The Transvaal Labour Crisis, 1901—6

Abstract

One of the crucial reasons for the failure of British policy in South Africa during the Reconstruction period was an acute shortage of African labour for the mines, which were therefore unable to support a large English-speaking immigrant community. According to the prevailing economic beliefs, there was a fairly rigid ratio between the numbers of unskilled coloured workers and of skilled white workers which the mines could employ, so that the scarcity of African labour did inhibit the mines from expanding their white labour force.The reasons for this scarcity include the deplorable physical conditions in which labourers lived and worked, and the unusually large demands for African labour in other sectors of the economy. British policy also, inadvertently, put less pressure on Transvaal Africans to take industrial or agricultural employment. However, the scarcity of labour was noticeable not only within British South Africa, but more especially outside its borders, where Africans seem to have been more reluctant than usual to take employment in the mines. It is possible to argue that the shortage was caused partly by the disillusionment of the workers as a result of their experience of British administration, and partly by a fairly extensive determination to withhold labour until conditions were improved. Such an interpretation is compatible with the facts of the case, though impossible at this stage to prove.Whatever the reasons for the scarcity, the result was the importation of Chinese labour to supplement the existing unskilled labour force. The well-documented complaints of the Chinese labour throw some light on the treatment of African labour. The Chinese also undercut the wages paid to Africans, who lost their commanding position as unconscious arbiters of the success of mining. Further, the Chinese were employed in terms of a very restrictive contract, whose terms were later extended to cover African labour as well, with the result that the industrial colour-bar was solidified at a time when white labour was in control of an unusually large area of employment.