DIAMONDS.GOLD.AND BRITISHIMPERIALISM
Africans had completely lost control of the means of production.
"Kaffir-
farming," as Whites called it, was commonly practiced by absentee owners,
such-as mining companies and mining capitalists, who invested some of
their profits in land and exacted rent from the African occupants.
The
republican governments tried to reduce this practice by prohibiting more
than fiveAfrican families from residing on a farm, but rarely were they able
to enforce such laws. Elsewhere, there were many types of sharecropping
arrangements, in terms of which the African tenants had effective control
of the means of production-land,
plows, and draft oxen-but
gave about
half of their produce and some labor services to the legal owner, who might
be an absentee individual or corporation but more commonly lived on the
farm. In some cases, Africans paid rent for their use of part of a farm by
providing labor for the white farmer. These categories were neither clear-
cut nor static. Many farms contained both sharecroppers and labor ten-
ants. Relationships were fluid and ambiguous; both sides were continu-
ously probing and testing them.
These processes increased the social differences among both the con-