Capitalist Flows and Working-Class Conditions: Colonial Labor Management and Racial Formations in Southeastern Africa, 1851–1900

Abstract Resilient Zulu moral economy compelled Natal’s sugar planters and white settler state to introduce Indian indentured workers since 1860. As concerns over productivity in a weak colonial economy informed this decision, meticulous management of labor time crucially shaped the treatment of migrant Indian indentees. Moreover, systemic violence in capital’s life processes formed the culture of work-discipline in the plantations and in other industrial sectors. Subsequently, as contract expired Indian indentees acquired relative economic mobility compared to Africans, they appeared in Zulu critiques of Natal’s settler colonial order. Ironically, dispossessed Zulus reproduced colonial logic of time management while discussing the comparative economic success of Indian “newcomers.” Zulu critiques of colonial labor management also complemented the racial exclusivity of migrant Indians. Analyzing the complex workings of capital, labor, and race in nineteenth-century Natal, this article explains how capital’s life processes shaped violent conflicts in the intimate domestic space of working-class lifeworld.