Children for Ewes: Child Indenture in the Post-Emancipation Great Karoo: c. 1856-1909

Abstract

While the employment of child labour in the Cape Colony under slavery is well known, the same cannot be said for the post-emancipation period, despite the hinge masters and servants ordinance of 1841 governing the new free labour market legitimating employment of two categories of child labour: those indentured by their parents, and 'destitute children' indentured by the state. Both groups left paper trails. That of destitute children is easier to follow because they had to advertised in the press, but a few scattered sets of contracts of 'indenture of apprenticeship by parents' (IAP) survive in the archives of the colonial magistrates. The article offers a close reading of the destitute children advertisements and IAP contract archive for one such magistracy: that of Colesberg in the Great Karoo in the second half of the 19th century. It traces patterns in the aggregate demography, form and features of the more than 250 IAP contracts signed in the magistracy over this period to...