Social and Economic Relations in Stellenbosch District 1870-1900
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'THE BOUQUET OF FREEDOM: SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC RELATIONS IN STELLENBOSCH DISTRICT 1870-1900' by Pam Scully submitted for the degree of Master of Arts OCT 1987 University of Cape Town The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town ABSTRACT OF MA THESIS 'The Bouquet of Freedom: Social and Economic Relations in Stellenbosch District 1870-1900' Submitted by Pam Scully The thesis explores the effects on the wine growing district of Stellenb~sch of the transformations in the political economy of the Cape Colony in the late nineteeth century. It is the first in depth study of Stellenbosch District and ·~'also contributes to other historical analyses concerned with the impact of industrialisation on rural society. Primary sources used include archival records, newspapers and the annual reports of the district branch of the Standard Bank. Labour legislation passed in the ~ftermath of slavery was most successful in tying labour to the farms when the labour market was confined to the agrarian sector. The mineral and transport revolutions of the late nineteenth century brought about the first major reformulation of social and economic relations in the Western Cape since emancipation. Between cl878 to 1896 wine farmers were hit by the general recession of the 1880s, by the excise tax on brandy, by phylloxera and by periodic labour shortages. Farmers, especially those capitalising their ;_ agricultural production, looked to the Zuid Afrikaansche Boere " Beskermings Vereeniging and later the amalgamated Afrikaner Bond to press for state aid to wine farmers. In the late nineteenth century farmers finally experienced the implications of the proletarianisation of the rural underclass. Many labourers left to work in the growing urban sector, on the Public Works or in self employment as market gardeners. Farmers in Stellenbosch, like their peers in other societies confronting the implications of industrialisation, regarded labour mobility as illegitimate. They felt threatened by outbreaks of arson and theft, but also by the labourers' new assertiveness. For a time labour relations on the farms took place in a context where labourers had a measure of leverage against the power of the farmer. By 1910 the farmers' world had been righted and this was no longer the case. CONTENTS Page TABLES AND MAP i ABBREVIATIONS ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 "EENDRAG MAAK MAGT":UNITY IS STRENGTH 11 The View from the Bill:Stellenbosch District cl865 ~ The Mineral Revolution-Stellenbosch ~and a Wider World CHAPTER 2 LANDHOLDING AND AGRICULTURE-1870-1900 35 1 ¥ Agr~cu. ture The Effects of Recession Agrarian capitalists CHAPTER 3 AGRARIAN POLITICS, AGRARIAN CONCERNS 61 cl878-1900 Farmers and Politics Transport and the Politics of Control Mobilisation of Farmers around the Excise Tax 1 Wine Merchants and Capitalising Farmers "'.:¥Unite Markets for Cheap;Wine CHAPTER 4 LABOUR RELATIONS 1870-1900 •. 84 ~- Farmers and Labourers and Competition for Labour Farmers and Labourers in a Capitalising Rural World .... Farmers, Labour and the State CHAPTER 5 lfTHE VIEW FROM THE FARM 1870-1900 123 Daily Life and Social Practice Theft: 0 1 asked with my heart not my mouth Crime and Consciousness The View from the Cottage The Election, the Bribe, and the Stolen Pigs CONCLUSION 158 BIBLIOGRAPHY 166 TABLES AND HAP Page Table 1 INVESTMENT OF A WINE FARMER IN 1885 40 Table 2 AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS IN STELLENBOSCH 44 DISTRICT 1875 Table 3 AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY AND INSTRUMENTS IN 44 STELLENBOSCH DISTRICT 1891 Table 4 AVERAGE PRICE WINE AND BRANDY 68 Table 5 POPULATION IN STELLENBOSCH DISTRICT 95 Table 6 POPULATION IN RURAL STELLENBOSCH 95 Table 7 FARM WAGES 99 Table 8 SUMMARY OF WINE AND BRANDY PRODUCTION 161 FOR THE COLONY Map STELLENBOSCH 1890 24 i ABBREVIATIONS CCP Cape Colony Publications DRC Dutch Reformed Church res Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London MLA Member of the House of Assembly MLC Member of the Legislative Council SCR Select Committee Report UCT University of Cape Town ZA Zuid Afrikaan ZABBV Zuid Afrikaansche Boere Berskermings vereeniging ii ACKNOWLEDGEHENTS Colin Bundy gave encouragement and support during the researching and writing up of the thesis and commented on many rough drafts. I hope this thesis does his supervision justice. Shula Marks very kindly sent me material on arson and also pointed me in the direction of a 'view from the farm'. Wilfred Scharf, Nigel Worden and Roger Chennel were a great help to me when I was des~erately searching for information in the early stages of research, while Patrick Harries provided incisive comments on some of the chapters. My interviews with the Starke family of Huldersvlei Central and with Koos de Waal of Happy Vale, gave me valuable information. Barbara Conradie of the Standard Bank Archives sent the Inspection Reports for the Stellenbosch branch to r1owbray so that I could consult them. I would like to thank the staff of the Howbray branch for providing such a pleasant working environment. The HSRC provided me with funding for a year as did UCT. None of the conclusions presented in this thesis are necessarily held by the HSRC, the Standard Bank, nor UCT. I am grateful to the staff of the UCT History Department for their encouragement, to Anna and Katherine for proof reading and other editing efforts, to Libby for word processing advice, to Mishl for helping me to print the thesis on the coldest night of the year and to C3 who gave me incentive to finish. This thesis is for my parents. iii INTRODUCTION In a recent article, Alan Mabin has written of the underdevelopment of the Western Cape in the late nineteenth century. [1] A similar claim could be made for the historiography of the region for that period. The capitalisation of agrarian production and relations in the Transvaal and Orange Free State has recently received attention from historians, but the cradle of capitalist agriculture in South Africa, the fields and vineyards of the South Western Cape, have so far remained largely untilled.[2] The earlier decades of nineteenth century rural history have been better served. Nigel Worden's study of the Western Cape has shown th·e importance of slavery in forming the springboard for capitalist production; and a thesis by Mary Rayner, on the wine industry and labour relations in the decades prior to emancipation, enric~e~ our understanding of the long history of stratification and accumulation within the wine districts. [3] 1. Mabin A,'The Underdevelopment of the WesternCape'[paper presented to·the Conference on the Western Cape, Roots and Realities, Centre of African Studies, UCT, July 19861 2. See Keegan T, Rural Transformations in Industrialising South Africa The Southern Highveld to 1914--[London, 1986], also Krikler J, Phd thesis in-progress;also Beinart W, Delius P and Trapido S [eds],Puttinga Plough to theGround :Accumulationand Dispossession inRural SouthAfrica, 1850 -1930 [Johannesburg, 1986] 3. Worden N, Slavery in Dutch South Africa [Cambridge, 1985] Rayner M, ..... WineandS 1 aves. The Fai 1 ure of an Export Economy and the Ending of Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa, 1806-1834' [Ph.D. thesis, Duke University, 1986] 1 For the period cl840 to 1890, recent work by Marincowitz has provided a valuable outline of a changing mid~nineteenth century political economy in the western districts.[4] However apart from a few recent honours dissertations, no work has yet been done at a local level in order to deepen our understanding of hjstorical processes in the Western Cape in the nineteenth century. [5] Local studies are neered to give us a "knowledge of the. peculiar histories and divergent internal dynamics of differing communities and an analysis sensitive to consciousness and organisation as well as economic relations".{6] This thesis is an attempt to illustrate how the consciousness of both dominant and subordinate classes in Stellenbosch district in the period 1870- 1900 was shaped not only by the heritage of slavery, but also and increasingly by the new forces of industrialisation that were generated by the discovery of minerals in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. 4. Mar incowi tz J, 'Rura 1 Product ion and Labour in the Western Cape, 1838-1888 with special reference to the Wheat Growing Districts' [Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1985]; also see Mabin A, 'The Making of Colonial Capitalism. Intensification and Expansion in the Economic Geography of the Cape Colony, South Africa 1854-1899' [Ph.D. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 19841 5. Host L, '"Die Hondjie Byt": Labour Relations in Malmesbury District cl880-cl920' [Honours dissertation, History Department, UCT, 19871; Van Ryneveld T, 'Merchants and Missions: Developments in the Caledon District, 1838-1850' [Honours dissertation, History Department, UCT, 19841; Vienings T, 'stratification and Proletarianisation: The Rural Political Economy of the Worcester District, 1875-1910' [Honours dissertation, History Department, UCT, 1986] 6. Beinart W, Delius P and Trapido s,'Introduction' in Beinart et al, Putting a Plough to the Ground, pl5 2 Ross argues that Cape agriculture was almost completely capitalist by the mid-nineteenth century. He, Worden and Rayner have certainly shown the existence of a capitalising elite within the dominant class in the Western Cape, from at least the late eighteenth century onwards.[?] With the entry of the Cape into the fold of. the British Empire in 1806, farmers in the South Western Cape became part of an increasingly hegemonic capitalist economy, based on the export of wine and later of wool, dependent on slave labqur, and late~ on a predominantly proletarianised wage labour force.