OVERVIEW: Disenfranchised miners in South Africa developed the gumboot dance as a way to communicate with each other underground, where the mine bosses had banned oral communication.
THE MAGIC’S IN THE BOOTS: The Story of Gumboot Dance and Other Forms of Liberation & Protest Dance in South Africa
A Global Engagements Page Created by Dylan Whitbread ’18
The Effect of the Mining Industry & The Origins of Gumboot Dance
Mining in South Africa has been a huge factor in both the development and the history of Africa’s biggest and most advanced economy. Coal, gold, diamonds and platinum are all minerals that are mined in South Africa and subsequently exported across the globe. However, the abundant wealth generated by these various natural resources has not been distributed evenly throughout the contentious history of the country, and the working conditions of those hardworking miners whose bare physical labour procures the rich minerals have remained consistently poor. The mass requirement for mine workers due to the boom of the mine industry attracted, and has continued to attract, migrant workers from all across South Africa and even from neighbouring countries such as Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The workers were migrant in the fact that they often traveled long distances and were separated from their families for extended periods of time. This was made worse by the oppressive and restrictive movement and Pass Laws established in South Africa under the apartheid regime. It was during this time that Gumboot Dancing, or Isicathulo as the Zulu call it, was born in those cavernous mines.
Working in the mines was a treacherous craft and often required hours of toilsome and repetitive hard labour. At best, the miners would have to deal with the floors of the mines being constantly flooded, whilst at worst – during the apartheid era – the workers would be chained and led into the almost-pitch-black darkness and shackled at their work stations. Mine shafts and tunnels have even been known to collapse, such as the collapse of the Coalbrook Mine in 1960, which left hundreds of workers either trapped or dead. The constantly waterlogged floors caused miners many problems, such as foot problems and ulcers, and also caused many long delays in their strenuous line of work. The white bosses eventually realised that issuing Wellington boots, which became commonly known as gumboots, to all the workers was a much cheaper solution than establishing a drainage system within the mines.
The mine workers were forbidden to speak whilst they were within the mines, and as a result the workers came up with an ingenious way to communicate amongst themselves without the strict bosses understanding. Through the stomping of their feet, the rattling of their chains and the slapping of their hands on the gumboots that they had been given, the workers sent messages to each other through the impending darkness of the mines. The workers soon began to refine their method of communication, and they evolved their percussive sounds and strong movements into a unique dance form that soon became a form of entertainment, with the workers performing for each other during their free time. The gumboot dance also developed along the docks of Durban’s harbour, where it was performed by the dock labourers that wore the same Wellington boots as the miners, due to the dangerous chemicals that they handled. The rise of anti-apartheid protests during what would become known as the Struggle – a period in which the oppressed black people within South Africa began to rise against the oppressive apartheid regime and their Bantu education system – led the gumboot dance to gain political and symbolic significance.
Oppression & Restriction Leading to Protest and Uprising
In South Africa during the 1970s, many black students – in conjunction with organizations like the Black Consciousness Movement and South African Students Organisation – began to protest and actively speak out against the apartheid government and the Bantu education system, in what has become known as the Uprisings. Bantu education was a system that denied black people access to the same educational opportunities and resources enjoyed by white South Africans and one it also required that all black students be taught in Afrikaans, the language of the oppressor. The Bantu education system also openly undermined the culture, history and identity of black people. The most famous instance of protest against this Bantu education system occurred on the 16th June 1976 – what is now known in South Africa as Youth Day and is a public holiday. On this day, between 3000 and 10000 students in the South Western Township (Soweto) of Johannesburg marched in peaceful protest towards Orlando Stadium, where the march was meant to culminate in a rally. The students were met, however, by the heavily armed South African police force who subsequently fired tear gas and eventually rounds of live ammunition at the demonstrating students.
The number of lives lost that day is not officially known, as reports vary between 23 to 200 students, however, the effect that the Soweto uprising had across the rest of South Africa and the very course of South Africa’s political direction was certainly far-reaching. The aftermath of the events of June 16, 1976, had dire consequences for the Apartheid government. Images of the police firing on peacefully demonstrating students exposed the brutality of the apartheid regime to the rest of the world, resulting in a high-level international revulsion against South Africa. Meanwhile, there was a renewed impetus and energy among the previously exiled and weakened liberation groups (like the Black Consciousness Movement and the African National Congress) as the Uprisings had spurred many new recruits to reach out and join such groups and the Struggle against apartheid. Thus, the Soweto Uprising was the first in a number of uprisings that transformed into a widespread revolt across South Africa, calling for the abolition and destruction of the oppressive apartheid government.
The video below is of Antoinette Sithole, the brother of the deceased Hector Pietersen, explaining the events that happened on that fateful day in 1976 and how she believes that the lives lost were not for nothing, as those involved in the Uprisings – in any form – had a hand in creating and crafting the South Africa that exists today.
Gumboot Dance as a Means of Liberation and Expression
Many of the protests during the times of the Uprising incorporated song and dance as a means of statement, solidarity and expression, and the same is still true of rallies and protests that occur in South Africa today. After the rise of the anti-apartheid protests during the Struggle, gumboot dancing became a voice of protest amongst the mine workers nationwide – who were still suffering against adverse working conditions and very low wages. The messages and vocals sung by these miners as they performed their gumboot dances, vocals that were subsequently sung by the local black people, began taking on a political message to fight the oppression of the government and to uplift the black community. These messages were taken and translated to a larger scale during the protests, with hundreds and thousands of protesters chanting and singing messages of political action whilst others danced and demonstrated among them. The video below could be said to be a potential representation of what such a political protest or rally might look like. Whilst these are school children in the video, one could imagine the line of gumboot dancers to be actual mine workers from the 1970s/80s, with the circular congregation around them being protesters of all ages – singing and shouting in protest – rather than the elementary school students that we see. One can certainly see the “call-and-response” type routine that transpires with the gumboot dancers, and during the times of the Struggle these “call-and-response” routines would have been embedded with political messages.
Gilbert and Tompkins, in Post-Colonial drama: Theory, Practice, Politics, begin to outline the effects that dance and demonstration can have within a community that has been oppressed: “By encoding identity through movement, dance often functions as a mode of empowerment for oppressed characters, particularly when their attempts to articulate themselves verbally have been compromised by the imposition of an alien language” (Gilbert & Tompkins, 240). This is the very reason that the gumboot dance, and other forms of political protest such as the Toyi Toyi, gained such significance to the protesters and the black community outright, as this was the physical and demonstrative form in which they could express the discourse that they had experienced, in a means that could not be silenced significantly by the restrictive laws they were subject to under the apartheid regime. Gilbert and Tompkins also speak of the efficacious effect that dance has in shaping a firm identity amongst those that face and experience struggle, allowing the oppressed to break away from those conventions and restrictions placed upon them by the oppressor: “Dance emerges as a locus of struggle in producing and representing individual and cultural identity. As a site of competing ideologies, dance also offers potential liberation from imperialist representation through the construction of an active, moving body that ‘speaks’ its own forms of corporeality” (Glibert & Tompkins, 242).
Gumboot Dance on Stage
The gumboot dance has found its way onto the theater stage on numerous occasions, both in South Africa and around the world. After the first democratic election in 1994, that saw Nelson Mandela elected as President of South Africa after spending 27 years in the notorious prison of Robben Island, gumboot dancing as a form translated from protestational to tourist attraction, with many groups staging performances in South Africa whilst many more (such as The Black Umfolozi dance group) have gone on to tour the world. Stimela, a production that has been performed across the globe in places such as The Royal Theatre in New Zealand, seeks to turn the gumboot dance form into a theatrical musical. Another popular group, Jazzart, sought to demonstrate that gumboot dance (and dance as a whole) could transcend such barriers as culture and race, whilst embracing the differences between people: “Jazzart, a group of about twenty artists of varied racial and performance backgrounds, actively work to combine dance forms in their productions. Their 1994 trio of pieces was composed of performance styles that thematically and physically suggested ways of achieving social integration without erasing differences” (Gilbert & Tompkins, 241-2). Whatever the thematic and performance choices for gumboot performance on stage, the commonality between them lies in the timeless message of hope, equality and freedom that radiated from gumboot dance performance during the Struggle and the political uprisings of the 1970s.
Continuation: Other Forms of Protest/Liberation Dance in South Africa
There are many forms of dance in South Africa that derive their origins from the time of struggle faced during apartheid, like the gumboot dance and the Toyi Toyi. So too, in South Africa today, are there dance forms that have their roots in the apartheid era, but continue to grow and be defined in the face of new struggle. Poverty, uneven wealth distribution, excessive crime, and a lack of access to education and other basic needs are all problems that face many people growing up and living in the new South Africa. The video below portrays one of these dance forms that has continued to grow out of the new socio-economic difficulty, Pantsula, and how the dance form itself is both a means of expression for the dancers, but also a means of escape from the drugs, crime and other difficulties that surround the dancers in the impoverished areas in which they reside.
Sources Used:
Pogrund B., (2010), The 435 SA miners who didn’t make it, from Times Live, 14 October, [online], Available at www.timeslive.co.za [Accessed: 20 December 2012]
Lesole’s Dance Project/ South African Gumboots. Dir. Bess, Stephen A. Perf. Lesole’s Dance Project. 2007.
The Black Umfolosi 5 – Gumboot Dance. Dir. Black Umfolosi Music. Black Umfolosi Music, 2011. Youtube.
Cutts, Robert. “Hector Pietersen.” (2007) Print.
Cutts, Robert. “Soweto, 16 June 1976.” Print.
Gilbert, Helen, and Joanne Tompkins. Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics., 2002. Print.
“The June 16 Soweto Uprising.” South African History Online. 7/21/2016 2016. Web. <http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising>.
Kellerman, Stefani. “The History of Gumboot Dancing.” Dreams to Reality. 10/5/2014 2014. Web. <http://www.dreamstoreality.co.za/the-history-of-gumboot-dancing/>.
Kwok, Aaron. “Isicathulo.” Project Malawi. 2008. Web. <http://kilby.sac.on.ca/activitiesclubs/outreach/malawi/isicathulo.htm>.
Laura SA. “Gumboot Dancers. Gumboot Dance Performed by Mine Workers in South Africa.” (2007) Print.
Stimela Musical Promo. Dir. Motloung, Thapelo. Mthakathi Entertainment, 2015. Youtube.
The Coolest Dance You’Ve Never Heard of: Pantsula. Dir. Stories. 2015. Youtube.
Unknown Author. “Bantu Education.” South Africa: Overcoming Apartheid, Building Democracy. 2011. Web. <http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/sidebar.php?id=65-258-2>.
Black Umfolosi – Live at Oxford Folk Festival – Gumboot Dance. —. 2010. Youtube.
Ram Reel: Antoinette Sithole: The Soweto Uprising. Dir. WSSUrampages. 2009. Youtube.
