Afrym
Music & Dance

The Gumboot Dance: Rhythm From South Africa's Mines

Slapping rubber boots, stamping feet and jangling bottle caps. The gumboot dance grew out of the harsh world of South Africa's mines and became a celebrated art form.

By Amos Hope Jnr · · 4 min read

A line of dancers stands perfectly still, dressed in work clothes and tall rubber boots. Then the leader shouts a command, and they explode into motion: stamping, kicking and slapping the sides of their boots with their hands, in sharp, intricate rhythms. The sound is like drumming, but there are no drums. The dancers' bodies and boots are the instruments. Sometimes they are joined by a guitar or a concertina. This is the gumboot dance, known in isiZulu as isicathulo ("shoe"), one of the most distinctive dance forms of South Africa.

Born underground

The story of the gumboot dance begins with the gold mines of the Witwatersrand, around Johannesburg, after gold was discovered there in 1886. The mines drew huge numbers of migrant workers, Black men from across southern Africa: from rural South Africa, Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, Botswana and elsewhere. Under the migrant labour system, they lived in crowded, single-sex hostels or compounds, often far from their families for months or years at a time.

Conditions underground were brutal. Mine shafts were often flooded with water, hot, dark and dangerous. To protect their feet, mine owners issued rubber boots, called gumboots, which were cheaper than draining the mines.

A language of rhythm

According to popular accounts, the gumboot dance developed partly as a form of communication. Workers were often forbidden to talk while working, and in the noise and darkness of the mines, some say they slapped their boots and rattled their ankle chains to send messages to one another. Over time, these sounds became rhythms, and rhythms became dances.

Whether or not this story is entirely accurate, scholars agree that the dance drew on many sources: traditional dances brought by workers from their home regions, such as the stamping dances of the Zulu and other peoples; the drills and marching of missionary schools and the military; and the competition between groups of workers in the compounds. Some researchers trace an important early form of gumboot dance to mission schools and dockworkers in Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal, where dancing in boots was a popular entertainment.

Dance as resistance and release

In the compounds, dancing was one of the few forms of entertainment and self-expression available to workers. It allowed them to release tension, express their identity and build solidarity with others from the same region or language group.

Mine managers sometimes encouraged dance teams and competitions, seeing them as a way to keep workers content and to entertain visitors. But dancers often used the performances to express criticism: making fun of bosses, mimicking overseers and singing songs about low wages, harsh conditions and homesickness, sometimes in languages the bosses did not understand. The dance was both a performance for others and a private language of the workers themselves.

How the dance works

Gumboot dancing usually involves:

  • A team of dancers in matching work clothes, boots and sometimes hard hats.
  • A leader who calls out commands and directs the sequences.
  • Slapping the boots with the hands, stamping the feet, clapping and kicking, creating complex, interlocking rhythms.
  • Ankle bells, bottle caps or other jingles attached to the boots, to add sound.
  • Accompaniment, sometimes by guitar, concertina or singing, though many routines are performed with the dancers' own rhythms alone.
  • Humour and theatricality, including mime and playful competition between dancers.

From the mines to the stage

Over the 20th century, gumboot dancing spread beyond the mines. It was performed at community events, in schools, for tourists and at festivals. Today, it is taught to children across South Africa and performed by professional dance companies on stages around the world. Observers have often compared it with the step dancing of African American fraternities and sororities, which also turns the body into a percussion instrument.

The American musician Paul Simon featured South African musicians on his 1986 album Graceland, which includes a song titled "Gumboots", recorded with the Boyoyo Boys.

A cousin of isicathamiya

The gumboot dance shares its roots in the migrant labour system with isicathamiya, the soft-stepping a cappella singing of Zulu migrant workers, made famous by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, as described in our story on isicathamiya. Both art forms emerged from hostels and compounds, where men far from home created beauty and community in difficult conditions.

Why it matters

The gumboot dance turns tools of hard labour into instruments of art. It began in one of the harshest working environments imaginable, among men separated from their families and denied their rights, and it became a joyful, energetic performance celebrated worldwide. Every slap of a rubber boot carries a memory of the mines, and of the creativity and resilience of the people who worked in them.

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