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William Gemmill and South African Expansion, 1920-1950

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Alan H. Jeeves (1987). William Gemmill and South African Expansion, 1920-1950. University of the Witwatersrand History Workshop, 'The Making of Class', 9-14 February 1987. University of the Witwatersrand History Workshop.
Type conference paper
Scope Economics and economic history of apartheid
Method archival narrative
Period studied 1920–1950
Regions Witwatersrand/Transvaal, Transkei and eastern Cape, Mozambique, Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Bechuanaland, Natal and Zululand
Themes mining migrant labour, business and state, labour markets wages, agriculture land
Citation key jeeves1987

Argument

William Gemmill, General Manager of the Transvaal Chamber of Mines, was a long-serving bureaucrat rather than a capitalist. He shaped mining policy on both white and black labour from the 1920s to the 1950s. Jeeves argues that understanding such officials is necessary to assess the extent and limits of mining capital's power and to disaggregate 'mining capital'. Gemmill consolidated the recruiting monopoly inside South Africa through nine-month contracts and the Assisted Voluntary System. He then pushed WNLA into tropical Africa to the north, negotiating with Southern Rhodesia and the other British territories, and built roads and medical services there. This entrenched migrancy, bound the region to the Rand, and made alternatives to a low-wage, transitory-labour system harder to imagine, even though Rhodesian and farming interests limited the Chamber's power. The case is made through a narrative of Gemmill's negotiations, drawn from official and company archives.

Evidence and method

Archival: Transvaal Archives Depot (Native Affairs, Mines and Industries, Labour files; Native Economic Commission evidence), Barlow Rand Archives (CMIC), Botswana National Archives, Zimbabwe National Archives (Chief Native Commissioner files), British Public Record Office (Colonial and Dominions Office), WNLA Annual Reports, the Lansdown Commission report (1944), and Gemmill's 1952 Optima article.

Place in the debates

Findings

  • Gemmill, a Chamber bureaucrat, was the dominant shaper of mining labour policy across four decades. (p. 2)

    As administrative head of the Transvaal Chamber of Mines, he, more than anyone, shaped the industry's policies with regard to both white and black labour throughout the whole period from the 1920's to the 1950's.

  • Gemmill's position in the Chamber's structure made him effective chief recruiter, linking the recruiting bodies to the policy executive. (p. 5)

    The recruiters reported to the Chamber's policy executive, the Gold Producers' Committee, through Gemmill, who functioned, therefore, as chief recruiter.

  • Longer nine-month contracts cut recruiting costs but shifted the burden onto workers and their families, and were made possible by the earlier elimination of competitive recruiting. (p. 6)

    The nine-month contract promised to produce very significant economies. The price of this was paid by the workers and their families in reduced flexibility and a longer commitment away from the peasant economy.

  • The Assisted Voluntary System worked as a form of recruitment that tied voluntary workers to the mines and displaced trader-recruiters. (p. 7)

    Essentially a form of recruitment, the AVS worked to bind the voluntary to the mines (against rival Rand employers) and to cut out the recruiter-middlemen.

  • In Mozambique, Gemmill had to concede a lower recruiting ceiling in the 1928 Convention, which threatened mine and farm labour shortages and spurred the push north. (p. 8)

    The South African negotiators accepted a ceiling of 80000 workers who could be recruited annually in Mozambique (down from the prevailing average of roughly 100000 per year) and shorter contract periods.

  • Tropical recruiting gave the mines a pre-emptive hold on northern labour supplies and made alternatives to migrancy harder to conceive. (p. 4)

    In these ways, the industry obtained a pre-emptive option on the very large, still untapped supplies of tropical labour, denied them to competitors and ensured the stability of the supply for years to come.

  • Southern Rhodesia resisted WNLA's northern expansion, for example with a never-implemented 1938 border cordon, which slowed but did not stop the South Africans. (p. 11)

    Huggins put legislation through Parliament in 1938 to exclude Africans without passes from a defined twenty-five mile zone along the colony's Limpopo border with the Union.

  • Tropical recruits were a small share of supply before 1939, but the Chamber treated the effort as a long-term investment. (p. 13)

    WNLA and the Chamber considered that their commitment to this enterprise was an investment for the future.

  • WNLA built substantial infrastructure in Bechuanaland to reach the northern labour supplies. (p. 15)

    Eventually, WNLA had constructed over 800 miles of roads in northern Bechuanaland alone; and had in addition established motor barge transport on the Zambesi and through the Okavango.

  • Many recruits were medically rejected, and the mines took the fittest workers while the farms received the sick, weak and very young or old. (p. 17)

    Since the mines paid more than the farms, they got the pick of the fit labour. The sick, the weak and those too young or too old went to the farms.

  • Gemmill and the Chamber resisted routine X-ray screening for cost reasons, although it would have reduced infection and the spread of TB; screening was introduced only in the 1940s. (p. 18)

    Without question routine X-Ray examinations would have reduced the incidence of infection of mine workers both on the mines and after they were at home.

  • The 1939 agreement with the northern governments diverted clandestine migrants into WNLA channels, depriving northern Transvaal and Zululand farmers of labour. (p. 20)

    WNLA had managed to divert at source part of the migration which formerly had provided northern Transvaal and Zululand farmers with much of their labour.

  • The heavy investment in the tropical migrant system locked in the Chamber's low-wage policy. (p. 21)

    made it the more difficult for Chamber of Mines executives to consider seriously real alternatives to its low wage labour policies based on maximum utilization of transitory, unskilled blacks.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source Kind Period How used
Transvaal Archives Depot, Native Affairs Department Archive (NTS) files, e.g. NTS 2006/8/280, NTS 2124 230/280/2, NTS 2115 225/280/9, NTS 2247 603/280 state archives 1923-1951 Correspondence, memos and meeting notes document Gemmill's negotiations, the AVS, medical examinations, and Chamber-government relations.
Transvaal Archives Depot, Department of Mines and Industries Archive (MNW 802/804 2489/25) state archives 1927-1928 Documents Gemmill's tour report introducing the AVS, Neergaard's northern tour report and the Gold Producers Committee statement.
Barlow Rand Archives, CMIC (Central Mining and Investment Corporation) Archive, Box 181 company records or reports 1927; 1935 Company correspondence on the AVS introduction and Rand Mines Health Department reports on TB morbidity.
Rand Mines Health Department Annual Report, 1935 (CMIC) company records or reports 1915-1935 Supplies TB morbidity figures showing the decline from 1915 to 1935 after tropical recruitment ended.
Archive of the Native Economic Commission, 1930-2 (K26) evidence commission or official report 1930-1932 Evidence by mine managers and others on the AVS and on medical examination of recruits.
Report of the Commission on Mine Natives' Wages, U.G. 21-1944 (Lansdown Commission), evidence (NWC 43, VII) commission or official report 1943-1944 Gemmill's 1943 testimony on health in the native territories, refuted by the Commission.
Low Grade Mines Commission 1919-20, Final Report commission or official report 1919-1920 Shows the mines' demand for renewed access to tropical labour dated back to 1919-20.
Secretary for Mines and Industries to the Minister, 21 Oct. 1924 (ARB 1508,1103, Department of Labour Archive) state archives 1924 Quoted memo on tuberculosis among discharged African mine workers and inadequate mine medical examination.
Zimbabwe National Archives, Chief Native Commissioner files (CNC S1561, S1542) state archives 1933-1939 Southern Rhodesian officials' views and countermeasures against WNLA, quoted on the labour war and negotiations.
Public Record Office London, Colonial Office (CO 525) and Dominions Office (DO 35) files state archives 1935-1943 Documents imperial and colonial government attitudes to WNLA, recruitment expectations, Nyasaland planters, and TB in Basutoland.
Botswana National Archive, Secretariat Series (BNAS) state archives 1928-1948 Evidence on WNLA infrastructure, medical surveys of recruits, and Rey-Gemmill correspondence on X-ray screening.
WNLA Annual Reports, 1934-45 chamber of mines or recruiting records 1934-1945 Source for levels of tropical recruiting and WNLA investments.
Report of the Commission on Medical Administration in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1947, and Report of Sir Walter Johnson, July 1937 commission or official report 1937; 1947 Support for Chamber medical grants and for high rates of TB and syphilis among mine workers.
Newspaper clippings (Rand Daily Mail, 1928 and 1951) newspapers periodicals 1928; 1951 Contemporary press cited on the AVS and on WNLA's free-labour portrayal.
W. Gemmill, 'The growing Reservoir of Native Labour for the Mines', Optima, 1952 newspapers periodicals 1952 Gemmill's own account of the 1939 agreement not to engage northern voluntaries.
Katzenellenbogen, South Africa and Southern Mozambique (1982) and Jeeves, Migrant Labour in South Africa's Mining Economy (1985) secondary literature compilation 1909-1930s Relied on for the Mozambique Convention negotiations and the mine medical examination history.

Inference

Quantification: Illustrative figures.

Archival biographical and institutional case study of Gemmill's role, tracing correspondence and negotiations among the Chamber, WNLA, and Union, Rhodesian, Nyasaland and Bechuanaland officials; claims rest on qualitative document reading with a few scattered figures.

Key claims

Claim Basis Strength
Gemmill, a bureaucrat who was not a capitalist, held decisive influence over Chamber of Mines policy on black and white labour from the 1920s to the 1950s. (p. 2) Archival correspondence and Chamber records; the claim rests on the author's reading rather than systematic data. Asserted
Gemmill drove WNLA's expansion into the tropical north, constructing a regional system that entrenched migrancy; Southern Rhodesia resisted and slowed but did not stop it. (p. 11) Zimbabwe CNC files, CO 525 files, Neergaard report, BNAS files, WNLA annual reports. Partial data
The mining industry declined routine X-ray screening and denied responsibility for TB in recruiting areas because of cost, despite evidence of high disease rates. (p. 17) 1924 Secretary for Mines memo, Rey-Gemmill correspondence, Lansdown Commission evidence, medical reports, Rand Mines Health Dept report. Partial data
The 1939 agreement with the northern governments diverted clandestine migrants into WNLA channels, harming northern Transvaal and Zululand farmers' labour supply. (p. 20) CO 525/185 file, Gemmill's 1952 Optima article and agreements; effects inferred. Illustrative or anecdotal
The 1928 Mozambique Convention conceded a ceiling of 80000 recruits per year, down from roughly 100000, creating labour shortages and mine-farm competition. (p. 8) NTS files and Katzenellenbogen's study. Partial data

The author's caveats

The author cautions that colonial officials' arguments about the social effects of migration must be treated with caution, since settlers used them to protect their access to farm labour. He notes that the 'pay-off' in labour flows was slow to materialize. He gives no formal discussion of the limitations of the archival base.

Gaps in the evidence

The argument rests mainly on elite correspondence and lacks systematic series on recruitment by origin, wages, costs and mortality to test the claimed cost savings and diversion of labour. Chamber of Mines and WNLA internal minutes and statistics exist and could quantify contract lengths, AVS shares, tropical recruit numbers and X-ray costs. Claims of Gemmill's decisive influence, as opposed to the mining houses' influence, are hard to test without comparative minutes of the Gold Producers' Committee.

Replicability: Data described but not public.