Microsoft Word - PhD Thesis Final.pdf - University of Limpopo ...

ecome wage labourers. Since the wages had to be paid in cash, most
people had to work on farms, mines, railways, factories and private homes
to have cash to pay tax. The taxes offered the governments the added
advantage of raising money to cover the costs of administering their
colonies. In this way Blacks were also forced to pay the costs of maintaining
the bureaucracy and the police force which oppressed them. As early as
1870, the British colonial authorities imposed a hut tax of 10 shilling on each
hut every year in order to pressurise men to go and work in the diamond
fields 527 . In those days, a man had to work for about three months, to get
enough money to pay the hut tax for himself, his family and his parents 528 .
After the South African War, Milner’s British administration in the Transvaal
imposed a poll tax of ₤2 on each adult Black male and another tax of ₤2 for
the second and each additional wife of a polygamist 529 .
As much as the mine owners and various White governments coerced
Blacks into the migrant labour system, the chiefs also played their roles in
getting men into the system. In addition to the missionaries – whom we
have seen earlier on encouraging people to work and pray - local chiefs
also actively supported migrant labour system. Kgoši Matsiokwane and later
his son and successor, Ratšhatšha, dispatched young men for work,
527 J. Pampallis, Foundations of the new South Africa, p. 24.
528 Ibid, p. 24.
529 Ibid, p. 24.
304