Colin Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry: A Critique

Abstract

The enormity of rural poverty in South Africa was ignored by government officials until academic works began to expose the extent of the problem in the latter part of the twentieth century. Colin Bundy’s Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry catalyzed debates on rural poverty that pervaded the area populated by black South Africans. Bundy’s work represents a significant advance in our understanding of the underdeveloped nature of African rural agriculture. It demystifies the myth of stagnant African agriculture alongside a dynamic commercial white agricultural sector. Through the Dualism Theory of Bundy, this paper seeks to understand which institution controlled the means of production and what form of domination or exploitation existed before the advent of colonialism. This paper further outlines Bundy’s arguments, analyses his critiques, and draws inferences from the arguments provided by other scholars to submit that no form of exploitation existed in pre-colonial South Africa.