| | The liberal economist Hobart Houghton described the years 1870-1918 in South Africa as a period when 'population, wealth and living standards increased greatly.' During this period African rural producers suffered a severe deterioration in their living standards and an enforced dependence on providing labour to white farmers and mines. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and even earlier in the Ciskei, a number of African producers adopted new crops and new methods of production, notably ox-ploughing, earned and re-invested money form transport riding and other occupations and expanded production for the markets opened up by white settlement, diamond and gold mining. Others were forced into wage labour, notably after the cattle-killing of 1857; most, however, continued to provide for their own needs, on African-controlled land, by purchasing land, or as tenants on mission stations or on land whose ownership had been appropriated by whites. African areas exported grain to white owned farms and to mines in the Cape, Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal. |
