The 1946 Mine Strike: Black Workers vs Apartheid Before Apartheid
The Story of South Africa: Empire, Apartheid, and Transformation — Fexingo HistoryPlay episode
Show notes
In August 1946, over 60,000 black gold miners on the Witwatersrand downed tools in South Africa's largest strike by black workers up to that point. Led by J.B. Marks and the African Mine Workers' Union, they demanded a minimum wage of 10 shillings a day and the end of the degrading compound system. The state crushed the strike with police batons and tear gas, killing at least 12 workers and wounding hundreds. But the strike's legacy rippled far beyond the mine dumps. It exposed the brutal labor regime that underpinned South Africa's gold industry—a system where black miners were housed in single-sex hostels, forced to 'pull through' underground in dangerous conditions, and paid a fraction of white miners' wages. The 1946 strike also forged alliances between African workers and Indian and Coloured trade unions, laying groundwork for the Congress Alliance that would later challenge apartheid. This episode revisits the strike through the eyes of its leaders and the ordinary miners who risked everything, and examines how the Smuts government's violent response hardened the resolve of the liberation movement—just two years before the National Party formalized apartheid. #1946MineStrike #AfricanMineWorkersUnion #JBMarks #Witwatersrand #GoldMining #RandAutumnRebellion #CompoundSystem #LansdowneCommission #Smuts #SouthAfricanHistory #LaborHistory #ApartheidResistance #BlackWorkers #UmkhontoweSizwe #JacobNzula #MineStrike #FexingoHistory #History Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo
