The Political Economy of Food Production and Nutrition in Southern Africa in Historical Perspective

David J. Webster

doi:10.1017/S0022278X00007114

The Political Economy of Food Production and Nutrition in Southern Africa in Historical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008

David J. Webster

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The abundant health enjoyed by these people [the Xhosa] must undoubtedly be principally ascribed to the simple food on which they live: milk, the principal dish, which is supplied in abundance by numerous herds of cows; meat, mostly roasted; corn, millet and watermelons, prepared in different ways, appease hunger… —Ludwig Alberti (1807)1 The tuberculosis scourge is undoubtedly on the upgrade in the Native Territories and especially in this district with its high rainfall and congested population. Unsatisfactory conditions of living and nutrition are amongst the chief factors in spreading malnutrition… the former accounted, I'm afraid, for a considerable infant mortality and pellagralike conditions among the adults.

Type: Articles
Information: The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 447 - 463

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X00007114 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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^{Page 447 note 1} Ludwig Alberti's Account of Tribal Life and Customs of the Xhosa in 1807, translated by Fehr, W. (Cape Town, 1967), p. 22.Google Scholar

^{Page 447 note 2} Fox, F. W. and Black, D., A Preliminary Survey of the Agricultural and Nutritional Problems of the Ciskei and Transkeian Territories with Special Reference to their Bearing on the Recruiting of Labourers for the Mining Industry (Johannesburg, 1938), p. 176.Google Scholar

^{Page 448 note 1} Ibid. p. 100.

^{Page 448 note 2} Monica, Wilson and Leonard, Thompson (eds.), The Oxford History of South Africa, Vol. I, South Africa to 1870 (Oxford, 1969), p. 80.Google Scholar

^{Page 449 note 1} Ibid. p. 83.

^{Page 449 note 2} Ludwig Alberti's Account of… the Xhosa in 1807, p. 23.

^{Page 449 note 3} Ibid. p. 24.

^{Page 449 note 4} The Diary of Henry Francis Fynn (Pietermaritzburg, 1950), pp. 303–6.Google Scholar

^{Page 450 note 1} See Sansom, Basil, ‘Traditional Economic Systems’, in Hammond-Tooke, W. D. (ed.), The Bantu-Speaking Peoples of Southern Africa (London and Boston, 1974 edn.), p. 153.Google Scholar

^{Page 450 note 2} Quinn, P. J., Foods and Feeding Habits of the Pedi (Johannesburg, 1959), p. 269.Google Scholar The reference to Ellenberger was: Ellenberger, D. F., History of the Basuto: ancient and modern (London, 1912).Google Scholar

^{Page 450 note 3} The calorific intake for women and children was much less, and in busy times a man would consume about half the total calculated. Quin, op. cit. p. 261.

^{Page 451 note 1} Sahlins, Marshall, Stone Age Economics (London, 1972), chs. 2 and 3.Google Scholar

^{Page 451 note 2} Ibid. p. 83.

^{Page 452 note 1} Brett, E. A., Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa: the politics of economic change, 1919–1939 (London, 1973), p. vii.Google Scholar

^{Page 453 note 1} Barber, William, The Economy of British Central Africa (Manchester, 1961), p. 93.Google Scholar

^{Page 453 note 2} See, for example, Samir, Amin (ed.), Modern Migration in Western Africa (Oxford, 1974),Google Scholar and Frank, André Gunder, The Sociology of Development and the Underdevelopment of Sociology (London, 1971).Google Scholar

^{Page 454 note 1} Bundy's, Colin seminal work on The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (London, 1979) is perhaps the best known piece,Google Scholar and Murray, Colin, ‘Keeping House in Lesotho’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1976, is also valuable.Google Scholar

^{Page 455 note 1} Bundy, Colin, ‘The Emergence and Decline of a South African Peasantry’, in African Affairs (London), 71, 285, 10 1982, p. 374.Google Scholar

^{Page 455 note 2} Ibid. pp. 376–7.

^{Page 455 note 3} Ibid. p. 377.

^{Page 455 note 4} See Murray, op. cit.; Bundy, op. cit.; and Delius, Peter, ‘Migrant Labour and the Pedi before 1869’, in Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Collected Seminar Papers (London), 21, 1977.Google Scholar

^{Page 456 note 1} Claasens, Aninka, ‘The Nature of Early Black/White Contact in South Africa’, 1977.Google Scholar

^{Page 456 note 2} Murray, op. cit. p. 15, quoting a statement by a late nineteenth-century missionary as recorded in Germond, R. C., Chronicles of Basutoland (Morija, 1967), p. 319.Google Scholar

^{Page 457 note 1} Murray, op. cit. pp. 15–16.

^{Page 457 note 2} Ibid. pp. 17–18 and 21.

^{Page 458 note 1} Amin, op. cit. p. 103.

^{Page 459 note 1} Fox and Black, op. cit. p. 1.

^{Page 459 note 2} Ibid. p. 35.

^{Page 460 note 1} Ibid. p. 43.

^{Page 460 note 2} Ibid. pp. 44–5.

^{Page 460 note 3} Ibid. pp. 108–20.

^{Page 461 note 1} Ibid. pp. 171–2.

^{Page 461 note 2} Ibid. p. 175.

^{Page 461 note 3} Ibid. p. 313.

^{Page 461 note 4} Quin, op. cit. p. 274.

^{Page 462 note 1} Ibid. pp. 274–5.

^{Page 462 note 2} Stadler, Alf, ‘Birds in the Cornfields: squatter movements in Johannesburg, 1944–1947’, in Belinda, Bozzoli (ed.), Labour, Townships and Protest (Johannesburg, 1979), pp. 19–48.Google Scholar

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