was plenty of both – you too would have seen little reason to work for a wage. In the late nineteenth century, Europeans were attracted to Africa due to its vast resources of land and minerals. Europeans came to Africa hoping to establish plantations and mines to produce crops and minerals for export to Europe. But there was an unexpected problem – a shortage of labour willing to work for wages.
Employers used many methods to recruit and retain labour. Heavy taxes were imposed which could be paid only by working for wages on plantations and mines. Inheritance laws were changed so that Fig. – Transport to the Transvaal gold mines, The Graphic , .
Crossing the Wilge river was the quickest method of transport to the gold fields of Transvaal. After the discovery of gold in Witwatersrand, Europeans rushed to the region despite their fear of disease and death, and the difficulties of the journey. By the 1890s, South Africa contributed over per cent of the world gold production. Fig.
— Diggers at work in the Transvaal gold fields in South Africa, The Graphic, . peasants were displaced from land: only one member of a family was allowed to inherit land, as a result of which the others were pushed into the labour market. Mineworkers were also confined in compounds and not allowed to move about freely. Then came Rinderpest, a devastating cattle disease.
Rinderpest arrived in Africa in the late 1880s. It was carried by infected cattle imported from British Asia to feed the Italian soldiers invading Eritrea in East Africa. Entering Africa in the east, rinderpest moved west ‘like forest fire’, reaching Africa’s Atlantic coast in . It reached the Cape (Africa’s southernmost tip) five years later.
Along the way rinderpest killed per cent of the cattle. The loss of cattle destroyed African livelihoods. Planters, mine owners and colonial governments now successfully monopolised what scarce cattle resources remained, to strengthen their power and to force Africans into the labour market. Control over the scarce resource of cattle enabled European colonisers to conquer