The night of the jackal: sheep, pastures and predators in the Cape - South Africa

Past & Present, Feb, 1998 by William Beinart

The value of wool exports peaked at over 3 million [pounds sterling] in 1872, but subsequently declined along with world prices. Wool was quickly overhauled, first by diamonds and then gold, as the most valuable exports from South Africa as a whole. But although wool production levelled off in the Cape during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, this did not spell terminal stagnation. Both Cape and national figures on sheep-holding show extraordinary subsequent growth: in 1904, woolled sheep numbers had fallen to 11 million, with 4.5 million fat-tailed sheep and 10 million goats; by 1913 they had climbed to 28 million, out of 47 million small stock in total. Wool continued as the key agricultural export and in some years it overtook diamonds to become second only to gold as the country's major export: for instance, fetching nearly 20 m [pounds sterling]. In 1919 when commodity prices inflated. Mutton was valued at over 3.5 m [pounds sterling]. around this time. Productivity, although low by international standards, and very uneven, rose from about 2.25 lb. of wool per sheep in 1865 to more than 5 lb. in 1911.(12)

Production on this scale, while partly due to an expansion of area under sheep, necessitated considerable investment and technical improvement. It also required far tighter control of the hot and hostile environment of the country. Diseases, particularly those caused by internal and external parasites (worms, ticks and scab acari), were a major hazard. Sheep numbers in the Cape stagnated from 1875 to 1905 partly because of the inability to cope with disease. Compulsory dipping for scab provoked extensive opposition, especially from frontier Afrikaners.(13) When the Division of Sheep was created in the new Union Agriculture Department in 1911, one of its first tasks was the final eradication of scab. By the end of the decade, 400 officials supervised 40,000 sheep-dipping tanks in the country; infected stock had been reduced to around 1 per cent.(14) This was part of a series of interventions into the pattern of pastoral production in South Africa which had far-reaching consequences for the relationship between the state and its subjects, both black and white.(15) Water provision also expanded rapidly. Many of the better capitalized farms had earth dams by the early twentieth century. Boreholes became an alternative as drilling technology improved: they were initially more reliable in that they tapped constant underground sources and evaporation was minimized by the construction of high-sided concrete storage tanks. Metal windmills, initially imported from the United States, sprouted across the dry regions of the country, becoming a central symbol of the South African landscape.

The cost of such rapid expansion was manifested in the state of the veld. Recognition of the impact of cattle and sheep, as well as attempts at regulation, went back to the Dutch period in the Cape.(16) The weight of numbers was compounded, so commentators increasingly argued, by the pastoral system. Like the Khoikhoi, settlers were pushed by the difficult terrain of the Cape into a partly transhumant life, trekking with the seasons to fresh grazing and water for their herds and flocks. The great majority, even of those permanently settled on one farm, also kraaled their animals or brought them back to a central byre near the farmstead each night. The main reason for this was safety. Animals had to be protected against theft and, even more importantly in the case of sheep, against predators. In a world with few fences, animals had to be prevented from straying. As a result of kraaling, millions of animals had to be driven every day to and from pastures.