it was impossible to find enough labour to work on their farms and, later, in their gold and diamond mines. The African population was quite content with its subsistence lifestyle: under traditional tenure arrangements, most people had access to land on which to graze their cattle and grow food for their families. They didn’t see why they should leave their homes for back-breaking labour on plantations and in mines. Nobody was offering wages high enough to induce such a dramatic shift. The colonisers quickly learned that the only way to get Africans into the labour market was to force them –
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