FORCED LABOR IN THE PILANESBERG - THE FLOGGING OF CHIEF KGAMANYANE BYCOMMANDANT KRUGER,PAUL, SAULSPOORT, APRIL 1870

During the 1860s, most of the Kgafela-Kgatla lived on Commandant Paul Kruger's property, Saulspoort, in the western Transvaal. They were for ced to render unpaid labour to the local Boers. At first, during the 1 840s, Bakgatla-Boer relations were 'amicable', but relations deteriora ted as the Boers embarked on irrigated farming in the 1860s and demand ed labour in order to build dams. In the late-1860s, when Kruger force d Bakgatla men to pull cartloads of stone to the construction site, th ey refused to render labour and Kruger publically flogged their chief Kgamanyane. Consequently, he and more than half his people migrated to present-day Botswana. The article situates the incident in the wider contemporary social and political context in which Boer labour practic es and racial attitudes prevailed, as well as Kruger's personal proble ms at the time. It argues that the flogging reveals aspects of the rac ial ideology of the time and adds to the current literature on corpora l punishment in settler societies.