ABSTRACT
It has become the praƸtice, in recent years, to start discussions on native economic conditions by dividing the natives into three classes : reserve natives, natives on European farms, and detribalized natives. This is a very inconvenient classification, 1 corresponding to no real social or economic distinƸtions. By no means all of the reserve natives are tribalized. Such important peoples as the Fingos have no chiefs, while the extension of individual tenure has meant that many a reserve native has not, as is popularly supposed, “ tribal land to fall back on.” Of the natives on European-owned land, the woonkaffers, who form the permanent labour supply of the farms, are usually detribalized, but quite large numbers live a life almost as completely tribal as that of any in the reserves. In faƸt natives on European-owned land in the Northern Transvaal are amongst those least affeƸted by European civilization. The urban native is classed as “ detribalized ”, but this is not necessarily the case. 2 The inconvenience of the classification is thus manifest, and a truer piƸture is obtained by accepting the census classification of “ peasants ” (which includes those living the same sort of life whether within the reserves or not), “ agricultural labourers,” and other occupational groups. This preserves the most valid distinƸtion between the two classes of rural natives: those dwelling on lands farmed by Europeans subsist in the main on wages in cash and kind earned by work on the spot, supplemented in many cases by permission to grow crops on part of the farm and keep some livestock; those dwelling on land not occupied by Europeans subsist on their own produƸtion, supplemented by the wages earned by work for Europeans at a distance from their place of residence.
