percent of the population
of the Union of South
Africa, according to the census of I 936-had
different histories, experi-
ences, and interests. In the reserves and adjacent British and Portuguese
territories, Africans continued to live in homesteads or villages and to
acknowledge the political authority of chiefs and headmen. Nevertheless,
white magistrates, traders, missionaries, and recruiting agents were trans-
forming their culture and their social and economic relations. As we have
seen, labor migrancy was becoming a central feature of the political econo-
my of the region, since few Africans were able to produce enough to feed
171