The bouquet of freedom : social and economic relations in the Stellenbosch district, c1870-1900

In: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21838

Abstract

Bibliography: pages 112-130. ; The thesis explores the effects on the wine growing district of Stellenbosch of the transformations in the political economy of the Cape Colony in the late nineteeth century. It is the first in depth study of Stellenbosch District and also contributes to other historical analyses concerned with the impact of industrialisation on rural society. Primary sources used include archival records, newspapers and the annual reports of the district branch of the Standard Bank. Labour legislation passed in the aftermath of slavery was most successful in tying labour to the farms when the labour market was confined to the agrarian sector. The mineral and transport revolutions of the late nineteenth century brought about the first major reformulation of social and economic relations in the Western Cape since emancipation. Between cl878 to 1896 wine farmers were hit by the general recession of the 1880s, by the excise tax on brandy, by phylloxera and by periodic labour shortages. Farmers, especially those capitalising their agricultural production, looked to the Zuid Afrikaansche Boere Beskermings Vereeniging and later the amalgamated Afrikaner Bond to press for state aid to wine farmers. In the late nineteenth century farmers finally experienced the implications of the proletarianisation of the rural underclass. Many labourers left to work in the growing urban sector, on the Public Works or in self employment as market gardeners. Farmers in Stellenbosch, like their peers in other societies confronting the implications of industrialisation, regarded labour mobility as illegitimate. They felt threatened by outbreaks of arson and theft, but also by the labourers' new assertiveness. For a time labour relations on the farms took place in a context where labourers had a measure of leverage against the power of the farmer. By 1910 the farmers' world had been righted and this was no longer the case.