The planned destruction of ‘black’ agriculture Hubert Cochet To cite this version: Hubert Cochet. The planned destruction of ‘black’ agriculture. South Africa’s Agrarian question, HSRC Press, p.12-27, 2015. hal-01375797 HAL Id: hal-01375797 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01375797 Submitted on 18 Jun 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. The planned destruction of ‘black’ agriculture 1 Hubert Cochet For those familiar with agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, travelling in the former homelands of South Africa elicits surprise. How is it that this densely populated countryside, dotted with rural settlements created by the forced removal policy under apartheid, is left uncultivated, largely abandoned to bush and underused? The landscape is characterised by very few livestock, evidence of erosion despite extensive woody vegetation and occasional signs of farming. Following on from 1994, when researchers, academics and the development community began reflecting on the future of these lands and how to revive ‘black’ agriculture, there is now a need to understand the historic and contemporary factors that have led to the massive abandonment of agricultural activities (Cochet 1998). How did the formerly vibrant production systems that once covered these lands die off, to the point that the landscape is now dominated by marginally used lands, even though rural population density is higher than ever? Reconstituting the steps and processes underlying this planned destruction is a prerequisite to any attempt at reconstruction. Overview of previous production systems In his book The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry, Colin Bundy www.hsrcpress.ac.za reconstructs the agrarian systems of the late 19th century in the future homeland of Ciskei, part of what was then the vast Cape Province (Bundy 1979). Many black farmers had already adopted animal traction and were using ploughs and carts. New crops, like winter wheat, had appeared in farmers’ rotations. Sheep farming was widespread, thanks to the growing international wool trade.1 Market-based peasant farming was reinforced by a growing market for agricultural products and livestock, and higher prices brought on by the diamond boom in Kimberley and the Witwatersrand gold rush. Together with the adoption of animal traction for tillage and transportation which enhanced labour productivity, this led to larger marketed surpluses (beyond what was needed for the obligatory hut tax) and the development of sheep pens and irrigation systems. The result was a thriving and dynamic form of black agriculture (Bundy 1979). This process of agricultural development also occurred on lands which had been newly controlled by white people or on Crown lands, where squatter-peasants and tenants would settle in the absence of the white owners (Bundy 1979). Bundy’s book gives the impression that there was no significant difference in labour productivity between white and black agriculture in the late 1800s, at least in this region of South Africa. Although this hypothesis would need to be tested by further 12 SAAQ.indb 12 2015/12/18 9:39 AM historical research, it is clear that the enormous differences in productivity observed today are primarily the result of relatively recent differentiation processes, and are largely due to the massive appropriation of resources by the white minority in the 20th century. White farmers had thus to face both foreign competition and domestic competition from the black peasantry, whose productivity was equal to theirs. Despite limited access to land, black farmers were more cost-efficient and tended to have more intensive techniques, and thus better returns. As a result, black farmers continued to produce marketable surplus, even after white people no longer managed to do so (Bundy 1979). Peasants had for long been a target for the anger and resentment of white farmers. These farmers had two main complaints. Firstly, they were unable to compete successfully with African peasants, whose production costs were kept relatively low through their access to family labour. Secondly, the existence of an African peasantry and the resilience of the African subsistence economy seriously impeded the flow of labour to white farms. (Maylam 1986: 89) The ‘reproduction threshold’ of African farms was lower than that of farmers of European origin, owing to a less expensive lifestyle, particularly with regard to imports. This allowed them to stay above the reproduction threshold longer when prices were low, and to generate a surplus even when white people could not. And yet, the vibrancy and resilience of black agriculture would bring about its downfall. As labour competition grew between black and white agriculture, it became clear www.hsrcpress.ac.za that the development of the latter – along with the mining sector – would require the methodical destruction of the first. First signs of distress Several decades before the 1913 Land Act sounded its death knell, black agriculture had started to weaken. Border wars, forced removals and long distances from markets undermined black agriculture in the Cape Colony, and particularly in the Ciskei. The rinderpest outbreaks in the 1890s dealt a heavy blow to the peasant economy in the country, as well as in many parts of eastern and southern Africa. In Transkei, for example, 80–90 per cent of cattle were decimated (Bundy 1979: 120; see also Wilson & Thompson 1971), brutally decapitalising farms (as cattle were the main form of capital accumulation) and reducing animal traction. In addition, taxes were increased. From 1880–1890, the poll tax and hut tax were introduced on the reserves, as well as a tax on ox carts, known as the wheel tax (Fauvelle-Aymar 2006). In the Cape Colony, the Location Acts of 1876 and 1884 turned black sharecroppers, tenants and farmers into ‘squatters’ whose land could be expropriated as necessary (Fauvelle-Aymar 2006).2 13 SAAQ.indb 13 2015/12/18 9:39 AM SOUTH AFRICA’S AGRARIAN QUESTION The development of domestic markets encouraged landowners to modify production processes and rely more on salaried labourers, leading them to evict tenant farmers (Fauvelle-Aymar 2006). Wages were much lower than the production share that previously remained with sharecroppers, the value of which increased as markets grew. Thus began the proletarianisation of rural populations. Moreover, as transportation infrastructure expanded and improved in areas occupied by white people (railways and roads linking major cities), black people were pushed deeper into their reserves, further penalising their market access. With an increasing number of farmers becoming wage labourers, socio-economic differences among black farmers deepened, separating those with access to animal traction (thanks to having replenished their herds after the rinderpest epidemics, often because they had the largest herds before) from the impoverished majority. In Transkei, the 19th century saw massive migration toward the Colony of Natal and its sugar cane plantations, while food production collapsed and grain imports skyrocketed (Bundy 1979). The development of mining and industry required a large influx of cheap labour, which aggravated the labour shortage felt by white farmers. It became obvious to white mine owners and farmers that they needed to radically increase labour availability without increasing its cost. This gold and maize alliance (Bundy 1979) in many ways fuelled the policy of massive proletarianisation of black populations that dominated the 20th century. Finally, the turn of the 20th century also witnessed one of the first massive aid programmes to white agriculture, providing support for fences, construction of the www.hsrcpress.ac.za first dam, irrigation development, credit, housing construction, outreach services and preferential rail rates (Bundy 1979; Fauvelle-Aymar 2006). Land grabbing and the further weakening of black agriculture The Land Acts of 1913 and 1936, leading to the delimitation of the ‘native reserves’ (the first one identifying 8 per cent, the second one 13 per cent, of the country’s land surface), were the culmination, and more particularly the institutionalisation, of a land-grabbing process already well under way. Because black agriculture was concentrated in a small portion of the territory, it was brutally affected by high population densities. During the decades following the Land Acts, the lands in the reserves degenerated and a process of rapid underdevelopment took hold. ‘Not only did the peasant communities cease to export grain: they ceased to grow sufficient to feed themselves’ (Wilson & Thompson 1971: 58). In addition, the cash and labour tenants who rented plots in white areas were ejected (Bundy 1979). Black people in white zones were only recognised as servants (wage labourers), labour tenants and squatters (Bundy 1979). Initially spared from expulsion, labour tenants were in time removed from the white areas so that the only black people left were wage labourers. According to Bundy (1979: 235), of the 14 SAAQ.indb