The Coalbrook Enquiry (1960)

News From Africa from the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under capitalism, mining, like all other industries is run strictly with a view to making a profit. Running costs are always kept as low as possible, and human considerations take second place to the prime motive of making a profit. Now, nearly six months afterwards, the report of the enquiry into the disaster at the Coalbrook mine in South Africa on 21st January, where 430 Africans and five Europeans were entombed, has said that the underground subsidence was due to “ negligence and wrongful acts and omissions ” by certain mine officials.

Mr. W. T. Dalling, Chief Inspector of Mines at Witbank, had many things to say at the enquiry which were not at all popular with the mine's management or its Counsel. He said that the fatal accident rate at Coalbrook North mine was 12 times as high as that in his own district, Witbank. Miners in South Africa did not carry any form of self-rescue gear; miners had survived falls in similar circumstances in the U.S. and Europe. He said his first reaction to the mine disaster was a picture of a mine that had collapsed due to weak supports. The method of mining in Coalbrook was that of cutting the coal and leaving pillars as supports.

Mr. Corbett, who assisted Mr. Dalling in investigations at the mine, said that after his observations, he thought the mine plans were inaccurate. He also said that in the northern area of the mine, there were “active pillars” which were “splitting and making low noises,” and that in most areas he visited, wasting (coal falling from pillars) had taken place. Evidence was given at the enquiry that on December 28th a fall had taken place in the mine, but the Assistant Manager did not consider it to be a major one, as it had been confined to one section of the mine, and the fall had not been reported. When asked if he thought the reason for the January collapse was that the coal pillars were called upon to carry more than their strength allowed, the Assistant Manager said he did not know. This was one of the men in whose hands were the lives of hundreds of other men. Mr. Dalling said that requirements and recommendations that were put to the mine management were ignored. He said that the lowest seam at the Coalbrook mine was mined in a very impractical and hazardous way and had been dangerously undermined. He said that pillar mining should only be used in upper areas of a mine, otherwise the pillars would take on too much strain and burst

Sir Andrew Bryan, world authority on mining and Chairman of the International Conference at Geneva in 1949 which drew up a model code of safety for mines, and who is now adviser to the British National Coal Board, read to the enquiry a lengthy and detailed report which he had compiled. He said there was no evidence that the mine collapsed due to general weighting. It appeared instead that an unusual occurrence, such as a rock-burst or bump had caused the collapse. Counsel for some of the African widows said Sir Andrew was not an independent witness as he claimed, but that his evidence was one-sided. He spoke no Afrikaans and appeared to have made no effort to have the evidence of the Afrikaans witnesses translated. The majority of these Afrikaans speaking witnesses were people who, worked underground and would have had a better knowledge of conditions. Sir Andrew replied that most of the evidence had been in English and had been sufficient to give him a general insight into matters before he compiled his report.

The Manager of the Clydesdale Collieries told the enquiry that the Coalbrook mine was so “popular” with African workers that the mine “had more boys than it knew what to do with.” There was a good recruiting system at the mine and the Africans, mostly from Basutoland and the east coast, “just kept coming.” This statement seems to be the crux of the matter. South Africa has an abundant supply of cheap labour in the Africans, and in order to try to raise their living standards, they go to the mines from the reserves. It is easier for them to go there than try to get to the towns to work because of the Pass Laws.

“The only interests of mine managements appeared to be output and cost,” said Mr. Dalling at the enquiry. This underlines our assertion that under capitalism, profit must be made at all costs—even human costs. Even under capitalism, where everything is measured in terms of how much it costs to produce, methods of obtaining power and fuel, other than coal-mining, have been devised. When we are able to make the best uses of science and new methods without the restrictions of cost, as we will under Socialism, men won’t be called upon to risk their lives in the bowels of the earth for a meagre living, which is the lot of most miners today

Phyllis Hart

The evidence quoted above is from the Johannesburg Star of varying dates during the last four months.

The Congo (1960)

News From Africa from the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many, many times, the Socialist Party has been asked to join in support of movement for national independence. Our reply in refusing to do so has always been that not only would such support result in our being side-tracked from our work of Socialist propaganda but that the aims and results of these nationalist movements at best were concerned with pushing forward the local and nascent ruling interests and at worst could be and usually were actively anti-working class. We have not been afraid to point out, too, that these movements which spoke so much of “freedom," “independence,” “liberty,” etc., were they to come to power and were they to find unwelcome opposition or criticism, would not hesitate to act in the same despotic and dictatorial manner against which they were the erstwhile protestors.

A recent case which supports this view is the recently established Congo State. Mr. Lumumba, the new Prime Minister, though new, is learning fast. He is determined to see that the new local capitalist interests are defended at all costs, even if it means getting the same soldiers, who did yeoman duty for the Belgian rulers, to do the same, job for him, as the following quotation from The Times (29/6/60) serves to illustrate:

  Mr. Lumumba gives warning . . . that he has decided to adopt all necessary measures for order to be respected and that these measures will be taken without weakness.

By the side of this article we can see what this means—black soldiers threatening black demonstrators with their rifles. Is this the freedom our opponents would want us to give up our Socialist work for?

Max Judd

Winds of Change (1960)

News From Africa from the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

All over the continent of Africa, Nationalism is on the march and the battle cry is “Independence.” Africans are demanding that political power be turned over to them. This, they say, would allow them to set about the problems of illiteracy, poverty and disease which the Colonialists have ignored or deliberately preserved. Offering this as the main reason for their Nationalism, they attract a lot of support and sympathy. What many people forget is that this newly won political power will be used to administer capitalism—with all the problems which white workers are already faced with.

When political independence is procured, the new powers must try to develop the economy. They need all types of heavy and light machinery, electrical equipment, scientific instruments, chemicals, and all those materials which go into the making of the manufacturing industries. They look to this capital as a means of increasing the output of the workers and thereby causing more wealth to be produced by fewer workers in a period of time. As well as foreign investment they require foreign manpower in such fields as education, science, law and technology In colleges and universities all over the world there are African students learning such subjects as will befit them for their respective tasks under capitalism. This and a lot more has got to be done until such times as their workers produce enough wealth to enable the country to find most of its own finance for development. An African government having the welfare of the economy in its hands will often have to warn their workers against striking or asking for higher wages. They will also have to make the normal government appeal to work hard and save and so help the African capitalists to sell their goods as cheaply as possible to compete on the world markets against other national capitalists.

Nigeria, Somalia, Congo, are all receiving independence this year, and Kenya and Tanganyika are not far behind. In all these countries there are the grovelling bands of prospective parliamentarians waiting restlessly to take over their appointed places as the “New Gov’ners” of the African working class. One thing Africa is not short of is leaders—they are ten a penny. Nigeria, which expects independence in October this year, has at least three political notabilities, one of whom has already been knighted for past service. This country should have no bother in attracting capital as it is considered to be “credit-worthy,” for these leaders have re-assured investors about the favourable political conditions in which their investments may flourish. Somalia and British Somaliland have gained their independence. Somalia has been under the jurisdiction of Italian trusteeship, granted by the United Nations. Now Italy is passing over the responsibility to one Abdullahi Issa, hoping quite naturally that he is the right man to protect any Italian interests which are left behind.

As to Kenya, is it to be Jomo Kenyatta or Tom Mboya? What will happen to the European settlers of the White Highlands and the Asian merchants who are in a minority? Can they fit into the African scheme of things? If not, and they have to leave, should the workers of Asia and Europe shed any tears? Or better still, will the replacement of these Colonists by African farmers and merchants be a source of joy for Kenya workers? No, no and no.

Shorn of the Nationalist pomp and false desires, the plain economic truth of this rapidly developing continent means power, position and privilege for those Africans who own the tools, instruments, machinery, transport and communications and all that is produced through them. These are the people who intend to employ other Africans in order that as much profit as possible will be made out of production, just like anywhere else in the world where there is production for sale. Capitalism, wherever it exists, is primarily concerned with the amount of rent, profit or interest it can generate.

Africans, who under Colonial rule were always lamenting their oppression and exploitation, might have been expected, when they became independent, to seek a way of life in which no exploitation could take place. But, as Nkrumah has put it, the Africans must not do anything which might have an adverse effect on foreign investment and lead to a lack of confidence. So then, the supposed freedom of Africa is dependent upon the need for foreign capital. Thus countries which in recent times have thrown off the burden of foreign domination—India and Egypt— have found themselves as free as the horse is from the cart when tied up in the stable. And what has the independence of a country to do with the independence of the workers of that country?

As the social and productive powers of the African workers increase so the surplus which they create will be the source whereby the under-developed will graduate to the developed, with banks, insurance offices, factories, stock exchanges, labour exchanges, and all the other features of a modern "civilisation.” Throughout all this development the workers must constantly seek to better their living conditions and like their counterparts throughout the world, organise themselves in trade unions. There is every reason to believe that these ambitious backward countries will break through the vicious circle of low output, primitive production and semi-starvation and become countries of full- blooded capitalism and nationhood.

When this time comes they will have attained abundant production through modern scientific and technological methods. The African workers—the cause of all this greatness—will have a “wonderful” standard of existence just like you and I. This standard includes finding a job, being at the mercy of the boss, spending the best and major part of each day in an office, factory or some other workplace. All the wealth that he comes into contact with will not have been produced primarily to satisfy needs, but in the interest of buying and selling for profit. All this—and the scheming, working, waiting and wondering, which the working class of the world do throughout their lives, always with a hope of bettering their material conditions.

It will be this that the African, Indian, Egyptian and Chinese workers will be letting themselves in for when they seek to develop capitalism in their countries.

Joe McGuinness

South African Notes (1960)

News From Africa from the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fight between the major political parties of South Africa takes the form of Afrikaner Nationalism versus English South Africanism. The Nationalist and United Parties are really, however, struggling over the control of the labour-power—more truly, over the surplus-value to be realised from the utilisation of the working-power—of the vast African proletariat. More simply, it is a squabble over which group, land-owning or industrial and finance capitalists, shall benefit more from the exploitation of the underfed, under-educated, under-privileged Bantu workers. Of course, the “progressives” and their allies, Liberals and crypto-"Communists,” support the abolition of the quasi-feudal restrictions on the mobility of workers, e.g., the hated Pass Laws, residence permits, etc., and favour the “freeing” of labour to develop into a fully-fledged industrial proletariat, available to add ever faster to the wealth of the Oppenheimers, Hambros, Engelhards and their fellow industrial-and finance-capitalists.

*     *     *     *

Mining in South Africa is based on the unskilled and semi-skilled labour of thousands of low-paid, low-living African workers. Usually, the "coloured” workers are thought to be less poverty-stricken. The following is no isolated example, and surely indicates the poverty, if not actual destitution, of the parents of the children. Headed "Hot stew and clothes for children in rags,” the news-item, from The Star, Johannesburg (1/6/60), contained the information that:

  The Red Cross has adopted a ramshackle coloured school on the Main Reef Road and has undertaken to feed and clothe the schoolchildren.
   The school, Aurora West Coloured School, is housed in a converted church building at the foot of the Maraisburg radio mast.
   The Roodepoort centre of the Red Cross Society described the 40 pupils there as "pathetic little figures ranging in age from five to 12, obviously undernourished and dressed in rags.”
    From today the schoolchildren will receive a daily supply of hot stew. Many of them have already received warm clothing.
    A spokesman for the Red Cross centre said that many local firms had contributed—but much more warm clothing is needed.
   Some of the children walk six miles to the school in almost freezing weather with no food in thin summer clothes ”

It is of interest that many of the parents of these children are more than likely employed by those "many local firms” at very low pay.

By contrast, an item in the same newspaper of the same date, entitled "Profits and distributions,” indicates that the practical application of apartheid in keeping the African "in his place,” i.e., poorly educated and extremely poor, and socially separate from his "white” co- worker, pays off. Top of the list comes General Mining Finance Corporation Ltd., whose taxed profit for 1959 was £1,929,000 (1958: £1,824,0001: of which dividends took £1,067,000 (1958: £912,000). With eleven other listed companies or groups, this news-item totals taxed profits for 1959 as £3,470,000 (1958: £2,377,000); of which dividends took £2,377,000 (1958: £2.144,000). Of course, "we” cannot afford substantial wage-increases!

Alec Hart