Migrant Labour in South Africa’s Mining Economy: The Struggle for the Gold Mines’ Labour Supply, 1890-1920

In tracing the development of the recruiting system, Alan Jeeves shows how a large proportion of the labour supply came to be controlled by private labour companies and recruiting agents, who aimed both to exploit the workers and to extract heavy fees from the employing companies. The gold indusry struggled for years against the internal divisions which created the competition for labour, until at last the Chamber of Mines, with the support of the state, succeeded in driving out the private recruiters and centralizing the system under its control. This study of the interests involved in the struggle for control of the black labour supply reveals much about the forces which created and now entrench racial domination in South African’s industrial economy.