Native Merchants: The building of the black business class in South Africa

By Phakamisa Ndzamela

Dispossession of fertile, mineral-rich land is correctly repeated as the root cause of the economic precarity of Black people in South Africa.
Colonial wars are rightly foregrounded but in a way that frames black people as having existed outside of organised enterprise.

This book builds and adds dimension to the picture of black people’s economic participation, taking the narrative from pre-colonial mining and spanning the colonial and apartheid periods, detailing tactics of economic exclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Sep 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9780624091622

Phakamisa Ndzamela

Phakamisa Ndzamela is an award-winning former business journalist for Thomson Reuters, Business Day, Financial Mail and Moneyweb. He holds a BA in journalism from the University of Witwatersrand and is currently reading for a Masters in business history at the University of Stellenbosch. He lives in Cape Town.

Book preview

9780624089810_FC

Phakamisa Ndzamela

NATIVE

MERCHANTS

The Building of the Black Business Class in South Africa

Tafelberg

In memory of my late father,

William ‘Dean’ Mziwoxolo Ndzamela, and

my mother, Portia ‘Zoe’ Ndzamela.

Introduction

The story of black business in South Africa remains underwritten. This book profiles the biographies of black people and communities who demonstrated impressive entrepreneurial and trading abilities both in the pre-colonial period and during the most difficult times of colonialism and apartheid.

As the book narrates economic activity in the pre-colonial and colonial period, ‘native’ refers largely to black people associated by birth to South Africa. However, it must be stated that the text does feature a few black merchants who were formerly enslaved people, brought to South Africa from other countries, as well as their descendants. The term ‘merchants’ is used simply to refer to people who sell goods and services regardless of the size of the operations.

Those definitions demonstrate the complexity and contestation of language when it comes to words defining identity in a sadly racialised society. The text makes reference to historical terms no longer acceptable. The author has retained these words to preserve the authenticity of the narrative and names of institutions.

In Native Merchants the reader meets black people involved in mining as merchants rather than as labourers during the Iron Age and subsequently during the diamond boom in the colonial period. These are stories of natives who engineered their own mining techniques and exploited the metals and stones in the belly of the earth long before the settlement of Europeans in what became South Africa.

By the fifth century AD, black people in southern Africa had demonstrated the skills to sink a shaft and excavate base and precious metals. These mineral resources were processed through indigenous smelters while some of the raw stock was traded locally and internationally.

Such commercial activities were not confined to our local context, of course. Around 900 BC African people like the Lem-Lem in Ghana were participating in barter trade. Africans had been trading their gold, which was in abundance, with Arabs on the banks of the Faleme River in West Africa. This was done in exchange for various Oriental products carried by the Arabs. There were proper economic systems including taxes on imported and exported goods and a currency that consisted of blocks of salt and gold pieces. Gold was sent to mints and turned into coins used for commercial exchange. Even a stock exchange existed in the city of Timbuktu in Mali.¹ Between 1405 and 1433, Chinese merchant fleets were visiting the African east coast area known as the Land of Zanj, which covered areas such as Kenya and Zanzibar.²

The book contains stories of black people in South Africa who took advantage of the discovery of diamonds. These black people lifted their picks, dug up and profited from the stones themselves.

Also documented is the story of the Khoe on the Cape shorelines who traded astutely with the Portuguese, the English and the Dutch before colonialism and slavery. These are indigenous people who placed a big premium on their livestock that Europeans sought to exchange for base metal.

Stories of entrepreneurial black women and men who owned vineyards, grainfields, livestock and enslaved people are all featured in the book, including a fascinating black woman who emerged from slavery in the seventeenth century to own the farm now known as the affluent Camps Bay in Cape Town. A business-minded group of formerly enslaved people also known as ‘Free Blacks’ arrived from West Africa and Asia, through the transatlantic slave trade. In the Cape they found a new home and became ancestors of what are now the Coloured, African and Afrikaner communities of South Africa. It is ironic that these people, after being liberated from enslavement, became slave owners and traders themselves, aping the conduct of their former oppressors. Some of these Free Blacks also employed white servants on their farms.

The participation of black people in the colonial, agriculturally based economy is documented. The characters discussed and their presence in history give us an opportunity to understand South Africa better, and to deal with stereotypes and complexes that see one group as superior to another.

✶ ✶ ✶

One of the issues confronted in the text is the often-repeated narrative in the post-liberation discourse of South Africa that the politically active and connected black business class after 1994 emerged as enterprise owners solely because of their proximity to the governing African National Congress (ANC) and its economic empowerment policies.

While there is a correlation between individuals connected to the ANC emerging as a class of wealthy businesspeople after 1994, it does not mean that this would not have happened without their membership or without the ANC assuming political power.

The fact is the leadership of the ANC (and its predecessor, the South African Native National Congress or SANNC) was always petit bourgeois, to paraphrase one of its leaders, Gaobakwe Joe Matthews. The other factor is that historically many leaders became wealthy before they joined the organisation. The origins of SANNC have been narrowed down to an elite group of missionary-educated professionals and chiefs, but no deep scholarly work has ever been done to locate these people at a business level.

The penchant for growling V8 engines did not suddenly originate because of the economic accumulation of a post-1994 society. In the early decades of the 1900s, the leadership of Congress travelled in burping sports coupés. Even before the arrival of motor vehicles, many of these leaders arrived at conferences in thundering cape carts pulled by the finest oxen and horses. They wore fine suits and owned substantial properties including two-storey houses and commercial farms. Again, this business class was mostly missionary educated. It built institutions from the bottom up with interests ranging from retail, restaurants, transport, hotels, media houses, laundry businesses and financial services.

The prevailing circumstances of discrimination dictated that this business elite be engaged in the politics of the liberation struggle, an injustice that distracted many from building empires. Our minds might imagine what might otherwise have happened to these businesses. The easy answer is that some would have survived to the present day as strong competitors. Others would have collapsed due to market forces, mismanagement and other factors that cause all businesses to fail.

What then of the expert who constantly chirps that the native must be grateful for the arrival of the colonial administrator? And who insists that black businesses would not exist had it not been for the mercies of imperialism with its missionary-based pedagogy? The commercial interests of the South African natives predate the arrival of colonialism, especially in mining, the bedrock of the wealth built by many European capitalists in South Africa.

While there is a correlation between missionary education and the rise of the early black business elite, it is important to locate the intention of this type of education. The bulk of the missionary education came at a time when imperial agents were fighting hard to dispossess black people of their fertile land and mineral resources. To the coloniser, the native was an uncontrollable savage. To ‘tame’ him, suitable methods were found.

When the Lovedale Missionary Institute was established in 1841 with eleven Africans and nine Europeans, Sir George Grey’s plan was to start a facility that sought to:

combat superstition by promoting Christianity; to shake native faith in witchcraft, and those who practised it by skilled medical aid; to overcome ignorance by native schools; and to counteract indolence by industrial training in various trades, and by employment on works of public utility.³

This book does not contain an exhaustive biographical list of all men and women who fit the description of ‘native merchant’, but a majority of those excavated were personalities who straddled commercial activity and political activism for the rights of black people in South Africa. This is an attempt to recover and narrate stories that remain hidden in our history.

1

African miners in the pre-colonial era and at the diamond fields

––––––––

Long before Europeans colonised the land now known as South Africa, mining activity took place in a period known as the Iron Age. In his work on pre-colonial history, the academic Thomas Huffman talks of the Early Iron Age, the period between AD 200-900, an agro-pastoral society; the Middle Iron Age in AD 900-1300, which refers to the Mapungubwe era and the Origins of Zimbabwe Culture; and then the Late Iron Age Period in AD 1300-1840 in Great Zimbabwe.⁴

As far back as the fifth century AD, natives were mining iron ore and smelting in Broederstroom, close to what is today the Hartebeespoort Dam in South Africa. Geologists in South Africa discovered millennia-old iron ore deposits and smelting furnaces dating back to the Iron Age period. They also found ancient workings of iron ore deposits in the hills of the Magaliesberg. The geologists have often argued that the minerals mined by the Iron Age people were shallow and not of high quality. But in other places, like Levubu in Makhado, the resources were richer. The VhaVenda had the celebrated Iron Mountains of Tshimbupfe near Levubu. They would embark on a two-day journey to acquire ore, carrying ripe corn stuffed into leather bags on their backs for bartering purposes. In turn the raw-hide sacks were used to measure the load for the ore. After the transaction, the minerals would then be carried back home and delivered to the smelter. The smelted iron was sent to the village smith who processed the raw material and turned it into axes and assegais.

In 1860, seven years before the famous diamond discovery, the explorer Thomas Baines had already recorded that Yzerberg near Pietersburg (now Polokwane) had been excavated, for many generations, by African people. Before the Iron Age softer ore, crushed and powdered, was mined in what is now South Africa. This was used for cosmetic products such as hair powder and for smearing the body. The Iron Age people also mined copper in the Musina and Phalaborwa areas and this was used to make a range of ornaments. When Europeans arrived and travelled the land, they discovered ancient mineshafts and adits in Phalaborwa. The shafts were estimated to be 21m deep. Ancient tin mines existed in the Waterberg district of the Northern Transvaal, now Limpopo, long before the arrival of Europeans. In 1919, a researcher called Baumann noted that the Iron Age people had extracted 18 000 tons of ore corresponding to about 1 000 tons of tin from the ancient tin mines.⁵

Africans girls were mining too

The translated Sesotho writings of Maseta Mamadi, a direct descendant of the Musina copper miners, describes African copper extraction operations in pre-colonial times. In explaining how the Musina people sank a shaft and shared the production proceeds, Mamadi notes:

The Musina people brought with them hammers and crowbars and bellows. The crowbar was for digging and was made of a piece of iron inserted into the end of a heavy stick. The bellows were made of a cow hide or the skin of an antelope. They also plaited very long cords of leather, which would not break. Then they made a big basket, tied the cords to it, and, getting into it, the sons of Musina went down the shaft. There they mined the copper, by the light of candles made of the leaves of the mokxote or mookxopho tree. Young men were sent to the mountains of Vendaland to fetch mokxote to make light when at work. Nevertheless, in spite of these things to help them, they followed a difficult trade. At that time there was neither girl nor youth nor man nor woman that stayed at home. The girls gathered the leaves of the mephane trees to make the fires with when drawing wire.

When they were mining the copper, they brought the ore to the surface in the skins of impala, buffalo or gnu. They brought the copper out in the form of stones or dust. The stones they then broke up with hammers and put into winnowing baskets. They winnowed this and eliminated the dust, so that only the copper remained, which they put into the crucibles and heated up. When the copper had melted in the crucibles, they had one or more holes prepared as moulds, and in the bottom of each they made several small holes. Then they took the crucibles and poured the molten contents into the moulds opening into the large hole, so that they filled up and overflowed so as to form one mass in the large hole. When the copper had cooled down, they pulled it out of the moulds. They then found it had formed little legs like a European pot and on top it looked like a lid; others again they made into headrests for chiefs. A large flat open space was prepared to put these ingots down, whereupon they would divide them upon their clans, so that each got his share of the production.⁶

There are varying views on how the shaft was sunk by the people of Musina. Some accounts indicate that ladders of thongs with wooden rungs were used to go deep into the belly of the earth. The people of Musina preferred children to be taught rock formations because hoeing the vegetable field was seen as less worthwhile. When the copper proceeds were shared, each beneficiary had various options regarding what to do with it. The girls also got their copper shares as they participated in the production process. People used their proceeds as they deemed fit. This included bartering for cattle and grain with other nations.

It was not always fun and games at the mining shafts of the Musina people. During the rule of Nkopetsekwa, a shaft collapsed in a fatal accident that crushed many bodies. Metallurgists and historians have struggled to find the exact dates for mining in Musina. But it is estimated that mining in Musina took place sometime in the first half of the second millennium AD.⁷ Although archaeologists do not give a specific date, they estimate that the period corresponded with production at other key sites such as the copper mines at Harmony (circa 1260 AD) and tin mine at Rooiberg (about 1515 AD). Apparently, the miners of Musina inherited the wrath of other African nations due to their surplus of pride and the disrespect they showed people who were not like them. This came at a cost to the lives of the Musina people.

The copper mining story was largely narrated to Mamadi by Raluthaga Musina in 1907. When the word was out that there was an abundance of copper, the Europeans came in looking for the owners of the mines. It is said that a man called Monyesakxoma, also known as Morongwa, was sent as a messenger to tell the people of Musina that government officials wanted the owner of the mine. The elder Raluthaga had aged and could not see the ‘government officials’. One of the Musina people, Makushu Tau, was accused of receiving some money from the enquirers as he claimed the mine was his. Raluthaga had worked on the mine and was present when the enemy ransacked them.⁸

In KwaZulu-Natal at a place called KwaGandaganda on the banks of Mngeni River, Iron Age mining was carried out in the period between the seventh and early eleventh centuries AD. The period was divided into three historical phases based on the ceramic style: the Msuluzi, the Ndondondwane, and by the ninth century, the Ntshekane. The mining activity at KwaGandaganda included copper and iron ore, smelting of slag and the shaping of slag, which is the stony waste matter separated from metals during smelting and refinement of ore. Researchers discovered iron working debris in KwaGandaganda, including ‘baked and vitrified mud furnace debris, broken tuyeres, unreduced ore and large pieces of charcoal’.⁹

Mapungubwe, which means ‘place of the jackal’, introduced many to a neglected history of African civilisation and commerce. Mapungubwe is situated between the Limpopo and Shashi rivers on the border of modern-day Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa. The African people who occupied Mapungubwe between AD 950 and 1250 were known as the Zhizo. European scholars were exposed to Mapungubwe in the 1930s.¹⁰

An African man known as Mowena led a group of European men to a hill of treasure where they found gold objects, beads and other jewellery items. One of the men was a young University of Pretoria student called JC van Graan, who had been hunting at a nearby farm with friends. During their expedition, they walked to a household in search of water. There they were served water in a very special container that piqued their interest. In enquiring about the jug, they were told about Mapungubwe. The young Van Graan then informed his father about the expedition. They returned with a group of men and coerced the African man Mowena into showing them where the treasures were. The encounter was then shared with the University of Pretoria’s history and archaeology departments.¹¹

Mapungubwe is known for its pre-colonial agriculture, ivory, copper and gold, and possibly cotton manufacturing and export trading. The goods also reached Zimbabwe, east Africa and down to the coast in Mozambique. The elite of Mapungubwe dined on Chinese porcelain and dressed in silk imported from the east. Arabs were a key trading partner to the commercial activities that happened in Mapungubwe.¹²

Gold and ivory in Mapungubwe were channelled to Swahili traders on the coast in the twelfth century in exchange for glass, beads, cloth and porcelain. Gold was also melted by the Africans in order to make jewellery and ornaments for the local elite. Members of the elite were often buried wearing gold necklaces. However, in the thirteenth century, Mapungubwe as an economic centre was overtaken by the emergence of Great Zimbabwe. Due to adverse weather conditions people decided to move to the northwest and the south. The terrible weather conditions such as floods would have made it difficult to engage in agriculture.¹³

The emergence of Great Zimbabwe attracted attention from Portuguese traders. The Portuguese and the Zimbabweans interacted through trading markets established because of the gold production in the southern African state. In addition to the trading markets known as feiras, the Portuguese are said to have visited Mutapa royal palaces in present-day Zimbabwe. The Portuguese visits in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were aimed at influencing the course of the gold trade.

Gold from Zimbabwe was traded to the Indian Ocean coast in exchange for a number of items including cloth, seashells, ceramics and glass beads. The port city of Kilwa, on an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of present-day Tanzania, controlled massive international trade and was an immediate beneficiary of gold from Zimbabwe. Kilwa was the largest port on the east African coast and also controlled trade from Sofala. After the arrival of the Portuguese in the port city of Sofala in the early sixteenth century, the Zimbabwean chiefdoms of Barwe, Danda and Manyika in eastern Zimbabwe became divided and ultimately broke away from the Mutapa state in order to access and control gold directly from the interior of the country. It is said that the divisions were caused by the Portuguese.¹⁴

The agenda by the Portuguese to seize control of the gold trade from the Indian and Muslim people and the feud between the chiefs of Zimbabwe led to a decline in the gold production. In the nineteenth century, European colonialists had identified the mines of Zimbabwe, and gold prospecting in the country rapidly increased when Zimbabwe became a British colony at the end of the nineteenth century.¹⁵

Natives mining diamonds in Kimberley

A typical day on the diamond fields involved men stabbing the ground with their pickaxes, in the hope of unearthing sparkling gemstones. Some men, travelling on creaking ox wagons, operated as transport providers, ferrying goods and providing services required by the miners at the diamond town. This was the end of the 1860s – a moment that accelerated South Africa’s transition from a colonial backwater to a capitalist mode of production based upon mining.

When the gravy train started chugging at the diamond fields of South Africa, people across the world jumped onto steam ships, took a risk and rode on the rough seas, optimistic about making fortunes from precious stones.

But what were the natives of South Africa doing when prospectors from Europe, the Americas and Australia, shovel in hand, endured the scorching heat of the midday sun with sweat streaming down their tanned faces?

In the early days, to find diamonds was almost easy, not back-breaking work at all. One Mr Unger, an experienced diamond merchant from Hamburg, once quipped that by a mere ‘surface scratching, not mining’, diamonds of large carats were extracted that were far superior to those found 90 feet deep in Brasilia. Men would arrive at the diggings with no capital, without even an iota of knowledge about diamonds, but were still able to pick up precious stones. Two men, George D Page and A Bailie, who were reputed to be unfamiliar with hard work, quickly found diamonds. In those early days the sun never set on the banks of the Vaal River without a gem find.¹⁶

A small homestead and kraal in Dutoitspan was plastered with diamonds. The walls were studded with 17 respectable stones. Such was the excess.¹⁷

Observing the bounty evidenced by fistfuls of diamonds, Standard Bank quickly found a gap to deeply entrench itself in the commodities trade. It took a decision to open a branch on the diggings in Klipdrift. In 1870, bank equipment was sent by ox-wagon. On a ferry across the Vaal River, from Pniel to Klipdrift, the bank safe slid, splashing into the river. Fortunately, it floated and was rescued from the waters. Standard Bank became the first bank to open on the diamond fields. Official figures of diamond exports in 1869 and 1870 were reported to be £178 273, but a dependable estimate put the actual output in the region of £1m.¹⁸

But where were the native Africans? Could they have been taking a siesta, while other enterprising humans from abroad were building what would become multi-generational wealth?

Were the anti-colonial wars of the nineteenth century so sapping to the spirit that no interest was left for diamond mining? Could it be that the native was so in love with his bulls and milk-rich cows that he was too blind to see the glittering diamonds’ worth? After all, were these gemstones not buried in their own ancestral land?

While it is difficult to answer for the historical whereabouts of every person during