ated. In areas where the land was still in African hands, the white govern-
ments were obliging chiefs and headmen to acquiesce in the presence of
recruiters of labor for the mines as well as magistrates, whose duties in-
cluded the collection of taxes. Some African families were enjoying increas-
ing prosperity by producing food for the urban markets, but other families
were experiencing periodic separation as the men traveled to mining towns
or white farms to work for several months at a time, leaving the women
with greatly extended responsibilities for the household economy. By
1900,
moreover, a few Africans were living permanently in the towns and
becoming the nucleus of an urban proletariat.'
These events were accentuating differences among the inhabitants
of
Southern Africa. The primary division was still the racial cleavage that had
been present in Southern Africa since the beginning of white settlement,
slave importation, and Khoikhoi incorporation in the seventeenth century
(chapter 2). This division was enhanced by the racist ideology that was now
pervasive among Europeans and North Americans, as well as white South
Africans, and it was becoming more rigid than ever.White men maintained
an absolute monopoly of formal political power in the Transvaal and