Thesis Abstract:
This thesis examines the connection between the South African mining state and the political liberation movement. It moves in a thematic manner by sketching out the various forces that drove European colonization and the subsequent experiences mineworkers faced while they labored underground. By understanding the dreadful conditions Africans were subjected to within the mines and on informal living communities, apartheid (Afrikaans: “apartness”) can be better understood as the culmination of a half century of labor control policies. New working and living environments both broke down and formed cultural identities, which planted the seeds for future political struggle by creating shared experiences among different communities.
Black mineworkers were placed on society's fringes and were prohibited from creating their own formal labor rights organizations, which resulted in the formation of informal governing institutions. Gang culture sprouted within hostels and informal living settlements by providing basic mineworkers with an outlet to purchase alcohol, to gamble, and to engage in prostitution. Violence arose and gangs became powerful economic and political entities as hostels and informal settlements evolved into the townships many associate with the apartheid state. South African society came to represent James C. Scott’s theory of “Infrapolitics.” White elites controlled black mineworkers, and thus, the violence that arose from gangs can be viewed as a form of informal and unchanneled resistance against the apartheid regime.[1]
Those placed on the fringes and who practiced Infrapolitics were incorporated into formal political struggles by Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC), and other political organizations such as the Pan African Congress or (PAC). This thesis focuses on Mandela’s actions as the leader of the ANC, and it shows the political struggles of the 1950s and 1960s channeled preexisting sentiments within the townships into a nationwide liberation movement. In so doing, this thesis bridges the scholarly gap between, mining and migrant labor, and the political liberation movement.
[1] James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 188. Scott articulates an exceptional theory that fits the evolution of political struggle within South African society.