraded under the direction of ex-soldiers, but their elected commandants were nearly always Afrikaner nationalists. The SAIF endorsed the decision to raise commandos to protect the interests of white workers and 'fundamentally establish this country as a white man's country'. 48 The communists also approved, for another reason. Bunting hailed the commandos as 'Red Guards of the Rand'; and praised them for enrolling in the Red Army under the Red Flag, 'which alone can ennoble war and bloodshed'. 49
The militants urged the commandos to seize arms, commandeer food and prepare for the fight that would surely follow the anticipated proclamation of martial law. 'The issue has got to be won by force and violence,' Fisher told a meeting in Johannesburg on 4 February. Mine owners, strike leaders and Smuts began discussions on the same day and nearly reached an agreement after three days of negotiations. The Chamber repeated its offer to observe a ratio of one white to 10-5 Africans, and made a new concession. The status quo would continue on all mines except the low grade ones until such time as government and parliament had considered the findings of an impartial board. Smuts undertook to appoint the board and give effect to its findings if they proved fair and workable. The men agreed to call off the strike provided that the 'status quo agreement' remained in force on all mines pending a final settlement based on the findings, which should adequately protect the white workers' position in the industry. No agreement was reached, other than an indefinite undertaking to meet again if ' new light was thrown on the situation'. This proved to be a turning point. Relations deteriorated from then on until the strike reached the climax of an armed battle.
Thompson and Crawford issued a circular on the 7th reaffirming the SAIFs endorsement of the commandos and instructing strike committees to use them against scabs. Fisher, Shaw, Spendiff, Wordingham and McDermid, all members of the Council of Action, were arrested on charges of incitement to public violence and taken into custody on the 8th. A large meeting held in Johannesburg on the same day demanded their release and called for a general strike. The augmented executive turned the proposal down, to the great indignation of the communists. They denounced the executive's lack of courage, ideas and initiative; and attacked the leaders for negotiating with the Chamber. Their proposals amounted to 'a considerable climb down for the men', and showed 'a distinct weakening on the question of the status quo agreement'. 50 The criticism was illogical, coming from militants who maintained throughout that the strike had been called to keep up wage standards, and not to enforce the colour bar. At this stage, however, they had turned their backs on any negotiated settlement, even if it introduced a measure of flexibility that would open fields of responsible work to Africans on the mines.
As on the war issue, the communists took up a position wholly opposed to that of Africans and Coloured. The status quo, said the APO deprived them of any opportunity to rise above the unskilled level. If the colour bar were removed, they would be employed according to their ability, skill and degree of education. No Coloured man in his senses would place his trust in the white Labour movement and its ally, Afrikaner Nationalism. Selby Msimang argued that the white worker demanded both a monopoly of certain trades and the exclusive right to a high rate of wages. His object was 'to put the iron heel on the neck of both mine-owner and Native'. 51 If the line was drawn as clearly as this between the two groups of protagonists, Smuts's own position was more ambiguous.
His next move placed him squarely on the side of the owners, though he continued to insist that his role was 'to form a ring for the two parties to fight it out'. 52 He told a deputation of Nationalist and Labour party leaders on the 8th that the government could not force the Chamber to settle the dispute on the strikers' terms. On the 11th he urged the men to resume work on the Chamber's terms, and promised police protection to those who complied. As the leader of a party that represented mine owners, industrialists and bankers, Smuts had to protect their interests against the pressure of the opposition, which represented landowner and white workers. Both backed the strike on the ground that it formed part of a struggle to defend the colour bar and a white South Africa. 53 Like the communists, Smuts denied that this was the issue. Unlike them, he contended that the dispute centred round the future of the mining industry 54 While agreeing with the Chamber that the colour bar obstructed the growth of efficient and profitable enterprise, he never accepted the view that racial discrimination was unjust to Africans and Coloured. He never departed a hair's breadth from the basic postulate of white South Africans that it was their inherent and eternal destiny to dominate persons of colour. 55
As minister of mines in 1912, Smuts had been responsible for inserting, without parliament's mandate, colour bars in the mining regulations. As leader of the opposition in 1925, he defended his action by claiming that he had done no more than perpetuate an old republican tradition. 56 At heart he might well have sympathized with the miners' fight for white supremacy. Party politics and his involvement with the mine owners and financial interests prevented him from proclaiming his sympathies in public. Unable to repudiate the concept of a white South Africa, he took refuge in silence, evasions and finally explosive violence. The Nationalist party demanded on 1 March an inquiry into the shooting of three strikers by policemen at Boksburg. Smuts rejected the motion with the historic words: 'let things develop'. As they developed to their violent and bloody end, he abandoned even the pretence of dealing with the merits of the dispute, and relied wholly on the 'law and order' phrase to defend his policy.
His statement of the 11th, calling on strikers to resume work and owners to restart the mines, provoked a sharp reaction. ' We accept General Smuts's challenge,' proclaimed the augmented executive, 'and we recommend all men on Strike to stand fast.' Tensions mounted as the prospects of a settlement receded. The first clashes between whites and Africans took place at Fordsburg on the 13th. Forty Africans were arrested. The police began the arrests of pickets on the 14th and took Andrews into custody on the next day for incitement to violence. Bunting suggested that the government was set on removing prominent opponents of ' Crawfordism '. Although the police denied reports of 'anti-white outbreaks', Bunting accused the ruling class, the administration and Abdurahman of fostering anti-trade unionism among Africans. A strikers' meeting passed resolutions demanding 'a white standard of living for the workers' and 'a country fit for white men and women to live in'. These events gave the cue for yet another effort in the International to equate the class struggle with colour bars.
Bunting thought that even Abdurahman, though apparently a tool of the owners, ought to want a 'white standard' for blacks also. The strikers admittedly still believed in 'keeping the kaffir in his place'. Yet unconsciously, even unwillingly, they were fighting his battles, too. Communists disagreed with the platform cry that the aim of the strike was to prevent him from rising to the white man's level. They supported the strike for opposite reasons. Its true purpose, they said, was to put the African on a civilized standard as against the Chamber's objective of putting the white man on 'kraal' standards. Defence of the colour bar meant defending wage rates, and this merited the support also of Africans. Ideally, the struggle should be for equal wages, but it could not be postponed until the rate for the job had been secured. The immediate, partial demand for the retention of colour bars was consistent with the movement's long-range aims. The removal of the colour bar would put money into the owner's pockets and not in the African's. His leaders who agitated against it, said the International, were 'simply playing the game of the capitalist'. They were his 'tools, dupes, or snobs'. Their agitation was neither spontaneous nor proletarian. They did not benefit their people by fighting the white unions. Each section of the working class was weakened by fighting the other section. 57
While they probed the striker's mind for signs of a true proletarian instinct, the communists could hardly ignore the dilemma of their own reasoning. The penalty of defeat, they said, would be large-scale victimization and the eventual elimination of the white worker. On the other hand, if he returned to work on his own terms, his privileged position would be entrenched at the African's expense. This would be a pyrrhic victory for the cause of inter-racial solidarity. The communists looked for a solution in their revolutionary vision. Capitalism, they argued, offered no hope for white or black. It degraded by causing enmity between them. Equality could be realized only after the revolution, 'when for the first time it will lose its sting'. The central task of all workers, irrespective of colour, was to destroy the whole capitalist class, irrespective of colour. They could unite on this platform. If they were to split again on the rock-bottom issue of labour exploitation, let them face it when the question arose.
The communists hoped that struggle would purify and revolution redeem the strikers' bitter racialism. Sworn opponents, they exulted, now called one another brother and comrade. ' Labour, right, centre and left, socialist, communist, nationalist, sane trade unionist and syndicalist, Sons of England, Sinn Feiner, comrades of the great war, and war-on-warites, all may be seen mixed up.' 58 It was a united front of communists and those to the right of them. No African or Coloured appeared on the platform. They could not expect to gain from a movement so constituted, in which they had no part and the avowed aim of which was to keep them in their place. 'Nothing can make our position worse,' lamented the APO 59 'except the placing in power of men of the Labour stamp.' Just that, and not revolution, was to come out of the strike. As C. F. Glass, secretary of the Communist party's Cape Town branch, pointed out at the time, the white workers were too backward, their trade unions too weak, and the party's forces too insignificant to make a revolution. 60 Without this redeeming element, the strike ran its reactionary course.
The commandos beat up men who trickled back to work. The managements armed mine guards and strike breakers. A proclamation issued on 22 February banned commando strike pickets. Andrews and the five Council of Action members were released on bail on the same day. This was a terrible blunder, thought C. J. McCann, the general secretary of the SALP at the time. When he heard of their arrest he said, 'Thank God, I hope they will have sufficient sense to keep them there.' 61 Ivan Walker, the secretary of the strike legal defence committee in 1922 and of the labour department from 1932 to 1946, came to a similar conclusion. The government, he insinuated in later years, allowed these 'so-called "prominent exponents of violent methods" ' to re-enter the struggle so that their activities might provide evidence of a 'Red Terror' or 'Revolution'. 62 The Council of Action accused Crawford of having 'framed' them. 63 He retorted that they were 'professed extremists and direct actionists' - the same charge levelled against him when deported by Smuts in 1914.
The long-standing feud of the militants with Crawford might well have hardened them against any compromise likely to reestablish his authority. Re-elected secretary of the SAIF in January, he was isolated from the augmented executive, the strike committee and the delegates who negotiated with the Chamber. Andrews and his associates had condemned 'Crawfordism' - the settlement of disputes by negotiation and compromise - since he became secretary of the SAIF in 1915. The strike gave them an opportunity to vindicate their own policy of direct action. Andrews wrote on the 25th to a correspondent in Australia that there was 'a revolutionary undercurrent in the situation'. The commandos constituted a 'military formation', largely 'Dutch', well disciplined, and if armed 'it is sub rosa'. Loose and unofficial ties between the Labour and Nationalist parties could develop into an alliance for 'complete autonomy and independence for South Africa'. The comrnando leaders held secret meetings towards the end of February, discussed plans for a general rising, and resolved to declare a republic. 64
The strength of the government's armed force on the Rand, including the police, mounted riflemen, special constables and civil guards, was raised by 4,500 to 7,000 men before 10 March. The police attacked the Putfontein commando on 27 February, wounding some and arresting others. Members of the commando serenaded the prisoners by singing the 'Red Flag' outside Boksburg jail. The police fired without good cause and killed three demonstrators A two-mile long funeral procession and big meetings along the Reef condemned the killing. The strike committee distributed leaflets urging the public to keep calm and avoid violence. ' More and more clearly the class war emerges,' wrote Andrews. 65 He pointed out that white workers, who had previously applauded and even taken part in the brutal repression of Africans, were now being hoist with their own petard. White supremacy was not the issue, he insisted. The strike had taught the lesson of labour solidarity and would be won conclusively if all workers joined. 'The time is past for any truce with the enemy excepting for the purpose of getting breathing space.' Organize the African, he appealed; extend the fight, spread the strike, force the Chamber off its pedestal and compel the government, for its own safety, to offer reasonable terms of settlement.
The augmented executive also wanted a settlement. Writing on its behalf, Crawford suggested a round table conference on 4 March with the Chamber to discuss 'possible terms upon which the strike might be declared off'. But the owners were no longer interested in negotiations. Emboldened by Smuts's wholehearted backing and the success of their attempts to restart the mines, they planned to discredit the miners' unions and detach them from the industrial federation. The Chamber replied in provocative terms that the proposed conference would be futile. 'Further, the Chamber will not in future recognize the South African Industrial Federation for any purpose.' Whatever might have been its status in the past 'under different control', it no longer represented the bulk of employees in the industry. The owners saw no reason why they should discuss their business 'with representatives of slaughtermen and tramwaymen'. The Chamber would assist the workers 'to get rid of the dangerous junta which has brought them to the present pass'. 66
This calculated arrogance exasperated the men and jolted the augmented executive into deciding to hold a second ballot. Andrews, it seems, regarded the decision as 'cowardly and humiliating', and intervened to frustrate the last attempt to arrive at a negotiated settlement. 67 He and other militants did not believe that the strike could succeed, but they were determined to break Crawford's influence and fan the flames of revolution. Andrews, Shaw, Fisher, Spendiff, Wordingham and George Mason had previously - and probably in the Fort formed themselves into an unofficial Committee of Action. All were 'persons who advocated the prosecution of the strike with greater determination and who worked unceasingly to encourage and assist the men'. 68 They decided on the night of the 4th to take over the leadership, stop the ballot, and call a general strike. On Sunday the 5th they addressed big meetings along the Reef, 'urged the workers to demand a general strike', and advised the commando leaders (who by then were called 'generals') to bring their troops to the Trades Hall on Monday morning. 69
Thousands of men surrounded the building, where the augmented executive was in session, and remained there all day. The Committee of Action catered for them with 'an unceasing torrent of oratory' and food 'organized on the spot' so as 'not to allow the Commandos to disperse', observed Andrews. Virtually imprisoned and either inspired or intimidated by this show of strength, the executive declared an immediate general strike and abdicated. The leadership passed into the hands of the committee: ' the implacable enemies of capitalism' who would fight at all times to bring about its downfall. 70 Even they could not, however, persuade railwaymen, printers, factory and other workers to join in the strike. It met with less response on the Rand than the general strike of 1914, and was virtually ignored in the rest of the country.
The call for a general strike was more of a gesture than a serious attempt to retrieve a desperate situation. That the appeal would fail was evident in January, when the SAIF urged unions in all towns to prepare for a general strike. The unions in Cape Town, politically the most advanced centre after Johannesburg, took no heed, and ignored requests from the local Communist party branch to demonstrate their support. They refused to send speakers to a party meeting on 1 February, ' as the struggle in the north was purely a question of the colour bar'. A. Z. Berman, Green and Glass took the line that the strike had been called to defend living standards and not the colour bar; but Abdurahman received the backing of Coloured in the audience when he heckled the speakers. The Cape Federation of Labour unions held a special meeting on 11 March to consider the letter from Johannesburg asking them to take part in the general strike. The Coloured delegates reported that there was much resentment among workers at the treatment meted out to them in the Transvaal and at the unprovoked attacks by strikers on Africans. The meeting agreed to arrange for a demonstration outside parliament, but cried off even this display of solidarity when the government refused to meet a deputation. 71
The strikers fought on with no effective aid from the trade union, Labour and Nationalist leaders who had edged them into battle. Frustrated men, inflamed by weeks of violent propaganda and martial exercises, vented their fears and resentments on Africans and scabs - on Africans especially. Unprovoked attacks on them were reported from many parts of the Rand on the 7th, the day of the general strike. The communists blamed provocateurs and distributed a leaflet headed ' LEAVE THE KAFFIR ALONE. WHITE WORKERS, HANDS OFF THE BLACK WORKERS! ' The strike committee issued a notice prepared by the police. It asserted that ' bodies of strikers are attacking Natives wantonly and without any reason or cause'. The committee instructed strikers to cease the attacks, which provoked Africans to disorder and antagonized the general public. The Transvaal executive of the African National Congress asked the government to proclaim martial law or to supply Africans with arms for self-defence. The APO executive urged Smuts on the 9th to protect inoffensive Coloured and Africans against 'cowardly murders ' by armed bands of strikers. An ICU meeting held at Cape Town on the 12th condemned the strikers because they murdered 'our poor innocent brothers and sisters'; and demanded that 'full justice' be meted out to the guilty men. 72
The Committee of Action urged the commandos to set up a unified command to stop 'the native trouble that had broken out'. 73 Fisher chaired a meeting of commando 'generals' in the Trades Hall to discuss 'the unrest among the natives'. 74 But the generals refused to take orders from the committee or even inform it of their plans. They turned Andrews out of the Communist party offices and held a meeting on their own. 'Racial and traditional feelings had not simply disappeared, in spite of the common struggle.' 75 The generals wanted a republic and were prepared to fight for it with guerrilla warfare. The committee dissociated itself from these aims and issued a statement denying any intention to set up a rival government, or of allowing 'our industrial strike to pass out of our hands'. 76 Communists and trade union militants lost control of the commandos. They became an independent force but without a central command of their own. The struggle developed into a series of isolated skirmishes and last-ditch stands as police and troops moved in for the kill.
Smuts declared martial law on the 10th for the fourth time in ten years, rushed to the Rand and took charge of the troops. They rounded up 1,500 strikers at the show grounds and made them prisoners. Andrews, Shaw, Mason and others, though warned of an imminent raid, were trapped in the party office. The police took them and the entire strike committee to the Fort, where they remained for the rest of the strike. Bunting joined them two days later. The International and the Transvaal Post, a Nationalist newspaper, were banned. Strikers began the attack by raiding police stations for arms. Police and troops retaliated along the Rand with air support, bombs, artillery, machine guns and tanks, driving the commandos from their strongholds at Benoni, Boksburg, Brixton and Langlaagte. Fisher and Spendiff made a last stand with their commando on the 14th at Fordsburg. Heavy artillery rained shells on them and forced their surrender. Fisher and Spendiff died, either at their own hands as the police alleged, or killed by the troops after the surrender. 77 The augmented executive formally announced the end of the strike on the 16th.
Smuts returned to a hero's welcome in parliament and asked for an act of indemnity. The strike cost between 230 and 250 lives, compared with the 113 South Africans killed in the German South West campaign and the 190 Africans killed at Bulhoek. The strike defence committee found that at least 214 were killed in the five days' fighting, of whom 78 were strikers, 76 members of the government forces, and 62 'ordinary' residents. Some 30 Africans were killed by strikers or hooligans. 78 Of 4,758 persons arrested, 953 appeared before the courts, 46 on charges of murder; of these last, 18 were sentenced to death and 4 were hanged. Sixty-seven were convicted of treason or sedition and fined or sentenced to imprisonment for periods ranging from 10 years to 14 days. All those still serving sentences were released under the Strike Condemnation Act of 1922 on or before 17 May 1924, immediately prior to the general election.
Andrews, Shaw, Mason and Wordingham, the surviving members of the Committee of Action, were acquitted on charges of public violence. Bunting and seven other communists were released without having been charged. The International, resuming publication on 26 May 1922, printed a 'roll of honour' of party members who had felt 'the weight of the iron heel in the period of White Terror'. The only ones sentenced to imprisonment were Brown, Chapman, Glazer and Goldman. They served seven, six or four months for carrying arms or breaking martial law regulations. The press published lurid accounts of 'a foul conspiracy which seized on the strike as a means to Bolshevism'. 79 Yet not a single Communist party member stood trial on a charge of treason.
The execution of H. K. Hull, D. Lewis, S. A. Long and C. C. Stassen for murders committed during the strike increased the resentment raging against Smuts. The Labour and Nationalist parties said that his refusal to reprieve Stassen, convicted of killing two Africans, was a sop to Africans and Coloured. The execution of Taffy Long in particular caused bitter resentment. A leader of the Fordsburg commando, he was said to have served on a firing party that shot an alleged police spy. Hull, Lewis and Long went to the gallows on 17 November singing the 'Red Flag'. Their funeral was turned into a great demonstration. While Labour mourned its martyred dead, Clements Kadalie and the ICU expressed their confidence in the government 'for bringing to the scaffold resolutely in accordance with our March resolutions those responsible for the outrageous and cynical murder of our people'. 80
Abdurahman also condemned white labour's ' bloodiest crimes' on the Rand, and asked how a repetition could be avoided. The lesson to be learnt, he said, was that the government should at once remove control of the industry from dividend-mongering directors and colour-prejudiced white trade unionists. The state must obtain a fuller control of working conditions and a fair share in the output. This implied that the African's wages, opportunities of advancement and living standards should be improved. Any settlement, however satisfactory to the state, capital and white labour, would end in disaster if it did not also recognize the invaluable services he rendered to the country or his legitimate and growing aspirations. 81
Here was an idea for a radical programme on which communists, militant trade unionists and the national liberation movement might have combined. Its great defect was the assumption that the white man's state would be any more benevolent than employers and white workers towards the African miner. But the proposal had the merit of stressing both his claims and the need to curb white power, greed and privilege.
The March rising, said the communists, was the 'most glorious event in the history of white civilization in South Africa', or, in a more restrained evaluation, 'one of the most glorious episodes in the history of the South African workers'. Its only fault was failure. 82 The party's post-mortem appeared in Bunting's pamphlet Red Revolt. He remained an unrepentant defender of the colour bar regulations. 'THEIR REPEAL WILL NOT BENEFIT THE NATIVE WORKER, RATHER THE REVERSE,' he emphasized; and he rebuked Africans who were 'taught' to say otherwise. Simple trade unionists, Afrikaner republicans, white supremacists and a small minority of class-conscious workers had joined hands behind the battle cry for the maintenance of white standards. Andrews, in a foreword, denied allegations of a Bolshevik or Nationalist party plot. The rising, he said, had begun in an ordinary strike against wage cuts, to which the Chamber had given a political character by attempting to replace white workers with the cheaper African. The government, alarmed at the workers' solidarity and the backing they received from farmers and the petty bourgeoisie, had decided to suppress the movement by force.
The executive committee of the Comintern arrived at a similar verdict. The mine owners, it said, had turned a struggle for wages and daily bread into an armed conflict, leading to the murder of hundreds and the imprisonment of the flower of the proletariat. Fisher, Spendiff and other brave labour leaders who had honestly fought for racial equality had been torn by shrapnel. The magnates' idea of equality was to reduce the white worker's living standards to the black man's level. They ' brought the black wage slaves into the field against the white exploited workers'. 83
South African communists could not ignore the accusation that strikers had taken part in brutal and unprovoked attacks on Africans. There had been, the party acknowledged, a general fear of a rising in March. Both sides had been alarmed. Fighting had taken place between Africans and whites all along the Reef on the 8th. The violence had been neither provoked nor condoned by the leaders. They had gone out of their way to stop it, and had sent men to warn strikers against turning the struggle into an anti-native pogrom. The party had distributed leaflets to this effect. Fisher and others had risked their lives to stop hooligans, who were more 'police stooges' than strikers, from attacking Africans. 84
Even so, none of the men who fought under the banner 'For a White South Africa' or who shouted 'scab' at Africans could be held free of blame for the outbreaks of racial violence. The virus had infected the strike at birth. The communists realized early on that it had degenerated into a struggle for the retention of colour bars, which they condemned in principle. Doubting the success of the strike, they continued to support it, and were then pushed into defending it by alleging that Africans stood to lose rather than to gain from the abolition of the bar. The argument was false and revealed the hollowness of the appeal for inter-racial solidarity. Comradeship could not develop between the beneficiaries and victims of 'baasskap'.
The white miners had made this clear in February 1920, when the executive of the SAMWU instructed its members to scab on African strikers. Communists from Johannesburg to Cape Town denounced the betrayal of class solidarity and warned that Africans would be forced into siding with the owners against the white worker. 85 He ignored the warning and fought only to retain his privileges, never to remove their disabilities. In backing him, the communists put themselves in the position of being identified with white supremacy, in spite of their persistent and vehement rejection of racial discrimination. The party's role in the revolt gave African and Coloured leaders reason to regard communists as the left wing of an exclusively white labour movement. They brought the reproach down on their own heads; and they gave substance to the accusation by failing to repudiate the main article in the banned issue of the International of 20 March, the day when its editor, Bill Andrews, was arrested and taken to the Fort with other members of the Committee of Action. The article appeared in Dutch and was addressed to policemen and armed civilians on the government side. 'Are you prepared to serve idiotic capitalists as their stupid underlings and accomplices in suppressing your fellow Afrikaners? It is their intention to replace us and also you with cheap black labourers.'
*'Develop': open a mine by sinking a shaft; 'stope': extract ore from a staircase in the seam; 'tram': load ore into the tram or skip