Page 52 - Demo

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Witwatersrand rebellion
Indeed, the period leading up to and shortly after Governor Clegg assumed duty was a volatile time for the South African economy, characterised by labour strikes. The global depression that followed World War I had affected South Africa. In addition, this era was coloured by significant political developments, whose implications reverberate in contemporary South Africa – moreover on the SARB in terms of the space it occupies in the South African socio-economic context.
At the beginning of 1918, black South African miners, struggling to make ends meet on their meagre wages, were the first to embark on protest action by boycotting concession stores on the East Rand, east of Johannesburg. Soon thereafter, municipal sanitary workers refused to work.
The police were called to arrest the striking workers, while black South African policemen were instructed to clear sewage buckets. Undeterred, more workers joined the strike and were arrested.
By July 1918, about 15 000 mineworkers went on strike, while scores of them were detained during their industrial action.
Elsewhere in the country, strikes broke out. This included Cape Town, where musicians who played at silent movie cinemas went on strike, demanding higher wages.
In 1921, the year the SARB started operating, white workers, mainly in the coal and gold mines, went on strike. The strike resulted from mine owners’ preference for cheaper black labour. Led by the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the South African Labour Party, these workers downed tools on 28 December 1921.
By February 1922, the strike had escalated to the point where the Union government felt compelled to intervene, but without success. Inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution and workers’ uprising in Russia in 1917, the South African workers soon organised themselves into armed groups and built fortifications in various locations on the Witwatersrand.