"'Natal is a White Man's Land': Anti-Asianism and Pro-White Labour Politics in Colonial Natal, c. 1906-1909". (original) (raw)
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1990
Was 1948 a turning point in the relation between agrarian capital and the state? Indeed-according to the notoriously impermanent maps that many historians have drawn. But stop, look back, look left, and look back again-and the crossroads of apartheid may disappear. Consider the usual story. From the 1920s, there was a growing farm labour shortage. But the Native Affairs Department (NAO) adhered to its ethic of paternalistic protection, and argued that a solution was 'above all dependent on farmers' preparedness to offer higher wages'. It would not aid agriculturists 'if this entailed artificially cheapening the price of labour'. 1 During the urban booms of the 1930s and 1940s, labour tenants fled in droves to towns. Among the farmers worst affected were those in the Transvaal, where labour tenancy was 'the only form' of acquiring workers in the early 1930s. 2 Landlords not only demanded tighter influx control and labour bureaux: in 1945 the South African Agricultural Union (SAAU) also urged a permanent separation of urban and rural workforces, preventing full time farm workers from moving to town. But the state reflected the interests of mining and manufacturing capital, and the proposals fell on deaf ears. Indeed, the NAD continued to advise improved working conditions, and to divert black labour to industry. Due partly to the state's 'reluctance' to become 'the pivot of forced labour measures', Transvaal agriculturists deserted the United Party (UP) in the May 1948 elections. 3 Almost immediately, the repressive apartheid regime began supporting capitalist landlords. In 1949 legislation was amended to 'permit groups of farmers to recruit' labour; a crucial bill establishing labour bureaux was drafted in consultation with the SAAU, which was afforded a 'privileged hearing' in the NAD. 4 Influx control was not only tightened: from 1954 'petty offenders' were also hijacked to farms. 5 The apartheid state 'sought primarily to secure a stable labour supply for agriculture' by implementing the SAAU's proposals-and by the late 1950s, apartheid had succeeded. Hence the 'coming to power of the Nationalist party...marked a turning point in the class struggle in the countryside.' 7 Although this story chimes agreeably with opposition to the apartheid state, it is also economical with the truth. Some dates are dubious; numerous facts are fantasies; many premises are perverse. But the silences are as disturbing as the sophisms. By focusing on the Transvaal, this account attempts to address some of the problems of too much politics chasing too little data. First, a regional economic system shaped the consciousness of farmers and the contours of state intervention. Subcontinental labour mobilization was 'perhaps the single most important feature of the early industrialization of South Africa', and landlords were all too aware that when 'the Native... is exploiting the farmer', 'the only way to counteract this is to import labour.' 8 Cries of 'labour shortage' in the 1930s culminated not in requests for influx control-debt was far more potent than passes in tying workers to farms-but in demands for apparatchiks' aid in procuring black immigrants. 9 State
New Contree a Journal of Historical and Human Sciences For Southern Africa, 2011
In die historiografie van die Anglo-Boereoorlog (1899-1902 het die vooroorlogse bestuur van Britse onderdane wat historiese, kulturele en bloed bande met die republieke gehad het tot dusver min aandag geniet. In die lig hiervan, word in die artikel die bestuur deur die Kolonie van Natal van hul Afrikaner onderdane, in die opbou tot die oorlog, onder die loep geneem. Deur gebruik te maak van 'n teoretiese raamwerk met lojaliteit as 'n fokus word die bestuur van Natal Afrikaners deur die Natalse owerhede in terme van vuurwapen besit; betrokkenheid in die militêre magte en algemene optrede, ondersoek. Hoewel Natal Afrikaners, in die algemeen slegs dislojaal in woord en denke en nie in daad was nie, het die Natalse owerhede dit anders beskou. Vir laasgenoemde was 'n simpatieke lojaliteit teenoor die republieke niks anders as 'n dislojaliteit teenoor die Natalse en imperiale owerhede nie. As gevolg daarvan, ondanks die feit dat min bewyse daarvoor bestaan het, is Natal Afrikaners in die aanloop tot die oorlog deur hul regering gewantrou en met die uitbreek van die oorlog versaak.
Working Class Action and Informal Trade on the Durban Docks, 1930s-1950s
In this article, I discuss the limited archival and other sources we have about three important African dock leaders in Durban between 1931 and 1949: Dick Mate, Amos Gumede, and Zulu Phungula. Scholars have described Phungula in particular as a proletarian hero. However, the actions and discourse of these leaders exhibit a distinctive combination of working class radicalism and a concern for the interests of African petty traders. Their thinking was also often characterised by economic nationalism and anti-Indian sentiments. Interviews with some of the leaders of the 1958 dock strikes demonstrate a similar mixture of working class and entrepreneurial concerns. I argue that these seemingly contradictory actions and discourses may not be inconsistent. The working class discourse was not simply an attempt by a petty bourgeoisie to appeal to African workers, as it was for some other African leaders, and Zulu nationalism was not a surrogate for repressed working class action. Instead, these different approaches to socio-economic advancement reflected the livelihood strategies of many dock workers, who combined formal wage labour with informal commercial enterprises. Moreover, their employment on the docks made these small-scale businesses possible and these activities were thus not just two separate sources of income; they were functionally linked and integral parts of households’ livelihood strategies.
The Protector, Plantocracy, and Indentured Labour in Natal, 1860–1911
Pacific Historical Review, 2018
Between 1860 and 1911, a total of 152,641 Indian indentured workers arrived in the then British Colony of Natal. The first group of workers who returned home in 1871 complained of ill-treatment and abuse by employers and the Indian government refused to sanction further allotments of labourers until the Natal government investigated their complaints. The ensuing Coolie Commission of 1872 called for the appointment of a Protector of Indian Immigrants, as one of several recommendations. The Natal Government duly complied as the Colony was desperate for labour. Such officials were also appointed in other colonial contexts around this time. Instances of worker abuse, however, continued throughout the period of indenture in Natal, notwithstanding some observers’ claim that the appointment of a Protector was a watershed moment for bonded labour. It appears that the vastness of the area under the Protector’s jurisdiction and the enormous power of planters made it difficult for Protectors t...
South African Historical Journal, 2020
South Africa’s system of migrant labour is widely accepted as being an exploitative system that was based on the degree to which the Chamber of Mines could derive a profit from cheap labour. The exploitation and suffering that mine labour and recruitment produced, however, tells us only part of a story. Why were people so willing to become migrant labourers – particularly on gold mines – in the first place? This is all the more important because it has been shown that African peasants responded very positively to market forces in the last third of the nineteenth century, and thus would have all the more reason to remain in their rural homes. As in the Caribbean, the Chamber of Mines in South Africa realised that active recruitment was required to launch large-scale migration from one region of Africa into another. But what did this active coercion involve? This paper primarily uses archival and pictorial records to explore how workers could sell their labour so cheaply at the expense of their families and rural homes. Extensive use has been made of the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA) and Native Recruiting Corporation (NRC) archives at the University of Johannesburg, as well as personal accounts of ex-traders in the Transkei. These have been used to inform an exploration of how the larger phenomenon of migration was propped up by false advertising, debt and extortion of mineworkers in the Eastern Cape.
The “labour aristocracy” in the early 20th-century South Africa
Chinese Sociological Dialogue, 2017
Drawing on a review of key literature, this article analyses the labour aristocracy in early 20th-century South Africa, going beyond traditional conceptual and territorial boundaries created through a methodological nationalism and Eurocentrism since the emergence of labour history as an academic discipline. It identifies some key dimensions attributed to the labour aristocracy in mainstream approaches that focused on Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and attempts to illustrate how these could be considered in analysing the particular South African case. The article mainly focuses on how the understanding of labour aristocracy would be reconstructed by demonstrating an aristocracy of labour that merges with an aristocracy of colour in South Africa.