Studies in colonial economic history in Eastern and Southern Africa have demonstrated how subversively both the colonial state and settlers colluded to create a labour reservoir out of the indigenous peoples. Turning Africans into a labour force was made unavoidable by settler determination to employ a capitalist mode of production to setup production in cash crops in order to satisfy market demands. State intervention was called upon by settlers to reinforce the system, and it took the form of the enactment of measures which legalised settler exclusive production of certain commodities. Likewise, access to the market was denied to African agricultural producers. In order to analyse this scholars, especially students of the political economy of Kenya have used the theory of the articulation of modes of production to analyse this phenomenon.1 They have sought to demonstrate how when conditions operated against settlers, the state and middlemen resorted to the use of African producers for those commodities which were in demand. In short, these researchers have demonstrated the contradictions inherent in the capitalist mode of production which is founded upon the myth that the culture of the settlers was more advanced that of the Africans and that their knowledge of agriculture along with the better technology that they possessed could sustain their dependence upon the capitalist mode of production. The Kenyan studies have shown that ignorance of the ecology and climatic conditions made settlers fail to raise enough of the commodities required by the market to meet the demand, and that even after they had mastered the ecological and climatic conditions, the decline in the market price of the commodity forced them to rely on African production which supposedly relied on pre-capitalist forms of production.2 The implication of this was that even when the market price of the commodities in question was at rock bottom, it was still profitable for Africans to grow and market those commodities.3 Invariably these developments and experiences point towards a situation whereby the capitalist mode of production could not be sustained without falling upon the procapitalist one.
It is important to note that despite all the outlined adverse developments which rendered the capitalist mode of production ineffective, the colonial state continued to support settlers in order to control not only commodity production but even its marketing. The Kenyan experience dovetails neatly into that of South Africa where the colonial state protected its keith and kin by setting up institutions which nipped in the bud African commodity production.4 Colin Bundy, William Beinert, Mike Morris, Martin Legassick, Harold Wolpe 5 and others have shown how African producers have been discriminated against right from production to the marketing state of the commodities. In the Rhodesian (Zimbabwean) case Robin Palmer and Richard Gray6 have shown the protective hand of the colonial state of settler agriculture. They have demonstrated that, even when settlers succeeded in monopolizing commodity production and its marketing, it was only a result of their superior technology and a grasp of the environmental conditions. The colonial state had fought along with them against African endeavours. Ian Phimister's works could not be more revealing of the wickedness of the capitalist system of production along with political support.7 In all these instances Africans were headed to barren areas where they could not support themselves economically and otherwise so that they came to depend on working either on farms or mines for a livelihood. In South Africa, `kaffir farming' had been yet another pre-capitalist mode of production used by white farmers to supplement the capitalist mode of production.8 The system had worked well for some settlers but only to be discontinued in 1913 through the institutionalization of the Land Act. However after the Land Act settlers continued to receive state support in the form of finance through the establishment of the Land Bank which supported settler agriculture per se. There could be no better evidence to the widely circulated belief that capitalism is, by nature, selective and Gunner Myrdal's convictions that wherever development occurs there, at the same time, takes place underdevelopment.9 The South African experience fits well into this scheme of economic analysis, and anywhere in the world, as A.G. Frank has remarked on Latin America, the betterment of one section of a population does not necessarily mean the same improvement of all, particularly to the same degree.10 In South Africa there were cases where African growers had entered into `kaffir farming' with settlers but, though such Africans became better compared to those who worked on farms as employees and those who remained on reserves to eke out a living, the mere fact that the output was shared in such a way that the landlord kept the lion's share shows the exploitative nature of the system. The owner of the land did not contribute even an iota of energy towards production save that of inputs but, at harvest time, he determined the nature of the distribution and made sure that the African did not become better so as to perpetuate the system.
While Colin Bundy's original work on the peasantry provided his readers with that rare approach to South African history, its weakness was its failure to see any successful resistance by Africans of the system which underdeveloped them, particularly the intervention of the colonial state. For that the reason Bundy saw the `peasantry' in South Africa being mobilised by the state into a mould from it could extract as much produce as was required and, when settler agriculture recouped,11 it was the same state that successfully closed market doors on the Africans. In that way the South African `peasantry' fell. Bundy ends his study with this fall leaving his leaders to wonder if that marked the complete demise of the peasantry, if it did recoup and, if so, at what point, how long and what assisted it to get up to its feet.
Using a similar approach, where a capitalist mode of production is employed in an attempt to understand how it helped settlers to monopolise production and marketing, paper examines the introduction and development of cotton production in Swaziland. However, since the paper takes Swazi challenge of the system that sought to frustrate their endeavours as the central them, the discussion begins with 1911 when such challenges began to flicker and, in order to redeem themselves along with their subversive system, settlers organised their racist association to serve as their mouth piece.
No work of this nature has been undertaken in Swaziland. The exception that of J.S. Crush, A. Booth and others which, however, tends to rely too heavily on sources and views of the colonial officials.12 This dependence on the latter sources is also reflected in their studies of Swazi labour and the struggle for it. There is a gap in their works on he impact of colonialism on the indigenous producers because recruiters of labour were selective in enticing young and able bodied men to south Africa and to some local capitalist institutions. The present study is concerned with history at the grassroots and not at a bourgeois level.13
While the South African and Rhodesian (Zimbabwean) experiences demonstrated direct and open state intervention in the production process to rescue settler agriculture from being throttled by African aggressive competition, the Swazi case did not experience the same development.14 Whatever state assistance of settlers against Swazi growers there was it was not gazetted to make it official and public. State financial institutions were not made available to the settlers but outside assistance through the state was possible and it was secured. However, in spite of that calibre of state collusion with settler producer, the Swazi experience does not demonstrate the final doom of local Swazi attempts at commodity production. There was an attempt to incorporate the Swazi into settler agricultural economies, especially those experts which involved commodity production and marketing. The post-World War One period, when alternative marketing facilities were made available, African producers resisted wholesale incorporation.
Having been introduced into Swaziland by the Swaziland Corporation Ltd., through Miller the local manager of the latter Company, cotton had expanded to other prospective growers like the Henderson Consolidate Corporation Ltd., at Balegane.15 There were some settler farmers who were also attracted to the cultivation of cotton and who had begun its production by 1906 and, among them, was Frank Bucham at Croydon who began to grow it in 1904 at the same time as the Swaziland Corporation.16 Captain G. Wallis, S. Sandeman and other settler farmers are believed to have begun to cultivate cotton by 1906, although most of them produced the crop on a small scale due mainly to the crop's remote market.17 Yet another seemingly strong explanation for the slow expansion of the commodity in terms of the number of growers who cultivated it and the limited lands under which it was grown was the lack of capital and labour. Another obstacle to the rapid expansion of the crop at least as far as production was concerned, were the transport costs which, when considered along with production costs, made the profits appear unencouraging.18
In order to solve the labour costs both individual settler producers and companies are reported to have employed women and children whose wages were very low compared to those of men.19 However, some companies who had tenants on their holdings used labour which was semi pre-capitalist in nature. This made the incentive to work hard to jerk up output to meet market demands remain at its lowest ebb. The condition of employment were not conducive for hard working simply because tenants believed that they had no alternative but to work for their landlords. In short, the conditions of service had not been agreed upon by both parties affected; rather they were imposed on the tenants by landlords. Such work conditions were equivalent to Mike Morris' `corvee' conditions in the South African case where resistance20 though not openly exposed, particularly in the countryside, seemed to have successfully attracted the attention of the masters. Only in British colonial Africa were conditions of service arrived at following an amicable discussion between employer and worker. Where an option was left to the employer either to accept or reject the work along with its deplorable conditions, the fiscal obligations of the colonised were such that employment was eventually accepted unflinchingly along with its debased conditions of service.21
However, in those enterprises where women and children were employed at a wage of 6d per day22 to perform weeding and picking, supervision was fairly easy in that there were no cases of confrontation due to low wages and inhospitable conditions of service; rather resistance assumed a subtle passive stance. Work was done at a slow pace and the quality of the crop was deliberately rendered low through mixing it with dry plant leaves.23 Sometimes clean cotton was mixed with stained one to make it imperative for the producer to undertake a clean up exercise before baling it for the market. These production problems incurred other costs which were borne by the producer. It became clear that the employment of women and children was no solution to the failure to secure male labour as shown above and, as a consequence, settlers sought to dilute their capitalist mode of production by absorbing Swazi males to the cotton business but not as a labourers on private settler farms. It had become clear to settlers that capital was scarce to allow them to retain the `civilized' capitalist system of production. Swazi male growers were encouraged by some settlers to produce cotton on Swazi Nation Land on different types of contracts. One of these was that the Swazi grower could sell his crop to the settler and, although the price was very low, it appears that those Swazis who entered into this arrangement accepted the terms of trade. The other was that as a result of the Swazi involvement in the cotton industry, they could now have access to settler grazing grounds and other rewards. Some settlers were opposed to these developments, and they sough means of ripping the arrangement in the bud through the formation of a ripping the arrangement in the bud through the formation of an European Settler Farmer Association in 1911,24 the purpose of which is discussed below.
The formation of the Settler Farmer Association had been motivated by the need to protect the racist settler farmer interests against African (Swazi) participation in cotton production, and to seek means to enforce a law that would thwart settler economic cooperation with Swazi growers, and equivalent of the `kaffir farming' system then commonly used in South Africa.25 In fact it was as a result on settler reliance of Swazi growers for cotton that Swazi independent cultivation of cotton mushroomed on Swazi Nation Land, particularly that which lay adjacent to settler farms. Most settler farmers had found it cheaper to encourage some Swazi growers to produce cotton and sell it to them. However, disgruntled elements within the settler community objected to such a development although this opposition was proved to be futile. The Association did not indulge in the issues which surrounded Swazi production of cotton for some settlers. The main source of settler opposition to coopting some Swazi growers was that Swazi farming methods were underdeveloped and that, because of that, insects, which worried the industry, would multiply rapidly and hinder the business. However, due to the lack of concrete evidence, the Farmers' Association found it very difficult to identify directly with settler attempt to frustrate Swazi production of cotton for some settlers.26
Leading among the cotton growing areas in early 1910s was the Hlatikulu region which had become the pillar of settler racist attitudes towards Swazi cotton growers. Several representations were made to the Resident Commissioner as early as 1911 about the danger of allowing Swazi growers to cultivate cotton.27 Somehow the Resident Commissioner was aware that Swazi cotton cultivators grew the crop under the close surveillance of consumers, the settlers. As a market for Swazi grown cotton, settlers were not only interested in the purchase of the commodity but had gone to the extent of supervising the whole production process in order to ensure that the right quality of the crop was produced. European supervision at this juncture need not be understood to mean that the incentive to produce the crop had been presented by settlers. In certain cases this was true but, in general, Swazi growers had taken the initiative to cultivate the crop because they knew that settlers would purchase it. However, even in the latter cases, settler intervention to assist in the production process was not shunned by Swazi cultivators, and the main explanation for this attitude was that the cultivators wanted to maintain a ``gold mine" trade relationship with their market, the settlers. Limitation on marketing facilities had made Swazi growers accept settler terms of purchasing their cotton. In fact, Swazi grower response to market demands for cotton had ben presented by the need for money with which to settle their fiscal obligation particularly among those who resisted selling their labour power to settler farms locally and to South African mining and agricultural industries.28
In the Mtsambam area of Hlatikulu where the Settler Farmers Association was most active in thwarting Swazi cotton cultivation, there had come into existence more than ten small scale cotton growers by 1913.29 Because of the limited nature of the financial needs such as tax, Swazi growers had limited their cotton to the maximum of one acre per grower, and its expansion had depend on the conducive nature of the terms of trade. The latter often came from those settler farmers who depended largely on Swazi cotton to satisfy the market demand. There are indications that Swazi cotton cultivation went up in some instances because of the settler offer of good prices which were at one sixteenth pence per pound. The level of production was determined by the terms of trade which the settlers offered to the growers most of whom seem to have expanded their cotton fields due to the profitability of the crop. In itself this is a clear indication that Swazi growers were already alive to the economics of production and marketing, and had avoided expanding production of a commodity whose market price was unprofitable. Though the Swazi grew their cotton on rent-free Swazi Nation Land where they employed family labour, when one considers the extent of the production, the labour time invested was often weighed against the returns to arrive at the profitability and vice versa of the enterprize. However crude the Swazi means of evaluating the unprofitability of cotton production were, the resisted settler pressure on them to increase the land planted with cotton.30
At the outbreak of World War One, the world market price of cotton was revived. However, the price increase did not affect Swazi growers positively since the settler price for their cotton remained at the pre-war level.31 The Settlers had exploited the ignorance of their clients in this case to their benefit. In fact the price increase had been necessitated by the amount of market demand since cotton had been used as explosives in the war.32 It is not clear whether the British Cotton Growing Association formed an Empire Cotton Growing Committee in 191733 in response to the demand for cotton by those who manufactured explosives. There is no doubt however, that the unquestionable need for the formation of the Empire insatiable demand for cotton in Great Britain. What is significant to the discussion is that the Cotton Committee went a long way towards meeting some of the needs of the Swazi growers by setting up a demonstration plot at Hlatikulu where Swazi cultivators received some technical education. This development reinforced Swazi grower challenge of settler monopoly over cotton production in particular. It was in reaction to the Cotton Committee's support for Swazi production of the commodity that settler farmers held various meetings where they resolved to paralyse these attempts. In the lobby for the support of the colonial state the settlers stated that Swazi cultivation of cotton would leave them with a precarious labour supply.34
The settler resolution to express their genuine concern over Swazi cotton production was due to their failure in the earlier part of the 1910s to secure the support of the state. In 1913, they used the spread of insects harmful to cotton as the excuse for frustrating Swazi endeavour35 but, when they realised that the state dismissed those excuses easily, the labour issue was brought up. It is important to note that settlers were fighting a battle on two fronts, that is, at the same time they sought to frustrate Swazi cotton production in favour of food crops such as maize, they also struggled to curb Swazi labour migration to South Africa. Settlers expected the colonial state to put forth `nationalistic' explanations for the localization of all unskilled labour which, they argued, ought to be employed on cotton and other settler enterprises. Such a view was meant to protect local enterprises whose financial positions were weaker than those of South Africa and could not compete in an open labour market. It is important to mention that amidst all these attempts to legalise the exclusion of Swazi growers from cotton production were attempts by some settlers to continue to encourage Swazi cultivation of the crop on their behalf, an equivalent of the south African `kaffir farming' system. They pressed for this even as late as 1920 but, by this time, Swazi Cotton cultivation had expanded as far as Nietgegund and Dwaleni in the south near present day Nhlangano.36
It was in the same year (1920) that W.B. Wilson, a Cotton Specialist, was employed by the colonial state to promote cotton growing in the territory. Having had a brief stint in Zululand as a cotton specialist, Wilson was already aware of racial problems which arose from cut-throat competition for the market. Upon assumption of his duties in Swaziland, Wilson encountered racial friction between Swazi growers and settler farmers. The Resident Commissioner had watered down settler complaint that labour power was in danger of becoming scarce and that Swazi production of cotton was to multiply pests harmful to the crop. By 1920 the settlers had added yet another dimension and that was Swazi cotton cultivators were thieves who stole settler cotton to swell their meager production. They argued that theft of settler cotton was spread throughout Nietgegund and Dwaleni.37
During the First World War and immediately thereafter a group of educated Swazi growers also began to cultivate cotton. These were pastors of religion who belonged to the Evangelical Alliance Faith, and they begun cotton cultivation following Missionary Jackson's encouragement. Among them were the Rev. P. Twala of Sandleni, Rev. E. Dludlu of Ngoloweni and Rev. E.M. Dlamini of Ngudzeni. These pastors were heads of he sub-stations of Mhlosheni Mission Station, headquarter of the Faith in Swaziland.38 Cotton growing by the pastors was already expanding by the early 1920s not because of Wilson's encouragement or the technical assistance he offered but it was due to the fact that they had realised that cotton offered a secure alternative source of cash to labour migration. These pastors defied settler opposition to cotton cultivation through the 1920s.39 They set up demonstration plants on their fields where they displayed to their church members and other interested growers the various stages of cotton production. Paramount among these lessons was the need to ensure that cotton fields stayed clean of weeds, and cotton was sprayed frequently to prevent the spread of harmful insects and to avoid mixing up stained and clean cotton at the picking stage.
The relevance of these schemes, whose initiative lay with the indigenous pastors, was to encourage Swazi men to use the farming of cotton as the source of income. In their programme, the pastors had aimed to divert able bodied Swazi men from migrating to South Africa to invest the labour power in what they termed economic development of their areas. Secondly, the pastors aimed curbing the already endemic social dislocation of families which had been created, and continued to be exacerbated, by the protracted periods of absence of heads of families in industrial South Africa. The influence of the pastors in their awareness soon received the attention of cotton consumers particularly the Veterinary Department which handled agricultural matters until 1928 when a department for the latter section was established.40 In fact it was the Swaziland Power Company which formed in 1923 and established a gin at Bremersdorp (Manzini) in the same year that purchased Swazi cotton through the Veterinary Department.41 In short, the marketing facilities were improved by the Power Company to purchase cotton irrespective of who had produced it. However, in those areas where the Power Company had no agent, growers continued to sell to settlers because the latter owned private transport. The impact of the Power Company remained strong in Manzini than in the southern part of the territory.
It was also in the mid 1920s that other cotton purchasing agents appeared both in Manzini and in the south, that is, the Hlatikulu-Nhlangano area. These agents transported the crop by means of South African public transport which operated between certain points in Swaziland and some towns such as Piet Retief in South Africa.42 This development went a long way towards injecting interest into the Swazi growers, hence the noise made by some settlers that the cotton sold by Swazi growers was stolen from their farms. Most records are silent on Swazi growers' views about the allegations of theft on settler farms, but oral evidence points towards a different direction. Settlers are alleged to have assumed that acquiring Swazi grown cotton by fraud did not represent theft while Swazi retrieval of their defrauded cotton was theft. This both parties were directly involved in cheating each other.43
When assessed objectively both production and marketing conditions appear to have thwarted Swazi endeavours at cotton production in order to protect settler monopoly over these facilities. However, the decline of the world market of cotton along with that of other commodities in the 1929-31 period forced settler dominance to the background because the business was no longer profitable.44 It was at that point that the colonial state stepped in to encourage Swazi production of cotton on the principle that, since the latter depended on pre-capitalist means of production even at the slumped price levels, the Swazi could make a profit.
It is clear from the foregoing discussion that settler illusion of commanding a superior and more efficient technology for production commodities proved futile. It is crucial to note that to maximise production in order to respond positively and effectively to market demands, the settlers failed to use capital appropriately and, instead, they turned to African producers to supplement their meager and diminishing commodities. In Swaziland this type of arrangement was disrupted by those Swazi entrepreneurs who challenged settler monopoly over commodity production.
1. J. Lonsdale & B. Berman, "Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895-1914' Journal African History 20. 4 (1979) pp. 488-90; D. Anderson and D. Throup, "Africans and Agricultural Production in Colonial Kenya: The Myth of the War as a Watershed", Journal of African History 26 (1985) pp. 327-331; E.A. Brett, Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa: The Politics of Economic Change, 1919-39 (London: Heinemann, 1971) pp.. 168-70; R.W. Wolff, The Economics of Colonialism: Britain and Kenya, 1870-1930 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974) pp.68-117.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Colin Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (London: Heinemann, 1979); W. Beinert and C. Bundy "State Intervention and Rural Resistance; The Transkei, 1900-1965, in M.A. Klein (ed) Peasants in Africa: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (London: Sage Publications, 1980) pp.271-316. M. Legassick in R. Palmer and N. Parsons (eds.) Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa (London: Heinemann, 1977) pp.201-220; H. Wolpe, "Capitalism and Cheap Labour-power in South Africa: From Segregation to Apartheid" Economy and Society 1 (1972) p.434; M. Morris, "The Development of Capitalism in South African Agriculture: Class Struggle in the Countryside" Economy and Society 5 (1975) pp.292-354.
6. See R. Palmer, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia (London: Heinemann, 1978); Richard Gray, The Two Nations (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), p.
7. Ian Phimister in R. Palmer & N. Parsons (eds) Roots, 1977, pp.255-267.
8. M. Wilson L. Thompson (eds) The Oxford History of South Africa Vol. 2 (Oxfor The Clarendon Press, 1971) pp.128-130; 182-183.
9. W. Elkan, An Introduction to Development Economics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973).
10. A.G. Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1969), pp.1-32.
11. P. Cooper, "Peasants, Capitalists and Historians: A Review Article" journal of Southern African Studies 7 (1980-81) pp.284-314.
12. J.S. Crush, The Struggle for Swazi Labour, 1890-1920 (Kingston: Queens-McGill Press, 1987); A.R. Booth, "Capitalism and Competition for Swazi Labour, 1945-60: Journal of Southern African Studies 13, 1, (1986) pp.125-50.
13. For an anthropologist's approach to similar problems see H. Kuper, The Uniform of Colour: A Study of White-Black Relations in Swaziland (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1947.
14. Ian Phimister, 1972, Op.cit.
15. B.A.B. Sikhondze, "The Development of Swazi Cotton Cultivation", Ph.D, University of London, 1989.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Mike Morris, 1975, Op.cit.
21. See Crush, Swazi Labour, 1987, Op.cit.
22. Sikhondze, 1989, Op.cit.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. M. Wilson & L. Thompson (eds) South Africa Vol. 2, 1971, pp.128-130.
26. SNA RCS 213/11 Miller Report on cultivation by settlers in Swaziland, 21 August, 1910.
27. SNA RCS 213/11 Resident Commissioner reply to the Secretary, Swaziland Farmers' Association 11 January, 1911.
28. SNA RCS 213/11 Settler Report on Swazi Cotton Cultivation in the Manzini district, March, 1911.
29. SNA RCS 275/14 Swaziland Farmers' Association to the Resident Commissioner, Objections to Swazi cultivation of cotton, 7 June, 1914.
30. SNA RCS 275/11 Swaziland Farmers' Association to the Resident Commissioner on sale of land to natives, 15 August, 1914; interview J.D. Scot, Luve, 13 February, 1982.
31. SNA RCS 383/17 Captain G.L. Walli's Resident Commissioner on Cotton Marketing in Swaziland, 17 February, 1913.
32. SNA RCS 383/17 Resident Commissioners' Report on the revival of the cotton market, 21 September, 1915.
33. SNA RCS 383/17 Resident Commissioner report on the Empire Cotton Growing Committee 17 November, 1917.
34. B. Sikhondze, 1989, p.25.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., SNA RCS 320/20 Resident Commissioner response to Pringle, 20 December, 1920.
37. B. Sikhondze, 1989, pp.34-35.
38. Ibid. pp.42-45.
39. Interview Elaine Dludlu, Ngologweni, 16 June, 1986: Mavis Masuku, Ngologweni, 16 June, 1986.
40. Alan Pim, Financial and Economic Situation of Swaziland (London: H.M. Stationary Officer, 1932) p.27.
41. SNA RCS 338/23 Swaziland Power Company to the Resident Commissioner on the cotton market, 10 September, 1923.
42. Sikhondze, 1989, pp.42-45.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.