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The Boys from Bothaville, or the Rise and Fall of King Maize: A South African Story

2004; Wiley; Volume: 4; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1471-0366.2004.00089.x

1471-0366

Henry Bernstein,

Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development

This paper tells the story, for the first time, of a maverick maize farmers’ association in South Africa during the period of apartheid. NAMPO (National Maize Producers’ Organization), that grew out of SAMPI (South African Maize Producers’ Institute), ultimately achieved a unique, if short‐lived, breach in the normal operations of ‘organized agriculture’: a set of relations and practices that bound together white farmers, the National Party and the state. The paper provides an account of SAMPI/NAMPO's project of ‘King Maize’ and an explanation of its fall after a brief period of victory from 1981 to 1985. This explanation draws on broader patterns of agrarian change in contemporary capitalism combined with the fracturing of the original agrarian bloc of apartheid in the 1980s, marking the end of a ‘second moment’ of South Africa's version of a Prussian path of capitalist development.