Gestión presupuestaria y grado de ejecución

The periodisation of the South African political economy from 1910 saw the government’s economic program geared towards relieving poorer whites through economic and welfare state

policies (Webster et al, 1997:193). This relief for the “poor whites” was compensation for the suffering they were going through as a consequence of modernisation and urbanisation. Key aspects for this economic policy by the Apartheid government for the poorer whites was through provision of financial support to farmers, the assurance of a supply of cheap black labour to agriculture, mining and industry as well as the protection of whites from black competition in the labour market (Webster et al, 1997:193). The financial support to farmers and cheap black labour to agricultural activities also included the Brits commercial farms.

Hartbeespoort Dam which is less than twenty kilometers from the Crocodile River was opened in 1923. This saw networks of canals being installed to take water to the commercial farmlands around Brits. This process encouraged the cultivation of citrus fruit orchards, vegetables, and grains which became and still is the mainstays of the farming community in Brits. The farming in and around Brits area attracted and still attracts black labour migrants and their families to the Madibeng local Municipality rural reserves.

Ipeleng shared that her parents migrated from Warmbaths, in the Limpopo Province, to Brits’

farms for work. She mentions that she is the second generation of the migrants who migrated to Brits to work in commercial farms thus she grew up on the farms and later worked there herself.

She moved to Letlhabile where she currently stays six years ago. This is how she relates her story:

Originally I’m from Warmbaths, currently known as Bela-Bela. I was born there. When I was still very small, maybe primary school age because I didn’t go to school I might not be accurate, my parents, sister and I moved to a place full of farms just outside Brits called De Kroon. The specific farm I grew up in is called Herbat. My father a while, left us in Brits and was moved to a farm where they specialised in wood, called Komatipoort in Mpumalanga. We continued staying with my mother who was working at that farm, and raising us on her own until she left us there on our own. When I was old enough I started to work on the same farm as well, met my ex-partner there, and it is also where all my children were born (Ipeleng, 04 April 2016).

According to those who participated in this study, Madibeng served, and also to a certain extent, still serves as a labour migrant destination with the Brits commercial farming as the main

attraction for some of the labour migrant families. Ipeleng explains that her parents moved with their family to Brits to work at the farms. Now what became of interest in this study is that the farm owners allowed black labour migrants to move with their families to the farms. Perhaps it is because in the farming industry all adult members were potential cheap labourers which would benefit the farm. The moving of a family or household to a farm partly alienated the disadvantages that came with having a labour migrant who is far away. This particular system carried its own social problems such as child labour, denial of primary education for children as well as continuous cycles of poverty among others. This system also created a cycle of unskilled labour migrants and families.

For example, Neo a mother to a twenty seven year old labour migrant man, who works in Johannesburg, Kempton Park and rents a room in Tembisa. Neo was raised by unskilled labour migrant parents, was an unskilled labour migrant herself and now her son is currently an unskilled labour migrant. Neo’s family history is the story of many other households found in the typical rural reserves historically created by the burgeoning of mines and industry in the Witwatersrand and other neighboring cities (Wester et al, 1997). This is how Neo narrated her and her family’s background of labour migration. This being their livelihood strategy for her household, she said:

…by birth I’m from Letlhakaneng, another village further there after you pass Maboloka.

We moved with my parents because they were working in Pretoria city and it was hard for them to get transport to work and for my brother and I to attend school… transport was and still is a problem there… so we moved to Oskraal, there by the farm plots while they were looking for a place here in Rabokala (a village near Oskraal). After they found a place in Rabokala we then moved to here at around 1985. I used to attend school at Rabokala Primary, this is before there were houses here, it was still just a big bush…

then I finished my primary education, and then went to Maledu high school, but I didn’t do my matric… (Neo, 06 April 2016).

Researcher: What were your reasons for not completing your matric?

Neo: I had a baby when I was sixteen years… I was still at secondary school by then…

my boy was born in 1990… but after he turned five years I tried to go back to school but I

wasn’t successful. Then I stayed home for some time… after a while I landed a job at Zone Fifteen at Garankuwa Industrial area.

Researcher: So what happened to your son?

Neo: Because I was doing these piece jobs, I had to take my son to my grandmother in Letlhakaneng to look after him, and I would fetch him on weekends. (Neo, 06 April 2016).

Letlhakaneng is a village further into Madibeng’s rural areas about 30 km from Rabokala village which is much closer to Brits town than Letlhakaneng is. There is only one bus a day that goes to Letlhakaneng in the morning to fetch people for work and school and in the evening to take them back. Thus Rabokala was strategic for individuals who needed work in Pretoria.

The culture of labour migration grew from the mining labour migrant system. Later industries spread as a livelihood strategy for rural households. As their immediate environment could not provide adequate employment to sustain the rural reserves that labour migrant system and Apartheid policies had created. Also because the transitions from subsistence living that forced black Africans in the rural reserves to cash based economy, it did not provide any other alternative other than migrating to cities and towns to access industry and mining opportunities.

This came out clearly in the study. Neo relates that as a teenage mother after the birth of her son who is now a labour migrant, she was unable to go back to school. Neo was forced to look after her child since there was no one else to look after him because both her parents were labour migrants. Later on when her son was old enough she had to take him to her grandmother in Letlhakaneng another village, to be looked after by her while she joined her parents in becoming a labourer at Garankuwa industrial site. For this family, migrating for work and being apart for long periods was the only way to ‘keep the family together’ and survive.

Internal labour migration was an inevitable process for black African families during Apartheid given the role that the labour migrant system played in the development of the South African economy. Like Ipeleng’s family, migrating from Warmbaths to the Brits farms was necessary for their families’ survival, although for her family it was both a livelihood strategy and a new geographical identity for the family. For Neo’s family internal labour migration became a livelihood strategy from one generation to the next.

Labour migration as a livelihood strategy presented itself to be generational for rural households which included not only Neo’s household but Mmamonare’s family whose survival is through a third generation labour migrant. Mmamonare, a seventy five year old who is a pensioner also relates that she grew up with a father who was always away working at the mines. She states that she never really knew her father as he was a labour migrant in Gauteng and only came back home permanently when he was old and sick, which caused him not to live long with them as shortly thereafter he died. She said:

When I grew up my father was working in Gauteng. He only came home once in a while.

By the time he came home for good he was sick and he didn’t live long after that, he died.

So you see I never really knew him (Mmamonare, 30 March 2016).

One of the characteristics of the migrant labour system was that it took black African men while they were still in their prime, healthy and fit for intense labour in the mines. These men were discarded and kicked out of the system when they slowed down, fell sick or became frail (Webster et.al, 1997). Just like Mmamonare’s father who had to return home when he was sick, the labour migrant men who were not fit to work were sent home and as a result would not be of any economic benefit to their communities and families.