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Getting Away with Slavery: Capitalist Farmers, Foreigners and Forced Labour in the Transvaal, c1920-1950

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Helen Bradford (1990). Getting Away with Slavery: Capitalist Farmers, Foreigners and Forced Labour in the Transvaal, c1920-1950. History Workshop conference, 'Structure and Experience in the Making of Apartheid', 6-10 February 1990. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (History Workshop).
Type conference paper
Scope Economics and economic history of apartheid
Method archival narrative
Period studied 1920–1950
Regions Transvaal, eastern Transvaal (Bethal, Middelburg, Witbank), northern Transvaal (Louis Trichardt, Limpopo border), Free State, Rhodesias, Nyasaland and Mozambique as labour sources
Themes agriculture land, labour markets wages, mining migrant labour, business and state, politics ideology elections, bantustans removals influx, resistance social movements, origins segregation
Citation key bradford1990

Argument

Bradford challenges the usual story that 1948 marked a turning point, with a paternalist pre-1948 Native Affairs Department (NAD) giving way to an apartheid state serving farmers. She argues that large capitalist farmers in the eastern and northern Transvaal met their labour shortage with foreign migrants, convicts, children and later pass-law offenders, supplied through recruiters, labour bureaux and state schemes. Pact and United Party (UP) officials sanctioned and organised this coercion. The UP's farm labour schemes of the 1940s, and the backlash from Bethal farmers they provoked, laid the foundations apartheid built on, and may even have helped the UP lose in 1948. State policy was in practice shaped by capital accumulation, uneven development and black resistance more than by the shifts of government. The argument rests on archival reconstruction of the labour bureau, recruiting networks and schemes, and it calls for disaggregating 'farmers'.

Evidence and method

Mainly Transvaal Archives records of the Native Affairs Department (NTS files) and the Government Native Labour Bureau (GNLB), including correspondence, minutes of liaison committee meetings and inquiry evidence. Also the SAIRR Farm Labour report (1939), the Native Farm Labour Committee report (1937-39), Department of Agriculture reports, the Handbook of Agricultural Statistics, newspapers (Star, Sunday Times), oral history interviews (Wits African Studies Institute Oral History Project), and secondary works (Jeeves, Phimister, Yudelman, Morris, Marcus, Van Onselen, Scott, Carlson).

Place in the debates

Findings

  • Farmers' 1930s demands for state help with labour focused on procuring foreign immigrants rather than on influx control. (p. 2)

    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.

  • Labour was a major cost, which explains maize farmers' hunger for cheap foreign workers. (p. 5)

    But hired labour often constituted an enormous 35 - 50% of running expenses excluding interest

  • The Pact-era state labour bureau supplied foreign workers on longer contracts and halved wages relative to private recruiters. (p. 6)

    The wage - after farmers promptly cut it to 20-25S. - was half.

  • Maize production was highly concentrated, giving large landlords weight with the state. (p. 9)

    a mere 6% of maize farmers had harvested over half the crop.

  • By the mid-1940s the labour supply to Transvaal farms came overwhelmingly from the Rhodesias and Nyasaland. (p. 10)

    In 1944,100% of the recruits of a large farmers' group came from the Rhodesias and Nyasaland

  • Demand for contracted labour in Bethal rose steeply in the late 1930s and 1940s. (p. 11)

    In Bethal alone, the number of contracted labourers increased almost fivefold in the decade after 1937.

  • The Minister of Native Affairs stated openly that illegal foreigners could be forced onto farms, even though South African Africans could not. (p. 12)

    'We cannot force Union Natives to work on the farms but we can force Natives illegally In the country to work on the farms.'

  • The 1947-48 Foreign Farm Labour Scheme was costly and failed, partly through resistance and recruiters' opposition. (p. 13)

    the Farm Labour Scheme had siphoned about 1,200 workers to landlords.

  • The UP's pass-court 'Farm Labour Scheme: Union' channelled thousands of South African blacks to farms within months, and soon outperformed the foreign scheme. (p. 14)

    By April 1948, over two thousand South African blacks had 'chosen' the farms; one fifth had descended straight into the maws of the Boerearbeidsvereniging.

  • State regulation of forced labour abuses in Bethal alienated Transvaal farmers and arguably helped the UP lose in 1948. (p. 15)

    With some justification, many contemporary observers regarded this penetration of the sphere of exploitation as responsible for driving many Afrikaans-speakers into the Nationalist camp in the Transvaal.

  • Apartheid's real gain for big farmers was expansion of inherited coercive schemes, not simply the labour bureaux. (p. 16)

    Far more significant for large capital was the expansion of its precursor's schemes affecting prohibited immigrants, prisoners and 'petty offenders'.

  • The state's policy was ultimately shaped by accumulation and struggle rather than by governments' political shifts. (p. 17)

    In the long run, the harsh rhythms of capital accumulation and struggle were the ultimate determinants of state policy on the ground, not the political gyrations of barbarous governments.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source Kind Period How used
Transvaal Archives, Native Affairs Department files (NTS series, e.g. NTS 2246, 603/280; NTS 2130, 245/280; NTS 2233/2234/2235, 469/280) state archives 1920s-1950s Main evidence for NAD policy, Liaison Committee meetings, farm labour schemes, recruiter practices, and official admissions of 'slave trade'.
Transvaal Archives, Government Native Labour Bureau files (GNLB 122, 123, 415, 416; 1950/13/240, 81/18, 81/19) state archives 1920-1931 Establishes operations, desertions, lottery allocation and farmer purchases of immigrants at the Rhodesian Native Labour Depot in the 1920s.
Letters and statements of farmers (Medalie Bros, J J Dorian and Co., Seelig and Co.) in GNLB 123 state archives 1921-1923 Evidence on wages paid for 'boys', numbers employed by large farmers such as Medalie Bros, and rations and treatment.
NTS 1984, 90/279(1): enquiry held at Sibasa, 23 June 1936 commission or official report 1936 Evidence of chief and recruiters on disappearance of child labour and recruiting practices in the northern Transvaal.
Handbook of Agricultural Statistics 1904-1950 (Pretoria, 1960/61) official statistical series 1904-1950 Used to calculate that 6% of maize farmers harvested over half the crop in 1935.
Report of the Native Farm Labour Committee, 1937-39 (Pretoria, 1939) commission or official report 1937-1939 Supports claim that large or financially strong farmers did not experience labour shortages in the late 1930s.
Report of the Reconstruction Committee of the Department of Agriculture and Forestry (Pretoria, 1944-5) commission or official report 1944-1945 Quoted for the finding that the large majority of farmers do not aspire to money-making.
Report of the Native Affairs Department for the Years 1949-50, UG 61/51 official statistical series 1949-1950 Cited for agriculture becoming more dependent on foreign labour.
Department of Agriculture and Forestry, Farming Opportunities in the Union of South Africa (1936) official statistical series 1936 Source for the claim that high yields and low labour costs were the main factors for success in maize farming.
South African Institute of Race Relations, Farm Labour in the Orange Free State: Report of an Investigation (1939), and SAIRR papers (AD 543) commission or official report 1939 Cited on farmers' views on importing labour and on maize farmers' output.
The Star and Sunday Times, Die Transvaler newspapers (1928-1947) newspapers periodicals 1928-1948 Corroborates labour bureau operations, press-gang recruiting, and the Johannesburg court scheme.
Interview with Daniel van Rooyen, University of the Witwatersrand African Studies Institute Oral History Project (1989) interviews oral history 1989 (recalling 1920s-1940s) Tenant's recollection of conditions on Lazarus's farm and the price of a person.
Interview with William Makana by Frans Sacpa, Johannesburg, 24 November 1987 interviews oral history 1987 Estimate of 14,000 recruited workers in Bethal by 1947.
Joel Carlson, No Neutral Ground (1973) and Michael Scott, A Time to Speak (1958) secondary literature compilation 1940s Contemporary first-hand accounts of the Johannesburg court scheme, 'Oom Piet', and compound conditions.
TPD 344 of 1946 (Rex v. P. Muraba) and International Commission of Jurists report (1960) legislation gazette 1946-1960 Cited for prosecution and compound conditions at Bethal farms.

Inference

Quantification: Illustrative figures.

Archival case study of the Transvaal, mainly eastern and northern, built from NAD and Native Labour Bureau correspondence, minutes and testimony, combined with a few figures, to revise the 1948 turning-point thesis by showing continuity between pre-1948 and apartheid labour policy.

Key claims

Claim Basis Strength
Pre-1948 state officials sanctioned and facilitated recruiting of foreign labour by farmers, producing a 'slave trade' on the border. (p. 10) NAD files (NTS 2130, 2207) with officials' private admissions and contemporary complaints. Partial data
The 1947-48 Foreign Farm Labour Scheme was a failure because of resistance by migrants and recruiters, siphoning only about 1,200 workers at high cost per head. (p. 13) NTS 2234-2235 and 2247 minutes, NC reports and Public Service inspection reports. Partial data
The Johannesburg pass-offender scheme of 1947-48 forced over two thousand South African blacks onto farms and was a UP-era precursor of apartheid-era petty offenders schemes. (p. 14) NTS 2250 (NC Johannesburg and SNA letters, 1948) and Carlson's memoir. Partial data
The 1920s labour bureau at Louis Trichardt allocated cheap, long-contract foreign workers to large farmers, then collapsed through desertion, rival recruiters and depression. (p. 6) GNLB 122, 123, 415, 416 correspondence on the lottery, wages, desertions and closure. Partial data
Large capitalist farmers, not small ones, secured foreign labour, and labour costs (35-50% of running expenses) drove their demand. (p. 5) Farmer letters in GNLB, Department of Agriculture publications, and the Handbook of Agricultural Statistics. Partial data
State handling of forced labour in 1947 cost the UP the Eastern Transvaal farm vote and helped Nationalist victory in 1948. (p. 15) Michael Scott's recollections and contemporary observers' views; no electoral data used. Illustrative or anecdotal

The author's caveats

The author concedes that the account draws heavily on eastern Transvaal evidence and omits small landlords dependent on labour tenants. She notes that accurate statistics on numbers of foreign workers are unobtainable. Some figures are only estimates (e.g. 14,000 recruited workers in Bethal in 1947).

Gaps in the evidence

The argument relies heavily on NAD correspondence and anecdotes, with few systematic series on the number, wages, and employers of foreign farm workers. Sources such as district labour bureau registers, Rhodesian and Nyasaland emigration records, Portuguese records and farm-level employment ledgers would test the scale and the claims about large and small farmers; some existed then in archives. Electoral returns by district would be needed to test the 1948 voting claim, and these exist.

Replicability: Data described but not public.