Maximum Average Violence: Underground Assaults on the South African Gold Mines, 1913–1965

Abstract

In this article I argue that historically high levels of underground violence in South African gold mines can be only partially explained by general cultural factors such as masculinity or race; social factors such as corporal punishment in schools; political factors such as state support for whites; or spatial factors such as the dangers of working underground. All are relevant and important as background conditions, but for a complete explanation, attention must also be paid to production relations in the workplaces themselves. The article begins with a close analysis of the only complete set of extant archival transcripts on underground assaults, the evidence to the 1913 Native Affairs Department Commission of Inquiry into the Grievances of Workers at Crown Mines. I argue that much of the workplace violence at Crown Mines in 1913 was specific to a particular historical set of work conditions on that mine at that particular time, rather than providing typical evidence of the incidence of assault underground. What the 1913 Crown Mines evidence does point to is the importance of organisation at the point of production for understanding workplace assaults. More generally, I argue that deeply entrenched industry-wide violent work practices underground should be attributed to the maximum average wage system, introduced on the mines in 1913. It was not until the maximum average system was abandoned in the 1960s that the institutionalisation of assault as a form of labour control could be successfully abrogated on the gold mines.