With South Africa currently facing a crisis as severe as any in its history, the book shows that these challenges are neither unprecedented nor insurmountable, and that there are principles to be found in history that may lead us safely into the future.
“Following the deportation of the nine trade union leaders at the close of the 1914 strike, Jan Smuts claimed in Parliament that the strike committee had proposed establishing commandos, and J.T. Bain had called for a ‘Federation Defence Force’. During the Industrial Conference (13-26 January 1922), some 200 mounted men from the farming district of Putfontein began holding parades in Benoni. The police arrived in Putfontein just before dawn on 19 January to arrest them, but four groups galloped away. The commando parades continued. On 26 January, detachments lined up for a combined infantry drill in Mayfair. The troops were miners from Langlaagte, Fordsburg and Mayfair.
The South African Industrial Federation responded to the Industrial Conference’s failure by releasing a statement on 29 January alleging government–employer collusion and calling on workers to join the National and Labour Parties in establishing a new government ‘calculated to promote the interests of the White race in South Africa’. Bob Waterson, one of the 1914 deportees, was a Labour Party parliamentarian by then, and he had also become a leader of the Brakpan workers’ commando established during the strike. At Johannesburg Town Hall on 5 February, he tabled a motion that ‘the domination of the Chamber of Mines and other financiers in South Africa should cease, and to that end we and the members of Parliament assemble in Pretoria to-morrow to proclaim a South African Republic immediately to form a Provisional Government for this country’. The resolution received virtually unanimous approval, and the gathering closed with renditions of the ‘Red Flag’ and the ‘Volkslied’ (indicating the unity of Afrikaans and English miners in the struggle), but when the proposal was put to National and Labour Party parliamentarians in Pretoria the following day, it was rejected.
Though denied a parliamentary extension, the revolutionary ferment continued on the streets. It was a peculiarly South African revolution. This was demonstrated on 11 February when a crowd exited Johannesburg Town Hall and unfurled a banner that reworked the international communist movement’s slogan to read: ‘Workers of the World Fight and Unite for a White S.A.’ The banner had made numerous appearances on the streets over the past few days.
As with all previous South African strikes, the critical issue in 1922 concerned whether the employers could defeat it by successfully overseeing a resumption of work during its course. On 11 February, Jan Smuts appealed for a return to work, and daybreak on the 13th saw the mines preparing for a general resumption of operations, amid a sizeable police presence.
Strike-related violence had commenced on 3 February when dynamite damaged a flange rail a mile west of Welgedacht. On 18 February, a group of men spotted a worker from the City Deep mine who had eschewed police protection. They signalled to the women’s commando (both male and female commandos had been formed), who proceeded to beat him unconscious. During February, there were at least twenty-two assaults on alleged strike-breakers, fourteen attempts to derail trains, six attacks on railway personnel, four attacks on policemen, six attempts to blow up power transmitters, one attempt to blow up a mine shaft, and numerous threats against scabs. Six machine-gun sections were sent from Pretoria on the 22nd in response to a request from the civil authorities for assistance.
“In Vrededorp that evening, a group of blacks was fired on from side streets, triggering a night of indiscriminate shooting in which an Indian woman was killed.”
Yet by March it appeared that the commandos had failed. The SAIF’s Augmented Executive decided on 4 March to approach the Chamber of Mines to conduct fresh negotiations. The chamber refused the offer that afternoon, dismissing it as a ruse to interrupt the successful reopening of the mines, and adding that it would not recognise the SAIF ‘for any purposes’ in the future, as it was clear that neither the coal miners nor the gold miners supported it. The Augmented Executive reassembled after receiving the letter and decided to ballot the miners about returning to work.
The Augmented Executive’s growing pessimism had led a section of the commandos to form a Committee of Action, consisting of figures such as Harry Spendiff, George Mason, Bill Andrews and Percy Fisher. More than a hundred leaders of unions affiliated to the SAIF met on 6 March, but commando units gathered outside, demanding a general strike of all Rand workers. In response, the delegates decided to add the option of a general Rand strike to the proposal to ballot miners on ending the existing strikes. When the amendment was approved by a majority of over two to one, another vote was held in which the general strike was the only option. It was endorsed almost unanimously.
The general strike commenced on 7 March, and commandos were active across the Rand that morning, stopping transport and pulling assistants out of work. They had limited success, as most shops opened, but they continued their efforts overnight, bringing large parts of the Rand under their dominion: trains to and from the East and West Rand were stopped, while in Springs a strike committee commandeered stores and prevented mine officials and scabs from receiving food.
In Vrededorp that evening, a group of blacks was fired on from side streets, triggering a night of indiscriminate shooting in which an Indian woman was killed. The violence resumed in the suburb after dawn, while white mobs roved through the streets of Ferreirastown, chasing blacks and coloureds in all directions. This phenomenon of what the police called ‘native hunting’ spread to Germiston later on 8 March, following an apparent attempt at provocation by the local commando, which successively approached the two native compounds at the New Primrose mine, causing the workers inside to flee the premises. On both occasions, mounted police arrived and drove the black miners back into the compounds. Following the incidents, rumours spread in Germiston that Africans were marching on the town. In response, commandos and hundreds of armed civilians launched a mass attack on one of the compounds at New Primrose, killing eight Africans and a white official.
At least sixteen non-Europeans had been killed by white civilians in the twenty-four hours since the beginning of violence the previous evening. The SAIF released a statement on 8 March in which it condemned the actions of ‘bodies of strikers … attacking natives wantonly and without reason or cause’, instructed ‘all strikers that conduct as above outlined must cease forthwith’, and warned that ‘the provoking of natives to disorder must have far-reaching consequences’.
The statement suggested that matters had already spiralled out of the federation’s control. On the afternoon of the 8th, the Committee of Action sent dispatch riders to instruct the commandants of all the commandos to meet at Johannesburg’s Trades Hall that evening to discuss ‘unrest among the natives’. At the meeting, Percy Fisher told the commandants that African unrest was not the issue. He said he had recently visited the Free State where the ‘General’ had agreed to take over. Fisher instructed the commandants to go home and await information as to the hour when they would have to disarm the police and hold Johannesburg for forty-eight hours, pending the arrival of reinforcements from the Free State.
“Thirty-two more bombs were dropped, and 2 200 rebels were taken prisoner.”
Shortly after daybreak on 10 March, an exchange of shots near Benoni Trades Hall heralded the attempted seizure of power. The government called in military aircraft to machine-gun the building, but when the five planes swooped to conduct reconnaissance, heavy fire from the building compelled them to withdraw. Another dawn attack on Newlands Police Station saw the officers inside surrender after ninety minutes. The government proclaimed martial law that morning in Pretoria, Middelburg, Bethal, Ermelo, Klerksdorp, Standerton, Heidelberg, Potchefstroom, Krugersdorp and across the Witwatersrand. The situation was bleakest for the government in Brakpan and Benoni, and when a contingent of the Transvaal Scottish regiment arrived that afternoon in Dunswart, which lay between the two areas, they were shot at by snipers concealed in bluegum trees. Fourteen soldiers were killed in the ambush. Following repeated warnings about the seriousness of the situation in Benoni, the military decided to flatten the Trades Hall. Aircraft bombed the building at 5 p.m., destroying the property, which had been packed with revolutionaries.
Groups of armed insurrectionists scurried across the Rand on 11 March, followed by huge crowds of spectators, who impeded Red Cross vehicles from reaching the wounded. Aeroplanes again engaged, dropping four more bombs on Benoni. The Rand Revolt was won and lost that day. The frenetic activity was a last-ditch effort to secure control of the Rand before the Union Defence Force could deploy. It failed, and on the 12th, with General Beves operating in the Melville–Auckland Park–Parktown area, General van Deventer in Benoni, Brakpan and Springs, and Colonel Nussey headed to Krugersdorp, the tide turned decisively. Thirty-two more bombs were dropped, and 2 200 rebels were taken prisoner. The pattern continued on 13 March, when a siege of policemen in Brixton was lifted.
Aeroplanes appeared over Fordsburg on the morning of 14 March, dropping leaflets rather than bombs, calling on women, children and ‘persons well affected to the government’ to leave the area between 6 and 11 a.m. A procession began out of the suburb, and the infantry advanced at 11 a.m. By 12.10 p.m. Fordsburg had fallen, and the red flag no longer flew from its Trades Hall. The bodies of Percy Fisher and Harry Spendiff were recovered in the Market Hall Buildings. They had apparently committed suicide.
Government troops cleared out former rebel strongholds on 15 March, with commando members trying their utmost to escape and shed their arms and ammunition. The joint executives of the SAIF decided a day later to renew their call for a ballot to end the strike, but on the 17th the leaders of three unions – the MWU, the Engine Drivers and Firemen, and the Reduction Workers – met with the permission of the military authorities and decided that course was impractical. They called off the strike, effective from midnight.
The Rand Revolt saw 29 policemen and 153 other people killed. The miners suffered a huge defeat (at least initially), returning to work for wages 25–50 per cent lower than before, while the status quo agreement was torn up and the Chamber of Mines increased the ratio of African to white miners.”
Extracted from History of South Africa by Thula Simpson, out now.
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