Stones of Contention

by Cleveland, Todd

  Imagining the Mines: Recruits’ Strategic Foreknowledge

  Prior to departing for diamond mines throughout the continent, recruits gathered as much information as they could about the working environments that these respective settings featured. This foreknowledge served a number of purposes. In colonies with aggressive forced labor schemes in place, it helped residents decide whether or not to flee ahead of the arrival of mining recruiters. Conversely, in less coercive environments, it helped residents determine whether to engage with the diamond industry or an alternative employer. For those Africans who did end up heading to the mines in one form or another, this knowledge helped the recruits mentally prepare for the challenges that lay ahead. In South West Africa, for example, recruiters observed that “even workers who have never been to a mine have extensive ‘fore-knowledge’ of the mine and its social situation and know which occupations exist . . . what to expect, and what not to do.”[88]

  Africans obtained this information in a variety of ways. Sometimes, mining companies themselves contributed to recruits’ awareness by disseminating information about working conditions and opportunities. Personnel from Consolidated Diamond Mines (CDM), for example, openly discussed with potential Ovambo recruits the prevailing conditions on the company’s Oranjemund mines in South West Africa. Even without CDM’s disclosures, though, the thousands of Ovambo migrants who made their way south to the diamond mines each year were constantly bringing back accounts of the latest conditions. Prospective recruits processed this continually updated information, often deeming the prevailing working and living conditions associated with a particular operation to be of greater importance than the wages on offer.

  In nearby Angola, recruits similarly prepared themselves for mine life by learning as much as they could about the labor environment at Diamang prior to departure. Diamang was unique in that women often accompanied their husbands and worked in a number of different capacities for the company, though not in the mines themselves, and so the many Angolan men and women who had previously worked for the enterprise used their personal knowledge to help themselves (re-)prepare mentally. Even those recruits who possessed no firsthand knowledge had likely observed fellow villagers returning home safely from the mines, which helped allay their concerns. For example, João Muacasso, who first left for Diamang in 1956, explained in an interview: “Many others before me had been selected from my village . . . and those older than me had worked before me so I had a great deal of knowledge about conditions at the company before I left. I did not fear going to the mines because so many people had done it before me and all had survived, so I knew that I could.”[89]Other recruits were less sanguine. Mawassa Mwaninga indicated that, after learning that her husband had been selected for work at Diamang, “I was afraid to go because I had heard stories about how the whites beat the blacks on the mines.”[90]Similarly, Mateus Nanto explained, “Many from my village had gone (to the mines) before me. So, I already knew about the suffering and the conditions there. I was afraid of going, but it was obligatory, so I had to go.”[91]Given the forced labor system in place in Angola, Diamang’s African employees had little choice but to make the best of their time on the mines.

  African Responses to the Challenges and Opportunities of Mine Life

  In order to temper the hardships on the mines, most African workers engaged in a range of low-risk activities, such as sharing tasks and singing songs. These tactics helped them endure the various labor regimens but without undermining or subverting them. A smaller number of employees chose to participate in more precarious undertakings that signaled a reluctance to comply with corporate policies. These more brazen acts included partially or fully withholding their labor, or even participating in diamond theft. Wherever possible, African employees also organized themselves into labor unions (or less formal entities) to express their grievances, with the overall objective of improving working and living conditions; at times, the realization of this goal necessitated formal labor strikes. Although companies generally tolerated collective labor association and expression, they typically dismissed or physically punished individual employees involved in any type of activity that threatened the bottom line. Laborers accused of engaging in work slowdowns or caught stealing diamonds, for example, could expect to experience some form of corporal abuse, as well as possible prison sentences, fines, or worse.

  For African men and women on the mines, the challenging nature of the labor process did not end when the whistle blew. On their return to company housing, they typically had to retrieve potable water and prepare meals to satisfy the hunger generated by grueling workdays. Even after colonial-era mining companies achieved food security, foodstuffs available for these evening meals were still periodically scarce owing to shortages or corporate neglect. Some companies also limited the activities in which workers could engage in mine encampments, including drinking. In response to these challenges, residents pursued a number of generally low-risk strategies to make their post-shift lives as bearable as possible. They socialized, danced, and sang, brewed and consumed alcohol, and, when viable, lodged complaints. In some of these residential settings, ethnic, linguistic, occupational, or tenurial divisions were regarded, while in others they were generally ignored. Mining officials typically displayed indifference toward workers’ post-whistle activities, deeming that laborers who were allowed to “blow off steam” would be less likely to disrupt the mine environment.

  Strategic Engagement with the Labor Process

  In many ways, diamond mine workers embraced many of the same strategies that laborers elsewhere in colonial Africa employed, including singing songs while toiling and voicing grievances in response to objectionable working conditions. But the particulars of diamond mining also encouraged actions and generated opportunities that were less commonly encountered in other work environments. One was the formation of unions, which was attributable to both the presence of large numbers of workers with shared grievances and the tradition of labor organization among European mine workers. Another was theft, or IDB (illegal diamond buying). After all, diamonds are as incomparably easy, as they are tempting, to conceal, and eventually sell. African mine workers also withheld their labor for varying lengths of time, which mine managers variously characterized as “substandard effort,” “work stoppages,” “slowdowns,” or “strikes,” depending on the nature and extent of the (in)action.

  Singing, Articulating Grievances, and Work Slowdowns

  African laborers at Diamang, like their diamond-mining counterparts elsewhere on the continent, pursued a wide range of creative tactics to mitigate the daily labor process, including singing. Both male and female employees sang while they toiled, which provided a mental escape from their work but also connected workers to distant homelands. For example, Costa Chicungo, who began with Diamang in the 1950s, indicated that the songs he and his co-workers sang “were . . . to remember family, etc.”[92]Other songs, though, had a more pejorative purpose, including one that featured the following morose verse: “The white makes us suffer, punishes us, hits us, offends us and strikes us with . . . the whip.”[93]Although laborers employed in a variety of different occupations on mines sang, those who performed tasks that lent themselves to the songs’ rhythms, such as shoveling, were the most consistent practitioners. Most Diamang mine bosses tolerated this activity because it appeared to improve morale and productivity. However, African overseers, or capitas, occasionally forced laborers to abandon this pursuit when songs denigrated the Portuguese, even though the lyrics were undecipherable to their targets.

  Diamang’s African employees also issued complaints to company officials, mine inspectors, and colonial administrators about insufficient rations, excessive labor demands, and abusive treatment. This action constituted a calculated gamble, as complainants risked corporal punishment for their perceived audacity. However, the various officials receiving these complaints usually ignored them or, less commonly, addressed them. In the early years of Diamang’s
operations, complaints about rations were the most prevalent. In 1925, for example, workers conveyed to Angola’s governor, who was visiting the mines, that food provisions were insufficient. Later that year, employees passed along a similar complaint to a local colonial administrator during an official visit. In this instance, laborers indicated that mine supervisors frequently hit them and that when they were supposed to receive meat in their rations “it is just bones, while the whites get all the meat.” As the legendary Bob Marley’s lyrics warned regarding the potentially explosive mix of hunger and outrage: “Them belly full, but we hungry / A hungry mob is a angry mob.”[94]Desperate to avoid having an “angry mob” on its hands, and spurred on by “hungry” workers’ complaints and its own paternalistic agenda, Diamang achieved food security shortly thereafter.

  Over time, complaints about personal mistreatment at Diamang outnumbered rations-related grievances. One example comes from 1956, during the unexpected arrival of a group of headmen, or sobas, to whom mine workers protested that “the monthly salary is too small, rations are too small for them and for their families . . . [while] overseers treat them poorly . . . wives should not work . . . and are treated poorly . . . and daily productivity targets are too high and take them, almost always, outside of suitable work hours.”[95]Ultimately, these complaints precipitated little change, though the company did spare these workers from corporal punishment. Going forward, employees voiced fewer complaints than in past years, though an incident from 1965 offers an example of workers’ ongoing pursuit of this strategy and the enduring risks. In this case, two Portuguese overseers beat and bloodied workers on one of Diamang’s mines, prompting the victims to complain to a company engineer, who, in turn, spoke to the perpetrators. Instead of admitting to the hiding or demonstrating any sort of contrition, though, the Portuguese retaliated, meting out further punishment.[96]

  African laborers in diamond-mining settings elsewhere similarly articulated their grievances, with similarly mixed results. For example, at Kleinzee, a mine in South Africa’s northwest corner, ethnic Ovambo from South West Africa (Namibia) experienced varying degrees of success regarding appeals they made to company officials to address a variety of working and living issues. During the six years that Ovambos were employed at Kleinzee (1943–49), their complaints resulted in the dismissal of a number of incompetent compound managers, a particularly contemptible pit supervisor, and even a mine manager—quite an impressive tally for such a brief time. As migrant laborers in a foreign country, the Ovambo workers displayed more loyalty to their employer (De Beers) than they did to the state, and even more to the mine bosses they respected.

  On diamond mines throughout the continent, African employees also periodically engaged in work slowdowns, took unscheduled or extended breaks, or simply gave less than their all. If mine overseers suspected any of these actions, they typically subjected the accused employees to corporal punishment. More often, though, these actions went undetected. At Diamang, for example, workers began withholding their labor either individually or collectively from the company’s inception. Company records from the enterprise’s first fifteen years of operations abound with instances of substandard effort. In one example from 1928, a Diamang official compiled a number of flagrant episodes that allegedly highlighted workers’ “bad will”:

  In mine no. 3 of the N’Zargi mine group, a rate greater than 50m3 (cubic meters of diamond-bearing soil removed) has not been achieved, although we’d hoped to reach a rate of 70m3. In this same group, it has been noted that the workers who handle the wheelbarrows abandon them immediately after the European who oversees them turns his back. . . . These workers fill the wheelbarrows only half, or a third, of the way. . . . Those who work in the removal of the overburden layer are satisfied with the removal of 2m3 per day, when other workers, working beside them, remove 6m3 in the same amount of time. There are even Africans who, asking permission to excuse themselves with the objective of satisfying certain bodily needs, spend two or even three hours . . . before returning. . . . Already, these types of acts have affected the production for June and July. . . . The current situation is highly prejudicial to the common interests of the company and the state.[97]

  Of course, from an African employee’s perspective, this “bad will” looks a lot more like “creative solutions to demanding conditions.” A subsequent letter to the same official suggests that laborers were employing these tactics intentionally, exploiting less experienced overseers. “Since the Governor’s visit, things have gone from bad to worse. Since Agent Calçada left they have been trying out their tricks on Agent Remacle, who does not know what to do. The situation now is that they know they can loaf on the job in defiance of us. We have no control over them whatsoever and are unable to get a day’s work out of them.”[98]As Diamang’s profits escalated and its control over labor increased, the company’s tolerance of these tactics diminished, and employees correspondingly engaged in slowdowns less frequently. African workers instead began exhibiting their “bad will” in alternative, though equally creative, ways.

  Striking Improvements: Labor Organizing and Work Stoppages

  Labor organizing was arguably employees’ most effective strategy for improving working and living conditions on colonial-era mines. Unions articulated the grievances of their members, and formal labor strikes constituted the most efficacious, if most extreme, weapon available to African workers during their struggles with mine management.

  Although unions were banned in certain settings, such as in Portuguese Angola, they flourished in many others, including South West Africa. Due to the long history of trade union activity in South Africa, mines in its mandate featured strong labor organizations and were also the sites of numerous aggressive work stoppages. As far back as the 1920s, mine workers in the territory had been organizing themselves. During that decade, the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union and several smaller unions had formed at the Lüderitz diamond mine, though these early organizational efforts don’t appear to have instigated any widespread or otherwise disruptive work stoppages. The most sensational strike staged in South West Africa would occur only some years later, commencing in 1971 and extending into 1972. Diamond-mine employees participated in this protest against poor working conditions and inadequate wages, as did miners of lithium, zinc, tin, and copper, as well as agricultural laborers. Indeed, it would be easier to identify groups of workers who didn’t strike during this pervasive unrest. Although CDM officials were convinced that the above-average salaries and living conditions at its Oranjemund mines would preclude labor strife, on January 3, 1972, workers at that facility joined the thousands of protesters from other industries who had already abandoned their jobs. Following the eventual conclusion of the strike, CDM raised wages substantially and adopted a more open, if still cautious, approach to labor organizing. In practice, corporate concessions did not always follow work stoppages on colonial-era mines, but strikes, especially on this scale, did send a strong message to employers that adjustments would have to be made.

  Labor organization and the articulation of grievances were also prevalent on diamond mines in the British colonies of Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast, although formal trade unions did not begin to appear until around the time of the Second World War. Before that, significant labor disputes were absent from the industry in West Africa, primarily because mine workers hadn’t organized entities through which to channel their concerns. One major factor that impeded the organization of labor unions on these mines was significant regional and ethnic diversity within workforces, which hindered both the development of a common identity and the expression of common grievances. The lack of government legislation granting laborers defined rights or trade unions a definite legal basis also contributed.

  Only in the 1940s, following formal approval and recognition from London, did Africans begin to form labor organizations on West African diamond mines. For example, the Yengema Diamond Workers Union (YDWU) formed in Sierra Leone in 1940, and
the Gold Coast Mines Employees Union (MEU) organized in 1944. Shortly thereafter, the YDWU amalgamated with DELCO’s Mining Employees Union to form the United Mine Workers Union (UMWU), whose first general secretary was Siaka Stevens, the future president and prime minister of Sierra Leone. Following the end of the Second World War, several developments fed both popular dissatisfaction and African labor strife, including spiraling inflation; shortages of consumer goods; growing disillusionment, especially of ex-servicemen; and swollen shoot disease (which affected the cocoa crop).[99]These social and economic factors prompted, for example, diamond mine workers in Sierra Leone to strike for several days in September 1945, which ultimately succeeded in both raising daily wage rates and reducing the work day to eight hours.

  For all of the unrest on Sierra Leone’s diamond mines, laborers in this setting only periodically resorted to work stoppages. In part, their relative quietude was attributable to the establishment in 1946 of a Wage Board, which was composed of five union, five employer, and three government-appointed representatives. Mine workers were initially encouraged by the creation of this entity, as the board seemed responsive to their demands, and since its decisions on minimum standards had the force of law, labor union confidence was strong. Into the 1950s, however, the board increasingly neglected workers’ concerns, which prompted many laborers to (re-)resort to strikes. Other workers simply left the formal industry altogether in order to take up independent digging. Collectively, these developments gutted Sierra Leone’s labor unions until they became virtually hollow, powerless shells; by 1954, paid-up membership in the formerly influential UMWU had fallen to only three hundred.

  In the Gold Coast, the 1950s also witnessed an increase in labor agitation, but with better results for its participants. From 1952, for example, the MEU Branch at Akwatia began engaging with the corporate management of CAST in an increasingly militant fashion. In June of that year, the union won a substantial wage hike for African employees and pressed the company for further salary increases. After company officials rejected these subsequent demands, the branch struck on December 28, 1953. Although CAST refused to relent, and most employees returned to work by the end of January 1954, the company did offer some minor concessions. Still feeling confident, the MEU was again ready to pick a fight. On November 20, 1955, the union commenced its “100 Day” strike. Participating members paralyzed the colony’s productive gold mines, while roughly 900 of CAST’s 2,600 diamond mine workers also elected to strike. Shortly after this protest concluded, Gold Coast mining companies increased their wage rates and also improved their conditions of service.