Archives dispel notion of money or nothing
The black middle class of 100 years ago was a lot savvier about building wealth, writes
IAM often playfully teased for having black middleclass tendencies — but what are they? Could they perhaps just be glimpses of the sidla ubusha bethu (enjoying our youth) lifestyle?
What does this strata of society value and have these material objects been the same throughout history?
Consider my own background. I grew up in a middleclass suburban family in Pietermaritzburg. My sibling and I had a model C education and I have memories of practising for piano eisteddfods, piano and clarinet duets with my sister and my parents’ ardent support for our education.
My dad passed away 14 years ago and my mom six years later, leaving us in a financially dire situation and with everything we knew pulled from under our feet.
My mother died when we had sold our suburban home, complete with a glass pool house and a husky named Coco.
We were left with a small plot of land our dad had bought as an investment in the township, a small budget to build our home, our parents’ debt and my father’s safety-deposit box.
The contents of the box were my dad’s Citizen Quartz silver wristwatch with his initial and surname engraved on it, my mother’s gold wristwatch, my parents’ gold American Swiss wedding rings, my dad’s old South African coin collection, a few bullets and my paternal grandparents’ reference books, complete with my grandfather’s wage stamps. The contents represented a man who valued discipline, industry, time, history and orthodoxy.
What do the objects left behind by others say about their lives?
Last year, I spent two months doing research in the Transvaal Master of the Supreme Court records in the National Archives in Pretoria on estates belonging to the black middle class between 1860 and 1960.
During an earlier research project, I had come across an article in a 1926 copy of the Zulu and English Johannesburg
Amanda Xuma’s estate in the 1930s was valued at more than £1 100. She owned a piano and had a bank balance of more than £640
newspaper Umteleli wa Bantu.
It claimed the cause of “waste among natives” was their thoughtless imitation of the social habits of Europeans and their lack of appreciation of the value of money and other forms of wealth.
I approached the black middle-class archive project, a study for the University of Birmingham, with a similar view.
But what I found in the estates showed that black middle-class families were often savvy with money. While working on the 1900s estates, I noticed that a healthy estate was one that had assets valued at more than £300, which was the yardstick until the 1960s, when it was changed to R2 000.
The early 20th-century estates were sparse, both in detail and number, but the 1920s were interesting. I knew from my reading of Umteleli wa Bantu that the Civilised Labour Act, a colour bar reserving well-paid jobs for white people, was being heavily debated in vernacular newspapers by prominent public intellectuals.
I found the estate of April James Nkomo in 1926, a beautiful time capsule of black middle-class values. Nkomo worked as a clerk and had a daughter who attended the esteemed Indaleni High School for Native Girls in the then Natal.
The inventory list showed that he owned a piano and had an estate valued at £680, at a time when a Sunday Times job advert for a foreman on a crushing plant in Northern Rhodesia offered £50 a month and a free house, and French silk fabric was being sold for £1 a yard.
In 1934, two key estates deserve mention, one belonging to a Stephen Mtoba, a native headman or induna who held the title deeds to many properties— and had a piano valued at £50.
By sheer serendipity I also came across the estate of the wife of former ANC president Dr Alfred Xuma, Amanda Xuma. Her estate was valued at more than £1 100. She owned a piano and had a bank balance of more than £640. To get an indication of what that was worth, at the time, the Sunday Times cost thruppence and a 1931 halfton Chevrolet commercial vehicle went for £90.
In 1948, the year the National Party came to power — when a farm of 769ha that included two houses, rondavels and 800 head of sheep and cattle was being sold for £16 000 and an entire South Coast sea-facing hotel cost £10 000 — black estates in the records I consulted were averaging close to £1 000.
Charles William Mccube, a carpenter with an estate valued at more than £800, had £200 life cover with Mutual Life Assurance and owned shares with L Ossip.
Fanny Maki, a housewife, had an estate valued at £1 800 and her three most expensive moveable assets were a wardrobe worth £22, a £20 piano and a radiogram worth £20. Hoseah Mphse owned a Chevrolet car and a piano valued at £80.
By the late 1940s and into the 1950s, the estates were getting more detailed, some because of debt and others owing to their relatively moneyed status.
For example, Abraham Nkomo, a retired minister, had an estate of more than R10 000.
By the 1960s, I was finding a lot more estates belonging to black individuals who lived in the Transvaal.
Punch Maponya owned passenger buses and had an estate valued at more than R70 000.
Ben Zikalala, a shopkeeper and farm owner, had an estate valued at R80 000 and a bank balance of more than R30 000. Magdalena Lethoba, a former teacher, had an estate valued at more than R40 000.
On a recent Morning Live show, a financial expert discussed the culture of saving in South Africa.
The person conveyed what has become conventional knowledge in this country: South African households do not save. My time spent immersed in the archives challenges this notion, specifically in regard to the black middle class.
The black middle class has become synonymous with consumption and what Hlumeko Biko in his 2013 book, The Great African Society, calls a false sense of “historical asset deficit”.
Indeed, the black middle class has a huge capacity to consume, but it also historically has the capacity to save and invest. And its establishment has roots that run deeper than the ANC embourgeoisement schemes since 1994.
Such estates further illustrate the resilience and savvy with which black elites manoeuvred themselves to find ways to accumulate wealth, circumventing the 1913 Native Land Act, 1920s Civilised Labour Act and apartheid laws in the 1950s.
So, can we still freely use the blanket term, “historical asset deficit” to rationalise the sidla ubusha bethu lifestyle of the young black middle class?
Ngwane is an MA student at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research