‘Blackbirding’ at ‘Crooks’ corner’: illicit labour recruiting in the northeastern Transvaal, 1910–1940

Abstract

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Africans in search of work were attracted to the wage‐paying employment opportunities on the Witwatersrand. These work‐seekers travelled great distances on foot, battling hunger, disease, and the harsh environment. For those Africans wishing to enter the Transvaal without benefit of official permission, the border presented little obstacle. These clandestine migrants easily bypassed police posts, but they experienced greater difficulty in evading predatory labour recruiters. Illicit labour recruiting took place all along the frontier, but assumed special significance at the far corner of the northeastern Transvaal. It was here where the borders of the Transvaal, Southern Rhodesia, and Portuguese East Africa met that labour pirating, or ‘blackbirding’ as it was sometimes called, careened out of control. Investigating the modus operandi of these unscrupulous labour recruiters sheds light on wider questions concerning the historical formation of labour markets i...