A century of migrant labour in the gold mines of South Africa

The discovery of commercial quantities of gold in the former Transvaal of South Africa in 18961 came twenty years after the exploitation of diamonds in the northen Cape. Labour practices followed the existing migratory pattern for domestic and foreign labour in industry, a pattern which exists to this day. Gold miners, like diamond miners, were accommodated in compounds, often segregated by ethnic group, and contracted for 18-month stints with no certainty of reengagement. The source areas of these miners have for the whole of the twentieth century fallen into three political categories: men from within the borders of South Africa itself, including former black ‘homelands’; men recruited from the former High Commission, now independent territories, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, who were often treated as honorary South Africans; and those from foreign countries, principally Mozambique and from as far afield as Angola, Zambia, and Tanzania. The fact that these miners came from all over southern Africa meant that the migratory system of labour would retard opportunity for men to progress up the ladder of skills and would for a very long time establish that the barrier of colour became also a barrier to advancement2. In 1900 the newly established recruitment centre, the Witwatersrand Labour Organisation (WNLA, popularly ‘Wenela’) was given wide powers by treaty, including the sole right to recruit in the provinces of Mozambique south of latitude 22°S, which had been one of the principal sources of labour before the South African wars of 1899–19022. In 1899 twothirds of recruited labour came from Mozambique, the second most important source being the Transvaal (18 per cent), and the Cape (5 per cent). Co-operative recruiting in South Africa began with the formation of the Native Recruiting Corporation (NRC) in 1912, at which date Mozambique was still the major source of labour, followed by the Cape and other provinces. In 1977 the NRC was amalgamated with the WNLA to form The Employment Bureau of Africa (TEBA), which to this day remains the central recruitment organization for all black mine workers from southern Africa3. Recruitment for gold mining A century of migrant labour in the gold mines of South Africa