This article considers the history of labour relations within Namibia’s agricultural sector, with specific emphasis on the karakul sheep industry. It examines debates concerning shortages of shepherds and the increasing efforts on the part of (white) sheep farmers in southern Namibia to import contract labourers from northern Namibia and southern Angola. The ability of local Nama labourers in southern Namibia to desert abusive employers and return to reserves (albeit overcrowded) caused farmers to rely increasingly, from the late 1930s, on migrant shepherds, with illegally recruited Angolans rising in importance – making up over 40 per cent of total recruits throughout the mid 20th century. The reopening of Namibia’s mines and industries after the Second World War, alongside increased Portuguese recruitment of Angolans from Cunene province for their own karakul industry (founded with smuggled rams), caused white farmers to change strategy abruptly from the mid 1950s. With heavy subsidies from the South West Africa Administration, farmers invested in labour-saving technological improvements on the sheep farms themselves, particularly jackal-proof fencing, transforming a shepherd-intensive industry into a near shepherdless one in less than a decade. This, along with the development of homeland structures, gave white farmers the leverage to reinvigorate informal, ad hoc labour hire. Using Namibian, Angolan and South African sources, this article reconstructs the transnational political economy of labour in Namibia’s sheep-farming sector, and it considers how transformations in agricultural technology restructures labour hire, often away from ‘formal’ contract waged labour towards other forms of exploitative labour relations.

本文考虑了纳米比亚农业部门劳资关系的历史，特别强调了卡拉库尔绵羊产业。它审查了关于牧羊人短缺以及纳米比亚南部（白）牧羊者加大力度从纳米比亚北部和安哥拉南部引进合同工的辩论。纳米比亚南部的纳马当地劳动力摆脱虐待雇主和恢复储备的能力（尽管人满为患）导致农民从1930年代后期开始越来越依赖移民牧羊，非法招募的安哥拉人的重要性日益提高，占40％以上。整个20世纪中叶的新兵总数。第二次世界大战后纳米比亚矿山和工业的重新开放，葡萄牙人从库内内省增加了对安哥拉人的招募，用于自己的卡拉库尔工业（以走私的公羊成立），导致白人农民从1950年代中期突然改变策略。在西南非洲局的大力补贴下，农民投资了养羊场本身的节省劳力的技术改进，特别是防jack栅栏，在不到十年的时间里将牧业密集型产业转变为近牧业。这与国土结构的发展一起，为白人农民提供了振兴非正式，临时工的机会。本文利用纳米比亚，安哥拉和南非的资料，重构了纳米比亚养羊业的跨国劳动力政治经济，