Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T01:16:50.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

White Workers in the Late Apartheid Period: A Report on the Wiehahn Commission and Mineworkers’ Union Archival Collections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2015

Danelle van Zyl-Hermann
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This paper offers a critique of the existing historiography on the late apartheid period, arguing that white workers’ role in and experience of the unraveling of racial privilege in the labor arena has been obscured by a focus on the high politics of reform and on anti-apartheid resistance emanating from African labor and the broader black population. Reporting from the archive, it discusses two under-utilized archival collections – that of the Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation and of the Mineworkers’ Union – as sources for starting to write white working-class organization, politics, identity, and experience into the history of reform and resistance, thereby adding a new dimension to South Africa’s broadly conceived struggle history.

Résumé:

Cet article propose une critique de l’historiographie existante sur les dernières années de l’apartheid et argue que le rôle et l’expérience des travailleurs blancs pour mettre fin aux privilèges raciaux dans le domaine du travail ont été négligés au profit d’une analyse portant sur les grandes politiques de réforme et sur la résistance anti-apartheid des travailleurs noirs et plus généralement de la population noire. Les deux collections archivistiques discutées dans cet article ont été sous-utilisées jusqu’à présent: il s’agit des archives de la commission d’enquête sur la législation du travail et de celles du syndicat des mineurs. Ces documents permettent de commencer à inscrire l’histoire de l’organisation, des politiques, de l’identité et de l’expérience de la classe ouvrière blanche dans l’histoire de la réforme et de la résistance à l’apartheid. Cet article propose donc d’ajouter une nouvelle dimension à l’histoire de la lutte contre l’apartheid dans sa conception plus large.

Type
Blind Spots and Politics in Sources from South Africa
Information
History in Africa , Volume 43 , June 2016 , pp. 229 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, Peter, Workers, War and the Origins of Apartheid: Labour and Politics in South Africa, 1939–1948 (Oxford: James Currey, 2000).Google Scholar
Beinart, William, Twentieth-Century South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Berger, Iris, “Solidarity Fragmented: Garment Workers of the Transvaal, 1930–1960,” in: Marks, Shula and Trapido, Stanley (eds.), The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth Century South Africa (London: Longman, 1987), 124–155.Google Scholar
Berger, Iris, Threads of Solidarity: Women in South African Industry, 1900–1980 (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Bozzoli, Belinda (ed.), Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Bright, Rachel, Chinese Labour in South Africa, 1902–1910: Race, Violence, and Global Spectacle (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).Google Scholar
Brink, Elsabe, “‘Maar ’n Klomp “Factory” Meide’: Afrikaner Family and Community on the Witwatersrand during the 1920s,” in: Bozzolo, Belinda (ed.), Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987), 177–208.Google Scholar
Brink, Elsabe, “Man-made Women: Gender, Class and the Ideology of the Volksmoeder,” in: Walker, Cherryl (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (London: James Currey, 1990), 273–292.Google Scholar
Clark, Nancy L., and Worger, William H., South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid (Pearson: Harlow, 2011).Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Coupe, Stuart, “Labour Relations by Authoritarian Regimes since 1945: South Africa in International Perspective,” paper presented at Wits History Workshop, Johannesburg, 13–15 July 1994 (http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/7760/HWS–72.pdf?sequence=1 , accessed 29 January 2013).Google Scholar
Darnton, Robert, The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990).Google Scholar
Davies, Robert H., “Mining Capital, The State and Unskilled White Workers in South Africa, 1901–1913,” Journal of Southern African Studies 3–1 (1976), 41–69.Google Scholar
Davies, Robert H., Capital, State and White Labour in South Africa 1900–1960: A Historical Materialist Analysis of Class Formation and Class Relations (Atlantic Highlands NJ: Humanities Press, 1979).Google Scholar
Department of Labour and of Mines, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation Part 1 (Key Issues) (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1979).Google Scholar
Department of Manpower Utilisation, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation Part 6 (Industrial Relations in the Mining Industry) (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1981).Google Scholar
Doxey, G.V., The Industrial Colour Bar in South Africa (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1961).Google Scholar
Dubow, Saul, Apartheid, 1948–1994 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Du Toit, Darcy, Capital and Labour in South Africa: Class Struggle in the 1970s (London: Kegan Paul International Ltd, 1981).Google Scholar
Du Toit, Marijke, “The Domesticity of Afrikaner Nationalism: Volksmoeders and the ACVV, 1904–1929,” Journal of Southern African Studies 29–1 (2003), 155–176.Google Scholar
Eley, Geoff, “Dilemmas and Challenges of Social History since the 1960s: What Comes after the Cultural Turn?,” South African Historical Journal 60–3 (2008), 310–322.Google Scholar
Ellis, Stephen, External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960–1990 (London: Hurst & Company, 2012).Google Scholar
Feinstein, Charles F., An Economic History of South Africa: Conquest, Discrimination and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).Google Scholar
Friedman, Steven, Building Tomorrow Today: African Workers in Trade Unions 1970–1984 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Giliomee, Hermann, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2011).Google Scholar
Giliomee, Hermann, The Last Afrikaner Leaders: A Supreme Test of Power (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2012).Google Scholar
Greenberg, Stanley B., Race and State in Capitalist Development: South Africa in Comparative Perspective (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1980).Google Scholar
Greenberg, Stanley B., Legitimating the Illegitimate: State, Markets, and Resistance in South Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Grundlingh, Albert, “‘Are We Afrikaners Getting too Rich?’ Cornucopia and Change in Afrikanerdom in the 1960s,” Journal of Historical Sociology 21–2/3 (2008), 143–165.Google Scholar
Horrell, Muriel, South Africa’s Workers: Their Organizations and the Patterns of Employment (Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1969).Google Scholar
Hyslop, Jonathan, “White Working-Class Women and the Invention of Apartheid: ‘Purified’ Afrikaner Nationalist Agitation against ‘Mixed’ Marriages, 1934–9,” The Journal of African History 36–1 (1995), 57–81.Google Scholar
Hyslop, Jonathan, “The Imperial Working Class Makes Itself ‘White:’ White Labourism in Britain, Australia, and South Africa Before the First World War,” Journal of Historical Sociology 12–4 (1999), 398–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyslop, Jonathan, “The Strange Death of Liberal England and the Strange Birth of Illiberal South Africa: British Trade Unionists, Indian Labourers and Afrikaner Rebels, 1910–1914,” Labour History Review 79–1 (2014), 95–118.Google Scholar
Iliffe, John, Africans: The History of a Continent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Johnstone, Frederick A., Class, Race and Gold: A Study of Class Relations and Racial Discrimination in South Africa (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976).Google Scholar
Katz, Elaine N., A Trade Union Aristocracy: A History of White Workers in the Transvaal and the General Strike of 1913 (Johannesburg: African Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, 1976).Google Scholar
Krikler, Jeremy, “The Commandos: The Army of White Labour in South Africa,” Past and Present 163 (1999), 202–244.Google Scholar
Krikler, Jeremy, The Rand Revolt: The 1922 Insurrection and Racial Killing in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2005).Google Scholar
Krikler, Jeremy, “Re-thinking Race and Class in South Africa: Some Ways Forward,” in: Hund, Wulf D., Krikler, Jeremy and Roediger, David (eds.), Wages of Whiteness and Racist Symbolic Capital (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2010), 133–160.Google Scholar
Lake, Marilyn, and Reynolds, Henry, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).Google Scholar
Lange, Liz, White, Poor and Angry: White Working Class Families in Johannesburg (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003).Google Scholar
Lewis, Jon, “The Germiston By-Election of 1932: The State and the White Working Class During the Depression,” in: Bonner, Philip (ed.), Working Papers in Southern African Studies Volume 2 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1981), 97–120.Google Scholar
Lewis, Jon, Industrialisation and Trade Union Organisation in South Africa, 1924–55: The Rise and Fall of the South African Trades and Labour Council (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).Google Scholar
Lichtenstein, Alex, “Making Apartheid Work: African Trade Unions and the 1953 Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act in South Africa,” Journal of African History 46–2 (2005), 293–314.Google Scholar
Lipton, Merle, Capitalism and Apartheid: South Africa, 1910–1984 (Aldershot: Gower, 1985).Google Scholar
Lodge, Tom, “Resistance and Reform, 1973–1994,” in: Ross, Robert, Mager, Anne K. and Nasson, Bill (eds.), The Cambridge History of South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 409–491.Google Scholar
Macmillan, Hugh, “Debating the ANC’s External Links during the Struggle against Apartheid,” Africa 85–1 (2015), 154–162.Google Scholar
Marks, Shula, and Trapido, Stanley, “Introduction,” Journal of Southern African Studies 18–1 (1992), 1–18.Google Scholar
Mawbey, John, “Afrikaner Women of the Garment Union During the Thirties and Forties,” in: Webster, Eddie (ed.), Essays in Southern African Labour History (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1978), 192–208.Google Scholar
Moodie, T. Dunbar, with Vivienne Ndatshe, Going for Gold: Men, Mines and Migration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Nicol, Martin, “‘Joh’burg Hotheads’ and the ‘Gullible Children of Cape Town:’ The Transvaal Garment Workers’ Union’s Assault on Low Wages in the Cape Town Clothing Industry, 1930–1931,” in: Bozzolo, Belinda (ed.), Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987), 209–234.Google Scholar
O’Meara, Dan, Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1983).Google Scholar
O’Meara, Dan, Forty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948–1994 (Randburg: Raven Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Pilossof, Rory, The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers’ Voices from Zimbabwe (Cape Town: UCT Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Pilossof, Rory, “‘For Farmers, By Farmers,’” Media History 19–1 (2013), 32–44.Google Scholar
Posel, Deborah, “Rethinking the ‘Race-Class Debate’ in South African Historiography,” Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies 9–1 (1983), 50–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posel, Deborah, “Language, Legitimation and Control: The South African State after 1978,” Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies 10–1 (1984), 1–16.Google Scholar
Roos, Neil, “South African History and Subaltern Historiography: Some Ideas for a Radical History of White Folk,” International Review of Social History, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Ross, Robert, Mager, Anne K. and Nasson, Bill, “Introduction,” in: Ross, Robert, Mager, Anne K. and Nasson, Bill (eds.), The Cambridge History of South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1–16.Google Scholar
Sadie, Johannes L., The Fall and Rise of the Afrikaner in the South African Economy (Stellenbosch: University of Stellenbosch Annale, 2002).Google Scholar
Saunders, Chris, The Making of the South African Past: Major Historians on Race and Class (Cape Town: David Philip, 1988).Google Scholar
Seekings, Jeremy, The UDF: A History of the United Democratic Front in South Africa, 1983–2001 (Cape Town: David Philip, 2000).Google Scholar
Simons, Harold J., and Simons, Ray E., Class and Colour in South Africa, 1850–1950 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969).Google Scholar
Simson, Howard, “The Myth of the White Working Class in South Africa,” African Affairs 4–2 (1974), 189–203.Google Scholar
South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR): A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1970 (Johannesburg: SAIRR, 1971).Google Scholar
Terreblanche, Sampie, A History of Inequality in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Van der Westhuizen, Christi, White Power and the Rise and Fall of the National Party (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Van Onselen, Charles, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914 (Harlow: Longman, 1982).Google Scholar
Van Zyl-Hermann, Danelle, “Baas or Klaas? Afrikaner Working-Class Responses to Transformation in South Africa, ca.1977–2002,” International Labor and Working-Class History 86 (2014), 142–158.Google Scholar
Various authors, “Special Issue: Transnational and Comparative Perspectives on Southern African Labour History,” African Studies 66–2/3 (2007), 137–387.Google Scholar
Vincent, Louise, “Bread and Honour: White Working Class Women and Afrikaner Nationalism in the 1930s,” Journal of Southern African Studies 26–1 (2000), 61–78.Google Scholar
Visser, Wessel P., “White Labour Aristocracy and Black Proletariat: The Origins and Deployment of South Africa’s Racially Divided Working Class,”ITH-Tagungsberichte 34: Die Arbeiterbewegung – Ein gescheitertes Project der Moderne? (Vienna: Akademische Verlaganstalt, 2000), 220–245.Google Scholar
Visser, Wessel P., “From MWU to Solidarity – A Trade Union Reinventing Itself,” South African Journal of Labour Relations 30–2 (2006), 19–41.Google Scholar
Visser, Wessel P., Van MWU tot Solidariteit: Geskiedenis van die Mynwerkersunie 1902–2002 (Centurion: Solidariteit, 2008).Google Scholar
Webster, Eddie, Cast in a Racial Mould: Labour Process and Trade Unionism in the Foundries (Ravan Press: Johannesburg, 1985).Google Scholar
Webster, Eddie (ed.), Essays in Southern African Labour History (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1978).Google Scholar
Witz, Leslie, “A Case of Schizophrenia: The Rise and Fall of the Independent Labour Party,” in: Bozzoli, Belinda (ed.), Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987), 261–291.Google Scholar
Wolpe, Harold, “The ‘White Working class’ in South Africa,” Economy and Society 5–2 (1976), 197–240.Google Scholar
Wolpe, Harold, Race, Class and the Apartheid State (London: James Currey, 1988).Google Scholar
Worden, Nigel, The Making of Modern South Africa (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).Google Scholar
Yudelman, David, The Emergence of Modern South Africa: State, Capital and the Incorporation of Organized Labour on the South African Goldfields, 1902–1939 (London: Greenwood, 1983).Google Scholar