CONVERGENCE: THE IMPACT OF CAPITAL, RACE, ETHNICIW AND GENDER ON LABOUR MIGRATION IN

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfrllment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts Ln Social Studies

By Denise Hildebrand Regina, Saskatchewan March 201

Copyright 201: Denise Hildebrand National Li brary Bibliothèque mationale of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services biblicographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellingtîon Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON KIA ON4 Canada Canada

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Migration theory extends on a continuum of divergent approaches that range from

analyses that privilege individual agency to perspectives that give primacy to the

stmcniral properties of advanced capitalism. Recent developments seek to synthesize

agency and structure, providing analytical space that can enrich the study of labour

migration. The application of a structuration mode1 to the specific context of labour

migration in southern Anica provides an alternative to counter the sirnpiistic analysis of

neocf assical theones and address the limitations of structural theories.

While capitaiist development played an overarching role in labour migration, it also

converged with the forces of ethnicity, race and gender. This convergence mediated the development of the structures and processes of labour migration. An examination of these forces helps to explain both structural transformation and structural maintenance, by analyling how the agency of individuals and collectivities was enabled or constrained by the dfverse, historical, economic, social, cultural and poli tical contexts within which labour migration took place. An analysis of the various layers of social structure that developed within these diverse contexts provides a deeper understanding of the multiple forms of agency that resulted from the development of the labour migration system.

The conceptuaiizations of class, race, ethnicity and gender developed along with the labou migration process in southem Afnca. These conceptuaiizations changed over time and contributed to agency that occurred at the surface level of social reproduction but also a-the deeper level of societal transfomation. Acknowiedgements

1wodd like to thank my advisors, Dr. JOAM Jaffe, Dr. Blair Rutherford, and Dr. Murray

Knuttila for their thoughtfiil comments and suggestions- 1 especially appreciated their patience in assisting me through this process.

1 wodd like to acknowledge the Faculty of Graduaîe Studies for the financial assistance it provided to me through scholarships.

The staff of interlibrary loans provided gracious assistance in retrieving much of the materiais 1used in my thesis. The persona1 book collections of Dr. Blair Rutherford and

George Manz helped me immensely and I wodd like to extend rny thanks to them for the loan of key matenals. Dr. Rutherford provided valuable advice on sources for investigating this thesis topic. Without this advice the conclusions would have been much more lirnited.

1would also like to achowledge the people of southern Afnca who triumphed over seemingly insumiountable odds to transfomi the oppressive social systems that existed in the region Their courage inspires me. Table of Contents

Page

Table of Contents

Plates

Chronology

Chapter 1 Introduction - Confluence

1.1 Tniutaries - An Argument for Structuration Theory 1.2 Diversions - The Role of Capital 1-3 Watersheds - Gender, Ethnicity and Race 1.4 Convergence 1.5 Methodology

Chapter 2 Setting the Course - Theories on Labour Migration

2.1 Navigating the Market - Neoclassical Theories 2.2 Diverting the Flows of Labour - Stmcturalist Theories 2.3 Convergence - Structuration Theory 2.4 hothe MainStream - Gender and Migration 2.5 Summary

Chapter 3 Swept Away - Capital adthe Expansion of Labour Migration 59 3.1 Overview of Capitaiisî Deveiopment 3.2 The Rishg Tide of Colonial Capital 3 -2.1 -10 Amencan 3 -2.2 The Chamber of Mines 3.3 The Ernergence of AfWaner Capitai 3.4 Capitai and the Structures of Labour Migration 3.4.1 Anchors and Moorings - Reserves and 3.4-2 Regulating the Flow - Infiux and Efflux of Africans 3-4.3 Beyond Boundaries - Foreign Labour 3.5 Summary

Chapter 4 Still Waters - Ethnicity, Race and Migration 4.1 Retum to the Source - The Origios of Race adEthnicity 4.2 Tidal Waves - The Flood of European Migration 4.3 Resevoirs of Identity - Manufactwhg Tni 4.4 Entering the Flow - Oppomuiities and Choices 4.5 Coalescence and Divergence - Race, Ethicity and Class 4.6 Summary

Chapter 5 Currents of Continuity, Tides of Change - Gender and Migration 4.1 Hamessing the Power of Women's Labour 4.2 Stemming the Tide of Women's Migration 5.3 S-

Chapter 6 Conclusion 6.1 Resolving the Legacies of Labour Migration

Appendix A - Methodologid Issues and Oppominities for Further Research 184

Appendix B - Glossmy of Terms 189 Srellenboscti a

Guod Hope

From: Lapping, B., : A History. London: Grafion. 1986. From: Lapping, B., Apartheid: A History. London: Grafion Books. 1986. South Africa at the close of the twentieth century.

WESTERN CAPE PatElizPef h

viii Chronology of South Africa's history Adapted fiom Sean 07toole 1 200 blyIron Age communities resident in what is now South Afnca 1 1 1652 meDutch East India Company establishes a settlement. 1 1 1800-30 The consolidated power of associated Nguni speakers under the leaders hi^ of Shaka Period of Afncan ex~ansionisrn. 1 1820 (En masse arriva1 of British settlers in the eastern Cape. 1 1837-1854 of 10,000 Afkhner settlers fiom the . 1838 DeBattle of Blood River where MEkanes defeated the Zulus, killing cver 1),000 and breaking the power of the united Zuiu annies. 1866 Discovery of diamonds at KUnberly* 1879 The Zulus defeat the British for the last time at the battle of Isandlwanda. 1886 Gold discovered on the Main Reef on the western outskirts of present day - 1899 Anglo-Boer war begins. Boers invade British South Af?ica. Britain responds with an army twice the size of Wellingîon's at Waterloo. 1900-02 Boer commandos engage in guemLla warfare. Boer civilian 'sympathizers' are put into concentration camps. Over 20,000 women and children die- 1910 Creation of the Union of South Afiica 1 1912 AfEcans react to the Native Land Act and abolition of Mcanpolitical rights. The South AfEcan National Native Congress was bom. 1913 The Natives Land Act is passed curtailing the rights of Afncans to own land. 1922 White mineworkers strike. The state intervenes and over 200 people are killed. 1923 The Urban Areas Act is passed in order to limit the nurnber of Aficans living in urban areas. The &cm National Congress (ANC) is formed. 1948 The Nationalist Party cornes to power with the ascendancy of Waner ideology. 1955 are exteuded to women. Over 20,000 women protest in the streets 1 (of~retoria , Johannesburg declared a whites-only area and 60,0001 Afncans evicted. 1958 The establishment of AfÎican 'independent' homelands by Verwoerd, the grand architect of apartheid. 1960 nie of 76 people who were demoostrating against state- kequired sanction for urban residence. The ANC is banned. 1964 ANC leaders, including Nelson Mandela, are sentenced to life in prison for

1986 U.S. Congress passes the Anti-Apartheid Act. Sanctions follow. 1984-1 994 De facto civil war in most black townships. Many politicaily-motivated burders and massacres. 1994 /First ever non-racial democratic election. The ANC, under the leadership of plson Mandela, comes to power-

ix Source: http:/Iwww.the core~ius.edu.s~andow/post~sa/sac~n~htmI Chapter 1 Introduction - Confluence

South Afnca is a nation bounded by water. From the Limpopo, Orange and Vaal Rivers in the north to the oceans on the southem tip of the Af?ican continent, people have traversed the watery currents to and f?om South Mca. Since before recorded history people have migrateci, searching for military conquest, converts to Christianity, weaith, work or a haven fiom the ravages of war and poverty. The confluence of these peoples as classes, ethnicities, races and genders contributed to the complexity of the economic, political and social interests that directed the flow of migrant labour in South Afnca. This diversity is manifested in theoften competing interests over labour that across space and time came together or into conflict. These interests converged fiom the deeply layered social relations where race, gender and class-consciousness emerged fiom beneath the powerful currents of economic, political and social control of labour by capital and the state. The convergence of these forces produced social divisions and alliances that were not homogenous by class, race or gender and contributed to the development and enforcement of state policy on labour migration in South Africa.

Although labor migration is not unique to southem Africa, the region is characterized by a system of forced and coerced labour that under colonialism lasted for over five hundred years. Beginning with the slave trade, colonial powers saw the advantage of harnessing

African labour. Colonial, and later state powen, adopted masures such as taxation and land expropriation to force Anicans into the monetary system. In addition, Afncan traditional systems of labour tribute existed pnor to colonialism and required the labour of young men in the service of chiefs and other traditional leaders. These traditional systems of labour tnbute were altered by capital expansion, as some traditionai leaders

demanded labour tribute in the form of contract labour to the mines and fanns of South a,,

The migrant labour system in southem Afnca became instinaionalized early in the

history of colonialism and its development created varying impacts on South Africa's

peoples based on their unique history, geography and culture. Its development was not a

simple process resulting from the choices of individuals or structured solely by the forces

of capital, but a process of conflict and cooperation, continuity and change, with shadow

and substance, surface appearances and unseen undercurrents. The structures and systems tint guided the movement of labour in South Afnca were not extemal to human action but both a medium and an outcorne of human agency.

Those who historically encouraged the ebb and flow or stemmed the tide of labour migration in what is now South Afnca have ken different agents at various times. Ciass, ethnicity, race and gender shaped the interests of these agents. Tribal chiefs and headmen either died fighting colonial expansion or sought to maintain their traditional power and economic pnvilege by forming alliances with colonial interests. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries merchant capitalists profited from the sale of millions of people.

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the capitalkt classes of the colonïzing nations fueled economic growth and capital formation through exploitation of a temporary or oscillating labour system. Leaders of neighbouring colonies, such as

Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland adopîed labour export strategies to gain a valuable source of foreign exchange through control over migrant wage remittances. Merthe

election of the Nationalkt Party in 1948, apartheid ideologues disciplined the flow of

migration to maintain a separate course of development based on race and ethnicity.

International financial institutions provided structural adjustment loans fkom the mid-

1940s through the mid-sixties until the World Bank was no longer able to de@ United

Nations cails for removal of technical and financial assistance from South Afica- Chiefs

and traditiod leaders sought power by recreating tribaiism through the establishment of

Bantustans. The emerging independent socialid States demonstrated their political

opposition to apartheid and adopted labour retention strategies during the 1970s and early

1980s. Across space and time these interests converged to produce changes in the

structures and processes of the labour migration system, producing ripples of change at

the ievel of the household to -des that brought down the apartheid state.

This thesis explores the convergence of the forces of capital, race, ethnicity and gender.

In order to guide this exploration, a chapter follows on the various theoretical traditions that have sought to describe labour migration. A review of capital, its history, characteristics and impacts are discussed in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 examines the role of race and ethnicity in labour migration, including a description of the origins of ethnicity and race and how these concepts influenced labour migration. Gender is the topic for

Chapter 5, which looks at women's role in production and reproduction, as well as, women's rnobility. Chapter 6 forms the conclusion. Two appendices compiete the thesis.

Appendix A is a description of the methodology and issues that ernerged along with a discussion of opportunities for Merresearch. A glossary of ternis is availabk in 1.1 Tributaries: An Argument for Structuration

Theories on labour migration have been and continue to be varied. Two major strms in

migration theory derive hmtwo major currents of social and economic theory:

neoclassical and structuralist These theories are oceans apart in analyzhg the motives for

migration, and have opposing views on the role of structure and agency in migration.

Neoclassical theoq focuses on the fiee-will of the individual who moves fiom a

traditional, rurai area of low-productivity to a modem, urban area of high productivity. In

this theoretical tradition the migrahg agent is endowed with puiposive action,

intentionality and with an understanding of the market that influences his or her agency.

The individual makes a rational choice to punw an expected gain in income from

interacting with the econornically more productive urban sector. This individual

compares the potential incomes fiom both the urban and d sector, in the short and

long terni, and makes the choice which best serves the migrant's interests.

Structural theones focus on the role of capital and the state in the coercion and regulation

of labour mobility through structures of control, the constraints placed on individual

agency and on the economic frameworks and systerns that drive the process of capital

expansion. The individual is viewed as part of a collectivity, a mass of people acting in their class interests. The ovenvhelrning power that the forces of capital and the -te exert is assumed by structurai theories to have primacy, rendering race, ethnicity and gender to secondary influences. The inherent bias of this approach steers their course of analysis towards market and capitalist relations of production and away from the tributaries of race, ethnic, and gender relations. In purniing such a narrow dimension, stmcturalists often miss the useful insights that alternative social relations and structures provide for the study of human action. This bias limits their ability to view the complexities that resulted fiom the interactions of these social forces in the development of labour migration in South Afkica.

Structuration theory recognizes the dynamic relationship between structure and agency. It goes beyond adysis of class relations to include alternative social forces, such as ethnicity, gender and race. Structuration theory provides an opportunity to explore a broader alternative to the reductimist analysis of neoclassic theories and the fiuictionalist theories of stnicturalism by looking at how capital, ethnicity, race and gender converged to shape and reshape the migrant labour system. The significance of ethnic, gender and racial structures and practices within South Afiica rnakes a case for a structuration approach.

Labour migration in southern Afnca has been described as ".. . one of the perennial problems of the political economy of southem Africa" (Matlosa 1992132).Matlosa describes the phases of labour migration witbin the region as the pre-mineral revolution; the mineral revolution (1 889 - 1906); state/capital pressures to provide cheap labour

( 1906-39);increased migration (1940-75); migration decline (1975-92). It is necessary to examine the phases of labour migration in order to demonstrate the importance of applying an historical analysis to labour migration in the region. The tirnelines for this inquiry extend from the dam of the nineteenth century, when British political ascendancy and mcanexpansionism altered the boundaries of the region, to the close of the twentieth centuy, when external migration was on the decline and the pst-apartheid state began a process to transform the labour migration system. A voyage into the history of this process is necessq to discover the structural relics of labour rnigratiori, which sunive to this day. These relics have sunived and been reconstiîuted because of and in spite of the actions and responses that stnictured and restnictured labour migration in the hundreds of years since its inception.

1.2 Diversions - The Role of Capital

The flows of labour in South Africa have been dominated by systems of power, dnven by capital accumulation and stnictured by ideology. The uneven development of capitalism within the region left South fica as the focal point of capital accumulation and subordinated the rest of the region as a source of labour, raw materials and markets for manufactured goods. Both capitalist development in the nineteenth century and the emergence of racist, ethnocentric and patriarchal political ideologies in the twentieth century were economic and social forces thaî tramformed the political economy and restmctured social relations throughout the region. In the interests of capital expansion and the pursuit of British colonial interests, measures were implemented to disenfianchise the ficmpopulation, as a means to create the preconditions for the developrnent of contract labour. The imposition of taxes tied the African population to the momy economy. The introduction of legislation removed Anicans' customary rights to land, regulated the movement of people and the pricing structures of agricultural commodities. The independence of South Africa fiom British dein 1910 brought increasingly

repressive measures into play that harnessed the power of Af3can labour into a flexible

system of labour supply to meet the needs of the fluctuating and volatile capitalist

marketplace. After the election of the Nationalist Party in 1948, apartheid began to

emerge as a forma1 econornic, social and ideologicai system. This system brought about regdations to control migration of Afkïcans both within the borders of South Afnca and without based on a systern of racial and ethnic segregation and separate development.

This dialectic between capital and apartheid has been described as "racial capitalism"

(Davies, O'Meara, Dlamini l988:5). The controi over the movement of people in the region was a central issue for the apartheid state, its SUppOReTS and its opponents. It rernains to be seen whether a pst-apartheid South Afncan state can successfully grapple with the problems that over a hundred years of established labour migration patterns and responses have engendered.

Capital in its many forms and factions played a key role in the South African stateys response to labour migration and the subsequent development of the labour migration system in the region. Although capital and the =te colluded in the development of this labour system, they also collided over issues related to the control over labour. Capital differed over issues such as liberal labour reforms, foreign versus domestic capital control over the indigenous labour supply, interna1 confiicts between factions of capital over subsidies made availabie to the agricdtwal sector through increased taxation of the industrial sector, and sanctions by international capital. Factions of capital, incluchg , manufacturulg and agrïcuitural interests, domestic

and foreign, were often in conflict over the labour supply. One of the major rifts was over

the labour tenancy of Afncans on white-owned land versus the need for workers in the

mining and manufactllcing sectors. Each faction lobbied for state poiicies that would

regulate labour supply in favour their particular interests. The Natives Land Act of 19 13, and successive legislation including the 1936 Natives Land and Trust Act, demarcated the land area that was avaiiable to Afncans. In 19 13 Anican ownership of land outside of reserve areas was restricted to 8 percent of the arable land, but by 1936 the reserves were extended to 13 percent of the total land area (Davies, U'Meara, Dlamini 1988). This Act forced many Afncans ont0 reserves and into the labour market where their labour was absorbed by both agricultural and mining capital.

The Agricultural Mkrketing Act of 1937 ensured that white farmers would conîrol the pricing of agricultural commodities. This Act favoured the development of capitalkt agriculture over mining ùiterests since this conîrol in pncing often increased the production costs in the mining sector. However, it also produced divisions between mining, industrial and commercial capital, which favoured the flexibility the Act provided in controliing the price of food, and agricultural capital which demanded that the state institute regdations to guarantee high pnces for agricultural commodities

(Davies, OY'Meara,Dlamini 1988).

The Urban Areas Act of 1923 (amended in 1937,1945 and finally in 1955) was passed to wntrol the movement of Aficans into urban areas. This Act airned to resettîe Afncans on reserves, thus, Iimiting their opportunities and extending capital's control over labour.

This Act placed the power of control over influx into danareas under in the han& of local authorities. Only those who had been born or lived in the sarne urban area for 10 years or more could maintain their urban residence. Afncans who had been repatriated to rural areas were ody dowed to lave the reserves with a 72-hour permit. By the 1950s,

Mux control was appiied to al1 urban areas, extended to include women, and labour bureaus were established to control the movement of people. Effliui controls were also established to prevent a shortage of labour for capitalist agriculture (Davies, O'Meara,

Dlarnini 1988).

International capital played a signifiant role in South Afnca. This role extends back in time from the eariy days of colonial control over the mining industry, to the 1960s with lucrative high foreign investment retums, the freeing of the gold standard in the 1970s and the drop in foreign investments following both the Sharpevilie shootings and the

Soweto riots. The apartheid state received loans from international financial institutions including the World Bank until the mid-sixties and the International Monetary Fund provided a loan to South Micaas late as 1982. In 1986 the U.S. Congress passed the

Anti-Apartheid Act prohibiting new investment and import of "non-strategic materials" including a wide range of goods from iron and steel to agicultural products. The withdrawals of General Motors, IBM and 73 major U.S. corporations followed, along with Barclays Bank (Davies, O'Meara, Dlamini 1988). This Act brought great pressure to bear on the South Afncan economy and contributed to the uitimate decline of the apartheid state and its repressive policies. Global capital will continue to have a role in South Afnca's economic future.

However, dong with those giobal economic influences came other cultural influences

such as those of Afncan Americans Marcus Garvey, who inspired African Arnerican

rnissionaxies in South Afiica, and W.E. DuBois, who had great influence over the development of Pan Afncanisî consciousness (Davidson 1964). The global anti-apartheid movement grew out of support for the South Mcanpeople in their çtniggle against the unjust laws of apartheid and brought great pressure to bear on their respective nations, in b~gingabout the implementation of economic sanctions against South Afica.

The strategies implememed by the various foms and factions of capital did not always keep the voyage to capital accumulation on course. Often îhese strategies floundered in shallows of economic decline and at other times were caught up in a current of mass unrest and political repression. The lack of unity and interem arnong South Africa's capitalist ciasses led to disputes over labour from the period of minerai discovery. This in conjunction with their cheap labour strategy limited their effectiveness in responding to periods of economic crisis.

1.3 Watersheds - Gender, Ethnicity and Race While the state and capital were primary forces in the origins of the labour migration system, their role does not adequately explain the varied responses of South Afica's people. The structures and modes of social organization produced by culturally articulated class and gender relations existed prior to colonization and continue until today, albeit in forms that have kentransforrned Thus, it is necessary to delve beneath the crosscurrents of capital and state to analyze the transformation of these social relations. In analyzing the structures and processes that shaped labour migration it is

important to demonstrate the role, not only of the might and power of the ruling classes, elites and capital, but also the important social action by individuals and collectivities.

These actions, overtly or covertly, coLlStituted both maintenance of the structures and system of labour migration and its eventual transformation. Not al1 of this action resulted in direct challenges to this system nor did it mate major ruptures in the development of labour migration, but nevertheless, it fias had lasting impacts and influences.

Challenges to the system came from communities who moved fiom traditional lands to escape drought, slavery and inter-tribal warfare, fkom men who broke their labour contracts or went on strike. Other challenges came fiom &can fanners who transfomed traditional agrïcultural practices to successfully navigate the capitalist marketplace and fiom Afrikaner settlers who sought to preserve the old order in the face of refoms that threatened their power over Afncan tenant labour. Destitute white fmers were released into the labour market to becorne a force for segregationist unionism.

Waves of protest fiom Afncans across time were met with varying depths of repression.

These and other challenges produced respcnses, which ultimately led to changes in the migrant labour system.

However, these challenges were mediated by the mechanisms of labour control, imposed by the state with the guidance of capital in its rnany forms, and cultural traditions that had their own foms of social control, including the control over labour. With every challenge

came a respnse based on capital, patnarchal and ethnic ùiterests. Capital required the

development of a flexible worldorce. White commercial farmers wanted an end to the

success of Anican agriculture. Apartheid ideologues and traditional leaders sought to maintain a separate course of development for black and white South A£iicans. Men were determined to maintain their control over women's labour.

A sigaificant event pnor to the Union of South Afnca was the Boer War. The defeat of the Afiikaner republics in 1902 had lasting impacts that brought them together as a force that crossed class and gender lines. In particular the death of 26,000 women and children in British concentration camps was an event that had a major impact on Afrikaner loyalties (Butler 1989). Resentments over 'English' control of economic and social life mediated previous social divisions. New leaders and institutions emerged along with the shaping of an apartheid ideology that would evenhüllly guide state poiicy on migration.

The 'English' domination of the mining sector and its infiuence over the South Afncan state were factors in uniting Afiikaner interests. By 1940 Afiikaner capitaiists had control over 85 percent of agricultural production Agx-icultural production was an insignificant economic sector in an econorny that was dominated and controlled by foreign capital.

English was the language of commerce and Afnkaners were disadvantaged as workers and capitalists alike. The unity that was forged by the alliance of Afiikaner workea, petty-bourgeoisie and capital laid the foundation for the creation of the Nationalist Party that swept into victory in 1948 and ruled for over 40 years (O'Meara 1983). The complex relationships that emerged show unlikely alliances between those who sought to maintain power. The emergence of the Bannistan system in the 1950s produced an ficanelite that benefited fkom the wealth produced by a labour force made captive for a capital sector in motion Erom the industrial heartland to the borders. This system also produced unlikely foes, as Afncan workers, in housing segregated by ethnicity and absent trade union representation, did not often engage in relations of solidarity but often in violent ideological clashes. Political entities, such as Inkatha, directed its power in an effort to control the thoughts and actions of Kwanilu7s population through the recreation of an ethnic identity tbat would submerge worker solidarity and Afncan nationalism.

Gender relations were also transformed in the development of the labour migration system. Labour migration resulted in the reconstitution of the household and the reorganization of pre-colonial divisions of labour by gender. The struggle to control women's mobility and labour, both productive and reproductive, led to consequences that shaped the role and status of Afiican women. The impact of labour migration on African women opened up opportunities for economic independence and mobility but also eroded the social security provided by women's status in traditional societies. The commodification of bridewealth customs, the increase in fernale-headed households and women's illegal migration were al1 outcomes of the labour migration system. Women's responses to these outcomes were varied due to their economic, social and cultural circumstances. Women pursued the opportunities that surfaced and traversed the dangerous currents of customary laws and state controls to eke out a living as petty traders, agricultural workers and domestic servants. For some women migration was an act of desperation, an escape fiom subordination by in-laws, senior wives or abusive husbands. Others went out in search of spouses who had not returned. Young women adopted the "modem" view of social advanement promoted by the mission schools where they were educated.

Labour migration resulted in widows, whose husbands were killed on the job, and desertion by rnigrating husbands. Migration by women was a result of motivations that were economic, cultural and ideological. Although women did not necessarily gain econornicdy fkom migration they did gain a form of independence that was not possible living under traditional laws and practices on the reserves or Bantustans. This independence came with a price as many migrating women broke their ties with farnily and rural support networks and lost the social security and status that came wïth aging in traditional society.

Both customary and legislative laws were enacted to specifically restrict the movement of

Afican women Women were considered minors and required permission from tribal authorities to leave the rural areas. During the perïod of secondary industrialization between the two world wars increasing nurnbers of women migrated to the urban areas defjkg both custom and law. Pressure was brought to bear on the South mcansuite by traditional leaders and in 1955 influx control was extended to include wornen. The structures and systems that soughî to control women's labour and mobility ofien created conditions that enabied women to reject as weil as accept this controi. Despite the measures imposed by the state and traditional authorities to limit women's mobility women continued to migrate. Women openly defied the extension of pass laws in 1956, rnarching in the streets of Pretoria 20,000 strong. The participation in this and other mass actions of protest galvanized many women into a movement thai, although forced underground and into exile, eventually transformed the face of South Afnca.

1.4 Convergence

This thesis describes the relationships between the social hierarchies of class, race, gender and ethnicity and how these interrelationships guided labour migration- It focuses on the development and role of capital in its multiple forms, the rise of racidism and ethnic divisions and the patriarchal systems that sought to control women's labour and mobility. In seeking to discover and dyzethese relationships, an argument for adopting a structuration approach emerges.

Labour migration in South Africa was not a one way voyage fiom the traditional to the modern set on a course by capital accumulation or rational choice. The complex social relations of labour migration emerged as the forcehl undercurrents of race, ethnicity and gender merged with the forces of capital to structure and restructure labour migration in

South Afica. These social relations themseives were stmctured and restructured by the labour migration system in a process of ebb and flow within the social, political and economic boundaries that were shaped across time and space by the shifking tides of social change.

South Afnca is a nation of diversiîy. The diversity extends to the social practices that guided the development of labour migration. The richness of this diversity provides an opportunity to broaden the scope of research on labour migration beyond the limits irnposed by neoclassical or structuralist theories. Rather than cirawing boundaries between theoretical models, academic scholarship on labour migration in South Afica must continue to build on both the insights and shortcomings of previous work. Chapter 2 Setting the Course

Theory, &er di, is mainly a means to other ends, and not an end in itselE BozzoIi 1391:15

Social scientists have approached migration theory fiom a diversity of theoretical perspectives that often refiect diverging viewpoints. Their disciplines, ideologies and conte- have shaped these particdar viewpoints and the assurnptions that emerge. The key assumptions of these varied conceptualizations reveal both similarities and differences in their understanding of the forces that direct and control migration. One of the key distinctions between these theoretical models is the emphasis placed on human agency in relation to social structure or systemn Neoclassical theories privilege the agency of the individual migrant or migrant household as the key explanatory factor in migration, whereas, stnicturalist or systems theories explain migration as a resuit of the continued reorganization of the capitalist mode of production. These theones establish a polarity between structure and agency losing an oppomuiity to develop a broader understanding of the forces guiding migration. Structuration theory argues that we must go beyond these conceptions to view "...structure as more than a pattern of materiai, objective, and extemal constraints engendenng human passivity; [and] for a conception of agency as more than action that is unstructured, individual, subjective, random and

implying absolute fieedom.. ." (Hays 1994: 58).

In approaching the study of labour migration it is essential to go beyond the many rnaïnstrearn approaches that have focused on the migration of men. Gender relations were viewed by some, as a mere tnbutq of minor gravity to the rnaimtream of thought on labour migration. The sipificame of gender relations and migration emerged fiom feminist intellectual traditions that enriched migration theory by creating analyticai space and conceptual tools to reveal the once submerged history of women and migration. As ferninist theories on migration have come into the mainmeam there have been ripples in the curent that has guided prevailing concepts about women's role in the maintenance and transformation of the structures and practices of labour migration in South Afnca-

These theones follow diEerent tributaries of thought. Liberal feminist theories view women as potential agents hindered by barriers that irnpede their enq into labour market streams, while others, both neoclassicai and stnicturalist, analyse how the structures and forces of capital expansion shaped women's reproductive and productive functions. The structure-agency nexus emerges in feminist theory and îhis debate is carried into an analysis of gender and migration.

Al1 of these theoretical traditions have been influenced by and parallel development theory. Development theories are linked to an analysis of socio-economic developrnent and modernization. Theories on modernization come fiom a spectrum of approaches and ideologies but many of them hold the view that rnodemization is part of a natural process of social transformation. Two opposing theoretical traditions guided development theory.

Modernization theory developed after the Second World War and came to have a considerable influence over development policy and programs in Third World counîries.

Modernkation theories viewed traditional societies as an early stage in a natural

18 evolution towards industrial society and capitalism. This evolutionary process was seen

to be broadly sirniiar in al1 societies. These theories advocate the rejection of iraditional

society and the adoption of Western values. Modernization theones viewed traditional

society as backward and Western industrial society as the preferred SM, and promoted a

concept of dualism that contrasted traditionai and modem societies. Many of the main

advocates for this theory had ideological concems about the spread of communisrn and

suggested development policies to explicitly guide development aid iù support of capital

expansion and industrialization of the Third World (Jary and Jary 1991 ).

Critiques of modernization theory came primarily fiom dependency and world systems

themies. Dependency theory emerged in the late 1960s, particularly in Latin America,

and was influenced by the theones of Marx. Marx examined development in terms of the requirement of capitalists to extract a surplus and accumulate capital in order to expand production. In order to increase this expansion continued extraction of more and more surplus value must occur. Marx's was concerned with development in the context of the transformation to a capitalist society.

Dependency theorists cntiqued rnodemization theory from a perspective that challenged the assumption that the Western model of development was a naturd aspiration for Third

World countries, precluding other social formations. Dependency theorists, or

Dependstas, critiqued the concept of economic duality and the sirnplistic contrast between traditional and modem societies. They also critiqued the lack of attention to the effects of colonialisrn and neocolonialisrn on the structure of Third World societies. Radical Dependistas argue that the unequd exchange mechanisms and international class

alliances between the North and South are the means through which the South becomes

exploited and kept in poverty (Chowdhry 1994).

World systems theory supports the Dependista notion that the North, or core, and the periphery, or South. World system thoery, however, goes farther in explaining that in the

16~century, capitalisrn became the single world-wide system that altered dl other social systems. Since that time neither feudalism nor socialism has been able to coexist side by side with capitalism.

Many theories argue over the role of modernization, however, many agree that rnodernization is inevitable. They would also agree that labour migration has a direct relationship to development and modecnization. Whether they pursue a perspective that promotes the dual nature of the economy by characterizhg traditional and modem society or critique capitalism as an exploitative and unequal mode of production and exchange, theories on modemization are linked with theories on labour migration.

2.1 Navigating the Market: Neoclassical Theory

In neoclassical theory, the goal of the migrant is to navigate the journey fiom the poor, sluggish backwaters of tradition, to the rich and forcefiil flows of the modem.

Modernization is the desired state. One of the key assumptions of neoclassical theory is that migration is a simple sum of decisions taken by an individual or a household based on a cost-benefit analysis of expected increased income in relation to the greater 20 probability of employment. Neoclassical migration theory proposes that the ciifference in

expected net gain in income between the point of origin and destination is the impetus

for migration Thus, migration is conceptualized as a positive phenornenon that implies

the voluntary movement of an individual or household towards greater socioeconomic

equality and an optimal distribution and allocation of labour in the market. Neoclassical

theories may have differences of opinion on the actual motivation for migration but one

curent of thought guiding their assumptions is that individual migration decisions are

based on a lack of equilibrium within the market. This lack of equilibrium encourages

movement fiom the traditional or rural sector to the modern or urban sector.

Neoclassical theory iduenced many theories on migration This chapter will focus on the dual sector mode1 and the new economics of migration. Although these theories differ

in orientation they both give primacy to the rationality of the hurnan actor. They also confer on the nature of structure, particularly state institutions, which they view as hampering market forces and creating barrien to human action. Both of these approaches were influenced by the early work of Ravenstein.

Ravenstein (1989) pioneered this micr~~analyticalapproach which emphasized the individual's will to move and was one of the first to propose a push-pull formulation of migration His observations fiom British census data revealed that people migrated from low opporhuiity (push) to high oppormnity (pull) areas. Proponents of this theory consider it to be the most widely known and accepted conceptualization conceming the push-pull motivators inherent in this approach.

21 The Lewis (1954) model, on which many recent neoclassical theories of migration are base4 analyzed the transfer of underemployed labour fiom what he called the non- capitalist sector to the emerging capitaiist sector or fiom the traditional sector tu the modern sector. Population movements were understood to be a rational response to uneven labour productivity and retums to labour between declining subsistence ewnomies in the so called 'tribal' areas and the modemizing industrial core of the excbange economy. In this model, migration links to economic development with surplus labour moving kom .traditional rural areas with low productivity to the modem capitalist sector with its higher wages and productivity. This model recognizes migration's role in accumulation, however, neglects to see the role of capital and the state in the creation and maintenance of these dual sectors. It also does not explore the role of gender, class or culture. The dual sector model neglects the interdependence of the two sectors that continue to be linked together in uneven and combined development. Lewis's work led to an ascendancy of economic models over cultural explanations for migration.

The dual-sector model describes migration as an essential labour market event that enables national economic development. In this view, migration in search for higher wages is inevitable and even expedient nie role of this migration process is to redistribute labour, not only fiom stagnant rural areas to dynamic urban areas, but also to enable growth in the more productive urban sector where rapid accumulation of capital

OCCUTS.

Critiques of this surplus labour model identify gaps within the fiuidarnental notions of

22 this theory, particuiarly, that it does not explain the fact that some ml rates of capital accumulation are greater than urban rates. The model: ". -.ignoreCs] the critical deof the rural sector as a producer of foreign exchange in many wuntries, as well as Afican urban sectors7import dependency.. . (Becker, Hamer and Momson 1994: 97)" Becker,

Hamer and Momson go on to critique the notion that workers move from traditionai to modem spheres of employment ". .. [qhe surplus labour mode1 ignores the fact that most labor in urban A£Îica is either ernployed in the idormal sector or is unemployed, rather than working in the modem sector (Becker, Hamer and Momson 1994: 97)."

However, subsequent theones sought to describe the phenornenon of urban unemployrnent within the dual sector model. Todaro (1976) advanced a dual sector approach with the implicit assumption that income expectations guided the decision to migrate. This assumption offset previous critiques of the dual model that failed to explain migration under conditions of unlimited labour supply and the subsequent decline of wages in the urbadmodern sector. According to Todaro, individuals make rational decisions based on the anticipated ciifference in wages accounting for tradeoffs such as periods of unemployrnent to maximize their life-long earnings over time. Equilibrïum will eventually be reached through the reallocation of labour, capital and resources in space.

The four basic characteristics of the Todaro model are: that migration is stimulated pnmanly by rationai economic considerations; that the decision to migrate depends on expected rather than actual wban-rural real wage differentiai; that the probability of obtaining an urban job is inversely related to the urban unemployrnent rate; and that

migration rates in excess of urban job opportunity growth rates are not only possible but

rational (Todaro 1992 :242).

This dual sector mode1 proposes that flows of labour move f?om low-wage to high-wage

coutries and that the flows of capital move in the opposite direction. This phenornena

results in a downward pressure of wages in the receiving coutries and an upward

pressure on wages in sending coutries. According to this theory labour migration will

continue until equilibrium in the labour market is reached with wage gaps disappearing.

The fündamental proposition of neoclassical theory is that differences in wage rates or, as

in the theories of Todaro, the expectation or perception of gaining a higher wage is the prïmary motivation behind migration. In this analysis, expected urban incorne is determùied by the current urban wage and the probabiliîy of obtaining employment at that wage over the wage rate at the point of origin. Variations in the rate of urban ernployment bring the labour market into equilibrium by lowenng the possibility of potential migrants gaining urban employment. If these expected incornes are defined in terms of both wages and employment probabilities, it is Iikely that continued migration will occur in spite of the existence of high rates of urban unemployrnent

Starting fiom the assumption that migration is based primarily on privately rational economic calculations for the individual migrant despite the existence of hi@ urban unemployment, Todaro postulates that migration proceeds in response to urban-nual differences in expected rather than actual eamings. The fiindamental premise is that

24 migrants, as decision-makers, consider the various labour market opportunities available tu them in the mal and the hansectors, and choose the one that maximizes their

"expected" gains fiom migration.

Todaro argues that current measures to equalize wages between urban and rural sectors is not the solution since many developing countries subsidize urban wages through minimum wage provisions, which he beiieves Merexacerbates the move fkom rural areas. He advocates the elimination of minimum wages and subsidies. Rather than advocating wage adjustments, to bring about an equilibrium beîween urban and rural incomes, Todaro suggests that rurai-urban migration itself must act as the ultimate equilibrating force "permitting urban wage rates to grow at a greater Pace than average niral incomes will stimulate merrural-urt>an migration in spite of rising levels of urban unemployment.. .(Todaro 1992:24S)." These arguments have given credence to policy recomrnendations that promote regulation of social spending in Third World economies, particularly to subsidies of wages through govemment wage bills.

International financial institutions have declared it is important for Third World govemments to allow market forces to make adjustrnents with minimal state interference.

However, evidence suggests that even though real urban wages have fallen considerably since the 1970s, labour migration has not abated (Becker Hamer and Momson 1994).

This evidence challenges assumptions, such as those of Todaro, that higher urban wages create differentials between mal and urban wages that bias the economy. Since real urban wages are already drastically low in relation to the coçt of living, Merreductions

25 would exacerbate already deteriorathg urban conditions. These reductions in turn would

be passed on to rural areas through reductions in remittance incomes and possible retum

migration to reserves or codesof ongin. These assumptions ignore the role that nual

areas play in the subsistence of migrants when urban wages drop and price controls on

food and rent disappear.

Recommendations by Todaro (1992) to alleviate the socioeconomic problems in the cities and shortages of labeur in rural areas as a result of rural-urban migration do not include urban job creation cir

Indic ' - te and costly educational expansion [th] will lead to further migration and unemployment... .Wage subsidies and traditionai scarcity factor pricing can be counterproductive.. ..it is often co~ectlyargued that the elimination of wage distortions through price adjustments or a subsidy system will encourage more labour-intensive models of production. rodaro f 992:243)

Todaro and other neoclassical scholars influenced migration policy and continue to support arguments for miaimizing state interference including those of the Chamber of

Mines (COM). COM responded to the Dr& Green Paper on International Migration

(1999) recommending that they continue to maintain the responsibility for recruitment of foreign workers. COM suggests that they would be much more efficient and effective than the South Afncan State in the delivery of this service.

The dual sector mode1 has been challenged by recent research that shows the marked links between the urban industrialized economy and the rural subsistence economy.

Numerous studies show that remittances can have an economic and social impact on a spe- of social collectivities fiom the nation to the household. Remittances are oflen absent fiom neoclassical research agendas and this absence allows for continued

assumptions defending the dualism of nual and urban life. Remitîances are but one factor

in the uitegration of rural and urbm societies and are often a source of conflict and cooperation between nations and household members. Perpetual linkages exist between rural and urban areas in a cycle of circular migration. These IÏnkages dispute the bifûrcation between the urban and the ml.

The view thaî migdon is an alternative to agridtural work is dismpted by evidence that, in many corntries, the two are necessary complements. Similady, the notion that migraîion has a negative effect on agricultural productivity is not supporteci conclusively by most of the evidence. The most rigorous economeîric work on the subject suggests that outmigration may be accompanied by a short-terni drop in traditional crop output, but that migrant wage incorne serves to raise productivity in the long run, by enhancing the working or *ed capital available to the rurai sector. (Stanton-Russeil, Jacobsen and Stanley 1WO:7)

However, this productivity is not universal and depends on several factors such as access to a sufficient land base, cash and household composition. Although not following a dual sector model, the auîhors continue to presuppose that increased capital and productivity can tip the scaie towards equilibrium in the rural areas, as a result of out-migration.

The New Economics (NE) theones of migration are also influenced by neoclassical theory and argue that migration stems fiom failures in the market, state and international policies to provide for material well-being. These failures are considered a result of barriers to economic advancement in the fom of state and international policies.

Decisions to migrate are largely based on minimizing risk to the household. Poor households often use migration as a means to diversi@ their livelihood strategies, combining foreign wage labour with other economic activities. The househdd is seen as a firm engaged in comparative advantage. NE theories have influenced theury on 27 household economics and argue that women have an advantage in the reproductive

productive sphere and are ". .. thus disadvantaged relative to men in the labour market"

veldman 1992:10). The household weighs the comparative advantage of each member

allocating migration responsïbility to that person who has greatest advantage in the

labour market.

However, hi theories recognize the importance of remitîances and ofien go beyond the individual in describing the reasons for migration- Stark (199 1) contends that the bais of contractual arrangements between a migrant and their family are based on the direct retums the non-rnigrating members receive through remittances fkom a migrating family rnember. These remittances are best explained as, ". .. an intertemporal contractuai arrangement between the migrant and the family than as the result of purely altruistic considerations" (Stark 199 1:25). This contractual arrangement reflects the relative bargainhg powers of the individual and the family through the efficiency, flexibility and dynamic of comparative advantage.

While Stark does not specifically address the two-sector mode1 he postdates that membership in a reference group with high relative deprivation in income or status influences migratory behaviour as individuals seek to lower relative deprivation.

[Alspects of human behavior, including migratory behavior, are both a response to feelings and an exercise of independent will.. .. People engage quite regularly in interpersonal income comparisons within their reference group. These cornparisons generate psychological costs or benefits, feeling gf relative deprivation or relative satisfaction. A person may migrate fiom one location to another to change his (sic) relative position in the same reference group, or to change his reference group. .. .In general, a person who is more relatively deprived can be expected to have a stronger incentive to migrate than a person who is les relatively deprived. (Stark 199 1:24) This decision is not necessarily based on attaining a higher level of income

but rather, and exclusively so, cf income differentials (Stark 199 1: 1 15). The

diversification in income strategy often offsets risks of production by providing the

capital that was previously unavailable to the poor households to expand and enhance

their production activities such as the hire of extra Iabourers, inputs and educational

opportunities for mernben of the household.

As in the duai sector mode1 NE theories ignore the political and social interests that

benefit fiom such a flexible system. NE theories also ignore the role such a system has in

migration decisions based on economic decline or the consequences of natural disasters.

Rather they focus on the household unit negotiating its way by a process of interpersonal

cornparisons through the fluidity of the market ever rnoving away from relative

deprivation towards a higher cash income. The contention that comparative advantage

guides this process of negotiation reduces the househoid to the individual, foregoing any analysis of the broader forces at work in migration decisions. According to Stark, the contractual forms that arise within the household give rise to

[m]igration decisions [th4 are ofien made jointly by the migrant and by some group of non-migrants. Costs and retums are shared, with the rule governing the distribution of bath spelied out in an implicit contractuai anangement between the two parties. (199 1 :îS)

Stark attributes the factors that influence migration decisions to infonnationa1 asymmetnes, attitudes towards risk, relative deprivation and intra-household interactions and says that ". .. [b]oth the migrant and family are endowed with a highly specific asset: mutual aitniism (Stark 199 1: 220)."

Stark explains the patterns and sedunentation of migration as a result of the migrant's 29 awareness that his children are likelier to adhere to a contractual arrangement with him if they observe him adhering to a contractual arrangement with his own father. This imitative and recurrent behavior is seen as critical in the formation of preferences and the evolutionary emergence of social noms of conduct. These social nom, as defined by the household contract, are dtimately based on the individual interests of the migrant.

The underlying idea is that for the household as a whole it may be a ,. - strategy to have members migrate elsewhere, either as a means of ri& sharing or as an investment in access to higher eegsstreams. Remittances may then be seen as a device for redistributhg gains. with relative shares determined in an implicit arrangement struck between the migrant and the remaining family. The migrant adheres to the contractual arrangement so long as it is in his or her interest to do so. This interest may be either altruistic or more self-seeking, such as conceni for fieritance or the right to retum home ultimately in dignity. (Stark 199 1:23 7)

However, the process of reaching this implicit arrangement is unexplained Forces such as those of capital, state, custornary law and gender relations are ignored as having no relevance to household decision making. Neither is there compelling evidence that risk is shared within the household given that women and children are ofien abandoned by migrant husbands or that often women migrate illegally facing deportation or worse. It also ignores that Afncan households were often not autonomous as decision-making uni& and were influenced by traditional social relations that resîricted women's mobility and defined the division of labour by status, age and gender.

While the NE school of migration differs substantially fiom the dual sector mode1 it ultimately has the same outcornes as neoclassical theory which privileges the role of individual choice, preference and imitation in migration decisions. NE theory proposes limited state participation in the migration process both as a force which seeks to create urban employrnent, subsidize wages or with "Political restrictions [that] may result in a 30 lack of complete information suppiied to potential migrants conceming opportunities in other regions or occupations. Similariy constraints on civil liberties rnay impose consequences on individuals who attempt to take advantage of econornic opportunities by migrating7' (Barkley 1994:394). The theoretical agenda focuses on the individual and the bamers they may face fiom state and international policies that restrict their advantage.

New Economics theory, despite its numerous shortcomings, expanded economic theory to look beyond the individual to explore household relations. In exploring household relations economic theory began to look at the differences that exist between household members. However, their lack of analysis of history or broader social forces, including race, gender and ethnicity, leaves their assumptions to drift on individualistic assumptions such as women's comparative advantage in household reproduction.

Neither the duai sector nor NE of migration explore structural factors such as legislative constraints that detemine and enforce migration in the context of contract labour and oscillatory migration. While some dual sector theories acknowledge the links between the two sectors of the economy they ignore the historical, political, economic and social forces that established these dual sectors, assuming them to be a natural consequence of capitalist development.

The failure of ecoaomic dualism consists in the following points. On the one hand a relaîionship between the two sectors of the economy is of necessity recognized; for example odaiingmigrants.. . On the other hand, explanation of the difference between the two sectors proceeds by invoking features that are ailegdy intrinsic and implicitly exclusive to each sector respectively, This central contradiction remains unresolved because the particular relationship between the two sectors is not itself regarded as problematic. Rather it is regarded as a naturai CotlSeQuence of the existing distribution of resources, skiils and attitudes of mind. in tbis way proponents of dualist theory tend to construct aaaiytical boundaries that coincide with physical boundaries 31 between the sectors- Neglect of economic history is an indispensable condition of îhis construction; and the habit of reductionism is its inevitable corollary. (Murray 198 1x9)

Both the circulatoxy nature of the migrant labour system and the investment of the remittances received fiom migrant labour in the local economy dernonstrate how these two sectors may be linked in the reproduction of the household and in production for the local economy. The oscillatory labour process guarantees that labour will maintain roots in the dareas.

Neoclassical theory presupposes that the market adjusts to any circumstance that might hamper its fimctioning and should be left alone to reach equilibnurn on its own. In a neoclassical household decision-making hework, the househoid evaluates the potential net economic contribution of each member. The choice of who migrates within a household settles on those individuals with the greatest potential to increase the wealth of the household Where these individuals migrate and settle depends on where they expect the highest lifetime incorne or lowest relative deprivation. Neoclassical theory avoids the role these migrants may play in the economic activities of their place of origin.

Migration is considered to be an occupational choice that acts as an investment in human capital.

One of the major weaknesses of this approach is that it fails to consider non-economic influences over the decision to move including the role of coercion versus free choice.

Labour movements are best understood as part of a global capitalist dynamic mobilizing a series of types of 'dee' or les-thanqual laboureres over the last 500 years. Labour migration, hmits most coercive to its most voluntary forms, represents a part ofthe historical spectrum of 'udiee' labour that became important in the nineteerith century and continues to be a vital ingredient in the recipe for nodal capital accumuiation today. (Paton 1995::9) There is scant evidence to support the notion of equilibrium between thte senduig areas and the receiving areas throughout the development of the migrant labaur system in

South Afnca. The structure and processes for capital accumulation in S-outh Afnca required the flexibility provided by a reserve or surplus of labour that couId be called on when labour supply was either insufficient to meet production demands or retunied to reserves during periods of economic stagnation. The market has brought neither equilibrium in wages nor in numbers of migrants to South Afiica.

Aiso absent fiom the neoclassical approach is an analysis of the role of -those who direct not only the process of migration but also the market itself This absence results in a theory that cannot adequately explain the process of migration in southem Africa since it ignores the primary role of the regions States and factions of capital in the cornpetition for control over labour in southem Afnca. Also absent is an dysisof the role of international financial institutions and international capital.

While these theories have serious flaws they do bring forward the notion of individual agency. Individual migrants, while constrained by the structures and systems of labour migration imposed by capital and the state, contuiued to pursue a diversity of migration decisions. Individuals acted alone or in collectivities that overtiy and covertly challenged the structures and systems of labour migration, resulting in a continuum of social action fiom systern maintenance to system transformation. These actions were ofien unpredictable and resulted in unforseen consequences for both the actom and those that sought to confine their responses. The complex anay of social forces acmoss time and

33 space irnpacted on individuals to either anchor theu social action in the daily

reproduction of social forms or to propel them on a course of individual and ultimately

social transformation.

Historical, economic and social contexts, within wiiich migration occurs, position an

individual's expression of agency. In exploring the context of migration, theory must go

beyond the narrow neoclassical interpretation of individualistic human action to

incorporate an analysis of the structures that both enable and constrain migration.

2.2 Structuralism: Diverting the Flows of Labour

Structural theories explore the transformation of the non-capitalist sector and have been

intluenced by Marx. Strucniralists explained migration fiom various perspectives

including: modes of production (Meillassoux 1981,1983 ; Folbre 1988); the uneven

development of capitalism in southem Afica (Hams 1993; Paton 1995); the articulation

of capitalist and non-capitalist formations in relation to the reproductive costs of labour,

ofien referred to as the cheap labour thesis (Wolpe 1972, Wolpe and Legassick 1975);

and an analysis of class formation, struggle and decline (Bozzoli 1978, O' Meara 1983).

Although these theones are not always identical many of them overlap. However, most

would agree on the overarching role of capital in controlling the South African state and

its policies towards maintainhg a labour migration process that served the interests of capital. This theoretical tradition views race, ethnicity and gender as functions of a particular mode of capitalist production, factions that delay class cunsciousness or, by-

34 products of the restructuring of social relations in the transformation of the traditional economy.

According to Wolpe (1972), the development of capitalisrn in South Afrika required a source of cheap labour to exploit the nation's natural resources. Migrants rotated between domestic and capitalist production in an osciUating cycle in sync with agiculturai seasons. This characteristic of production provided capital with the opporhmity to keep wages dom Capital pursued a cheap labour strategy drawing on a pool of surplus labour, that was created by the destruction of the pre-capitalist mode of production.

Wolpe adopted Mm's proposition that surplus labour

.. . is a necessary product of accumulation or the development of wealth on a capitalist basis, this surplus-popdation becomes... a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production. It forms a disposable mdustrial reserve -y, thaî belongs to capital quite as absolutely as if the later had bred it at its own cost. ..,The whole fonn of the movement of modern industry depends therefore, upon the constant transformation of a part of the labouring population into unemployed or half-employed hands- (Mm 1906: 693)

Thus, a reserve anny of labour becomes both a creation and a condition of capital production and accumulation. According to Marx, there are three forms of surplus labour: 1) Boating labour - where worken move from job to job in the industrial core attracted by the movements of technology and capital; 2) a latent reserve - where workers are confined to areas of neo/colonial states and advancing capitalist agriculture guarantees that agriculturai producen are constantly on the point of passing over into an urban or rnanufacturing proletariat ensuring that the source of this supply is constantly flowing and ". . . [t] he agicultural labourer is therefore reduced to the minimum of wages, and always stands with one foot already in the swamp of pauperism" (Marx 1906:705); and, 3) the stagnant reserve - where workers are irregular, casual, marginal and whose incornes fali well below the average and make up an ".. .inexhausîible reservoir of disposable labour-power characterized by a maximum of working time, and minimum of wages (Marx 1906:706)."

The reserve army of labour increases with the potentiai energy of wealth The greater the bctioning of capital growth dong with the productiveness and mas of the proletariat, the greater the reserve army. The more extensive the reserve anny the greater the amount of pauperism exists and ". .. establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding to an accumulation of capital" (Marx 1906:708). This becomes one of Marx's central arguments on the nature of capitalist accumulation.

According to Marx, in order to clear the way for capital's advance, the social means of subsistence and production must be transformed into forms of capital. Simultaneously, those involved in subsistence and production must be transformed into wage-labourers.

This ". .. so-called primitive accumulation, therefore is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as primitive, because it forms the pre-hiçtoric state of capital and of the mode of production corresponding to it (Marx 1906:786)." However, in southem Afiica the peuetration of capitaiism fed off ". ..the precapitalist sectors through the mechanism of primitive accumulation - with the contradictory results of both perpetuating and destroying them at the same time (Bundy 1979:243)." Maintenance of this precapitaiist sector was a preoccupation of the state and capital in order to offset the responsibility to provide for a

36 less than subsistence wage.

By examining the transformation nom the precapitalist to capitalia mode of production

structural theories challenge the dual sector model- The reproduction of labour required

an agrîcultural base as a subsidiary means to provide subsistence, limit urbanization and prevent permanent settlement in the city or country of destination- Accordhg to Wolpe

(1 W2), Meillasoux (1975) and others, it was in the interests of capital to expand

capitalist production while simultaneously preserving aspects of the precapitalist mode of production, in order to reproduce labour at a lower cost. The South Afiican state, in cooperation with mining and agricdhrral capital, articulated a system of production which protected and advanced capitalist social relations in both the econornic and political spheres. This system of production required the circulation of workers systematicaliy between their subsistence based 'homelands' and the centres of accumulation and employment.

Amther structuralist critique of neoclassical theory centres on the role of the state and capital in the coercion of the labour force. The migrant labour system developed through a process of coercion that was required by the needs and constraints of South African capitalist expansion. Rather than having the fiee choice to maxirnize their utility, as posed by the neoclassical approach, labour was used to fuel capitalist growth in southern

Afkica at the expense of African socieîies. The erosion of African agricultural production released the population to wage labour in the market economy often requiring them to abandon precapitalist production in favor of migration. In a critique of neoclassical 37 assumptions, Loxley (1987) states:

This type of mode1 has extrernely limiteci appli~ability~if any, in the southern AfEca context, It cannot explain the historical origins of the migratory labour system because it cannot accommodate the fact that the capitalist penetration of pre-capitalist societies shaped both the magnitude and the paneni of expected rurd incornes, wbile simultaneously generaîhg a workiug class divorced, in whole or in part, fkom the land. Neither does it dow for the centrality of non-market forces in tbis process- In reality, it was not so much the market that le.to the separation ofthe Afiican worker fkom the land, as the widespread use of military force by both Boer and Britisk dersin South Aiiica and by Gennan settlers in Namibia (Loxley 1987:202).

Structural theones explore the links between industrial development and

underdevelopment in rural areas and as a result question the notion of equilibrium. Amin

(1974) concluded that the immobility of certain factors of production, such as natural

resources, challenged notions of equilibrium. According to Amin the underdevelopment

of hinterland regions is a structural feature of '"meîropolitan" capital that requires

mobility of migrant workers, fiom these hinterlands to the sites of production. In the

South Afncan case, the factors of production remained predominately immobile,

particularly in rnining and shipping, until the period of secondary industnalization.

Structuralist critiques challenge the presumption of equilibriurn as ahistoncal and

reductionist since it ignores the structuralist parameters within whicb migration decisions

are made. The expectation of equilibrium as a result of migration is seen by rnany

stmcturalists as "an article of faith" (Wood 1982) rather than fact.

Structural theories have also explored the role of the state in creating conditions that

favored the development of capitalist agriculture. Arrighi (1973) observed that economic

development stnitegies in Southern Rhodesia failed to absorb unemployed workers and in fact created a surplus of wage labourers. Previously prosperous peasant fmerswere released into wage labour through state intervention in providing advantages to capitalist agriculture, discrimination against peasant production and through the process of

technological advancement in the 1950s and 1960s. Many studies (Paton 1995, Hams - - /, 1993, Van OnseIen 1Y'/O ) expiûrcd 'hr cmditions that exacerbated the underdeveloprnent

of sending corntries' economies and the role of colonial govenunents in undermining

ficanagriculture - often the final impehis that drew Afkicans into wage labour in South

.. . Illabour migration was not a trip to work fiom a traditional society but rather a whole social voyage - a century-long process of social transformation that resulted eom the penetration of capitalist relations of production and facilïtated unequal development - a concentration of investment profit and reinvestment in a labour importurg area. Wbat emerged, in facf was a complete new historiography of southern Mcathat has become the most important theoretical base for understanding the region today. (Paton 1995:1 1)

Stnic~uralapplications seek to demonstrate the interconnection between the development of labour importing coumies and the underdevelopment of labour- exponing countries. The control over jurisdiction in the migrant labour system between sending nations and the state of South Afkica ". .. was of major importance in the formation of a regional system of states" (Paton 1995:3). Two historical viewpoints on labour export policy include the view that colonial administrators over tirne were ovenvhelmingly implicated in the supply of labour to their neighbouring states.

Govements in countries such as colonial Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Malawi were complicit in the supply of labour to serve British colonial interests. In many instances capital acted as a de facto state apparatus that -wu responsible for local governance including the control over migrant labour. Govemments such as the colonial

Portuguese East Afinca negotiated labour supply agreements with South Anica to barter for increased revenue and other concessions from the British empire which histoncally exerted trernendous control over the Portuguese economy.

Paton (1995) descnies three phases of developing autonorny in labour export policy. The first phase involved an allegiance by administrators to their colonial government or in the case of company states, loyalty to the company. Supplies of labour were used to enhance capital accumulation and extend capital penetration for the colonial state or the company.

The second phase saw the interests of the administration shifi to a focus on interna1 capital development in policy-making related to labour supply. Interna1 demands, by emerging capital interests, would eventually eclipse the importance of the colonial regime. This varied £kom territory to tedrybased on the rate of their absorption into capitalist production. The third state resulted fiom a regional surplus in the supply of labour. In countries where revenues and foreign-exchange balances were not dependent on labour export policy, governrnents could take a position against providing foreign labour or could begin to address the process of social transformation that would be accelerated by suspending circular migration.

Structurdist theories enable us to focus our view of migration on the systems and structures of capital accumulation and class formation. It is cledy evident îhat the interests of capital and the state played a key role in the implemenîation of the labour migration system in South Anica, restncting the choices and opportmities of individual migrants. In examining the uneven development of capitaiist production and reproduction stmcturalists offer a broader historical analysis of the changes in the labour migration system. The study of capitdism7suneven developrnent wiîhin southern Afncan region was also a useful structuralist endeavour. Much of the work on this theme challenged the notion of dud economic sectors in describing the links between sending and receiving areas and the importance of remittance earnings in rural households and national economies.

Structural theories also understand the role of capital in the creation of the structures and systems that control the flow of labour.

While stmcturalist theories go beyond an analysis of rational individual action they have often neglected the important legacy of precapitalist socid relations and racisrn. By focussing on the political economy of production and reproduction, stnicturalists often dismiss the criticai influences of patriarchal, ethnocenûic, and racialist ideology as no more than a function of capitalism. According to Wolpe, "Racial ideology in South

Africa must be seen as an ideology which sustains and reproduces capitalist relations of production (Wolpe 1972:454)." However, this point of view Iimits itself to an understanding of social action that occurs as a result of the natural progress towards modernization, reducing precapitalist and emergent capitalist social relations to their economic function. Racial ideology has echoed dong the temporal course of South

Afica7shistory. It can be found on the sMace of social interactions between individuals and institutionalized into complex state-enforced systems of domination and violence. It can instill a positive sense of identity in a social environment that has displaced famiiiar social relationships and mobilize collectivities in the name of dead martyrs. Racial ideology undermined class relations, while ultirnately gaivanizing them. Stmcturalists analyze the mechanisms of control over labour provide a usefid hework to consider labour migration, however, they fdl short in their preoccupation with the interests of capital. The segregation and conîrol over labour was a process that involved negotiation, resistance, cooptation and adaptation. This process was fluid and took place at al1 levels of society. Although the rnechanisms of coercion and violence cannot be ignored it is also useful to analyze their impacts at the household and individual Ievel. By limiting the analysis of social response to class relations, stmcturai theories are unable to plumb the depths to find alternative explanations for social action.

2.3 Convergence - An Argument for Structuration Theory

Structuration theory seeks to integrate structure and agency and has been a recent influence on migration theory. The dynamic between structure and agency become a central analytical focus that reveals social structures as instruments and outcornes of social action in a continuum Grom structurai reproduction to structural transformation.

Structuration theory proposes the "duality of structure" recognizing îhat structures enable as well as constrain social action (Giddens 1984). The durability of these structures depends upon the scaie and scope of the stnictural foms that may preclude the possibility of certain choices. Social structures become both the medium and outcome of social action and could not exist without the willing or unwilling participation of human actors (Hays 1994).

Agency gives an explanation for the creation, recreation and transformation of social structures within the boundaries limited by structural constraint The capacity of agents 42 to affect these structures varies with the accessibility, power, and durability of the social

structure in wbch the agency takes place, Agency, thus, occurs within struchirally

defined limits, and while altemative choices may be available agents ofien tend to

reproduce rather than transform social structures. This process of reproduction

.. . is never füiiy stable or absolute and, under particdar circurnstances, the structured choices that agents make can have a more or les transformaiive impact on the nature of structures themselves. Human agency and social structure, then, have a simdtaneously antagonistic and mu.tually dependent relationship (Hays I994:65).

According to Giddens (1984) agency occurs when an individual exerts power to produce an effect though intentional action This intentional action takes place as a continuous process that flows through evqday life. Giddens maintains that human social activities are recursive, implying that agents reproduce the conditions that make these activities possible. He adds:

It is the specifically reflexive form of the knowledgezbility of human agents that is most deeply involved in the recursive ordering of social practices. Continuity of practices presumes reflexivity, but reflexivity în tuni is possible oniy because of the wntinuity of practices that makes them disénctively 'the same' across space and time. (Giddens 1984:3).

This notion of reflexivity guided Gidden's conceptualization of practical consciousness, what the agent hows about her or his action or social environment but is unable to express. Practical consciousness was distinguished from discursive consciousness, what agents are able to say about their actions or social environment, and as a concept endowed the agent with an enhanced capacity for action The "routinization" of day to day social activity is what Giddens identifies as "...the material grounding of what 1 cal1 the recursive nature of social life" (Giddens 19 84:xxiii).

Structuration theories on migration privilege neither the agent nor the structure as an

43 explanation for migration but rather emphasize tbe mutual dependency and antagonism

between human agency and social structure. The application of structuration theory

enables an understanding of the factors that infiuenced the supply as well as the demand

for labour and revealed the role of Anican societies in the development of the migrant

labour system. The exploration of the labour supply side revealed motivations that drew the Afncan population into migrant labour. These motivations were often linked to social relations that existed prior to capitalist development.

In the eariy stages of migrant labour young men were often required by culturally defined desto work for wages îhat wouid be paid or goods that would be purchased as tribute to tribal leaders. These young men were part of a social system in which traditional sources of power exerted influence over migration decisions. In exploring power, Giddens identifies two major resources which are implicated in the reproduction of social systems.

Two types of resource can be distinguised - the allocative and the authoritative. By the nrst of these 1refer to dominion over material facilities, including material goods and the natural forces that may be hamessed in their production The second concerns the means of dominion over the activities of human beings themselves. (Giddens 1987:7)

These sources of power provide a usefûl framework fiom which to view the role of

Afncans and settlers and their pwer to influence the actions of others in the maintenance of the labour migration system. However, the deployment of both of these resources to expand the scope and intensity of social control should be detached fiom intention According to Giddens, 'Al1 strategies of control employed by supersrdinate individuals or groups cal1 forth counter-strategies on the part of subordinates (1987: 1l)."

These counter-strategies often produce unintended consequences that result in systems

44 that are produced fkom intentional action. Thus, structure becornes at once both enabling as weli as constraining-

Social reproduction and social transformation occur as a result of social action that occurs at the surface level of society, as daily actors, anchored by day to day routines, or at a deeper level of social structures that require social actors accorded with transfomative power or agency (Hays 1994). These different layers of social structure embody the levels of power that can lead to system maintenance or bring about social change. In South Africa the multiple layers of social structures and their subsequent power relations afforded the creation, maintenance and eventual transformation of the

South Afncan state and its policies towards labour.

The migrant labour system led to the development of an Afncan working class through the inter-relationship of two processes:

FirstIy, the particular trajectory of capitalist penetration and the varying demands generated by it; secondly, the orgarri7irt;on and reproductive systems internai to fican sotieries and the way in which capitalist penetration interacteci with tfiem. (Wright 1995:778)

The structural impacts that emanated from these processes produced a unique form cf captalisrn that created a semi-proletariat that was at once drawn into capitalist production while at the same time rooted in the land as subsistence fmers. This semi- proietariankition was both the desired outcome of the trajectory of South Afncan capitalism and a source of resistance to full proletarianization by the Afncan population.

The history of South Afica makes it unique as a capitalist state, which did not base itself on Mly incorporahg the major* of its population into the working class and in fact 45 excluded this majore based on their race.

mcanresistance to full proletananizatiion is observed in the early work of Bundy (1979) who demonstrated that prosperous ficanagriculturalisâs had, in fact, taken advantage of oppormnities presented by an enlargeai market. This counters the structuralist assumption that al1 rural Afkicans were poor and forced to engage in capitalkt production. Bundy poses questions of why and how once prosperous commullities were reduced to poverty thugh increased effmrts by the state in serving the dernands of mining and agricultural capital- The cr-tion of a supply of surplus Afncan labour resulted fiom policies that limited AfEcauis' use of arable land and favoured 'white' agriculture.

Structuration theories argue that the crmion of the Afncan working class was a complex process. Many Afncans prospered under xew commercial relations and in the early stages of mining development migration was mostly discretionary. It was only after a concerted eEort by colonial and later state powers tm suspend profitable Afncan agricultural production in favor of mining and 'white' agicultural interests that labour migration became necessary.

Segregationist mechanisms employed by othe state of South Afiica, such as pass laws, colour bars to certain occupational categcrries and the establishment of reserves and later

Bantustans were essential to the developrnent and maintenance of this labour circulation systern. Both South Anica and Southem Rhodesia, which at one time was the largest

46 labour importer in the regios maintained their economic and political systems based on white privilege. The South &can state undenvent transformations as a result of the many unintended consequences of their actions to control labour. Competing interests, of capitalist classes, tribal leaders and apartheid ideologues, sought to influence state policy on labour migration Agricuitural, mining and manufacturuig interests often came into conûict over state policies. Policies on Afiican labour that the ruling parties implemented often resulted in challenges f?om opponents. These policies sometimes had impacts outside of South Afnca's borders. The increasingly repressive apparatuses of control that resulted in the Sharpeville and Soweto massacres influenced international opinion against the apartheid state and led to sanctions that created ruptures in the ruling

National Party and its eventual decline.

By exploring access to resources in hierarchical systems based on factors such as class, age and gender it becomes apparent that some agents had more capacity than others to influence the forthcoming migrant-labour system. A voyage into the history of the region is required, to reveal the undercurrents of tradition, ideology and gender that have combined to produce the labour migration process. History has shown that while many social relations have been transformed by the labour migration system, others have remained. The legacies of tradition, racism and paîriarchy persist in the region and influence the course of labour migration across time and space. These legacies resulted in varied outcornes for nations, households and individuals within the diverse contexts fkom which they emerged and cannot be explained by econornic phenornenon alone.

Structuration theory extends an analysis of the social relations that shapeû labour

47 migration to include other hierarchies of social. power and privilege. An examination of the forces, not only capital and the state, but also ideology, tradition and patriarchy reveals their role as conjunctive and interdependent influences over the labour migration system in South A.ca.

2.4 Into the Mainstrearn - Gendered Theory

Women in southem Afkica followed migration streams fiom the period of slavery, when they were drawn into the currents of early capitalism and racialism. Women entered into migration streams, propelled by the transformation of traditional social relations, or were held back by their own conformity. Women navigated national, cultural, and class boundaries transforming themselves in the process. Alternatively, othen reconstituted traditional social relations from a perspective that reflected knowledge of the limitations

?O their social action.

Many theories analyse the role of women as stnictured by advancing capital interests, state regulation, and traditionai power or as agents who circumvented the racially and gendered structures of migration, protested state regulation of their movement and defied traditional modes of social control. Brochman sees gender as a fundamental component for analysis of labour migration.

The way in which the, space and society selectively influence the actor, and are reflected in the actor, and simultaneously, how the individuai actor feeds back into society and hereby reproduces andior transforms it, is gender-specific. (Brochmm 1991: 122) Scholars, most notably those fiom the disciplines of economics and anthropology, have largely concemed themselves with women in their relation to male migration and the predominance of these studies focused on the women left behùid Researchers examined the impact of male absenteeism on women, including the breakdown of traditional family patterns (Schapera 1947, Meillassoux 198 1, Paton 1995). Male bias limited the research and analysis of women and migration by focussing on issues including the economic relations that underpi. bndewealth, remittance endowments in the househoId and women's fertility. What emerges is a perspective that identifies women as objects and not subjects. These scholarly endeavours largely ignored the gendered structures and systerns of labour migration which reflected a unity in thought and action of the state, capital and traditional leaders in defence of the patriarchd power relations that sought to control female migration- This unity was shaped by the dominant patriarchal worldview of traditional African societies and Western capitalism that required women's labour, both paid and unpaid, for its continued reproduction. These scholars also ignored how gender relations were restructured by the transformation of domestic and productive labour pattern, through direct and indirect challenges to patriarchd modes of control.

By separating male and female migrations into discreet areas of study it becomes possible to discover how one has impacted on the other. A gendered analysis of labour migration explains the links between male and female migration, as well as the unique charactenstics of each fom of migration. However, one cannot ignore the relationship between male and female migration. Research on women and migration incorporates feminist approaches fiom diverse theoretical traditions, yet is guided by a concem for gender analyses. The sources of feminist theory on migration are similar to theories of development. Two major approaches that parallel development theones are liberal feminist theones that were linked to modemization theories and rnany Marxist feminist theories that were influenced by dependency and world systems theones. Others developed critiques of bot- approaches. From Iiberal to criticai and post-colonial, feminist theory contributed immenseIy to the body of theories on migration. Most would agree that there exists a sexual division of labour, that male-bias persists in many scholarly approaches and that gender is socially constructed. Feminist theories and research address the uivisibility of women in social research and idluence a broad range of research topics which include women in development and more particularly women and migration.

The pioneering work of Danish economin and anthopologist Ester Boserup chalienged assumptions about Third World women, by highlighting their crucial role in production and reproduction. The publication of her book Women's Role in Economic Dmelopment

(1986)brought the worlds attention to the integration of women into research agendas.

Boserup argued that government bodies were responsible to establish processes and structures that would bnng about equality of men and women in public and social life.

Other Iiberal feminists around the world rallied to the cause and began to develop critiques of their colleagues includhg the belief in efficiency, faimess and integrity of f3ee markets and technological development. Liberal feminists argue that women's equal participation in modernization processes will deliver them from poverty and exploitation. They promote modernization, based on the

Western model, as the goal of iraditionai societies. This modernization process should draw women into the labour market and provide them with an independent source of wealth which would Mt them out of poverty. Educational programmes and developrnent projects sought to involve women, enhancing their capacity to engage with the market by improving women7sefficiency and effectiveness in household and commercial production. Many women in southem Africa who had been left behind by male migration were recipients of such programming. Investments in women human capital, would enable women to escape traditionally unskilled, low-wage work and have equal opportunities with men in a market that was presumed to be gender bIind. Liberal theones ofien blamed cultural traditions and men's resistance to changing traditionally prejudicial maintenance of female x'nferiority (Boserup: 1990).

Tinker (1990) and others critiqued economists and development planners for omitting women7srole in productive processes, their reinforcement of women's subordinate rde through policy and programs and their imposition of Westem cultural values. Tinker and other liberal feminists suggested that the reallocation of resources, such as technology and education, in a more efficient manner would assure the enhancement of women's productive and reproductive roles. Women would be fkee to become rational actors able to maximize their productive potential. The philosophical underpinnings of liberal theones viewed men and women as equally possessing the essential human capacity for rationalit-and therefore, by providing women with the same opportunities and benefits

5 1 as men gender equality wodd prevail. Each agent wodd be the best judge of her own self-interest Individual choice wodd progel women into the rnainstream of the economy to pursue self-interested goals. The utility of ultural constructs and values were vieweà as exogenous factors outside the realm of the economy. By linking women's agency to the economy liberal feminists ignored other factors that reveal the complexity of gender relations.

[Glender is seen to be an aspect of aii orgmbtional relations and behaviour, more distinct and explicit in some institutional locations than ohers, but always interacting to shape the identities, practices and Me-chances of different groups of women and men in specific ways. An analysis of the des, noms and practices througb which different institutions constnict gender divisions and hiermchies helps to unCover the underlying shared ideologies which govem apparentiy distinct and separate institutions. (Kabeer I994:6 1)

Partriarcha1 ideology was shared and in fact, often governed the processes that sought to control women's responses to male migration and the migration of women as well. Many of these processes of control were considered external to tke economy and thus not a focal point for liberal research agendas.

Liberal ferninists considered equity as economic independence and sexual inequality as caused by traditionai values and male ignorance. These corniderations revealed their lack of depth and diversity and a pro-Western bias. Many southrem feminists critiqued the belief in the benevolence of modernization because of its ahistorical application. Their critique identified an ignorance of broader issues of inequality in society, such as class, race and ethnicity and its Western bias with narrow interpretations of inter and intrahousehold structures and roles. Bosemp's and other liaeral feminist's prescriptions were seen to be like "'treatingcancer with a bandaid" (Benena and Sen 1986:287) since they did not address fuudamental issues such as imperialism and racism.

These liberal theories also often ignored the social context within which women were responsible for the material well-being and basic human survival of their households by providing water, food, and clothing. Women's traditional reproductive role was seen only as a consiraint to the choices they had and the decisions they made in favour of or against migration. Traditional society was viewed as backward and as a result many liberai feminists ignored the status and protections that were available to women in traditionai social relations. May women opted to preserve this status and protection rather that migrate into an unknown world.

New Household econornics view the household as a homogenous unit that maximizes its utility by sending out into the labour market the member who possesses the greatest marketable skills. Households pool and divide their income in a process of "strategic transfers" (Becker 1981) whereby a process of paternalistic altruism guides the allocation of household resources in order to increase effîciency and thus maximize the welfare of the household (Hart 1997).

Neoclassical theories on the household have been critiqued by feminist approaches since they assume that households act in an altruisitic fashion and therefore ignore intra- household inequities in labour, property, incomes and decision-making between men and women. In many historicd accounts the maleness of the migrant labour force is taken for granted, while the nual homestead is presented as a hannonious unit in wwhich aii members were United in maxhizbg reouces and resisting threats to its integrity ., . and presents a view of the precolonid homestead that is quite undifferentiated with regard to power relations within it. (Waiker 1990: 177-78)

Another criticism of the neoclassical approach was that it assumed incompatibility between productive work and family roles that often coexisted in peasant and pre- indutrial societies (Stichter 1990). Uany feminists conceptualize the intemal dynamic of the household as a determinïng factor in the quality of women's lives. Family, kin, domestic, and class relations influenced the productive and reproductive relations of the household. These influences mediated the choices of migrant men and women and the differential impacts on members of the household The household cannot be reducible to a homogenous unit as neoclassicai theory implies.

Feminist theory on labour migration provided a critique for neoclassical accounts which claimed that both men and women have the same motivations to migrate and yet based their assumptions on gendered divisions of labour that relegated women to the ml areas, left behind by their migrating mates. For some scholars, women were an empincal object of study not in their own right as in the male migrating actor, but in their response to changes that male migration had in women's reproductive role. Anthropological studies of gender were ofien rural based and considered women's ability or inability to undertake agricuItura1 activities. The invisibility of womei='s migration in neoclassical theories reveal their gender blindness. Their assumptions, that women stayed at home because of the naturai sexual division of labour, presurned women's responsibility for the reproduction of the household through subsistence agriculture or remittances fiom

migrant spouses.

The sex/gender nexus became a source of debate among feminist scholars. Marxîst and

socialist feminist theories sought to descnbe and analyse women's reproductive and

productive roles. In analysing the ongins of these roles some concluded that the labour

force itself is socially constnicted in any mode of production. The analysis of modes of

production was a structural approach adopted by many feriinists to describe the activity

of women within the household. Many Marxist feminists focused on the relationship

between modes of production or reproduction in the household and the broader mode of

capitalist production. Marxist feminist theones sought to deflect criticisrns of

stnicturalist theories, for their omission of women's subordination in the sexual division of labour. The surplus labour thesis of capital accumulation inforrned the cheap labour hypothesis but, according to many feminists, failed in explaining why women were subordinated within the sexual division of labour. The sexual division of labour predated capitalism and continued in socialist societies (Stichter and Parpart 1988).

Structural theories underestimated the importance of agency in the transformation of gender relations. According to Walker:

The extreme oppression of Man women that has characterized twentieth century South AEnca cannot be seen as an inevitable outcome of the logic of capital& development. Like the system of migrant labour itselç it has to be seen as a product of struggle, negotiation, compromise and defeat, the outcome of which was not foreordained at the start - nor immutably fixed for all time to corne. (Walker 1990:196) By examining the social relations of gender it was possible to expand the analytical and conceptual tools of orthodox class analysis. An analysis of the social relations and practices of everyday life revealed asymmetrical gender relations. The revelation of eveqday life opened immense possibilities for feminist scholars as it provided explanations f~rthe spectriim of women's actions. Women both resisted the prevailing social structures and noms or upheid them in a continuum of responses fiom system maintenance to social transformation. Social relations were viewed as mutable and varied according to the diffenng social formations that have existed across time and space.

Stichter (1990) poses five aspects of household production and reproduction that affect women's employment pattern. (1) The social relations of productive (wage) work including the amout, allocation, distribution and tramfer among household members.

(2) The social relations of reproductive work including, the amount, allocation, distribution and transfer among household members. (3) The structure of the household including, the size, age, sex composition including female-headed households.

(4) home and resources, the total household income and value of productive resources and the distribution of this income and resources among the household members including immediate and inheritance distribution patterns. (5) Decision-making and power relations mong the household members particularly husband-wife relations but also parental decisions. These aspects would aiso affect women as a result of the migration of a male household member or as an influence over their own decision migration. These aspects of household production and reproduction provide a usefitl framework for analysing how the labour migration process altered household production.

56 While fisfiamework is useful it does not locate the household within the broader forces

of society, such as the ideology, 1egisIative constraints and the strength or weakness of

the national economy.

By undertaking gender analysis feminist scholars have discovered that male and female

migrations have had both negative and positive effects on women Male migration ofien

resulted in detenorating economic and social conditions for women who assumed the

sole economic and domestic responsibility for their household (Elson 1992). Female

internal migration someîimes resulted in the improvement of woments economic and

social condition by challenging cultural limitations on economic and social participation

(Walker 1990; Bozzoli 1991). This ambiguity, in motivation and consequence of female

labour migration, has led some to conclude that:" Female labour migration in relation to

the possibility of social change.. .both embodies system-maintenance and options for

change" (Brochman 1991: 122). Women's experience of labour migration is expressed in

a continuum of action, enabled and constxained by the structures of capital, patriarchy,

ethnicity and race. These structures overlapped to create varied contexts fkom which

women responded.

The household, as the unit of analysis, revealed the social dimension of migration and

emphasized the importance of ciass position, familykousehold structures, and kin

relationships. Some feminist scholars (Walker 1990, Bozzoli 199 1, Elson 1992) sought to

link the household or micro structures with macro structures to explain the motivations and outcornes of migration. In the same way that feminist theories sought to challenge

57 the analytical privileging of male migrant labour systems these theories soright to develop an analysis of labour migration that privileged neither structure nor agency.

The range of responses that women had to their own or their spouse's migration was mediated by the layering of social forces that impacted on women in different ways, due to their ethnicity, race, social and economic status. Some women and men abandoned patriarchal structures by choosing urban migration and refused to participate in customary activities. The response by traditionid leaders was to join with the state in promoting increasingly repressive laws that restricted the freedom of people to move and settle in the place of their choice. However, the structures imposed by the state and traditional authorities to control labour migration created an environment that afforded both opportunities and barriers to social change. The eventual disrnantling of the apartheid system was not just a result of the new needs of capital but a process of reaction against injustice from the individual to the global level.

In sumrnation, structuration theoq does not daim to be an infallible grand theory that answers every question concerning the relationship between structure and agency throughout the history of labour migration in southern Afnca. Rather structuration provides the opportunity to raise further inquiry into the processes that guided labour migration in southern Afnca. Chapter 3

Swept Away- Capital and the Expansion of Labour Migration

From the e~~estdays of European colonisation of South fica, economic and other measures introduced by successive colonial and apartheid remes sought, among other things, to benefit white property owners, including bers, mine owners, industrialists and financiers, at the expense of the black majority, ,. . Throughout the period of white minority rule, these white economic interests were not merely passive beneficiaries of the activities of the white state. They were also active participants and initiators in construchg a political and economic system, which in the end was classifieci in international law as a crime against huIlzanity. Siibmission of the -&can National Congess to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1997.

The development of the migrant labour system created multi-layered social relations and structures that extend fiom the interregional bilateral arena to the cornmunitu and the household. In examining this development it is critical to understand the role of capital and its impact on labour migration. Capital in al1 its guises depended on the migrant labour system. The historical relationship between the various foms of capital and the development of state policies on labour migration in South Afnca reveals capital's ovewhelming determination to control the structures and systems of labour migration.

These structures and systems lefi behind social and econornic legacies that survive to this

&y and have become a liability in current interregional negotiations on the migration of contract workers to South Anica. The consequences of these legacies impact on many aspects of labour migration uicluding job reservation, infiux control, wages, unequal access to resources, mine migrancy and hostels (O' Meara 1998).

This chapter provides a brief ove~ewof the role of capital in labour migration. It looks deeper into the rde of colonial capital and the responses fiom other capitalist interests, uicluding mercapital. It examines the case of Anglo American, which was and continues to be a powerful economic force in South Afnca. Its ongins as colonial capital and participation in the 'English' dominateci Chamber of Mines was a source of tension for muercapital, due to their competing interests over labour.

In examining the role of particuiar capital interests it is useful to look at the development of the mechanisms implemented on behalf of capital by the state to control îhe movement of labour. These include the role of capital in expropriating Afncan lands, restricting their movement and the control over foreign labour supply.

3.1 Overview of Capitalist Development

The South Afncan state and capital had a shared goal of growth and wealth accumulation, although their strategies on reaching this goal often differed. These differences resuited from competing interests betwen factions of capital including the character of ownership, whether colonial (English), Afnkaner, state or foreign, or the economic sector whether finance, manufachiring, mining or agriculture. Further complicating this cornpetition was the colonial, known by some Afiikaners as 'Eng1ishy, monopoly over the mining sector (Bunting 1969). The English domination of South

Afnca's most powerful economic sector led to dissatisfaction on the part of Afrikaner capital. In order to expand the growth potential for Afnkaner capital, a political movement culminated in the formation of the Natiodist Party wtiose aim was to gain control over the state and its resources. With the financial backing of Afrikaner capital, the Nationalist Party came to power in 1948. The Nationalist Party's increasingly repressive legal and military measures against migrant workers resulted in the flight of

foreign capital and the eventual conversion of neo-liberal elements of Afrikaner capital,

who advocated labour reforms. The history of southem AfEca reveals a spectrum of

interests, among factions of capital and the various colonial and nation states, that

promoted cooperation and confiict in accessing and controliing migrant labour. The

confluence of these interests enabled and constrained the structures of labour migration

within South Anica and the region as a whole.

The paaicular history of South Afiican created frequently competing factions of capital

whose interests were ofien in conflict. The colonial legacy of British imperidism was a

source of fnistration for Afkkaner capital interests. The rnining sector dominated labour

recruitment through vehicles such as the Chamber of Mines and its affiliates. Afnkaner

capital went through a rapid growth with the commercialization of agriculture and

creation of Afnkaner financial institutions. Labour recruitment and placement policies, that favoured the foreign-dominated mining monopolies, were often met with harsh

criticism fiom Afnkaner capital that required labour for agricultural production and

processing.

State capital emerged in the early days of the Union of South Anica with the creation of the South African Railways and Harboun (S AR&H) in 19 10 (Davies, O' Meara, Dlamini

1988),ESCOM (electric power) in 1922 (Bunting 1969), ISCOR (steel production ) in

1928 and SASOL (oil fiom cod production) in 1929 (Davies, 07Meara,Dlamini 1988).

These economic activities created their own need for labour. Sometimes the interests of the state and capital coalesced Cooperative relations between

Afhkaner capitalists and politicians enabled the emergence of Afrikaner monopolies such as, SANLAM, the Rembrandt Group and Volkskas. Afrikaner controlled companies like

SANLAM and Voikskas, benefitîed fiom their association with the Nationalist Party throughout the 1950s and 1960s (Davies, O'Meara, DImini 1988).

However, Afnkaner capitalists were not dways a homogenous group. Some Afnkaner capitalists took the side of reforms to labour mobility while others fiercely supprted apartheid policies that irnposed control over African labour. Afrikaner capitalists, who later adopted a neoliberal perspective opposed labour controls, and desired a more stable, settled and productive workforce. This opposition became

profoundy political in that it chalienged one of the pïüars of apartheid - i.e. îhe idea that black workers were merely temporary sojouniers in white cities. (Truth and Reconciliaîion Commission 1998:1)

Frustrated by the lack of govemment action on implementing reforms, Anton Ruperî, fiom the Rembrandt Group, and Harry Oppenheimer, from Anglo Amencan

(representing Afnkaner and English capital respectively) established the Urban

Foundation in 1976 to push for reform in the areas of influx control, housimg, and black land ownership. A wide range of corporations and business organizations supported this initiative (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1998).

The statekapital relationship also impacted on class relations. Anican migrant labourers were a source of cheap labour to al1 capitalist factions. From the colonial period and onward, capital enlisted the support of the state to establish measures that would ensure the continued availability ofthis cheap labour source. This support included the development of a series of laws that: segregaaed job categories by race; made it a criminal offense to break a labour contract; restricted the influx of Afncans into uban areas; imposed a pass identification system; and resrricted Afncan business ventures. As well as providing direct control over labour, the state also insti~edthe development of reserves and Bantustans in order to lhit the amount of productive land that could be owned by

Africans and ensure a subsidiaq source for household reproduction through subsistence agriculîural production. This combined form of household production through subsistence agriculture and productive wage labour was a stnictural feature of labour migration in southem Afnca.

Migrant labourers were drawn from al1 over southem Afnca, leaving their families behind as decreed by their contracts. They lived in over-crowded and inadequate housing and were only provided with a minimum of food for survival. Those who worked in the mines also faced added occupational health and safety dangers. These atrocious and exploitative conditions were one of the main reasons that workers, who had a range of ernployment opportunities, avoided the rnining sector in favour of higher paying jobs in the emerging transportation, energy and manufacturing sectors. Repaîriatiûn was mandatory for a period of tirne before contracts could be renewed. This repatriation to their reserves or homelands provided a base of subsistence in the event of a downtum in the economy and a place to remonce rnid-life came and contract work was no longer available. Mcanworkers protested against the system that defined their economic situatior, and

denied their political rights. Over the coune of South Af'rica's histov, workers organized

against unjust pass laws, job classifications and inûux control in addition to issues in

common with workers everywhere. These protests were often met with harsh repression

includïng killing stnking workers and the banning of pro-union organizations and

individuals.

With the formation of the , subsequent governments provided protections to white workers including the legislation of job resewations and the nght to union representation These protections resulted fiom strike agitation by workers, particularly in the mining sector, who feared their jobs would be made available to black migrant workers. The mineworkers strike of 1922 was a case in point. This strike not only benefited white workers but also provided an example to black workers of the effectiveness of job actions, including strikes.

However, capital also acted in ways that undermined white interests. Agricultural capital successfully Iobbied the state to enact increasingly restrictive legislation on African land tenancy that promoted the exodus of small mostly Afnkaner farmers out of the rural areas. Many srna11 Afnkaner fmers relied on their Afncan tenants to provide for their subsistence and were unable to cope with expanded production responsibilities. Capitalist agriculture required more land to provide cheap food for the expanding mining and emerging manufachiring sectors and aggressively lobbied for this legislation. Many of these displaced and impovenshed farmers migrated to the cities and there were fears that, if their numbers increased, the potential for social and political problems would &se.

South AEîca's defeat of German colonial control, in 19 15, gained them access to a new

economic market and a haven for destitute, unemployed f-ers in South Afnca

(Davidson 1964).

Many of these fmers stayed in South Afnca and became workers in sectors that were dominated by 'Engiish' capital. The rise of AfÎikaner nationalism included the support of fnistrated Afhkaner workers who in 1937 had an annual individual incarne of £86 in cornparison to £142 for non-AlEkaner whites- These worken also opposed 'English' capitalist refoms to remove the colour bars that protected their jobs (Afncan National

Congress 1997).

Meither capitalists nor workers were always united in their interests or demands on the state. In some cases the state acted with a particuiar faction of capital at the expense of another. Complex class relations resulted from these actions and at times workers aligned themselves with factions of capital in order to mertheir own particular interests. The from the colonial days before the Union until today, reveals a coming together or coming apart of capital, state and class interests. These interestç changed over time and were mediated by ethnic tensions, economic sector priorities, and international opinion. Labour migration occurred within this changing context and was itself transformed in the process. 3.2 The Rising Tide of Colonial Capital

The discovery of diamonds in 1867 and gold in 1886 brought what is now South Africa

from the statu of a backwater colony to a shining star in the constellation of British

imperialism. By the 1880s, colonial nile and capitalist expansion transformed existing

economic, social and cultural practices of Afncan societies. Although extensive trading

routes existed in southern Afîica, Swahili and Arab merchants dominated the sale and

trade of ivory, goats, salt and slaves. At that time, small chiefdoms throughout the region

engaged in active trade with the Europeans. By the 1830s these chiefdoms were

increasingly mnsolidated into powerN kùigdoms including the Zulu, Matabele, Basotho

and Swazi (Lapping 1986). These kingdoms provided a soiace for migrant labour.

The development of the mining sector in colonial South Afn'ca, Narnibia, Zimbabwe and

Zambia changed the course of history within the region. This large-scale mode of capitalist production required the widespread exploitation of large nurnbers of mcan workers that were drawn into wage labour in the mines or into the commercial agicultural sector. The huge market created by the mine labour force enabled spin-offs for capital expansion in agricultural and manufacturing secton. The mining industry also played a significant role in the creation of institutions and laws that shaped the structures and socials relations of labour migration (Davies, OYMeara,Dlamini 1988).

Initial labour shortages, during the early years of exploration and development, enabled migrant labourers at Kimberly diarnond mines to demand higher wages in order to acquire better food and lodging than was provided in the compound labour camps of the mines. These initial labour shortages were a result of the discretionary participation of

Africans who, in general, preferred a lifestyle of homestead production, over working in

the mines (Lapping 1986). This discretionary participation was a bane to mining capital,

which required increasing nwnbers of workers to exgand their productive capacity- The

British govemment acted in the interests of minùig capital by conquering neighbouring

African kingdoms and reabsorbing the breakaway Amerrepublics through

negotiaîion or military campaigns. Mining capital required a flexible yet consistent labour

supply and enlisted British support for adopting strategies that limited the economic

choices open to Afncans. These strategies included the implementation of laws that

expropriated larger proportions of African land, resettled scores of people and imposed

taxes on Afiicans.

The development of the mining industry stirnulated the second wave of capitalist expansion. Growth of the secondary expansion, in the period from 1919 - 47, was due to the manufacture of textiles, steel, building products, mining equipment, and petrochernicals, food and beverage industries and the creation of financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies. The complete domination of agriculture by capitalist production also required a large pool of migrant labour. Migrant labour in the mining and non-mining sectors more than doubled fiom 279,8 19 to 604,526 between

1921 and 1951(Whiteside 1988).

Merthe Second World War, the South Afiican economy grew rapidly. This growth continued until the 1960s when more than a decade of civil unrest culminated in the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and the Rivonia treason trials of anû-apartheid activists in

1963. Nervous foreign investors, disturbed by this unrest, withdrew their financial

support. This took its toll on the South Afncan economy. The South Afncan regime

succeeded in restoring order, arresting, exiling and imprisoning leaders of the -est and

repatriating millions of people to the Bantustôns. With the civil disobedience under

control the South Anican state consequently restored confidence in its economy. Foreign

investrnent inspired a booming economy with spectacdar levels of capital accumulation.

The years from 1963 -1972 have been dubbed the "golden age of apartheid" (Davies,

O'Meara and Dlamini 1988:28),

Business was central to the economy that sustained the South African State during the apartheid years. Certain businesses helped to design and implement apartheid policies while simultaneously challenging others. Other businesses benefited fiom cooperating with the security structures of the apartheid state, in order to receive protection against liberation forces. Most businesses benefited hmoperating in a racially structured context (Truth and ReconciIiation Commission 1998).

By the early 1980s eight corporations linked by investments, joint ventures, inter-locking directonhips and shedownership, controlled most of the South Afiican economy.

During this period, foreign African labour accounted for over half a million workers per year with a high in 1974 of 78 percent foreign labour employed in the gold mines of

South Africa. In 1970 Mozambique and Lesotho each provided nearly l5O,OOO, Malawi over 100,000 and Botswana, Swaziland and Rhodesia colledvely providing over 85,000

contract workers for South mcancapital (Whiteside 1988).

At the same time the mechanktion of mùung and agriculture created high leveis of

persistent unemployment for South Anican workers and labour tenants. Capitalist

agriculture required more land and surplus labour in order to maxïmize their productive

capacity. The introduction of influx controls resulted in massive expulsions of people to the Bantustans who provided a surplus of labour for expanded agricultural production.

Bantustans also provided labour for the manufacturing and processing plants that were relocated on the borders of the Bantustans. Both former danworkers and labour tenants assurned new productive roles as they became con- workers (ficmNational

Congress 1997). Structurai unernployrnent resulted nom this approach to controlling labour and created immense benefits for the capitdist systern since it enabled the creation of an increasingly flexible surplus of labour that possessed few legal rights within South mca-Unemployment in South Afnca rose to a toral of three million by 1983. It is estirnated that between 1960 and 1970 almost two million people were forcibly resettled on the Bantustans with an additional million resettled by 1980 (Davies, O'Meara,

Dlamini 1988).

Before 1971 the Bretton Woods monetary and financial system tied the U.S. Dollar to the gold standard. The collapse of the Bretton Woods in 197L removed gold as the standard, allowing its price to increase to new highs. By the mid-1980s the price of gold rose 15 times over 1970 levels (Davies, 09'Meara, Dlamini 1988)- This price rise enabled mining interests in South mca to change their recmiting practices drastically. The mining sector was able to reduce its dependence on foreign contract workers by increasing wages. With these wage increases workers in South Anica and the Bantustans were more willing to accept jobs in the mines that had previously been done by foreign workers.

These strategies enabled the mining industry to pursue a course of heterogenous sourcing of labour so that they were not dependent on any one source for their labour supply

(Crush 1995). The participation of foreign workers in the gold mining sector was reduced fiom 79 percent in 1973 to 42 percent by 1984 (Matlosa 1995).

Throughout the twentieth century Afican workers engaged in stniggles over issues related to labour migration, particuiarly in the mining sector. The National Union of

Mineworkers (NUM) took up the cause of migrant labour since their inception in 1983.

Governments had failed to address the effects associated with migrancy which lefi mineworkers no altemative but to take collective action on issues such as bargaining with employers, health and &&y, compensation and housing. NUM has called for an end to the migrant labour systern because of its inhuman and exploitative nature (Matlosa 1995).

NUM has also proposed that migrant workers who have worked in South Afnca for five years be allowed to apply for permanent residence. In addition to voicing protest against the migrant labour systern, NUM has also initiated small-scale income generating projects for rniners who have been repatriated and provided them with an opportunity to reduce their dependency on contract labour. NUM has pursued this strategy including the establishment of the Masotho Mineworkers Labour Cooperative in 1988. 3.2.1 Anglo American - ''English'' rnonopoly

Mining was one of the primary interests of Anglo American, one of the most powerfùl economic forces within southern ecaBy the 1920s it had expanded its mining interests into colonial Angola, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. South African capital, itself heavily indebted to outside interests, expanded imo and took control of the al1 the major economic sectors of Namibia including the diamond fields that Anglo American bought with a loan fiom Amencan financier J.P. Morgan (Davidson 1964).

Anglo Amencan consolidated its control over diamonds in South Africa through the absorption of companies such as DeBeers and Rand Mines. The surplus labour of the

African migrant worker created the wealth that Anglo Amencan was later fiee to invest in new ventures. After World War II these new ventures included oil, banks and insurance companies, property services and manufacturing and even rnoving investment offshore to the United States, Canada and other destinations.

Anglo American has ties to foreign capital which extend to the early days of gold and diamond exploration. These ties include Barclays and Standard Banks in Britain and

Royal Dutch Sheil. Anglo Amencan is one of the eight conglomerates in the constellation of monopoly capital that dominates the South Afican economy (Davies, 07Meiua,

Dlamini 1988). During the unrest of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Anglo American and its president Hamy Oppenheimer feared the flight of foreign capital due to the civil unrest by

Afncan militants and the corresponding repression by the South Afncan state.

Nonetheless, in 1986/87, fifty-five of the 297 British firms in South Mca close4 and nineteen reduced their stake in the country. Over this period, 104 American £hmsold their South Afrïcan branches, leaving 157 United States- owned companies in South Afnca. The witbdrawals were, however, far fiom coqlete. Moreover, in general, they were effected in such a way as to mini'mise the adverse impact on the South African economy and to guarantee th& parent finns a continued foothold (Tmth and Reconciliation Commission 1998:3) Ando American and other Iibeml capitabsts felt that the restrictive chancter of ripartheid

Oppenheime~promoted iiberal reforms such as the expansion of entrepreneuriai, educational and training opportunities for the Afhcan population, which he believed would enhance advanced capital accumulation and prevent the spread of cornmunism.

Oppenheimer's thesis acknowledged that the growth of advanced capitaiism required technical skilï and expertise from a well-educated, stable and satisfied workforce. This growth would rnodie the social and political structures of apartheid in a Ibndamental way, thus tramforming South Afncan society. According to Oppenheimer, rationality rather than ethnicity should guide business decisions (The Study Commission on U. S.

Policy Toward Southem Africa 198 1).

Although Anglo American promoted labour refonns they did not in fact implement very many of the policies that they supported (Afiican National Congress 1997; Davies,

O'Meara, Dlamini 1988). Apartheid did not restict the wages provided to migrant workers yet Anglo Amencan did not increase African wages. They collaborated with the apartheid state in order to suppress job actions and strikes in theïr mines and worked alongside the South African Defense Forces as part of the Johannesburg Demalcom

(Defense Manpower Liaison Conmittee). Demalcom dealt with a range of issues that emerged fkom South Afiica's conscription laws. South Afnca instituted conscription as a response to the need for footsoldiers and technicians in the wars being fought in the region. Demolcorn assisted with the planning of conscription intakes, determined

guidelines to enable conscripts to work in certain industry sectors and to control labour's

involvement in the liberation stniggle. Certain Anglo American holdings were identified

as national security Key Points in 1980, creatîng another network of cotlaboration with

the apartheid state that involved the training and deployment of commando troops by

SADF and management to protect these holdings fiom terrorist attacks (Afncan National

Congress 1997).

Anglo Amencan's approach to reforms was grounded in neo-liberal ideology that saw the

laws and structures of apartheid as restrictive to the long-term productivity and growth of the South Mcan economy (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1998). Hany and his

father Sir Emest Oppenheimer supported policies that served their particular interests,

including the maintenance of good relations with international finance capital and punuing a cheap labour strategy through the support of the labour migration system, influx control and d-unionism (Davies, O'Meara, Dlamini 1988).

3.2.2 The Chamber of Mines - Agents of Colonial Capital

Anglo American and other corporations worked inside the Chamber of Mines to lobby the state on issues of interest to mining capital. The Chamber of Mines (COM) was formed in 1889 by the mining monopolies which included DeBeers and Rand Mines.

These monopolies came together with the express purpose of "'coordinating, regulating, controlling and standardizing cheap labour to the afflliated mines" (Matlosa 1992:33).

COM established other labour recruitment agencies in other parts of the southem Afiican region. These included the establishment, in 1902, of the Native Labour

Association (WENELA) based in Malawi, Mozambiquz, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The

Native Recniitùig Corporation (NRC) was established in 19 12 to recruit cheap labour in

South Afnca, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland and the South West Afnca Native

Labour Association emerged in 1926. Until 1906, COM filied its labour demands with

convicts or through importing indentwed Chinese Iabou.because at this time Afican peasant migration was discretionq and not a reliable source of labour (Matlosa 1992).

The COM extensively Iobbied in favour of implementing pass laws and the imposition of taxes on the African population. COM also instituted intemal disciplinary measures on mining companies to limit competition for wage labourers in order to maintain lower wages. In order to limit this competition they established a maximum average wage. In fact, in 1897 mine wages were lowered by over 25 percent to 58 Rand per month, where they remained in real ternis until the mid-1970s when labour unrest and increased gold prices precipitated an increase (Davies, O'Meara, Dlamini 1988).

Upheavals in the supply of labour persuaded the Chamber of Mines to reexamine its reliance on foreign workers. The foreign labour supply was nearly 80 percent in the early

1970s (Matlosa 1993, presenting a potential crisis in labour supply should it be withdrawn for any reason. After independence several couniries in southem Afnca stopped the contract labour system including Zambia and Malawi. Zambia withcirew its workers after the 1966 Sharpeville Massacre in South Anica protesting the actions of the apartheid regime. In 1974,74 Malawian miners were killed in a plane crash on their way to contract work in South Afnca. After this tragedy Malawi withdrew some 120,000 contract workers and withheld their mine labour force until 1977 when COM negotiated a new deal with a severely reduced number of 12,000 (Paton 1995).

With the independence of Mozambique in 1975 came the unilateral rejection by the

South Afncans of the 1909 bi-lateral agreement for the supply of labour. Two important factors were behind the rejection of this agreement. The first factor was the sociaiist goveming party, the Frente de Libertaçao do Moçarnbique (FRELIMO), that provided a second fkont for resistance to the apartheid state. Mining interests feared that some

Mozambican migrant workers would bring their socialist ideas into the mines and the hostels of South Afnca. These fears led COM to promote a labour strategy that reduced levels of Mozambican workers. The second factor was the collapse of Mozambique's economy and infrastructure, making the recruitment, processing and transportation of migrants more difficult. This collapse was a result of more than a decade of war to liberate Mozambique fiom Pomiguese colonialism. A wake of destruction, by the departing Portuguese, reduced much of the country's infiastructute to rubble. COM undertook the reduction of Mozambican contract workers and lowered their numbers over two-thirds by 1978 (Whiteside 1988).

In 1980, the newly independent Zimbabwean govemment decided not to renew the recruiting Iicense of The Employment Bureau of Afnca Lirnited (TEBA) which had replaced WENELA and dl other labour recruitment agencies in the region. Subsequently, al1 Zimbabwean miners were repaîriated at the end of their contracts. Although the governent did not aIlow active recruitment for employment in South Afnca it did not

prevent Zimbabweans fiom seeking or accepting employment (Paton 1995).

Through these and other measures COM was able to reach their target of reducing their

foreign labour component to 50 percent by the late 1970s (Matlosa 1995). COM's inward

iooking strategy for labour recnùtment went hand in huid with the state's need to address

the serious intemal employment cnsis which added fuel to the anti-apartheid struggle.

This trend of reducing foreign labour in the minùig sector continued into the nineties,

however, foreign labour continues to play a significant role in the mining sector.

COM continues to lobby around labour supply issues. It is interesting to note that COM's

interests have not changed substantially since its early history. In COM's response to the

1997 Draft Green Paper on International Migration they express concerns over proposed changes to the contract labour system. One of their major concems is the "publicization" of the labour recruitment process that is currently carried out by their recruitment arm

TEBA. COM insists that îheir provision of this senice to the state is more efficient and effective and would impinge on their ability to recmit adequate supplies for foreign labour- In their brief they state:

We do not believe, however, that a transforrned DCIS pepartment of Citizenship and immigration] would have the capacity to design and administer a new system for the categorisaîion of skills in the market, monitor that market more efficiently than the market can do itself and simultaneously police the web of desthat the draftms propose. We are also fùndamentally opposed to the notion that the supply of foreign labour (irrespective of skill levels) to the mining industry and the national economy should be determineci by a cornmittee of officiais and captured in a "national immigration plan." (COM 1997:6) Their rationale of resistance to state interference in the supply of foreign labour is based

on their assumptions that the indigenous labour supply, while abundant, is not adequate

to meet their special needs and that

[tlhere is a widespread notion that the buk of our employees are unskilled, with some semi-skilled and even =der numbers of skilld If SUis defined by fornial cerebral content, then such a notion is valid,. .. To be successfûl in their jobs these workers must have particular aptitudes and attributes which as in the case of mining cornmunities worldwide, are typically the product of at least several generations of employment in the industry. If these considerations were to be ignored, and if it were to be assumed that our "unskilled" foreign migrant workers codd readily and instantaneously be replaced by local rec~ts,that would undoubtedly damage the industry. We are heavily dependent on the distinctive physical and mental quaiities that charactexise our manual workers, who sirnply cannot be swiftly replaced. The tenn 'bkilied" must not be aliowed to Iead to such a state of affairs. (COM 1997:3)

COM's concems over the Dr& Paper emerge fiom a context in which the ruling Party,

the ANC, seeks to establish favourable relations within the Southern Afiican

Development Coordination (SADCC). Seveml observations in the Draft Green Paper on

International Migration bring forward concerns about regional development, establishing

state management over labour recniitment and flows of skilled labour to South Afiica and

negotiated immigration targets (Chamber of Mines 1997). In addressing these concerns

SADCC may bnng about increased controls over foreign migrants as well as policies

which deal with the wages and conditions of work within the mining sector.

The decline of the 'racial Fordist' (Murray 1994) model of the growtb in South Afrca paralleled the worldwide economic decline that began in the early 1970s. Sourh African industry applied a Fordist model of assembly production in mining and manufacturing.

This system required the repetitive and routine labour of semi skilled labourers based on a racially constnicted division of labour that protected skilled white labour fkom

77 cornpetition with largely unskilled low-wage black worken. This productive mode1 led to

long-term stagnation in dl sectors of the South Afncan economy, parCicularly the gold rnining sector. While other codesaround the world moved to increase production through the introduction of technology, South Africa continued to punue a cheap labour strategy for production, however, cheap labour could not, in the end, compensate for the low-cost of mechanized production (Martin 1994).

Currently, the gold muiing industry is in cnsis and the COM has indicated that 40 percent of South Afiica's gold is now produced at a loss due to the costs of labour, which consti~e50 percent of the total costs for extraction. The cheap labow strategy uitimately resulted in the failure to invest in new technologies that drarnatically lowered production costs in Australia and North Amenca. South Afnca has now become one of the highest cost producers of gold in the world. As a result of the minhg sector's need to lower costs, employment in this sector went fiom 534,000 in 1986 to 380,000 by 1993 (Murray 1994).

33The Emergence of State and Afrikaner Capital

State capital developed almost irnrnediately after the creation of the Union of South

Anica. From Union until the early years of the 1920s many state-owned indusaies were established in fisheries, transportation, manufacture of steel, fertilizer, textiles and oit, and production of electricity. When the Nationalist Party came to power and consolidated state and Afnkaner interests, Afrikaner capital was able to pursue a course towards monopoly capital @avies, 07Meara,Dlamini 1988). SANLAM was establishedl in 19 18 and created a space for AHcaner capital in the

financial seMces sector. The next major penod of growth for Afiikaner capital was in the

1930s when the Broederboond, an organization that promoted Afnkaner interests, formed

Volkskas, the merbainking houe in 1934. A Nationalist paper Die Transvaler was

published in 1937 by Voortrekkerpers publishing Company in Johannesburg (Bunting

1969).

The election of the Nationdist Party created expanded opportunities for growth of

Afrikaner capital. SANLAM's assets rose fiom R 5 million in 1939 (Davies, O'Meara,

Dlamini 1988), and R30 million in 1948 to R3.i billion in 1981, while companies over

which it exercised effective control had assets worth R19.3 billion (Tnrth and

Reconciliation Commissiom 1998). Afnkaner companies prospered fiom pro-Afkikaner

policies and practices of the Nationalist Par?y including favorable pricing and subsidies,

efflux conîrols to meet the : labour requirements of Afiikaner agricultural capital, awards

of substantial government Gontracts and other perks. The flight of foreign capital after the

Sharpeville crisis permitted the substantial movement of Afiikaner capital into other

economic sectors, including the arms industry, through the provision of loans by the

apartheid state (Davies, O7IMeara,Dlamini 1988).

By the 1970s elements of PPLfrikaner and non-Afrikaner capital began to converge in

interlocking directorates that spanned aU sectors of the economy. who favored this convergence began to see the flaws in apartheid strategies regarding the regdation of

African labour. Many of these corporate entities such as SANLAM and Rembrandt Group saw their interests with 'Engiish' capital against the more hard-line Afkikaner

separatists. Both SANLAM and Rembrandt Group joined hg10 American and other

English capitalists in supporting the reforms of Prime Minister Botha's Total Strategy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This strategy proposed a movement away fiom racial discrimhtion in certain economic categones in order to wui support fiom middle class

AfÏicans. However, the strategy did nothing to alter the fundamental structure of the labour migration system that benefited 'English' and Afiikaner capitalist alike.

3.4 Capital and the Structures of Labour Migration

The migrant labour system was designed to serve the class interests of commercial fkrmers and urban industrialists. This system would change over tirne as these oflen- competing interests shifted the terrain in which labour migration occurred. Despite their differences, capitalists shed interests in lowenng their labour costs substantially with migrant workers. With the labour migration system, the capitalist class was able to set the course for capital accumulation and expansion. This system was fluid and flexible by design and guaranteed to remain so by the oscillation of labour across time and space.

However, at the same time it was also highly regulated to meet the needs of emerging capitalism. The South Afncan Staîe, up to and including the apartheid period, served the interests of the capitalist class in the development and maintenance of this racially segregated labour system. This system established structures that restricted Afncan people's rnovement outside of the enforced boundaries of their homelands The control over foreign labour recruitment, the implernentation of pass laws and the creation of reserves were strategies that enhanced the success of capital in dl its forms and factions. Capital, in dl its guises, influenced when and how these strategies emerged. In the early days of discovery, capital required the migration of countiess workers on a grand scale.

During the days of apartheid, capital relocated labour intensive industries to the borderlines of the Bantustans, where surplus ecanworkers provided a ready supply of labour. Capital's interests over labour migration varied over time and across space and required different policy prescriptions to meet whatever interest was determined as primary to the state and the economy at a parhcular point in time.

The control over labour supply was critical for al1 factions and sectors of capital. Despite the differences between the various forms of capital they agreed on maintaining essential charactenstics of labour migration, fiom the discovery of minerals until the stagnation of the South African economy in the 1970s. These characteristics included the withdrawaI of Africans from productive agricultural lands; the control over the movernent of African people; and the need for foreign workers to supplement the supply of labour.

3.4.1 Anchors and Moorings - Reserves, Homelands and Bantustans

The establishment of reserves, homelands or the Bantustans of South Afnca divided the land between the black and the white populations. It was an accepted doctrine by colonial administraton of the &y that the best way to administer the Afican population was to create reserves. In South Afica, the Native Land Act of 1913 forced the black population, who in 191 1 made up 67 percent of the population, ont0 the poorest 7.3 percent of the country's land (Davies, O'Meara and Dlamini 1988; Whiteside 1988). This

Act prohibited Afiicans from owning land, outside the reserve areas, and restricted the number of rent-paying sqaiatter peasants on white owned fms.The immediate effects of this Act were the uprooting and migration of tens of thousands of people and their livestock to unknown reserves. Overcaowding on the reserves forced men to queue in

Iong lines at native labour recruitment sites and, if lucky, secure a job, and walk to life in the compouads and work down in the deep pits of the mines. According to the 1925 census, over 45 percent of al1 males in worked as migrant labourers (Nzula,

Potekhin, Zusmanovich 1,979).

The intent of the Land Act was to bitthe success of Afncan agriculture. Despite increased European immigration and rapid land expropriation, some African farmers actually prospered. Afr-icans who opted for European agricultural models diversified their holdings by renting land that was fertile, converting to cash cropping such things as tobacco, double cropping of goods for expanding local markets, used more advanced technology such as ploughs and increased their herds. It was estimated that before the implementation of the Soutii African Land Act in 1913, hundreds of thousands of

Africans benefited fkom market opportunities. By 1904, blacks in Southem Rhodesia still provided 90 percent of marketed crops. The growth of the mining sector contnbuted to this prosperiv by increasing the demand for market crops, especially for those who were located close to bigger markets including the mines themselves, and Kimberly where the population reached 50,000 by 1870 (Paton 1995; Lapping 1986).

In 1893 irnposed a tanff on grain fiom in order to protect the market of white fmexs, who had turned fiom stock rearing to growing crops in 1896. The Rinderpest epidemic of f 897 swept through southern Afnca wiping out 90

percent of the Basotho's cattle. Despite these chdlenges Basotho fmers adapted

through loans, using horses for draught and expanding their sheep herds. Through the

First World War hi& prices for wml and grain were sustained and the Basotho took

advantage of this situation to export maize and wool. However, the slump of 1929 and

the 1930s proved disastrous with falling prices, global economic depression and drought-

Simultaneously, the rising price of gold stunulated the expansion of rnining production

and the demand for labour led to an increase in the numbers of migrants fiorn Basutoland

during the 1930s and 1940s (Murray 198 1).

Many African peasants successfully implemented agricultural innovation and

diversification and responded in some respects more effectively than some European

landowners. This created labour shortages for large landholders and the burgeoning

mining industry in the period from 1840 to 1870. The 'labour shortage', that prompted so much cornplaint by colonists during these years, is ofien aîtributed to the lack of responsiveness by 'tribesmen' for the opporhmities opened by cash wages. Part, at the very least, of this shortage was due to the preference of the land-based Afncan for meeting new wants by selling produce, a preference reinforced by resistance to a qualitative change in social structures and relations (Bundy 1979). Capital successfully lobbied for the implernentation of the Land Act to limit the success of African agriculture with the aim of transforming the discretionary character of Afncans7migrant labour. No longer able to eam incorne from agricultural production many Africans were left with few choices other than labour migration. Nationalist organizations such as the Afncan National Congress protested the Act and

Iobbied for its repeal (Lapping 1986). In writing of his tirne, Albert Nmla, one of the founders of the South Afiican Communist Party wrote:

The land shortage and the whole complex systern of îhe peasant's enslavement by the government, the trader, the rnoney lender, and finally by the txib al chief, forces him to take on outside work. He cannot find work in the reserve. (Nzula, Potekhin, Zusmanovich 197953)

This issue became a central focus for anti-colonial and anti-apartheid campaigners and galvanized the relationships between various organhtions, including the Afncan

National Congress and the Communia Party. Many capitalists, including Sir Emest

Oppenheimer, feared the growing power and influence that communism was providing to the Afîican pesant and working classes and supported refoms that would gant increased oppomuùties for an .Wcan middle class in hopes of hampering this influence

(Bunting 1969).

Another strategy that capitalists supported was the taxation of Africans. The imposition of taxes created a need for cash in the fom of wages. In South Afnca taxes were introduced on each hut owned, a head tax on each male over 18 and a labour tax in

Capetown province for males that worked less than three months a year in waged employment. Al1 of these taxes were paid in cash (Whiteside 1988). Faced by increasing taxes, confiscation of the most fertile lands and other fonns of discrimination Afncans were no longer able to support themselves through subsistence or commercial production.

Taxes not only supplied a guaranteed revenue for this state but also led to the accomplishment of their main objective which was the creation of siilplus labour. Thus,

Afkïcans entered wage labour, forced to migrate in order to find work. In constant need of money, the peasant in the reserve usually fell into the clutches of the trader or the money-lender. Most traders were European and ofien were assigned the role of tax collectors. These traders also had a monopoly over îransportation and labour recruitment. This role gave them control over debts that were owed for taxes and tramportation of agricultural commodities. Once entangled in this systern of credit and debt, the debtor was required to either perform forced labour in prison, or sign a contract with a recniiting company to work on a farm or in the mines, obtain an advance, and thereby pay off lis debts. Having signed a contract, workers were not able to refuse work on threat of impr-isonment (Whiteside 1988).

Often after working for six months a contract labourer on the plantations of South Afnca was lefi with only the advance they had received on signing a contract, after paying back the employer for transportation and food In the mining sector things were not considerably different. Miners were docked pay if they were sick, even fiom the result of a mining accident and workers were given quotas that, if not reached, resulted in loss of the &y's pay. The miners' pay was further reduced by deductions for taxes that were sent either to the local authority or tribal chef Those who chose to live outside of company- provided housing faced exorbitmt rents for slum accommodation.

The homelands or Reserves developed to meet the needs of the capitalist class from the period of labour shortages at the turn of this cenhiry to the mid-seventies when high levels of unemployment threatened the security of the apartheid state.

The homelands developed as labour reserves for the mines and fanxis, and a means of subsistence agriculture for the migrant worker's famiiy, to supplement his iow wages. In this era of refonn, the homelands serve Iess of an econornic fiinction - imporMg labour - than a politicai one: exporting unernployment fiom white areas. (Frederikse 1986: 104)

The refoms of the 1980s, which provided self-government for the homelands of

Transkei, , and , were an opportunity to transfer the social welfare of the Afkican population into the han& of the Afncan administrations in the impoverished and remote homelands. Along with the costs of social welfare went the corresponding unfavourable statistics on the employrnent and heaith of Afiicans. The oniy legal option for leaving these isolated areas of destitution was contract labour.

Many women defied the pass laws to join their husbands in the cities and, after travelling hundreds of miles, built tents and shacks from found materials and endured nwnerous police raids as they 'squatted' in the shantytowns surrounding the larger urban areas. In response the police established roadblocks on previously uncontrolled border crossings with the Bantustans and stepped up its attempts to dismantle the shantytowns through fkeqrient raids, demolition of various camps and deportations (Frederikse 1986). By 1984 illegals became treated as aliens under the Miens and Immigration Laws Ammendment

Act and, when caught, were prohibited from reentry into South Afiica. in spite of al1 this the squatters continued. Frednkse describes the reality of the 1980s and the choicesopen to households in the homeiands.

Their illegal migration to the cities is a logical development of - and protest against - the unparalied policy of influx control. The women and chiidren in the country's oldest and largest squatter settlements in did not flee the homelands of Transkei and Ciskei... out of a vague attraction for the bright lights of the city. They saw that course as their only means of survival. (Fredmikse 1986:104) This forced relocaîion of millions of Afiicans has been described as "the most staggering example of social engineering attempted by any governent since Worid War II."

(Frederikse 1986: 109)

3.4.2 Regalating the Flow - The Influ and Efflux of McanWorkers

Pms Laws, and other influx and efflux control measures, were Unposed by the South

AfXcan state and previous colonial regimes to controi the fIow of labour within the region. According to Davies, O'Meara, and Dlamini, the objective of the labour migration system was

the maintenance of a cheap labour system through 1) restricting the fkeedom of movement of black persons so as to channel workers where employers need ch- labour; 2) enforcing employment contracts by making sure that workers stay where they are wanted as long as they are wanted; 3) policing the workers and aiiowing the weeding out of the unemployed and 'troublemakers' and 4) confining and barricading the surplus population (i-e. the unemployed) in the rural slums of the Bantustans. @avies, O' Meara, Dlamini 1988:171)

Pass laws found their origins during the slave trade when laws of the time prevented

A£iican slaves from moving to other jurisdictions without the permission of their owners.

Merthe British acquired the Cape of Good Hope they assisted their new Dutch subjects by introducing what could be called the first of the pass laws. Under this law, al1 indigenou Khoikhoi pastoralists, who were displaced from their lands by European settiement, required a fixed residence. The Khoikhoi were compelled to work for

Anikaner settlen, in order to have a fixed residence and thus secure a pass (Lapping

1986). Even with a pas these new workers could only leave the area with permission nom their 'master'. Progressively stricter pass laws were introduced with the development of the rnining industry, however, until 1948 they were applied, province by province, with exemptions for some Afkicans, namely women and certain professionals

(Davies, O'Meara, and Dlamini 1988).

With the election of the Nationalkt Party in 1948 pass laws were extended and a system of 'influx control' was established and extended to women- The Natives Laws

Amendment Act of 1952 and the Natives (Urban Areas) Amendment Act of 1955 dlowed only those who had worked or resided in an urban area for a minimum of 15 years to reniain- Al1 others needed a permit for visits of more than 72 hours. The Natives

Act, which was passed that same year, standardized the 'pass book' which had previously been issued in a variety of forms by employers and chiefs. These books were issued by the department of Native Anairs to al1 Afncans and were to be produced on demand.

'Efflux control' was also instituted in areas where shortages of labour created problems for capitalist agricultural interests. Only if satisfactory labour supplies were available for capitalist agriculture in rural areas were Africans allowed to seek employment elsewhere

(Davies, OyMeara,and Dlamini 1988).

Ironicaily, the implementation of these laws and various modes of regdation became a paradox of dorseen consequences. Afkicans continued to move to urban areas in South

Africa fiom the Bantustans and other countries ofthe region, despite the increasingly repressive controls. With the repeal of influx control laws in 1986 the state recognized that attempts to prevent urbanization were futile and therefore began a carnpaign of

'orderly urbanization' which sought to define rather than restrict the limits of urbanization. By ~CCC~M~in principle that Afiican irrbianization was inevitable and economically desirable, state plamers shifted emphasis fiom centraüy managed, racially dehed statuatoxy meanrs of curbing the influx of black people into the urban areas, to informal mechanisms for regulating the movement and settlement of work-seekers . within specific regions. This 'orderly urbanization' poficy depended upmn recognizing the artificiality of the homeland boundaries and called instead for the development of metroporitan-centrai planning regions where private enterprise and the fiee play ofmarket forces would assume the main roles in shaping the economic geography of South Africa. (Murray 1994~42)

Capital in al1 its aspects needed a flexible workEorce that codd be cailed on to fil1 a void of productive labour during times of economic growth or resettled to dareas,

Bantustans or couutries of ongin when downturris in certain sectors of the economy produced a surplus of unemployed workers. noe control over labour mobility was a central concem to al1 forms of capital who have continuously argued for their nght to control the flow of workers, particularly foreign workers.

3.43 Beyond Boundaries - Foreign Workers

Neighbouring countrïes negotiated with the Soulih African state to guarantee a steady supply of workers for the mines of South Afnca These negotiations and their subsequent outcornes reflected historical relationships of conflict, coercion and cooperation that shaped the labour migration system throughout southeni Afkica. Foreign workers provided mining and agricultural capital with a steady flow of labour. This flow increased or decreased depending on the particuiar economic or ideological context of South

Africa's history. The control over foreign labour- was and continues to be a source of conflict and cooperation among the region's stattes and foms of capital. Capital in its many forms was able to influence state policies am the migration of workers to South

Africa This influence was to enable and constraiin the flow of foreign workers. The Portuguese government signed the Mozambican Convention with Transvaal in 1909 guaranteeing the annual exportation of 100,000 Mozambican contract workers to wage in the Transvaal gold mines. The Portuguese government was paid directly in Rand, a valuable source of foreign exchange, and revenue hmskimming a proportion of wages earned by the contract workers. They were also paid a fee for each worker recruited and given 50 percent of the Transvaal trade to the port of Lourenço Marques (Munslow

1983).

In other cases, such as Beuchanaland and Swaziland, negotiations reflected competition over foreign labour supplies. In Beuchanalaud the colonial government became a Labour suppiy administration which regulated migration to the district level. They became caught between the flight of their people to the mines of South Africa, as a result of excess taxation, and the stmggle to control tbis exodus at the sarne time. By 1940 nearly 9 percent of the population was working in South Africa (Paton 1995).

British and Afî-ikaner rivairies over labour conîrol continued in Swaziland until Swazi capital interests began to pressure for a strategy of labour retention. Despite desperate shortages of labour for hire in the country the administration ignored pleas by Swazî employers to stop the export of labour. An upswing in employment oppomullties at home resulted fiom expanded agroforestry, mining and public works. Fierce competition began between foreign and domestic labour recruiters over the labour supply. This competition forced increased wages and shorter contracts by the Transvaal Chamber of Mines7Native

Recruiting Corporation (NRC) which had been established in Swaziland in 1913. Employers' groups began to win some concessions hmthe administration regarding the cornpetition over labour supply. The response of the NRC was to try and capture the recniitment market by providing fiee popular activities during recruitment drives. These activities included showing movies to over 10 percent of Swaziland's population throughout the country incfuding westerns and ethnographie film on 'tribal' ceremonies.

Swazi officiais responded to pressure from employers' groups into refüsing new NRC recruitment licenses and canceling the transfer of existing ones. The NRC began to bow to Swazi govemment requests that included workers' compensation and to provide health coverage for migrants suffering the effects of tuberculosis. Swaziland kept their complement of migrant workers to 5 percent of their population by 1964 compared with

Botswana at 10 percent and Lesotho at 19 percent. However, by 1966'44 percent of wage earning rural dwellers were employed outside Swaziland (Paton 1995).

The rise in mine eamings ratios with both urban and rural employment generated increased migration during the 1970s. By this time unemployment in Swaziland had nsen to unprecedented levefs. The Swazi govemment adopted a policy of £iee labour mobility and made it clear that COM could recruit as rnany workers as it needed. By the second half of the 1980s, Swaziland received a reward nom South Mca, for being cooperative in the inter-regional ideological codict, by increasing the contingent of Swazi workers fiom 11,000 in 1984 to 18,000 in 1989. While the rural poor and least educated were wlnerable to their dependence on South Afncan mine employment7a growing number of skilled Swazi made their way to the Bantustans of South mcawhere industrial decentralization of manufacturing was creating new opportunities (Patton 1995). The Chamber of Mines and the Swazi government were, over tirne, in conflict and

cooperation over labour supply. Historically detennuled contexts and circumstances led

to shifbg interests of labour supply. These interests enabled and constrained the

structures that mediated the flow of workers to and Erom Swaziland.

Mer the supply of miners fkom Malawi and Mozambique decreased, Lesotho became the

most important country of origin for migrant miners in South Africa. A labour force

survey in 1985/86 found that 27 percent of the countcy's labour force was employed

outside the country (Patton 1995). The government u1 Lesotho was Iess concemed about

this long-tem dependency on South Afkica and viewed migration in terms of the

monetq retum that it generated. It was also seen as necessary to offset the domestic

employment crisis. By 1990 mine migrancy occupied 86 percent of al1 waged labour in

Lesotho and accounted for up to 50 of the GNP through the Deferred Pay Fund (DPF).

The DPF was established in 1973 and made it compulsory for Basotho miners to remit 60

percent of their salaries to a government controlled fkmd. These salaries provided a

vaiuable source of foreign exchange revenue for the govenunent of Lesotho. The miners

were only able to access their salaries once they had completed their contracts Eamings through contract labour constituted more than 70 percent of the total income of rural households (MatIosa 1995). Capital enabled the stmchual development of Lesotho's househoid and national economies through their conmol over Basotho labour migration.

3.5 Summary Labour twk plxe within a context in whiçh the precapitalist wonorny was trmsformed.

The phases in the development of labour migration were guided by the parallel development of the capitalist and state systems and stnicpses that sought to engage the

Afncan population in migrant labour. Migrant labour also changed over time with shifis

in ideology, econornic growth and decline. The mining, agricultural, manufâcturing and

commercial sectors of the South Afiican economy required workers and enlisted the

support of the state in establishing the structures and systems of labour control. Certain

secton, such as mining and agriculture, depended heavily on foreign worken, which at

certain limes benefited these sectors and at other times provided a disadvantage.

The demand for and control over labour -mu an issue that brought the capitaiist classes together but also into conflict. Whiie capital agreed on the ned to control labour mobility the negotiation over iabour supply required state intervention to balance the efflux and influx of worken into labour migration.

The expropriation and reallocation of A.f?ican land and people was a key feature in the control over the labour force. As well as fieeing up the most arable lands for commercial production, land expropriation and the creation of the reserve systern limited the economic opportunities of many Afin'cans. Capital lobbied for and supported measures that maintained their control over land tenure. However, the fluctuating needs of al1 forms of capital created structures and systems of labour migration that generated responses fiom workers, capiialists and states in the region niese responses were not homogenous by class or nation. The ideological divide of workers, factions of capital and nation states in the region mediated the development of class and national alliances. The Dr& Green Paper on International Migration (1997) has tabled some recommendations based on a strategy of regional economic integration though SADCC.

The substance of these recommendations presume a fke flowing of labour and capital throughout the region dong with the corresponding market liberalizing mechanisms to remove barriers to economic growth, Will the pst-apartheid state be able to hold its ground in this fiee flow of the market or be swept away fi-om their goal of eliminating labour exploitation? Cmit maintain a steady course towards a mutually agreeable regional strategy on labour migration, or will it be diverted by the currents of market forces, historicai rivalries, and domestic demands for economic justice? Time aione will tell. Chapter 4 Still Waters Run Deep - Ethnicity, Race and Migration

.. . Every coloured group of races, Coloured, natives Asiatics, Indians, etc. will be segregated, not ody as regards the place of aweUing or the neighbourhoods dwelt in by them, but also with regard to the spheres of work. The members of çuch groups can, however, be aiiowed to enter White territories under proper lawfùi control for the increase of working power.. . Draf t Constitution Nationalist Party South Afnca 1942

Many years ago, when I was a boy brought up in my village in the Transkei, I Iistened to the elders of the txibe telling srones about the good old Ws,before the dvalof the White man. Then our people lived peacefiilly, under the dernomtic rule of their kings and their arnaphakarhz, and moved fieely and confidently up and down the country without let or hindrance. Then the country was ours, in our own name and ri@, We occupied the land, the forests, the rivers; we extracted the mineral wealth beneath the soil and aii the riches of this beautifut country. We set up and operateci our own goverrunent, we çontroiied our own armies and we organized our own trade and commerce. The elders would tell tales of the wars fought by our ancestors in defence of the fatherlanâ, as well as the acts of valour perforrned by generals and soldiers during those epic days. The names hganeand Bhambatha, among the Zulus, of Hintsa, Makanq Ndlambe of the AmaZhose, of Sekhukhune and the others in the noxth, were mentioued as the pride and glory of the entire Mcannation.

Nelson Mandela Testimony fiom the 1964

Ethnicity and race are concepts that emerged fkom the process of colonialism and imperialism and continue to flow through the discourse of social thought. The concept of race was first noted in the sixteenth century (Jary and Jary 1991) and has since taken new forms as various theoretical traditions laid daim to its meaning. Conceptualizing race and describing its attributes and effects was a project of many scholars who followed different ideologies, methodologies and paradigms. Theories on race and ethnicity range from the thoroughly discredited theories of primordialism that view race and ethnicity as fixed, natural or biological characteristics, to stnicturalist theories that ground their

explanations of racial and ethnic conflia in the class divisions created by capitalism.

While conceptualizations of race were often ascribed to biological factors, etbnicity was

viewed, fkom a sociological perspective, as an identity assumed by a social group that

shared cultural phenornena such as customs, rituais, habits, language and social

institutions. Ethnicity could incorporate several dimensions including culture, religion,

politics and nationalism (Jary and Jary 199 1). Mthough today, ethnicity and ethnic

conffict are household words, the preoccupation with the concept emerged in the 1960s

(Eriksen 1993). Despite its recent appearance on the theoretical scene, eîhnicity has

permeated the language of scholars who sometimes assign ethnicity with an authenticity

and authority it does not deserve. Many scholars have andyzed history and describe

people as xnembers of ethnic groups, tribes or nations that did not exist at that point in history. The violence of the 1970s was often attributed to ethnic conflict when evidence reveals that the conflict was ideological and driven by anticomrnunist sentiments (Mzala

1988, Davies, O'Meara, Dlamini 1988). Ethnicity is often confiated with the concept of race, or nation. These conflations muddy the waters of analysis due to vague and arnbiguous descriptions and meanings (Eriksen 1993). Race and ethnicity inspired social engineering, hatred and violence but altematively inspired pnde, identity and collective action that transformed the social landscape. From the globai to the individual, race and ethnicity aitered the perceptions and practices of corporate conglomerates, nation States, families and people within South Africa and without. The exploration of race and ethnicity reveals that both are socially consûucted and restructured in the course of history. Race and ethnicity are mutable concepts that can be endowed with power through their expression as ideological foms, particularly racism and ethnocentncity. When endowed with mer,these concepts become a force in shaping and reshaping social relations and structures. In the case of South Africa, these conceptualkations have significance in andyzing the structures and processes that enabled and constraùled the iabour and movement of Afncan people.

An exploration of the history of migration in the region reveals the lasting impact that the forces of ethniciîy and race had on the landscape and people of southem Africa. These forces were to mitigate the transformation of class and gender relations in the development of labour migration. The identities, ideologies and social practices that constitute ethnicity shaped and were shaped by the tides of capital expansion and were brought to the surface in a vortex of ideology and social change. Ethnicity has and will remain a powerful current that has reshaped the social, political and physical boundaries of South Afnca It is a current that has merged and divided people, fiseled the apparatuses of social control and engulfed class and race consciousness in a maelstrom of ideologically-inspired violence. In the South Afncan context, ethnicity and race are complex and layered concepts that have profoundly afTected iabour migration. However, neither race nor ethnicity on their own can explain the varied responses to labour migration which were not homogenous by race, ethnicity, ciass or gender. Ethnicity was created and sustained through different cultural forms such as language,

customs and traditional sources of power. These cultural forms underwent transformation

fiom the confluence of alternative social relations that emerged fkom the flux and flow of

the diverse peoples who settled what is now South mca. People heard new ideas,

leamed new languages, witnessed other traditions and customs, expenenced alternative

foms of production and suffered new foms of exploitation. The changing requirements

of new systems of administration and labour markets introduced ongoing adjustments to

social practices and relations. In turbulent times, ethnicity provided a source of both

acceptance and excIusion and contnbuted to the formation and destruction of social and

physical boundaries. Labour migration took place within these shifting boundaries and

provided opportunities for ethnic leaders and racialist ideologues to promote rivalry

arnong ethnic groups as well as the emergence of movements with an Afkicuiist

ideologies.

The ethnically stmctured labour migration system created apportunities for individual migrants, who relied on ethnic networks to provide the knowledge and social supports required for life in the mine compounds or urban ghettos. However, access to opportunities was mediated by the ethnic and racial segregation of peoples within physical, political and social boundaries. Physical boundaries were created in the forrn of reserves, Bantustans, urban townships and mine compounds. Political boundaries detemiined who could vote and own land Social boundaries established privilege and power in social relations. In crossing and interacting with these boundaries, individuals and wllectivities developed identities and ideologies that were sources of social cohesion and solidarity but dso sources of conflict and social transformation. Social

transformation and the devebpment of the labour migration system in souîhern Afnca

were not solely products of capital accumulation, nor the resdts of individual choices.

Race and ethnicity were both rthe causes and effects of social change. The Iogic of the labour migration systern, fiom its early inception in the late nineteenth century, required the application of race and eîhnicity in determining work and mobility. By the turn of the twentieth century Afncans oc~upiedurban townships and reserves that were segregated by ethnicity and race.

The institutionalization of apazrtheid was a social transformation enabled by years of concerted effort in the creation of a racialist identity and ideology. Apartheid restructured labour migration as part of the= apartheid plan to deny Afiicans the right to citizenship in

South Afnca based on their raee. Apartheid ideology saw people divided into two races, white and everyone else. Evem those with only a drop of non-white blood were considered as other (Mzaia 19.88). Under the Bantustan system workers could only enter

South Afi-ica with a contract anid a passport provided by their homeland. But ultirnatdy the regulatory and oppressive structures of apartheid led to their own undoing, with the emergence of world-wide anti-apartheid actions including wars in southem Afnca, economic sanctions and civil unrest.

Zn this chapter 1 will examine the role of ethnicity and race in the history of labour migration, and the impact that ethnicity and race had on Afncan responses to the labour migration system and on the transformation of traditional African modes of social and economic control. 1wil1 describe îhe sources of Afiikaner idenîity, interests and ideology tha: provided the foundation for the emergence of the apartheid state. The nineteenth century was a period of intense transformation of political, economic and social boundaries. formed powerfid kingdoms, Boer seîtlers established independent

States, diamonds and gold were discovered and disease decimated the catue herds of the region- This period inspired legends that provided a source of ethnic consciousness and identity that remain to this day. A look back into the history of this period is crucial in understanding the conceptualizations of ethnicity and race and their impact on the labour migration system in southem Afiica.

4.1 Return to the Source - The Origins of Labour Migration

The nineteenth cen- was a period that had significant impacts on the later development of an ideology that privileged race and ethnic segregation. European settlement and

African expansionism were forces that transformed social relations and structures fiom the household to the state. Neither Europeans nor Mkicans were homogenous groups in their language, customs or social practices. These differences provided a source of loydty and strife. The nineteenth century was a time that many ideologues recalled to conjure up images of heroes who inspired loyalties based on race or ethnicity, or animosities for enemies who kilted these heroes- Therefore, it is usefiil to look back in time to the source of ethnicity and race in South Afnca.

Southem Afnca in the early years of settlement was a place where rnany Afncan societies prospered. Ships passing around the Cape in the early seventeenth century bought meat, ivory and other trade goods from the Khoikhoi, Xhosa and Sotho settlers who had

migrated as far as western Cape. Evidence of Sotho settlement revealed they were traders

with expansive trading routes in the region and brought goods from as far away as China

(Lapping 1986).

The colonial conquest of the region that became known as South Africa began with

Dutch occupation of the Cape region in the 1650s. The Khoikhoi people populated the

region and kept herds of cattle and sheep that provided much-needed meat for ships that

stopped over at the Cape of Good Hope on the^ joumey from Europe to east Asia. The

Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), or , established a

pst at the Cape followed by a permanent settlement so that by the mid-1600s Khoikhoi

lands began to be expropriated by white settlers. Soon Dutch settlers were occupying

lands that the Khoikhoi considered as commons. Like many peoples in southern Afnca the Khoikhoi observed communal foms of land tenure. Not even kings held private

ownership over land (Mzala 1988). The Euaopeans drew the Khoikhoi into conflict over attempts to seize communal lands and disputes over low cattle prices and thefi of the&- animals.

Doman, a Khoikhoi leader, worked for the VOC and traveled as far away as Java. He grew discontented with the lot of his people and eventually led the Khoikhoi in many successfiil rainy &y raids, knowing that muskets ddnot fire in the min. Consequently,

Doman waged a number of successfûi military campaigns. His aim was not to kill but rather to put pressure on the Dutch to start pwchasing Khoikhoi cattle. Eventually the superior muskets defeated the spears of the Khoikhoi and, withïn twenty years, each subsequent chief required endorsement £kom the VOC in order to 'de' (Lapping 1986).

Despite their ultimate defeat, the Khoikhoi challenged the encroachment of European migrants equipped with an understanding of their enemy, an understanding acquired through decades of social interaction However, the Ioss of their lands and the communal structures of land tenure left the Khoikhoi with fewer options for survival and as a result many ended up in the employ of Dutch çettlers. The resîructuring of the social relations of production created an alternative hierarchy of power over the lives of people based on theïr race. By the end of the eighteenth century 13,090 Khoikhoi and 26,000 slaves fiom neighbouring Angola, Mozambique, Madagascar and Zanzibar were employed by the estimated 20,000 ekaner settlea (Lapping 1986). Atter 150 years of Dutch coloniaiism, the Khoikhoi came to believe that the 'Divine Hierarachy of Being' had placed them "higher than animals but lower than 'men' (whites)" (Davies, O'Meara,

Dlamini 1988:s).

The Xhosa, Zulu and Swazi spoke mutually understood languages, together known as

Nguni. Nguni speakers had migrated south to the eastem Cape by 1500. Sotho speakers, including the Basotho, Tswana, and Venda, occupied the mountain, northem and northeastem regions of what is now South Afnca as early as the eighth century. Powerfûl kingdorns emerged in the nineteenth century, with political, economic and cultural systems and structures that were kept intact through the maintenance of large and powerful desand skilled negotiators (Lapping 1986; Davies, O'Meara, Dlanini 1988;

Study Commission on USPolicy Toward Southem Afnca 198 1).

A process of Anican expansionism in the first tedecades of the nineteenth century

created a diaspora of peoples throughout the region- This period was known as the Zulu wars (Study Commission on U.S. Policy on Southern Afnca 198 1), Lgaqane mble

1982), Mfecane translated as The Cnishuig (Davies, O'Meara, Dlamini 1988) or

Dflaqane (Bozzoli 1991 ). The period was remembered in the oral history of southem

Afnca and stories recount the hardship their ancestors experienced. People spoke of enemies that were other Af?icans who had displaced them from their land, taken their wealth in cattle and kepî their young men as warriors in Shaka's arrny (Lapping 1986).

Shaka was King of the Zulus from 1816 - 1828 and established military control over an extensive temtory by the early nineteenth century, uniting previously divided Zulu clans.

He became lcnown as the "Black Napoleon" (Rodney 1972). These united clans were to become a powerfiil force in African expansionism.

In the early 1800s, the Ngoni people expanded their area of control into southem

Mozambique and later South Africa. King Shoshengana renamed the region Gaza. The ivory trade was the exclusive monopoly of the Ngoni dong with their control of cattle.

Hunting expeditions were carried out with militaristic zeal and many species of animals became extinct within three decades. Controls on grazing and cultivation and the tribute demands of food for the army led to overgrazing and the decline of gathering. The tribute demanded by the various levels of royalty left the disposessed classes vulnerable to the lures of capital, drawn to wage labour in the sugar plantations of Natal. Mzilikazi, derof the Matabde, expanded his empire through conquest and invasion dlhis defeat by the

Boers in 1839 (Bozzoh 199 1).

Kwena groups settied the highveld areas of what is now South Afnca. III the course of the difaquone, they fled Mzilikazi's advances to cluster around the mountains of Basutoland

under the protection of Moshoeshoe. Many Kwena became Sotho by adoption (Matsetela

1982). A loosely associated group of people, who fled the Zulu wars to settie in the area known as Ciskei, became known as the Mfengu The Mfengu sought the protection of the British and fought on the side of colonial forces during the Frontier Wars (1 830-

1890). They were rewarded with Xhosa lands (Anonymous 1991). This period transformed the settlement patterns, identities and alliances of many Afiican people.

People surrendered familiar forms of social organization and structure as they merged with western cultures, as in the Mfengu, or were absorbed into other cultures, as in the

Kwena.

Many kingdoms resisted white settlernent throughout the nineteenth century. The military might of the Xhosa nation kept Boer settlen at bay for over 50 years beginning in the mid-1700s. Zulus engaged in successful battles against increasing numbers of British troops for eight years until their defeat by British forces in 1887 (Lapping 1986). The

Zdus, under their King Dingane, were defeated by a detemined British arrny and several of their allies, after the renowned battle of Isandlwana in 1879, when the Zulus wiped out an entire regiment of British troops. Last to be conquered were the Venda in northem Transvaal, who reversed the flow of Boer settiers in the 1860s and maintained their independence until1898 (Study Commission on U.S. Policy Towards Southern Africa

198 1)-

Some of these battles were fought with guns that had been purchased in Kimberly, the site of the first diamond discoveries. Many Afncans were sent by their chiefs to labour in the KUnberly's mines, southern Afnca's primary gun marketplace, in order to earn rnoney to purcbase guns (Lapping 1986). These wars against colonialism and the

Afncans who fought in them became symbols to many Afiricans who later fought to restructure a labour migration systern that segregated the work and movement of people by their race. The ongins of labour migration reveal that racialist ideology conspired with capital expansion to enforce a system of exploitation based on race and class.

4.2 Tidal Waves - The Flood of European Immigration

Southem Afnca was transfomed forever with the coming of the Europeans in the early years of the sixteenth century. Prior to the arriva1 of Europeans, Anicans in the region engaged in pastoral, agricultural activities, mining and small-scale commercial activities including trade. The infiwc of European settiers created impacts on local communities as the competition for land increased, economic activity took on new forms and social relations altered These impacts contributed to the emergence of labour migration.

The floodgates of European migration remained open ïnto the 1960s bolstered by the tides of capital accumulation and ideology. In exploring the depth of social relations in South Afnca it is possible to discover the interrelation between European settlement and

Afncan response. The history of European settlement is critical in explaining factors that led to the system of labour migration in southem eca.A swey of this history, albeit incomplete, is usefid in identifjring what factors explain the variation in responses to the migrant labour system, in addition to capital accumuiation and state regulation. It is also useful in explaining the uneven development of capitalism and statehood within the region.

European migrants were not a homogenous group. Afrikaner ideologues promoted a raciaiist world-view that denied Anican sovereignty while some British missionarîes successfully campaigned to end slavery and preserve Afncans' right to land. Also, the interests of some settlers ofien confiicted with proposed reforms that commined indigenous labour to the industrial sector or impsed taxes and quotas on Afncan tenançy. Many Afiikaner settlers were unsuccessful in making the transformation to capitalist agriculture. They became part of the surplus labour pool in urban areas and the focus of Anilcaner welfare organizations. European mine workers went on strike to preserve job categories for whites only. These and other examples dernonstrate the varied responses to labour migration that were guided by racial identity.

Settiement was to be one of the cornerstones of coIonial strategy. lit provided a vehicle for the eviction of a large surplus of unemployed rural dwellers in their country of ongin.

Southern Afica was a convenient haven for those seeking religious fieedom, as weLl as a place to exile undesirables including cruninds and political dissidents. The migration of

Europeans to southern Anica also provided a line of defense for the colonial order.

Colonial govemments encouraged the large-scale invasion of European settlers to the

region, particularly to what are now called South Afnca, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

Europem received many incentives to immigrate inctuding free passage, access to cheap

land, tools and favourable legislation to guarantee control of the emerging capitalist

market. This in-migration by the European population transfonned previous relations of

production. Many settlers expected that Afiicans living on their lands would provide an

ever-flowing pool of labour to exploit New desprohibited Afkicans fiom owning land

outside reserve areas. Those choosbg to [ive on lands outside those areas were required

to pay rent to the land's owner. Failure to pay often resulted in removals to overcrowded

reserve areas. ficans were now forced to pay rent on land that they had lived on for

decades. In order to pay these rents Anicans became wage labourers for their new

landlords.

In the early 1820s' the British financed the migration of 4,000 settlers to South Afnca as

a response to the growing unemployment and mounting disorder in Britain. Among these

settlers were radical missionaries who observed the deplorable conditions of slavery in the region and mounted an active opposition that forced British Parliament to ban slavery.

These missionaries sought to save souk and establish an Afican clergy by providing medical, social and religious seMces as incentives to conversion to Christianity. They also protested Afikaner land grabs in the fkontier, lobbied and were successful in having lands returned to their original Afiican occupants. A few missionaries were also suspected of supplying arms to the Afi-ican population for defense of their land (Lapping

1986). Some missions sent young Afncans overseas to pursue higher education at universities in the Brïtain and the United States. Some of these young people rehimed to found and participate in nationalist movements in the fonner British colonies (Marks

199 1).

Ideological differences between the British and Bwr settlers precipitated an exodus of fmers fiom the Cape region to further expand colonizabon of the region. The British fiee market iiberal ideology emphasized class over race in social and political relations.

This ideology clashed with elements of the Boer commmity whose brutal exploitation of the Afncan population was thought by the British to be primitive and backward. Many of these farmee defended their precapitalist generation of surplus through rents fiom

African tenants. Their exploitation of black labour was based on their racist ideology which forbade equality between the "white master and the black servant" (Davies,

O'Meara and Dlamini 1988:6).

Under the guise of humanitarianism the British repealed the pass law of 1809 kingup labour to create a mobile supply for their emerging market needs. This, in wmbination with the abolition of slavery throughout the Bntish Empire in 1807, led to extreme dissatisfaction on the part of Boer settlers who believed the Bntish took the side of

Africans in cornplaints made against them by radical missionaries (Lapping 1986). As a result Boer farmers undertook the Great Trek in 1837. Even a hundred years later the Great Trek was revered by the apartheid regime as a mythic event of equal importance to

the flight of the Israelites from Egypt (Lapping 1986).

The Great Trek of AfYikaner legend and the Anglo-Boer War were two critical events in

South Afiica's history that contributed to the emergence of meridentity. The death

of Boer settiers at the han& of ficans and the consequences of the Anglo Boer war

created martyrs that were revered by Afnkaner capitaiists, workers and small fmers

alike. The "scorched earth pdicy7' against Boer lands and the ""Murderof the Innocents",

the death of 26,000 women and children in British concentration camps, fuelled

Afnkaner sentiments into a unified force (Brink 1990) that would eventually propel the

Nationdist Party to victoxy in 1948.

The constitution of Anikaner identity required the participation of workers, bywoners '

wealthy farmers, teachers and other professionals. Afikaner intellectuals, such as clergy,

scholars and teachers, adopted a gospel of religious, cultural and political separatism that

appealed to al1 of these disafEected groups. The Rebellion of 19 14- 15 was a crucial event

that provided the recently founcied Nationalist Party with a banner to rally behind and

promote their ethnic ideology. South Africa's govemment had pledged its support to the

British in the First World War. The commander-in-chief of the newly fomed Union

Defence Force resigned his commission along with over 10,000 troops who refbsed to

spill the blood of young Afnkaner rebels at the behest of their traditional foe. The rebel

army was put down and one of their leaders, Jopie Fouie, was hanged, creating another

1. Bywoners were fanners thai practiccd farming on the half. They rcceived most of their Ecome hmAûîwi tenants who suncndmed haif of their agricu1ûxra.i products in exchange for access to productive Id

109 Afkikaner martyr. Mer the Rebellion, the Dutch Reformed Church @RC) threw its powerfbl support behind the ethnic movement (Giliomee 1989).

Ethnic financial institutions such as Volkskas and the University of Stellenbosch represented the scope of ethnic economic and ideological power that would sustain apartheid to its height in the 1960s. By accumuiating wealth and investments, Afnkaner capital was able to sustain the infrastructure for the ideological transformation of the nation The Natiodist Party was a vehicle that propeiled AfÎikaner conscioumess beyond the cultural arena Werbecarne a political as well as culturai identity

(Davies, 07Meara,Dlamini 1988).

4.3 Reservoirs of Identity - Manufacturing Tribalism

Labour migration emerged withui the context of physical and social boundaries that resulted from European setîlement and Afican expansionism. During the late nineteenth century labour migration was often discretiow rather than necessary. Many Africans had access to land for cultivation and viewed migration as a means to increase their wealth in cattle or irnprove their subsistence fming activities. Migrants viewed work in the capitalist sector as a temporary phenornenon, rather than a permanent option. Young men fulfilled customary labour obligations to chiefs and headmen by taking on contract labour. The additional income from this labour gave Africans the opportunity to acquire guns, horses, livestock, ploughs and manufactured goods. Afn'cans resisted the encroachment of European settiement but also took advantage of the opportunities provided b y improved faming tec hnology, including ploughs and draft animais, O ften purchased with eamings accrued through migrant labour. Many Afiicans developed and rnaintained successfid fming operations despite devastating naturd disasters and increasing legislation that limited their oppominities.

The Glen Gray Act of 1852 defined the role of the state in land allocation by introducing racial segregation in land ownership, consolidating a form of pnvate land ownership that replaced African communal forms of land tenure. This land ownership was largely consolidated in the han& of well-to-do African peasants, headman and other favored traditional leaders. However it also created a force for social change that threatened the haditional power of the chiefs as

[tjhe altered concept of land tenue that accompanied the emergence of large peasaats and progressive farmers: individual AEncans not only sought land within an ovdlsituation of land shortage, but they did so within new contests in which land wuid be granted by authorities other than the chief (Bundy 1979:96)

The pursuit of small-scale commercial agriculture by Afncan fmers led to changes in social relations. Responsibilities to kinship groups and distributive noms of traditional society tended to be replaced by exploitative social relations that emerged fiom individualistic and profit-maxirnizing motives. Some Africans, including the Bafokeng, retained and developed a preference for individual land holding, thus threatening the chiefs' traditional power over communal land redistribution and social reproduction

(Bonoli 199 1). Despite the aim of the Glen Gray Act to strengthen traditional power it had the effed of weakening it as wei.

The "Shepstone System" system, named after Theophilus Shepstone, Secretaxy of Native

Anairs, began in the 1890s as a poiicy to segregate the population, maintain pre-capitalist modes of homestead production and administratively divide the Anican cornrnunity. This system endowed chiefly authonty over land distribution and cwtomary law. The colonial state of the time realized that the erosion of traditionai power would create dificulties in controlling and maintaining the labour migration system. In extending the powers of the

Glen Gray Act, the colonial state recognized their lack of facilities and hhstmcture to conârol a large population in motion fiom reproductive subsistence labour to productive labour in the emerging capitalist sector. Chiefly authonties understood the power they had in this situation and negotiated from a position of power to resist outright expropriation of their lands (Guy 1982).

The development of the homelands or reserves in Afnca favoured the maintenance of a class system that privileged Afiican politicians and bureaucrats who supported and implemented policies of the national government. While many of these Africans became wealthy, the majority of the population had neither the benefils of traditional communal life nor the benefits of modern urban living. With the devolution of political power to the homeland govemments traditional leaders sought to preserve traditional modes of social organization. But these traditional modes of social organization changed with the introduction of colonialism and many people began to adopt alternative social practices.

To counter these trends traditional leaders sought to gain increased control over migration. People were not permitted to leave the reserve without the express permission of chiefs or headrnan and often only left as migrant labourers. Although capitalist production transformed the social relations and structures of subsistence production, traditional authorities continued to wield considerable power over labour through their conîrol over labour recruitment and land allocation. These altered forms of social controol extended the scope of traditional authority particulariy in regards to labour migration.

The entrenchment of chiefs and headmen in the administrative and political structure of Pondoland and the dynamic of local politîcal processes therefore helped to perpetuate migrancy as a specific fomof proletarianisation, (Beinart 1987: 130)

The Native Administration Act of 1927 left the state with ultimate control over the appointment of chiefs and a segregation of the justice system. The role of the chieftancy became accepted by a state confkonted with maintainhg order in the rurai areas. "The survival of the chiehcy and the use made of chiefs and headmen in administering

Pondoland, had important implications for patterns of production stratification and political conflict in the area (Beinart 1987: 122)."

The complex relationships and responses emerging fiom this authority can only be understood by the degree of control that people could exercise within their own community and homestead. Over the course of the next century Afncanç were to resist traditional models of social control over their labour and mobility but also to cling to traditional modes of homestead production that relied on routinized reproduction of customary social relations.

In 1948 the pro-Afnkaner Nationalist Party came to power and immediately began to enlist chiefs and other tribal authorities in the hplementation of apartheid in the rural areas. The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 bolstered the power of the chiefs by expanding theu tax base. Arnendments to the Native Tmt and Land Act in the mid-1950s allowed only those Afncan families settled on white-owned land before 1936 to remain. The remaining families were considered squatters and given a choice of repatriation to

"homelands" or permanent Ml-time work as labouren. The implementation of apartheid

s2w that both rural and urban boundaries were clearly defined. Urban townships such as

Soweto were drawn dong ethnically defined grids and the movement between rural and

urban areas took place ody within eWcconduits.

The tribal royalty of South Afnca were resunected with the establishinent of the independent hornelands, including Kwazulu which was located in the state known at that time as Natal. Chief Buthelezï, the notorious founder of the (IFP), was a loyal supporter of the Kwazulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini, and began his collaboration with the apartheid system in the 1950s. Buthelezi had been a member of the

ANC but grew discontented with their lefi-wing ideology and formed the IFP as an alternative. The IFP had its roots in the Inkatha movernent of the 1920s and its aim was to reduce the influence of radical "cBolshevik"elements in the union movement and in the countryside (Marks 1989). The IFP established its tribal identity by manipuiating cultural symbols into a c'manufactured tribalism" (Murray 1994:94), with the intent of establishing a hegemony of power which would last beyond the dismantling of apartheid.

The struggle for hegemony with the Afncan National Congress (ANC) resulted in brutal warfare, particuiarly in the townships of Natal during the 1980s and early 1990s. The IFP soldiers in this war were often recruited amongst Zulu migrant workers, both in the homeland and in the urban hosteis. A history of conflict existed between the 'worldly' politicized youth of the townships and the contract workers who were looked down on because of their rurai origins and affiliation with the IFP (Munay 1994). Hendrik Verwoerd, Nationalist Party's Minister of Native AffauS, became the intellectual

force behind the architecture that wodd support his master plan for separate

development. Verwoerd believed that this separate path would benefit Afiicans by

restonng traditional institutions of power and self-government. The distinct traditions of

mcanpeoples would provide a vdued culturai environment that would provide a haven

f?om the ravages of life in the European dominated tuban areas. A key strategy for this

plan was the restoration of tribalism and chiefly authority. This strategy was not unique to apartheid but had been promoted by bureaucrats, businessmen and missionmies in the

nineteenth and early twentieth cenhuy, who advocated for the creation of the system of

Anican reserves. The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 provided chiefs and headmen with salaries and privileges as incentives for their role in reviving traditional beliefs and practices that had ken abandoned by urban dwellers, many of whom lived by traditions that they had acquired through a Christian education.

Verwoerd also believed that separate development was required for educational institutions. South Africa had more educated Africans than any other country in the continent The Nationalist Party viewed these Afncans as a threat since they often inspired acts of resistance and transferred their radical ideas to the homelands. To counter this trend Verwoerd drafted the Bantu Education Act in 1955. This Act transferred authority for Bantu education to the Department of Native Affairs, lixniting the influence of liberai missionaries and the scope of African education. An apartheid syllabus was introduced that focused on the acquisition of mative languages and excluded areas of study such as science or mathematics. Verwoerd's grand design included participation in traditional ceremonies wiih Afican

chefs and headmen who called him Rupula (the rain bringer) or Sebeloke (the patron) the

Great Indm (Lapping 1986). Over bowls of mealie porridge and sorghurn and maize beer Venvord and tribal authorities discussed the implementation of apartheid and the restoration of centuries old traditions of chiefly dignity and honour.

Foremost among Mdcaner organizations was the Broederbond whose ongins went back to 19 18. In the aflermath of World War 1, Afiikaner nationalists began to organize scout troops, student leagues and women's organizations to promote a complete separation of

Afkikaner society in order to survive British imperialism. They organized among army officers, civil servants, local officials and teachers and swore aii their recruits to silence.

Broederbond leaders played a key role in organizing an alliance of class forces throughout the 1940s and its members were promoted to office afier the election of the

Nationalist Party in 1948.

However, the Broederbond itself was transformed with the assassination of Vewoerd in

1966. Factions within the Nationalist Parfy fought bitter stniggies over relsucing of apartheid laws and policies over the next two decades. Control of the Broederbond was also contested well into the 1980s when the verkrumpter hard-liner Afkikaners raHied opposition against the verligres refoms of the pragmatic centrists, Vorster and Botha.

Verkrampters felt that these refoms only benefited big capital and abandoned Loyalty to issues such as cultural purity and presemation (Lapping 1986). Afiikaner identity was key in shapuig labour migration. As workers, farmers and capitalists Afrikaners ail shared an interest in controlling Afncan labour migration. These interests, however, were not identical and therefore forces such as class often mediated the Ievel of cooperation that was possibIe. Afrikaner ideologues were not able to quickly transforrn class alliances and laboured for decades to win support fiom small fmers and workers who were often skeptical about political promises (Butler 1989). Severai key events enabled Afrikaner identity and political leaders wdthese opporîunities to advance their cause of racial and ethnic segregation. The control over labour mobility was an essential element in maintaining this segregation.

A parallel process that shaped different African 'tribal' identities coincided with the creation of an Afrikaner identity. The emergence of the Bantustan system and the repatriation of thousands of Afiicans to these ethnically divided locations created an artificial tribalism that was not universally accepted by Afncans.

Attempts of the state and the traditional authorities to control the boundaries within which African people lived and worked proved to be largely a failure. From the days of the Glen Gray Act to the implementation of the Bantustan system people defied the ethnic and racial boundaries that had been imposed on their work and movement. Afncan people defied traditional authorities by illegaily migrating to wban areas and challenged repressive structures of apartheid through civil disobedience, exile and armed struggle.

However, many Africans remained within the boundaries that structureci their productive lives and their mobility While racial and ethnic identities resonated with many Afiicans, others chose to form alliances across class, race and ethnic boundaries. The implications of these various responses require Merexploration of motivations that go beyond an analysis of class, race and ethnic relations.

4.4 Entering the Flow - Opportunities and Choices The oscillahg nature of the migratory labour force has its ongins in the 1860s when the first diamonds were discovered in the alIuvial beds near the fork of the Vaal and Harts rivers. The new mining industry required crews of diggers and many young men were sent to engage in the cash economy by chiefs who continued to hold authority over young men's labour. This engagement with the cash economy was inevitable but took place within a context that provided options.

The Rand becarne a centre of industrial expansion after the discovery of large gold findings in 1886. The gold mines required many workers who were willing to endure hard and dangerous labour. Work in the gold mines was often not the most commun choice of migrant workers since Johannesburg or other tow-ns close to the mine sites provided alternative economic sectors and work less arduous than mine labour. Many also chose these tomsince they were close in proximity to the reserves where they or their families had homesteads. By 192 1 the population of Johannesburg had risen to half a million, providing a vibrant economy in which a range of employment options were avaiiable. Many of these migrant workers were moving up in status within the econornic hierarchy of the labour market as a result of a more resiiient and powerful local urban economy. Working as kitchen helpers, store clerks, dairy workers, shop assistants or in the transportation sector afFected the cultural behaviour and political consciousness of many young men. Male migrancy of this type denresulted in permanent urban residence and was almost never remembered as forced on them (Bozzoli 199 1)

The historical circumstances of the wming of migrancy to Phokeng (which ttiemselves had roots in a Ionger history) meant that people embraced it as much as they submiaed to it; îhat they could, widiin adrnittedly narrow Mts, choose occupations as much as have them forced upon km;and that they could thiak of themselves as actors as much as people acted upon. (Bozzoli 199 1 :105)

Strange diiances were formed between some AEncans and Afiikaners that enabled them to hold substantial tracts of land as trust native locations or reserves. The Bafokeng and other BatSwanas of the region sided with the Boers in the War with the British. Paul

Kruger, president of the Transvaal Republic, dtimately made the Bafokeng purchase the land they occupied however, they were issued deeds for the property and continue to hold mineral nghts to the land (Bozzoli 199 1). This access to land enabled the material conditions for discretionary participation in migrant labour. For many of these people, the rurai economy continued to take precedence over the urban economy even into the 1930s.

Ethnicity iofluenced the process in which people experienced labour migration

Migration fiom certain areas, including the areas lmown as Fingoland and Ciskei, was firmiy entrenched by the turn of the centq. Many of these people were descendents of people displaced by the Mfecane. They had thrown in their lot with the British and benefited fiom this association by acquiring a range of education, skills and links with the workplace and knowledge of the broader oppomuiities of the labour market.

A distinctive feature of ?heu patterns of migrancy was the avoidance of work on the Rand mincis and the Cape farms, where wages were low, work strictly supervised and controls directly imposeci.. .. They favoured jobs at dispersed points of production or in more open urban settings which gave them some scope for selfi>rganization and mobility. (Beinart and Bmdy 1987:19)

In contrast, Mpondo migrants had a much shallower lmcwledge of the labour market

suice almon no labour migrancy occurred pnor to 1890. Even by the 1930s the rates of

out migration from their disîricts remained markedly lower, although the gap was

closing.(Bujis 1988). Although many, like the Mfengu, chose permanent residence in the urban areas others preferred the oscillating mode of labour migration whereby labour was divided between subsistence homestead production and temporary migration to cover the cost for cash ne& such as rents and taxes.

In this conte- younger Mpondo men were drafted by professional recruiters and had limited choice over work destination. The Transvaal mines and sugar plantations in Natal were common migrant labour destinations. These plantations were closer than the Reef mine sites and contracts were of shorter duration usually 6 months allowing these migrants to spend longer periods at home (Bujis 1988). Like al1 migrant labourers, the

Mpondo lived in closely supeMsed compounds and worked in ethnically composed gangs that reinforced their ethnic cohesion.

Mining hostels were contested ground for ethnic rivalry. From the early days of mine migrancy, managers took advantage of existing ethnic rivalries to physically, socially and economically divide workers by ethnic identity. Management supported ethnically appointed representatives who policed the mining compound and played a role in dividing class-consciousness dong ethnic Iines. The role of ethnicity guaranteed that 'Yhe tribal stnïcturing of the compounds cushioned the impact of industrialization by retaining the 'moral' restraints and standards of tribal Iife (Harries I989:102)."

Despite the fktthat their relationship to the land had altered, maq Afncans continued to value the social security and patriarchal role of homestead production. May migrants planned their retirement fiom migrant labour and invested resources to ensure a modicurn of financial independence through the security of a rural homestead.

Fijaîerial conditions of mine migration, at least before the 1970s gave fise to variant strands of migrant culture whose common motif was cornmitment to the independence and satisfaction of patriarchal proprietorship over a rurai homestead. (IMoodie, Ndatshe 1994:2 1)

In order to gain access to land it was necessary to engage in traditional social practices that surrounded distribution. This ensured that traditional sources of power remained with chefs and headmedïhe labor force that characterized South mcanlabour migration was not solely a device of the capitalist classes that required a flexible and oscillating workforce to keep wages low. Afn'can resistance to full proletarianisation came fiom their will to remain on the land. Those that opted for urban residence often made plans to purchase a homestead for retirement and rnost urban residents maintained ties with family and kinship networks in rural areas. With continued access to land Africans were able to move between urban and rural landscapes.

Afn-can people responded to labour migration fiom a context where ethnicity and race created both oppomuiities and constraints on social action The responses were varied and shaped by geography, the depth of traditional power, sedimentation of social practices, and the formation of social networks. The establishment of political, social and economic barndaries engendered responses that ranged fiom proactive support from t&al leaders to mass protests and violent confkontaîion Afkican people had much to do with the transformation of the labour migration system but were never the homogenous force defined by their ethniciîy or race.

4.5 Coalescence and Divergence Race, Ethnicity and Class

Race and ethnicity mediateci the developrnent of class-consciousness in South Afnca.

People united as classes, but often ciass-consciousness contained a dimension of racial identity since the character of the class system operated in favour of white workers and capitalists alike. This racial identity was the source of alliances that crossed class boundaries and included rural and urban Afkicans in the stniggle to transfomi this raciaiist system.

The shilling strike of July 19 18 created an ailiance among Afncan migrant and industrial workers, the urban underclasses and the petty bourgeoisie that sustained two years of militant agitation. Pnces for some consumer goods began to nse with the beginning of

World War 1. Mation led to a downward spiral in wages for black workers, who did not receive the war bonuses and cost of living adjustments of their white counterparts. Rising

@ces coupied with declining real incomes created a politically charged atmosphere and radicalization that eventdly empted into the 1920 black rnineworkers strike (Bonner

1982). Despite unity on the demand for increased wages, housing and pass laws among the

multi-class black alliance behind the strike, there continued to be a dividing line between

those who considered îhemseives educated and generally white collar, and thus,

supposedly deserving of cornmensinate privilege. Many of these blacks set thernselves

apart fkom those who lived in rural areas and practiced traditional homestead production

without the perceived benefits of modemization. The black petty bourgeoisie, through

organizations such as the Transvaal Native Congress, argued that their tastes and needs were different than rural dwellers and, consequently, their salaries should be considered separately. They also successfully lobbied for reforms to the pass laws that ailowed specific exemptions and the relaxation of regulations for the aspiring petty bourgeoisie.

Like the agitation on wages, therefore, the agitation on passes was a double-edged weapon since its central target could, as it were, be dismantled and used to disorganize the alliance it had occasioned. (Bo~er1982:283)

Many of these movements had ative participation by sectors within the trade union movernent who took up the campaign against the forced labour system. Some of these organizations pursued an Afiicanist position within the Industrial and Commercial

Workers Unionhdependent Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICUNCU) in

East London. According to Beinart (1987) three elements characterizcd the IICU:

an explicitly Afiicanist position (sîrongly idiuenced by separaikt Christianity); an articulation of specific mban underclass grievances (especially of women); and an attempt to cobble together an alliance with popular forces in the city's rurai hinterland This last aspect - the attempted urban-rural alliance - not oniy involve recniiting migrant workers and peasants under the IICU banner, but also rneant accepting rural chie& as an appropnate focus for mob-on. It was precisely because of the very strong links between East London's labouring population and the mal hinterland, and because of the complex nature of migrant-worker consciousness, that there was a material interest behind this kind of alliance. (Beinarr 1987~272) The IICU leadership sought to con% or strengthen its alliance with Xhosa chiefs by referring to Xhosa tradition. These references not only appealed to the chiefs but also to migrant worken in East London audiences. By 1927, the IICU had become a strong force in rnobilizing urban workers and the rural peasantry. So, while ethnic identity was a factor in dividing Afncan, it was also a factor in uniting them.

Race was also to provide a force for organizing worker solidarity. In 1946 Afican mineworken went out on stxike to demand increases in wages and benefits. The strike was put down by force and 12 mineworkers were killed and a hundred injured. This event was to galvanize AErican radicalism and led to increased confrontation with the state even fkom politicaily conservative petty bourgeois organizations such as the Natives'

Representative Council (Davies, OYMeara,Dlamini 1988).

Mkaner consciousness pervaded capitalist and worker alike. In 1922 British mining interests announced they would promote African workers to semi-skilled occupations in order to offset the impact of falling gold prices. White workers, mostly Afnkaners, responded with a strike that enipted into fierce fighting and resdted in 200 deaths. Strike leaders were charged with murder and eighteen were sentenced to death. These worken threw their support behind the National Party, which spoke out on their behalf. Two years later the National Party was elected with their support (Lapping 1986).

Afncan trade union militancy, particularly in sectors where Afncan worken held semi- skilled occupations, emerged in the period from 1942-46. Afrikaner workers responded by appealing to the Labour Party to preserve their niche in the low-paid job categories that were reserved for white labour. The Labour Party's lack of response to this appeal

led these workers to support the Nationalist Party, whose platform included rigid job

colour bars to protect against entry of =cari workers (Davis, O'Meara, Dlarnini 1988),

and segregation of previously racially mixed low-incorne neighbourhoods (Lapping

1986).

The Nationalist Farty had its roots in the , which was created in

response to the National Party's fbsion with the United Party. Afrikaner nationalists

viewed leaders of the United Party as conciliatory to British Mperial interests and

resolved to create a new party that would more effectively defend MMcaner interests.

Butler (1989), O'Meara (1983) and other neo-Marxist scholars claim that the desertion to

the Nationalist Party resulted fiom the dissatisfaction of fanners with an economic

situation that did not meet their labour and market needs. However, economics alone do

not explain why it was only Afnkaner faxmers who deserted.

The Nationalist Party promised fmers rigid controls over the movement of labour. Both the mining and agicultural secton suffered losses of workers following the second

period of industrializatioa that occured between the two World Wars. Afn'can workers

were deserting white fmsfor employrnent in industry and many faxmers supported the

Nationalist Party's platfôrm for conîrolling the urbanization of Afiican labour. Mer

1948 the Nationalist Party wnsolidated and expanded pass laws. The Group Areas Act of

1951 demarcated the townships by race and ethnicity. Through the Natives Laws

Amendment Act of 1952 and the Urban Areas Amendment Act of 1955 influx control was applied to al1 urban areas and included women as weil as men. Labour bureaux were

established to control the movemeat of work seekers and local authorities were given

powers to remove Africans considered to be superfluous (Davies, O'Meara, Dlarnini

2988). These acts of the apartheid system sought to limit the spread of class-

consciousness and formed the basis for the imprisonment and exile of many people who

defied the structures and mechanisms of sociai control.

People in South Afnca were united and divided by race and ethnicity. African trade

unionists worked in racial solidarity with peasantts and petty-bourgeois organizations.

Anikaner workers defended the right to protect certain job categories for whites ody.

However, people also worked across class, racial and ethnic comtnicts to ultimately

challenge the repressive structures of the apartheid state.

4.6 Summary

While the ovenvhelming role of capital and state in developing the labour migration

system cannot be denied it is also important to note how other forces interacted to transform this system. It is very difficult to analyse these interactions as discreet aspects

since they are often dependent on one another.

From these examples we have seen that hierarchies of power were not solely determined by materialist views of class as they relate to ownership of the mmof production, but also by hierarchies based on culturaily defined sociai structures that existed prior to the development of capitalism. Sbtus and power belonged to traditional authorities such as chiefs and headmen, enabling some Afncans to have more influence than others. in

recogninng the importance of other hierarchies within the region, spaces are created for a

deeper analysis of the role tbat Afiicans have played in constituting the migrant labour

system in addition to the conditions that have rnediaîed their agency.

The particular nature of these hierarchies detennined their ability to resist or comply with

the labour migration system and, in fact, their cornpliance may have led to the

maintenance of their power across time and space. Many of those who resisted the system

did so in spite of traditional obligations and further undermined the power and privilege

of traditional leaders, and often rejected age-old rivalries despite colonial attempts to

promote ethnic confiict. Other traditional leaders were able to recreate these rivalries

uuder conditions of high unemployment, impoverishment and violence.

One of the conditions that often rernains obscureci, particularly within the neoclassical

framework, is the role of ideology in structuring a racialist hierarchy within the region.

The settler populations who embraced this ideology eventually came to political power in

South fica and Rhodesia and had considerable influence over the migrant labour system beyond their own borders. Yet it was the promotion of this ideology that dtimately led to its owndemise as those within the region, and without, challenged its inhumanity.

The complex interaction of these forces demonstrates the convergence of structure and agency that shaped and reshaped the migrant labour system. The shifting balance of power between Afkicans and Europeans and within AfÏican and European societies was a key influence in the determination of migration. These hierarchies of power precipitated changes and consequences that economic theories alone motexplain. The complexïty of the system of labour migration requires an approach îhat links dysesof history to the study of patterns of settlement, the developrnent of capitalism and the construction of ideology. This analysis should encompass how ethnically and racially defined forms of social organization and relations iduenced the agency of individuals, classes, ethnic groups and gender in the labour migration process, and how this agency was then refiected back into society as social change. Labour migration occurred within a context that was defined by the overarching power of capital, but was also iduenced by the social relations and structures that emerged from other sources of identity such as ethnicity, race and, as the next chapter explains, gender. Chapter 5 Currents of Continuity, Tides of Change - Gender and Migration

You have tarnpd with the Die gewig is swaar, women, Die moeders is nodig, You have struck a rock, Uns gee nie om as ons You have dislodged a gevang is nie, bouider, 011sis bereid vir onse You WU be crushed- wyheld.

Unzima lomthwalo ha The weight is heavy, mimima, We need our mothers, Unn'ma lomthwalo duna We won? give up, even if madoda, we're jailed, Asikhaîhali noba We are ready for our siyabotshwa, fieedorn. Sisimisele inkhuiuleko.

Women's fieedom song fiom the 1950s sung in Engiish, Zulu and Af?ham.

Wornen in southem Africa were profoundly affected by labour migration. Colonialism

and capitalism merged with preexisting patriarchal social structures to reconstitute

gendered practices and structures. The reconstitution of these practices and structures

created conditions that both constrained and enabled the diverse responses of Afncan

women and men. These responses ranged fiom the routinized reproduction of social

structures to the transformation of the practices and structures that sought to constrain

women' s action.

Ln traditional societies gender was socially constructed through the deployrnent of authoritative and allocative resources by patnarchal sources of power and by women's reactions to these sources of power and control. These sources of power ranged fiom kings, chefs and headmen to husbands, brothers-in-law and fathers. However, it was not only men who enacted these sources of power since, in many societies, older women had authority over younger women, parîicularly in the allocation of labour and matenal resources. Polygyny was a social practice extençively practiced throughout the region giving senior wives authority over younger wives. Reproductive labour was the exclusive domain of women in many societies in southern Afnca and within this domain women's role was ciearly defined.

Women's work included agriculturd production, particularly planting, weeding, and post-harvest responsibilities. Domestic responsibilities were included in the sphere of women's work and included activities such as collecting water and firewood, in addition to food preparation, healthcare, and childcare responsibilities for howholds. Many of these households often included grandparents and other extended farnily members, as well as a woman's immediate family. Men helped with the clearing of land and the harvest but their main responsibilities involved hunting and animal husbandry. Land allocation was the responsibility of chiefs and headmen. Women, in general, were not permitted to own land.

Women's status was defined by the value of their bridewealth, their age, the number of children they produced and their success at subsistence farming or petty trading. Women also received status fiom their participation in traditional ritual practices that honoured ancestors or prepared young women for adulthood and mdage. Traditional institutions such as bridewealth and polygyny defined the structures and hierarchy of control over women. A woman's family arrmged her marriage in consultation with traditional authorities through enactment of customary laws that defined the process of brideweaith and polygyny. Customary laws also set out the distributive relations of inheritance that excluded women fiom the right to inherit land or property fiom a deceased spouse, father or other kinsman.

The Mtutionalization of labour migration in the region created varying impacts on

Afncan women, dependhg on their social status, race, class or ethnicity. These impacts also varïed with women's location in theand space. For many women the recoIlStituted structures and practices that resulted fiom labour migration provided multi-layered coflstfaiats on their action. CoIlStraints were imposed on women, in the fonn of state and customary laws, as junior wives in polygynous households, as converts to Chnstianity, as workers, and as women left behind by rnigrating husbands. New foms of subordination replaced old foms and in many cases women chose to pursue the course of social continuity, where familiar foms of subordination were known and understood within their practical consciousness. Following this course was ofien the preferred alternative to entering the forceful and often dangerous tides of social change.

ûther women rejected these familiar foms of subordination and set out to explore the tides of change and transformation. This j ourney of exploration required taking ris ks that ofien increased women's subordination as they became caught up in the forceful flows of race, class and ethnicity. Many women did not succeed in navigating these forcehl flows and were tunied away fiom these tides by force or by choice. Many others persevered and contributed to the social and political transformation of southern Afnca. In addition to discovering the cornplex interplay of class, race and ethnic relaticsns, it is

critical to understand the enduring influence that patIiarchy had on women's actions.

Patrïarchal muctures and practices sought to control women's productive and reproductive actions as well as their mobility. As an ideologicai form, patnarchy extended from the state to the household "Clearly, the dependence and control of wives is not only mediated through the state, but also through an intemalized ideology of subordination (Cock l988:2 11 )."

The history of southern Afiica illustrates a process, whereby the state and traditÏona1 authonties sought to control women. It is necessary to expand an analysis of labour migration beyond the borders of South Afkica Labour migration impacted on wamen throughout the region, as men migrated to what is now South Africa fiom distant locations. The reconstitution of Afncan societies, as a result of advancing capitalism and labour migration, created the conditions that provided for increased economic and social oppominities for women. Many women took advantage of these opportunities tochange their economic and social situations. The transformation that occurred in these women's lives also resulted in changes to the broder society and created apprehension f0.r both the state and iraditional sources of authority.

Colonial officials began to realize that their system of indirectly rule would nev-er succeed if nual chiefs lost control over women. As a result, African chiefs and coIonial officials fonned a patriarchai coalition and set about creating date and ideologid sîructures to bring these women under control.. .niral Micm authorities and urban Mcan elites set about ushg political, economic and ideologicai weapons to bring women to heel.. - Church and state authorities butiresse.these Iaws with well developed patriarchd ideologies, which emphasized rnodesty and subsenrience as ideal female traits. (Parpart 1988: 1 I S- 133) The state, religious and traditional authorities believed that the wives left behind by male migration adopted practices that threatened their paniarchal view of morality. These practices thieatened the patriarchal structures and systems that sought to control women.

This perspective characterized women as unfaithfid, untnistworthy and incapable of moral behaviour. ''Women often get tired of waiting for their husbands and ofien becorne unfâithfiil to their husbands who return home and often find tbat their wives have given birth to children of whom he is not the father (Schapera 1947:62)."

As a result of this behaviour, some jurisdictions decided to take action. h Southern

Rhodesia, The Natives Aduitery Punishment Ordinance was enacted in 19 16 as a response to the continuous representations made by chiefs, headmen, and other traditional leaders. According to the new law, extra-marital liaisons were considered adulterous only if a woman was manied. Marned Afncan men could continue to have sexual relations with unmarried African women without fear of criminal penalty. European men could have sex with African women of any marital status without being charged with adultery, despite the pressure fiom Anican men to include European men in the law. While colonial officials were intent upon bolsterîng Afncan patriarchal authority they were not willing to impinge on the rights of European males (Schmidt 1992). Punishments for adultery were severe and women received the brunt of the law's punishments since their actions were considered a threat to property rights because a man had paid lobola and thus 'owned' his wife. This law provided little protection for Afncan women, rnarried or single. Patriarchal leaders drew on their control over authoritative resowces to extend their control over women. At the same time, laws were enacted that opened spaces for women's emancipation fiom

traditional authority- Some jurisdictions, including Southem Rhodesia Mplemented

legislation that granted women the opportunity to petition for divorce. Many women took

advantage of this and other opportunities to change their situation

As restrictive as their choices may have been, women took advantage of openings created by legislation promulgated during the &st three decades of colonial de.Native commissioners fkquently commented on Afiican women's awareness of their newfound nghts and t6eir tendency to act upon them." (Schmidt 1992:1 1)

Women's actions were not only confined to the reproduction of the structures and

practices that underpinned their oppression but also took action with the understanding

that they had the capacity to brïng about social change. According to Boaoli (1991)

African women responded to the process of modemization with some degree of power

and began to espouse an ideology "that .. . seeks to co&ont and conîrol the modem

world, and use it to their own advantage(Bono1i 1991 :55)."

As a result of these structural changes, women were able to assume social, economic and

political roles that challenged paîriarchal ideologies, structures and social relations. While

some women made changes in their lives that did not directly challenge patriarchy, others

.. . fought back, often successully. Like workers, they fought to improve the conditions under which they labored both as producers and reproducers. And Like class struggles, gender stniggles were mediated by political , economic and ideological factors. Poor women fought different battles, and for different rewards, than middîe class wornen- (Parpart 1988: 133)

Young Afncan women began to migrate to urban areas in greater numOen and their

productive and reproductive roles shified to other women within the household. As a

resdt it was not only husbands and fathen who suffered a loss of this labour, but also older women and senior wives who had to absorb the labour that these young women had provided Many women who were lefi in this situation resented this migration and joined

their husbands and fathers in voicing objections to the urbanization of young women.

African men objectai to loss of th& daughters fÏom rural areas where they were so crucial to agricultural production and lineage reproduction,. .. Similady oldm women opposeà the departure ofyounger women and girls whc bore the brunt of household and agricdtural production. (Schmidt 1992: 157)

Elder women often had control over the labour of younger women, and the loss of their

labour rneant that the women left behind had to assume extra productive activities. But, more irnportantly, these women Iost the status that was afforded to them by their place in the hierarchies of traditional society.

While some men only saw advantage in the continued subordination of women, others began to recognize the transfomative capacity of women's action. Union leaders associated certain issues with women and to assign particular roles and identities to them.

The roles and identities were constructed for and by the women themselves. According to

Beinart these roles could be descnbed as: "Women as wives; Women as workers;

Women as brewers; and Women as landladies" (Beinart 1997:302-303).

In 1930, the Independent Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (IICU) appealed to wornen as wives of striking memben. The IICU encouraged women to provide domestic support to stnking families and to encourage their men to join. Union leaders grew to recognize women's forcefid participation as workers, primarily domestic worken who joined the generd strike and refùsed to work. At first, women were not involved in the berworkings of the movement nor were their demands included in the platfoxm of the EU.Buf the withdrawal of women's labour as domestic and other workers convinced

the union leadership to take on issues of importance to women (Beinart 1987).

However, in the history of South Afnca, not all wornen took up the cause of social movements. Women's response to social movements was as diverse as their response tu migration.

The women's responses to the new social movements were varieci and cornplex. Many remained apolitical, or even antipoïitica&tfieir resiiience and defiauce continuing on a personal level. Others went dong with pofitical and social action but later claimed that their hearts had not rdybeen in it, or that they had becorne disillusioned by defeat; a thud and tiny category was entirely captivated by the political and social ideology of the movements. (Bozzoli 1991: 162)

Capitalist expansion challenged patriarchal modes of control, as opportunities emerged for women to gain access to sources of supply and distribution of regional food and other forms of trade. However, at that time women's access to class roles outside of the household, were constrained by an implicit agreement of the state, the capitalist class and patriarchal interests. Laws defined Afncan women as minors, unable to move fiom their wai locations without permission. In South Africa, the Native Administration Act of

1927 sanctioned traditional law in control over marriage, bridewealth and divorce and maintained women's legal statu as minors. Women were unable to own property, enter into contracts or have Iegal custody of their children. Patnarchal traditions achieved indirect controls over women and eliminated the need for direct state involvement.

In analyzing labour migration it is important to consider the structures that sought to control the labour and movement of women. These structures existed in different fonns and at different levels fkom the household where husbands controlled the distributive mechanisrns of wealth and determined women's reproductive role to the state where

legislation imposed restriction on women's fieedom of movement. To understand

women's responses to this control one must discover the currents of social continuity and

delve into the tides of social transformation. A refiexive understanding of their own

capacity, limitations and strengths guided women's response to the sources of allocative

and authoritative power that sought to control their lives. Women's agency reproduced

the structures and practices of theîr own subordination, but women's agency also

transformed thern,

5.1 Hamessing the Power of Women's Labour

Women's labour, both productive and reproductive, was an essential component of labour migration in southern Africa. The role of women, particularly women's role in reproducing the household, is of concem to many feminist scholars who recognize the significance of gendered social relations. "The social relations of reproduction clearly must have a cornplex, dialectical relation to the matenal facts of who does or does not do reproductive labour, and who does or does not reap its rewards (Stichter and Parpart

1988: 1 l)."

Feminist researchers began to examine the social relations of production and reproduction in order to more fully describe women7sexperiences. These social relations took place within the social constructions of gender that defined women's role within the household, the broader communityyand the nation. Gendered rules and practices defined women's location within the social hierarchy that either limited or expanded their opportunity. Not al1 of these desand practices revolved around women's productive or reproductive role. However,

[glender hierafchies cannot be reduced to parbcular relations of production and reproduction. But they cannot be analyzed independently of them. .. . [Tlo discover the elementary forni, as it were, of îhe seddivision of labour [one] must - .. discover the ~fomiationswhich have taken place through inçorpor;ition into social formations in which the capitalist mode is dominant. (Mmay 198 1: 169-70)

Capitalism, and in particular the labour migration system, required a transformation of the social formations that structured the practices of household reproduction. However, this transformation did not require a full-scaie abandonment of pamiarchal ideology. In the context of souîhern Africa, gender was already an ideological, as weil as a social constnict (Stichter and Parpart 1988; Bozzoii 199 1; Folbre 1988). Patriarchal ideology and social notions of masculinity and femininity were reconstituted with the institutionalization of labour migration and capitalist production. Labour migration was a system organized around a particular form of household reproduction that required the transformation of masculine and ferninine reproductive roles to accommodate the new productive role of men. The change in reproductive roles was necessary since "'the construction of the social rneaning of masculinity and femininity at the level of ideology

(gender) would depend on the social organization of reproduction and production

(Stichter and Parpart 1988:l l)."

Women filled the reproductive roie that men had abandoned as a result of the reorganization of production and reproduction that resulted from labour migration. Many women assumed a management role in household reproduction, transforming the notions of women's traditionally non-management role. Throughout South Afrca's history the notions of male and fernale changed. InteMews with elder and younger migrants in the late 1980s revealed that young men had different notions from elder miners (Moodie Ndatsahe 1994). To elder miners, gender incorporated moral characteristics that were attrïbuted to male and female identities. These concepts of gender undenvent transformation as a result of demigration and women were ascribed the male attributes of competent and benevolent management of the um=i (homestead). In contrast, young men of the day viewed gender as a biological factor that defined male and female reproductive roles. These young men scoffed at the notion of women as managers.

While it is indisputable that capital exerted a major force in the reconstitution of social practices and structures, it is also important to consider other influentid forces. In the early days of labour migration women's reproductive role was not only transformed by the absence of delabour in household production but also by technologies purchased with the wages produced by male migration. Many men used their mine earnings to invest in technologies that would expand household reproduction with the aim of producing a surplus. The introduction of this technology increased the scope of male production and displaced women's role in household reproduction.

The animal drawn plough altered the basic semal di\+sion of labour within Nguni societies: the use of the anhals was the male preserve, hence ox-drawn ploughs ensufed that men would becorne more active in tillage. The widespread use of the plough meant that the economic bais of polygamy - the need of the head of a large household to have more than one (food-producing) wife - was greatly cümiuished (Bundy 1979: 95)

Technoiogy, therefore, transformed not only the role of women in househoid production but also the social structures of marriage. Other factors such as drought and disease impacted on women's reproductive role. The

Rinderpest epidemic of the 1890s (Hames 199 1, Vail 1991) decimated the cattle herds of southern Afiica, resulting in increased cornpetition for both cattle and female labour. In these circums~ances,there was a greater probability and urgency for migrants to accumulate cattle for bridewealth and to replace their destroyed herds (Beinart 1982).

Women's labour was again required to replace the loss of draught power and the management of the homestead in their husband's absence. Both the reproductive role of women and the structures that reproduced this role were yet again altered by forces that were out of women's control-

The appropriation of women's labour, both productive and reproductive, existed prior to capitalist development. In many African societies, social institutions such as maniage and bridewealth structured the social relations between men and women and estabiished the right of men to control women's labour power through its transfer fiom father to husband. The control over women's labour was as key to many traditional societies as it has ken to the development of capitalism. (Gordon 1996; Wright 1995)

According to Wright (1995) it was crucial for the chiefs and elders to retain a source of marriageable young women in the rural areas in order to guarantee the retum of young migrant labourers. Traditionai leaders benefited fiom their control over bridewealth.

While traditional leaders controlled bridewealt. the nature of thk structure and process changed with the coming of labour migration. These leaders played a role changing the structures and processes of bridewealth by privileging economic over cultural interests, and exacted iarger contributions for the bride's family and for themselves as negotiators of the agreement -y couples resisted chiefly control over determining bridewealth relations, and by 1949 most urban couples sanctimed their marriages and divorces through the courts. This preference was due in part to the need for court-issued certificates of marriage to legally remain in urban areas (Parpart 1988). Without these certificates women were repatriated to mal areas. What becomes clear fiom the example of Northern Rhodesia is that

women often succeeded in defending their intatseven in hostile circumstânces. They discovered ways to use new paîriarchal institutions and laws to gain their new ends. The contest to control fernale sexuality was not purely one-sided- Women leamed how to use their sexuality to bargain with men both in the courts and in daily life. (Parpart 1988:134)

In Southem Rhodesia a parallel process occurred as traditional and colonial interests converged to both remove old structures and constraints and add new dimensions to the subordination of women. As in Northern Rhodesia, bridewealth (lobolo) became increasingly commoditized as cash became involved in the transaction. The traditional processes of bndewealth occurred over many years and required a negotiation of gifts in the form of goods and çattle. Traditional authorities transformed lobolo transactions, in which young men substituted cash eamed through migrant labour to meet the requirements of lobola. Although the transformation of ZoboZo customs was not complete, it contributed to women's loss of status within the community (Folbre 1988).

Bndewealth was an entitlement that gave men control over their wives' reproductive capacity and the children that they bore. Prosperous men had more wives and, hence, more children and total labour power. Afkicans compensated for their lack of land by employing extrernely intensive labour processes, using household rather than hired labour. Many of these men had modest success as commercial fmers (Schmidt 1993) and slowly began to accunidate wealth. With increased income fkom fanning and migration it is not surprising that the cattle and cash components of bndewealth payments were rapidly inflating. "In 1904, four to five head of cattle were still being demanded as loboZa[bridewealth], but the cash component had nsen to an average of one pound.. . in the late 1920s and 1930s an average of eight to nine head of cattle and fifieen to nineteen pounds were paid for Zobola (Schmidt 1992:36)."

Mpondo household heads benefited nom a migrant labour system that provided a cattle advance to migrant workers. Eamings accrued to the household head rather than the migrant, making it difficult to abandon their home at the end of a contract. The competition for control over young males' labour through varied patriarchal social relations arnong their fathers, chiefs and employers was "predicated on the continued ability.. . to control the productive and reproductive capacity of women" (Walker

1990: 179). Fathers tramferred their conml over their &ughten7 labour to their son-in- laws through brideweatth.

The further dismantling of women's status came with the loss of politically and socially prestigious roles as healers, midwives and diviners. Customary ritual activities, such as beer-brewing gave women social prestige. Colonial authorities and rnissionary settiers took an unfavourabie view of these activities and many traditional ritual ceremonies were forbidden. Despite these repercussions, women continued these forbidden practices underground Diviners, many of whom were women, were proclairned as messengers of the devil by missionaries, nonetheless, their activitieç were concealed by the local population who continued seekùlg their advice. Spirit mediums and healers con~ued despite threats of deportation (Schmidt 1992).

According to Schmidt, women in Southem Rhodesia suffered a loss of political and ritual roles with the coming of Christianity. Christianiîy promoted a set of beliefs based on

Western notions that were adopted by converts to the new fa& Colonial and religious authorities clashed over African authorifl and prohibited mission stations from providing sanctuaxy to women who had nui away fiom forcd ar polygynous mariages. However, like the coIonial authonties, missionaries feared that women who were fiee fiom patriarchal controls and authority would abandon their moral as well as social responsibilities. Therefore missions sought to transfer control over women fiom Afiican authorities to Christian models of self-imposed control based on assumption of Christian values and mords (Marks 1989). Many traditional views of women's role were transformed as "new mission dites .. . rejected the long - accepted methods of indigenous fernale healers and midwives (Schmidt 1992: W)."

Women's role of brewing ritual beer also lost its cultural significance and often became a source of income for women. The illegal brewing of beer for profit was looked on with disfavour by both colonial and îraditional societies and many attempts were made throughout the region to disnipt this activity. In Southern Rhodesia the British South

Afkica Company enacted laws outlawing the brewing of traditional beer. These laws interfered with an important source of income for Afncan women and their households,

143 and threatened one of women's major ritual roles, that of brewing beer to honor the

ancestors (Schmidt lgW87). However, women continued to produce the ihitbeer and

developed strategies including "subterfbge in avoiding arrest as a result of beer brewing

our liquor selling" (Bozzoli 1991 ).

Bonner traced the migration of Basotho women to the Rand in South Afnca in the first

few decades of this century to uncover their role as both desireables and undesirables in

the functioning of the labour migration system. Capitalists found themselves in a

situation where they required women to provide services to workers, including the brewing of traditional beer. The continued exodus of Basotho women as illegai entrants into the Afiican locations around the mines was largely ignored by the authorities, as was their illegal brewing of beer. However, traditional leaders campaigned against the loss of women's labour, along with certain capital interests who sought to make profit through the sale of alcohol. Women who brewed beer for profit were often fiont and centre in clashes with local authorities that sought to impose a municipal rnonopoly on the brewing of beer. The incorne fiom beer brewing was largely derived hmmigrant workers and was often a vital source of household income. According to Bonner: "These women were, al1 too often, not brewing beer to sustain a settled family life but were, rather refugees from marriages that had cracked under the strain of rural pauperisation and the migrant labour system (Bonner 1990:227)."

By the 1920s, there was a phenomenal growth of female migration to the Rand with

Basoîho women being in the forefiont of this trend. These women kcarne the scapegoats for the social malaise that accompanied the illegal brewing of beer such as dninkeness, debauchery and disease.

The temporaqr liaisons that miners formed on the Rand with these women was viewed as subversive by the state, capital and traditionai auihonties, since they led to what they termed as 'deûibalization' and permanent settlement. Basotho women were believed to be the major actors in these fleeting relationships thai created unstable social relations in the urban areas and, in their absence, a spectre of women's independence in the rurai areas.

Municipal authorities soughî to end women's role in the iiiegal brewing of beer. niese authorities deployed the police in preventing women £kom this illegal activity. Police action to disrupt this activity resulted in armed clashes between police and the supporters of women brewers. Municipal beer boycotts also supprted Basotho women Authorities claimed that Basotho women were the instigators of these nots and became the targets of a campaign to forcefblly repatriate women to their homeland. Despite this campaign the number of Basotho women migrants increased throughout the 1940s and 1950s and towns on the Rand "were swamped by this tide of wornen immigrants and soon felt themselves sinkùig in a vast lake of illicitly brewed beer" (Bonner 1990:234).

Not until the early sixties would measures be taken to curb the migration of Basotho women to the region known as the Rand, as previous attempts to regulate these rnovements were Ml of lepl loopholes and lacked comprehensive enforcement. This lack of govemment control over women's migration fiom Basutoland to South Afnca weakened paîriarchal relations and created new social relations that both led to women's increased independence and dso left men with no choice but to adopt extreme rneasures to regulate women's movements (Wilkinson 1987).

Patriarchal control by husbands extended over female reproduction, and it is estimated that throughout the 1960s family size in Rhodesia remained high because of the importance of children's contribution to household production. In 1969, only 5.6 percent of women were involved in wage labour, with the majority restricted to subsistence agricdtural production. It is estimated that children contributed 25 percent of îhe labour required to meet the household's subsistence needs (Folbre 1988).

While the structures of the economy and racism tied women to the land, so did the attitudes of Afncan men, particulariy migrant workers who required women's productive and reproductive labour. Many men opposed birth control rneasures because they supposedly contributed to women's unfaithfùlness. Women who refused sex with their husbands were often beaten. Women were left with large families to support, few resources and their children missed out on the opportunity for education due to productive responsibilities (Folbre 1988).

In examining household survival strategies, Elson identifies male migration as a source of household disintegration and women's deteriorating position. Elson daims that the growth of female-headed households as a result of migration has not always led to their emancipation. Despite increased household income, as a result of male migration, women are often lefi without sacient resources to sustain their households. The control that men have over allocation of these resources creates exireme hardship for rnany women.

"Migration, in a growing number of cases, appears to be a polite word for desertion. It is a male suMval strategy rather than a female survival strategy (1992:4 l)."

Migrating husbands abandoned many women or failed to distribute the income generated by their migration. Women who have been lefi behind by male migration ofien existed in exheme hardship with increased desfor management and reproduction of the household. Feminist scholars researched the situation of women who were left behind by male migration and concluded that women, both married and single, were cleariy disadvantaged in their reproductive and productive role.

In their capacity as marrieci women lefi behind by absent husbands, an extant conjugal relationship specifies a combination of heavy domestic responsibility with a varïabie degree of economic insecurity. Since effective household management depends above al1 on the reliabiiity of cash remittances, it is not surprishg that women's experience ranges fiom relative security to bitter fnistraîïon acute personal stress and emotional desolation. In their capacity as single women, the failure of a conjugd relationship exposes them directly to the vicissitudes of a labour market heavily loaded agâinst them; and exposes their children to the vicissitudes of rearing by more or less distant kin; to the high ri& of malnutrition; and to a vicious circle of socid deprivation. (Murray 198 1 :156)

These conditions were often the final impetus in women's decision to migrate. For many women, migration became the ody viable alternative for themselves and their households, despite the unknown hardships involved in making a new life somewhere else. The decline in male mine migration in the 1970s resulted in a corresponding increase in fernaie rural to urban migration. Cock (1988) estimates that

[t]he increase in employment was especiaily dramatic between 1973 and 1982 when there was a 5 1.7 percent increase in the number of black women ernpioyed. ... But these women are mainly Iocated in the service and agicultural sectors in the least skilied, lowest paid and most insecure jobs. (Cock 1988:207)

Thus, changes in the patterns of male migration had a major impact on women's reproductive and productive labour as women left behind to provide for the reproduction of their household or as workers who entered productive labour for an incorne to support their household.

In order to maintain patriarchal wntrol over women's labour, men formed an alliance both fomally in laws and informally in household practices. Men's control over both authoritative and allocative resources extended their power to transform women's productive and reproductive roles. The extent to which these resources were deployed varied with the historical context in which economic, social and cultural forces combined to produce and reproduce the structures and systerns that subordinated women. in order to control the productive and reproductive role of women it was necessary to control their ability to migrate. This project was one of central significance to the state, capital, traditional authorities and husbands.

5.2 Stemming the Tide of Women's Migration

Before the inclusion of wornen under the pass laws, the labour migration of women existed outside the formal institutional constraints of male labour migration. Male migration took place within an institutional framework that legislated time, place and processes for migration through a regime of pass iaws and work contracts. In the early days of labour migration, men exchanged tribute labour for mine migration and followed traditional desand noms that respected the authority of chiefs and headrnen. Many of these rules and noms were transfonned into new forms, as a resuit of labour migration, and were respected by male migrants (Moodie and Ndatshe 1994). However, many men rejected laws, contracts and traditiona1 authority and became active in their unions, civil society or alternatively were chronically unemployed or part of the criminal underclass.

A different set of structures and practices shaped women's migration. Explicitly patriarchal ideologies operated in the household, the structures ofgovemance and the economy in order to maintain a hierarchy of gender that disadvantaged women. Many women reproduced these structures and practices in a tacit understanding of their limited oppominities for migration. However, other women migrated despite the disadvantages.

Wornen migrated in the face of ostracism from their kin and communities. Administrative solutions curtailed their movements tbrough the progressive implementation of pass laws and punishments that included their forced removal fkom urban areas and heavy fines.

According to Gordon (1996) the partnarchal ideologies of both the colonial state and traditional leaders were the pnmary factors which acted to discriminate against femaie migration in southem ficaAfncan men opposed refoms that granted more independence to women since they claimed this led to improper fernale behaviour and loss of male power and privilege. Fernale migration became a contested issue among national, international and agricultiiral capital in South Afnca with the growth of

secondary industry and increased commercial agricultural production. Women were the

losers in a battle between agricultural and indusirial interests. Pass laws were introduced, in 2955, to bring an end to women's fieedom of movement fkom the wal areas.

Traditional and colonial ders fomed an alliance, albeit with different objectives, to prevent female migration and confine women to the rural areas. A variety of practices fkom outxight prohibition to restriction of female mobility demonstrate that women's labour migration was deliberately controiled. Despite this, many women challenged this control through urban and illegal migration, and were often encouraged by the state and capital whose confiicting interests also required female labour to provide seMces for

Afncan miners such as cooking, laundry, beer-making and sexual se~ces.Women also migrated to take up informal activities such as petty traduig and srnaIl-scale commercial farrning. These activities provided women with increased independence, both econornically and socially, and allowed for a loosening of kinsmen's contd over their lives.

Women, fkeed from unhappy marriages or left behind by migrating spouses, began to migrate to urban areas as conditions worsened in rural areas due to decreased access to productive land, drought, disease and commodity pricing structures that favoured white agricuiture. Since few options for waged work were available, women entered into informal activities such as gardening, beer making, and selling food and senices. These activites seldom generated smcient revenue to support a household and many women in the Cooperbelt region of Northem Rhodesia pursued "mine mamages" for the extra financial support (Parpart 1988).

Women in Southem Rhodesia worked within the new rules imposed by the colonial powen to challenge traditional constraints on divorce and migration within the court system. The Native Maniages Ordinance Act of 19 17 provided women with an opportunity to use the court system to evade forced rnarriages and sue for child custody and divorce fiom polygamous husbands. The British South Afkica Company sought to abolish traditions that mistreated women and provided women with the legal right to pursue divorce. Soon after, a flood of divorce requests fiom unhappy wives swamped the courts of district oficials. Divorce rates soared as traditional leaders looked on in dismay

(Schmidt 1992).

Later, this same Ordinance that fieed women fiom oppressive gender relations within customary law was invoked to give cause for the removal of women who were not living with their legal spouses in wban areas. The opposing logics of the rnissionq, the indigenous leaders and the state converged in lobbying for this Act. However it had unintended consequences for gender relations, giving and taking away women's power to control their lives. The changing desbrought about by colonialism resulted in changes to women's stahis and opportunities. However, colonial leaders also wanted to keep women in rural areas. In Southem Rhodesia

[t]he colonial adminisiration preferred women to remain in villages, where they were expected to continue subsistence agriculhiral production for maintenance of themselves and their chiidren. This was seen to aid the goveniment's general poiicy of "Industrializationwithout urbanization... .Later, women were ailowed to iive in colonial towns, but only as wives of workers. Single women fomd living illegaiiy in Afkicao compounds were repatriaîed to their villages. (Munachonga 1988:181)

Colonial and traditional authorhies viewed this type of behaviour with disfavour. In 1929,

Northem Rhodesia established the Native Authorities in part to restore and expand

chiefly powers to bring women under control. These views presumed that women were

responsible for urban immorality, which led to crime and social disorder (Schmidt 1992).

With this extended control chiefs increased their control over the movement of women,

Northem Rhodesia irnposed a number of legal restrictions on women's mobility that

culminated in the Natives Registration Act of 193 8. This Act required al1 unmarrïed

women and non-permanent residenîs travelling to an urban area to obtain a pass fiom a

local authority. Afncan females were considered as minors and were denied rnobility without male consent (Schmidt 1992).

Two decades afier the British South Africa Company proclaimed the 1916 Natives

Adultery Punishrnent ûrdinance, women in Southem Rhodesia continued to nui away to the fms,towns, mines and mission stations. These mission stations provided women with the opportunity to get a Western education and ofien instilled Western Christian values that challenged traditional practices such as bridewealth and polygyny. However, traditional authorities viewed this with disfavour and campaigned to prohiiit women fiom entering mission stations without permission fiom îheir kinsmen.

The relatively fiespaces provided by the missions became an early source of tension between missionaries and colonial officiais. Mission stations were prohibited fiom providing sanctuary for women who did not have her guardians permission to be ttiere. This prohibition later became a melaw that was challengeci by missionaries ttiroughout the colonial period. (Schmidt 1992: 117) In South Afnca pass laws were intrsduced as a way to control the movement of the

Afncan population In times of economic expansion, including the rapid industnalization

that immediately followed both World Wars, increased productive labour was required,

includiag women's Iabour. During these times pass laws were often relaxed to

accommodate production needs. BozzoIi found that during the 1920s and 1930s

townships were remembered by women she inte~ewedas places where they could Iead

modest and ordered lives. Women migrated to urban areas to work as domestics pnor to

marriage in order to bring furnitme and other household goods into the mamage. It

became an activity that increased the status of a woman and became a normative activity

(Bozzoli 1991).

Initially pas laws were not extended to women, however, with the increased influx of

Africans fiom the reserves, came a concern for how this process would take place.

Merthe election of the Nationalist Party in 1948 a vision was developed to retum reproduction to the rural areas. The implementation of this vision required women's retm to îheir assumption of household reproduction.

As it turned out, the "grand apartheid" vision of a fidly migrant male and fernale workforce, with all reproducîion king undertaken in the rural areas, was never Myimplemented. Many of those urban black families, .. . which had obtained a place in the city in the earlier decades, fought long and bitter struggle to ensure that they remained in town; whde state and municipal auîhorities came into conflict over how far-reaching the removal attempts should be. (Bozzoli 1991:169)

In 1955, the South Afncan State extended pass laws to include women. Women protested this extension and on August 9, 1956 over 20,000 gathered in Pretoria to express their discontent. These protests were part of the mass struggles in the early 1950s that led to actions such as the formation of the Federation of South African Women VSAW) in 153 1954, and the adoption of the Women's Charter. These most turbulent times focused on a

FSAW campaign to protest the issuing of passes to Afncan women and mobilized

thousands of women into a force that was met with increasing repression. After the

Sharpeville massacre in 1960 the state took action against several FSAW leaders

including imprisonment, exile or house arrest. These women acted as individuais, who

sought to change their physical and social space, and as collectivities, which shared a

common vision to eliminate traditional and legislative laws that restricted their mobility,

engendered responses fiom husbands, traditional leaders, and the state through their

varied apparatuses of control.

Women chose domestic service as a result of legislation that restncted the movement of

women, particularly unskilled women into the urban workforce. This

iegislation imposes an embargo on the entry of unskilled Afiica. women into white urban areas, and bhds domestic servants to their present employers. Losing employment couid weU mean forced removal to the teenring nird slums of the homelands. (Cock 1988:206)

As a result, employers exerted tremendous power over îheir domestic servants, keeping

wages low and working conditions poor. Many women chose to live in îhis environment

as the threat of repatriation to the rural areas meant a worsening of women's economic

situation.

Domestic labour was among the most poorly paid, intensely supervised and isolating

forms of work. African women in need of a cash income for raising their families usually

chose to work independently in the informal sector, brewing and selling beer or hawking grain and vegetables. The flexibility of these activities accommodated their childcare and housekeeping responsibiliîies and were generally more lucrative than domestic senice

(Schmidt 1992; Bozzoli 199 1)-

In addition, the state implemented muresto eliminate illegal migrants fiom urban areas. Illegal migration increased with hi& levels of unemployment and many women risked repatriaiion to work as domestic servants. Employers tumed a blind eye to the illegal activities of migrant women in order to retain their workforce. The state concluded that the only way to enforce already existing laws was to punish employers who hired women that illegally migrated from the Bmtustans as domestic workers.

In 1979 the state also launched a campaign to rid the urban areas of iilegd migrants by Mposing R500 fkes on heir employers, with the redtthat many domestic workers were laid off at a time when uxiemployment was nsing. (Loxley 1987:214)

Rather than face fines, many employers dismissed their domestic servants, who were eventually repatriated to the Bantustans. Despite these circumstances, women continued to de@ pass laws and illegally migmted to urban areas. As a result, the state adopted increasingly repressive legislation and enforcement mechanisms.

Increasingly, the social environme~tof the urban townships became more violent and unstable. Unemployment and crime were on the increase and people feared gangsters who crept out at night and infIicted suffering on innocent people. Women began to feel that they had no control over the things that began to happen to them, rather than the women acting as the central agents in "making things happen" themselves (Bozzoli

1991). In providing a critique of the over-simplistic assumptions that characterise the cheap

labour thesis Folbre concludes that

capitdist logic alone does not explain the native reserve system in Zimbabwe, which probably conûibuted to labour shortages and increased labour costs until at least the 1940s. Patriarchal logic was also at work, Restrictions on women's participation in the modem sector, favoured by mmy Mcan men, purchased a form of political stability that was particularly costly to women. Men were able to leave the reserves to work for wages without sacrificing their control over production uiere. (Folbre 1988:7O)

Other factors contributed to increased female migration and included the loss of

remittances fiom mine earnings, high levels of male unernpioyrnent at home. hwlevels

of agriculturaf production and income resulted from hi& costs of inputs and reduced

prices for agricultural commodities (Findley 1997). Findley observed that economic

reasons were a primary consideration in African women's decisions to migrate. Migrating

women share characteristics with their male counterparts such as youth, better education

and involvernent with formal economic activities after migration. However, Findley

highlights some distinguishing features of female migration, which include: the fostering

of daughters as domestic helpers; the permanent migration of women who hold no

customary rights to land ownership; lower levels of education on average than their male

counterparts; lower paid, lower skilled employment dermigration; inclinations towards

informal sector employment due to the flexibility it offers for childcare responsibilities;

participation in female urban support networks such as savings clubs; and supportive

retationships with neighbours and friends,

In exploring recent gender-based migratory trends in Swaziland, Harris (1993) concluded that the recent shift in women's labour participation fkom cas& labour in the agriculhual sector to permanent employment in the expanding textile and manufacturing sector led to 156 a disintegration of household structures and a transformation of gender relations.

Factories provided younger, beîîer-educated women with migration oppounities, which

are mavailable to women who worked as plantation fieid workers or homeworkers, for

the mobile and flexible textile industry. The shift to permanent, rather than seasonal

employment, led to more permanent urban migration of women who were single and

tended to have greater aspirations for their children. Hams found that there were fewer

numbers of women manying with each generation and that women often married at a

later age.

Lesotho, a major labour suppIy country to the mines of South Afnca, has been described

as the ''land of gold widows" (Wilkinson 1987:226). Women assurned the sole role for

social reproduction and subsistence agriculture in a social structure that maintained their

subordination. Despite this subordination, over the decades women established a pattern of managing the homestead that parallels the emergence of mine migrancy in Lesotho.

However, evidence shows that this management role has been difficult for rnany women.

Many women became widows as a result of occupational hazards at the mines or received

iittle or no remittances from their absent husbands. Some women experienced outnght abandonment.

Women's international migration has been constrained in the past by laws thaî restricted their entxy into South Afiica, a nation that geographically surrounds Lesotho, Women7smigration to urban areas within Lesotho has been constrained by prevailing male attitudes which have opposed femde ur5an migration. Many held the believe that fdemigration leads to a comption of values and femaie virtue that led to an evenîuai erosion of cultural noms and marital instability (Murray 1991). Wilkinson observed that women experienced positive factors in their decisions to migrate. The creation of female support networks in rural and hanareas were ofien a response to a transient male population. This support gave women the option of staying on the homestead or moving to seek employment. Women in Lesotho took advantage of educational opportunities and becarne generally better educated that men. From an early age, boys assumed the traditional task of herding wfiich limited their accessibility to school. Young men undertook these tasks while waiting to become mine migrants once they attained a certain level of matmit..

Like their counterparts in Swaziland, rnigrating Basotho women were generally younger and better educated and valued the independence that an urban lifestyle provides. These migrating women were also more committed to permanent migration to urban areas within Lesotho because they could find a small degree of fieedom and independence, uniike life in the mlareas. Despite their increasing mobility and higher educational levels women occupied the lowest paid fonnal occupations in the clericai and domestic sectors, which suggests that structural and normative obstacles continued to constrain women's economic opportunities (Wilkinson 1987).

Walker argues that the restructuring of gender relations and the control of women in pre- colonial society by the colonial state played a key role in shaping labour migration.

Further, she concludes that the migrant labour system impacted on the role and status of women. This impact was exîremely complex and involved both increased opportunities for personal independence and mobility, while at the same time undermined the security provided to women in pre-colonial societies.

Waiker and others criticise the fknctionalist approach of the Wolpe-Legassick thesis for privileging capital as the motor of labour migration and call for increased attentiveness to the role of African societies in the shaping of the labour migration system. Interna1 pressures for male migration began before the discovery of rninerals in the region and included factors such as drougk civil war, technological innovation and bridewealth.

Control of young men, who were released hmhomestead production to pursue wage labour, was rooted in the processes and relationships intemai to the labour-exporting society and was central to the ongin of labour migration. Young men were often required to fill the void created by the migration of a sister or sister-in-law.

53Summary Waker notes the sexuai division of labour did not permit a socially sanctioned entry of women into the labour migration system. In the nrst part of this century, women's central role in homestead production limited their opportunities for migration. Women's move to town was more likely to be permanent, as women had less to lose hmthe rural homestead that provided them with increased burdens of production. During this tirne the lack of controls over women's movements provided women with an opportunity to escape the oppression of traditional gender relations and worsening economic situation in the dareas. Many women broke their ties with rural families, making it difficult to return. The

migration of women was okna challenge to norms and relations of power within

traditional society and contrasted to male migration that confonned overall to patriarchal

controls (Waker 1990). However, this deche In traditional paîriarchai control did not

automatically benefit wornen, since there were no corresponding opportunities for

women in the new economic order. Women were thus transferred fiom one system of

subordination to another in the transformation of pre-colonid societies.

Kabeer refers to the importance of gender dysisin understanding the role of

institutions. "Both within and across uistitwiïons gender operates as a pervasive

allocational principle, linking production with reproduction, domestic with public domain

and the macro-economy with the micro-level institutions (Kabeer IWS:6l-62)."

The institutions that guided the labour migration system in southern Africa combined

control over both authoritative and allocative resources. This institutional control enabled and Iimited the econornic and social activities that were open to women. The depth of this institutional control intensified as a result of women's agency in challenging this control.

However, the intensification of this control was met with increased resistance fiom many women who continued to assume activities that threatened the structures and systerns of patriarchal domination-

Cuiîurally defined niles, norms and practices were embedded in the daily lives of women-

Many acted to preserve traditions that limited women's options in recursive routinization of practices that reconstituted aspects of traditional social structures. However, women also resisted the traditional controls over their labour and defied legislative constraints over their movement, This resistance led to the transformation of social relaiions within the household and without An analysis of women in the labour migration process reveals a process that shaped and reshaped the actions and responses at the micro and macro levels of society. Gender relations were also transformed as new des, noms, values and practices emerged fiom the labour migration process.

The study of gender and labour migration in southem Afkica provides a vast, relatively undiscovered tenain fiom which to explore the tributaries of human action that corne together in the ebbs and flows of labour movement. The actions and responses of wornen and men to the changing social structures in the development of labour migration led to a continuous restnictuhg of gender relations at the household and societal levels. For some women, unable to escape fkom the mire of sedirnented roles, it meant increased gender subordination, pauperization and loss of status while, for others, it meant a degree of fieedom fiom traditional roies and uicreased options for economic survival. Although women in southem Afnca coursed against the tides that sought to control their labour and mobility, the toxic detritus of racial, patriarchai, and econornic subordination hampered their resistance. Women in southern Af5ica made life choices based on their implicit knowledge of the structures and systems that created their subordination, and on their own capacity to respond to the challenges that this subordination imposed. And like women everywhere, they will continue to çtniggle, negotiate and compromise in their everyday lives. Chapter 6 Conclusion

Throughout the history of southern Afnca, multiple contexts shaped and reshaped the

social relations and structures of labour migration. Class, race, ethnicity and gender

rnediated the social relations and structures witbin changing political, economic and

social context The creation, maintenance and -formation of these multiple contexts required the wihgand unwilling participation of î#he people who pursued labour migration in Soirth Afiica.

According to Moodie and Ndatshe (1994) formal sources of power have the capacity for the unequal allocation of rights and resources amomg differently socialized actors "who rnake the best (or worst) of their positions and siturations by strategic maneuvers" within historically particular social structures (Moodie and Ndatshe 1994: 274). The overlapping structures and rules of racialism, ethnicity and patrLarchy in southern Afnca defined the uneven, unequal and shifting terrain in which labour migration took place. Agents experienced the multiple structures of labour migrattïoq which were inforrnally and fomally sanctioned and ofien existed outside their scope of power.

Structural constraints existed as ùistitutionalized maral obligations as well as legal obligations. Patriarchal ideology assumed that indiwiduals have moral obligations to honour their patemal kin by obseMng practices thzt recognized traditional sources of authority. These moral obligations had greater impact on some people than others. While many Anicans abandoned traditional forms of patrirarchal control, pennanently moving to the cities and tomof South Afn'ca, such as the MBengu and the wornen of Baphokeng, others, including the Mpondo, prefmed a lifestyle that combined homestead production with migrant labour. Many migrants saved to purchase a homestead on which they could live out theîr old age in dignity and respect. For many Afncans ties to the land remained and influenced their migration decisions.

Agency implies an array of alternative foms of action that depend on the different layers of socid structure that are

more or less hidden fiom everyday consciousness, more or less powerfiil in guiding human thought and action, and more or less durable in th& resistant to change- All of this means that structures are more or less open to intentional and unintentional human tinkering. In fact, one might argue that it is the very flexibility of some levels of social structure that contributes to the resilience of other levek (Hays 1994:62)

Hays argues that agency occurs on a continuum fiom stmchiral reproduction to structural transformation and is determined by the depth and durability of the structural foms within which the agency occurs- These structural foms would not exist without the willing or unwilling participation of social actors whose choices are enabled or constrained by struchirally defined limits or alternatives. Structures are the medium and outcorne of human agency and, while they preciude certain choices, they often provide limited alternatives. In following these alternatives some agents are able to transfonn the structures that provided these alternatives. Agency and structure are thus at once antagonistic and mutually dependent. The structures of labour migration in South Afnca depended on the limited opportunities that were open to African workers. From the capitalist perspective they depended on an underpaid workforce that could be expanded or contracted in response to economic conditions. From the workers' perspective they depended on these limited opportunities in order to meet their cash needs for taxes, rents and other costs of household reproduction. However, this dependency on a flexible and

low-paid workforce led to capital's failure to rnechanize production in certain economic sectors such as mining and agriculture. As a result other nations increased their advantage over South Afkica, particularly in their low-cost production of gold. Afncan workers took advantage of every new opportunïty that resulted fiom the restnichinng of the labour market and organized to expand their opportunities through strike actions, boycotts and other fonns of civil unrest.

Race, ethnicity and gender are concepts that intluenced the construction of social, political and economic structures in South Africa In understanding the continuum of social action it is critical to locate the agent within the muitiple and layered structures that emerge fkom these concepts. The conceptuakation of race was a primary ideological dimension of apartheid. Although the labour migration system took advantage of racial segregation fiom the early days of its implementation, apartheid synthesized society into two races, "white" and the "other". Despite the fact that apartheid sanctioned the creation of numerous exclusively Afrikaner institutions and organizations, white was considered as a whole, whereas other was characterized with a multitude of ethnic identities. These characterizations were arbitrary and satisfied apartheid's transitory interests, including the classification of Japanese as "honourary whites" in the 1960s to encourage Japanese investment in South Africa's economy (Study Commission on U.S. Policy Toward

Southem AfnM 198 1). Apartheid developed mechanisms of extreme repression and

çontrol that provided few opportunities for Afncans to challenge the system without severe penalties, including death and life irnprisonrnent However, the racialist and ethnocentric logic of apartheid created an environment of terror and tyranny that led to

the collapse of the state and its structures of subjugation.

Structuration theory provides the usefül concept of routinization or, as Hays (1994)

describes it, structural reproduction. This concept provides an explanation for an analysis

of social reproduction across time and space. In southern mca, capitalist production

requked the willing and unwilling participation of labourers in forms of social

organization and relations that at first were unfarniliar, but became routinized in a century

or more of labour migration Homestead production required the routinization of labour

that followed the agricultural cycle, and ofien migration oscillated within the cycles of

ploughng and harvesting. Those Africans who had access to fertile lands enjoyed the benefits of homestead production.

Women's role in household reproduction has not significantIy changed since the introduction of the labour migratton system. However, women's role in productive labour is as diverse as the opportunities provided by increased education, scope of employment possibilities and acceptance of modem noms and values. These diverse oppohties enabled many women to escape fiom the routinized desof homestead production.

Hierarchies of class, race and gender were reconsîituted through persistent forms of social inequality that resulted fkorn social action. The deeper structures of social life largely determined the choices available to agents, and often, limited adjusîments of the labour migration system to a superficial level. Despite the fact that some of these changes took place at a superficial level they resulted from intentional acts that occurred within a

context of recursive understanding of the structures that constrained their lives. The

incremental application of increasingly restrictive South Afncan laws that controlled the

movement of people and structured their social and economic lives resulted in the potential that brought change at the deeper level.

On the other end of the spectnim, transfomative agency cm be understood as possible at particular moments in history when deeper social structures enable a tide of collective action. This collective agency alters the form of these social structures. In descnbing collective agency it is useful to examine the reconstitution of traditional cultural forms and the relationship between groups of people. In doing so it is necessary to describe previous cultural foms and relationships.

New cuitural forms are nor arbitmy; they are sociaily structurd by both existiog culturai foxms and by the existuig relations between groups. And new ideas do not arise spontaneousiy in the mi& of their individual carriers; they are shaped by the social groups to which those individuals belong and by the systems of meaning in which those individuals are immersed. (Hays 1994: 69)

History reveals that the relationship between Boer settlers, British colonialists and

Afncan kingdoms reinforced a sense of exclusion or belonging and the ideological constitution and reconstitution of patriarchal, racialist and class relations. However, these relations were not homogenous, as multiple patterns of human responses to labour migration emerged and were guided by historical circurnstance, previous alliances and divisions, and one's location within the depth of structural constraints imposed by the state, capital and ideology. The labour migration system in southern mcamaintained elements of racial, ethnic, class and gender conflict. However, this system also enabled racial, ethnic, gender and class solidarity. Capitdists, who were often divided dong ethnic lines, competed over

Afirican labour. The demands for labour of British imperial capital in their control over the rnining sector were often in conflict with A£iikaner capital's requirements in the agriculturai sector. Many aercapitalists believed that the economic policies favoured British imperial interests and abandoned their support of politicians who they viewed as conciliatory This conflict gaivanized AfScaner interests and set in motion plans to improve their place in the market. By 1948 they achieved the political power it would take to implement their plans to control labour migration.

International capital has been involved in the South Afncan economy since before it became a nation. The interests of international capital and financial institutions shifted over time, in some instances acting with the South African state to ensure maximum profits. Later, international capital created a situation that put the apartheid state at the centre of a global controversy when economic sanctions against South Africa were imposed These sanctions contributed to the demise of the apartheid state.

Reserves, hantownships and Bantustans were physical boundaries that sowtto confine people by their race and ethnicity. Race and ethnicity were concepts endowed with meanings that were manufactured by cultural brokers who conjured up images of fallen heroes and the glorious past to inspire loyalty and ethnic cohesion. In the course of its history the South African state conspired with traditional leaders to facilitate control over the labour migration system- In exchange for land, kings, chiefs and headmen

controlIed the movement of African people. mcan people were assigned an ethnic

identity that determined where they would live and who wodd have autharity over them.

However, many Afncans rejected this identity and chose to pursue other options that were provided by illegal migration and participation in the informal ewnomy.

Mine compounds provided boundaries that promoted ethnic competition and conflict.

Miners lived in ethnically segregated domitories and often worked in ethnically defined work teams. This ethnic segregation was a tactic on the part of rnining capital, which hoped to deflect class dissatisfaction. These conflicts were ideologically inspired and often disguised behind a veil of ethnicity. Organizations such as the Inkatha Freedom

Party tùelled these conflicts through their control over labour recruitrnent in Kwazulu and their maintenance of ethnic rivalries on the mine sites. However, class solidarity ultimately displaced ethnic animosities when the National Union of Miners was forrned in the wake of South A£Îica7s liberalization of labour legislation

Women came into conflict with traditional leaders when they became permanent urban migrants who earned their livelihood through illegal brewing of alcohol, adultery and prostitution. In response, traditional authonties collaborated with the state to repatriate these women to their reserves. Women also inspired the support of brothers in the trade union movement who recognized the contribution that working women could make to the struggle for labour rights. As a result, many of women's dernands became included in unions' programs of action. Many women depended on the labour migration system througb remitîances and

household production Not di women chose to navigate the dangerous voyage of

migration and many wiliingIy and uflwillingly opted to stay in the rural areas. Some

women were repatnated as a result of increasingly restrictive legislation including pass

and anti-adultery laws. Others, such as the women of Baphokeng, decided to remto

their homelands as a result of the escalation of violence in the urban townships of South Afnca

Capital, gender and ethnicity were three forces that shaped labour migration in southem

Mca. The future of labour migration in the region must consider these forces in order to

address the many negative consequences of labour migration. Some of these

consequences wiil be difficult to overcome including the high rates of unemployment,

widespread poverty and animosity between groups of people. The role of gender analysis

will also be essentid to guarantee the gains that women have made.

6.1 Resolving the Legacies of Labour Migration

The future of labour of labour migration in southern Afnca rernains unclear. The aftermath of the last four decades has left the coutries in the region in a wake of economic, social and political turmoil. Four decades of political violence and terror, destruction of the physical landscape, high unemployment, increasing violent crime and lack of housing and idhstmcture have eroded the sociaI landsape and left miilions in a state of physical, economic and emotional trauma. Healing the scars on this landscape will not be an easy process. South Afiica must play a pivotal role in this process. Its relationship to most of the countries in the region has been long and kught with conflict and cooperation. Several major outstanding issues surround the future of labour migration in the region. These issues uiclude land tenure, housing, labour practices related to recruitment of foreign workers and the newly ernerging free trade zones, job creation, the brain drain and illegal migration. However, there are dso factors outside of the conml of the people and governments in the region. Severe drought and flooding have plagued the region in recent years. The legacy of the wars fought in the region include the millions of refugees who settled in neighboirring cotmtries or became displaced in the urban areas of their own countries as intemal refugees. In this conte* it is very dificuit to imagine a solution for the region's nations who owe massive debts to intemational financial institutions and manage their economies through imposed stnictural adjutment policies.

if South Africa adopts a policy of intemal sourcing of labour it can create extreme difnculties for neighbouring corntries such as Mozambique and Lesotho. Even with the reduced number of foreign workers, these nations rely on the employment South fica provides for their citizens. Both of these nations have high unemployrnent rates, thus, the end to labour migration to South Africa would create merhardship. If South AfEca chooses to crack down on illegai migration it would have similar implications for the neighbouring States.

Land tenure is a serious issue in the region as recent events in Zimbabwe have shown.

Policies on land tenure must be crafted with input nom dl sectors of society. The complex social relations that revolve around land allocation make these policies extremely rise for any govemment who must straddle the narrow bridge between the multiple interests that seek access to land.

As well, the availability of land in Mozambique has been exacerbated by the proliferation of land mincis. The land mines issue should be a concem for al1 of Mozambique's neighbours. These countries provide refuge to the millions of Mozambicans who fled the war and are no Longer able to retum for fear of land mines. Clearing away the land mines has been extremely slow, and flooding has made this process even more difficult-

Housing, including the assessrnent of the hosteliing systern will need to be addressed by many countries in the region. The lack of adequate permanent housing left many living in substandard conditions in both urban and rural areas. In rural areas, millions of people were resettled into overcrowded situations, resulting in environmental impacts such as deforestation and the degradation of wa~erquality. Currently much of the work being done around the issue of housing is corning fiom pssroots organizations and trade unions.

Job creation is another vital concem for the region. Strategies for job creation will be extremely challenging for southern Afnca The primary resource-based economies of southem Africa required labour intensive methods of production, particularly in mining and agriculture. While the rest of the world expanded productive capacity by introducing new technologies, South Afnca maintained their labour intensive approach. South Afica and other countries may have to imprmve their technological capacity, however, the

Merexpansion of new technologies in southern Africa may only increase the number of unemptoyed. Privatization is also anthe rise in the region, and this reduces the amount of control the state has over job creatibon. Again in the face of structural adjustment, govemments are down-sizing rather dixan expanding the social sector. The role of the state, then, must be to increase pressure on the private sector for job creation. Small local projects have been supported by development agencies and offer opportunities for self- employment or cooperative development. However successfui these projects might be, at this point they are unable to address the overwhelming need for jobs.

The current context within which labaur migration occurs creates opportunities for the countnes in the region to share strateees in order to address the issues identified here.

Making this situation even more difficult are international capital and the international financial institutions, who have placedl conditions on how these countries manage their national affairs. In addition, powerful lobby groups including the Chamber of Mines want continued control over issues related tao the recruitment of foreign workers rather than transfer this authority to the South McanState. It is too soon to say what will transpire in southem Afnca However, labour rmigration will continue to transform as the opportunities and constraints on humam action shift with the tides of social change. Bibliography

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Methodological Issues and Opportunities for Further Research

Methodological Issues

The methodology 1employed was a voyage of discovery that began with an ùverview of

labour migration in southern Afnca. The course of my research deepened my

understanding and helped to shape rny conclusions. Bibliographies and references in

books and articles led me to other sources of information. Eventually 1discovered an

article by Caroline Wright entitled "Gender Awareness in Migration Theory:

Synthesinng Actor and Structure in Southem Afnca." This article charîed the course of

my journey in an exploration of the role of gender, race and efhnicity in the labour migration process in southem mca.

The work of Anthony Giddens provided an analysis that enabled the exploration of alternative structural hierarchies that cm influence social action. In a previous paper I had appiied structuration theory to the concept of refusal as a form of social agency. The readings of Giddens for this paper provided a familiarity with the concepts that 1 was able to employ in this thesis.

In developing my theoretical perspective 1 was challenged with unfàmiliar concepts that aise out of economic and anthropological studies. Much of the theoretical writings contained jargon and conceptualizations that, in many instances, were not always easy to comprehend. Critiques of these works often conveyed a more cornprehensible understanding of these conceptuaIizations. These critiques provided a basis for understanding the opposing traditions of neoclassical and stnicturalist theory.

Much of the evidence I used in support of the stnicturation approach comes fiom research that was guided by stnictudist theories. This makes my conclusions somewhat limited.

Ahhough there is a vast scholarship of work on labour migration in southem Africa, there were scant few references to Gidden7stheories on structuration. Therefore, 1 applied this theoreticai co~stnictonto research that did not necessarily advocate a structuration approach. However, I thigk that this also was the source of interest for my pursuit of this theoretical approach The research of many structuralist theories provided a challenge for the application of a structuration approach. Valid arguments are put forward fkom a structural perspective and ihese arguments are often backed up by considerable research.

Another major drawback of the research involved the use of secondary sources of information. Much of the information included in this thesis comes fiom secondary and tehary sources, acquired ~oughinterlibrary Loans. Since there was no way to verify some of this information 1 codd only rely on those sources that could be cross- referenced.

One of the major difficulties I encountered was the conf'using sources of information that provided different dates, percentages, spelling of names, names of organizations and acts of government, and general errors in describing people and places in the history of South

Afnca. Although these errors did not create theoretical problems they did provide a sense of confusion and additional tirne in tryïng to identify which of any source might be correct.

This thesis presents a number of shapshots into the hisîory of labour migration and does not claim to be an exhaustive analysis of the research on labour migration. These snapshots provide evidence that support an argument for a structuration approach to the study of labour migraiion in southem Afiica Charting a theoretical course with structuration theory provided a unique opportunity to venture into unexplored terrain.

Although the joumey to plot this course was often challenging, the work and the knowledge 1 gained was my reward.

Opportunities for Further Research

Many of the issues raised in the introduction regarding the methodology of îhis thesis have implications for fûture resûuch The inconsistency of the research I encountered raised questions that codd only be answered by reviewing source documents. Rather than relying on second or third-hand documentation it would be usefûl to examine original reference documents.

It would also be usefùl to prepare a bibliography of reference materials that would specifically deal with applications of structuration theory to labour migration.

Bibliographies codd also be prepared on the role of race and ethnicity in South Afican migration and the role of gender and migration in South Africa. The charactençtics of culturally def5ned social structures and relations could be explored within the context in which they operated in South Afnca This exploration could enrail one or more case studies that compare the role of culture in different contexts in order to discover the significance of cultural merences to labour migration and the specific cultural constnrcts that enabled or constrained social responses.

The resilience of particular social forms withui the context of labour migration is a topic that could be addressed with future research. Why have customs such as bndewealth and customary inheritance laws survived? Racialist ideology has existed for centunes despite its inherent lack of social justice and tolerance. These are issues that need Mer discussion since explanations based on theories of class conflict ofien dismiss opportunities to explore alternative models of human action.

Another research project could involve developing an accurate description of the laws that shaped labour migration fiom the first period of indusaialization that followed the mineral discoveries to the dismantling of the apartheid laws in the 1990s. This could be produced as a reference guide for further research on the legislative constraints that simultaneously restricted and encouraged the flow of labour. One factor in this project would be the availability of archival copies of the legislative acts. Review of the original documents is key to veriQ certain aspects of the documents, including their officiai names, dates of their signing and content. While much information is provided about the expansion of European and Afiican senlement, not much attention is paid to the diaspora of people who were displaced by this expansion. The resettlement of people as a result of the Mfecane, the creation of the

Boer Republics and the Anglo-Boer War explains much about the spectnmi of opportunilies that were available to AfEcan people.

Labour migration in southern Afi-ica is source for ethnogaphic work on peoples' motivations to migrate- Case studies could explore the hows and whys of peoples' migration choices. These midies could compare descriptions of peoples ' migration intentions and actions from different regions in what is now South Afica. Patterns might emerge fiom the evidence and provide condusions regarding how the context of migration impacts on migration decisions.

Perhaps the major implication of this exploration into labour migration in South Afnca is that people's actions are complex and require a deeper level of analysis than is possible with structural or neoclassical applications. Structuration theory provides an alternative approach that pemits the analysis of social forms from the Ievel of state intervention to the actions of individu& within a household. Structuration theory also enables broader conceptuaIizations of issues such as race, class, gender and ethnicity that are limited by the simplistic analysis of neoclassical theory and the functionalist application of stmcturaiia theories. By expanding the scope and depth of analysis, structuration theory creates a space for enhancing our knowledge and examination of labour migration in

South Africa. Appendix B

Glossary of Terms

Agency An important debate in sociological theory concerm the relationship between individuals and social structure. The debate revolves round the problem of how structures determine what individuals do, how structures are created, and the limits on human capacities to act independently of structural constraints; what are the limits, in other words, on human agency. Three positions in this debate include: (1) the argument that structures cannot be seen as detemiining and the emphasis should be placed on the way that individuals create the world around them. (2) A contrary position argues that social structures determine the characteristics and actions of individuals and collectivities, whose agency or special characteristics therefore become unimportant. (3) The third view compromises between (1) and (2),avoiding both the idea of a structure determining hdividuals and dso that individuals independently creating their world.

Capitalism The term capitalism denotes and economic system in which the greater proportion of economic life, particularly ownership of and investment in production goods, is carried on under private (i.e., non-govemmentai) auspices rhrough the process of economic cornpetition and the avowed incentive of profit Capitalism is a system in which a profit- seeking minonty owns the means of production, and where most others are wage laborers whose labor power actually generates these profits for the owners. It is disthguished hmother modes of production (see modes of production), such as slavery or feudalism.

Class Class analysis derives from the work of Karl Marx and Max Weber. Marx analyzed class in relation to the ownership of capital and the means of production. He divided the population into owners and workers, the bourgeoisie and the proletanat Class was more than just a way of descnbhg the economic position of different groups, because Marx saw classes as tangible collectivities and as real social forces with the capacity to change socieîy.

Weber divided the popdation into classes according to econornic differences that gave nse to different 1Xe-chances. Weber distinguished four classes: the propertied class: the inteuectual, administrative and managerial class; the traditional petty-bourgeois class of smdl businessmen and shopkeepers; and the working class. Class conflict was comrnon and was most likely to occur ktween groups with imrnediately opposed interests, for example between workers and managers rather than workers and capitakts.

Class Consciousness According to Mm, class-consciousness is a situation whem the protetariat becomes aware of its objective class position vis à vis the bourgeoisie and its historic role in the transformation of capitalism into socidism. The proletariat would develop from a class 'in itself', fiom a collection of workers sharing a common class position but with no collective awareness, to become a class 'for itself. Marx believed that consciousness develops out of the working class's concrete experience of the contradiction between capitalist relations of production based on individual pnvate property and the emerging collective forces of production, creating a proletariat whose power was collectively based and experienced.

Comparative Advantage Comparative advantage is a concept that holds that there is a benefit to specialization in production of goods and services. This concept is ofien broadened to describe women's comparative advantage in reproduction, disadvantaging them in the productive sphere.

Division of Labour The division of Iabur can refer to a technical division of labour and describes the productive and reproductive processes. it can also refer to a social division of labour and to sociai differentiation of different areas of social life such as family and work. The se& division of labour refers to the division of tasks between women and men and the separation of the domestic domah hmthe public sphere. Etlbnicity Ethnicity can be broadly dehed as a coliection of shared values and practices (objective and subjective/perceived and actual) which define human coilectivities in relation to other collectivïties. Ethnicity can incorporate collective identity including cultural, national, religious or other foms.

Forces of Production A Marxist concept referring to both the materials worked on and the tools and techniques employed in production of economic goods. The forces of the production inciude the machinery, materiais and human labour that, when combined, yield the production of goods and services. Together, machinery/tools and resources make up the means of production.

Forcikm was a method of organizing production in industriai society that was capital intensive, inflexible, required semiskiiled labour to perform repetitive and routine tasks, used hierarchical and bureaucratie management structures, and advocated protectionism for national markets-

Functionalism Functionalism explained social institutions in ternis of the functions they performed. Society was viewed as a system of interacting yet interdependent parts that came together to meet social needs and maintain boundmïes within the broader worId.

Gender Anthropologists, feminists and sociologists focus on cultural variations in the corstmction of gender, ideas of sexuaiity, procreation and reproduction, and the way gender roles are conditioned by society. Gender does not refer to the biological and physical clifferences between the sexes, but to socially constructed notions of femininity and masculinity. For a considerable amount of time debate raged between those advocating theories of descent as the primary feature of kinship systems and theories that favloured marriage as the more significant factor in establishing solidarity within society. Another perspective on kinship relations considered the extents to which they are premised on moral duties and obligations. Some social theorists considered how wider political ;and economic forces influence the character of the fdy.

Mode of Production This concept is of great importance in Marxist theory. Modes of prodaiction were used to describe the historicai transformation of the economy and society. In Eeudal societies the mode of production was characterized by extraction of economic surplus hma non-fiee peasantry. Capitalist production is characterked by the ownership of tlie means of production by the capitalist class. This theory has been expanded by same feminists to hclude the domestic economy and the mode of production is related tohousehold reproduction.

Modernization theory was a dominant analytical paradigm in sociology for the explanation of the global process by which traditional societies achievaed modernity. Modernization theory has been cnticized fiom two perspectives: (1) modernization is based on development in the West, and is therefore an ethnocentric madel of development; (2) modernkation does not necessarily lead to industrial growth and equal distribution of social bene&, since it is an essentidy uneven process resulting in underdevelopment and dependency. Marxist alternatives to moderniza~ontheory stress the negative aspects of modemity on traditional societies.

Patriarchy A fom of social organization in which males hold power over fernales- and children. It can also be explained as any social system where men maintain social, economic and cultural dominance of women. This dominance extends fiom the housesfiold to the whole of society. Polygynous marriage Polygynous mamages can be described as ones where a husband marries more than one de.Usually, these different types of manïages are related to human and land resources. Polygynous fdesare prevalent where humans are the most important resources in economic and political systems such that more children are able to be reproduced. Mmiage payments or gifts take the form of brideweabh payments, in valuables or estate, fiom the husband's side to the wife's.

Production Production cmbe defined as a process in which humans expend energy in transfomiing nature in order to produce goods for consumption. Production can refer to the creatisn of the means of existence fkom food, clothing and dwellings to the creation of surplus value in a capitalist society. Surplus value is created by capitalist extraction of surplus produced by the rest of society. Foms of production can include subsistence production for the producer's individual or househoid use and commodity production of goods for sale through the market

Reference Group In forming their attitudes and beliefs, and in performing their actions, people will compare or identie themselves with 0th- people, or other groups of people, whose own attitudes, beliefs, and actions are taken as appropnate measures. These groups are called reference groups. People do not achially have to be mernbers of the groups to which they refer.. Reference groups may have a comparative fuoction when they form a basis for evaluating one's own situation in life.

Relations of Production This is a concept central to Marxist social theory. Marx viewed the econorny as the main determinant of social phenornenon. In capitaiist societies, productive relations occur between capitalist and worker. Capitalists control the means of production and can dispose of the gwds and seMces produced by the worker. nie relations of production are treated as fùndamental to the constitution of society. These social relations between capitalkt and worker are viewed as antagonistic.

Relative Deprivation This concept suggests that people mainly expenence feehgs of deprivation when they compare their own situations unfavourably with those of other individuals or groups. Cornparisons can be made both with individds with whom people interact and with outsiders; what matters is which reference group the person or group chooses as the focus of cornparison.

Reproduction The reproduction of the inputs of production and human beings. The reproduction of inputs is ofien referred to as social reproduction while the reproduction of human beings is often referred to as domestic reproduction. In describing the duality of structure Giddens examines the reproduction of social action and social systems.

Role In sociological tenns, a role is a collection of socially defïned attributes and expectations associated with sociai positions.

Social Cocstruction of Reality The social construction of reality indicates a perception that social reality is actively constructed and reconstmcted by individual actors. Sociologists working fiom within this perspective argue that sociai phenomena do not simply have an objective existence, but have to be interpreted and given meanings by those who encounter them: they have to be socially constmcted.

Social Structure Social structure refers to any arrangement of social phenomena into a definite pattern. The structure of a society is the enduring and pattemed aspects, providing the context and background against which people live out their daily lives. Giddens refers to structures as the desand resources implicated in the production and reproduction of social action- For Giddens these structures were at the same thethe means for the reproduction of social systems.

Social System For Giddens a social system was a relatively persistent patternhg of social relations across time and space and reproduced by social action. Social systems in this sense are not closed as proposed by fiuictionalist theories that argue social systems have a tendency to preserve and maintain boundaries between themselves and other social systems or the natural world.

Traditional society Viewed by some as pre-industrial and predomhntly rural societies. Some view this term as problematic since it contrasts traditional and industnal societies, sees traditional societies as static?is based on modernization theory, categorizes vastly diverse peoples under one rubric adromanticizes or denigrates such societies.

Tribalism There is no undisputed or neutral definition of the tenn tribe or tribalism. In colonial tirnes, ûibe was a pejorative tenn used to describe a grouping of peopie under a chief or headman. Social relations within a tribe were based on kinship groupings. Geographical boundaries are important to the concept of tribalism, which is now used to designate a demarcated group with a common ethnic identity. Whether red or invented, txibalism is used in making statements about identity.