Dragons on the Rand: a documentary about indentured Chinese workers on the Witwatersrand mines 1904-1919

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.