PART II: UNEQUAL, TRANSITIONAL CONTEXT
4. Introduction: Rendering trans-generational and lifespan inequality visible
4.4 Colonial period: unequal constructed identities
110 which she confronts historiography on the Khoekhoe written from a mainly white, male perspective.
I now move to the colonial period to trace key antecedents and consequences of the discriminatory, ‘divide and conquer’ attitude and behaviour that sheds light on
contemporary inequality (uninterrupted structural violence) and crime/social harm (direct violence). I bear in mind Fanon’s sober admonition: ‘to those who take it on themselves to describe colonialism … it is utopian to try to ascertain in what ways one kind of inhuman behaviour differs from another kind of inhuman behaviour’ (Fanon, 1967:86).
111 Khoikhoi in the service of farmers declined’ (p.51). As opposed to the Khoikhoi or the San, African farmers largely resisted aggressive raids for labour (Crais, 2011: 41).
4.4.1 Inequality and murder
Adhikari (2010:79-89) draws attention to the process by which the San were marginalised and later murdered en masse when the Dutch East India Company (DEIC) government in 1777 ‘radicalised its stance by endorsing the root-and-branch killing practices of
commandos’ using an ‘extirpation order’. In explaining the colonial experience of the San he uses the words ‘the Cape San was relegated to little more than a footnote to the grand narrative of conflict with Nguni- and Sotho-Twsana-speaking peoples’; ‘in the establishment of white dominion… hostilities with the San often appear as a sideshow to Dutch interaction with the Khoikhoi’; and ‘the distinct experience of hunter-gatherer societies is glossed over, with the term ‘Khoisan’ being used mainly to refer to the Khoikhoi’ (p.79).
With regard to the San and their identity, for example, Adhikari also argues that:
The effacement of San identities formed a significant part of the genocidal process [...] in the latter decades of the eighteenth century, the already ambiguous distinctions between Khoikhoi and San, and between forager and herder, had become even more blurred in the eyes of frontier society as increasing numbers of San were taken up as labourers, as Khoikhoi joined up with San resisters. (Adhikari, 2010:51).
Adhikari states that even if the extirpation order had not been issued in1777, government complicity in killing San people is still evidenced by the fact that they supported
commandos (p.51).
4.4.2 Racial Inequality
According to Feinstein (2005:1), it was ‘after control of the colony passed to the British that the process of movement into the interior gained momentum’. He contends that there was a:
‘[F]undamental division between these two groups of people – the original black majority and the new white minority with massive and enduring implications for those who would come to own the land, water and other resources, and those who would supply the manual labour’.
112 By referring to all indigenous people as ‘black’ Feinstein remains silent about the
Khoekhoe and San and their self-identity. This could indicate a historical erasure or simply the use of binaries to indicate local and settler communities. Whatever his intention, which appears to be politically correct, and in line with Biko’s black consciousness stance; the fact is, some people want to be known by their own chosen identity and do not want to be rendered invisible by a politically correct term. In an introduction to the anniversary edition of Freire’s (2000:20) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Macedo suggests that it is often ignored that language is sometimes used to ‘make social inequality invisible’.
4.4.3 Inequality through destruction of political economy
According to Wilson the British applied a policy that caused them to systematically push the Xhosa back east. He states that this led to the destruction of the Xhosa’s political- economy (Wilson 2007, web reference 11). Wilson states that during the late 1800s, the colony took initial steps towards political equality for some, by granting the franchise based on economic qualifications which excluded most African and coloured people. No reference is made here to San or Khoekhoe people and what happened to their political- economy. As Feinstein avers:
[T]he situation was totally transformed by the discovery of diamonds and gold in the late nineteenth century. From that point forward the economic history of South Africa becomes a story of how this unique combination of the indigenous people, European settlers and mineral resources were
brought together in a process of conquest, dispossession, discrimination and development to promote rapid economic progress. (Feinstein, 2005:3).
4.4.4 Inequality in death
Even in death, the theme of inequality was evident. This is exemplified by the 1899-1902 South African war between the Boers and the British where approximately 14 000
African and coloured men, women and children, and approximately 22 000 Afrikaner, women and children died under appalling conditions in separate civilian concentration camps (web reference 12). Yet, when this war is referred to, the unequal treatment and deaths of African and coloured people in camps are seldom mentioned – only the deaths of white women and children (cf. Jansen, 2009:67). In some books black African people are referred to, and coloured groups are completely erased. The numbers of those who
113 died differ in every book. These examples of routine erasure or marginalisation according to an unstable hierarchy, point to the normalised inter-relationship of cultural-structural- direct violence (Galtung, 1996:2) and counter-violence (Gil, 2006:509) in South African society.
4.4.5 Inequality enforced by law
According to Gelb (2003) the boer settler republics were defeated in 1902. He suggests that the ‘peace settlement inscribed racial discrimination in the foundations of the new South African state’. This state was ‘constituted in 1910 from the British colonies of the Cape and Natal and the Boer republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State’ (p.18). The Cape was the only province with non-racial franchise when the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910. Black people were excluded from parliamentary membership (web reference 13). As Gelb (2003) states, ’inequality in relation to land, labour and capital, the factors of production’, began to manifest. The 1913 Land Act reserved initially 8%
which was increased to approximately 13% land for black people. This served as the basis for the Bantustan system (p.19). Other repressive measures such as the ’Masters and Servants Act, the Native Poll Tax, and reservation of skilled work for whites’ were entrenched, amongst other laws and policies (web reference 14). Inequality was now formally enacted in the laws of this society which combined race and class into mutually reinforcing constructs that favoured whiteness. Further repressive laws followed in later years.
4.4.6 Resistance to inequality
In 1912 after several trips to London to plead the case of black people came to nothing, the ANC was formed. Workers began to resist the racial and class inequality. During 1918 and again in 1920, approximately one million black workers went on strike for higher wages. Workers started to organise themselves in trade unions. Increased repression caused resistance to strengthen. This period marks the emergence of non- violent resistance to political, social, economic and legal inequality and its myriad consequences (web reference 15).
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