Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | 'Blackbirding' at 'Crooks' Corner': Illicit Labour Recruiting in the Northeastern Transvaal, 1910-1940 |
Author: | Murray, Martin J. |
Year: | 1995 |
Periodical: | Journal of Southern African Studies |
Volume: | 21 |
Issue: | 3 |
Period: | September |
Pages: | 373-397 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | South Africa Transvaal |
Subjects: | labour recruitment labour migration Labor and Employment History and Exploration Ethnic and Race Relations |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637250 |
Abstract: | In the early decades of the 20th century, Africans in search of work were attracted to the wage-paying employment opportunities on the Witwatersrand in the Transvaal (South Africa). These work seekers travelled great distances on foot, battling hunger, disease, and the harsh environment. For those Africans wishing to enter the Transvaal without official permission, the border presented little obstacle. These clandestine migrants easily bypassed police posts, but they experienced greater difficulty in evading predatory labour recruiters. Illicit labour recruiting took place all along the frontier, but assumed special significance at the far corner of the northeastern Transvaal. It was here, where the borders of the Transvaal, southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) met, that labour pirating, or 'blackbirding' as it was sometimes called, careened out of control. This paper investigates the modus operandi of these labour recruiters in order to shed light on wider questions concerning the historical formation of labour markets in southern Africa. It concludes that illicit labour recruiting, along with the violence and coercion that accompanied it, actually facilitated the process of proletarianization by bringing the buyers and sellers of labour power together in the marketplace. Notes, ref., sum. |