Coal, Crisis, and Class Struggle: Wankie Colliery, 1918–22

Despite its pivotal economic position in Central Africa, the history of Zimbabwe's Wankie Colliery has scarcely been explored. Although the historical pattern of capital accumulation and class struggle on the colliery has yet to be traced in any detail, this article suggests that a useful starting point is the protracted labour crisis which convulsed the colliery in 1918. Attempts to expand output through intensified pressure on a dwindling supply of black labour soon established a vicious circle in which workers' health deteriorated rapidly. Hundreds of black miners were incapacitated by ‘tropical ulcers’. An ensuing commission of enquiry exonerated the colliery's management of any blame, but it is nonetheless significant for the light it casts on the British South Africa Company Administration's narrow conception of its role after the Privy Council decision depriving it of ownership of ‘unalienated’ land in the Colony. The article's last section examines the conflict between the colliery's management and organized white workers in the context of the racial division of labour. In doing so, it emphasizes the structural vulnerability of white labour in the colonial era.