Tuberculosis and Migrant Labour in the High Commission Territories: Bechuanaland: 1885–1998

Abstract Britain acquired the High Commission Territories (HCTs) of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland largely as a result of conflict with the Boer Republics around the turn of the twentieth century. The Territories were poor, had dispersed rural populations and few natural resources. Britain administered the HCTs on the principle that expenditure should not exceed the revenue obtained through taxation and made little investment in basic services and infrastructure. Generating sufficient revenue was a constant problem. The HCTs were starved of funds for essential services, and they soon became dependent upon the revenue from contracting labour to the gold mines. Selling migrant labour, however, came at a cost. From as early as 1912, the annual medical reports from the three Territories suggested that the mines were spreading tuberculosis into vulnerable populations. Medical repatriations were one of the obvious costs of a system in which a physical elite travelled south and, having served their contracts, returned home seriously ill. This chapter examines the interplay between colonial taxation, oscillating migration to the gold mines, the poverty of local communities and the emergent TB epidemic in Bechuanaland. The imposition and subsequent lifting of the ban on the recruitment of tropical labour and continuing tensions over recruiting at local and governmental levels are then linked to the developments of the medical system and compensation regimes.