Most of the walls in the yard have a black grease line at seat height (testimony of the many workers who waited there), and the plaster, made with sand from the mine caps, is falling in pieces from the walls. Apart from the few black clerks, none of the staff is under fifty, and several are over seventy. If the suggestions at the heart of the Riekert Commission were to become law, Telona1 could be shut down and the era of independent recruitment organizations would be over.
At the root of the problems the WNLA faced during the post-war reconstruction period were lower quality mines. In the boom of the previous decade, the Randlords (including Barnato of the Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Company and Robinson's group) had committed themselves to training these ICM graders. This was one of the reasons why Olinese Labcur was imported, W1der licenses issued by British Unionist Givernrrent.
The outstanding feature of the characters of these natives is their propensity to tell lies. However, the origins of Telona are lcrlged firrrQy within the framework of the imperial bourgeoisie. He later became a clerk to the Chief Justice of the Transvaal, and was intimately involved in that department's investigations into the Jameson raid.
Recruiters of the type Telona was to become - registered mine workers and head tax profits.
The original need for rroney on the part of subsistence farmers was to pay taxes levied for the purpose of getting out, work. The mine owners' alarm is reflected in the Gold Producers' Ccmnittee evidence to the 1951 Corrmission on the Socio-Economic Development of the Native Areas in the Union of South Africa. One form in which this can be seen is in the forced operation of the peasants from the land and the transfer of this land to modern private property.
47 In 1922 a wider boycott was organized, beginning with a 'systematic boycott of trading stations by women' in the Herschel district. The Smuts government's response was the Fagan Commission, a document outlining the "rehabilitation of reserves". Corn shortages reached desperate proportions in 1946, and the miners' strike of the same year has been cited as a result of the situation.
A labor force presented itself at the mine gates and returned to the reserves of its own accord, a piercing dream of the mine. As safety for blacks on white farms and conditions on the reservations deteriorated, these men increasingly imported their families to the cities. In 1939, the number of families on the Johannesburg Municipality's waiting list for housing was 143.
Capital invested in production for export from South Africa's peripheral economy in the early part of this century gave rise to a degree of monetization of the economy. By 1945, mining's contribution to GDP had fallen, from around 18% in the 1920s, to 13%, while industrial production contributed 19% of GDP. In 1945, the Board of Trade and Industries concluded 'that, on the whole, there has been a large increase in the average size of the industrial economy. The higher fixed capital per location actually indicates greater mechanization. par.
However, the effect of the rapid increase in the organic composition of capital was to increase the degree of black inability to work. The tasks of the labor offices were given in.. a) the employment of the Bantu and the regulation of the labor supply with a view to its connection with the dena.nd;. Now the head of the Labor Office has been made the director of domestic work (who supervises the issuance of all licenses) and the issuance of new licenses has been withheld.'
It appears that Telona is being 'streamlined' out of existence in connection with the rationalization of labor control legislation to suit rronopol capital. What remains to be done is to place Telona very briefly in the context of the work pattern of the 1970s. The Riekert Commission can therefore first be seen in the oontext of the steady increase in black unemployment, especially evident during the last five years.
Given the economy's dependence on foreign capital, this is a threat with serious consequences.
BLACK LABOUR FORCE
Although it is probably inadmissible to bury Telona before its death, it saw, to quote its director, that it is fast becoming an anachronism in the development of South African capitalism. Formerly Native Recruiting Corp., Chamber of Mines recruiting organization operating in South Africa. See Morris: The development of capital in South African agr:j.culture: class struggle in the countryside.
Appendix B to the Report of the Select Carrrnittee on Native Labour, Reports of Select Ccmnittees 1910/11 Vol.ll p Most of the information on the labor bureau system comes from an unpublished paper by Horner and Wilson entitled Central Labor Bureau. Mare p.44 - he attributes the massive increase in female arrests to the rapid deterioration of the reservations in the late 1970s.
Mc:NaInara, J.K.': The development of recruitment infrastructure: Witwatersrand gold mining labor migration routes and complex accommodation, 1889-1912. Re'l:ocation and Riekert: AtteIilpts at rural and urban stabil- South African Labor Bulletin, Vol. In Essays in Sou,'th African Laboui> History, E.Webs'ter (ed,.). rris, M.: 'The development of capitalism in South African agriculture:. rris, M.: 'Capital and apartheid: a critique of IlCMer free labor concepts.
Perrings: State and labor migration in the South African political economy, particularly in relation to gold mining. Evidence for the self-mission on the socio-economic development of indigenous areas within the Union.
