The Failure of Stabilization Experiments and the Entrenchment of Migrancy to the South African Gold Mines

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Alan H. Jeeves; Jonathan Crush (1992). The Failure of Stabilization Experiments and the Entrenchment of Migrancy to the South African Gold Mines. Labour, Capital and Society / Travail, capital et société 25(1).

Type	journal article
Scope	Economics and economic history of apartheid
Method	archival narrative
Period studied	1886–1992
Regions	Witwatersrand, Orange Free State goldfields, Mozambique, High Commission Territories, Southern Africa
Themes	mining migrant labour, origins segregation, business and state, labour markets wages, bantustans removals influx, demography urbanisation, unions strikes
Citation key	jeeves1992

Argument

The authors argue that short-term migrancy to the gold mines was not an inevitable product of mining economics. They show that in each earlier crisis (1902-14, the 1920s, the 1950s) managers or governments considered stabilizing the black workforce with family housing, labour farms, or a Union-preference labour policy, and all of these efforts failed. Migrancy survived because of a political bargain among mining capital, white labour, white farmers and the state, which was embodied in the 1911 legislation. It also survived because of the low-wage regional labour market, the mines' revenue role for the state, and the cost advantages of compounds for the older mining houses. State opposition, notably Verwoerd's unwritten 3 percent rule on married quarters, and the rise of foreign labour in the 1960s then locked the system in. The case is built chronologically from archival and secondary sources, in a revisionist critique of the 'cheap labour' and underdevelopment theses.

Evidence and method

Central Archives Depot files (Native Affairs, Mines and Industries), Chamber of Mines archive microfilm rolls, Central Mining/Rand Mines papers, Rheinallt Jones papers, evidence to the Fagan, Tomlinson and Native Mine Wages commissions, Mining Industry Commission 1907-8, Low Grade Mines Commission reports, Chamber of Mines employment data (Table 3), and 1913 and 1931 surveys of married quarters (Tables 1-2). It also draws on a 1974 housing survey, a personal communication from Denis Fair, and extensive secondary literature.

Place in the debates

• Cheap labour / underdevelopment thesis (Wolpe, Johnstone, Levy, Legassick) on the origins of migrant labour (see Cheap labour thesis and the function of the reserves). Rejects it as one-dimensional and as confusing cause and effect. The authors say it ignores how workers and rural households shaped the system and that mining capital did not design migrancy as a perfectly profit-maximizing arrangement.
• Was migrancy an economic necessity of gold mining or a political construction? (see The mine migrant labour system: origins, recruitment, foreign labour and stabilisation). Argues that its entrenchment was the result of a political bargain and a conjuncture of forces, not of economic necessity alone.
• African agency versus capitalist imposition in the migrant system (see The mine migrant labour system: origins, recruitment, foreign labour and stabilisation). Takes a middle position. The system was an uneasy compromise in which workers' preferences mattered, but the authors stress its coercive character and the corporate and state choices that perpetuated it.
• Mining industry's claim that workers themselves rejected stabilization (see The mine migrant labour system: origins, recruitment, foreign labour and stabilisation). Treats the claim as self-serving. Workers were never consulted, and the industry used it to justify migrancy.

Findings

• Managers experimented with stabilization in crises as a way to secure control and labour supply. (p. 5)

  By establishing labour farms or creating villages on or near the mines, managers could strengthen their control and provide incentives for miners to accept longer-term employment in rigorous underground work.

• Family housing was substantial in the early mining era, with tin towns outside compound control. (p. 8)

  In 1913, a Native Labour Bureau investigation identified about 5,000 men (and 12,000 people in all) living in married quarters on the mines.

• The tin towns were largely eliminated by state regulation and mine management action. (p. 10)

  By the early 1930s, less than 1,500 workers were housed in the tin towns of the Witwatersrand (Table 2).

• The 1906-10 outcome was a political bargain rather than an economic dictate. (p. 12)

  Significantly, the economics of mining did not directly dictate this outcome, which was more the result of a political bargain laboriously constructed in the years 1906-10.

• During the Depression the mines drew on local supply, so no wage-driven stabilization was needed. (p. 17)

  By 1933, the mines were employing 240,000 black workers, of whom barely 50,000 came from Mozambique.

• A regional labour market depressed wages for black workers across the economy. (p. 20)

  Since wage levels in all of the other territories were much lower than in South Africa, the country was a magnet for the entire region.

• Mining revenue funded subsidies for sheltered white employment, which gave the state a stake in the existing labour system. (p. 20)

  Manufacturers would receive tariff protection, bounties and other subsidies in return for maintaining agreed levels of white employment

• The Nationalist government capped married housing at an unofficial 3 percent, blocking Anglo American's Free State plan. (p. 25)

  the Department flatly refused to countenance any plan that did not place an upper limit of 3 percent on the proportion of workers on any mine that could reside in family accommodation.

• The mines never approached the 3 percent limit because of their growing reliance on foreign migrants. (p. 26)

  Between 1950 and 1975, no gold mine even came close to the 3 percent figure.

• By the early 1970s the mines were overwhelmingly dependent on foreign migrants. (p. 26)

  By the early 1970s, almost 80 percent of mineworkers were migrants from Malawi, Mozambique, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland.

• On the eve of the 1974 labour crisis, virtually no workers lived with families on the mines. (p. 27)

  At that time, only 0.7 percent of the black workers were living in married quarters on mines and in townships.

• Migrancy was not an inevitable product of mining economics. (p. 27)

  The entrenchment of the system should not be seen as the inevitable product of economic necessity in the mining industry.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Native Affairs Department file NTS 9831 2/408, Native Married Quarters 1913 (Central Archives Depot, Pretoria)	state archives	1913	Source for Table 1 counting mine married quarters and residents in tin towns in 1913.
Native Labour Bureau investigation of married quarters on the mines, 1913 (as reported via Moroney)	secondary literature compilation	1913	Establishes about 5,000 men (12,000 people) in mine married quarters before stabilization was curbed.
Rheinallt Jones Papers, University of the Witwatersrand, AD 1428/D8	state archives	1931	Source for Table 2 showing 1,458 miners in married housing across Witwatersrand mines in 1931.
CAD, NTS Native Commissioner Benoni to Director of Native Labour, 3 December 1937	state archives	1937	Supports claim that surviving tin towns were in atrocious condition.
Evidence and Reports of the Mining Industry Commission, 1907-1908, TG 1, 2, 1908	commission or official report	1907-1908	Commission set up to examine Creswell's white-labour theories; its majority report was ignored by government.
Interim and Final Reports of the Low Grade Mines Commission (UG 45-19; UG 34-20)	commission or official report	1919-1920	Documents recommendations to lift the ban on tropical labour, which the state resisted.
CAD, NTS 2006/8/280, Walters to Smuts, 30 June 1922	state archives	1922	Evidence for the 1922 Union-preference labour policy.
CAD, Department of Mines and Industries (MNW) 802 2489/25, Pts 2 (incl. Director of Native Labour 1927 letter and Creswell Memorandum 1927)	state archives	1927	Shows the government raising the Mozambique limit and Creswell's arguments against foreign labour.
Barlow Rand Archives, CMIC Collection, Box 181, John Martin to CMIC London, 14 December 1927	company records or reports	1927	Records mining industry's attempts to get renewed tropical labour recruitment, met by hostile government.
Public Record Office, W. Gemmill, 'TCM. Gold Producers' Committee, Mozambique Convention Negotiations', 30 March 1928	state archives	1928	Supports account of the 1928 Mozambique Convention negotiations and the Gold Producers' Committee role.
Chamber of Mines data on sources of mine labour, 1933-39 (Table 3)	chamber of mines or recruiting records	1933-1939	Table 3 shows rising local and foreign employment on the mines during the 1930s recovery.
Working profits figures for gold industry 1911-32 and 1933-40 (source unspecified)	official statistical series	1911-1940	Contrasts post-devaluation profits with earlier decades to show the 1930s boom.
Evidence of William Gemmill to the Native Laws (Fagan) Commission, Wits AD 1756	commission or official report	1940s	Quoted to show Chamber's claim that workers did not want families on the mines.
Mining Survey (Chamber of Mines in-house journal) 1/4-1/6, 1947-48	newspapers periodicals	1947-1948	Illustrates industry propaganda in defence of compound life and migrancy.
Gold Producers Committee's Case Summing Up, Witwatersrand Native Mine Wages Commission (Cory Library MS 16590)	employer association records	early 1940s	Shows recycled Chamber memoranda defending migrancy and the costs of stabilization.
Chamber of Mines Archive (CMA) rolls: 2149/2535, 1705/634, 1962/1853, 1705/651, 543/650, 1705/630, 1951/1753, 1705/728	chamber of mines or recruiting records	1950s	Document Chamber policy, costs, the 3 percent rule and the 1954 count of mineworkers in married quarters.
Tomlinson Commission Record of Evidence vol. XII, 20 May 1952 (Busschau, Gemmill)	commission or official report	1952	Source for Chamber's testimony that about 12 percent of the workforce could be stabilized.
NTS 9855 2/408(3) Married Quarters for Natives on Mine Areas, 1953	state archives	1953	Establishes classes of workers to be housed in married quarters and mine management's views on control.
Natural Resources Development Council, A Regional Survey of the OFS Goldfields (1954)	commission or official report	1954	Context for the state planning process on Free State mine housing and the 3 percent limit.
Personal communication from Denis Fair, 21 July 1989	interviews oral history	1952-57 (recalled 1989)	Testimony that the Native Affairs Department insisted on a 3 percent cap on married housing.
Rand Daily Mail, 3 February 1953	newspapers periodicals	1953	Source for Verwoerd's public rebuke of Oppenheimer's village plan.
Native Recruiting Corporation Records, Summary of Replies to Questionnaire on Bantu Housing, 21 March 1974	chamber of mines or recruiting records	1974	Survey evidence that only 0.7 percent of black workers lived in married quarters in 1974.
Crush, Jeeves and Yudelman, South Africa's Labor Empire (1991)	secondary literature compilation	1960s-1980s	Source for foreign labour share (80 percent by early 1970s) and negotiations leading to the 1987 repeal of the 3 percent rule.
Legislation: Native Labour Regulation Act and Mines and Works Act (1911), Natives (Urban Areas) Act (1923), Native Lands Act (1913)	legislation gazette	1911-1923	Used to show the political compromise entrenching migrancy and the colour bar.

Inference

Quantification: Descriptive tables.

Historical narrative based on archival and official records, structured by comparing three crisis periods (1902-14, 1920s, 1950s) and asking why stabilization was not adopted. Argument rests on political-economy reasoning and counterfactuals, with small descriptive tables.

Key claims

Claim	Basis	Strength
In 1902-14 some mines allowed family housing and tin towns, but this stabilization remained small, and the political bargain of 1906-11 rather than mining economics entrenched migrancy. (p. 29)	1913 CAD NTS married-quarters survey (Table 1), Native Labour Bureau investigation, Mining Industry Commission, and the 1911 Acts.	Partial data
Tin-town stabilization collapsed through regulation; by 1931 under 1,500 workers lived in married quarters on the Witwatersrand. (p. 27)	Rheinallt Jones Papers count (Table 2); legislation of 1911-1945; Benoni Native Commissioner letter.	Partial data
The 1930s Depression and the 1933 gold price rise let the mines meet demand from traditional sources without wage increases or stabilization. (p. 35)	Chamber of Mines labour supply data (Table 3) and working profit figures.	Systematic data
The Chamber of Mines defended migrancy by asserting workers' preferences without consulting them and by pointing to the costs of stabilization. (p. 40)	Gemmill's Fagan Commission evidence, Chamber memoranda, Mining Survey articles.	Illustrative or anecdotal
Stabilization stayed negligible through 1950-75 as foreign workers rose to nearly 80 percent of the workforce; only 0.7 percent lived in married quarters in 1974. (p. 43)	1954 CMA summary, Crush-Jeeves-Yudelman book, 1974 Native Recruiting Corporation survey of forty mines.	Partial data

The author's caveats

The authors note that the 1913 Native Labour Bureau study did not count the many more people in tin towns and slum yards away from the mines. They also say the Chamber never actually consulted workers about their preferences.

Gaps in the evidence

The argument depends heavily on elite and employer records and offers little direct evidence of worker preferences, wages or the costs of stabilization, so counterfactual claims remain asserted. Systematic mine-level series on married housing, wages and recruitment costs across 1900-1975 would test the claims better; Chamber of Mines and government records likely existed then and survive in archives. Oral histories or worker surveys could address the workers' own preferences, which the authors stress but do not document.

Replicability: Data described but not public.