ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the reaction of white mineworkers on Zambia’s Copperbelt to the country’s looming independence, or more accurately the lack of reaction. In the early 1960s, suddenly, and unexpectedly, the Copperbelt’s white inhabitants found themselves on the northern edge of white-ruled Southern Africa, with the British Empire unravelling around them. It might be expected that this would prompt strenuous and protracted resistance to decolonisation from white mineworkers, yet it did not. Instead, in early 1963 white workers at one of the largest mines, Mufulira Mine, embarked on one of the longest strikes in the region’s history over the seemingly trivial issue of bonus forms. This chapter explores tis strike and its significance and argues that this episode offers insights into the operation and roots of racial identity and privilege. The privileged position of whites on the Copperbelt did not depend on the colonial political order and was instead based on their capacity to extract high wages from the copper industry through racialised collective action. Consequently, their fortunes were not tied as closely to the state as were white workers elsewhere in the region, and so were unwilling to defend colonial rule.
