Diamonds in the Rough: The ICU’s Activism on the Lichtenburg Diamond Diggings, 1927–1931

This article tracks the involvement of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) in the strike on the Lichtenburg diamond diggings of June 1928, during which 35,000 black workers downed tools. At the time, this was the second largest strike by black workers in South African history. This article adds to the literature on the strike in two ways. First, it argues that from mid 1927 (a year before the strike), the ICU began to pay attention to the plight of black workers and location residents on the Lichtenburg diggings and in the adjacent locations. When workers’ weekly wages were cut from 20 shillings to 12 shillings in June 1928, the ICU organised workers by picketing and mobilising workers to strike; by holding meetings to discuss their demands; and by negotiating with white diggers and state officials. A second contribution of the article is the argument it makes that recently unemployed workers and persecuted location residents joined the striking workers, broadening the composition of the body of strikers and the scope of the strike. The ICU managed to mobilise these workers and this became a hallmark of their activism in subsequent years. At the end of the strike, an agreement was reached between workers, the state, diggers and the ICU to pay 15 shillings – a less dramatic wage drop than proposed. The ICU’s role in the strike was so pronounced that in the months that followed it, the membership of the ICU exploded in towns across the Western Transvaal. This article argues that the strike was an outstanding achievement for the ICU in spite of its organisational decline towards the end of the 1920s.