{"title":"This Year in History: The 1922 Rand Revolt","authors":"D. Money, Danelle van Zyl-Hermann","doi":"10.1080/02582473.2023.2193867","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In the opening decades of the twentieth century, the most serious challenge to South Africa’s newly established settler state came not, as might be expected, from Africans displaced by the 1913 Native Land Act or corralled into compounds as cheap labour for the brutal mining industry. It came, instead, from white workers: a racially privileged but structurally vulnerable class of men – and women – living and labouring on ‘the margins of a capitalist society where charity was in short supply and social contempt abundant’. The perpetual threat of displacement with cheap black labour animated white industrial conflict throughout the first two decades of the century, with major strikes in 1907, 1913, and 1914. All centred on the mining industry, the axis of the South African economy. In each case, the state forces intervened in favour of mining interests. At least 20 strikers were killed in 1913 when troops opened fire on crowds outside the Rand Club, and in 1914 a largescale military mobilisation halted strikes. 1922, however, was of a different magnitude. Amid rampant inflation and falling gold prices, the Chamber of Mines moved to replace 2000 semi-skilled white workers with cheaper black workers. The broader white mining workforce, fearing it would soon face the same fate, reacted with outrage. In January, a major strike broke out on the gold and coal mines, escalating by early March to a general strike across the Transvaal. This took a revolutionary direction as armed strikers seized control over parts of the Rand and formed commandos to directly confront the state. This challenge took two main forms: republican strikers, animated by the memory of the Boer conflict with Britain, sought the formation of an independent republic; anti-capitalist strikers, drawing on revolutionary currents influential in the white labour movement, sought the formation of a communist state. Many strikers had military experience, and intense violence engulfed the Rand. White working-class women, too, formed commandos that attacked police and","PeriodicalId":45116,"journal":{"name":"South African Historical Journal","volume":"74 1","pages":"526 - 528"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"South African Historical Journal","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2023.2193867","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In the opening decades of the twentieth century, the most serious challenge to South Africa’s newly established settler state came not, as might be expected, from Africans displaced by the 1913 Native Land Act or corralled into compounds as cheap labour for the brutal mining industry. It came, instead, from white workers: a racially privileged but structurally vulnerable class of men – and women – living and labouring on ‘the margins of a capitalist society where charity was in short supply and social contempt abundant’. The perpetual threat of displacement with cheap black labour animated white industrial conflict throughout the first two decades of the century, with major strikes in 1907, 1913, and 1914. All centred on the mining industry, the axis of the South African economy. In each case, the state forces intervened in favour of mining interests. At least 20 strikers were killed in 1913 when troops opened fire on crowds outside the Rand Club, and in 1914 a largescale military mobilisation halted strikes. 1922, however, was of a different magnitude. Amid rampant inflation and falling gold prices, the Chamber of Mines moved to replace 2000 semi-skilled white workers with cheaper black workers. The broader white mining workforce, fearing it would soon face the same fate, reacted with outrage. In January, a major strike broke out on the gold and coal mines, escalating by early March to a general strike across the Transvaal. This took a revolutionary direction as armed strikers seized control over parts of the Rand and formed commandos to directly confront the state. This challenge took two main forms: republican strikers, animated by the memory of the Boer conflict with Britain, sought the formation of an independent republic; anti-capitalist strikers, drawing on revolutionary currents influential in the white labour movement, sought the formation of a communist state. Many strikers had military experience, and intense violence engulfed the Rand. White working-class women, too, formed commandos that attacked police and
期刊介绍:
Over the past 40 years, the South African Historical Journal has become renowned and internationally regarded as a premier history journal published in South Africa, promoting significant historical scholarship on the country as well as the southern African region. The journal, which is linked to the Southern African Historical Society, has provided a high-quality medium for original thinking about South African history and has thus shaped - and continues to contribute towards defining - the historiography of the region.