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‘The Natives are always stealing’: white vigilantes and the ‘reign of terror’ in the Orange Free State, 1918–24*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Martin J. Murray
Martin J. Murray
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Binghamton
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Extract

During the formative years of capitalist agriculture, white farmers in the Orange Free State relied on both legal and extra-legal means to create a docile labour force of African workers. Coercive laws were a necessary component in the overall process of fashioning a rural working class out of quasi-independent squatter communities. Yet, no matter how repressive, the legal system alone was not sufficient to ensure work-discipline and docility on the white-owned farms. Frustrated with their inability to force African farm labourers to work diligently and to prevent them from deserting the farms, white farmers frequently turned to indiscriminate violence to sow terror amongst the dispossessed African rural population. White vigilantes formed a kind of paramilitary wing of the white farming class. While the state authorities never officially sanctioned vigilantism, those white farmers who used violence to intimidate their African labourers had little to fear with respect to prosecution, let alone conviction. Yet despite all their efforts to break the will of rural Africans, white farmers lived in continued fear of ‘native risings’. Rural Africans, too, remembered: the shooting incidents that occurred in the Orange Free State were indelibly etched in the collective memory of the emergent rural working class.

Type
Other Articles
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 107 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

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21 The Natal Advertiser, 11 May 1918, ‘Shooting Natives in Free State’.

22 CAD, NTS 7659, 10/332(i), C. W. Pritchard, RM, Lindley District, to the Minister for Native Affairs, Pretoria, 10 August 1918.

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24 CAD, NTS 7659, 10/332(i), Ibid.

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26 CAD, NTS 7659, 10/332(1), Acting RM, Frankfort, O.F.S., to the Secretary for Justice, Pretoria, 22 May 1919.

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28 Ibid.

29 CAD, JUS 5/242/16. RM, Frankfort, to the Secretary for Justice, Pretoria, 22 May 1919; CAD, JUS 5/242/16: Head Constable, SAP, Frankfort, to the District Commandment, SAP, Bethlehem, 7 June 1919.

30 Diamond Fields Advertiser (Kimberley), 20 06 1918Google Scholar, ‘Free State Natives’.

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43 Physical assaults, shootings and killings of farm labourers took place throughout the rural districts with frightening regularity. European farmers had little to fear from all-white juries of their peers. Acquittals were commonplace. See, for example, The Star (Johannesburg), 3 02 1923Google Scholar, ‘Shot at native girl’; Rand Daily Mail, 11 May 1918, ‘Tied to a tree and thrashed’; Rand Daily Mail, 13 December 1919, ‘Elliot murder charge’; and Rand Daily Mail, 13 September 1919, ‘Native's death from a bullet wound’.

44 CAD, NTS 7659, 10/332(i), Memorandum from G. Cole Bown, RM, Kroonstad District, to the Secretary for Justice, Pretoria, 26 November 1920 [Confidential].

45 Ibid.

46 CAD, JUS 5/242/16. RM, Jacobsdal, to the Secretary for Justice, Pretoria, 6 December 1920.

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51 CAD, JUS 5/242/16. G. S. Beer, Deputy Commissioner, SAP, Bloemfontein, to the Secretary, SAP, Pretoria, 30 December 1920.

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54 CAD, JUS 5/242/16. H. L. duToit, Zout Pan, to the RM, Jacobsdal, 23 November 1920.

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57 CAD, JUS 5/242/16. RM, Lindley, to the Secretary for Justice, Pretoria, 26 January 1021; and Enclosure: ‘Resolution’, E. J. Brolin, Chairman, Lindley Road, 12 December 1920.

58 CAD, JUS 5/242/16. RM, Lindley District, to the Secretary for Justice, Pretoria, 26 January 1921.

59 Ibid.

60 CAD, JUS 5/242/16. W. E. Bok, Secretary for Justice, Pretoria, to the RM, Lindley District, 28 January 1921.

61 CAD, JUS 5/242/16. RM, Lindley District, to the Secretary for Justice, Pretoria, 26 January 1921.

62 Ibid.

63 See, for example, CAD, JUS 5/242/16. T.J.Butler, Secretary, Springfontein Farmers' Association, ‘Resolution’, addressed to the Honourable F. S. Malan, Acting Prime Minister, House of Assembly, Cape Town, 23 April 1919.

64 CAD, JUS 5/242/16. RM, Lindley District, to the Secretary for Justice, Pretoria, 26 January 1921.

65 CAD, NTS 7205, 23/326, Peter Motiyane, General Secretary, O.F.S. Native Congress, Kgorovale, Thaba'Ncho, O.F.S., to the SNA, Pretoria, 3 April 1924.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid.

68 CAD, NTS 7205, 23/326, SNA, Pretoria, to the Attorney-General, Bloemfontein, 11 April 1924. Extract from telegram from Secretary, Vigilance Committee, to General Secretary, Native Congress, Thaba'Nchu, 8 April 1924.

69 CAD, NTS 7205, 23/326. Head Constable, SAP, Vrede, to the District Commandant, SAP, Bethlehem, 5 August 1924.

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