South African History [Mineral revolution] – Part 3
GamingIn the late 19th century, the limitations of the liberal Cape tradition became apparent. The hardening of racial attitudes that accompanied the rise of a more militant imperialist spirit coincided locally with the decisive discovery of mineral riches in the interior of southern Africa. In a developing economy, cheap labor was scarce and the demands of educated Africans for equality met with increasingly fierce resistance.
At the same time, the large number of Africans in headquarters beyond the Kei River and north of the Gariep (Orange River), who later rejoined the Cape Colony, posed new threats to racial supremacy and white security, increasing segregationist pressures.
Alluvial diamonds were discovered in the Vaal River in the late 1860s. The subsequent discovery of dry deposits in what became the city of Kimberley attracted tens of thousands of people, black and white, to the first great industrial center. Africa and the world’s largest diamond deposit. In 1871, the British, who expelled several rival suitors, annexed the diamond fields, which fell into sparsely populated territory west of the main northern migration corridors.
The Griqualand West Colony thus created was incorporated into the Cape Colony in 1880. By 1888, the consolidation of the diamond claims had led to the creation of the huge De Beers monopoly under the control of Cecil Rhodes. He used his power and wealth to become Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (1890-1896) and, through his British South African Company, conqueror and ruler of present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Mineral discoveries had a major impact on the subcontinent as a whole. A rail network linking the interior with coastal ports revolutionized transportation and energized agriculture. Coastal cities such as Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban experienced an economic boom as port facilities were modernized.
The fact that mineral discoveries coincided with a new era of imperialism and the struggle for Africa brought imperial power and influence to southern Africa like never before.
Independent African headquarters were systematically subjugated and incorporated by their white-ruled neighbors. The most dramatic example was the Zulu War of 1879, which saw the Zulu State under imperial control, during which King Cetshwayo’s impis inflicted a celebrated defeat on British forces at Isandlwana.
In 1897, Zululand joined Natal. The Republic of South Africa (Transvaal) was annexed by Great Britain in 1877. Boer resistance led to British withdrawal in 1881, but not before the State of Pedi (north of Sotho), which was within the borders of the Republic, was subjugated. The indications were that, having been asserted once, British hegemony was likely to be reasserted.
The southern territories of Sotho and Swaziland also came under British rule, but maintained their status as imperial dependencies, so that both present-day Lesotho and Swaziland escaped the dominance of local white regimes.
The discovery of the Witwatersrand gold deposits in 1886 was a turning point in South African history. It heralded the rise of the modern South African industrial state.
Once the extent of the reefs was established, and deep-level mining proved to be a viable investment, it was only a matter of time before Britain and its local proxies again found a pretext for war against the Boer republics of Transvaal and the United States. Orange Free State.
The demand for franchise rights for English-speaking immigrants in the gold fields (the inhabitants of Uitlan) provided a lever to pressure the government of President Paul Kruger.
Spurred on by deep-level mining magnates, to whom the Boer government seemed obstructive and inefficient, and in anticipation of a Uitlander uprising, Rhodes launched a raid into the Transvaal in late December 1895.
The failure of the raid spelled the end of Rhodes’ political career, but Sir Alfred Milner, British High Commissioner in South Africa since 1897, was determined to overthrow the Kruger government and establish British rule over the entire subcontinent. The Boer government was finally forced to declare war in October 1899.
The mineral discoveries had a radical impact on all areas of society. Labor was needed on a large scale and could only be provided by Africans, who had to be removed from the land.
Many Africans responded readily to the opportunities offered by wage labor, traveling long distances to earn money and supplement rural enterprise in the family economy.
In response to the expansion of domestic markets, Africans exploited their agricultural skills and family labor to good effect to increase production for sale. A sizable black peasantry emerged, often through sharecropping or leasing of labor on white-owned farms.
For the white authorities, however, the main consideration was to secure a supply of labor and to undermine black competition in the land. The laws of conquest, dispossession of land, taxes and approval were designed to expel black men from the land and funnel them into labor markets, especially to meet the needs of the mines.
Gradually, the alternatives available to them were closed, and the decline in the family economy made wage labor increasingly essential for survival.
The integration of Africans into South Africa’s emerging urban and industrial society should have followed these developments, but recurrent short-term labor migration suited employers and authorities, who sought to entrench the system.
The closed complexes started in the diamond fields, as a means of controlling migrant labor, were replicated in the gold mines. The preservation of communal areas from which migrants could be removed had the effect of lowering wages by denying the rights of Africans within urban areas and keeping their families and dependents in subsistence plots on the reserves.
Africans could be denied basic rights if the fiction could be maintained that they do not belong to “white South Africa” but to the “tribal societies” from which they come to serve the “needs of the white man.” Where black families secured a foothold in urban areas, local authorities confined them to segregated ‘places’. This set of assumptions and policies informed the development of segregation ideology and, later (beginning in 1948), apartheid.