REMOVALS AND RESISTANCE - RURAL COMMUNITIES IN LYDENBURG, SOUTH-AFRICA, 1940-1961

After 1948, the National Party government implemented coercive policie s to remove African landowners and rent tenants from 'white' farming d istricts and resettle them in black 'reserves. This paper focuses on t he different responses within and among four communities in the Lydenb urg district of the eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga Province). It sh ows how Africans were more than mere victims of these policies but res ponded actively to the policies of the state which had to take account of their actions. The responses to removals of members of each commun ity were shaped by the histories which had given rise to their distinc tive identities and their relations to the wiser agrarian and industri al economies of South Africa, Communities themselves were divided betw een chiefs and followers, between richer and poorer farmers, and betwe en those involved in nationalist politics and those who focused rather on immediate, local interests. Responses to removals and among and wi thin communities were complex and ambiguous and cannot simply be under stood in terms of the distinction between 'resistance' and 'collaborat ion'. Present state policies, which seek to remedy the injustices of t he past, need to be sensitive to the divisions among rural communities and the complex reasons for people's different responses to past remo vals.