In the Shadow of Policy. Robert Ross
the major source of accumulation, albeit in different ways, for both African people and white farmers, most of whom were Afrikaners of Dutch descent.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a range of measures were taken that especially affected African agriculture, fundamentally reshaping the rural livelihoods of African people (Bundy 1988, Mayer 1980). In addition, the discovery of diamonds (1867) and gold (1880) marked the emergence of the mining sector in the country, which had a profound impact on the agricultural sector, both white and African (F. Wilson 1975). The mining and white agricultural sectors held considerable political power at the time (Legassick 1977). Together they pushed for the promulgation of legislation that would give them control over African labour (Seekings and Nattrass 2006; F. Wilson 1975). State revenue from the mines was spent on developing the commercial capacity of white capitalist farming, which had moved beyond nomadic livestock to become sedentary. The economic conditions encouraged white farmers to abandon the practice of keeping peasant squatters on their farms in favour of the development of their farms for large-scale production of crops and livestock. To facilitate further expansion of commodity, white farmers required access to and control over a permanent workforce. Legislation was enacted that denied Africans access to white-owned land by prohibiting different forms of tenancy. Various anti-squatting laws culminated in the Natives Land Act No. 27 of 1913. The 1913 act, which was followed by the Native Trust and Land Act No. 18 of 1936, identified the areas that should be set aside for black people. This was the first legislation to apply the principle of territorial segregation and separate land rights for ‘natives’ and ‘non-natives’, preventing Africans from purchasing land outside the ‘reserves’ and restricting accumulation within them. The ‘native’ areas were gradually reshaped so as to serve as labour reserves, which in turn had devastating consequences for black farming. By the late 1950s, African farming had declined substantially. A vicious cycle of overpopulation, deterioration of natural resources, migration and impoverishment increasingly manifested itself. Despite these segregation policies, some black people managed to purchase land (referred to as ‘black spots’), but they were often forced to allow others – officials, the church, missionaries – to hold the land in trust for them. These groups became subject to forced removals during the apartheid era (see Claassens and Cousins 2008; Van Leynseele forthcoming; Walker 2008).
A second set of legislation, including the Glen Grey Act (Cape Act No. 25 of 1894), was aimed at limiting the amount of land Africans could hold. The ‘one-man-one-plot’ principle and the intention to extend private tenure was of central importance and served the purpose of securing notions of individually owned property and drawing people into the monetary economy. Limiting the size of plots compelled landholders to seek additional income off-farm elsewhere so that ‘… during the coming generation a limited number will be agriculturalists, i.e., native farmers – and … the rest will have to go out and work’ (M. Wilson 1975: 65). Making the plots indivisible meant that all but the landowner’s eldest son had to find off-farm livelihoods, which they found en masse in the mines, factories, large farms and in the transport sector. Women were predominantly drawn into the commodity economy as domestic labourers. Raising taxes also served to increase the need for cash among rural Africans (Bundy 1988; Lewis 1984). A strict land-use model was implemented, hinging on land use in distinct categories of land, combined with tenure arrangements such as freehold, quitrent and communal (see chapter 14, this volume). However, the tenacity of local practices, rural opposition to tax increases and the limits of state capacity meant that tenure reform ‘fell away as a central administrative objective …, (Beinart and Bundy 1987: 141).
Before the early twentieth century, the state had actively intervened only to address land and labour questions and issues. At the turn of the nineteenth century and during the early years of the Union, Afrikaner nationalism drove land policy and was instrumental in the formation of specific agrarian institutions whose mandate and orientation were largely shaped by the political and economic needs of the then ruling elite and the state. The state was often resented by white farmers because of the interference of state officials who arrived at their farms to implement ‘corrective’ measures (such as preventing soil erosion, or stock control to prevent diseases from spreading). Nonetheless, the state implemented a series of interventions that gradually led to the situation where white farmers increasingly looked to the state to solve their problems. After the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the state started to support white-dominated, large-scale capitalist agriculture more aggressively. Mbongwa et al. (1996) point out that between 1910 and 1935, 87 acts were passed to legitimise the provision of state support to white farmers. The policies raised the price of agricultural commodities to well above market levels. The formation of the Land Bank in 1912, providing credit to capitalise white agriculture, was soon followed by a range of initiatives effectively subsidising white farming (see F. Wilson 1975: 136–153). Poor white farmers received state support to rationalise their enterprises and were provided with cheap credit. Cooperatives were formed and railway extensions, which largely bypassed black farming areas, were constructed. The state assisted the institutionalisation of an agricultural expert system by establishing a national Department of Agriculture (DOA) in 1924 and agricultural training colleges and research stations (F. Wilson 1975; Beinart 2003). This is also the period when numerous ‘white’ and ‘black’ universities (notably faculties of agriculture) and other agricultural institutions of higher learning were created, with the support of the state and corporate lobby groups.
Beinart (2003: 336) argues that the agricultural expert system became associated in rhetoric and policy with attempts to forge a unified and modern white nation from the early years of the twentieth century onwards (see also Anker 2001). Heinrich Sebastian Du Toit, a highly committed senior official in the DOA, played a key role in the construction of an agricultural (expert) discourse and practice. Du Toit travelled worldwide, and his experiences convinced him that the advances of science should be incorporated into farming. This would stimulate production and secure conditions for the proper tilling of the land in difficult and marginal environments. These advances were intended to benefit the mass of white Afrikaner landowners, rather than white farmers in general. Du Toit felt that many rural Afrikaners had been bypassed by the department’s research and publicity initiatives (Beinart 2003: 237). State support in irrigation cannot be disconnected from the poor white question. Brown (2001) situates the formation of the veterinary department, which dealt with animal diseases and breeding, and an entomology department at the turn of the twentieth century in a similar perspective.
As in Europe and the United States, expert knowledge was brought together in these institutions in order to facilitate agricultural and rural development (Brown 2001). Agricultural development, the leading role of the state, experts and expertise, Afrikaner nationalism and modernisation became intertwined. The frame of reference for most agricultural experts became the white settler farm. Black or African farming was either virtually absent from or on the margins of agricultural expert knowledge, even though some experts drew on African farming techniques (see Bundy 1988).
Land degradation in the ‘native reserves’ (for example, soil erosion, land denudation and the drying-up of springs) attracted the attention of the South African government. The 1932 Native Economic Commission called for a development programme to teach Africans how to use their land more economically and to halt resource degradation (M. Wilson 1975; Yawitch 1981). The Native Trust and Land Act No. 18 of 1936 provided the legal framework for government services to begin the reclamation and rehabilitation of the so-called native areas. The Act had two important objectives: to address the problem of overcrowding in the native areas by allocating additional land and to halt or prevent degradation on both old and new land allocations by means of land-use (betterment) planning. The South African Native Trust handled the allocation of additional land which became known as ‘trust land’. The Act ‘prevented the emergence of a stratum of rich or small capitalist farmers by rigidly insisting on a combination of communal grazing and one-man-one-plot agriculture’ (Cross and Haines 1988: 83).
The chief concern of betterment planning between 1936 and 1950 was the protection and rehabilitation of natural resources. The government introduced policies that were aimed at limiting livestock in order to arrest the perceived denudation of the rangeland. It also engaged in the construction of contour banks in an attempt to prevent soil erosion.