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'Blackbirding' at 'Crooks' Corner': Illicit Labour Recruiting in the Northeastern Transvaal, 1910-1940

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Martin J. Murray (1995). 'Blackbirding' at 'Crooks' Corner': Illicit Labour Recruiting in the Northeastern Transvaal, 1910-1940. Journal of Southern African Studies, 21(3). Taylor & Francis.
Type journal article
Scope Economics and economic history of apartheid
Method archival narrative
Period studied 1910–1940
Regions Northeastern Transvaal (Crooks' Corner), Southern Rhodesia, Portuguese East Africa, Nyasaland, Witwatersrand
Themes mining migrant labour, origins segregation, labour markets wages, business and state, comparative theory, agriculture land
Citation key murray1995

Argument

Murray uses the case of illicit 'labour pirates' at Crooks' Corner to show that the formation of the southern African labour market involved competition among recruiters, intermediaries and states, and that force and market exchange were intertwined. He partly revises Jeeves, arguing that illicit recruiting did not wither after the Chamber of Mines stabilised recruitment in the 1920s. It continued, supplying farms, collieries, sugar estates and other employers, and licensed agents and mining groups often colluded with it. Migrants voluntarily sought the recruiters' help to cross borders despite abuse. The author concludes that the free/unfree labour dichotomy is untenable.

Evidence and method

Archival correspondence, reports and conference notes from the Central Archives Depot (Pretoria) and the National Archives of Zimbabwe (Native Affairs, BSA Police, Administrator's Office files). Also Bulpin's popular history The Ivory Trail, the 1939 Native Farm Labour Committee report, and secondary literature (Jeeves, Harries, Tapela, Makambe). The author admits the evidence is fragmentary.

Place in the debates

Findings

  • The 1913 prohibition on recruiting 'tropical' labour for the mines backfired by pushing migrants towards unlicensed recruiters. (p. 12)

    The prohibition against official recruitment of 'tropicals' drove clandestine immigrants from north of the Limpopo into the hands of unlicensed private recruiters

  • Unlicensed recruiters charged high capitation fees, and African runners were also paid bounties, indicating how lucrative the traffic was. (p. 11)

    Unlicensed recruiters exacted a huge price for the delivery of labour, charging exorbitant fees ranging from ?7 to ?9 for each work-seeker.

  • Licensed agents bought illicitly recruited labour and passed it on as their own, blurring legal and illegal recruiting. (p. 12)

    sell them to the licensed recruiters in the Transvaal, who pass them on as the result of their own labour

  • Competition among recruiters was settled by force rather than by market bargaining, and per-head commissions encouraged abuse. (p. 16)

    In this free-for-all, competition was resolved not by means of respective marketplace bargaining powers but instead through superior force.

  • The scale of the largest freelancer's operations: Barnard recruited thousands illegally in a single year. (p. 18)

    In 1917 alone, Barnard's best year, he singlehandedly recruited 3,250 Africans illegally

  • Many Shangaan migrants wanted to go to the Rand and cooperated with the illegal recruiters, showing migrant agency. (p. 18)

    'No force is used and these Shangaans so far from objecting are very willing to go with Barnard'

  • Murray disputes Jeeves' claim that illicit recruiting died once the mining companies stopped relying on private recruiters. (p. 22)

    Contrary to what Jeeves seems to suggest, illicit labour recruiting did not evaporate because the huge mining companies were able to break away from their reliance upon private recruiters.

  • Illicit recruiting persisted and was redirected to non-mining employers such as sugar estates, collieries and highveld farms. (p. 7)

    private labour agents stepped up their procurement of 'illegal' labour for other employers, especially for the sugar estates and collieries of Natal

  • Employers outside the mines, notably Transvaal farmers, knowingly depended on illegally entered migrant labour. (p. 23)

    It was an open secret that white farmers throughout the northern Transvaal, but particularly in the Zoutpansberg district, relied in large measure for their seasonal labour demands upon African migrants who entered the Transvaal illegally.

  • The conclusion denies a rigid separation of free and unfree labour, since coercion helped bring workers to the market. (p. 26)

    illicit labour recruiting, along with the violence and coercion that accompanied it, actually facilitated the process of proletarianisation by bringing the buyers and sellers of labour-power together in the marketplace

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source Kind Period How used
Central Archives Depot (CAD), Department of Native Affairs (NTS) files, e.g. NTS 2024, 2025, 2027, 2131, 2132, 1451 state archives 1911-1945 Correspondence, reports and affidavits by Union officials document illicit recruiting at Makuleka and later alleged WENLA irregularities.
CAD, Native Affairs (NA) 2, 5766, F2(2) state archives 1911-1913 Letters, police reports and affidavits (Wheelwright, Kirkpatrick, Randfontein inspectors) on recruiter fees, slave-trade-like practices and Makuleka.
CAD, Government Native Labour Bureau (GNLB) 123, 1950/13/D240 (also cited as 150/13/D240) state archives 1913-1920 Native Commissioners' letters documenting 'body snatching' and the persistence of recruiting irregularities.
National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ), N3/22/4 Vols 1-2 (Chief Native Commissioner, Salisbury, on Illicit Recruiting of Native Labour), incl. Notes of a Conference held at Pietersburg, 10 September 1918 state archives 1914-1923 Main file for narrative of Barnard, NRC/Seelig truce, state responses, and official statements (Stubbs, Cooke, Taylor, Gold).
NAZ, A3/18/30/20, /22 and A3/18/38/1 (Administrator's Office, Correspondence, Native Affairs, Labour) state archives 1915-1918 Police and NC reports, affidavits and lists of recruiters on Barnard, Diegel and Roux and the joint police response.
NAZ, S138 series (S138/22, S138/40, S138/203) and S1561/4, S1542/Li, S482 224/39 state archives 1925-1940 1920s-30s evidence that clandestine recruiting for farms and WENLA continued (Reed brothers, Spraggon, Bullock memoranda).
NAZ, S235/508 and S235/511, District Native Commissioners' Annual Reports 1930 and 1933 commission or official report 1930, 1933 District reports show migrants masquerading as Portuguese natives to get passes in the 1920s-30s.
NAZ Oral History (English) Oral/BE5, R. G. L. C. Bennett interviews oral history n.d. Cited with official files on Spraggon and MacDougall's trading and transport business.
Transvaal Mining Regulations Commission, Final Report, 1910 (statement of the President, Transvaal Chamber of Mines) commission or official report 1910 Establishes that East Coast natives were about half the gold-mine African labour force in 1910.
Union legislation: Act 15 of 1911 and Act 22 of 1913; Minister for Native Affairs' May 1913 prohibition north of 22 degrees South legislation gazette 1911-1913 Prohibition on recruiting 'tropical natives' is argued to have driven clandestine migrants to illicit recruiters.
T. V. Bulpin, The Ivory Trail (Cape Town, 1950) secondary literature compilation narrative of 1900s-1920s Popular narrative supplies colour, biography and quantitative claims (e.g. Barnard's 3,250 recruits) on blackbirders.
Alan Jeeves, Migrant Labour in South Africa's Mining Industry (1985) and related articles secondary literature compilation 1890-1920s Foil and partial source for recruiting irregularities and the claim that illicit recruiting declined after 1920s; partially revised by the author.
Patrick Harries oral testimony study, ' "A Forgotten Corner of the Transvaal"' (1987) secondary literature compilation c. 1900s-1910s Used for background on Crooks' Corner and the 'body snatcher' label.

Inference

Quantification: None.

Qualitative archival case study and narrative reconstruction from official correspondence, police and Native Commissioner reports in Zimbabwean and South African archives, supplemented by Bulpin's popular history; arguments are interpretive and set against Jeeves's account, with theoretical conclusions about free/unfree labour.

Key claims

Claim Basis Strength
Between about 1910 and 1918 freelance white 'labour pirates' based at Crooks' Corner intercepted clandestine migrants and sold them in batches to licensed recruiting agents. (p. 374) CAD NTS/NA2 files, NAZ N3/22/4 and A3/18/30/22 official correspondence, plus Bulpin. Partial data
The 1913 prohibition on recruiting 'tropical natives' backfired, pushing migrants into the hands of unlicensed private recruiters. (p. 383) Statements of the Acting Director of Native Labour and Sibasa Sub-NC from NAZ files; Jeeves; Act 15 of 1911/Act 22 of 1913. Partial data
Licensed agencies including the NRC and Seelig colluded with illicit recruiters such as Cecil Barnard, undermining state-brokered truces. (p. 386) Stubbs, Cooke, Gold correspondence in NAZ N3/22/4 Vol. 2 and CAD files; officials' suspicion but not proof. Partial data
Barnard, Diegel and Roux dominated recruiting of Shangaans, with Barnard alone illegally recruiting 3,250 Africans in 1917. (p. 389) Bulpin p. 166 and NAZ Devine letter of 6 October 1918; sketchy police reports. Illustrative or anecdotal
Illicit recruiting did not wither in the 1920s but shifted to farms, collieries and other employers, and continued to involve WENLA and the Chamber's agents through the 1930s-40s. (p. 393) Rhodesian NC annual reports, SNA Bullock memoranda, CAD NTS 2024/2131/2132 letters, Reed brothers and Spraggon cases; Native Farm Labour Committee report. Partial data
Migrants were often willing participants who used illicit recruiters to cross the frontier, so violence and coercion facilitated proletarianisation and blur the free/unfree distinction. (p. 397) Quotations from a Rhodesian labour agent and NC reports; theoretical argument against free/unfree dichotomy. Asserted

The author's caveats

The author states that the story 'is necessarily sketchy and incomplete', that only 'fragmentary pieces of evidence' survive in scattered archival records, that the evidence is too thin to identify all migrant flows or their volume, and that 'only scraps of evidence survive' on the fate of the outlaws; he also notes that officials failed to prove many suspicions.

Gaps in the evidence

The argument that illicit recruiting persisted and was integral to class formation needs quantitative data on clandestine migrant volumes, prosecutions, and WENLA/NRC attestation and desertion records, which would test claims such as the 95% and 10% figures; some such records exist in Chamber of Mines and WENLA archives. Sources are almost entirely official and Rhodesian/Union administrators' views, with Bulpin's romanticised narrative standing in for African voices, so migrant perspectives and the claimed 'willingness' are asserted rather than evidenced. Oral testimony from migrants or Shangaan communities, now partly recoverable, and employer farm records could better test the claims.

Replicability: Data described but not public.