Dragons on the Rand: a documentary about indentured Chinese workers on the Witwatersrand mines 1904-1919
Date
2010-03-04T09:10:52Z
Authors
MacLellan, Gail GIlmour
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Abstract
Between 1904 and 1907 just over 65,000 Chinese labourers were brought to South
Africa to work on the Witwatersrand mines. All but those who had died or been
executed, and perhaps a handful who had disappeared, were repatriated to China by
1910. In those short years they doubled production of the mines; were instrumental in
bringing down the Conservative government in Britain, leading to Responsible
Government in the Transvaal; and their presence led to a number of labour and race
laws that were to blight the whole of the country for most of the following hundred
years. The documentary tells their story, and attempts to read between the lines of the
hundreds of official documents which are almost all the evidence that remains of their
sojourn here.