Content note: Banner carrying a white-supremacist slogan, South Africa 1922. This object is shown as it was published. Why
Fordsburg Women's Commando Marching Under a 'Fight and Unite for a White S.A.' Banner (1922)
A newspaper photograph of women marching in Fordsburg behind a banner that reads 'Workers of the World Fight and Unite for a White S.A.' The banner takes the stock internationalist slogan 'Workers of the World, Unite' and re-attaches it to a racially exclusive aim, so the borrowed class slogan carries the new demand; the printed caption says the women were marching to a strike meeting.
- Date
- 1922
- Period
- Interwar
- Made by
- Striking white mine workers' commandos, Fordsburg, Johannesburg (Fordsburg Women's Commando), Rand strike of 1922
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Country
- South Africa
- Medium
- Photograph
- Issuer type
- Movement
- Regime
- Smuts Government
- Leader
- Jan Smuts
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Themes
- Labor, Race and ethnicity
- Event
- Rand Revolt 1922
- Techniques
- Transfer
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (credit: University of the Witwatersrand digital archives), retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Commons: Public domain; published 1922 (pre-1931, US PD)
Unknown photographer, 1922; University of the Witwatersrand digital archives, via Wikimedia Commons
Text on the object
[handwritten, top:] 11/II/22 [banner:] [WORK]ERS OF THE WORLD FIGHT AND UNITE FOR A WHITE S.A. [printed caption:] Fordsburg Women's Commando marching to the strike meeting in town this morning.
The first letters of 'Workers' on the banner are obscured by folds and are supplied from the visible remainder. Banner is already in English; no translation needed.
