T. Dunbar Moodie

Migrancy and Male Sexuality on the South African Gold Mines

The first part of the paper is a descriptive analysis a phenomenology of male sexual experience on the mines. It deals first with miners sexual relationships with boys known as the wives of the mine and then turns to relationships with women living on farms or in townships near the mines known to the miners as town women. The second part is more diachronic depicting with a very broad brush the argument that for junior partners in certain of the men-boy relationships sexual subordination was actually used as a resource in the long-standing resistance by migrant miners to proletarianisation. Proletarianisation however as it has eventually come to the gold mines has had sexual implications which help to reinforce rejection of migrancy by contemporary black miners and their wives. (excerpt)

Maximum Average Violence: Underground Assaults on the South African Gold Mines, 1913–1965

In this article I argue that historically high levels of underground violence in South African gold mines can be only partially explained by general cultural factors such as masculinity or race; social factors such as corporal punishment in schools; political factors such as state support for whites; or spatial factors such as the dangers of working underground. All are relevant and important as background conditions, but for a complete explanation, attention must also be paid to production relations in the workplaces themselves. The article begins with a close analysis of the only complete set of extant archival transcripts on underground assaults, the evidence to the 1913 Native Affairs Department Commission of Inquiry into the Grievances of Workers at Crown Mines. I argue that much of the workplace violence at Crown Mines in 1913 was specific to a particular historical set of work conditions on that mine at that particular time, rather than providing typical evidence of the incidence of assault underground. What the 1913 Crown Mines evidence does point to is the importance of organisation at the point of production for understanding workplace assaults. More generally, I argue that deeply entrenched industry-wide violent work practices underground should be attributed to the maximum average wage system, introduced on the mines in 1913. It was not until the maximum average system was abandoned in the 1960s that the institutionalisation of assault as a form of labour control could be successfully abrogated on the gold mines.

The Formal and Informal Social Structure of a South African Gold Mine

The primary purpose of this article is to examine the structures of domination in a South African gold mine from the perspective of black migrant miners. The formal management organizational blueprint for mine and compound is compared with the actual social structure of the mine. The article concludes that the black miners experience of domination in the South African gold mines is a complex combination of management-ordained authority and personal power on the part of a series of overlapping, sometimes conflicting, sometimes complementary, black fiefdoms; namely those of the Team Leader [boss boy], Personnel Assistant, Induna, and the clerks.

Comprehending Class Compromise in the History of Class Struggle on the South African Gold Mines: Variations and Vicissitudes of Class Power

ABSTRACT This article seeks to apply Erik Olin Wrights explication of class compromise to the rise of the National Union of Mineworkers on the South African gold mines. Wrights clear and cogent exercise in analytical Marxism is, however, used more as an ‘ideal type’ to achieve understanding in Max Webers sense, than as an hypothesis to be proved or disproved. The article challenges conventional Marxist notions of power by introducing a more relational concept of power, developed by Michel Foucault in a final series of interviews during the years before his death. The article thus makes use of Wrights notion of class compromise to frame the history of the NUM, while also seeking to advance a sociological analysis of power (in this case class power), using the ideas of the late Foucault to confront, and at least modify, widely accepted Marxian (and, for that matter, Weberian) concepts of power and domination.

Bra Soks: An Inside Story of the Rise of the National Union of Mineworkers at Vaal Reefs Gold Mine

Abstract I interviewed Oliver Sokanyile for two days in Umtata in 1995. Although he never achieved a national reputation, he was an important early local actor in the early days of the NUM at Vaal Reefs. When the NUM arrived in 1982, Sokanyile joined. He was elected as Western Transvaal regional chairman at the first NUM National Congress in Klerksdorp. In 1985, when the union rank and file took control after the 1984 strike, Sokanyile was demoted to treasurer. Thenceforth, nonetheless, until he was fired after the 1987 strike, Sokanyile, a shrewd strategist, remained one of the most prominent union leaders at Vaal Reefs. Younger union leaders, who knew him as Bra Soks, spoke of him with tremendous respect. His story provides a window into the early years of the NUM at the local level and perhaps speaks to some pressing issues facing the NUM at the moment.

Separate Development as a Failed Project of Social Engineering: The Flawed Logic of Hendrik Verwoerd

Abstract An earlier version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the outset of a conference on ‘The Golden Age of Apartheid’. That talk sought to set a tone for the conference by focusing on contradictions in the racial and cultural logic of Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, whose political interventions dominated events and reconfigured society during the period of apartheids golden age. While ‘separate development’ presented an apparently moral (if anthropologically questionable) ‘separate cultures’ argument for ‘national development’, it was always fundamentally undercut by racist assumptions of apartheid. This seems to have been true of Verwoerd’s personal attitudes as well as his political initiatives at the time.

‘Igneous’ means fire from below: the tumultuous history of the National Union of Mineworkers on the South African platinum mines

From the time Impala dismissed its entire workforce in 1986 up to and well beyond the Marikana massacre, the National Union of Mineworkers has struggled to organise the platinum mines of the Bushveld Igneous Complex. This article focuses on two case studies that highlight the fundamental importance of informal networks for organising mine workers. While the union now seems seriously at risk, it has never had an easy time in Rustenburg. Worker committees are not a new phenomenon there. Nor is insurgency. Mineworkers in South Africa, like mineworkers worldwide, have never been passive recipients of direction from above.From the time Impala dismissed its entire workforce in 1986 up to and well beyond the Marikana massacre, the National Union of Mineworkers has struggled to organise the platinum mines of the Bushveld Igneous Complex. This article focuses on two case studies that highlight the fundamental importance of informal networks for organising mine workers. While the union now seems seriously at risk, it has never had an easy time in Rustenburg. Worker committees are not a new phenomenon there. Nor is insurgency. Mineworkers in South Africa, like mineworkers worldwide, have never been passive recipients of direction from above.

Allen V. L.. The History of Black Mineworkers in South Africa . London: Merlin Press, 2005. Bibliograpy. Index.Volume 1: Mining in South Africa and the Genesis of Apartheid, 1871–1948 . xx + 491 pp. £40.00. Cloth. Volume 2: Apartheid, Repression and Dissent in the Mines, 1948–1982 . xx + 489 pp. £40.00 Cloth. Volume 3: Organize or Die . xxxiii + 746 pp. £50.00. Cloth.

cated readers, and advanced graduate students will be able to follow a wellcrafted work of synthesis, although not one that intends to present an innovative overarching interpretation. Still, there are points that I found particularly stimulating. The examination of African slavery and the assessment of the role of the African middle classes in postindependence Africa made me reformulate some questions and will force me to revisit some of the literature in these areas. Given its characteristics, this book will be a valuable tool for teachers and graduate students. Certain chapters can also be useful for course reading in introductory courses, although these need to be carefully chosen. Finally, historians of Africa will also benefit from reading this text. Like any good work of synthesis it will encourage reconceptualization and reassessment and thus will contribute to the exploration of old and new questions.

Basotho and the Mines: a social history of labour migrancy in Lesotho and South Africa, c. 1890-1940 (review)

fight we have won’ were dominant slogans around which private and public memories were and are still formulated in the Kwanyama areas, the hard core of SWAPO’s political support until the present. A more thorough engagement with this problem, perhaps supported by a brief account of the borderland history from 1960 to Namibian independence, would therefore have been welcome. Overall, Emmanuel Kreike has produced a solid and highly recommendable piece of work at a time when issues he touches upon (such as grazing pasture rights, environmental degradation and cross-border migration) are of high relevance in his dynamically changing region of study.

Eddy Tshidiso Maloka, Basotho and the Mines: a social history of labour migrancy in Lesotho and South Africa, c. 1890–1940 . Dakar: CODESRIA (pb £28.95, US

fight we have won’ were dominant slogans around which private and public memories were and are still formulated in the Kwanyama areas, the hard core of SWAPO’s political support until the present. A more thorough engagement with this problem, perhaps supported by a brief account of the borderland history from 1960 to Namibian independence, would therefore have been welcome. Overall, Emmanuel Kreike has produced a solid and highly recommendable piece of work at a time when issues he touches upon (such as grazing pasture rights, environmental degradation and cross-border migration) are of high relevance in his dynamically changing region of study.