Labour reserves and surplus populations: Northern Ghana and the Eastern Cape of South Africa

This article is focused on the political economy of two of Africa's "labour reserve" regions, northern Ghana and the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The majority of residents in these regions are taken as paradigmatic examples of "surplus populations." They exemplify a main feature that has been used to theorize the concept of surplus populations today, namely, that their labour is surplus to the needs of capital accumulation. We follow the method of Arrighi and Piselli, tracing the political economic transformations of these regions from the turn of the 20th century until the present in order to ground the concept of surplus population in a specific historical context. We argue that it is limiting to think about these populations' utility or uselessness only in relation to capital. To understand the political implications of "surplus populations," we must think about the interrelation between the political and economic roles that they play and how these developed within specific historical contexts.