Las prácticas de ciudadanía en el movimiento social del 15M

The Nationalist government’s criticism of the Basutoland government reflected the belief that the mountains were only recently populated and that this was the root of the problem. Most reports stated that the mountains were not populated prior to the settling of Batloka people in the 1870s - the deliberate destruction of the San population by the early British and Cape colonial governments was totally ignored. A number of

commentators, including both Pole Evans and Palmer, argued that the area was not actually suited to any human habitation. Many of the complaints coming from South Africa during the 1940s and early 1950s argued that soil erosion could not be prevented without massive, or even total, depopulation of the mountain area. This fitted in with more widespread calls for the removal of African population from watersheds frequently made in South Africa during the late 1940s and early 1950s. In May 1951 S.P. LeRoux, Minister for Agriculture, for example, told Parliament:

One would like to see the Native population removed from the mountainous areas, from the catchment areas of rivers, to more flat country92

Yet during the mid-1950s these calls for the removal of the Basotho population from the mountain area declined and eventually disappeared. In order to understand why it is necessary to trace changing attitudes towards African occupation of land within the Union, and its relationship to an apartheid ideology, and how this influenced attitudes towards the three High Commission Territories.

The historiography of the genesis of apartheid has shifted significantly since the mid- 1980s. The work of Deborah Posel, in particular, has shown that the Nationalists came to power in 1948 with no ‘grand plan’ for apartheid. Posel argues that there were essentially two distinct apartheid ideologies amongst Nationalists in the late 1940s and early 1950s; one she characterises as the ‘total segregation’ school and the other as the

‘practical’ school.93

91 PRO D 0 3 5 / 4316, The Transfer Question; additional file note (anon.), 4 June 1953.

92 LeRoux, S.P. (Minister o f Agriculture), Union o f South Africa, Debates o f the House o f Assembly, 4th Session, 10th Parliament, 1952, p.7318. Similar statements in Parliament were also made by Abrahamson, Union o f South Africa, Debates o f the House o f Assembly, 1st Session, 10th Parliament, 1948, p.1767, Mitchell, D.E., Union o f South Africa, Debates o f the House o f Assembly, 1st Session, 10th Parliament, 1948, p.2108 and Hen wood, Union o f South Africa, Debates o f the House o f Assembly, 2nd Session, 10th Parliament, 1949, p.6120.

93 Posel, D. The Making o f Apartheid 1948-61: Conflict and Compromise (Oxford, 1991), pp. 49-60.

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South African white commercial farmers had always looked to those small areas of the Union reserved for African occupation with envy, not just because of the land resources but, more importantly, because they saw within them a rich source of labour. Labour shortages in the commercial agricultural sector were endemic during the first half of this century, but became even worse during the Second World War with the flight of many farm workers to the towns and cities to take advantage of the new opportunities presented by the rapid growth of secondary industry. This perennial problem for white farmers underscored their attitude to most political and economic issues: though the ability and techniques used to gain labour varied greatly over time and between well capitalised large scale commercial farmers (the ‘mealie kings’) and poorer white farmers.94 Generally larger farmers were able to fulfill their labour needs with state support and this meant that they were willing to accept the division of the African labour force into different economic sectors. This lay behind the support for policies to create a permanent urban labour force by the the South African Agricultural Union’s (SAAU), the main vehicle for commercial farming interests. Nevertheless all farmers, large or small, were opposed to any land segregation policies that had a negative effect on them in practice. For example, farmers in areas near existing reserves vehemently opposed the extension to the reserves under the 1936 Land Act and, at a local level, often managed to delay or even prevent the purchase of scheduled land under the Act’s provisions.

Posel argues that the SAAU was one of the prime forces behind the ‘practical’

conception of apartheid in the late 1940s.95 Their primary concern, and hence their conception of what apartheid meant, was finding a solution to their chronic labour shortage problems. Posel’s research concentrates on the allocation of labour between different sectors of the economy and hence her interest is in the SAAU’s attitude to influx control and not the organisations' attitude towards the reserves. Nevertheless it is clear that even in 1948 many commercial farmers wanted to see not just a suspension of the scheduled area policy but the breaking up of the whole reserve system.

While the ‘total segregation’ conception of apartheid is often identified in popular histories as a uniquely Afrikaner ideology almost all professional historians accept that the earliest segregationists were English-speaking liberals.96 These liberals were

94 Bradford, H. ‘Getting away With Murder: “Mealie Kings”, the State and Foreigners in the Eastern Transvaal, C.1918-1950’ in Bonner, P., Delius P. and Posel, D. (eds.) Apartheid's Genesis 1935- 1962 (Braamfontein, 1993), pp. 96-125.

95 Posel, The Making o f Apartheid, p. 54.

96 Dubow, S. Racial segregation and the origins o f apartheid in South Africa, 1919-36 (Basingstoke, 1989).

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concerned about the impact of African urbanisation and were anxious to find ways to keep African populations in the reserves. As we saw in chapter 2, by the early 1930s it was clear that conditions in the reserves were very poor and if their African population was to remain in these areas some sort of development policy was needed: the Native Affairs Department, therefore, began to implement Betterment policies designed to increase agricultural productivity.

The rapid rate of African urbanisation during the 1930s and more especially during the war years brought increased interest in the ‘native question’ amongst Afrikaner

Nationalists. Accelerated rates of female migration, especially from Lesotho,97 into Johanesburg and other Rand towns added to white fears of a permanently settled urban population politically able to challenge white supremacy: the increasingly vocal African opposition during the war years inevitably fuelled these fears. A number of Afrikaner Nationalists (often described as the ‘visionaries’), especially within the South African Bureau of Racial Affairs (S ABRA), began to advocate an ideology of ‘total

segregation’ as a solution to these concerns. The ‘visionaries’ believed that in order to protect white supremacy there had to be be the complete ‘separation of White and native into separate and self-sufficient socio-economic units’.98 Given the heavy dependence of capital on African labour the ‘visionaries’ recognised there would need to be a significant economic sacrifice to enact this programme. For white workers too there was an obvious attraction to ‘total segregation’ as it would remove cheap African competition for jobs.

When the Nationalists came to power in 1948 there were, therefore, two distinct views about African occupation of land within the Apartheid fold: a ‘practical’ view that would happily alienate any African land where it suited white economic or political interests, and a ‘visionary’ view that looked to increase the size of the reserves and economic opportunities within them as a step towards ‘total segregation’. These contradictory and competing views of Apartheid both had their own constituencies within the National Party: the ‘practical’ view was generally espoused by both farming and large capitalist interests and ‘visionary’ view by workers and intellectuals.

Calls for the de-population of the Lesotho mountains seem to fit clearly within the

‘practical’ conception of Apartheid: the mountain population was causing siltation and problems for irrigated farming and should, therefore, be removed. In much of the

97 Bonner, “‘Desirable or Undesirable Sotho Women?”.

98 Eiselen, W.M. ‘The Meaning o f Apartheid’, Race Relations, 15, 3,1948, p. 80, quoted by Posel, The Meaning o f Apartheid, p. 51.

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literature on the rise of Apartheid the interests of white farmers are seen to be paramount. Dan O’Meara, in particular, sees agricultural capital as being the driving force, arguing that ‘apartheid sought primarily to secure a stable labour supply for agriculture’.99 While Posel lays more emphasis on conflicting conceptions of what apartheid meant to farmers, industrialists, workers or intellectuals she agrees that addressing the needs of white commercial agriculture was central to the design of apartheid.100

Strijdom, who represented a farming constituency and was a long term advocate of irrigation farming,101 was the most vehement critic of British policy towards the environment in the three High Commission Territories. Baring records that during a meeting in March 1951 to discuss the proposals for the Senqu/Orange river dam Strijdom:

made it clear that his own belief is that in order to save the waters of the most important river in southern Africa it will one day be necessary to remove Natives not only from the mountains of Basutoland but also apparently from the lowlands.

When pressed by me he admitted that much could be done to reduce soil erosion but he did not believe that it could be eliminated as long as there was a large Native population in Basutoland. I have often felt that this was the view of the Nationalist leaders.102

There were, however, Nationalist MPs who were arguing for the opposite; ie. that Lesotho should support a greater population. Despite the ‘practical’/ ’visionary’

dichotomy outlined above one of these MPs was a representative of farming interests:

J.N. le Roux the MP for Ladybrand and the Chairman of the Orange Free State Agricultural Union. In a speech in Parliament in 1946 Le Roux complained about British policy in Lesotho:

I also want to make an appeal to the Minister to get in touch with the Imperial Government in regard to the Protectorates. We have nothing to do with them today, but indirectly we have. I mention Basutoland here and I must say that the soil erosion in that Protectorate is a disgrace. It makes your heart sore when you see in Basutoland how the fine rich soil is being washed away and how it is ignored. Indirectly we shall pay for that, because the natives will be squeezed out, owing to not being able to make a living on the lands, and they will come to the Union in the near future, we shall again have to provide them with land and a place to settle. Therefore I would appeal to the Minister that as we have now become erosion conscious the Protectorates must fall into line and recover their land as well so that they can carry a greater population than is the case at present.103

99 O’Meara, D. Volkskapiyalisme: Class Capital and ideology in the development o f Afrikaner nationalism, 1934-1948 (Cambridge, 1983), p.177.

100 Posel, The Making o f Apartheid, p.7.

101 His maiden speech in Parliament (29th July 1929) was about the need for a coordinated national irrigation scheme.

102 PRO DO35/4061, Baring to Baxter, 16 March 1951.

103 LeRoux, J.N., Union o f South Africa, Debates o f the House o f Assembly, 3rd Session, 9th

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Nevertheless in the late 1940s and early 1950s the majority opinion within the National Party was that the mountain areas of Lesotho should be de-populated. This was

certainly the assessment made by the Chief Secretary to the High Commissioners Office in February 1952 when he reported that the general ‘opinion in the Union holds that these mountains... should be evacuated’.10*

Over the next few years there was a major shift in attitude on the issue of African occupation of Lesotho, mirroring the development of a more concise conception of apartheid within the National Party. H.F. Verwoerd, the Party’s chief spokesman on

‘Native affairs’ and the leading policy maker, played a key role in the development of this strategy in the early years of apartheid. In 1948 Verwoerd was closely aligned with the SABRA ‘visionaries’ and through-out his career he continued to use their language and call for ‘total segregation’ as an ultimate ideal. He was, however, always careful to allay the fears of industrialists and farmers reliant upon African labour.105

Verwoerd’s way around these contradictory ideologies was to state that they were being practical in the short term but were moving in the long-term situation where ‘total segregation’. The ideology was internally contradictory as the ‘practical’ policies would take the country along a different route from that leading to the purported ideal of ‘total segregation.’106 Nevertheless Verwoerd’s ideology of apartheid was more than just ‘practical’ apartheid dressed up in ‘visionary’ language. Significantly for the debate here Verwoerd accepted the ‘visionary’ calls for the reserves to be developed economically (though he wanted to also use white capital) but he rejected calls for their territorial expansion.

The Tomlinson report107 originally commissioned in 1950 but not finally published until 1956 was a key area of contest between Verwoerd and the ‘visionaries'.108 Verwoerd announced that he accepted the report in principal though there were some details with which he disagreed. In practice few of the recommendation were ever enacted. Nevertheless the Tomlinson Report is relevant in respect to the issue because of what it said about the High Commission Territories.

Parliament, 1946, Vol. 56, p.8330.

104 PRO DO35/4014, Notes on visit by Turnbull to Basutoland, February 1952.

105 Lazar, J. ‘“Verwoed versus the “Visionaries”: The South African Bureau o f Racial Affairs and Apartheid, 1948-1961’ in Bonner, Delius and Posel, Apartheid’s Genesis, pp. 362-392, p.371.

106 Posel, The Making o f Apartheid, (chapter 3).

107 Tomlinson, F.R. Summary o f the Report o f the Commission fo r the Socio-Economic Development o f the Bantu areas within the Union o f South Africa, (Pretoria, 1955), p.181.

108 Lazar, ‘Verwoed versus the “Visionaries’” .

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This report envisaged that Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland would form three of the

‘cultural-historical cores’ of South Africa’s African population. The incorporation of the three High Commission Territories was seen as essential to the success of the policy of ‘total separation’. And by including their land areas in the calculations, the division of land between the African and European populations south of the Limpopo looked much more even, jumping from 13 percent to 47 percent .109

Obviously if the ‘visionaries’ had had their way the population of Lesotho would have increased and, therefore, allegations of overcrowding in Lesotho would be

incompatable. Verwoerd’s rejection of Tomlinson’s calls for the establishment of freehold tenure are also relevant in this respect. He stressed the importance of maintaining ‘traditional’ African communal land tenure - the very practice that was (and is still) so often blamed for causing poor farming techniques and overgrazing.

South Africa remained keen to get its hands on Lesotho in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but now in order to fully incorporate it into the ‘total’ apartheid system. When Strijdom visited London in 1956 he expressed very different views to those reported by Baring in 1951. Rather than calling for the removal of the African population from Lesotho he complained that the British policy of allowing white settlement in the three High Commission Territories did ‘ not fit into the Union pattern’.110

While pressure for transfer of the High Commission Territories did not stop in 1954, complaints about soil erosion in official correspondence between London and Pretoria did suddenly disappear. The erosion and siltation issue is not mentioned once in lengthy correspondence between 1955 and 1960 over the feasibility of another reservoir scheme in the upper reaches of the Senqu/Orange river.111 Similarly, press reports about

proposed schemes on the South African stretches of the Orange river no longer pointed the finger of blame for the high silt content of the river at either the Basotho or the

109 Tomlinson Summary o f the Report o f the Commission fo r the Socio-Economic Development o f the Bantu areas, p. 183. This figure was based on a calculation including all o f Swaziland, not just the

‘native areas’.

110 PRO D 035/4329, Note o f conversation between Strijdom, Prime Minister o f the Union o f South Africa, and Louw, Minister of Finance and External Affairs, and Sir Anthony Eden, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Earl o f Home, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, at

10 Downing Street on 19th June 1956. The Natal Agricultural Union (NAU) continued to call for the ‘depopulation’ of watershed areas in the province into the 1960s, arguing that African

agriculural practices were ruining the some o f the most fertiles areas. These complaints were clearly linked to NAU opposition to plans to consolidate the ‘homelands’, see Naunlu, July 1967, quoted in Greenberg, S. Race and State in Capitalist Development (New Y ork, 1980), pl03.

111 D035/7256, Regional water supplies in Basutoland: Ox-Bow Lake Scheme.

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British.112 With South African pressure off the need for anti-erosion policies in the mountains of Lesotho was no longer had of political importance and the

Commonwealth Relation Office’s interest in the issue quickly waned. The soil erosion specialists in the Basutoland administration obviously continued to take an interest, but their mission was no longer seen as politically vital

112 See, for example, cuttings from the Diamond Field Advertiser, 16 October 1957 to 18 May 1965, in KAB 3/KIM-4/1/183-039.

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7. The politics of land and rural development in colonial Lesotho