The Dynamics of Rural Accumulation in South Africa: Comparative and Historical Perspectives

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Timothy Keegan (1986). The Dynamics of Rural Accumulation in South Africa: Comparative and Historical Perspectives. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 28, No. 4. Cambridge University Press.

Type	journal article
Scope	Economics and economic history of apartheid
Method	synthesis review
Period studied	1840s–1980s
Regions	Highveld (Orange Free State, Transvaal), South Africa, comparative: Kenya, Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Europe, North America
Themes	agriculture land, origins segregation, labour markets wages, bantustans removals influx, business and state, politics ideology elections, comparative theory, inequality poverty unemployment
Citation key	keegan1986

Argument

Keegan argues that South Africa's fully capitalist, white-controlled agriculture is the exceptional African case, and that it was a contingent outcome rather than the product of an inevitable logic of capital. He rejects both the 'Prussian path' analogy and underdevelopment theory's assumption that capital's needs explain rural change. On the Highveld, capital for farming came mostly from outside agriculture (trade, speculation, mining wealth, and above all the state), not from self-generating accumulation by the old Boer landowners. Black sharecropping thrived and then declined, and labour tenancy suited undercapitalised farms. Mechanisation from the 1940s and state subsidy then made black tenants expendable, and the post-1948 state's removals completed the process. White racial ideology and populism, together with sustained state support, explain the outcome. The article closes with comparative evidence that peasants and family farms are the norm and that South Africa is the anomaly.

Evidence and method

Secondary literature on South Africa, East and Central Africa and Europe. Archival and printed primary sources from the Orange Free State: Bloemfontein Archives files, Standard Bank inspection reports, Cape Blue Books, newspapers and farming journals (The Friend, Farmer's Advocate), biographies, commission reports, and the Wits Oral History Project. Draws on the author's own book Rural Transformations in Industrialising South Africa (1986).

Place in the debates

• Prussian path / revisionist (Trapido, Morris, Legassick, Greenberg) interpretation of capitalist agriculture (see Agrarian transition to capitalism and the fate of the African peasantry). Rejects it. He denies continuity between the old Boer landowners and the new capitalist farmers, and denies that proletarianisation followed automatically from industrialisation. He stresses discontinuity and contingency.
• Underdevelopment theory vs modernisation, and whether peasants persisted because capital needed them (see Agrarian transition to capitalism and the fate of the African peasantry). Critiques both for assuming a single universal dynamic. He argues peasant persistence reflects peasant resilience and a weak colonial state, and may constrain accumulation rather than serve capital.
• Causes of the decline of the black peasantry and tenantry (state action vs wider economic forces) (see Agrarian transition to capitalism and the fate of the African peasantry). Argues that the revisionist literature ascribes the decline solely to state action. He adds white farmers' day-to-day struggle, racial ideology, mechanisation and subsidy; the state was important but not decisive.
• Why labour tenancy and sharecropping emerged (see Agrarian transition to capitalism and the fate of the African peasantry). Sharecropping was a response to white landholders' lack of capital and black tenants' resources, not a feudal survival. Labour tenancy was a rational solution to supervision and capital constraints.

Findings

• Farm capital came largely from outside agriculture, so there was no self-generating accumulation by old Boer landowners. (p. 8)

  The great bulk of new capital being invested in agricultural enterprise was imported from elsewhere or accumulated in nonagricultural pursuits.

• Sharecropping was a product of early industrialisation and not a precapitalist relic. (p. 12)

  Far from being a quasi-feudal relationship associated with the precapitalist past, sharecropping was a product of the early stages of South Africa's industrial revolution.

• The state was the indispensable generator of capital for white farming. (p. 15)

  It was only on the basis of constant state support, however, that a capitalised farming economy under white control eventually emerged and was maintained.

• The land banks marked the start of large-scale state financing of whites-only farming. (p. 17)

  The establishment of land banks (whose facilities were available to whites only) was an important watershed, for it marked the beginning of sustained, large-scale state financing of white farming.

• White farmers' indebtedness was already large by the 1930s and still very high in 1985. (p. 21)

  By 1985, farmers' debts exceeded 8,000 million rands, despite the massive weeding out of failed farmers over previous decades.

• Proletarianisation of black peasants did not follow automatically from industrialisation, contrary to the Prussian analogy. (p. 18)

  the proletarianisation of black peasants in South Africa did not proceed as a logical corollary of industrialisation and urban growth.

• Labour tenancy suited the capital constraints of undercapitalised farms. (p. 19)

  So labour tenancy was a perfectly rational way of organising labour.

• The demise of black tenancy was not mainly due to direct state coercion; mechanisation and subsidy were major factors. (p. 20)

  But the demise of black tenancy on white-owned land was not achieved solely, or even mainly, by direct state coercion.

• Mass evictions after the 1950s eased labour control for farmers but produced mass unemployment. (p. 21)

  Mass evictions of hundreds of thousands of Africans from white-owned land dramatically alleviated the problems of labour mobilisation that had characterised the first half of the century, and ushered in an era of mass unemployment and immiseration.

• The overall conclusion stresses contingency over inevitability. (p. 24)

  There was no consistent trajectory of development or inevitability either in the spread of capitalist relations in agriculture or in the assertion of white control over productive resources.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Annual Cape Colonial Blue Books (magisterial reports)	commission or official report	c. 1840s-1914	Cited as containing evidence of booms and slumps in land transactions, supporting the argument that land speculation was a form of primary enrichment.
Standard Bank Archives, Johannesburg, Annual Branch Inspection Reports (incl. Kroonstad Inspection Reports 1915)	company records or reports	c. 1890s-1915	Supports the claim that the most progressive farmers were late arrivals with capital from older districts, and details cases of failed capital-intensive enterprises.
Bloemfontein Archives (BAD): CS 4873/07, NAB 861/07, DA 1915/2/09, DA 1997/1/09	state archives	1907-1909	Documents wealthy and corporate-owned farming (Newberrys, Nourse, Bourke) and steam-ploughing costs at Vereeniging Estates.
The Friend (Bloemfontein) newspaper articles and editorials, 1892-1912	newspapers periodicals	1892-1912	Used for examples of wealthy farmers with mills and threshers, steam-plough failures, Seggie's views, and a 1908 editorial on squatting laws.
The Farmer's Advocate (Bloemfontein) and Farmer's Weekly	newspapers periodicals	1907-1918	Evidence on corporate farming (African Farms Ltd), large landed enterprises and the role of company capital on the Highveld.
Men of the Times: Old Colonists of the Cape Colony and the Orange River Colony (1906) and Men of the Times: Pioneers of the Transvaal (1905); obituary in South Africa (London), 1925	secondary literature compilation	1905-1925	Biographical evidence that late-nineteenth-century capitalised farmers had earlier been traders, transporters and hunters.
Dictionary of South African Biography entries (Nourse, Lewis and Marks)	secondary literature compilation	1968-1977 editions	Biographical evidence for Randlord and industrial investment in highly capitalised Highveld farming.
A. P. Cartwright, The First South African: The Life and Times of Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (1971)	secondary literature compilation	1902-1971	Biography quoted to show Fitzpatrick's Buckland Downs was an uneconomic 'cheque-book farm' funded from non-agricultural wealth.
Natives Land Commission, Minutes of Evidence, UG 22-1916	commission or official report	1916	Evidence of E. R. Grobler cited alongside a 1908 editorial on white farmers' reliance on black squatter tenants.
Report of the Commission to Inquire into Co-operation and Agricultural Credit, UG 16-1934	commission or official report	1934	Source for the figure that white farmers' debts already amounted to 100 million pounds by 1934.
Natives Land Act of 1913	legislation gazette	1913	Cited as social-engineering legislation that sought to outlaw black sharecropping, but did not by itself transform rural relations.
Oral History Project, African Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand	interviews oral history	oral evidence on post-World War I rural change	Basis for claims about the coexistence of different tenancy types and the declining options of black households.
Keegan, Rural Transformations in Industrialising South Africa (1986) and related articles (author's prior research)	author survey or fieldwork	1850-1950s	Fuller documentation of the sharecropping, accumulation and capital claims is delegated to the author's earlier book and articles.
Surplus People Project, Forced Removals in South Africa (5 vols, 1983)	commission or official report	1950s-1983	Cited for population shifts and mass evictions from white-owned farms.
Official agricultural output statistics (as critiqued via Lipton)	official statistical series	1940s onward	Author notes that productivity comparisons between white and black farming rest on unreliable official statistics.
Comparative statistics on European farm structure (Goodman and Redclift; S. H. Franklin)	secondary literature compilation	1960-1970	Used to show family smallholdings and part-time farming remain the norm in advanced capitalist agriculture.
South African Broadcasting Corporation news report, September 1985; farmers' debt figure	newspapers periodicals	1985	Supports the claim that farmers' indebtedness exceeded 8,000 million rands and a 'second Great Trek' was predicted.

Inference

Quantification: Illustrative figures.

Historical-interpretive essay combining Highveld regional synthesis with comparative argument (Kenya, Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Europe). Claims rest on selected case examples from newspapers, archives, and biographies, the author's prior research, and secondary literature, set against the 'Prussian path' and underdevelopment models; no systematic data series or statistical testing.

Key claims

Claim	Basis	Strength
Capitalist farmers of the Highveld were not lineal descendants of the old Boer landowners; capital came mainly from non-agricultural or imported sources (trading, transport, hunting, land speculation, mining and finance capital). (p. 634)	Biographical compilations, Bloemfontein Archives files, Friend and Farmer's Advocate articles, Cape Blue Books, Standard Bank inspection reports, supported by anecdotal examples of Randlord and company farming.	Illustrative or anecdotal
Capital-intensive farming often did not pay; sustained accumulation from agriculture alone was atypical, as shown by steam-ploughing failures and Fitzpatrick's uneconomic estate. (p. 637)	Specific cases (Minter, McLaren, Seggie, Fitzpatrick) drawn from The Friend, Fitzpatrick biography, BAD files and Standard Bank reports.	Illustrative or anecdotal
Sharecropping on the Highveld was a product of early industrialisation and of white landholders' lack of capital, not a quasi-feudal relic; black tenants accumulated capital and prospered before being undermined. (p. 638)	Author's earlier research (Rural Transformations ch. 3; 1983 JPS article), contemporary 1908 editorial, Natives Land Commission evidence.	Partial data
The state became the main generator of capital for white farmers (land banks, co-operatives, price supports, marketing boards), without which capitalised white farming would not have emerged or been sustained. (p. 641)	Historical narrative based on legislation and institutions (Land Banks 1907-08, Union Land Bank 1912, 1936 marketing boards) and the 1934 credit commission figure of debts.	Partial data
The decline of black tenancy was not due solely to state coercion: mechanisation from the 1940s, state-financed credit for tractors, and removals made tenants' ploughing spans and household labour expendable. (p. 646)	Asserted narrative citing de Klerk on mechanisation, Surplus People Project, Morris, Greenberg and Wits oral history material.	Asserted
Racial domination in the countryside came in cyclical waves tied to boom periods, with different tenancy forms coexisting on the Highveld until the 1950s. (p. 645)	Author's 1985 African Affairs article and oral evidence from the Wits Oral History Project; no systematic series.	Illustrative or anecdotal
Comparative evidence shows capitalist agriculture elsewhere (Europe, Kenya, Rhodesia, Nyasaland) was also dependent on state support and non-farm income, so South Africa's full agrarian capitalism is the exceptional case rather than the persistence of peasants. (p. 648)	Secondary literature (Mosley, Kitching, Palmer, Hodder-Williams) and secondary compilations of European farm-size statistics (Goodman and Redclift, Franklin).	Partial data

The author's caveats

Notes that statistics on black versus white farm productivity are 'very unreliable' and official figures underestimate reserve output (citing Lipton). Acknowledges that changes in rural areas since World War I are 'one of the major lacunae in our understanding of contemporary South Africa' and need much further research.

Gaps in the evidence

The argument that capital came from non-agricultural sources and that capitalised farming rarely paid rests on selected cases of notable individuals and companies; it would need systematic farm-level accounts, mortgage/bond registers and land transaction records to test representativeness. Claims about black tenant accumulation and productivity relative to white farms would need agricultural census and tenancy data, which existed but are not used here. Evidence on the post-1940s mechanisation-driven decline of tenancy and the state's role relative to markets would need subsidy, credit and tractor-adoption series, which also existed in official sources.

Replicability: Data poorly documented.