Charles Van Onselen introduces his biography of Kas Maine, a black South African sharecropper, by stating, "This is the biography of a man who, if one went by the official record alone, never was" (3). It is a biography of a man who lived in the "margins" of society. Illiteracy breeds invisibility.
Unlike Nelson Mandela, whose education, political connections, and sheer luck made his voice heard around the world, Kas Maine lived and died with no record except for the record of his arrest. Yet Kas Maine's life, though partially determined by political and economic forces outside of his control, demonstrates the agency of bold and persistent men. Like Mandela and like Nontheta, he refused to allow others to control his entire existence. Where he held power, though it was little, he exercised his right to it.
Van Onselen's stated purpose for Kas Maine's biography is to establish the "personal, psychological, social and structural" reasons for why the Maine family moved away from the South African highveld into labor migrancy and industry. Van Onselen certainly accomplishes his purpose; however, his greater contribution may be a detailed record of the power imbalance between black and white men whose daily lives and economic realities were co-dependent, a daily record that demonstrates how black men showed self-determination throughout the economic relationship that created a sharecropping existence.
The question of self-determination is raised in a chapter ironically entitled "Independence": What does it mean to be "independent" if your livelihood is dependent on the instability of the weather and the good favor of white men whose loyalty and sense of justice are unpredictable? To become "independent," Kas has to borrow money and pray that the weather works to his advantage so he can pay the debt back quickly. If the weather works to his disadvantage (and it often does), he has to pray that the white men who hold his debt will have mercy.
But Kas Maine does not allow his entire life to be controlled by outside sources. Inside the limited sphere where he can make decisions, he chooses autonomy. The white landowners held most of the power in the relationship between themselves and black sharecroppers; if they chose to let a sharecropper go, they would always find another. Nevertheless, the black sharecropper still had a certain amount of freedom to choose for whom he might sharecrop, or with which men he might enter into agreements. Kas appears to reflect a great deal on the injustice of the system and exercises his freedom of choice at critical periods. For example, during one moment of acute clarity, he told Koos Meyer, the white sharecropper he worked for, "You know, one day God will allow us to purchase property - just like you - and I will hire you, and overwork you just as you are doing to me" (116). His statement ended the sharecropping relationship. Van Onselen states that leaving Koos Meyer to sharecrop with Piet Reyneke, whose integrity was proven over the long run, was a decision Kas never regretted (117). I would argue that Kas's regret factor may have had less to do with Reyneke's character and more to do with Kas's sense of agency.
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