diseases on the mines. During
1931, the
Miners' Pthisis Medical Bureau classified 1,370 African miners as suffering
from tuberculosis or lung diseases, or both, caused by mining.v" Living
conditions were appalling. Down to World War II and beyond, only
1
percent of African mine workers were legally eligible for family housing.
The rest were housed, as in the past, in single-sex compounds with between
three and six thousand men to a compound. Those built before ,world War
I housed between sixty and ninety men to a dormitory; those built during
the 1930S, about twenty. Beds were not supplied. Men either slept on the
short concrete bunks or made or bought wooden beds designed to fit them.
The food, though nutritious,
was unattractive and monotonous.
Most
mines had no dining rooms and men ate outside or in their dormitories. 45
The mines were run on military lines. The officers-the
shift bosses and
compound
managers-were
white; the noncommissioned
officers-the
underground
"boss-boys" and compound "indunas" -as
well as the mass
of laborers, were black. No women were allowed in the compounds.w
The state used its power to apply racial discrimination in manufacturing
industries and public works. For this purpose, the Hertzog government