ABSTRACT
This chapter examines why and how the mining companies, and the white workers, became involved in racial discrimination, and a system of racial discrimination came to be operating in the gold mining industry. It explores what significance this system had for relations between the groups operating it. The job colour bar was a contradiction of profit maximisation by the mining companies. Complimentary to this accommodation of the job colour bar in skilled work was a determination to restrict unskilled work to non-white workers. Few things filled the companies with greater alarm than the White Labour Policy. The reason was straightforward: the employment of politically free workers rather than ultra-exploitable workers in unskilled labour, in which about 90 per cent of the labour force was employed, would have had a disastrous effect on profitability. While posing the threat of displacement to the white mine workers, the exploitation colour bars thus formed the foundation stone of their employment.
