Lifting the Ban on the Recruitment of Tropical Labour: 1933–1945

Abstract

The ban on the recruitment of Tropical labour, imposed in 1913, was arguably the single most important state intervention in the mines’ history. It was the only intervention aimed specifically at protecting migrant labour—and it was strongly opposed by the industry. To have the ban lifted, the Chamber commissioned the international experts Almroth Wright, William Gorgas and Lyle Cummins to find a solution to deaths on the mines. Wright failed to develop an effective vaccine, and the expert recommendations of Gorgas and Cummins were largely ignored. Improved conditions on the mines did lead to a reduction of deaths from infectious pneumonia. What proved most effective in lifting the ban, however, was relentless lobbying, led by the company actuary William Gemmill and the Chief Medical Officer of Rand Mines, Dr A.J. Orenstein. Despite persistent evidence to the contrary, by 1938 the Chamber of Mines succeeded in persuading the South African government, the Colonial Office and the ILO that conditions on the mines were safe and that oscillating migration was beneficial to labour.

The global ban on the recruitment of Tropical labour, imposed in 1913, was arguably the single most important state intervention in the mines’ history. It was certainly the only intervention aimed specifically at protecting migrant labour—and it was strongly opposed by the industry. To have the ban lifted, the Chamber of Mines needed to persuade the South African government and the British Colonial Office that conditions on the mines were safe and oscillating migration was beneficial to labour. The Chamber also had to convince the ILO, which, under the leadership of Dr Luigi Carozzi, took an active interest in migrant workers and monitored the data coming out of Johannesburg.¹

The Chamber had a great deal at stake in regaining access to Tropical workers. In his annual address for 1936, the Chamber’s President noted there had been an adequate labour supply during the year, with the numbers employed increasing. The labour force consisted of 56 per cent South Africans, 19 per cent from the Protectorates and 25 per cent from Portuguese East Africa. However, the mines’ labour needs would rise over the coming five years, and this made Tropical recruiting essential. The President acknowledged that Tropical workers were unaccustomed to industrial life and therefore more prone to disease and accidents. He was confident, however, their employment was ‘not fraught with any undue danger’.² William Gemmill was equally forthright about the mines’ need for Tropicals. South African men were reluctant to work underground, and around a quarter of the recruits offering themselves to the NRC were rejected on medical grounds. That forced the mines to recruit abroad. The average cost of bringing men from Nyasaland to the Rand, including medicals, transport, rations and compulsory repatriation, was £2 15 s.³ At that time, the gold mines employed 300,000 black miners and the Gold Producers Committee estimated that soon they would require an additional 100,000. Those recruits could only come from Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which at that time were supplying less than 2000 men.⁴

Immediately after the ban was imposed in 1913, the Chamber commissioned the international experts Almroth Wright, William Gorgas and Lyle Cummins to find a solution. It was an expensive exercise. Sir Almroth Wright’s mission to Johannesburg cost £14,905 and General Gorgas’ investigations (considered at length in the next chapter) £6815.⁵ That investment was largely wasted: Wright failed to develop an effective vaccine, and the expert recommendations of Gorgas and Cummins were largely ignored. Rather than take up Gorgas’ suggestion to reorganise the mine medical system and abolish the use of migrant labour, the Chamber turned to lobbying, redefining the understanding of risk and further vaccine research.

The lobbying reached particular intensity in 1933. Throughout that year, the WNLA and William Gemmill used the daily press to promote an experimental pause in the ban. In August that year, The Star reported that as the result of medical improvements, the ban on recruiting from north of latitude 22° south would soon be lifted.⁶ The mines would benefit from a supply of labour from the British territories, as sufficient men could not be obtained in the Union. The High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Stanley, spoke with the Southern Rhodesian Prime Minister, Godfrey Huggins, who was opposed to organised local recruitment for the Transvaal mines. The Northern Rhodesia administration initially also opposed the WNLA recruiting locally, but it soon changed its mind.⁷

The Resident Commissioner of Bechuanaland, Charles Rey, supported the WNLA. His only concern was that the number of men available in the Protectorate would far exceed the quota.⁸ In 1933, he wrote to the High Commissioner: ‘The recruitment of these additional thousand men will undoubtedly be of much assistance to the Territory. It will help the native to get a little money which they badly need, and will enable the Administration to get in a certain amount of additional Hut Tax, which they need no less badly.’⁹ There were other benefits. To facilitate transport to the mines, the WNLA had started clearing the route from the Tati to Kazunguls, a distance of nearly 500 kilometres, at its own expense. Rey hoped that network would open up the Game Reserves for tourists. The High Commissioner agreed. Tropical recruiting gave men in the Protectorate a means of paying their tax.¹⁰

The experiment began in January 1934 with 1006 Bechuana and 1009 men from Northern Rhodesia. They were housed in compounds containing not more than 20 men and inoculated against pneumonia with Lister’s not very effective vaccine.¹¹ The early recruiting programme was poorly organised and there was much discontent among men who presented themselves to the WNLA office at Francistown, as almost half failed the entry medical.¹² Men under the age of 20 or over 40 years were rejected outright.¹³ There was also discontent among some local officials. The Resident Magistrate at Serowe, G. Nettleton, was critical of the WNLA’s failure to publicise the recruitment drive. If notice had been given, he would have made a Hut Tax tour. Nettleton made it ‘very clear [to defaulters] that they were not being coerced into going to the Mines or anything else but if they failed to do something towards paying their Hut Tax they would have to take the consequences’.¹⁴

A second problem was ensuring that Bechuana were employed. Following discussions in Salisbury, Gemmill informed Rey that the Southern Rhodesian government had no objections to their workers crossing the border to WNLA camps in Bechuanaland. The only difficulty Gemmill could see was to prevent the small experimental quota being swamped by Rhodesians. He had instructed the local WNLA recruiter to reserve the quota almost entirely for Bechuana. Gemmill was confident that if the experiment was successful, he would be able to reach an arrangement with the Southern Rhodesians as well.¹⁵ Much to the annoyance of Salisbury, however, the WNLA was soon recruiting Southern Rhodesian workers who had crossed the border.¹⁶

By October 1934, the experiment had been going on for ten months and Charles Rey wrote a memorandum in support of the WNLA. He noted that the gold mines were practically the only wage labour open to the Territory’s men. While it might be ideal to retain the majority as a healthy peasantry, to do so would involve building up an export-oriented primary industry, and this in turn would require vast public expenditure on securing a reliable water supply and transport infrastructure. Rey was satisfied that the WNLA initiative fully conformed with the recommendations of the League of Nations Committee on Native Labour. In addition, the Association’s presence made it possible for the government to safeguard the interests of migrant workers. Any attempt to prevent men from going south would be an interference with their freedom. ‘Experience has shown that conditions of work on the Witwatersrand Mines are such that the majority of labourers return from the Mines infinitely better nourished and consequently of better physique than they were on arrival. A very small proportion inevitably contract Miners’ Phthisis but as far as is humanly possible every means known to mining medical science are used to minimise this risk.’¹⁷

In January 1935, The Rand Daily Mail reported that the lifting of the ban was imminent. The initial batch of recruits had stood up admirably to mine work and the most stringent health tests had been completed.¹⁸ The Chamber was looking to the future, when further expansion of mining would require increasing the labour supply. The government had sanctioned the recruitment of a further batch of workers from the north, conditional upon an assurance from the mines that their labour requirements could not be met from within the Union. Soon after, Gemmill completed a tour of Bechuanaland, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. In an interview with The Cape Times, he boasted that the experiment had been so successful and the death rate so low that the gold mines hoped to recruit several thousand men from Nyasaland. He also revealed that in due course the WNLA would require men from Southern Rhodesia.¹⁹

Initially, the Principal Medical Officer for Bechuanaland, Dr Hamilton Dyke, supported the WNLA as he felt it would be a great mistake to deprive men of the opportunity to supplement their meagre incomes. Mining was also beneficial to health. ‘This is reflected in the well-nourished and healthy appearance of most of the men when they return to their homes after a period of work on the Rand Mines. They are generally better conditioned than the men who have not been to work on those Mines—provided, of course, that those returning with Tuberculosis are excluded.’²⁰ He wanted the administration to provide medical examinations of recruits before their departure. The Resident Commissioner endorsed Dyke’s proposal.²¹

Initial Data on the Experiment with Tropical Recruiting

In July 1935, the Chamber produced the first data on the experiment with Tropical recruiting. The original batch of just over 2000 Nyasa and Bechuana translated into an average employment of 1759 men. The mortality rate from respiratory disease among the Bechuana ‘Tropical’ miners was 6.15 per 1000, compared to 3.24 per 1000 for Bechuana ‘non-Tropicals’ and 2.57 per 1000 for ‘All Natives’. In addition, there were five deaths from accidents and a total of 88 men in the experiment were repatriated, 63 because of disease and 25 as the result of accidents. Although the mortality rates were two to three times higher than for non-Tropical labour, the Chamber was confident that further recruitment was ‘not fraught with any undue danger’. Over time ‘natives from non-industrialised regions’ would adjust to the rigours demanded of modern labour.²²

Soon after the release of the initial data, Dr Orenstein, the Superintendent of Sanitation for Rand Mines, sent an explanatory note to the Bechuanaland government. The corrected mortality data show that up to May 1935, 12 of the Bechuana ‘Tropical’ miners died, giving a total mortality rate of 14.74. In addition, 37 men were repatriated on account of disease, 5 with pulmonary tuberculosis and a further 11 because of accidents. However, no deaths which occurred amongst natives after they had left the mines were recorded.²³ The returns were disturbing, especially when the mortality and repatriation data were combined. There was to be little improvement over time. As of January 1937, the experiment was three years old and the annual death rate among ‘Tropical Natives’ from disease was still 14.14 per 1000 per annum, compared to 6.87 for ‘All Natives’.²⁴

In a confidential memorandum to Gemmill, Orenstein acknowledged that the data suggested recruitment from the North should cease. However, certain factors needed to be borne in mind. The experiences on the Witwatersrand mines and the copper mines in the Belgian Congo showed that among Tropicals the mortality in the early stages of employment was very high and then gradually fell. Furthermore, comparisons with miners drawn from regions with greater resistance to infection were unfair. A better comparison was between the mortality rates of Tropicals under home conditions (which supposedly were very high) and those of men employed on the mines.²⁵ Orenstein’s argument had no empirical foundation. As he had admitted while giving expert testimony before the Low Grade Ore Commission in 1919 and repeated in his confidential memo, no data on rural death rates existed.²⁶ In addition, mine recruits were a physical elite unrepresentative of their home communities.

Despite the weakness of his argument, Orenstein had important allies. E.N. Thornton, the Secretary for the South African Department of Public Health who monitored the experiment, noted that the mortality rate per annum among Tropicals was almost double that of all black miners. The Department was, however, satisfied that the mines were safe. ‘There is not, in the opinion of the department, any reason to believe that objection can now properly be raised on the grounds of public health to the waiving completely of the ban on the recruitment of natives from north of latitude 22 degrees.’²⁷ By end of the 1930s, the Chamber had a regional headquarters in Salisbury and the key elements of its northern strategy were in place. British governments rarely challenged the claims that the benefits of mine labour far outweighed the costs, and generally supported the Chamber’s demands for access to men from Bechuanaland, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland.²⁸

The Salisbury Agreement

By the mid-1930s, the effects of the Great Depression were receding and Southern Rhodesian mines and white farms wanted access to labour from the north.²⁹ The Nyasaland government preferred to channel labour through the WNLA, since it offered capitation fees and better pay and conditions. It also believed the WNLA quotas were the only way to regulate the movement of men south. The likelihood of lifting the ban provided an impetus for an agreement between the three northern governments. It also gave the WNLA an opportunity to exploit tensions between Southern Rhodesia and its neighbours.

The Salisbury Agreement, signed in August 1936 between the Rhodesias and Nyasaland (now Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi), established two principles which must inform the setting of the labour quotas for South Africa’s gold mines: the preservation of the social structure of native life and the prior claims of the territories to labour. Once those principles had been satisfied, the Rand mines could recruit workers.³⁰ Under the Agreement, the WNLA was permitted to recruit 8500 men per annum from Nyasaland. In return, the mines agreed not to engage Nyasa workers resident in the Union. Disputes were to be decided in London by the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

The Salisbury Agreement was designed to regulate the flow of labour to the advantage of the northern governments. However, it proved fragile because of the conflicting interests it was designed to reconcile. The Agreement did not, for example, stop clandestine emigration to South Africa. The contentious issues were addressed in a series of meetings between representatives from the Rhodesias and Nyasaland. The Standing Committee on Migrant Labour, which met in Salisbury in December 1937, agreed that the unregulated flow of labour had reached alarming proportions in part because of illicit encouragement by the Witwatersrand gold mines.³¹ It wanted the South African government to help end clandestine immigration. That issue was not resolved and became the source of serious tension between Southern Rhodesia and Pretoria.

The need for uniform work conditions in the territories, and in particular the treatment of workers in Southern Rhodesia, was another contentious issue. At a 1939 meeting of the Standing Committee on Migrant Labour, for example, the Northern Rhodesia representative suggested that the Southern Rhodesia regulations be changed to limit the work day on its mines to eight hours in accord with ILO prescriptions. The conduct of medical examinations and the treatment of repatriates were also discussed, following complaints from Nyasaland about the repatriation of dying men. The Southern Rhodesia representative claimed that its Medical Director always notified the Nyasaland authorities of miners repatriated because of tuberculosis. In a policy reminiscent of the WNLA, the Committee agreed that ‘subject to medical assent that they were fit to travel, incurables who expressed a wish “to go home to die” should be allowed to do so’.³² At the next meeting of the Committee in October 1939, Nyasaland wanted the Salisbury Agreement reviewed to recognise the WNLA’s quota. That proposal was opposed by Southern Rhodesia. The Salisbury government opposed WNLA recruiting in Nyasaland because it was blocking its own access to labour,³³ and would have restricted the flow of labour to its own mines and farms.³⁴ Despite such differences, the Agreement operated until the outbreak of Second World War, when the Nyasaland government restricted and then suddenly suspended WNLA recruitment because of a domestic labour shortage.³⁵

The 1937 Abraham Report on Nyasaland

By October 1936, when the Tropical experiment was two years old, the Governor of Nyasaland commissioned a review of labour migration. J.C. Abraham, a Senior Provincial Commissioner, was asked to report on Nyasa employed in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. Abraham’s brief was to review wages, work conditions, housing, health and welfare, including that of agricultural labour in the Northern Transvaal. In order to compare conditions with those in the Union, he visited a number of mines and farms in Southern Rhodesia.³⁶ Abraham was also to report on the experimental employment of Tropicals by the WNLA.

Abraham estimated there were 20,000 Nyasa resident in the Union and another 70,000 in Southern Rhodesia. Each year, about 8000 Southern Rhodesians went to the Union where the wages were higher, and their places were taken by Nyasa who would work for less. Abraham was greatly impressed by WNLA’s operations and in particular by its Johannesburg Depot, where ‘the smooth efficiency of the organisation is as delightful to see as is the consideration with which all natives are treated’. He visited Crown Mines, where he found the conditions underground clean and comfortable, and noted that water was used to lay the dust, thereby preventing miners’ phthisis. The first repatriates were returning to Nyasaland and Abraham observed that they ‘looked exceptionally fit with the average weight gain of 14 lbs’.³⁷

William Gemmill provided Abraham with data on the 550 Nyasa engaged by the WNLA over the previous two years. The official death rate was 11.76 per 1000 per year compared with 6.6 per 1000 for all black labour. Dr Orenstein reassured Abraham that a high death rate was to be expected during the first decade and then it would fall as recruits acclimatised to aggregation in compounds. Abraham was satisfied: ‘No expense is spared, and whatever science can do is being done, to ensure the maximum degree of health for tropical natives employed by the Rand Mines Group, which employs all the Nyasaland natives under the experiment.’ Abraham added that the mines were not solely responsible for the high mortality rates: he had heard comments in Johannesburg about the ‘comparatively disappointing physique’ of the Nyasaland recruits.³⁸

Having accepted Orenstein’s explanation, Abraham reported to the Governor: ‘Nyasaland must expect a higher morbidity and mortality rate than that of natives from South African territories until they become similarly accustomed to aggregation and a degree of immunity from its incidental disease is achieved.’ He recommended that recruiting should not only continue but be expanded.³⁹ The distribution list for Abraham’s Report included the Under Secretary of State, the Colonial Office, the Chief Secretary at Zomba, the Parliamentary Library, London and the ILO in Geneva. A review copy was also sent to The Times in London.⁴⁰

There are a number of reasons why Abraham’s report presented such a favourable picture of the WNLA. The Rand mines did provide better wages, living conditions and medical care than did South Africa’s asbestos and coal mines, or the mines in Southern Rhodesia.⁴¹ Abraham had no medical qualifications and no specialist knowledge of occupational diseases associated with hard rock mining. He did not speak with miners but relied instead upon Orenstein and Gemmill and the official data. Perhaps most importantly, he adopted a narrow view of disease, focussing on pneumonia rather than silicosis or tuberculosis, a serious problem about which Gorgas had already warned the Chamber in 1914. Abraham’s report contains a single reference to miners’ phthisis. Implicit in his account was a Darwinian model of primitive or unseasoned labour versus industrial labour, in which the weak were of necessity culled by infection. The same model underpinned the public presentations by Orenstein, Abraham’s key informant.

In March 1937 the acting Governor of Nyasaland, K.L. Hall, wrote to the Secretary of State, W. Ormsby-Core, endorsing Abraham’s findings. ‘I can confirm’, Hall wrote, ‘the favourable impression gained by Mr. Abraham of conditions on labour on the Rand Associated Mines. The members of the Emigrant Labour Committee also were satisfied that labour was better looked after there than anywhere else in British Africa.’ Hall had visited the Crown Mines in Johannesburg and applauded ‘[t]he almost ideal conditions under which Nyasaland natives work. The extent and variety of the food ration was remarkable, the sanitary arrangements would be the envy of any European club in Nyasaland and the Zomba European Hospital accommodation and facilities would hardly be acceptable for a native out-patient dispensary on the Rand.’ Hall was also impressed by the system of mine medicine. He found the South African Institute for Medical Research splendidly equipped and up to date, although he suggested that it would be an advantage to have accurate statistics on the number of Nyasa employed in the Union. The initial medical exam was vital if rejects at Johannesburg were to be kept to a minimum. ‘I saw natives from the Protectorate who were supposed to have passed a local preliminary examination of such patently poor physique that they would never be finally accepted. I have no doubt that explains the comparatively high mortality among the Nyasa … the Rand has the advantage over every other employer of labour whether elsewhere in the Union or in Southern Rhodesia of [offering] better wages and ideal conditions.’⁴²

In the wake of Hall’s visit, in September 1937 William Gemmill invited S.S. Murray from the Chief Secretary’s Office at Zomba to tour the Randfontein Estates mines in Johannesburg, which employed 1500 Nyasa. Murray was particularly impressed by the quality of mine medicine and the low mortality rates.⁴³ He found that everything possible was done for the well-being, comfort and recreation of miners.⁴⁴ The hospital arrangements were equal to those in European hospitals, and X-rays were used freely in cases of accidents.

The 1938 Burden Report on Nyasa Workers in Southern Rhodesia

The WNLA was pleased with Abraham’s report, which it used to justify an expansion of recruiting. In December 1937, an agreement was signed between the Nyasaland government and the WNLA for 8500 men. The WNLA paid the rail fares to Johannesburg, provided free medical care, a deferred pay scheme and compulsory repatriation after a maximum period of 18 months. According to Gemmill, those conditions conformed to the ILOs Convention No. 50. Provision was also made for the collection of Hut Tax and the payment of a Pass Fee to the Nyasaland government. In addition, the WNLA promised to purchase all the Nyasaland rice available for issue on the mines to Tropical labour. Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland would not only benefit financially, but: ‘[t]hrough the improvement in the health and physique of the adult male Native population that would follow’.⁴⁵

Abraham gave Nyasaland and the WNLA what they wanted. For reasons which are unclear, in September 1938 Captain G.N. Burden, the Nyasaland Labour Officer stationed in Salisbury, was commissioned to provide a further report on the work and living conditions of Nyasa in Southern Rhodesia. In the event, his account provided additional support to the WNLA. Burden visited mines, farms, road camps, brickworks, locations and factories for a study which was conducted over six months. He also visited the Cam and Motor Mine in Southern Rhodesia, which J.C. Abraham had inspected some months earlier.⁴⁶ It was the biggest gold mine in the country, employing 2000 men, more than half of whom were Nyasa. The death rate for all recruits was around 16 per 1000 per annum while the rate among Nyasa was over 20 per 1000, but Abraham did not question the mine’s safety.⁴⁷

Burden reported that migrant workers usually arrived in small groups numbering less than ten. They received a free issue of food, provided by Southern Rhodesian officials at various points en route. On entry, their fingerprints and particulars were recorded, and a pass issued. In 1937 the mining industry employed just over 30,000 Nyasa.⁴⁸ There were a further 25,000 on farms and an estimated 20,000 employed in the towns. The city of Salisbury was a magnet, with many migrants finding work and accommodation as servants. Others lived on the east side of the city in hovels. The conditions on white farms were oppressive, with work beginning at dawn or soon after and continuing until dusk. Farm labourers were paid as little as 10s a month and were subject to the whim of white farmers. Labour conditions on the mines varied greatly. Some of the bigger mines compared favourably with the Rand, but there were also large mines where the facilities were poor. The wages for experienced miners were a third of those offered on the Rand and the non-payment of wages was common. Burden found that the real value of wages depended on the conditions under which migrants lived and the rations they received. He also found that in their disputes with managers, foreign workers were ‘defenceless’.⁴⁹

Abraham had created the impression that there were some minor problems in the treatment of migrant labour which the Southern Rhodesian government was doing its best to address. Burden found that Nyasa were cruelly exploited, and that Southern Rhodesia was doing little to improve their situation. The Colonial Office endorsed his report: ‘Here we see the contract system at its worst. This is the sort of thing which has set the ILO against contract labour. These contracts are made between private employers and defenceless employees. They have practically nothing in common with the desirable contracts made between the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association and (in fact, though not in form) the Governments of Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia.’ The Colonial Office pointed out that if the government of Nyasaland expected the Secretary of State to defend the contract policy in Parliament and at ILO Conferences, it must ensure that such abuses ceased. It also questioned why, despite repeated requests, it had received Burden’s report seven months late. London believed the Report had been suppressed by Nyasaland.⁵⁰ On its part, the Southern Rhodesia government did not accept Burden’s report as accurate, and lamely instructed field officers to ensure conditions improved, where necessary.⁵¹ In March 1940, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Malcolm MacDonald, acknowledged receipt of Burden’s report which he had read ‘with great interest’. However, in view of Burden’s criticisms of the Southern Rhodesia government, he vetoed its publication.⁵²

Abraham and Burden’s reports both favoured the WNLA. Abraham praised the work and living conditions on the Rand mines, while Burden’s criticisms of Southern Rhodesian labour markets were to the benefit of South Africa’s mines. Instead of protecting migrant labour from the north, Burden argued, London gave white settlers in Southern Rhodesia what they wanted: namely access to cheap and unprotected labour. Both reports were also characterised by a number of notable omissions. They contain virtually no reference to tuberculosis, silicosis or the mines’ repatriation policies. There was also no reference as to what constituted an acceptable death rate.

Medical Warnings of an mpending Tuberculosis Crisis

Alongside favourable reports on the experiment with recruitment of Tropical labour was a series of reports from medical officers about a sudden rise in the number of tuberculosis cases due to infected men returning from the mines. Those reports presented clear warnings about the impact of contracted migrant labour on public health. During 1933, a total of 348 tuberculosis cases were diagnosed in Bechuanaland. Of those, over two-thirds were pulmonary, with the numbers being far lower in the northern districts. The Principal Medical Officer, Dr Hamilton Dyke, noted that until the end of 1933 men had not been recruited from the North for work on the gold mines. He was greatly concerned, as the local population was susceptible to infection and their powers of resistance were lowered by a poor diet. Having read Dyke’s Report, the Resident Commissioner Charles Rey admitted that the incidence of tuberculosis was disturbing. ‘The distribution of Tuberculosis suggests that a good deal of infection originally is introduced by men who have worked on the Rand Mines and would indicate the necessity for compulsory medical examination of all Mine recruits before they leave the Territory, and also that the standard of physical fitness required of such recruits be higher than it is at present.’⁵³

In July 1935, the Resident Magistrate at Molepolole, S.L. Forster Towne, reported that tuberculosis was increasing rapidly in the district and no precautions were taken when men who had been infected on the mines returned home. There was no system of notification and the men themselves did not realise the danger they posed to their families. ‘Would it not be possible’ he asked, ‘to raise the standard of medical examination when the men are recruited? Also, a notification from the Mines of the return of these men and their early treatment in some special place and not allowing them to return home without being treated.’⁵⁴ The District Commissioner’s Office in Mafeking feared the Protectorate would become a bed of disease if preventive measures were not taken. As a matter of urgency, it wanted the government to fund isolation wards to halt the spread of infection.⁵⁵ In Francistown, the Medical Officer was concerned that the disease was increasing rapidly. Men who left to work in South Africa or Rhodesia became infected and returned home to their families. When questioned, young tuberculosis patients, including children, would often recount that a relative, living in the same hut, had recently returned from South Africa with a cough.⁵⁶

One of the most detailed reports on a looming health crisis was from the Resident Medical Officer at Serowe. The district had an area of more than 100,000 square kilometres, and a single medical officer served its population of over 100,000. Of those, 20,000 to 25,000 constituted the floating population of Serowe, the rest being scattered in small, often inaccessible villages, where the incidence of tuberculosis was impossible to gauge. The Resident Medical Officer offered two reasons for the steady increase in the number of pulmonary cases during his seven years in Serowe. The first was a prolonged drought which resulted in poor crops and a scarcity of milk. The other factor was the return of infected men from the mines. Some may have contracted tuberculosis while underground or have started their underground work with latent infection which flared up as a result of exposure to silica dust. Repatriated men were not re-examined on their return, so there was no data to corroborate his suspicions. To identify the cause would require full details of the number and percentage of men who were repatriated with lung disease. It was important that those men report to the District Medical Officer before returning to their homes so that some follow-up scheme could be initiated.⁵⁷

The Bechuanaland Administration had no control over the WNLA data. However, in October 1935 the Department of Health did produce its own review of the impact of recruiting on public health. The Medical Officer at Gaberones was in no doubt that the incidence of tuberculosis was rising, and that in most cases the infection originated in the gold mines: ‘As regards women and children, these contract the disease through contact with the men who have returned from the mines and developed the disease there.’ While on the mines, men were well fed and housed, and the disease lay dormant. After fulfilling a contract, a miner returned home where, because of poverty, he began to lose weight and his resistance was lowered. As a result, the disease, dormant for perhaps years, flared up and the patient died a few months later. ‘In most cases, once the disease becomes active, it is a rapidly spreading and very infectious one, with the result that those living in close contact with him are liable to be infected, and this is by no means an infrequent occurrence.’⁵⁸

The length of mine contracts varied from 6 to 12 months, but migrants were allowed to work on indefinitely provided they remained fit. The longer a man worked underground, the more likely he was to become infected. It was unusual for a miner to develop even a dormant pulmonary lesion after he had served a single contract, but common after he had served two. ‘In fact, one cannot help noticing that the vast majority of natives who develop active pulmonary tuberculosis are those who have completed more than two contracts.’ The standard of fitness required by the WNLA and the NRC was very high, and it would be impossible to make it any higher. The Gaberones Medical Officer proposed that recruits should not spend more than 18 months underground during a working life and that period should be divided into two terms of nine months, with an interval of at least a year. He also wanted the mines to notify local authorities of all miners repatriated with tuberculosis. Such a policy was imperative as: ‘[p]ractically every native who goes to the mines and works there over a certain period of time develops pulmonary tuberculosis. He becomes infected on the mines.’⁵⁹

In October 1936, 18 months before the ban on Tropical recruiting was lifted, Dr J.W. Sterling, Principal Medical Officer of Bechuanaland, wrote a memo on tuberculosis. The number of pulmonary cases, he noted, rose from 180 in 1931 to 290 in 1935. The figures were based on patients seen at hospitals and clinics. This, Sterling acknowledged, was a poor guide as most patients did not seek the aid of European doctors. ‘There is no doubt that this disease was originally introduced from the Mines, but now cases are frequently met with in women, children and young adults who have never been to the Mines but who, in quite a number of cases, have had relations or friends who at some time worked on the Mines. This bears out the fact that the disease is now contracted in the Territory itself.’ Like the Gaberones Medical Officer, Sterling believed that every man who worked on the gold mines for a certain period developed tuberculosis. Sterling noted that the spread of infection was also governed by conditions in the Protectorate. Frequent droughts caused malnutrition and the Bechuana custom of living together in large villages influenced the disease rate. As tuberculosis was of comparatively recent origin, the population lacked immunity, and Sterling expected a rapid increase in the number of deaths.⁶⁰

In his official correspondence, the Bechuanaland Resident Commissioner, F.C. Rey, usually disregarded Dr Sterling’s advice and played down the spread of tuberculosis from the mines. In a letter to the High Commissioner in November 1936, Rey admitted that his administration might have done more to secure medical examination of men before they left for Johannesburg, and to provide medical attention on their return. But to do so would have imposed an additional burden on his already overworked administrative and medical staff. What did real harm, according to Rey, was the uncontrolled and unregulated exodus of men seeking work other than on the mines. Those migrant workers were neither as well-nourished nor so well paid. The Protectorate’s enormous borders made it impossible to control the flow of labour.⁶¹

There were several possible reasons for Rey’s behaviour. Whenever a medical officer raised the issue of tuberculosis or miners’ phthisis, William Gemmill responded with data from the Bureau showing the rates of lung disease were low and the mines safe. The Protectorate’s medical department had neither the capacity to examine repatriated miners nor the capacity to commission its own research. More important still, Rey viewed the reintroduction of recruiting as a purely economic matter which was ‘of enormous importance’ in enabling men to earn wages and the government to collect tax. There was a high rate of defaults and the hut tax received in 1933, the year prior to the experiment, was only a quarter of the expected £40,000.⁶² Whatever perspective one adopts, the fact remains that the Bechuanaland administration depended on labour migration.

Political Contests Over Tropical Recruiting

In addition to the mounting medical evidence of spreading disease, there was political opposition in London to WNLA’s recruiting. The British Social Hygiene Council (Council) took an active interest in migrant labour. In March 1934, its deputation met in London with the Secretary of State for the Dominions, J.H. Thomas, and the Under Secretaries Malcolm MacDonald and Dr Drummond Shiels. It was an important meeting, as the experimental introduction of Tropical labour, inoculated with Lister’s vaccine, was under way, and there was a great deal at stake for both the Chamber and the Protectorate.

Dr Shiels noted that tuberculosis in the Bechuanaland Protectorate appeared to be on the increase and that most of the new infections had occurred on the gold mines. The poor physique and poor diet of the Bechuana added to their susceptibility to disease. Sir Basil Blackett, President of the Council, replied that the population’s well-being was at risk from the heavy recruiting and the lack of supervision. Of a recent batch of 500 men recruited for the mines, from which the recruiter had already discarded obvious weaklings, another 33 per cent were rejected on medical grounds. Four years after Britain had signed the ILO’s Forced Labour Convention, there had been several cases which infringed it. The local administration lacked the necessary knowledge and experience to create a labour organisation. Blackett suggested that the cost of establishing such an organisation and expanding the medical service might be met by a capitation fee paid by the mines.⁶³ He also wanted a general commission into the social effects of migrancy.

The meeting reached no agreement and Blackett continued to lobby Thomas, suggesting the cost of appointing Commissioners to monitor the health of migrant workers be met by the Chamber of Mines. Thomas was unsympathetic.⁶⁴ The examination of recruits was so strict that only those in excellent health and of first-class physique were accepted. Modern methods of diagnosis on the mines led to the discovery of lung fibrosis at an early stage. The diet and housing conditions of recruits in their home settings were, he believed, more dangerous than was employment on the mines. Recruits were ‘fattened up’ before they were sent to work and most labourers returned from the mines better nourished and in better health than they were on arrival. While a very small proportion contracted miners’ phthisis, every effort was made to minimise the risk.⁶⁵ The poor physique of recruits, Thomas concluded, was due to the inadequacy of water supplies, the general economic conditions in the Protectorate and a poor diet.

In early July 1936, the Secretary of State received a second deputation from the British Social Hygiene Council. The notes for the meeting include a number of extracts from the Bechuanaland Protectorate’s annual medical reports, which showed a looming crisis. Major Orde Browne was unconvinced by the Council’s arguments, but he did concede that the Protectorate needed an anti-venereal campaign and better supervision of migrant labour.⁶⁶ That, however, was not the end of the matter. Four months later there was a meeting in Mafeking between the Resident Commissioner, Charles Rey, and a British delegation which included Major Orde Browne and Dr Drummond Shiels. The deputation suggests how seriously the issue of health and migrant labour was taken in London. Much of the discussion was about the importance of combatting venereal disease and tuberculosis. Shiels argued that the unsatisfactory position in the Protectorate was largely due to malnutrition and the remedy lay in improving the water supply. Major Orde Browne’s perspective was rather different: he wanted enhanced supervision of migrant labour.

Charles Rey did not share Orde Browne’s concerns. Unlike migrant workers from other parts of Africa, recruits did not have to trek long distances as they were drawn from places close to the railway. ‘I do not, however, agree with the necessity for the creation of machinery for supervision of migrant labour, nor do I consider that this is a real problem so far as this Territory is concerned.’ The movement of labour across the border for employment other than in the mines was far less satisfactory in terms of nourishment, health, wages and general control.⁶⁷ Rey’s stance was at odds with his Principal Medical Officer and also with other members of his administration. One senior officer remarked that neither the Territory nor the dependants of men recruited to the mines received any benefit from their employment. All too often their wages were spent on the Reef, or men returned with useless items such as gramophones.⁶⁸

Importing workers from the north was expensive but it offered the mines several advantages. The signing of specified quotas with colonial governments guaranteed a supply of labour and it did so at pay rates which depressed wages for South African recruits. For that reason, the ban drew the Chamber into direct conflict with the South African Department of Native Labour. In 1922, William Gemmill told the Mining Industry Commission that for purely political reasons, the government was refusing to allow a trial of 5000 Tropical recruits. The ban had been imposed because of the high mortality rate from pneumonia, but with Dr Lister’s anti-pneumonic vaccine that danger had passed. ‘We [the Chamber] consider that the Government cannot maintain a most absurd restriction.’⁶⁹

Colonel S.A.M. Pritchard, the Director of Native Labour who also appeared before the Commission, emphatically disagreed. Tropical recruiting, he argued, was both unnecessary and expensive. Pritchard pointed out that in 1921 alone, the mines had spent £489,000 in capitation, levies and distribution fees. There were, however, ample recruits available within South Africa to meet the mines’ needs. Pritchard’s main objection to lifting the ban was that the Chamber would use imported labour to depress wages in the Union. Pritchard had also seen reports of high phthisis rates among men who had returned from the mines. The situation was particularly disturbing, as medical officers in the Territories were not sufficiently au fait with silicosis to produce reliable data. He was sure that the death rates would be a good deal higher in Tropical recruits. Pritchard did not believe that importing Tropical labour was in the interests of South Africa and he referred to Gemmill’s proposed experiment as ‘the thin end of the wedge’.⁷⁰ Pritchard suspected that by importing foreign labour, the mines were able to export and thereby hide the occupational disease which would otherwise have been visible.

Negotiations About Medical Examinations and Repatriations of Black Miners

From 1916, the Miners’ Phthisis Acts made exit medicals compulsory, but in the case of black miners those medicals did not include a chest X-ray. Three years before the ban on Tropical recruiting was lifted, the issue of exit medicals again became the focus of top-level concern. In 1934, Dr Hamilton Dyke’s proposal that a medical examination of black miners should be compulsory and include an X-ray prior to repatriation was endorsed both the Bechuanaland Resident Commissioner and Sir H.J. Stanley, the British High Commissioner in South Africa. Stanley wanted the mines to take responsibility for such examinations.⁷¹ The Secretary of State for the Dominions recommended the notification and follow-up of tuberculosis cases repatriated from the mines.⁷² Charles Rey also wanted legislation to make the medical examination of recruits compulsory before they were dispatched to the gold mines, and he intended to discuss the matter ‘in a preliminary way’ with William Gemmill during his visit to Johannesburg. Rey also promised the High Commissioner that he would raise the possibility of the medical examination of mine labourers prior to their repatriation.⁷³ The matter dragged on for months as Rey had difficulty in obtaining information from the WNLA. The correspondence makes clear that none of these issues had been formally negotiated with the Chamber before the resumption of Tropical recruiting.

It appears that Rey was intimidated by Gemmill, who in turn was sensitive to what he perceived as lack of cooperation from the northern governments. Soon after recruiting recommenced, Gemmill complained to the Resident Commissioner’s office in Mafeking that the WNLA’s efforts in opening up Northern Bechuanaland were ‘looked upon with suspicion’ in some official circles. The WNLA had already spent several thousand pounds on the scheme which, when completed, would enable the WNLA to tap the whole of Bechuanaland and in addition obtain labour from adjacent areas. It would be one of the biggest development projects in the Protectorate and Gemmill cautioned: ‘You will appreciate, however, that operations of this description are only possible if we have the cordial co-operation of the Administration.’⁷⁴

In August 1935 the High Commissioner’s Office asked Rey for an update on his year-long discussions with Gemmill on medical examinations.⁷⁵ Rey in turn wrote not to Gemmill but to his subordinate at the Chamber, Mr. Wellbeloved, asking for clarification.⁷⁶ Wellbeloved assured Rey that, as provided under the Miners’ Phthisis Acts, every migrant worker was medically examined prior to repatriation. He gave no details as to the form those medicals took and whether, as with white miners, they included an X-ray.⁷⁷ Charles Rey had little understanding of either the miners’ phthisis legislation or the function of the Bureau, and he tended to believe what he was told by the WNLA and the NRC. During the final months of 1935, Ray had a tortuous correspondence with the Chamber about exit medicals. Rey believed that such examinations would best be done in Johannesburg by experts at the Bureau.⁷⁸ He was not aware that the Bureau examined very few black miners.

William Gemmill was unimpressed by Ray’s suggestions. Such examinations would be expensive and cumbersome, and in the vast majority of cases wholly unnecessary. Such a proposal had been fully examined by a Parliamentary Select Committee in 1925, which found it impracticable. Gemmill pointed out that the Bechuanaland Administration could always conduct its own medicals of suspected tuberculosis cases. If any such patients were identified, they could be referred to the Bureau in Johannesburg for further examination. Gemmill then outlined the procedures he claimed were used routinely in South Africa. If a miner in the Native Territories was suspected of suffering from tuberculosis or silicosis, he was examined by the District Surgeon, who reported to the Bureau. If fit to travel, the man could be sent to Johannesburg for examination. The costs were paid by the Bureau, that is by the state rather than by the mines. While that procedure applied to South African recruits, in two cases it had been used with black workers resident in Basutoland. Gemmill concluded: ‘I should be obliged if you would let me know, in the light of this information, what procedure you would like adopted in respect of Bechuanaland Natives.’⁷⁹ Gemmill was no doubt aware that the Protectorate had a single X-ray machine and no funds to return men to Johannesburg for examination. He was also aware that the procedures he described for monitoring black miners in South Africa rarely occurred.

Despite Gemmill’s assurances, protests about repatriations continued. In May 1936 the Government Secretary of Bechuanaland, H.H. Price, wrote to Gemmill about the repatriation of several dying men. The District Commissioner at Kanye reported that three men repatriated with lung disease had died within days of their return. They were in Price’s view unfit to travel, but no notification had been received from the WNLA. A fourth man was repatriated with pulmonary tuberculosis, and Price asked whether he had received compensation.⁸⁰ Price reminded Gemmill that where migrant workers suffered from silicosis or tuberculosis, their particulars should be sent to the nearest District Commissioner and a copy forwarded to the Principal Medical Officer at Mafeking. Price also requested that notification of men repatriated for other disabilities be forwarded so that treatment could be made available. Gemmill’s response has disappeared, but we do know that nothing changed.

At the beginning of the Experiment with Tropical recruiting, the WNLA had agreed to provide the Principal Medical Officer with full particulars of all Bechuana miners rejected on arrival in Johannesburg and then repatriated. In addition, all repatriated tuberculosis cases were to be sent to a Medical Officer for examination and treatment. In practice that did not happen. Out of the 94 cases notified in 1937 and 1938, the WNLA and the NRC forwarded documentation for only 12.⁸¹ When confronted about the lack of notifications, the WNLA claimed that for some years certificates had been sent routinely to District Officers in Bechuanaland.⁸² That claim was false. The numbers compensated by the Bureau were small, which makes the WNLA’s refusal to issue notifications curious. Was it an oversight or did the WNLA and the NRC have a policy of not providing such information? We do know that during the 1930s and 1940s, the lack of notifications was a major concern for local medical officers.

Conclusion

The ban on tropical recruiting was imposed in 1913 as a response to what both the South African government and the British Colonial Office saw as an unacceptably high death rate among miners from tropical regions. The ban would be lifted if, as the mining houses promised, the mortality rate could be brought down to a satisfactory level. Precisely what that meant became the focus of a complex process of definitional manoeuvring. In his report from October 1935, for example, the Medical Officer at Gaberones presented a clear warning that increased recruiting by the gold mines was a threat to public health. As a number of other health professionals had done, he identified the cumulative exposure to silica dust as a major risk. While prolonged work on the mines saw men develop some immunity to bacterial pneumonia, it increased their dust exposures and therefore their risk of contracting tuberculosis. Orenstein disagreed. Those deaths, he argued consistently in a variety of forums, were due to the racial inferiority of black miners and not because of working in a phthisis-producing industry. The remedy was acquired immunity which could only be gradually gained by prolonged exposure to industrial labour.⁸³ Orenstein’s arguments gained wide acceptance among the white public but were not sufficient to have the ban lifted. For that purpose, scientific data was perceived to be needed.

In the two decades after the ban was imposed, much changed. The mining companies had substantially reduced (but certainly not eliminated) deaths from infectious pneumonia by building changing houses, improving conditions in the compounds and providing miners with more adequate rations. They did much less to alter those structural features, such as dust exposures, which could not easily be engineered out of the mines. They also strenuously denied the threat that tuberculosis and repatriations posed to labour-sending communities. In the process, the impact of tuberculosis as an occupational disease was rendered largely invisible. The statistics on mortality rates reflected this dynamic. Not only were the figures inconsistent from year to year and document to document, but they also systematically ignored much of the evidence. The data used to measure risk was based solely on deaths from disease and accidents on the mines and excluded deaths at the WNLA compound, where many miners succumbed to illness and injury before they could be repatriated. It also excluded those who died in transit, or after returning home. Were those deaths included, the WNLA’s own data showed a mortality rate from disease between three and five times higher than for other black miners.⁸⁴ The Union government’s decision in 1937 to permanently lift the ban followed what it viewed as a successful experiment with Nyasa and Barotse. That decision was underpinned by the failure of London and the colonial administrations to distinguish between the risks of pneumonia, which killed miners at work, and tuberculosis and silicosis, from which most died after leaving the mines.

After the ban was lifted, the WNLA took immediate steps to recruit in Nyasaland, Barotseland (now the Western Province of Zambia) and Northern Bechuanaland, not only tapping the local populations but offering employment to workers in transit from Angola and Namibia.⁸⁵ In addition to its headquarters at Francistown, the WNLA established rest and feeding camps at various points along the recruiting trail. To the end of 1944, the WNLA had invested more than £35,000 on depots and camps and more than £55,000 on road construction and maintenance.⁸⁶ The transport system established by the Association had a wider economic significance. Each year its trucks carried not only recruits and repatriates but around 8000 fare-paying passengers, and conveyed goods to the benefit of government, traders and local customers.