ASAUK 2018

To what extent is the supply of cheap labour still acknowledged as a key component of the production matrix in the economic growth and development trajectory of Southern Africa? Abundant and constant supply of cheap labour was part of the legacy, post-independence governments inherited at the end of white minority rule in most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. In his Glen Grey speech of 1894, Cecil John Rhodes laid down, in what he referred to as “a native Bill for Africa”, principles upon which a policy for regular supply of cheap black labour was to be founded in most of British-ruled Southern Africa. For as long as British Empire rule lasted, regime after regime of white rulers from the Cape to areas north of the Zambezi and beyond, kept the creed of always keeping the “native in his proper place”, as foundational to the architecture of the emergent colonial capitalist economy. Closely tied to it was the colonial land policy of dispossession and forced containerization of Africans into labour (concentration camps) reserves. This paper is a comparative analysis of how contemporary labour policies of South Africa and Zimbabwe represent continuity or a break with the past in addressing labour supply issues in the context of a neo-liberal development agenda. It poses the question whether or not the new policy reforms on labour are an unmitigated rehashing of Rhodes’ economic imperium. I contend that unless policy makers seriously acknowledge the resilience of the labour reserve concept with a view to structurally re-engineering it labour policy will do little to lift people out of poverty.