Market Square

Date: 4 July, 1913

Fighting breaks out as police confronts a riotous crowd on the Johannesburg market square and mounted soldiers during the first miners' strike. The years between the Union of South Africa (1910) and the First World War (1914) were moderately prosperous. During this period, organised labour began to find its feet in the Union. The first trade unionists in South Africa were the Uitlanders, the Dutch word for foreigners. These Europeans brought with them their knowledge about trade union activities. By 1910, the trade unions had gained support and were beginning to lure the uprooted poor white Afrikaners and those who had failed on the land. These trade unions, however, were not recognised by their employers with the result that dissatisfaction increased among the miners on the Reef. In May 1913, the miners at the New Kleinfontein mine on the East Rand went on strike. Mine management ignored this small strike, refused to recognise their mining trade union, and took on other men; but news about this led to sympathetic strikes on other mines.

The government did not take these seriously, and therefore made no move to consider the strikers' complaints, or to curb their aggressive behaviour until rioters set fire to Johannesburg's Park railway station on 4 July. Shop fronts were smashed and looting began almost immediately, especially in jewellery and gunsmith shops, where the rioters were looking for firearms. The police opened fire, sparking off further rioting and shooting in the town. An angry mob then proceeded towards President Street and set fire to the offices of The Star newspaper. The next day things came to a head outside the Rand Club. The mob refused to disperse and fired shots at the military. One of the ringleaders, a tall red-headed miner from Nigel named J L Labuschagne, twice walked into the street, threw out his arms and cried, "Shoot me!" The second time, when the crowd behind him began to move forward, he was shot dead; a 13-year old boy, Monty Dunmore, was shot through the back while selling Strike Heralds to the crowd outside the Rand Club, and horses were killed in the crossfire.

Source:

1. Norwich, Oskar, (1986) A Johannesburg Album, p.140.
2. Howcroft, P. (undated). South Africa Encyclopaedia: Prehistory to the year 2000, unpublished papers with SA History Online