Inboekstelsel

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Inboekelinge child labour was instituted by Boers in Southern Africa during the 18th and 19th centuries. [1] The word is derived from the Dutch verb inboeken (register; literally "in-book"), referring to the requirement of entering the names and details of the inboekeling (also spelled inboekseling), or apprentices, in the Landdros's register. [2] It is widely seen as a form of slavery by historians of South Africa. [3]

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The system had its origin in the Cape Northern Frontier during the second half of the 18th century, when settlers of mostly Dutch descent would capture native children and force them to work as indentured labourers until adulthood. [4] When Voortrekkers migrated into the Transvaal Republic during the 1840s, they brought the inboekstelsel system with them. [5] Inboekelinge children were captured during raids, or handed over as apprentices by their conquered parents in return for land or goods. [1] In some cases they were sold by Dutch-speaking settlers to other burghers, in what became known as the trade in "black ivory". [6]

In the Transvaal, the inboekelings numbered about 4,000 in 1866, nearly one for every ten settlers. [2] In 1869 the synod of the Dutch Reformed Church adopted a resolution condemning the practice, but rescinded it two years later on the grounds that the system no longer existed. [6] In the Transvaal, legislation required that males be released from indenture at the age of 25, while females were released at 21, but the law was not always observed in remote frontier districts. [1]

British attitudes towards the Inboekstelsel system were ambivalent. The British administration of the Transvaal Colony between 1877 and 1881 did not affect it. [7]

Historians, like Elizabeth Eldredge and Fred Morton, have argued that Inboekstelsel was a system of slavery. [3] Although legal slavery was formerly abolished in the Cape Colony in 1834 by the British Empire, the inboekstelling system allowed Dutch-speaking settlers to continue to practice forced labour.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 C. H. Feinstein (2005-06-23). An Economic History of South Africa: Conquest, Discrimination, and Development. Cambridge University Press. p. 53. ISBN   978-0-521-85091-9.
  2. 1 2 Breckenridge, Keith. "Power Without Knowledge: Three 19th Century Colonialisms In South Africa" (PDF). University of KwaZulu-Natal. pp. 22–29. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 February 2014. Retrieved 26 January 2014.
  3. 1 2 Morton, Fred (2019-05-28), "Slavery in South Africa", Routledge, pp. 251–269, doi:10.4324/9780429306105-10, ISBN   978-0-429-30610-5, S2CID   199314684 , retrieved 2022-05-26{{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  4. ↑ Gwyn Campbell (2013-01-11). Abolition and Its Aftermath in the Indian Ocean, Africa and Asia. Routledge. p. 43. ISBN   978-1-135-77078-5.
  5. ↑ Gwyn Campbell; Suzanne Miers; Joseph Calder Miller (2007). Women and Slavery: Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the Medieval North Atlantic. Ohio University Press. p. 196. ISBN   978-0-8214-1723-2.
  6. 1 2 Hermann Giliomee (January 2003). The Afrikaners: Biography of a People. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. pp. 184–185. ISBN   978-1-85065-714-9.
  7. ↑ John Laband (2005). The Transvaal Rebellion: The First Boer War, 1880-1881. Pearson/Longman. p. 41. ISBN   978-0-582-77261-8.
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