Controls and constraints: Land, labour and mobility in Namaqualand

Literature › Works

John Sharp; Martin West (1984). Controls and constraints: Land, labour and mobility in Namaqualand. Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development in Southern Africa, Carnegie Conference Paper No. 71. SALDRU, University of Cape Town.

Type	conference paper
Scope	Wider apartheid literature
Method	archival narrative
Period studied	1795–1984
Regions	Namaqualand, Northern Cape, Port Nolloth, Springbok, Eastern Cape (migrant origin)
Themes	origins segregation, agriculture land, mining migrant labour, labour markets wages, bantustans removals influx, inequality poverty unemployment, unions strikes, demography urbanisation
Citation key	sharp1984

Argument

Using Little Namaqualand as a regional case, the paper argues that racial classification and stereotyping emerged from processes of primitive accumulation, impoverishment and the growth of agriculture and copper mining on the frontier, rather than being simply created or adapted to by capitalism. Racial boundaries were flexible in the nineteenth century (e.g. trekboers entering reserves became 'aboriginal'), hardened with Tickets of Occupation, mining labour recruitment and the Depression, and were consolidated by apartheid legislation in the 1950s. In the recent period the O'okiep Copper Company has used the Coloured Labour Preference policy and retrenchments to substitute Coloured workers for Africans and Whites, producing a smaller, more tied and cheaper workforce. Mobility is tightly controlled through company housing, reserve tenure rules and anti-squatting law, leaving the poor increasingly vulnerable.

Evidence and method

Secondary literature, theses and mission/colonial records (Sharp 1977, Luyt 1981, Smalberger 1975, Klinghardt 1982), government reports and title deeds, population censuses 1951, 1960 and 1980, a newspaper report (Die Burger 1977), and a personal communication from the DCC personnel manager (1983). Builds on the authors' own anthropological case studies.

Place in the debates

• Did capitalism adapt to or create the racial order in South Africa (liberal vs revisionist)? (see Liberal vs revisionist: was apartheid functional or dysfunctional for capitalist growth?). Argues the debate will be sterile without regional detail; in Namaqualand racial categorisation emerged from primitive accumulation on the frontier, and mining and agriculture hardened it without determining it.
• Cheap labour thesis and racial substitution in mining (see Cheap labour thesis and the function of the reserves). Shows the copper company benefiting from replacing Whites with lower-paid Coloured workers, an example of employers using race-based labour rules to cut costs and tie labour.
• Role of the Coloured Labour Preference policy (see Coloured Labour Preference policy in the Western Cape). Sees the policy as flexible in practice, used adroitly by the employer, with Africans still occupying many jobs and Coloured workers lacking mobility.

Findings

• Racial categories were fluid in the nineteenth century; movement between land-access categories implied a change in racial identity. (p. 6)

  The White trekboer, therefore, who settled in a reserve became by association an 'aboriginal' or person of mixed descent, and this perception was often confirmed in the next generation

• Tickets of Occupation, designed to protect indigenous land access, also institutionalised racial classification. (p. 5)

  had the effect of introducing an institutionalised form of racial classification into what had been a fluid situation.

• The 1909 Act taxed reserve men to push them into mine wage labour. (p. 9)

  The 1909 Act imposed a tax on adult males in the reserves to force many of them to seek work on the mines.

• Company housing ties workers to employers and restricts mobility. (p. 13)

  Housing is provided at nominal rent, but ties workers to their employers.

• Racial substitution in the mine workforce: Coloured numbers held up while White and African numbers fell (Table 1: total 5102 in 1974, 2955 in 1982). (p. 15)

  'Coloured' workers have been substituted for Africans and Whites in a much reduced total complement, as the following table indicates

• The 1979 illegal strike broke the Mine Workers Union's White representation, enabling further substitution. (p. 16)

• Anti-squatting law and housing control restrict the options of the poor and retrenched. (p. 20)

  This has led to restricted options for the poor, the retrenched and the unemployed in the region.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Population Census 1951 (vol.1), 1960 (vol.1) and 1980 Population Census Sample Tabulation 02-80-01	population census	1951, 1960, 1980	Establishes the growth of the African population of Namaqualand from just over 3000 in 1951 to over 5000 in 1960 and into the 1980s.
Personal communication, Personnel Manager, O'okiep Copper Company (DCC), January 1983	interviews oral history	January 1983 (figures for 1975-1982)	Gives the number of migrant workers employed (2300 in 1975, 600 by 1982), also the basis for Table 1 on racial composition of the workforce.
Table 1: Employment in the copper mines (1974, 1975, 1982) by race	company records or reports	1974-1982	Documents substitution of Coloured workers for Africans and Whites in a shrinking labour force.
Die Burger, 5 July 1977	newspapers periodicals	1977	Supplies the number of workers by race retrenched in 1977 to show fluctuations hidden by Table 1.
Leipoldt's diary, Monthly Reports, Rhenish Mission Society, 1840	state archives	1840	Shows that children of Dutch trekboer farmers used mission schools, i.e. mixed use of reserve zones.
Ticket of Occupation for Komaggas (C2-1888: Appendix to Reports of Select Committees)	commission or official report	1888 (Ticket granted by 1874)	Shows that the Tickets of Occupation institutionalised racial classification by specifying eligible inhabitants.
Title deed of the farm Springbokfontein (quitrent grant to Jacobus 'Bastard' Cloete, 1850)	state archives	1850	Illustrates that quitrent titles were initially granted to people later classified as non-white.
Mission Stations and Communal Reserves Act, 1909	legislation gazette	1909	Formalised the exclusion of mission reserves from mineral rights, transferred control to the state and imposed a tax on adult males in reserves.
Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act of 1976, Section 3(c), and Group Areas proclamation for Port Nolloth 1968	legislation gazette	1968, 1976	Shows state controls on squatting and in-migration restricting the mobility of Coloured people.
Smalberger 1975, A History of Copper Mining in Namaqualand	secondary literature compilation	1852-1939	Source for the opening of the first significant mine in 1852, mining-town markets and the 1939 purchase by an American consortium.
Luyt 1981 and Klinghardt 1982 theses (UCT)	secondary literature compilation	nineteenth century-1980s	Supplies wage rate comparisons with the Western Cape, early landowner complaints about labour shortage, and the reserves' share of land area.
West 1984 and Sharp 1984 Carnegie conference papers; West 1971	author survey or fieldwork	1971-1984	Based on fieldwork, these support claims about tied company housing, squatting, and the impoverishment of reserve dwellers.

Inference

Quantification: Illustrative figures.

Regional historical case study and narrative overview synthesising secondary and anthropological research, with a few census and company employment figures; claims about racial categorisation rest on qualitative periodisation and interpretation, not systematic testing.

Key claims

Claim	Basis	Strength
Racial categorisation in Namaqualand hardened gradually through land-access categories, the Tickets of Occupation, and the development of mining and agriculture, rather than being fixed from the outset. (p. 6)	Ticket of Occupation wording, title deed examples, mission journals and Sharp's thesis on bywonership, used illustratively.	Illustrative or anecdotal
The 1918 closure of the larger copper company erased material differentiation in the reserves and caused general impoverishment, and the depression lasted through the 1930s. (p. 10)	Sharp 1984 and Smalberger 1975; no quantitative series presented.	Asserted
The African population of Namaqualand grew from just over 3000 in 1951 to over 5000 in 1960 despite influx control and the Preference Area policy, and in 1980 Africans made up over a third of economically active non-White men. (p. 11)	Population Censuses 1951, 1960 and 1980 sample tabulation.	Partial data
Since the mid-1970s the copper company has substituted Coloured workers for African and White workers in a sharply reduced labour force, producing a more region-tied and cheaper workforce. (p. 15)	Table 1 of DCC employment figures, Die Burger 1977 retrenchment numbers and the personnel manager's communication.	Partial data
The 1979 illegal strike broke the White Mine Workers Union's power, with its membership dropping from 750 in 1974 to under 100 in 1983. (p. 16)	Unreferenced union membership figures and narrative of the strike; no source cited.	Asserted
Recent decades show increasing differentiation within each racial category, while those without land, capital or secure employment are increasingly vulnerable to impoverishment. (p. 21)	Synthesis of regional case studies; no systematic household or income data presented.	Asserted

The author's caveats

Mostly implicit: the authors describe the paper as a broad overview drawing on recent anthropological research, and note that available employment figures hide large fluctuations in the number of Coloured workers.

Gaps in the evidence

The argument about racial classification and impoverishment would need systematic series on land titles and reserve populations, wages, household income and employment by race over time, rather than selective figures and secondary theses. Mission, magistrate and Cape land-office archives and company employment records, together with census enumeration data by district, existed and could test the periodisation. Household survey or fieldwork data on differentiation in the reserves and towns, from the 1980s onward, would better ground the claims about growing vulnerability.

Replicability: Data poorly documented.