A Long Way Home

Jonny Steinberg, Micah Reddy, Fiona Rankin-Smith, Dinah Rajak, Laura Phillips, Noor Nieftagodien, Anitra Nettleton, Jock McCulloch, Sekibakiba Peter Lekgoathi, Deborah James, Michelle Hay, Patrick Harries, Jacob Dlamini, Peter Delius, David Coplan, Julia Charlton, William Beinart

Description

Indexed in Clarivate Analytics Book Citation Index (Web of Science Core Collection)
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Highlighting Migrant Humanity - Peter Delius and Laura Phillips

Chapter 1: Ngezinyawo — Migrant Journeys - Fiona Rankin-Smith

Chapter 2: Slavery, Indenture and Migrant Labour: Maritime Immigration from Mozambique to the Cape, c.1780–1880 - Patrick Harries

Chapter 3: Walking 2 000 Kilometres to Work and Back: The Wandering Bassuto - Carl Richter and Peter Delius

Chapter 4: A Century of Migrancy from Mpondoland - William Beinart

Chapter 5: The Migrant Kings of Zululand - Benedict Carton

Chapter 6: The Art of Those Left Behind: Women, Beadwork and Bodies - Anitra Nettleton

Chapter 7: The Illusion of Safety: Migrant Labour and Occupational Disease on South Africa’s Gold Mines - Jock McCulloch

Chapter 8: ‘The Chinese Experiment’: Images from the Expansion of South Africa’s ‘Labour Empire’ - Fiona Rankin-Smith, Peter Delius and Laura Phillips

Chapter 9: ‘Stray Boys’: The Kruger National Park and Migrant Labour - Jacob Dlamini

Chapter 10: Surviving Drought: Migrancy and the Homestead Economy - Michelle Hay

Chapter 11: Migrants from Zebediela and Shifting Identities on the Rand 1930s–1970s - Sekibakiba Peter Lekgoathi

Chapter 12: Verwoerd’s Oxen: Performing Labour Migrancy in Southern Africa - David B Coplan

Chapter 13: ‘Give My Regards to Everyone at Home Including Those I No Longer Remember’: The Journey of Tito Zungu’s Envelopes - Julia Charlton

Chapter 14: Sophie and the City: Womanhood, Labour and Migrancy - Laura Phillips

Chapter 15: Bungityala - Jonny Steinberg

Chapter 16: Migrants: Vanguard of the Workers’ Struggles? - Noor Nieftagodien

Chapter 17: Debt or Savings? Of Migrants, Mines and Money - Deborah James and Dinah Rajak

Chapter 18: Post-Apartheid Migrancy and the Life of a Pondo Mineworker - Micah Reddy

Sujets

• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• África
• General officer
• History of Africa
• General
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781868149940
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 12 Mo

Extrait

A LONG WAY HOME
A LONG WAY HOME
Migrant Worker Worlds 1800–2014
Edited by Peter Delius, Laura Phillips and Fiona Rankin-Smith
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg, 2001
www.witspress.co.za
Published edition © Wits University Press 2014
Compilation © Edition editors 2014
Chapter © Individual contributors 2014
Text editors Peter Delius and Laura Phillips 2014
Image editor Fiona Rankin-Smith 2014
First published 2014
ISBN: 978-1-86814-767-0 (print)
ISBN: 978-1-86814-768-7 (digital)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
All images remain the property of the copyright holders. The publishers gratefully acknowledge the publishers, institutions and individuals referenced in captions for the use of images. Every effort has been made to locate the original copyright holders of the images reproduced here; please contact Wits University Press at the address above in the case of any omissions or errors.
Cover artwork © Tito Zungu, decorated envelope, pen on paper, date unrecorded, 8.9 × 15 cm, Standard Bank African Art Collection (Wits Art Museum)
Copy edited by Alison Lockhart
Proofread by Inga Norenius and Julie Miller
Indexed by Clifford Perusset
Cover design by Emmaneel Vorster
Book design and layout by Oliver Barstow
Printed and bound by Paarl Media, Paarl
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Highlighting Migrant Humanity
Peter Delius and Laura Phillips
Chapter 1
Ngezinyawo — Migrant Journeys
Fiona Rankin-Smith
Chapter 2
Slavery, Indenture and Migrant Labour: Maritime Immigration from Mozambique to the Cape, c .1780–1880
Patrick Harries
Chapter 3
Walking 2 000 Kilometres to Work and Back: The Wandering Bassuto by Carl Richter
Peter Delius
Chapter 4
A Century of Migrancy from Mpondoland
William Beinart
Chapter 5
The Migrant Kings of Zululand
Benedict Carton
Chapter 6
The Art of Those Left Behind: Women, Beadwork and Bodies
Anitra Nettleton
Chapter 7
The Illusion of Safety: Migrant Labour and Occupational Disease on South Africa’s Gold Mines
Jock McCulloch
Chapter 8
‘The Chinese Experiment’: Images from the Expansion of South Africa’s ‘Labour Empire’
Fiona Rankin-Smith, Peter Delius and Laura Phillips
Chapter 9
‘Stray Boys’: The Kruger National Park and Migrant Labour
Jacob Dlamini
Chapter 10
Surviving Drought: Migrancy and the Homestead Economy
Michelle Hay
Chapter 11
Migrants from Zebediela and Shifting Identities on the Rand, 1930s–1970s
Sekibakiba Peter Lekgoathi
Chapter 12
Verwoerd’s Oxen: Performing Labour Migrancy in Southern Africa
David B Coplan
Chapter 13
‘Give My Regards to Everyone at Home Including Those I No Longer Remember’: The Journey of Tito Zungu’s Envelopes
Julia Charlton
Chapter 14
Sophie and the City: Womanhood, Labour and Migrancy
Laura Phillips
Chapter 15
Bungityala
Jonny Steinberg
Chapter 16
Migrants: Vanguard of the Workers’ Struggles?
Noor Nieftagodien
Chapter 17
Debt or Savings? Of Migrants, Mines and Money
Deborah James and Dinah Rajak
Chapter 18
Post-Apartheid Migrancy and the Life of a Pondo Mineworker
Micah Reddy
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures and Tables
Index
Acknowledgements
This book and its accompanying exhibition were made possible only with the help and support of a large group of people. In particular, we would like to extend thanks to those who commented on drafts and gave advice on the manuscript, including Harriet Perlman, William Beinart, Deborah James, Luli Callinicos and Saul Dubow.
We would also like to thank the Wits Art Museum (WAM) gallery staff and Gail Behrmann, Isabella Kentridge and Sarah Delius for their help in collecting and compiling images for use in the book. Thanks too to Oliver Barstow of Fourthwall Books for his layout expertise.
We are most grateful for the sponsorship from Hollard, Standard Bank and Lauren Gore, whose contributions helped make this publication possible.
INTRODUCTION
Highlighting Migrant Humanity
Peter Delius and Laura Phillips
In the twentieth century, South Africa became internationally infamous for a pervasive system of racial discrimination. Less widely acknowledged is how fundamental migrant labour was to the making of modern South African society. Nowhere else in the world have urbanisation and industrialisation been as comprehensively based on migrant labour as in South Africa. Migrancy and institutionalised racism fed off each other and shaped the lives and deaths of millions of people. And, as the tragic events at Marikana have underscored, it is a system that haunts South Africa’s present as well as its past.
The main aim of this book is to portray migrant experience, agency and humanity in thought, action and expression – dimensions that are often neglected in overviews of the migrant labour system. It can be read on its own, but it was conceived during the planning of an art exhibition on migrant life entitled ‘ Ngezinyawo — Migrant Journeys’, which opened at the Wits Arts Museum in April 2014. It is our hope that this book, together with the images, artefacts and soundtracks in the exhibition, will provide an enriched perspective on the history of migrant labour.
Migrants have often been presented as victims tossed to and fro on currents entirely out of their control. In this view, they have no agency and certainly no part in shaping the development and the form of the system. While there is no doubting the asymmetries of power in the making of an economy based on migrant labour, there is a considerable body of research from recent decades that has qualified this account, showing how migrant struggles and choices helped to shape the system. What has also emerged much more clearly is how migrants found ways to assert and express their humanity. They crafted rich forms of art, dress, dance, music and song. They created a myriad of social forms – from burial societies to mine marriages – to sustain them in desolate and often dangerous environments. They conjured forms of masculinity that enabled them to conceive of their lives as the heroic struggles of warriors in a peculiar form of purgatory. As the twentieth century progressed and growing numbers of women travelled to town, their presence created new economic and social practices and added vivid strands to the tapestry of city life.
A view from above
A focus on migrant experience and agency needs to be located in a wider understanding of the migrant labour system. At the outset, it is worth recalling that migrant labour in southern Africa, despite its highly coercive character, was not a uniquely or even supremely harsh form of labour mobilisation:
Many labour systems around the world were more draconian, coercive and brutal than South Africa’s. Plantation slavery in the New World and Soviet forced labour in the Siberian gold mines made the harsh conditions in the South African mines pale by comparison. But most of these systems never aspired to be voluntary labour systems operating under the norms of modern industrial capitalism. 1
Neither was southern Africa unusual in the importance of migrant labour in the early phases of industrialisation. But it differed from many other societies in that it increased in importance over time, and was entrenched through an insidious system of pass controls and removals from urban areas. 2
There are few commentators today who would dispute that migrant labour has been a deeply destructive part of our history. Many accounts of the system’s evolution emphasise the extent to which it was created and shaped by capital and the state. These explanations focus on the last decades of the nineteenth century, as an increasingly pervasive participation in migrant labour was entrenched by colonial conquest, the loss of vast swathes of land, the imposition of taxes, draconian pass laws and centralised recruiting. By the early twentieth century, the system provided cheap labour on a large scale to the mines, factories and some farms. In the ensuing decades, workers’ wages stagnated, while rural economic resources, which had helped to prop up their families, were placed under mounting strain. Some of the more fertile rural areas were able to sustain significant levels of food production, but in most regions, very limited returns from farming and an expanding need for cash ensured that men (and increasingly women) had no option but to find employment on the mines and farms and in the cities.

Table 0.1 Contract labour migration to South African mines Year Angola Botswana Lesotho Malawi Mozambique Swaziland Tanzania Zambia Zimbabwe Other Total 1920 0 2 112 10 439 354 77 921 3 449 0 12 179 5 484 99 950 1925 0 2 547 14 256 136 73 210 3 999 0 4 68 14 94 234 1930 0 3 151 22 306 0 77 828 4 345 183 0 44 5 107 862 1935 0 7 505 34 788 49 62 576 6 865 109 570 27 9 112 498 1940 698 14 427 52 044 8 037 74 693 7 152 0 2 725 8 112 70 167 958 1945 8 711 10 102 36 414 4 973 78 588 5 688 1 461 27 8 301 4 732 15 8967 1950 9 767 12 390 34 467 7 831 86 246 6 619 5 495 3 102 2 073 4 826 17 2816 1955 8 801 14 195 36 332 12 407 99 449 6 682 8 758 3 849 162 2 299 192 934 1960 12 364 21 404 48 842 21 934 101 733 6 623 14 025 5 292 747 844 233 808 1965 11 169 23 630 54 819 38 580 89 191 5 580 404 0 653 2 686 232 610 1970 4 125 20 461 63 988 78 492 93 203 6 269 0 0 3 972 267 513 1975 3 431 20 291 78 114 27 904 97 216 8 391 0 0 2 485 12 237 844
Source: J Crush, V Williams and S Peberdy, ‘Migration in Southern Africa’. A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis and Research Programme of the Global Commission on International Migration, September 2005, p. 3
Workers, far from their homes and families,