Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to study the life histories, social and economic conditions faced by farmworkers in the Umvoti region of KwaZulu-Natal province from the late 19th century and during the first two decades of the 21st century. It seeks to understand the main factors that led to landlessness in this area, which in turn resulted in a significant section of the African population becoming farmworkers. By focusing on the lives of ordinary people, the dissertation bucks a general trend in the historiography of South Africa which is dominated largely by studies of certain elite groups or individuals such as leaders of political parties or established social groupings. By studying the social history of farmworkers in Umvoti, this dissertation hopes to shift the South African historiographical preoccupation with either elite groups, individuals or organised political formations.
While this study investigates the issue of landlessness and the experiences of farm workers in Umvoti region from the late 19th century until the post-apartheid period, the focus is the experiences of farm workers from the 1950s onwards. The main sources of information are the archives which were collected by the Association for Rural Advancement and the Black Sash which are housed at the Alan Paton Centre and Struggle Archives. The archives are also complemented with the interviews which I conducted with the farmworkers at the Umvoti region.
This thesis also considers the extent to which the policy and legislation changes introduced since the advent of democracy have had on the lives of farm workers. In other words, have the lives of farmworkers seen any material improvement? This is a very pertinent question because critics believe that the neo-liberal economic agenda of the ANC government is working against the interests of the
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poor.1 The debate regarding the economic policy framework the ANC has pursued has taken place while the land question is capturing the attention of all South Africans with pressure to confiscate land without compensation