Migrant labourers in transit from the rural reserve to the city where they entered into labour contracts, usually for nine months or a year.
Living and working conditions for urban blacks were dismal. About one – third lived in informal houses. Few could get freehold tenure, so there was little incentive for those who lived in formal houses to improve them. Blacks in any event received such low wages that it was impossible for most to do so. Neither could they pay sufficient rent or taxes to enable the white municipalities to upgrade the locations under their control.
Blacks suffered a wide-ranging job colour bar. Apprenticeship committees excluded them from skilled jobs. Some white trade unions had black members, but most blacks were members of black trade unions, which could not take part in wage negotiations. Deficient education and training also formed major obstacles to advancement.
In a multitude of ways black urban life was demeaning. Family income on average was half the living wage and their diet was often disgracefully deficient. Blacks were subjected to numerous laws that applied only to them. The great majority of those convicted of criminal offences were guilty of contravening the pass laws and the possession of ‘native’ liquor, giving rise to what a government report called ‘a burning sense of grievance and injustice’.
At the bottom of the labour market was a mass of migrant black workers without rights and with little choice but to sell their labour cheaply. The gold mines of the Witwatersrand, the dynamo of the economy, were based largely on black migrant labour. By 1911 more than 90% of the black population of Johannesburg was male, working for very low wages; if they were paid more they would work less, so the justification went. Intending to return to the reserves, many blacks lived temporarily in wretched shacks or labour compounds. As a source of ultra-cheap labour, they were a constant threat to unskilled and even semi-skilled Afrikaner workers.
