The pursuit of employment also shaped movement long before the nineteenth century. Young men travelled both locally and regionally to attach themselves to wealthy homesteads where their labour was rewarded with livestock or other items that could contribute to their bride-wealth goods and so to marry and achieve full adulthood. This pursuit of bride-wealth goods continues to be a key element in the system that evolved in the nineteenth century. But new goods came to play an increasingly important role. Most important from the 1840s to the 1880s were firearms, which played a key part in the hunting economy, power struggles between Trekkers and Africans and in conflicts between polities. The South African Republic tried to ban the arms trade with Africans, which was far from effective, but it did make guns very expensive in the interior. They were much easier and cheaper to buy in the Cape. The pace and scale of the acquisition of firearms by migrants was formidable. In 1862, Merensky calculated that the Pedi army consisted of 12 000 men, of whom approximately a third had guns – mainly anachronistic muzzle loaders. By 1876, the army was fully armed with breech loading rifles.3
A considerable literature has accumulated in recent decades on this early system of migrant labour, but our understanding of many elements remains sketchy. A great deal of historical writing portrays epic journeys whether by Trekkers, explorers, hunters, missionaries or shipwreck survivors. But the extraordinary journeys routinely undertaken by migrant workers, crossing more than a thousand kilometres of often hostile terrain, remain largely unrecorded and uncelebrated. While the evidence to correct this omission is sadly sparse, there are some documents that provide revealing glimpses into their travels. One of these was penned by a Berlin missionary, Carl Richter, who was based in the Transvaal and it was published in the Berlin Missionary Journal in 1882.4
Richter was born in Prussia in 1836 and was trained in the craft of nail-making. As was the practice at the time, after his apprenticeship, he travelled from town to town seeking work, until he eventually joined the Berlin
Figure 3.1
Photographer unrecorded
Migrants arriving on the diamond fields in search of work 1886
Courtesy of McGregor Museum, Kimberley Historical Photographs Collection
Missionary Society. After seven years of training, he was sent to the Transvaal. His own background as a travelling worker sparked his interest in the migrant workers who regularly passed by the mission stations and whom he encountered on his own travels.5 While he saw some elements in common between their experiences and those of apprentices in Germany, his cultural blinkers ensured elements of tunnel vision. He noted in his description that the
concept of ‘wandering’ is used as it is in Germany among the artisans and apprentices, i.e., to look for work. A wanderer in the sense of a tourist is unknown here. A Mossuto does not have a thought left for nature’s beauty or otherwise historical peculiarities, to strengthen and refresh his soul life through them. Even travel such as that of an artisan, who wants to create an opportunity for himself in a foreign place to perfect his craft, is unfamiliar to the Bassuto. The Mossuto of today only wanders to earn money.6
Despite his blind spots, Richter provides an informed overview of the development of labour relations in the Transvaal. The extract that follows is based on Richter’s account, with some minor editorial interventions to enhance the accessibility of the text, while retaining as much as possible of its original character.7
The Wandering Bassuto by Carl Richter
For as long as the white population advanced into these regions of the Bassuto (about since the year 1836), the Mossuto has been sought after as a worker. Either he was forced to work or he went voluntarily to earn something.8
Slavery, in the sense as in many other countries where adult persons are purchased for a price, did not exist here. This practice was limited only to the small children, whom one mostly appropriated in an illegal way; these children were then trained to become workers. But here, too, a time frame was set by the government, within which such a slave should acquire his freedom. I believe it was in the twentieth year. However, this year was not always the year of release, as is evident from the fact that the Mossuto never knew the years of his age and because his owner was probably never too hasty to voluntarily release his cheap worker.9
But many adults were also forced to work in the following way: one or more Boers had legitimately made themselves owners of a piece of land, which was occupied by indigenous people. The latter were then informed that for them to be permitted to stay on the property of the one or more whites, they had to work for their baas (master) for a certain time without remuneration. The chief of the tribe had to see to it that all young, strong people took turns, one after the other, to go to work for their masters, who often stayed a very far distance from them.
This forced manner of working caused much unhappiness and trouble on both sides. Among the Bassuto an expression was coined for such involuntary work attendance, which was supposed to be Dutch and was adapted according to their way of speaking and sounded ‘zoomaareng’, more or less with the meaning: ‘into the for-nothing’, it was supposed to imply: ‘We are going to work without getting any payment for it.’
It often happened that the summoned worker did not pitch up and the baas or ‘master’ himself had to ride to fetch him and when he had brought him to his place and set him to work, he fled away again after a short time. New trouble arose again for the chief of the tribe or the field cornet [a government official]. Often the field cornet had to go to that kraal himself and threaten punishment.
Usually the Boers, when they wanted to capture a fugitive, carefully approached his dwelling place by night, in order to surprise him early in the morning and to take him captive. One day saw a field cornet with a Boer, who had succeeded in getting back such an escapee. In order not to give him the opportunity to run away again on the way, they had tied him with a rope to the horse, in such a way that the one end of the rope was fastened to the saddle and the other around the neck of the Mossuto. Thus he had to (nolens volens) run along next to the horse. The distance from the kraal to the home of the Boer was about four to five German miles [one German mile = 7.5 kilometres]. Certainly not much consideration would have been given on the way to the pedestrian by the riders.
But in earlier years, many of the Bassutos also went voluntarily to distant areas to look for work. Many such workers stayed in the old colonies; others, however, returned after a number of years. One can often find people in these areas who have lived more than ten years in a foreign land.
A new stage with regard to wandering has emerged since the discovery of the diamond fields. Wandering is now the young man’s pleasure because it is associated with many hopes for the future life of the young Mossuto. It can be assumed with certainty that of the many thousand young people who grow up here, only very few don’t go wandering. To a German, who has got to know wandering in his homeland, the thought often comes up at the sight of such ‘working Kaffirs’ to draw a comparison between the earlier German apprentices and the local working Kaffirs. Some trends may be different from the other, but yet another is very similar. When in earlier times in Germany a ‘qualified one’ started his travels, he had his burden of the examination behind him and, maybe alone or with a travel companion, he was often accompanied out of the gate by companions of the trade and some friends, to then try his luck in the ‘world’.
Here we find the Mossuto, as inexperienced in every work as possibly imaginable, preparing himself for wandering. However, a young man will never embark on the journey alone; he waits until several countrymen want to start on such a journey, to which he