6 - The Environmental History of a “Labor Reservoir,” 1903–1970s

Summary

Even if life was difficult for you [at work] everything you were getting was fair because of the struggles of how they were living at home … because of the children at home and how they were living.

By 1903 extensive production could no longer provide for the population. Such transitions from independent food production to wage labor by Africans, according to Colin Bundy, lie “at the core of South Africa's social history.” That this transition occurred, however, should not obscure the continuing historical dynamic, including the environmental dynamic in the increasingly dependent rural reserves. The collapse of indigenous production is also a major theme in environmental history, but in contrast to temperate regions of the New World, in South Africa the indigenous population remained the majority. They did not lose all their land and they remembered how to farm. In Kuruman, the history of indigenous food production continued after the collapse of subsistence and peasant production. Even as people became more dependent on remunerated labor, they continued to work the environment. Even though people in the twentieth century gained part of their livelihood by selling their labor, the study of environmental history continues to illuminate changes in their lives. The environmental history of this period revolves around the overlapping interactions between humans of different categories, the nonhuman world, the state, and the cash economy. Incorporating environmental factors into this history does not entail arguing that they are the determinant forces.