THESEGREGATIONERA
arrested strike leaders, drove men underground at bayonet point, killed 12
men, and injured more than
1,200.
The Chamber of Mines then an-
nounced that the "Gold Mining Industry considers that trade-unionism as
practised by Europeans is still beyond the understanding of the tribal
Native....
A trade union organisation .... would not only be useless, but
detrimental to the ordinary mine Native in his present stage of develop-
ment." The chamber's victory broke the African Mineworkers Union and
seriously weakened the Council of Non-European Trade Unions.V
Between 1939 and 1948, the racial division among South African work-
ers became sharper than before. This was largely because the wartime
expansion involved changes in the structure of manufacturing industries.
Before the war, for example, the Transvaal garment industry provided
employment for many Afrikaner women who had moved from the farms to
the towns. During the war, however, the expansion of the garment industry
led to the employment of increasing numbers of Coloured and African
women. Solly Sachs, an energetic socialist leader of the Garment Workers'
Union, and several remarkable Afrikaner women, tried to maintain work-
ers' solidarity across the color line, but by 1948 the Garment Workers