Abstract:
The gold standard crisis defined the end of an epoch. From at least
the end of the first world war to the Christmas of 1932, the South African and
Imperial states and mining capital were involved in a struggle over the form of the
South African and international money supplies. Whilst in appearance an abstract
and mysterious debate, the contest over the form of the money supply laid the
foundations for a system of value that penetrated into the daily lives and politics of
many southern Africans. Chief amongst these, were the hundreds of thousands of
migrant mineworkers who, before 1933, received their wages in gold. This paper
explores what is universally understood as being the primary reason for migrant
labour—the need for money. The ideas and practices associated with the control
and transmission of metallic money were at the core of the experience of migrant
labour before the crisis, and, it is argued, formed a major part of the self-definition
of migrant gold miners during the 1920s. Following from this, the paper posits a
re-interpretation of the gold standard crisis. The turning point that coincided with
the new year of 1933 was not merely an economic change but constituted a major
transformation of the form, value, velocity and politics of money throughout
Southern Africa. Coincidently, the crisis was an economic and cultural transition
for the mining industry itself, and marked a dramatic re-definition of the terms of
economic conflict between workers and managers. Finally, this paper presents
evidence for a new periodisation of capitalist development in Southern Africa that
meshes together the cultural and economic dimensions of historial processes in a
manner that foregrounds the experience of the African working class.
