and removal into reserves, African household livelihoods remained largely in farming and livestock pasture. By the turn of the twentieth century migrant labour in the mines by African men was sporadic. Those who did would work for a specified contract, return to the reserves for lengthy periods before they would need to go and look for work again in the city31.
Freund (1988) makes a useful contribution to the history of proletarianisation in
‗The African Worker‘. He critiques classical Marxist analysis, arguing that it fails to acknowledge the complexities and the differences in the formation and composition factors of working class (or the worker) in Europe vis-à-vis Africa.
He asserts the differentiated proletarianisation of the African worker, as opposed to the industrial revolution in Europe. He also outlines the long history of duality of existence of Africans as workers and as rural people and how the actual reproduction of workers was in what Wolpe (1980) calls pre-capitalist modes of production. Freund (1988) outlines how men migrated from all parts of the continent to work either in mines, mostly with specific reference to Southern Africa; the migration of men from Mozambique, Lesotho, and Malawi, for work in the mines and how class relations and class conditions were varied. Another significant point from Freund is the articulation of capitalist modes of production with pre-capitalist modes of reproduction, in how workers, mostly migrants (although they were urbanised and worked in the cities), through migrant labour patterns continued to maintain their countryside existence and use value production through subsistence agriculture.
In South Africa, it was the 1913 Native Land Act and other institutional mechanisms including taxes that became the catalyst for pushing African men into work. Prior to new legislation, African migrant labour was sporadic, working on short-term contracts with high wages, as opposed to immigrant labour (also called indentured labour from India, Malaysia and China) who were working under long-term low wage contracts32. As demand for increased productivity and demand for economies of scale increased, so also did the demand for labour. The
31 Bundy (1979:110, 126), Callinicos (1987:19), Department of Economics (1950:1-7) and Hemson (1979:12)
32 Department of Economics (1950:17), Freund (1988), Hemson (1979: 12), (1996: 147-148)
latter shifted from demand for any African labour, to demand for a mass pool of cheap African labour. Historical accounts show that legislation throughout the early 20th century constituted state sponsored capitalism, in which the state - through legislation- ensured the production of cheap migrant labour, needing wages to pay taxes, yet still tied to reserves and rural extensions for household subsistence and familial connection33. This historical account is detailed both in historical accounts of industrial development and sociological analysis of the political economy of South Africa34.
These historical and sociological accounts give a detailed history of the origins of migrant labour and the relationship between industrial capitalist development, land, dispossession and racial discrimination in the early 1900s. Further work shows that migrant labour throughout the 20th century was premised on demand for cheap labour, influx and urban control of Africans, which was used to maintain an African rural-based migrant labour system. Hemson details the history of dock workers in Durban, the social reproduction of the working class and working class consciousness in Durban (Hemson, 1979, 1996). In his thesis the history of industrial development in South Africa is the history of the migrant labour system, urban control and forms of resistance with people engaged in fighting for their lives. The Department of Economics (1950: 43-94) also records that the growth of dock work and Dunlop in Durban until the 1940s represented the growth of migrant work and various forms of control capital instituted through the state (in the form of municipal authority and native authorities).
The history of migrant labour, proletarianisation and urban influx of people is inextricably linked to the history of struggle and contestation for the city by Africans. Callinicos (1987) makes an account of proletarianisation, urbanisation and resistance in the gold city. She shows the growth of migrant labour, growth of urban settlements and struggles for city space in the 20th century. The living arrangements in the Rand were racially segregated and African migrants increased due to pressures of survival with increasing deterioration of subsistence in the
33 Callinicos (1987), Bundy (1988), Hemson (1979), Bozzoli (1981)
34 Freund (1988), Legassick (1977), Wolpe (1972, 1980)
countryside and an increasing pool of cheap labour in the mines and industry. A lot of Africans also migrated in search of work and freedom from the paternalism and patriarchal order encountered in the countryside. Callinicos (1987) and Moodie (1994) write about young men who came to the Rand to discover their manhood away from the paternalistic orders of rural chiefdoms, as well as women who came to the city in search of their husbands and some in search of freedom.
The control of movement, leisure and everyday life of Africans by colonial authorities resulted in contestations and struggles for city life. What began in Durban as control on traditional beer production grew in the Rand resulting in numerous struggles between colonial authorities and people‘s struggle for space to make their own living and determine their own leisure in the city.
Literature also makes an account about spatial organisation of the city, about the accommodation and housing of African migrants in compounds and hostels and the subsequent building of segregated townships for African workers and their households in Chesterville, Lamontville, Kwa-Mashu, Umlazi and Claremont (on the fringe of New Germany35. This increase in the influx of Africans into Durban is explained by Simkins (1981) as being due to the increasing vulnerability of Africans caused by the accelerating impoverishment of the rural areas, evictions of African tenants from white- owned farm land as the state assisted white farmers who found it more profitable to put land into productive use than rent it to African tenants. The other factor was the further development and growth of the manufacturing sector in Durban from the 1940s onwards. Between 1936 and 1946 the female population in Durban had doubled from over 14 200 to over 28 500 (Hemson, 1996:14). This signifies growth in women and children (meaning families) living in the city, which can be argued as urbanisation). Yet Hemson (1996) argues that even though the growth of Africans in Durban seems to indicate stabilisation of African urbanisation, the vast majority of Africans living in Durban were migrants36. The 1946 government statistics show that out “of 104
35 (Swanson, 1976; Platsky, 1985; Maylam, 1994); (Manson, 1981:11-12)
36 A similar assertion is also made by Maylam (1996), and is corroborated in numerous researches on proletarianisation of Africans into migrant labour, which entailed dual identity of working men as city workers while maintaining their family and household networks in rural settlements for subsistence, identity and meaning.
100 or so Africans living in Durban, about 77 500 were migrants, and a mere 26 600 permanently urbanised”37.
Maylam and Edwards (1996) in ‗The People‟s City – African life in Twentieth Century Durban‟ make a compelling argument on the contestation and struggles for the city in Natal. Maylam shows that part of the growth of Durban throughout the early 20th century included an increase in the influx of native populations in Durban, first, around the Point area as well as Bell Street compounds; then Somtseu Barracks, then Cato Manor, migrants living in backyards of white and Indian landlords in various parts of the city; then Hostels and factory compounds;
then free-hold areas like Claremont near New Germany, then to the creation of black townships in Lamontville first, then Umlazi and Kwa-Mashu (Maylam, 1996). Maylam and Edwards (1996) also write about the growth of African women in Durban from the late 1930s onwards. There was also a large number of Africans commuting in and out of Durban mainly as day/ casual workers. There was also a large influx of Africans in Cato Manor by the 1940s, before their removal after the 1950 Group Areas Act.
This influx brought with it a variety of alternative forms of existence, livelihood and struggle. Cato Manor symbolized not only the occupation of urban physical space, it also represented the opening of economic and political space, many economic opportunities to supply basic commodities and services, petty entrepreneurs, the informal sector, even illegal and illicit economic activities.
These activities (economic) were either individualist or on a cooperative basis38. The cooperative movement grew from the second half of the 1940s, which gained new momentum and took various forms. Some functioned as communal buying clubs whose members sought benefits as consumers; others served as informal wholesale organizations in which members sought to make profit as middlemen.
Other cooperatives operated as small-scale banks or loan clubs39. Maylam (1996) argues that these cooperatives represented a new voice and organizational mobilization of proletarian consciousness and militancy and activism which was
37 Hemson (1996: 17)
38 Maylam and Edwards (1996: 20)
39 Edwards (1989)
absent in static political organizations like the then established ICU, which also lacked a political base at this time. These cooperative organizations seemed to represent a peculiar convergence or blending of entrepreneurship, consumerism and militancy, coupled with the influx of Africans into Durban, occupation of physical space and exploitation by some of economic opportunities, but also by carving out and penetration of political space for the expression of protest against various forms of oppression, much organised by work-place issues. These all constituted militant forms of economic, political and organizational mobilization with working class consciousness and challenging elite African formations40. The book also highlights the new militancy found amongst the African proletariat (that were even more mobilizing than the ANC Youth League and Communist Party) during the 1940s. Some of these movements and mobilization were worker-based, e.g. Hemson‘s (1996) account of dock workers, Sitas‘ (1996) account of Dunlop workers in 1942 to early 1943, Indian and African workers strike in Falkirk in 1937, and led by Zulu Phungula. Another such movement was the Natal African Tenants and Peasant Association, led by Sydney Myeza, uniting shantytown communities and providing them with an organisational base. These movements represented a new militant assertiveness, absent in the defunct ICU and other established political establishments. It was also a counter to elite formations which were established by entrepreneurs and the African elite; some of these movements were pro-apartheid, anti-Indian and Zulu-nationalist41.
The book asserts that the Group Areas Act and removal of Africans from central areas of Durban; from Cato Manor; from the oldest African township of Baumanville and from central hostels in Bell Street, Ordnance Road and Somtseu Road to the new township of Kwa-Mashu represented a devastating assault on the underclass and large amounts of people. Until then there were still people able to resist proletarianisation including Cato Manor‘s market gardeners, petty entrepreneurs and informal sector operators, also all across other areas. New townships were situated far from central Durban, represented transport costs for
40 Maylam (1996), Padayachee et al. (1985)
41 Edwards (1989: 2, 19, 30)
people, these new areas also lacked recreational and health services. By the 1960s state (central and local) efforts to limit and regulate access to physical space and close down political space were becoming successful, mostly through racially and ethnically defined group areas. But these group relocations didn‘t go without opposition and resistance. Resistance in the 1950s was in overt political action (e.g. the 1952 Defiance Campaign) as well as work-place action and mobilisation by SACTU. There were also community-based struggles, mostly in opposition to Apartheid spatial restructuring, removals and relocation42.
Forms of resistance in the 1950s and 1960s by workers, communities and women were to be silenced until the 1973 famous Durban strikes which pioneered new worker militancy in the 1970s and 1980s leading to the political activism of the 1980s and 1990s leading ultimately to freedom. These movements and activism in the 1980s were also characterized by appropriation of living space by Africans as they grew to more than 3.5 million by 1988, half of which were said to be living in shack settlements outlying the greater Durban. Most of these shack settlement dwellers were employed, but lived without health or electricity services around Inanda and Kwa-Mashu.