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Slavery, Social incorporation and surplus extraction; the nature of free and unfree labour in South-East Africa1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Patrick Harries
Patrick Harries
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
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Extract

This essay questions the generally held view that the northern Nguni were not involved in the slave trade. It is shown that elements of the Ngwane (Swazi), Ndwandwe (Gaza and Jere) and possibly Mthethwa (Zulu) confederations were involved in the sale of slaves captured in the hinterlands of Lourenço Marques and Inhambane. In the 1840s the terms of the slave trade turned against suppliers as British and anti-slavery activities caused a rise in slavers' overheads, a surfeit of saleable slaves on the coast and a consequent price drop. The export of slaves through Lourenço Marques and Inhambane became unprofitable as the two trading posts were unable to compete with the safer embarkation points north of the Zambezi. As the export of slaves from the coastal settlements south of the Zambezi declined, the trade from this area took on a new form as engagé labour for the Indian Ocean islands and as non-contracted and unprotected ‘migrant’ labour for Natal and Kimberley. Slave suppliers ceased to sell slaves for export through Lourenço Marques and Inhambane because far higher prices could be obtained from Transvaal Boers and from domestic purchasers. But it was the rise of domestic slavery in the Gaza state that finally ended the maritime export of slaves as by the 1860s, with the loss of labour through warfare and increasingly through migrant labour, it was more profitable to use slaves locally than to export them.

Domestic slavery in the Gaza state is treated as a dynamic social relationship in which the slave, as against the kinsman, had no rights and was consequently entirely dependent upon his master for his means of production and reproduction. It was this dependence which resulted in the extreme exploitation defined here as slavery. Slavery should not be seen merely in a functionalist sense as a form of socio-political incorporation aimed at expanding the size of the ruling group. In a society controlled by kinship rights and obligations, slavery provided a man with a means of accumulating wealth and attracting followers. Thus slave labour was realized in the form of repatriated wages; female children born of concubines provided their fathers with brideprices while male children had limited kinship rights and were therefore more exploitable than ‘legal’ offspring. Slave labour also released Gaza Nguni women from agricultural work and allowed them to concentrate on the child-producing and child-raising activities that ensured a putative Gaza Nguni ‘purity’ and, consequently, the perpetuation of the exploitative structure of Gaza society.

In a society that had no concept of ‘free’ labour, i.e. labour freed from its former means and relations of production, the distinction between slave and non-slave labour was often blurred, and a disadvantaged kinsman could hypothetically be materially worse off than a slave. Zulu and Swazi forms of servility are examined and are shown to have been only marginally different from Gaza slavery. From this it is deduced that Gaza slavery had its roots in the relations of production taken northwards from the Nguni area. Slavery is seen as a new and more exploitative social relationship that arose in response to the emergence of new forms of production in southern Mozambique.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , July 1981 , pp. 309 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

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22 In Mauritius, the ‘Mozambiquer’ community in 1828 consisted of 15,444 males and 3,713 females. A similarly disproportionate ratio of male to female slaves is to be found in vessels passing the Cape. Parliamentary Papers: Slave Trade, vol. 76 (1828–9), Report of Commission of Inquiry upon the slave trade at Mauritius, 12 March 1828, p. 26. Cape Archives, G.H. 28/1. Enclosure to Dispatch 45, Court of Commissioner 24 April 1808; G.H. 23/5, Somerset to Bathurst, 21 May 1818.

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76 Haig-Smellie, in South Africa (weekly), 2 02 1889.Google Scholar

77 JSA, file 72, pp. 3–6, evidence of Inkando. My thanks to John Wright for drawing my attention to this reference. The families of young girls taken into the isigodlo received no material rewards for their loss. See Mael, R., ‘The Problem of Political Integration in the Zulu Empire’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1974), 43Google Scholar. See also Doke, C. M. and Vilikazi, B. W., Zulu-English Dictionary (Johannesburg, 1953).Google Scholar

78 Kuper, Hilda, An African Aristocracy (London, 1947), 67–8Google Scholar; Bryant, , Zulu People, 444, 546, 553, 557, 576–7, 604.Google Scholar

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80 Leslie, David, Among the Zulus and ama Tongas (Glasgow, 1875), 258Google Scholar; NA/I.I. 1/5 NDR, Contractors to P.I., 1 August 1878; Parl. Papers, 1879, 1.11 (C. 2220), no. 66 and correspondence.

81 Ibid, (evidence of Undawo of Sobana), 187.

82 NA/SNA 1/1/25, no. 54: returns of Zulus entering and leaving the colony; see also SNA 1/1/38, 208/80, SNA 1/1/41, 615/50, SNA 1/1/48, 480/81; Gibson, J. V., The Story of the Zulus (London, 1911), 222–3.Google Scholar

83 NA/CSO 787. 3373/80 Br. Res. to High Commissioner, 10 November 1880, encl. in SNA to Lt. Gov., 21 September 1880.

84 NA/SNA 1/1/42, 648/80, Findley to SNA, 30 October 1880; ZGH 725, Res. Comm., Zululand and Governor, 28 October 1889; Times of Natal, 23 October 1889.

85 Interview with Muhlavaze Makwakwa, Manjacaze. My thanks to Gerhard Liesegang for access to this transcript. Fuller, C. E., ‘Ethnohistoric study’, 101–2.Google ScholarPostscript. With reference to n. 75 (p. 326 above), it is of interest that the account book of an Indo-Portuguese trader working between Lourenco Marques and the Zoutpansberg shows a sudden influx of seventeen slaves in 1863. This would coincide with the Swazi raids on the Delagoa Bay hinterland. A male child (‘Boy pequeno’) sold for between £10 and £30 and an adult male (‘Boy’) for up to £60. (Account book of Manuel da Gama, private MS; Junod, , Life, 1, 150).Google Scholar