On 4/27/12 11:09 PM, Patrick Bond wrote: > Political economy traditions in South Africa * > > By Patrick Bond > > version in the /Encyclopedia of South Africa/ (edited by Sean Jacobs and > Krista Johnson), Boulder, Lynne Rienner > > The study of South African political economy has an extraordinary set of > lineages. There remains in political economic research an excellent > potential for praxis-based scholarship and for revitalizing what was > once a world-leading intellectual tradition, even if there is not a > single program in a tertiary educational institution that carries its name. >
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/origins/testing_the_brenner_thesis.htm For all of its devotion to British exceptionalism, the Brenner thesis would seem ill equipped to explain why British rule failed to abolish extra-economic forms of coercion in its most important colonial holding: South Africa. Indeed, it was here where non-market forms of exploitation helped to successfully propel the nation into the front ranks of capitalism on the continent. In keeping with laws already enacted in the rest of the British Empire, slavery was abolished in 1834. But the devotion to freedom was only lukewarm. Great Britain soon found ways to reintroduce other forms of labor conscription.14 Bristling at the abolition of slavery, Boer farmers withdrew into the east and northeast, where they would be allowed to pursue religious freedom while trafficking in human beings. Their KhoiKhoi slaves could be relied on for the dirty work on their farms. According to Bernard Magubane, "the Boers stood for outdated slavery on a petty scale, the foundation of their patriarchal peasant economy, the British colonist represented large-scale capitalist exploitation of the land and Africans."15 For the British, abolitionism was not entirely altruistic. The Reverend Thomas Farrell Buxton, a prominent abolitionist, explained his goals in a letter to the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and the Civilization of Africa: "We determined to form two associations, perfectly distinct from each other, but having one common object in view, putting an end to the slave trade. One of these associations to be exclusively philanthropic in character, and designed mainly to diffuse among the African tribes the light of Christianity, and the blessing of civilization and free-labour-the other to have a commercial character, and to unite with the above objects the pursuit of private enterprise and profit."16 Emulating the old masters of the Spanish empire, British colonial administrators in South Africa employed indigenous feudal institutions on behalf of capitalist exploitation. The Spaniards made cunning use of the Incan 'mi'ita' while the British co-opted local chiefs to supply labor gangs. Peter Lionel Wickins writes: "Some justification for the use of forced labour was found in tribal custom, which allowed for service to a chief (tribute labour) or to the community (communal labour). The purpose of tribute labour was to support the chief in his office and to enable him to perform his public duties, such as hospitality to strangers and the relief of the hungry in time of dearth. But with the spread of a money economy chiefs became acquisitive and the system was abused. Tribesmen found themselves compelled to cultivate their chief's land, not in the tribal interest, but purely for his personal gain; or even sent off to work as contract labourers on the, mines, either individually or, as was sometimes the case in South Africa, in age-regiments."17 Just one year after abolishing slavery, the British colonial government in South Africa passed an ordinance in 1835 requiring ex-slaves to become apprentices to their previous owners. The blacks reacted by deserting or damaging property. The British followed up with a new ordinance in 1841 that established criminal sanctions for breach of contract, but this solution proved short-lived as well. The ruling class next toyed with the idea of importing convicts from England, a practice that had succeeded in Australia. Finally, they passed an 1853 ordinance that provided means of subsistence and a small cash wage based on contract. Violations of the contract were punishable by a stiff prison sentence. Despite verbal commitments to transforming South Africa along free market lines, reality somehow fell short of the ideal. As happens almost universally in colonial settings where there is a surplus of arable land and a shortage of labor, the bourgeoisie resorts to extra-economic coercion to extract raw materials for export. In South Africa, this took the form of forced migrant labor, particularly in the gold mining sector. In another volume, Wickins once again unveils the actual practices that evolved despite the British verbal commitment to free labor: "In the later nineteenth century, when the shortage of labour for White enterprises was becoming acute, three forms of compulsion were attempted: firstly, taxation - capitation (poll) or hearth (hut) tax - which served a dual purpose of providing revenue and forcing Blacks to earn sufficient cash to meet their obligations; secondly, so-called squatters laws to restrict the number of Africans resident on European farms; and thirdly, attempts to substitute individual tenure for communal title in the reserves. To these forms of coercion must be added the pass laws. These were not conducive to the labour mobility that hard-pressed employers were anxious to foster, but they did give those who had labour a hold on their workers. This control was strengthened by other legislative measures, such as the Masters and Servants Laws and the Native Labour Regulation Act of 1911. The best-known example of a labour tax was the annual poll tax (of 10 shillings) imposed by the Glen Grey Act of 1894 in the Cape on all African men in certain districts who were not freeholders or regular lessees or who had not served a stipulated minimum period in wage labour during the year. The labour tax was in fact ineffective and was repealed in 1905. The Act also authorised the issue of individual title deeds in the Glen Grey district near Queenstown, at least partly with the intention of forcing on to the labour market those unable to acquire and exploit individual plots efficiently. This part of its provisions, too, did not fulfil the hopes placed in it. There was no marked drift from the countryside of people deprived of access to land by the spread of individual tenure."18 The stakes were incalculable. According to South African economist, the Witwatersrand would have yielded 6,000 pounds worth of gold if a sufficient labor force had been deployed to dig it from the earth. The reserves and the migrant-labor system made the realization of such a bounty of surplus value possible. Migrant workers were snared in the same web that colonists had set from the very beginning whenever they initiated the process of primitive accumulation: they were forced to seek work in the mines in order to avoid arrest for failure to pay taxes. Ironically, Magubane cites Maurice Dobb, whom Brenner describes as a forerunner, to explain the need for forced labor in South Africa: "When the supply of labor for any new enterprise was insufficiently plentiful, for example in mining, it was not uncommon for the Crown to grant the right of impressments to the entrepreneur or to require that convicts be assigned to the work under penalty of hanging if they were refractory or if they absconded."19 The development of mining also created opportunities for the capitalist class, especially in light of the inexplicable desire of native Africans to subsist through farming rather than dig for diamonds or gold at a pittance. This led to the establishment of a mixture of wage and forced, contract labor. An 1872 proclamation declared that mine owners were obligated to pay a wage to a miner, while he would be forced to carry a pass when he was not at the site. Since diamonds were extremely valuable, labor conditions became prison-like. All sorts of extra-economic controls were instituted to keep workers in line. These controls were utterly necessary for the growth of capitalism, since free market compulsion would have not sufficed. The biggest obstacle to the mine owners' plans, however, was the relative prosperity of the African peasant who was able to not only subsist on the fertile soil, but sell a surplus in the commercial marketplace. This development was most pronounced in the Cape Colony. Taking pity on the understaffed gold mining companies, the state enacted a migrant labor system in the 1890s. Contracts to work in these prison-like compounds were made more palatable through prostitution and saloons (shebeens). And if an African preferred subsistence farming to mining, legislation could bend his will to the greater good of capitalist development. The Glen Gray Act of 1894 imposed a ten-shilling tax on all men in the Cape colony who could not prove that they had been in wage employment for three months in every year. These sorts of laws persisted throughout the twentieth century as South Africa was entering the ranks of the developed world. The vast wealth of South Africa rests on mining and mining, which in turn rested on unfree labor through the 1970s. Workers who quit a contract were characterized as "deserters" by the authorities and subject to arrest. A boycott by American unions finally abolished such "master and servants" acts, but long after the damage had been done. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
