Employment and Repatriation, 1904–1910

In the first chapter of this book it was argued that Chinese labour became the main instrument of the mining industry’s policy to solve the generalised crisis of accumulation which had developed during and after the war of 1899–1902. Thus, between May 1904 and November 1906, 63,695 labourers were imported for unskilled work in the Witwatersrand gold mines. They were engaged on three-year contracts in the first instance with a right of renewal for a further period of up to three years.1 However, as a result of action by the Liberal government in England in 1906 and the Het Volk government in the Transvaal in 1907, recruiting was prohibited after 30 November 1906, and the right of renewal provided for by s.17 of the Contract of Service withdrawn.2 Consequently from June 1907 the numbers of Chinese miners progressively declined. The last shipment of time-expired labourers was returned to China in February 1910.3 As a result of deaths from accidents and disease contracted in the course of service, discharges purchased by the labourers themselves with or without Imperial government aid, and forcible repatriation of so-called ‘undesirables’, the maximum number of Chinese in the employment of members of the CMLIA was 53,828 in January 1907.4 During the period of recruitment between February 1904 and November 1906, the difference between the number recruited and the number employed was as high as 17 per cent. Of this loss, no less than 14.96 per cent was incurred on the Rand itself, representing a financial outlay to the importing companies of £176,905.5