Thus, while those who are very wealthy like to believe that they are worthy of the financial rewards they have accrued, many poorer people don’t want to mess with the dream that they too might achieve such riches if only they work hard enough. For them to concede that perhaps the system was stacked against them—that money had become far better at begetting more money than working long hard shifts—would be tantamount to abandoning their sense of agency and their cherished beliefs that what made their countries different was that anyone who worked hard enough could be whatever they wished to be.

Before the turn of the eighteenth century, the status of a Free Black in society was often influenced by the abilities of the individual rather than purely the colour of their skin. There is the story of the two formerly enslaved men, Anthony and Manuel from Angola, who had a white worker as their employee. Despite the upward mobility of a select few Free Black people, the vast majority were not in the same position. By the eighteenth century, poverty was a common feature for Free Blacks.

Bundy’s research notes that the suppression of the black commercial agriculture went beyond the raid on the land. Custom duties were stacked against black farmers, thus reducing the margin on their earnings. Purchase of land by black people was also made to be very difficult. But did these black commercial farmers have names and who were they? The rest of this chapter selects some individuals to provide visibility to those who prospered during changing socio-economic circumstances.

Black people could buy land at £1 an acre and they could buy farms from white farmers. Many Africans had adopted the plough and advanced methods of cultivation that missionaries wanted to instil. Tini Maqoma, the son of the Xhosa warrior Maqoma, outperformed his white neighbours in cultivation. He produced maize and grain that was in contrast to the ‘white man’s weed’. In 1876, one of the sons of Chief Stokwe bought a farm containing Fort Willshire for £1 800 as part of a strategy to get back the land.

The legislation discouraged the black entrepreneurs from pursuing their own business interests. Instead, it focused on meeting the labour needs of white farmers and the mining industry. Consequently, white farmers had less competition in the market as their former competitors’ appetite to pursue business has been thwarted. The dispossession through the Native Land Act not only converted the African industrialists into a proletariat, but also shifted the focus of the black entrepreneurs towards activities of protest and resistance. A great deal of energy that could have been used for growing black industry was now channelled towards the struggle against domination and discrimination.