Qualla: 1935 Copperbelt strike

1935 Copperbelt strike: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 29 May 1935, near the Roan Antelope copper mine in what was then Northern Rhodesia, colonial police opened fire into a crowd of protesting African miners. Six men were killed. Seventeen more were wounded. The strike ended that day. In the language of the British administration, it was a disturbance that had been contained. In another language, one not yet written down in 1935, it was the first thing.

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1935 Copperbelt strike: The Copperbelt

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Copperbelt was not ancient. In 1935 it was barely a decade old as an industrial region. The Roan Antelope and Nkana mines had only started commercial production in 1931. But the copper lying beneath this stretch of what is now Zambia had been known for a very long time, and C...

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1935 Copperbelt strike: The Tax

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The specific grievance that lit the fuse was a hut tax - a colonial instrument introduced by the BSAC in 1901 in North-Eastern Rhodesia and rolled out in North-Western Rhodesia between 1904 and 1913. The tax was enormous. In some cases it represented six months of wages. It was n...

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1935 Copperbelt strike: Depression on the Belt

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Great Depression reached the Copperbelt through the collapse of European copper prices. In February 1931 the Mkubwa mine shut down. The Chamishi, Nchanga, and Mulfira mines followed over the next few months. Construction at Roan Antelope and Nkana was just wrapping up. The re...

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1935 Copperbelt strike: Twenty-Nine May

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The strike began at Nkana on 27 May 1935 and collapsed the following day for lack of coordination. Then it ignited at Roan Antelope, where some of the tribal leaders within the compound joined the strikers and gave the action coherence. On 29 May a large crowd gathered outside a ...

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1935 Copperbelt strike: What Started That Day

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The strike did not win higher wages. It did not abolish the tax. It did not secure access to the mines reserved for Europeans. By those measures it failed. By another measure it succeeded completely. It was the first organized industrial action in Northern Rhodesia. Historians po...

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