This paper amounts to a series of discursive reflections on why industrial capitalism has assumed the shape that it did in southern Africa- and in South Africa particularly-during the two generations before the commencement of struggles for political independence in Africa. It is far from the last word on the subject. However, it tries to draw attention to an historiographical problem which has remained undeservedly submerged in recent works: the relationship between the labor process-what Marx often referred to as the "hidden abode" of industrial capitalism-and the social reproduction of the industrial workforce.