Of Livestock and Deadstock: Entrepreneurship and Tradition on the South African Highveld

TL;DRAbstract

This chapter argues that rural entrepreneurship begins in the 1940s when the first trading licences were granted to Africans in the Witsieshoek Native Reserve in the north-eastern Orange Free State region. It explores the complex relationship between entrepreneurship, culture and the identity politics of Qwaqwa in the 1980s. Entrepreneurs often come from immigrant groups in many rural areas of Africa. Urban African entrepreneurs of the 1960s were able to entrench themselves in the cities. There was no major movement of urban entrepreneurs to rural areas despite state policies of the 1960s and 1970s with that objective. In the 1930s, Witsieshoek was one of the most impoverished rural reserves in South Africa. Many individuals broke into retailing by shifting their material assets from livestock to ‘deadstock’, i.e. commerce. The expansion of entrepreneurship in Qwaqwa was driven forward neither on the basis of state funds and support nor through the relocation of urban entrepreneurs to

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