Powering Apartheid: The Coalbrook Mine Disaster of 1960

Abstract

ABSTRACT 1960 was a pivotal year in the history of apartheid and of South Africa. However, the first great crisis of that year – the Coalbrook Mine Disaster – has been largely forgotten. At least 435 miners died when a large section of the mine collapsed on 21 January 1960. The Coalbrook Disaster can be attributed in large measure to the rise of the racist, capitalist apartheid state in South Africa after 1948. As the first major crisis of 1960 in South Africa, it dramatised and foreshadowed many of the debates that ensued during that year about the nature of the apartheid state. Key causes of the disaster were the exponential increase in demand for coal following the opening of the Taaibos power station in 1954 on the one hand, and the cumulative effects of unsound mine labour practices based on race on the other. Using contemporary newspaper accounts, government files, and the official enquiry report, this paper seeks to highlight the human cost of the rise of the South African mining industry, and especially of the coal that powered the construction of the apartheid state.