Transvaal mine managers see no need to ban dagga

A Transvaal inquiry in 1908 found little support among responding mine managers and officials for banning dagga, the local name for cannabis.^[1] Many described moderate use and worried that restrictions would make it harder to recruit African men to the gold mines.^[1]

Officials asked whether smoking harmed the workforce

The Government Native Labour Bureau questioned mine inspectors and pass officers about how much cannabis was used, by whom and with what effects.^[1] The survey came as colonial officials were considering whether to follow restrictions imposed elsewhere.^[1]

The neighbouring Orange River Colony had prohibited supplying and receiving cannabis.^[1] In the Transvaal, however, decisions about drugs were closely tied to labour fitness and control in the mining economy.^[1]

The questions reflected that concern: officials wanted to know whether dagga made workers incapable of doing their jobs and whether prohibition would help.^[1]

Recruitment mattered as much as intoxication

Responses varied in their estimates of how widely cannabis was used, but generally described it as moderate and unproblematic.^[1] Several respondents saw no need for prohibitory legislation.^[1]

Managers warned that adding restrictions to workers’ lives could discourage men from travelling to the Rand.^[1] Some also described cannabis as helping sociability or vitality within the compounds.^[1]

Waetjen interprets this tolerance within a system concerned with keeping workers available and manageable.^[1] It grew from the interests of mine administration, alongside the practices and preferences of the workers themselves.^[1]

Workers’ health appeared in the replies

Some officials reported that miners smoked cannabis to bring on coughing, believing this helped clear inhaled dust from their lungs.^[1] Those accounts reveal contemporary ideas about relief from a dangerous working environment.^[1]

Other replies proposed restrictions on young smokers, and one linked poor work performance to combining cannabis with liquor.^[1] The survey therefore contained qualifications and disagreements within its overall resistance to prohibition.^[1]

The findings did not settle the wider debate

No action was advised on the basis of the 1908 research.^[1] A second inquiry in 1911 extended to town magistrates and again found that most responding officials did not favour a total prohibition.^[1]

National controls nevertheless followed in 1922.^[1] In South Africa, the mine surveys preserved evidence of a substantial administrative constituency that had seen a ban as unnecessary or harmful to its own labour interests.^[1]