A Century of Migrancy from Mpondoland

Abstract

Migrant mineworkers from Mpondoland came into the news as the victims of the shootings at Marikana platinum mine in August 2012. Fourteen out of the 45 people who met their deaths over the two weeks of turmoil at Marikana came from this area and another 16 from other former Transkeian districts in the Eastern Cape province. Evidence suggests that workers from such rural communities, which have been sending long distance migrants to the mines for over a century, are still migrating in some numbers and were central in the strike. This article outlines changing patterns of migration over the long term and suggests that these did not entirely undermine agricultural production, at least till the later decades of the twentieth century. It aims to explore aspects of agency and identity from the perspective of workers who returned to the Mpondoland districts and to suggest how new solidarities and associations emerged from the interactions between changing rural and urban contexts. It also discusses some of the generational and gender tensions that reflected the circulation of earnings. Migrants from Mpondoland have been characterised in both historical literature and contemporary journalism as traditionalist and fiercely attached to their rural homes. It is important not to ethnicise a diverse segment of the South African workforce, and we need to allow for many different individual trajectories, as well as changes over time. However, I will suggest that a sense of collective identity has in part shaped their responses over the long term and seem to be evident, alongside unions, in new expressions of worker solidarity.

Key words:

• migrancy
• Mpondoland
• Marikana
• rural production
• rural associations
• worker solidarities

Note on Contributor

William Beinart is Rhodes Professor of Race Relations at the African Studies Centre, St Antony's College, University of Oxford. His major research and teaching interests are in southern African history and politics and in environmental history. He has focused especially on rural society in the Eastern Cape. His research and teaching explores the intersection between social, political and environmental issues at a local, national and global scale.

Notes

1. For a summary, see Stichter (1985).

2. Districts were Bizana, Flagstaff, Lusikisiki and Tabankulu in Eastern Mpondoland and Libode, Ngqeleni and Port St Johns in western Mpondoland.

3. Figures taken from Census (1910–1960). These are the Agricultural Census and Transkeian Territories General Council reports. From the 1910s to the 1960s, these are from cattle dipping records and as dipping was compulsory, they may be reasonably accurate. A new series was collated from 1975 by the Transkeian government. See Mpela and Muller (1986).

4. Figures taken from Census (1910–1960). These are the Agricultural Census and Transkeian Territories General Council reports. These were estimates, based on observation, and average figures may seem suspiciously similar, giving rise to the question: were officials simply returning the same estimates every year? In fact, the annual figures vary greatly from a low of 139,000 in 1936 to a high of 810,000 in 1939. I think that they have some value. After the mid-1960s, the figures for Transkei, which was given self-government in 1963, were no longer published regularly though some estimates suggest stability in production up to the early 1980s.

5. For discussion of these and other surveys, see Beinart (1992a).

6. I have used the spelling Mpondo when the interview is translated from Xhosa, but Pondos in this quote because it reflected Mdingi's usage in his English in the interview. In translations I have avoided the plural amaMpondo/amaXhosa and only use the stem.

7. Pondoland General Council (1929:57–8).

8. On the changing character of homesteads, see Hunter (1961) and Kuckertz (1990).

9. This explanation is based on interviews done in Lusikisiki and Bizana in 1988. See also Kropf and Godfrey (1915).

10. van Tromp was referring to Port St Johns district. His note was found in David Hammond-Tooke's personal papers.

11. Compare Philip Bonner (1990).

12. Unpublished chapter from forthcoming book. Thanks to the author, at the Fort Hare Institute for Social and Economic Research, for access to this material.

13. Figures take from the Web.

14. The rumours were based on press reports that Ramaphosa unsuccessfully bid R19.5-million for a buffalo cow and calf in an auction.