bywoner, noun

/ˈbeɪvʊənə(r)/
Forms:
baywhoner, beiwonerShow more Also baywhoner, beiwoner, bywohner, bywonner, by-wooner.
Origin:
Afrikaans, DutchShow more Afrikaans, by (earlier Dutch bij) with, at + woon dwell, reside + agential suffix -er.
1. In historical contexts. A landless white tenant-farmer or foreman, giving his labour in exchange for the right to occupy and work a portion of farm land on his own account. Also attributive. See also poor white. Cf. labour tenant.
1886 J.J. Aubertin Six Months in Cape Col. & Natal 235Then there is what are called the Baywhoner tribe among the Dutch..that live upon the landowners, their friends.
1889 H.A. Bryden Kloof & Karroo 253A beiwoner (a sort of sub-farmer on the estate of a richer farmer, who is expected to perform certain duties for the privilege of running his stock).
1896 R. Wallace Farming Indust. of Cape Col. 481‘Bijwoners’, who are frequently the hangers-on or poor relatives of some local magnate, grow tobacco and other crops on the share system.
1908 M.C. Bruce New Tvl 5The poor relations occupy the position of servants above that of the kafirs and help in the work on the farm. They build themselves a cottage a little distance off and have won the name of ‘by-woner.’
1926 M. Nathan S. Afr. from Within 226Many farms are let on a profit sharing system to whites, who are neither owners nor tenants, but are remunerated by a certain share of the annual produce...These persons are called ‘bywoners’.
1936 Cambridge Hist. of Brit. Empire VIII. 804There emerged a landless class of Europeans who lived as ‘bywoners’ on the farms of others or sought unskilled work in the towns.
1946 T. Macdonald Ouma Smuts 62The poorest man in South Africa is the bywoner (the squatter on the farm), usually a poor white.
a1951 H.C. Bosman Willemsdorp (1977) 97To be a lorry driver was to be a king. That was how he felt about it, after the poverty and the misery and the degradation of his life as a bywoner.
1975 W.M. Macmillan My S. Afr. Yrs 133The tenants were traditionally called ‘bywoners’, men who live beside others (the landowners) and, as the name indicates, they were squatters without secure tenancy rights or for the most part any rights whatever.
1988 J. Sharp in Boonzaier & Sharp S. Afr. Keywords 84Increasing tensions between large landowners, small farmers and landless bywoners in the rural Transvaal as early as the 1880s.
1990 D. Van Heerden in Sunday Times 16 Sept. 21The real Children of Verwoerd are the ones now conducting a reign of terror in black townships. A whole generation steeped in the culture of an underclass...Discriminated against, denied dignity, treated like bywoners in the country of their birth.
2. Figurative, and transferred sense. A socially inferior, dispossessed, or dependent person (or thing); a parasite. Also attributive.
1872 in A.M.L. Robinson Sel. Articles from Cape Monthly Mag. (1978) 283Of all the ‘bywohners’ hanging on to the skirts of the language there is only one to which we have a decided aversion — to wit, that symbol of Oily-Gammon- Iago-Judas-Iscariotism, ‘slim.’
1966 C.A. Smith Common Names 280The bushes perform a useful function in that they shelter other plants — ‘bywoners’ (= squatters) as they were termed by Marloth — which would otherwise have been grazed or trampled out of existence.
1972 R. De Villiers in Argus 25 Mar. 9I don’t blame English-speaking people who refuse to be content with a kind of ‘bywoner’ position which is implicit in the whole philosophy of Nationalist Afrikanerdom as the older and senior ‘partner’, as the dominant group.
1974 Sunday Tribune 28 Apr. 20This province (sc. Natal) will remain the bywoner of national politics unnoticed and unsung.
1978 Sunday Times 20 Aug. 15An economic bywoner in his own land, he sat on the sidelines of a massive economic expansion spearheaded by English-speaking South Africans.
1980 Sunday Times 16 Mar. 15Dr Treurnicht leads this band. They accommodate their new English allies with difficulty, as bywoners.
1983 [see group area noun phrase sense 1].
A landless white tenant-farmer or foreman, giving his labour in exchange for the right to occupy and work a portion of farm land on his own account. Also attributive.
A socially inferior, dispossessed, or dependent person (or thing); a parasite. Also attributive.
Derivatives:
Hence bywonerskap  /-skap/ noun [Afrikaans -skap -ship].
1912 H.H. Juta Reminisc. 148I firmly believe that the evil and pernicious system of ‘by-woonerschap’ is more responsible for the manufacture of the poor white than anything else.
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bywonerskap

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