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5 w Marashea on the Mines The Expansion Era The small fraternity of scholars who have studied the Marashea consider the gangs to be an urban phenomenon that peaked on the Rand in the 1950s but then withered away as a result of increased police pressure and tightening influx controls. Bonner argues that “the more rigorous application of the pass laws began to take its toll on confidence and strength so that by the mid-1960s the Russians’ heyday had come and gone.” Coplan acknowledges that the Marashea has continued to the present day but maintains that “harsh enforcement of apartheid and influx control regulations in the mid-1960s reduced formal Russianism.”1 To be fair, Bonner’s research focused solely on the Marashea on the Rand in the 1950s, and Coplan mentions the Russians only in passing. Nonetheless, these assumptions are erroneous. The 1950s and 1960s were a turning point in Marashea history but not one that marked a decline . Rather, this period was a watershed in the expansion and reorientation of the Marashea, which established a powerful presence in the Free State and far West Rand goldfields. The Russian gangs employed a range of strategies that facilitated their survival in South Africa, but the single most critical factor in the society’s survival and expansion over the past fifty years has been its association with the mines. expansion Following the 1963 passage of the Aliens Control Act, the number of Marashea employed in urban areas other than as mineworkers decreased accordingly. 115 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. Dunbar Moodie notes that, “the earlier pattern of proletarianized Sotho working one or two shifts on the mines and then moving into secondary industry was hampered if not stopped altogether by the 1963 legislation.”2 By contrast the number of Basotho working on the mines expanded dramatically, especially following the opening of the Free State mines in the 1950s. By the mid1970s over one hundred thousand Basotho men worked on South African mines, and “Lesotho nationals became heavily concentrated on Free State mines because of their proximity to Lesotho.”3 In this same period, mineworkers experienced significant wage increases.4 Basotho women and women from the various homelands migrated to the Free State to service mineworkers , and the Russians moved in to capitalize on these developments. With urban employment more difficult to obtain, the divide between Russians who worked on the mines and their unemployed compatriots became increasingly evident. These distinctions were not absolute in that some mineworkers augmented their earnings through illegal weekend activities; also men drifted between these categories, working for a period and then “loafing,” depending on family circumstances, personal preference, and the availability of employment. However, mineworkers’ wages remained the one stable financial source available to the Marashea, and the gangs, which had always had members working on the mines, became more mine oriented after the 1950s. Marashea in the Free State and other mining areas established informal settlements on farm properties adjacent to mines. In so doing, Marashea gangs strategically placed themselves close to their target market. Many mineworkers frequented nearby Marashea settlements that supplied dances, concerts, liquor, dagga, and women rather than incur the expense and traveling time to get to urban townships. When mines were close to larger towns like Welkom, Marashea groups also established themselves in the neighboring townships. The move to the mines began while the Johannesburg Russians were at the height of their power in the 1950s. Asked when Marashea began in the Free State, ST responded, “I don’t know the year, but they started when the mines were established in the Free State. Many of the people working in Gauteng went to the Free State mines.” Many Marashea joined the society in Johannesburg in the 1940s and 1950s and then moved with their groups to the Free State, or they migrated from the Rand independently and joined newly formed groups in the Free State. These movements were noted in the press. For example, a 1956 court case revealed that Scotch Sepula, “the alleged leader of a notorious gang of Basutos on the Free State goldfields known as the Russians,” was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment on a charge of public violence stemming from a fight with a rival Russian gang...

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