The Story of a Crime the Vindication
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SEND A COPY TO YOUR FRIENDS OVERSEAS! THE STORY OF A CRIME BEING THE VINDICATION OF TH E TRANSVAAL STRIKE LEGAL DEFENCE C O M M IT T E E in connection with the Great Strike on the Witwatersrand in 1922. AWAKE, ARISE, OR BE FOR EVER FALLEN! Sold for the Benefit of the Strike Victims Dependants Relief Fund. PRICE ONE SHILLING. 28th M ay, 1924. Published by the Committee at Room No. 11, New, Trades Hall, Rissik Street. Johannesburg. South Africa (P.O. Box 125), to whom all orders for copies and subscriptions to the Fund should be sent. TABLE OF CONTENTS. ....... Chapter 1 Page 4 Origins and Issues ............................................................................ r Page 9 History of the Strike Chapter Pape 12 The lie as to the Nationalist Party (hapter 3 Page 13 The lie as to Bolshevik influences (’hapter 4 Page 16 The He as to the alleged attacks by Strikers on Natives Chapter ft Page 18 The true cause of the Strike ...................................................................... Chapter 6 Page 12 The true causes of the Outbreak ............................................................... Chapter 7 Page 28 Government by Martial Law Chapter Page 32 The Trials and Sentences ( hapter Page 37 The Report of the Mining Industry Board ....................... Chapter 10 Page m The Report of the Martial Law Commission Chapter 11 Page 44 Chronological History of the Strike ......... Chaptei 12 THE MAN From m Photograph by Rudolf Steger. Pretoria GENERAL JAN CHRISTIAN SMUTS at the age of 29 NOTE— The authenticity of this portrait has been questioned. It is an exact photographic re pro dnction of the portrait in “ The Heroes of the Boer War,” by F. Rompel of the Volk stem, published in 1903 by the late W . T. Stead. WHAT WILL HE BECOME? THE HOUR KILLED AT B E N O N I, MARCH, 1922. CHILDREN. WOMEN. MEN. Dora Tackey, age 12 years. Annie Bullard. C. B. de Villiers. Alexander Tackey, age 15 years. C. E. Lombard. Gert van Rooyen. Cyrus St. J. Watt, age 16 years. 11. M. Truter J. Jooste. S. G. Beal. Clifton Beiigelly L. I. Swartz. THE STORY OF A CRIME being THE VINDICATION OF THE DEFENCE COMMITTEE in connection with the trial by Special Criminal Courts without Juries of 195 men and 6 women, arising out of the Strike on the Witwatersrand in 1922. CHAPTER I. ORIGINS AND ISSUES. This Committee was formed by the Trades Unions on the Witwatersrand to provide for the defence of the prisoners who were indicted for murder, treason, sedition and other felonies in connection with the great Strike on the Witwatersrand in the Transvaal, which commenced on the 2nd of January and ended on the 17th of March, 1922. The funds were subscribed mainly by those Trade Unions, and the Committee was composed of representatives of the fol- lowing Trades Unions:— Amalgamated Engineering Union. Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers. Associated Building Trades Union. Boilermakers, Ironworkers and Shipbuilders’ Society. Buildings Workers Industrial Union. National Vehicle Builders Union. S.A. Engine Drivers and Firemen’s Association. S.A. Ironmoulders Union. S.A. Mine Workers Union. South African Typographical Union. with the addition of the Chairman, then and now, of the Provincial Council of the Transvaal, and the Chief Magistrate of Johannesburg in 1916— 19. No money was received from the Communist Party or any other political party, or from any foreign source. In all but four cases these Accused had been deprived of their right under the Magna Charta to be tried by Jury, by a provision in the Indemnity Act passed after the alleged offence that trial by Jury might be denied in Martial Law Areas “ if the Attorney General is of opinion that if the accused person were tried by Jury the ends of justice are likely to be defeated,” that is, in plain words, if the Attorney General thought a Jury would be likely to acquit. By similar provisions Trial by Jury has for the past ten years practically been abolished in cases arising out of Labour disputes in South Africa. One result of that was that on this occasion at least four innocent men were convicted of murder, and were sentenced to death, and at least two innocent men were hanged, one of them after a second trial, the first Court having been unable to agree. The four men tried by Jury had to be so tried as the locality of the alleged offence was outside the areas in which Martial Law was proclaimed. They were all acquitted. Three Special Crim inal Courts of two or three Judges were created to try the other cases and this Committee pro vided for the defence in all the cases where, as was usual, the accused was without means. In no case was the charge one of theft, robbery, or looting, nor was there so far as is known any such charge in connection with the Strike, although most of the men had drawn no wages for over two months, and although in many parts of the Witwatersrand there was no police force for weeks at the end of that period. These facts speak for themselves. The Outbreak out of which these cases arose was of a very serious character; the fighting- lasted for five days, and in the course of it at least 76 members of the Government forces, 78 strikers and 62 ordinary residents, including women and children, were killed. The civilians killed number many more than the number given, but we have no means of getting the exact figures. The Dependants Fund Committee still has 21 destitute widows and 71 fatherless chil dren on its books and that is not one third of these widows and fatherless. Rifles, machine guns, artillery, bombing aeroplanes, armoured trains and tanks were used against the Strikers and their families, and the civilian population generally. In the Town of Benoni alone (which is the only town from which we have been able to get detailed information) the civilian deaths, due mostly to bombing by aeroplane, were:— Dora Tackey, age 12 years. Alex. Tackey, age 15 years. Cyrus St. J. Watt, age 16 years. Annie Bullard (female). C. E. Lombard (female). M. M. Truter (female). C. B. de Villiers. Gert van Rooyen. J. Jooste. S. G. Beal. Clifton Pengelly. L. I. Swartz. The official explanation of these Benoni casualties was that the bombing apparatus on several aeroplanes had been put into operation accidentally by rifle bullets fired by the Strikers, although the destruction of the Benoni Trades Hall by aeroplane bombs was spoken of at the same time as " splendid marksmanship.” The men, women and children who were killed were of the governing races of this country, as were also the men who took part in the Outbreak. The sup pression of the Outbreak was followed by the arrest of 4,692 men, 62 women and 4 children, of whom only 844 men and 9 women were ever charged in any Court, and of these 657 were ultimately disposed of in Magistartes’ Courts as petty offenders. The offences alleged against the four children arrested are not known to us, as none of them were ever charged. It is obviously our first duty, to these Prisoners, to ourselves and also to the public, to give the causes and history of the Strike and of the Outbreak in which it ended, as a virulent and world wide campaign of lies has been conducted against the Strikers by the capitalistic and Gov ernment press and other agencies under the same influence. We are fully conscious of the strength of the forces against us, but we are also confident that in the future as in the past truth will in the end be made manifest and will endure. Speaking in the House of Assembly on the 19th of March, 1922 our present Prime Minister described the Outbreak as a blood bath ” and stated that the aim of the “ Rand Revolutionaries ” was to establish “ a sort of Soviet Repub lic.” On the 25th of that month the reactionary Town Council of Johannesburg resolved that it “ places on record the horror and disgust with which it regards the recent attempt to subvert law and order and hand over the City to bloodshed and outrage, and calls upon the Government to punish with proper severity those who are responsible.” On the 2 8th of February, ten days before the Outbreak started, this Town Council had turned all its employees, none of whom had committed anv offence, out of the Power Station and Tram Sheds by the use of an armed force and at the point of the bavonet without notice. At the same time they secured from London Financial houses intimately connected with the Gold Mines, a loan of £1,000,000 on what they rightlv boasted to be the most favourable terms ever granted. The London newspapers said, for instance, that there was “ for the most part only praise for his (General Smuts’ -) statesmanship in allowing the so-called Strike to develop until it was revealed as a Bolshevik or anarchial attempt to foment revolution.” that “ everywhere it is the same story — Russian gold behind a movement subversive of civilization ” and that ‘‘ the S.A. Government will, we are informed, be able to prove the existence of a wide spread Bolshevik conspiracy, and this constitutes fresh evi dence of the Bolshevik bad faith.” No vestige of this proof has as yet been forthcoming. Similar reports have been made to the Labour Party in Great Britain through Mr. Arthur Henderson, the present Home Secretarv from a tainted source on the Witwatersrand : and General Smuts has taken care to congratulate that party on its accession to power and to flatter it bv approving of the abandonment of the Singapore base as a “ great moral gesture ” whatever that vulgarity mav mean.