About this site

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

1919

70,000 African miners strike. The well-organised and disciplined strike alarms the government. Troops with bayonets break through barricades killing three and wounding 40 strikers. Police and armed whites attack a solidarity meeting, killing 8 and wounding 80.

In January the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU)is formed in Cape Town soon to take off across the country and to become the largest black union ever existing in South Africa, known as 'ICU White Man!' (Meli, 1988 p 63)

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. Return to theThis resource is hosted by the site.