Returning to the rand revolt: centering settler colonialism and racial capitalism in labour history

This study focuses on the Rand Revolt, a white mineworkers strike that occurred in 1922, as a lens into the white working class in the early 20th Century, Witwatersrand, South Africa. This strike is significant because the events surrounding its conclusion led to the co-optation of the white working class which in turn contributed to the consolidation of white minority settler rule and the racial organisation of capitalism in the following years. Prevailing historical materialist approaches give primacy to class in explaining these events at the expense of thorough engagements with settler colonialism and racialism. As such, my research question is the following: How can placing settler colonialism and racial capitalism at the centre of analysis reframe the prevailing understanding of the Rand Revolt? Three sub-questions flow from this main question. First, I ask: How did settler colonialism shape the state's response to the 1922 strike? Second, how did racialism structure the consciousness of the white working class during the Rand Revolt? Third, how did racialism shape the character and orientation of class conflict as it unfolded in the Rand Revolt? To answer these questions, I gathered data from the state-mandated commission of inquiry following the strike and analysed the commissioners' final report alongside the oral testimonies given by witnesses. The main argument is that the foundational antagonism between the ‘Native Other' and a ‘white South Africa' produced by settler colonialism shaped the internal dynamics of the strike. On one hand, state actors' responses to white working-class resistance ushered in broader concerns with maintaining the security of white domination over ‘natives'. On the other hand, racialism, embedded in the class consciousness of strikers, saw white working-class militancy and selforganisation subsumed into the reification of the dominant order at the height of class struggle. I demonstrate this argument using evidence of the discourse and practices among both state actors and strikers. These revealed shared racial anxieties between the state and strikers surrounding ‘Natives' which were resolved through violence and enclosure aimed at Black subjects in urban areas. Considering the intertwined relationship between race and class reveals that both the affective and material dimensions of white supremacy shaped the character and orientation of class struggle between white labour and capital in the early 20th Century, South Africa