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First struggles against segregation
When WWII ended with the defeat of tyranny in Europe, hopes grew that the South African government would now move away from segregation and begin to grant the disenfranchised majority their rights. However, it soon became obvious that the government was not going to make any far-reaching concessions to black demands. In the decades after the war the European powers granted independence to most of their colonies. In contrast, the grip of the minority white control was about to tighten.
Although the country prospered economically during the War years, they were a period of industrial militancy. Despite government bans on worker action, there were 60 strikes between 1942 and 1944. The end of the Second World War raised hopes for a halt in falling living standards. However, these hopes proved empty and in August 1946 the African Mineworkers Union launched a massive strike which involved nearly every mine in the Witwatersrand gold-mining area. Mining activities came to a virtual standstill as 100,000 workers stopped work in the largest mass action of the time.
Prime minister Jan Smuts (who ironically also wrote the preamble to the UN charter on human rights) sent in police who surrounded the miners’ compounds and forced the workers back down the shafts at gunpoint. In one incident police opened fire, killing nine and injuring over 1,200.
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Oh
dear... but what about those Pass Laws?