The Economics of the Colour Bar

EVEN without the intervention of law, effective combination among African labourers would have been difficult because of high labour turnover due to the migratory system, marked language and tribal differences, the paternalistic governmental system of their reserve homelands, their general naivety and the absence of any tradition resembling labour-union action. In the early years of this century, when really powerful workers’ combinations had been established in the mines by the Whites, the Africans remained without any apparent form of organisation as a pressure group. In 1911, this state of affairs was perpetuated by legislation which rendered legal strike action almost impossible.

How has this disability adversely affected the relative or absolute standards of the Africans? This question can be answered only in the light of a recognition that consumers are the ultimate employers, and that strike power can, in the long run, increase the remuneration of any group of workers only through (i) the exclusion of some of its competitors, or (ii) through forcing the removal of exclusive barriers imposed against the group by its competitors (or by the state on its competitors’ behalf) but not through the exclusion of the complementary resources supplied by investors.1

To those who perceive the implications of this vital principle, it must appear that the biggest blunder made by the people who were trying to maintain the Africans in their traditional subservience was in not permitting them to organise in labour unions with the right to strike. It could easily have been pleaded that the simple Africans entering the modern world needed protection against exploitation; and moralists the world over would have eulogised this enlightened attitude. Yet the result of effective African labour unions would have been the attainment by a relatively small group of black employees of far higher standards of living, whilst the vast majority of Africans (a smaller number because the population survival would have been much reduced) would have remained in the relatively poverty-striken reserves or on the farms.

Such a policy would have perpetuated both rural and urban poverty among the Whites as well as further impoverishing non-Whites. The industrial progress which, as we have seen, has come about through the rapid economic integration of all races since the 1930s, would have been drastically slowed down; the unprecedented farming prosperity enjoyed until recently (in spite of enhanced farm wage-rates) through the more effective use of the non-white people in industry would have been sacrificed. But many South Africans would not regard poverty and backwardness among the Whites (if accompanied by a parallel decline in non-white standards) as too big a price to pay for the certainty of the perpetual subordination of Africans.

AVOIDANCE OF UNION RESTRICTIONS

The first law which made it virtually illegal to organise strikes among Africans was the Native Labour Regulation Act of 1911. This Act, which resembles in some ways the Masters’ and Servants’ Acts (see below, p. 106), includes also some admirable provisions regulating recruitment organisations, defining the liability of the mines in respect of injuries (along the lines of workmen’s compensation) and prescribing minimum standards in respect of other fringe compensations (health conditions, medical facilities, compound accommodation and food) for Africans. The Act applies to any area or industry the government may determine.

Strikes and lock-outs by Africans were not expressly forbidden by law until 1953, although the Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act of that year did little more than provide iron-clad consolidation of a situation which had prevented African labour unions from functioning aggressively since the beginning of the century. The hope was openly expressed that, by providing other machinery for handling industrial relations, the Act would finally undermine African labour unions2 (which, although ‘unrecognised’, had always been legal organisations unless they resorted to strikes or strike threats). The new machinery consists principally of Regional Labour Committees, under white chairmen, to which selected Africans are appointed by the Minister of Labour – not elected. These Regional Committees, which are intended to mediate in the case of disputes, fall under the Central Native Labour Board. It is provided also that African employees in a factory shall have the right to elect works committees to express their wishes.

The laws against strike action have been extraordinarily effective. In spite of political organisations like the African National Congress and the Pan African Congress (which became so powerful that they were recently declared illegal), there appear to have been no successful and few attempted strikes on the part of African employees.3 Such minor strikes as have occurred have probably been due, almost entirely, to indignation at grievances which were quite unconnected with remuneration or fringe benefits. But where African labour unions have been established, managements seem to have taken their existence into account and to have been anxious to be on good terms with them. Such unions have, on occasion, presented the Africans’ viewpoint before the Wage Board, under the Wage Act.

Now these laws and circumstances which, through denying Africans the right to protect groups among themselves from the competition of their many compatriots, have so assisted African advancement as a whole, may yet be held to have been ‘unfair’. This is because they have, at the same time, withheld also the power to fight similar exclusions imposed by other labour unions, by industrial councils or through the Wage Act. Hence, although Africans have no legitimate grievance at having been denied permission to raise labour costs in the occupations in which they work, they do have, it seems to me, a very genuine grievance in that the law has permitted organisation on the part of other races to raise their labour costs; for the labour organisations of Whites and Coloureds, together with direct protections and demarcations imposed by the state, have not only raised the prices of the commodities which the Africans have to buy but have reduced the latters’ opportunities of bidding for more productive and well-remunerated work.

At the same time the Africans as a whole have been protected against exploitation by labour unions organised by those of their own race; and this protection has always threatened to bring about effective ultimate competition of Africans with Whites and Coloureds. The threat has been intensified by fears of the eventual results of Bantustans and developments in the Rhodesias and has recently caused apprehension in white labour unions, which have begun to suggest that African unions should now be ‘recognised’ under the Industrial Conciliation Act. To prevent African advancement through effective competition with the Whites (they say, of course, to ‘prevent the exploitation of Africans to the detriment of white organised labour’) the white unions want Africans to have active unions of their own.4 There is a real danger that this request will soon be acceded to, for it would perpetuate the economic subordinancy of the black races in a way the world will approve. The authorities are likely to fear also that, if effective labour unions are prohibited, the Africans will join politically motivated – perhaps underground – associations. The African leaders are unlikely to perceive the purpose in any such move. Today’s ideologies and stereotypes have prevented them, as well as their white advisers (with a few interesting but unimportant exceptions), from perceiving that the free market would have offered the opportunities which restraints on the market have denied to them. The law, the administration and the tolerance of collusive labour action have held off these opportunities.

The Africans have throughout had some rights under the Masters’ and Servants’ Acts which are likely to be repealed under the Bantu Laws Amendment Bill. They seem to have become anachronistic, not because the time has been thought ripe for the concession of the right of collective bargaining to Africans, but because other means of preventing discontent among African employees, superficially similar to those believed to be normal behind the Iron Curtain, are about to be adopted.

When their work has competed (currently or potentially) with that of other races, the remuneration of Africans has been determined through Industrial Council Agreements (to which, of course, the Africans themselves are not parties) or under the Wage Act. In some Wage Board determinations the bulk of all of the employees covered by the determination have been Africans. This machinery has almost certainly had the effect of curbing not only the entry of Africans into industrial and commercial employments (from farming and mining), but still more their rates of progress into semi-skilled or skilled work.

Amendments made to the Industrial Conciliation Act in 1956 may, however, conceivably have the wholly unintended effect of encouraging organisations which might enable non-Whites to exercise countervailing coercive power against economic colour bars. These amendments enact that Whites and non-Whites may not be members of the same labour unions,5 except in separate branches of mixed unions which must have wholly white executives.6 And with separate non-white unions, it could happen that the power of the strike was used to achieve the right to perform work at present monopolised by Whites. That is, the non-white unions might prove capable of breaking the oppressive power of the standard rate principle by achieving the right to undercut. If so, they could dissolve the economic injustices which the enforcement of so-called ‘equal pay for equal work’ has perpetrated and perpetuated. Indeed, reports of friction between the racially split unions suggest that attempts in this direction are already being made. On the other hand, the amended Industrial Conciliation Act of 1956 (to say nothing of the Bantu Laws Amendment Bill) confers ministerial powers like those which, we are told, are wielded by the state in the Iron Curtain countries; and this may rule out the possibility to which I have here referred.

THE MASTERS’ AND SERVANTS’ ACTS

The absence of labour unions has not meant that Africans have had no protection against abuse by managements of firms or individual employers. In the Afrikaner Republics, as well as in the Cape and Natal, the Masters’ and Servants’ Acts had previously aimed to protect the labouring classes (mainly Africans but to some extent Coloureds and Indians) from possible abuses by their employers, because they (the non-Whites) could not effectively enforce contracts through civil actions, and vice versa. On the face of it, one would have thought that the labourers had more to gain than their employers from simple machinery for the enforcement of employment agreements when privately initiated proceedings against either parties would have been impracticable. In principle, protection was provided for the employee as much as for the employer. In practice, it is believed by many to have operated most unfairly for the non-Whites.

It may be mainly because the non-Whites have provided the bulk of the labouring force that the idea has arisen of these laws constituting a clear case of colour injustice. The use of criminal sanctions (against ‘masters’ as well as against ‘servants’) for the enforcement of contract is certainly reminiscent of communist institutions. But the intention of the Masters’ and Servants’ laws was good: they embodied the wisdom of experience, evolved from attempts to solve genuine problems, and in content do not suggest discrimination. Any real injustices must have arisen more out of the administration of the law. For instance, it has been alleged that, particularly in the villages, the popularity of the magistrates who enforce these laws has often depended upon the severity with which they deal with the employees.

If laws of this kind are wisely conceived and justly administered, there is a legitimate role for labour unions. They can provide machinery for the effective enforcement of the legal rights of their members so as to ensure that contracts of employment are entered into freely, and subsequently honoured.

On the whole, however, criticism of the Masters’ and Servants’ Acts seems to have sprung from the popular notion that the private exercise of coercive power (via strike or other action)7 constitutes one of the basic rights of man in a free society. These laws are often regarded as ‘antiquated’ largely because, if they can in fact provide effective court protection against abuses, they have dissolved the fashionable arguments in favour of the toleration of private coercion. But disputes about the fulfilment of contracts between the employee and the people as consumers (concerning the wages and other compensation he is entitled to expect from consumers) ought surely to be settled without recourse to industrial war or the threat to use it. Is it not better to allow independent courts to interpret agreements and to ensure that they have been freely entered into? Is it not better to allow the determination of wage-rates and the conditions of work without recourse to the principle of ‘might is right’? Admittedly, safeguards are desirable against the exploitation of one set of employees by others, such as by the managers against the rank and file. But ought not these safeguards to be embodied into non-discriminatory rules the breach of which can be challenged by appeal to the courts?

A common argument for the retention of the Masters’ and Servants’ Acts and other Acts embodying the same principle (like the Native Labour Regulation Act of 1911) is that the classes to whom this legislation applies have not yet reached the standard of civilisation and responsibility which would justify their being entrusted with coercive power (the right to collective bargaining). This argument implies that they must, sooner or later, progress to the stage at which it will be thought appropriate to grant permission for Africans to arm for private economic war (for righteous aggression or defence). But I am by no means certain that, if they had possessed such powers, the Africans would have used them less irresponsibly or less anti-socially than the Whites have used them in the Western world in general. For one thing, the Communists would certainly have manœuvred to get control of African labour unions and they would, I think, have succeeded. We can guess that they would have done their best to foster the quite understandable bitterness of the Africans; any such outcome would have been just as indefensible as the ‘Colour Bar Acts’ which political agitators had successfully demanded through the strikes of 1907 and 1922, and the civilised labour – apartheid trend established under the Labour-Nationalist pact of 1924.

Naturally, it appears to be grossly unfair to deny any labouring class and especially the Africans the right to organise when these rights are permitted for other classes and races. And yet virtually the only legislative provisions which have facilitated the rise of the Africans in the economic sphere have been those which have prohibited or otherwise hindered their right to strike. It seems to me that all other industrial legislation in South Africa (with the sole exception of the Masters’ and Servants’ Acts) has tended in the opposite direction, namely, to maintain the non-Whites in a condition of economic inferiority and subordinancy. It is natural enough that the Africans and their leaders should deeply resent their inability to use the power of the strike whilst others have that right. But, as we have seen, unless they could use strike power (a) to force the state to abandon those restraints on the free market which have borne so unfairly upon them; or (b) to break such economic power as is possessed by the white labour unions, they could as a group gain nothing thereby. On the other hand, if they attempted to better their condition by fighting the ‘profit-seeking capitalist’ they would merely prolong their economic subjection.

The use of labour union power to crush labour union power does, however, seem to be a distinct possibility in the not too distant future in a neighbouring country because the white and black unions there are separate organisations. The African Mineworkers Union in Northern Rhodesia (with 35,000 members) has recently demanded the ‘Africanisation’ of mining operations, including the right to training for responsible and skilled work such as surveyors and draughtsmen. The fact that the mining management agreed, and accepted African trainees, led to a strike on the part of the 600 white miners at Mufulira,8 although both management and strikers kept up the pretence that this was not actually the issue.9 What is interesting is that the management held out against the Whites for more than two months and eventually won the struggle on behalf of the Africans. They did not want the strike to continue, of course, but they obviously recognised that, in the era which was emerging, any strike against colour bars which had been imposed by white union pressure would have the sympathy of the black-dominated government; and that the Africans must therefore be gradually allowed to undertake skilled and responsible work. Indeed, the owners are almost certainly contemplating the time, in the not too far distant future, when a carefully selected minority of well-educated Africans will have to be trained for top management.

10See pp. 107–8.

11This has not happened.

12In 1959, 221 Africans were convicted under the 1953 Act.

13This point of view was clearly expressed at the ninth General Meeting of the Trade Union Council of South Africa, held in May, 1963.

14In the case of very small labour unions, the Minister of Labour may use his extraordinarily sweeping powers to grant exemption from this requirement.

15Members of different races in mixed unions are not permitted to be present at meetings at which Whites are present. The sole exception is executive meetings, where non-Whites may legally be present in order to state their point of view.

16As we have seen, such action compels consumers to pay more for output, or suppresses competition from (i.e., opportunities for) less fortunate classes.

17This is the world’s second largest underground copper mine.

18The pretence was that the strike was concerned with the refusal of the white miners to provide data for the payment of bonuses to Africans and other data required for costing.

• 1The system has recently been changed. Any African may now choose whether he wishes to be subject to tribal or Portuguese law. If he chooses the latter, he has the right to vote (whatever that means in a dictatorship) but he then becomes liable to taxation.
• 2Inter-marriage is a crime in South Africa. It is officially encouraged in Mozambique.
• 3The present government of the Republic of South Africa deny that this is the purpose of apartheid (separate development). I propose, however, to show why that must be the consequence of their policy.
• 4See Bibliography, p. 183.
• 5There are of course politicians who seek to exacerbate colour resentments solely because they think it will help them in their manœuvring for power. I am not writing for them. They and their henchmen will misrepresent and reject my thesis because it may hamper the achievement of their ambitions.
• 6In Natal there was some possibility of non-Whites qualifying for the franchise but only a handful did, in fact, qualify.
• 7Cape Times, 20 August, 1937. The exchange ceased on 31 August, 1937.
• 8In fairness I should add that, since the fall of the coalition and the outbreak of the war, the Cape Times has been the most influential outlet in South Africa for the consistent and persistent expression of enlightened opinion.
• 9They have since been represented in Parliament, not on a common roll, but by four white members. Indians now have no representation. But Coloured and Indians together exceed the Afrikaners in number.
• 10Some injustices may be due more to class barriers than to colour barriers. For instance, there is much resentment felt against Portugal as an intransigent colonial power. But no legally enacted colour bars exist in any Portuguese territory; and a South African who crosses into Mozambique is at once struck by the wholly different attitude, at least superficially, towards colour. Yet the overwhelming majority of the Africans of Mozambique are extremely poor. Some critics conclude that Portugal maintains a de facto if not a legal colour bar. But there are approximately an equal number of Whites and non-Whites with ‘assimilado’ status (that is, who have achieved both literacy and the ability to live at defined civilised standards) who have long enjoyed absolute equality of rights before the law. Yet only 160,000 out of the population of 6.6 million enjoy this status and only 5 per cent of the non-white assimilados are Africans (the rest are Indians and half-castes). If the evident backwardness of the masses is caused by deliberate policy rather than by unrestrained population growth and a paucity of natural resources, there is certainly cause for complaints of class injustice, but not of colour injustice. But educated and responsible non-Whites are not subjected, in the Portuguese territories, to the indignities and humiliations they suffer in South Africa.
• 11Some injustices may be due more to class barriers than to colour barriers. For instance, there is much resentment felt against Portugal as an intransigent colonial power. But no legally enacted colour bars exist in any Portuguese territory; and a South African who crosses into Mozambique is at once struck by the wholly different attitude, at least superficially, towards colour. Yet the overwhelming majority of the Africans of Mozambique are extremely poor. Some critics conclude that Portugal maintains a de facto if not a legal colour bar. But there are approximately an equal number of Whites and non-Whites with ‘assimilado’ status (that is, who have achieved both literacy and the ability to live at defined civilised standards) who have long enjoyed absolute equality of rights before the law. Yet only 160,000 out of the population of 6.6 million enjoy this status and only 5 per cent of the non-white assimilados are Africans (the rest are Indians and half-castes). If the evident backwardness of the masses is caused by deliberate policy rather than by unrestrained population growth and a paucity of natural resources, there is certainly cause for complaints of class injustice, but not of colour injustice. But educated and responsible non-Whites are not subjected, in the Portuguese territories, to the indignities and humiliations they suffer in South Africa.
• 12I shall illustrate my thesis almost entirely by reference to experience in the Republic of South Africa where I have been living whilst my ideas were forming. But the lessons learned from a study of colour bars, apartheid and other manifestations of colour prejudice in South Africa, are of direct relevance wherever skin pigmentation or other racial characteristics serve as a principle for confining individuals to any sort of economic or social inferiority.
• 13Without attempting a comprehensive account of colour relations – economic, social or political – in South Africa, I shall try to identify (a) the forces that have tended to dissolve the economic and social inferiority of the non-white classes, and (b) the opposing forces – constituting the injustice – that have tended, deliberately or otherwise, to perpetuate this inferiority. In the final Chapter I shall sum up what I hope the reader himself will have gathered from the facts and interpretations presented about the nature of these forces.
• 14Now my interpretations of the facts will amount to a criticism of the thinking – not the sincerity – of many of the more vociferous of those who campaign, with tenacity and courage, against colour injustices. I shall, on the whole, be questioning the insight and wisdom of people with no axe to grind – the vastly more numerous disinterested opponents of racial discrimination. It is ideas and stereotypes, not aims and purposes, which I shall be challenging.
• 15Of the four colonies merged, it was in the Cape alone that the non-Whites had any sort of effective political rights; and in order to get the consent of the Cape for unification it had been essential that there should appear to be no risk of these rights being removed. Moreover, the entrenched clauses (which were believed to eliminate the risk) were probably an equally necessary condition for the acceptance of the South Africa Act (which constituted the South African Act of Union) by the British Parliament. Indeed, in the debate on the Act British statesmen confidently expressed the view that the ‘liberalism’ of the Cape would gradually spread to the other provinces. But the march of time belied this faith and proved the entrenchments to be quite ineffective.
• 16But the South African government in the middle and late 1930s was an unholy and uneasy coalition, and if the liberal-minded members of the coalition had raised the issue it would have threatened cabinet unity. Indeed, when I myself tried to arouse public opinion in 1937 by referring to the manner in which the public had been misled, I was strongly attacked by the Cape Times (in a controversy which went into several issues) for irresponsibility. I had charged that we had carelessly ‘torn up our Constitution’. But no steps to rectify the position were taken, or even seriously considered.
• 17But the South African government in the middle and late 1930s was an unholy and uneasy coalition, and if the liberal-minded members of the coalition had raised the issue it would have threatened cabinet unity. Indeed, when I myself tried to arouse public opinion in 1937 by referring to the manner in which the public had been misled, I was strongly attacked by the Cape Times (in a controversy which went into several issues) for irresponsibility. I had charged that we had carelessly ‘torn up our Constitution’. But no steps to rectify the position were taken, or even seriously considered.
• 18When the Afrikaner Nationalists eventually obtained the upper hand, in 1948, they immediately took steps to prove that the Constitution had been torn up. By various manœuvres, which included an attack on the judiciary, an attempt to transform Parliament into a High Court, and finally packing the Senate with their own representatives, they secured the two-thirds majority needed for the abolition of the existing non-white voting rights. Far from the ‘liberalism’ of the Cape having spread to the rest of South Africa, as the British Parliament had been led to expect before Union, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State traditions of ‘no equality in church or state’ had been forced on the whole community, and the Coloureds had been deprived of a political status they had held for a century. Of course, political representation of a minority is no guarantee of economic justice for that minority. The Minister of Coloured Affairs argued recently in defence of the abolition of the political rights which the coloured people had enjoyed, that these rights had left 80 per cent of them ‘backward and poor, with leaders deserting them and trying to gain admission to the white masses’. But their removal from the common roll has been felt as a humiliating deprivation of status.