‘From Red Blanket to Civilization’: Propaganda and Recruitment Films for South Africa's Gold Mines, 1920–1940

Abstract

This article highlights the importance of motion pictures in the Transvaal Chamber of Mines' strategy to recruit and educate African workers for the Witwatersrand gold mines during the interwar years. Responding to the need for an ever-expanding workforce, in the mid-1920s industry officials began producing and exhibiting recruiting films in the reserves and protectorates in a bid to establish hegemony over labour reservoirs. Miners on the Rand were also shown films promoting western medicine and safety procedures in a bid to reduce contagion and worksite injuries. These films, overlooked in the historiography to date, are an important source for historians as they were among the earliest examples of colonial cinema produced south of the Sahara, and provided tens of thousands of African villagers with their first opportunity for viewing motion pictures. Accounts in white newspapers smugly reported on spectators ‘running in terror’ from the screen, but Chamber memos show that officials recognised the ability of Africans to understand the nuances of filmic narrative. Moreover, the films themselves provided a new venue that made it possible for potential recruits and their families to critique the minutiae of labour contracts and working conditions on the Rand. Africans enjoyed the medium, but they were not its victims.