Introduction^{Footnote 1}

During an archival foray in South Africa at an early stage of my current research project, I was approached one morning by a fellow researcher who had just arrived in the reading room. My hurried and rather cryptic entry into the archive’s visitors book (“research interest: white workers”) had piqued his interest enough to interrupt me where I was pouring over some documents. “So you’re working on the 1930s and ’40s, Albert Hertzog and those guys?” he enquired enthusiastically, after introductions. His face fell when I replied that my research centered on the late and post-apartheid period, from the late 1970s onwards. “But there were no white workers left by then,” he protested, then added: “Or, whoever was still working-class, wanted to be.”

This anecdote from a chance archival encounter demonstrates, however crudely, the predominating understanding of South Africa’s white working class. White workers are associated with the early twentieth century and poor whiteism, urbanizing and industrializing South Africa, and the rise of Afrikaner nationalism, but, mid-century, they essentially disappear from the historical narrative following the advent of National Party (NP) rule in 1948 and the subsequent white prosperity of the 1960s. The scholarship on South Africa’s working class dealing with the 1970s onwards focuses on African (and to a lesser extent, colored and Indian) workers.^{Footnote 2} Meanwhile, the historiography on whites during this period is focused on high politics of the NP, and the verligte-verkrampte ^{Footnote 3} struggle in its ranks. Where white workers are mentioned, they are typically portrayed as a negligible and homogenous group of conservatives obstinately committed to white supremacy.

Indeed, the history of “ordinary” whites has been neglected in the apartheid period.^{Footnote 4} In this paper, I propose two archival collections which may be employed for writing the history of white workers during late apartheid, and for constructing a more profound and nuanced understanding of white working-class agency, politics, and identity during this period. The archive of the Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation (popularly known as the Wiehahn Commission) comprises a diverse collection of documentation pertaining to the reform of South Africa’s industrial relations machinery, as investigated by the Commission between 1977 and 1981. These reforms initiated the dismantling of the race-based, dualist system of labor relations which characterized much of the twentieth century – a process which had profound implications for white workers and their trade unions. The Wiehahn Commission’s extensive documentation has not previously been utilized for historical research, although, as will be explained below, its potential is legion. The second archive which is explored here and proposed as a case study, is that of the Mineworkers’ Union (MWU) – one of South Africa’s oldest and longest-surviving white-only trade unions. Although the MWU has attracted the attention of researchers throughout its tumultuous history, its documentation – in particular its in-house newspaper, which is my focus here – remained largely under-utilized and has not been mined for all its historical worth. I discuss the potential of these two source bases, and how together they offer a starting point for writing the history of white labor politics and working-class experience during the late apartheid period. Reinserting white workers into the historical narrative in this way serves to counter the homogenizing representations in the existing historiography, thus bringing new insights to the period of reform and the dismantling of apartheid.

Historiographical Overview and Critique

White workers first drew sustained attention as subjects of historical inquiry in the 1960s and 1970s, as a new generation of historians expressed their discontent with the predominating “liberal” historiography which they saw as interpreting the past in terms of the primacy of race.^{Footnote 5} Adopting structural Marxist perspectives, the revisionists advocated the explanation of historical change on a macro scale with classes as the main actors and material conditions as their motivations.^{Footnote 6} Many focused their analyses on the relationship between the state, capital, and organized labor in the first half of the twentieth century in an effort to understand the failure of a nonracial labor movement in South Africa and white workers’ role in the construction and maintenance of racial capitalism.^{Footnote 7} In a seminal work of the time, Robert Davies argued that capital’s accommodation of white working-class interests during this period constituted an effort to divide the working class along racial lines and thereby diffuse any challenge to the existing conditions of capital accumulation.^{Footnote 8} The resultant privileged position occupied by white workers in the racist hierarchy of labor and labor rights prompted some scholars to view them as a “labor aristocracy.”^{Footnote 9} Others went further, arguing that the concept of a “white working class” in South Africa was “mythical,” as white workers worked mostly in supervisory positions and were themselves exploiters drawing advantage from a racially organized society.^{Footnote 10}

Parallel and in response to this neo-Marxist historiography, another strand of revisionism developed which sought to look beyond structuralist analyses to aspects of individual agency and the everyday lives of ordinary working people. Observing the 1970s’ increased worker militancy, emergent social historians focused on workers’ consciousness and experience, seeking to write nuanced and complex histories sensitive to the politically-relevant aspects of cultural and social life. Central here was Charles van Onselen’s Studies on the early Witwatersrand, a number of thematic essays focused on the lives of domestic workers, brick makers, and prostitutes on the Rand.^{Footnote 11} Social history studies paved the way for a growing realization that class analysis alone had limitations in the same manner as an exclusive focus on race was not sufficient for understanding the past – a more subtle approach was needed which recognized that both race and class were fluid and historically contingent categories.^{Footnote 12} While some scholars tried to provide more nuanced interpretations of the agency of white workers and the state vis-à-vis capital, others turned to ideas of community and identity.^{Footnote 13} Feminist historians in particular challenged existing explanations of the past for neglecting female experience and agency. This critique produced a number of gender studies examining the role of white working-class women in Afrikaner nationalist politics and society, and nonracial trade unionism during the 1930s and 1940s.^{Footnote 14}

In the context of South Africa’s democratic transition in the 1990s, the rise of postcolonial theory stimulated a shift towards issues of discourse, representation, and identity politics. Jeremy Krikler applied these insights to white workers during the 1922 Rand revolt, demonstrating how material factors, social conditions, and cultural understandings specific to both the racial and class position of the strikers explained their organization and revolutionary behavior during the strike.^{Footnote 15} While social and cultural histories, often focused on marginal communities such as the working class, remain popular, there are recent moves towards writing broader transnational histories which highlight processes of integration and difference between the local, national, and global. Here, too, South Africa’s white workers have featured in the historiography. The focus has fallen mainly on early industrial South Africa before the First World War in comparison with other British colonies or dominions.^{Footnote 16}

There is, therefore, a rich and diverse scholarship on South Africa’s white workers, which reflects historiographical trends and developments of the last half century. It revolves around debates on the relative importance of ideological or material considerations, and the tussle between racist, nationalist, and nonracial consciousness in explaining white working-class organization, politics, identity and experience. As my overview demonstrates, however, this scholarship is strongly concentrated on the first half of the twentieth century.^{Footnote 17}

This neglect of white workers during the second half of the century may be attributed to the scholarship’s understanding of the effects of NP rule on the material position of whites. Following the nationalists’ ascent to power in 1948, the early apartheid period witnessed the tightening and expansion of racially discriminatory labor legislation such as job reservation, a dramatic increase in state employment from the civil service to parastatal industries, the widening of the social security net, and racially-determined educational opportunities.^{Footnote 18} Such policies benefitted whites in general and Afrikaners in particular – and within the context of strong post-war economic growth, facilitated dramatic upward social mobility for many workers. According to Davies, “between 1946 and 1960 the number of whites described in censuses as laborers (…) decreased by 61 percent while the numbers in the new petty bourgeoisie increased by some 74 percent.”^{Footnote 19} Within the Afrikaner population in particular, the absolute and proportional number of males in the lowest income categories shrunk, while their presence in the higher income sectors of the economy swelled rapidly, leading to the establishment of an urban Afrikaner middle class of white-collar workers and managers.^{Footnote 20} Whites had “never had it so good,” writes William Beinart of the 1960s.^{Footnote 21} This narrative of embourgeoisement, as well as a focus on high politics after 1948, sees the story of South Africa’s white workers, so vividly portrayed for the first half of the century, fall silent.^{Footnote 22}

The literature on South Africa’s working class now turns to the plight of black workers, focusing on their role in the escalating struggle against apartheid. The white government’s repressive attitude towards African workers and black organizations in general, especially after 1960, ensured a period of relative industrial peace amongst these workers who formed the overwhelming bulk of the country’s unskilled and semi-skilled labor force.^{Footnote 23} But from the 1970s, in the context of stalling economic growth, grievances within the African labor force about rising living costs and unemployment mixed with enduring discontents regarding Africans’ lack of labor rights.^{Footnote 24} In January 1973, two thousand African brick workers came out on strike in the east coast city of Durban, demanding an increase to their daily wage. A series of strikes ignited across the city, and spread to other industrial centers such as East London and Johannesburg. The next two months saw more than sixty thousand African workers down tools in over hundred-and-sixty strikes.^{Footnote 25}

The immediate causes of this mass industrial action were economic. Due to the economic downturn, unemployment was rising and hikes in inflation led to a steady increase in the cost of living. These developments brought to a head the desperation already engendered by extremely low wages, particularly in the Durban-based textile industry. But more long-term processes were also at play. The cultural changes wrought within the African labor force by decades of urbanization and industrialization were translating into greater political awareness, potential for militancy, and collective mobilization among African workers. This period therefore witnessed the renewed growth of African trade unions. Despite government efforts to quash emerging unions, about twenty-five African unions with a membership some 75,000 workers were in existence by 1975, and expanding rapidly. In June 1976, industrial unrest was exacerbated by country-wide community demonstrations against apartheid policies, starting with the Soweto student protests.^{Footnote 26} The government responded to these uprisings with brutal suppression, which only served to exacerbate local tensions and international pressure on South Africa. Close links between workers and community-based political groups meant that demands for labor rights and political freedoms readily flowed together, threatening political and economic instability which the country could ill afford.^{Footnote 27}

Eager to forestall the politicization of the African workforce and ameliorate the damaging effects of apartheid policies on the economy, Prime Minister Vorster appointed a Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation to redesign South Africa’s system of industrial relations. Led by Nic Wiehahn, professor of labor law at the University of South Africa, the Commission released the most important part of its report to Parliament on Labor Day 1979. In what has been labeled a historical concession, the Commission recommended the legal recognition of African trade unions and the right of African workers to organize, as well as the abolition of statutory job reservation.^{Footnote 28} Although hailed as “major” at the time, these reforms sought to offer concessions to sections of the African population in order to contain resistance and safeguard continued white, Afrikaner-led control over the state and economy.^{Footnote 29}

But the government’s efforts to gain control over African workers were outstripped by the consequences of the reform process it had set in motion. As in other African countries earlier in the century, African labor seized upon the new, albeit restricted space accorded to them through the legalization of African labor organization to fashion a new space for resistance to white domination, mobilize, and demand full political rights.^{Footnote 30} These demands converged with those of community-based defiance movements in the townships.^{Footnote 31} The formation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in December 1985 united various African unions, representing some 500,000 workers, in a single federation which “recognized the inseparability of shop-floor struggles from the broader political struggle.”^{Footnote 32} It was clear that the reforms’ goal of curbing the power of African unions and depoliticizing African labor had in fact had the exact opposite effect. Meanwhile in the industrial realm, African unions overtook established unions and labor federations who could no longer claim to represent the majority of organized labor.

The rapid growth of the African labor movement during this period thus served to effectuate an important shift in the balance of power between the government and its opposition.^{Footnote 33} By the late 1980s, South Africa had reached an impasse between the military machinery of the white government, and the protests and insurrectionary violence of the black liberation movement. In February 1990, with the perceived respite offered by the collapse of the Soviet Union (an important source of financial and ideological support for the ANC), President F.W. de Klerk unbanned the liberation organizations and freed Nelson Mandela. When Mandela’s African National Congress took power in 1994, it was in alliance with COSATU and the South African Communist Party.^{Footnote 34}

In the existing historiography, the period between the outbreak of mass industrial action in the early 1970s and the start of negotiations in the early 1990s is often understood in terms of “reform and resistance.” The historical narrative thus typically focuses on either high politics and the white minority government’s efforts to bolster its legitimacy and gain control over the elements challenging it, or on the various forms of resistance emanating from South Africa’s black population, either in organized form or in everyday life. Neil Roos argues that “ordinary” whites have been left behind in the existing historiography on apartheid, and that there is a dire need for probing the histories of what he calls “subaltern whites” – “ordinary people” in the tradition of social history, as well as “deviants” outside the mainstream – in order to fracture homogenizing understandings and representations of white society.^{Footnote 35} The experience of South Africa’s white industrial workforce – those whites occupying an anomalous position in this racially ordered society, uncomfortably far removed from elite white policymakers and uncomfortably close to a politicized black workforce – is one such aspect of the history of “ordinary” whites which is absent from the existing narrative on the period of reform and resistance. Where white workers are mentioned in the literature, this is done in passing, in connection with support for conservative or right-wing political parties.^{Footnote 36}

By the 1970s, almost 400,000 white workers (29 percent of the economically active white population of 1.4 million) were organized in trade unions.^{Footnote 37} Occupational data on Afrikaners in particular shows that a substantial section of the population remained in blue-collar occupations throughout the apartheid period (Table 1).

Table 1.

Distribution of Afrikaner labor force, 1946–1991^{Footnote 38}

Although they certainly formed a minority of the labor force in primary and secondary industry, these white workers represented a crucial part of the workforce – they held the majority of supervisory and skilled jobs, and a significant proportion of semi-skilled positions. Until the Wiehahn reforms, they enjoyed a privileged position in the racially-organized labor arena, reflecting their privileged position in a racially-organized society. Apartheid labor legislation denied African workers labor rights, excluded them from industrial conciliation mechanisms, and enforced white dominance of industrial councils and the organized labor movement. White workers were, therefore, ideally positioned to negotiate for the racial allocation of the most favored jobs, and the safeguarding of their privileged position in the labor hierarchy.

The period of reform and resistance is rightly infamous for what the apartheid government failed to do – grant Africans full labor rights, full political rights, and full citizenship. But because the existing historiography overwhelmingly views the reforms of the late 1970s and 1980s in conservative terms, it overlooks the implications of the reforms and their consequences for this section of the white population. For white workers, the dismantling of racist labor legislation meant the dismantling of their privileged status in the labor arena – and this more than a decade before other whites were confronted with the political democratization of 1994. While we know much about the high political aspects and African labor’s role in this process, we know little about white workers. The remainder of this paper introduces two under-utilized archival collections which may be employed to remedy this situation and bring white workers into the narrative on the late apartheid period.

The Wiehahn Documentation

Upon its appointment on 8 July 1977, the Wiehahn Commission was charged with investigating, reporting on, and making recommendations in connection with all existing labor legislation, most notably the 1956 Industrial Conciliation Act, and was ordered to submit interim reports “in view of the urgency of the matter.”^{Footnote 39} The fourteen commissioners – eleven white, and one colored, one Indian, and one black – were drawn from the ranks of the labor movement, business community, civil service, and academia.^{Footnote 40} This made the Commission South Africa’s first multiracial state-appointed inquiry. Yet none of its members could be seen as speaking for African workers – indeed, only organized labor was represented on the Commission. There were also no women on the Commission, despite the fact that women constituted a growing proportion of those in formal employment.^{Footnote 41} In terms of its white members, the Commission included both English- and Afrikaans-speakers.

By way of notice in the Government Gazette, interested parties were invited to submit written representations.^{Footnote 42} The Commission received 255 submissions from a variety of respondents, including employers’ organizations, labor organizations, industrial councils, state departments, institutes, and individuals. Subsequently, hearings were convened in major cities across the country at which 184 institutions, organizations, and individuals – many of whom had also submitted written evidence – gave oral testimony.^{Footnote 43} In addition, the Commission visited a number of local factories, training centers, and mines to observe labor practice and gather evidence, while several commissioners travelled abroad to examine labor relations and conduct research on alternative conciliatory mechanisms and systems. With the gathering of evidence formally concluded in May 1978, the commissioners proceeded to debate the evidence before them and formulate their response and recommendations.^{Footnote 44} These recommendations were released in six parts between 1979 and 1981, and subsequently published by the Government Printer.

In the three years during which it investigated every aspect of South Africa’s industrial relations, the inquiry produced a vast amount of documentation. Yet it is the Commission’s published reports which have formed the basis of all existing analyses of the Wiehahn inquiry and its meaning as part of the reform process. It is unclear why labor analysts and historians have not consulted the Commission’s extensive archive as a source for understanding the dynamics and strategic considerations which characterized this crucial historical juncture. Possibly, part of the answer may lie in the fact that, by the time the Wiehahn documentation became legally accessible to the public around the turn of the century, South Africa’s political transition had already taken place and the reformed labor legislation borne of the Wiehahn process had been overhauled in the new democratic context.^{Footnote 45} With a certain understanding of the Commission’s role and meaning as part of the reform process already established in the historiography, the newly-available documentation thus attracted little attention.

But scholars of this period would do well to exhume the Wiehahn documentation, housed at the South African National Archives in Pretoria. This extensive collection comprises the written representations and comments received by the Commission from various interested parties, organized according to the labor legislation to which they pertained.^{Footnote 46} Not only has the Commission’s complete agendas and minutes been preserved, but full verbatim transcriptions of all the Commission’s oral testimony sessions and deliberation meetings are available in the archive. These alone comprise over 10,000 pages. With regard to the Commission’s seven investigative subcommittees, the archive is less complete but nevertheless holds important pieces of documentation.^{Footnote 47} Agendas and minutes for the industrial relations subcommittee and mining subcommittee survive, as well as transcriptions from oral testimony brought before the mining subcommittee by several trade unions during its investigation of the 1956 Mines and Works Act. There is also a number of papers compiled by various subcommittees, as well as their reports and recommendations. In addition to the extensive evidential documentation, the Wiehahn collection further includes press statements and circulars, newspaper cuttings and inquiries (local and international) pertaining to the Commission and its work, some literature gathered in the course of the inquiry which informed the Commission’s investigation, as well as a number of speeches delivered by Wiehahn and other commissioners. Finally, the collection includes documentation detailing the legislation and regulations governing the Commission, and documentation pertaining to administrative matters such as its finances, travel arrangements, and staff.

Visiting the National Archives in the course of 2012 and 2013, I found the Wiehahn collection to be well-ordered and in good condition. Although there is a computerized catalogue available, researchers are best advised to consult the hardcopy inventory list of the collection (list S413, available at the front counter of the reading room) for detailed information on the content of the Wiehahn collection. Flash-free photography of the documentation is allowed, and photocopying facilities are available for the patient researcher at a fee. The documentation can be expected to reflect the linguistic duality which characterized the South African state during this period, as the inquiry was conducted in and accommodated Afrikaans and English, the two official languages at the time. Indeed, during its testimony hearings and deliberations, the Commission operated on a bilingual basis – the timing of actors’ code-switching often being an interesting dynamic to observe in the transcriptions.

In addition to the documentation housed at the National Archives, Naas Steenkamp – the only surviving Wiehahn commissioner at the time of writing – retains a private archive at his home in Somerset West, outside Cape Town. Steenkamp’s collection of Wiehahn documentation is not as extensive as that of the National Archives. However, it does contain copies of what may be seen as the qualitatively richest sources, namely the written representations submitted to the Commission by interested parties, as well as the verbatim transcriptions of the Commission’s testimony and deliberation meetings. What perhaps distinguishes Steenkamp’s collection, is the fact that his documentation reflects his comments and marginalia from the time of the inquiry. While Steenkamp’s collection is not inventorized, I encountered it in relatively good order in 2012 and 2013, securely housed and organized in chronologically numbered files.

This extensive documentation of the Wiehahn Commission has not previously been utilized, despite its rich research potential. The evidentiary documentation – written submissions and oral testimony brought before the Commission – reveals the responses of a wide spectrum of actors not only to the immediate crisis in the labor arena, but also to the broader prospect of reform and their understanding of its implications for the country and its political dispensation. This may provide insight into how various key sections of society saw South Africa and imagined its future in the context of the escalating local and international pressures which characterized this historical juncture. This in turn can facilitate a much more complex and nuanced interpretation of the economic, political, and social processes which characterized the 1970s and 1980s.

While this part of the historical material is dominated by the testimony of organized labor and big business, other, perhaps more unusual voices also sound from this archive. A handful of black labor representatives came to testify before the Commission – including the Consultative Committee of Black Trade Unions and the Trade Union Advisory and Coordinating Council, with the latter bringing its lawyer along – while there was also a deputation from the National African Chamber of Commerce, a black employers’ organization. Other testimonies which catch the eye and may be of interest to historians beyond the field of labor and business history, are those of the security police, or of organizations like the South African national councils for the blind and the intellectually disabled. The Wiehahn documentation is therefore remarkably diverse in terms of the voices it captures.

Beyond the evidentiary documentation, material such as the extensive transcripts of the Commission’s deliberation sessions, the subcommittee papers, and the Commission’s draft reports offer the opportunity to reconstruct the Commission’s debates and trace the evolution of Wiehahn’s final recommendations. My own research has started to reveal the contestation which lay behind the compilation of the Commission’s reports, and the complexity of the power dynamics, strategic considerations, and vested interests which characterized the reform process in the labor arena. This stands in contrast to existing scholarship which look only to the Commission’s published reports and take the constellations of opinion which appear there at face value. A close reading of these sources may offer more profound insight into the making of apartheid’s reform, and hence into the motivations and objectives underlying the policies which shaped the landscape on which the struggle of the 1980s played out.

Central to the research interests of this paper, the Wiehahn documentation offers rare insight into the changing nature of the apartheid workplace and the state of the white-led organized labor movement during this period. Labor federations and unions from across the labor spectrum brought testimony before the Commission. Their written and oral evidence reveals the distinctive pressures and interests characterizing workers in specific sectors, industries, and job brackets. An understanding of these dynamics makes it clear that there could be no uniform response from all white workers to the prospect of reform, and thus offers an opportunity to complicate current understandings in the historiography.

A particular focus on the role played by commissioners drawn from the ranks of white labor – their appeals and strategies shaped by the constituencies and interests they represented – provides further insight into white workers’ agency in shaping the reform process, and into the ways their representatives managed (or failed) to negotiate impending change. While the written or even oral testimony of trade union deputations – making once-off appearances before the Commission and hence in the sources – often presented what seemed to be unified views and clear-cut opinions, competing considerations and internal struggles within the labor movement can often be much more clearly discerned in the appeals, arguments, and changing positions of the commissioners, whom we meet again and again in the sources.

The Wiehahn documentation therefore presents a rich and compelling source base – but is also problematic in terms of the silences evident in the material. It must, for instance, be remembered that, as an official government inquiry, the Commission and its proceedings were governed by a certain enforced decorum in terms of conduct and debate. It may be assumed that this would have influenced both the nature of the statements made before the Commission and the manner in which they were made.^{Footnote 48} Indeed, there were instances during the proceedings, especially deliberation meetings, when Wiehahn reminded the commissioners to abide by this decorum:

Wiehahn’s appeal not only highlights constraints imposed upon responses to the Commission, but also points to a second blind spot which the researcher must bear in mind when dealing with the Wiehahn documentation: the fact that many discussions took place outside the Commission’s main deliberation meetings. In an interview, Naas Steenkamp explained that the reason Wiehahn appealed to the commissioners to exercise restraint was because of the very heated exchanges which characterized subcommittee meetings. “This is where most of the arguments, even fighting took place,” Steenkamp related.^{Footnote 50} Regrettably, no evidence of these encounters survives. Similarly, the silences of conversations which occurred outside the Commission’s official boundaries must be acknowledged. The documentation hints at such unofficial exchanges taking place, and it is obvious that they were enormously influential. During one Commission meeting, for instance, Wiehahn noted that new provisions for the Apprenticeship Act could be resolved “in private conversation,”^{Footnote 51} while in another, commissioner Nieuwoudt referred to a conversation between himself and then ex-Prime Minister Vorster regarding the future of separate development.^{Footnote 52} Similarly, it was during a private visit on a Sunday evening that Steenkamp was able to convince commissioner Grobbelaar to back what would become the Commission’s majority recommendation for unqualified freedom of association.^{Footnote 53} The silences of such private canvassing and unofficial conversations become most problematic in cases where we have even less evidence of their occurrence. Steenkamp suspects, for instance, that Minister of Labour Fanie Botha made certain assurances to white labor, particularly representatives such as commissioner Nieuwoudt, prior to the commencement of the inquiry, offering undertakings of continued protection in order to secure white workers’ participation in the Wiehahn process.^{Footnote 54}

The Wiehahn Commission’s extensive source base therefore also has its limitations, and supplementary sources are needed to further trace white workers’ negotiation of the reform period. Focusing on a trade union as case study, the next section discusses historical source material pertaining to the all-white, blue-collar Mineworkers’ Union and how it may be employed to investigate white working-class organization, politics, identity, and experience during this period.

The Mineworkers’ Union Archive

Founded in 1902, the MWU is historically associated with its defense of race-based job reservation in the mining industry. Established on craft union principles, the union initially represented mainly British immigrant miners whose scarce skills were on demand on the Witwatersrand’s infant goldfields. By the 1930s, however, the MWU had developed into an industrial union whose membership was dominated by unskilled and semi-skilled Afrikaans-speaking miners. During the 1930s and 1940s, when nationalists endeavored to mobilize Afrikaners in a bid for greater economic and political power, cultural entrepreneurs under the leadership of Albert Hertzog set out to gain control of unions with a substantial Afrikaner membership. By the 1948 general election, Afrikaner mining constituencies displayed strong support for the nationalists, and were instrumental in voting the NP into power.^{Footnote 55} Throughout the first decades of apartheid, the MWU enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the NP, supporting government in return for the protection and benevolence of the state. However, the institution of labor reforms following the Wiehahn inquiry put the MWU on a confrontational path with the NP and the union aligned itself with right-wing politics. The far right, however, was not able to halt South Africa’s democratization. The new political and economic realities of post-apartheid South Africa “forced the MWU to rethink its vision, strategies, and structures.”^{Footnote 56} The union underwent a leadership change and a process of reorganization and reinvention, emerging in the early 2000s as the “labor movement” Solidarity. It has since developed into a prominent and vocal voice in South African civil society, claiming to speak specifically for Afrikaners and seemingly finding wide resonance in this regard.^{Footnote 57}

As a case study for investigating white workers’ experience of the late apartheid period, the MWU presents a number of advantages. In the first place, the union offers continuity of analysis – it is possibly the only white union which not only survived the Wiehahn reforms as well as South Africa’s democratic transition, but actually grew throughout this period.^{Footnote 58} Secondly, its history is well documented, so that contextual information is readily available. Wessel Visser’s organizational history of the MWU between 1902 and 2002 is one of the few existing studies focused on white workers which reaches beyond 1948.^{Footnote 59} Thirdly, the union’s history of nationalist mobilization, support for the apartheid government, and Afrikaner identity offers the opportunity to investigate the changing role of nationalism, race, class, and ethnicity within this section of the labor movement – in other words, a study of the MWU offers the intellectual opportunity for pursuing into the late apartheid and even post-apartheid period many of the same themes which concerned studies of early twentieth century white workers.

For most of the twentieth century, the MWU’s membership covered non-artisanal underground employees – those whites at the lowest end of the mining skills and supervisory hierarchy, working in the production process directly alongside African workers.^{Footnote 60} White miners – as holders of certificates of competency – were responsible for blasting work, as well as supervising unskilled and semi-skilled African workers carrying out the physical processing work. But during the course of the century, white miners’ role in the blasting process was progressively fragmented and transferred to African workers, so that white miners’ limited skills were eroded with their work becoming concentrated on supervision. By the time of the Wiehahn inquiry, therefore, little difference remained between the skills of MWU members and the African workers they supervised. This rendered white miners completely dependent on racially discriminatory legislation for safeguarding their superior position and privileges in relation to African workers.^{Footnote 61} Given this position of economic vulnerability of the MWU’s 18,000 members, its deputation testifying before the Wiehahn Commission in February 1978 demanded the maintenance of existing labor legislation, the continued exclusion of Africans from labor rights, and the retention of job reservation.^{Footnote 62}

Despite this, the Commission’s report recommended the very opposite of these demands. How did ensuing labor reforms and the dismantling of racial privilege in the labor arena, and beyond, affect these workers’ sense of identity and lived experience? It was with these questions that I approached the MWU’s archive – although “archive” is a relative term when it comes to the MWU’s surviving historical material. When I arrived at Solidarity’s Kloofsig-based headquarters south of Pretoria in August 2011, I found its historical records in complete disarray and their preservation much neglected. The seemingly haphazard collection of books and folders, overfilled cardboard boxes and crates, and scattering of loose papers presented to me as “the archive” was spread out across a number of storerooms and completely unordered.^{Footnote 63} I uncovered various volumes of minutes from General Council, Executive Committee, and Officials’ meetings. Yet it soon became clear that a continuous record of these documents no longer existed and that much of the surviving material was not particularly qualitatively rich. Other surviving documentation such as membership records, union pamphlets, and correspondence was often not properly dated or incomplete.^{Footnote 64} The most complete record pertained to the union’s in-house newspaper, as Solidarity retained copies of most editions from the 1970s to the present. I therefore turned my attention to this part of the historical record, working through the entirety of the newspaper material held by Solidarity, where I was allowed to photograph the sources as desired.^{Footnote 65}

During the 1970s and 1980s, the MWU’s mouthpiece was published in newspaper format as The Mineworker: Official Organ of the MWU. ^{Footnote 66} In April 1991, this changed to The Mineworker: The Newspaper for All White Workers,^{Footnote 67} then just one month later to MWU-News: The Newspaper for All White Workers,^{Footnote 68} and finally settled on MWU-News: The Voice of the White Worker ^{Footnote 69} in July 1991. It still appeared in newspaper form, but now on a monthly basis. A decade later, the publication was again revamped, taking its current magazine format and appearing from January 2001 as Solidarity: The No 1 Labour Magazine in SA,^{Footnote 70} and from mid-2001 as Solidarity: The Leading Labour Magazine. ^{Footnote 71} It now appeared more or less on a two-monthly basis. These changes reflect developments within the union itself. In the wake of the Wiehahn reforms, the MWU set out to consolidate the ranks of white, blue-collar labor by expanding its membership beyond its traditional mining nucleus to include workers in the steel, electric, and chemical industries. The changes in the early 2000s, in turn, reflect the union’s reinvention as its new leadership developed it membership base to include white-collar and professional workers.^{Footnote 72}

Although the newspaper changed over time, its content typically centered on a number of regular features. These included the lead front page article (which up to 1991 formed the main body of the often very slim newspaper), a separate editorial feature (from 1991), speeches delivered by the general secretary and the president to the annual union congress (which were typically printed in full subsequent to the meeting), as well as end-of-year messages to the readership penned by the general secretary and other union officials. Advertisements for mining-specific products or services offered in mining towns or areas also dotted the pages of the newspaper during the 1970s and 1980, and shifted to reflect the union’s changing membership in subsequent decades. Often letters to the editor were also included. Until 1991, the general secretary fulfilled the role of editor; thereafter a communication officer was appointed to handle the newspaper, while after 2000, the publication was produced by the union’s communication department.

The newspaper was in the first instance a mouthpiece – an organ of communication of a specific organization with the main purpose of speaking to and for the white workers who belonged to the MWU. Until the late 1990s, it was the union’s main means of regular communication with its members about union and workplace matters – informing them on everything from union elections, wage negotiations and strike ballots, to safety regulations, legislative changes, and production figures. The Mineworker was typically distributed directly at workplaces and change houses, free of charge. At the same time, the newspaper was clearly intended as a means of communicating on behalf of MWU members – like the union, it represented its members’ interests and acted as their voice. The paper was, therefore, also read more widely than just the immediate mine working membership of the union, by employers, rival unions, and the government. Indeed, especially until the early 1990s, general secretaries often used the pages of the newspaper to respond to reports and statements in the press, challenge other union leaders, or confront employers or the government.^{Footnote 73} In 1991 when an editor was appointed, the role shifted away from the general secretary for the first time. Nevertheless, a contribution by the general secretary remained an important part of the publication. As the union adapted to advances in communication technology from the late 1990s, it switched to electronic communication as the main means of relaying important (often industry- or workplace-specific) information to its growing membership. Consequently, Solidarity magazine appeared less frequently and was distributed via post. Unlike its predecessor newspaper, the magazine was not a platform for communicating to employers or the state (Solidarity issued press statements, open letters, or petitions) – nevertheless, it continued to be an important means for the union’s leadership to communicate with its broad membership collectively, and continued its primary function as an instrument for conveying the union’s views and informing members of developments within different industries and the broader Solidarity labor movement.

Until the mid-1980s, the newspaper was roughly bilingual, with most articles published in Afrikaans and English. Afrikaans seemed to take precedence – the Afrikaans newspaper title and tagline was more prominent in the masthead, and when letters to the editor or other smaller contributions appeared, these were typically printed only in Afrikaans. Yet overall, the content suggests that the general secretary as editor was deliberately ensuring that both Afrikaans- and English-speaking members had access to the newspaper’s content.^{Footnote 74} From the late 1980s, the balance shifted more decisively towards Afrikaans. Whereas in the past the main article by the general secretary would have appeared in both languages without fail, this was no longer the case. However, the editorial was still printed in both languages. Later, Solidarity magazine also carried articles in both languages – particularly in the case of the general secretary’s column – but the content was overwhelmingly Afrikaans, and English articles were often simply shortened versions of the Afrikaans original. These developments seemed to suggest a shift not only in the union’s membership and focus, but in the way it imagined itself. Indeed, during the late 1980s, the MWU aligned itself to right-wing efforts to press for the formation of an independent Afrikaner volkstaat (people’s republic), while in the post-1994 context, Solidarity has represented itself as a champion of Afrikaner civil rights.

While Visser drew on the union’s newspaper in the course of his research into the organizational history of the MWU, broader matters of experience were beyond the scope of his investigation. As this discussion of the union’s newspaper suggests, this source base can go significantly further. Newspapers provide access to the discourses circulating in a community, with journalists and editors taking up these discourses, while also shaping them through the texts they produce which speak back to the community. In other words, newspaper content reflects and inflects its readership, articulating the opinions, views, and experiences of its readers and writers, while at the same time shaping those very views and experiences.^{Footnote 75} Not only may The Mineworker therefore offer insight into the issues which concerned this section of white mining labor, their workplaces, and to an extent the communities in which they lived, but it also provides access to the discourses and representations employed to talk about and understand these issues, and the way in which this section of white labor’s self-representation changed over time.^{Footnote 76} Rory Pilossof has argued that the in-house periodicals of specific organizations, interest groups, or communities have been neglected in the historical study of Africa and may be put to productive use for writing more nuanced social and cultural histories of such groups.^{Footnote 77} Indeed, the MWU’s newspaper is an exceptionally rich historical source. With the MWU’s archives in such a fragmented state, its newspaper provides a rare opportunity for extended and continuous engagement with the union’s history.