The Economics of the Colour Bar

CHAPTER 16 THE BORDER AREAS

IN pursuit of the objectives of apartheid or separate development, the proclaimed policy of the Nationalist Government has, since 1955, been (a) to establish ‘border industries’ near the reserves where it is assumed that Africans can be more suitably employed as labourers by white capitalists in integrated co-operation with white artisans and supervisors; and (b) to establish ‘Bantustans’, i.e., districts from which white capitalists (and ultimately white supervisors and artisans) will be excluded, but in which Africans will be allowed some considerable measure of local autonomy and ‘ultimate independence’.1

In 1921, the Stallard Commission had recommended that Blacks should not be allowed in white areas except as temporary employees. By then a relatively small number had become resident in white districts (excluding farming and mining areas). But since that time the great African influx into industry has created a situation which can, I believe, never be reversed. The slow influx of Africans during the 1920s was accelerated after 1934 by the stimulus of an increased dollar price of gold, and later by the acute labour scarcity of the Second World War. The 15 years of apartheid policy since 1948 have so far resulted in no discernible deceleration. Far from any net return of Africans to their presently defined ‘homelands’, we may more reasonably expect a net exodus.

FORCES WORKING AGAINST APARTHEID

The inescapable truth is that, over the decade up to 1961, in spite of influx control and the extraordinarily drastic Native Laws Amendment Act of 1951, a million additional Africans were attracted to employment in soundly located activities which are mostly far from the border areas;2 and the total number of urban Africans in the whole country, which increased by nearly 50 per cent between 1951 and 1960 (from 2.3 million to 3.4 million), is likely to continue to grow, even if part of the growth occurs in the border areas. Indeed the larger probability is of a slowly increasing trek of African labour away from the reserves or Bantustans and from the farms to the existing urban areas or areas adjacent to them. The number of adult male Africans living in the reserves or Bantustans may then form a declining proportion of their total numbers. But of course reckless ‘endorsement out’ of politically selected regions or occupations may well reduce local African populations.3

Statistics of employment in industry by race show remarkable consistency over the years. The trends have hardly been disturbed during the 15 years of apartheid policy, in spite of increasingly drastic enforcement intended to reverse them. This suggests that even harsher recourse to methods which we usually associate with the administration of Soviet communities, as in the Bantu Laws Amendment Bill, will be no more successful. I cannot help thinking that the politicians responsible, having been concerned almost entirely with the effects of their proposals upon electoral, United Nations and International Court approval, have never applied their minds to the significance of the statistical history of the last 40 years.4

Nevertheless, the announced objective is slowly to remove African labour from certain established industrial areas. With this end in view, the Government is not only diverting Africans (by influx control) from these regions but giving conspicuous, much publicised, yet so far not very effective special encouragement5 for the ‘border industries’. The announced intention is that, as elsewhere, the more highly skilled and responsible work shall continue to be undertaken by Whites. Hence the aim is the perpetuation of a form of economic integration but the transfer of this integration to what are regarded as more appropriate districts. But unless the African employees to be moved by authority are to be forced into farm or mine work, they will have to find jobs in as yet non-existent industries, in what are now agricultural districts; and with the exception of certain areas near East London, Durban, Maritzburg, Newcastle and west of Pretoria,6 the border areas intended are almost as poorly located as the projected Bantustans. They are mostly far removed from sources of materials and markets for potential products; they have hardly any water schemes, extremely backward transport arrangements, and inadequate power supplies; and they lack near-by mining industry which might render profitable the establishment of service industries and complementary industries. The border activities will, however, benefit from specially generous financial assistance through the state-operated Industrial Development Corporation,7 from special allowances to industrialists under the Income Tax Act of 1961, from wage-rate concessions,8 from special railway rates (at present rather uncertain), from the provision on favourable terms (i.e., at the taxpayers’ expense) of transport, water, sewage, effluent disposal and power, probably from preferential tariff treatment, and finally from various unpublicised favours promised to promoters. A number of factories have been established in the border areas, presumably through quiet ministerial assurances that these special competitive advantages (which burden the taxpayer with a heavy capital cost for every border employee) will be perpetuated for some time.

ECONOMIC BURDEN OF APARTHEID

Now for many years I have been teaching my students what seem to be the lessons of recorded experience that the most vital entrepreneurial decision – which can make all the difference between the success or failure of a new enterprise – is that relating to its location. I have always accepted that the best measure of centralisation or decentralisation of industrial activity (and other economic operations) in any area is likely to be achieved when the decisions are made on behalf of those who risk large capital sums in the development;9 and I have always regarded it as one of the major weaknesses of state control that political objectives are only too likely to dominate the issue, because officials and politicians are not themselves personally responsible for losses and do not bear the consequences.10

But government spokesmen have made surprisingly optimistic forecasts of the numbers of Africans whom they hope to be able to direct or attract, without disaster, away from where they are at present contributing to output, to segregated integration in new areas. If they do succeed in transferring large numbers in this way, it will be almost entirely through the operation of differential wage-rates, which are very much lower in the border industries than in the already established industrial areas, with hours of labour longer and fringe benefits (including overtime payments) considerably less generous. The Financial Mail complained recently that in the clothing industry African wage-rates were 28 per cent lower in border areas than in Durban (where, on the whole, African wage-rates in the established industrial area are lowest).

‘The gap is often enormous, and while border theorists emphasise wage differentiation they are really defending a low wage policy.’

If such wage-rate discrepancies were merely sufficient to off-set the longer distances of the established industrial areas from the reserves and the larger social costs to Africans of being forced to live so far from wives and families, no injustices would be caused by the differentiation. Indeed, at relatively low wage-rates African labour could (irrespective of any other ‘subsidy’ element) be bid away from areas such as the Western Cape and the Rand. But industrialists who have started in the border areas seem to regard all the other special advantages as chicken feed in comparison with the lower labour costs they have been promised. If this opinion is justified, it follows that disparities in labour cost must be caused by the exclusion of Africans (by means of influx control and ‘endorsing out’) from the established areas to which they would otherwise be attracted. The Financial Mail has described the border districts as ‘local Hong Kongs’. But the labour of Hong Kong is cheap because distance and immigration laws prevent its people from moving to areas where their productivity would be higher; whilst in the case of border areas, African labour is cheap because it is being deliberately excluded or driven from the regions in which its contribution to the common pool of output has been larger.

It seems probable that many border industries will survive only if Africans employed in the new industrial areas are quietly permitted to undertake far more skilled and productive tasks than in the established industrial areas (from which they are to be withdrawn or withheld in future). Otherwise their survival will demand even bigger preferential advantages or subsidies than are already being offered. There was no hint of such a policy when the scheme was first put forward. But just as the final revision of this book was being made, the Prime Minister made a statement11 referring to ‘measures being taken’ to provide ‘more and better employment opportunities for Coloured people and Indians and for trained and unskilled Bantu (Africans) in the Bantu homeland areas and the border area industries’.12 If this means that Africans are to be allowed to undertake skilled work in the border regions it is an oblique announcement of a remarkable breach in the economic apartheid dyke. But it will be grossly unjust to the pioneer industrial regions.

Outside government circles, however, few have had much faith in the possibility of a large number of Africans ever finding employment in the true border areas.13 There are many critics who fear that the claimed objective is merely window-dressing for the benefit of the outside world and that there is no real intention to persevere with it. Others regard it as a manœuvre to acquire cheap labour for the farms and mines. What will in fact take place, says one responsible critic,14

‘is wholesale removal of African families to the congested and underdeveloped African areas, where there neither is nor can be employment or land available for their support. There they will be dumped in “rural villages” under conditions of destitution that will force the men to accept employment as migrant labourers on farms, mines and so on, on such terms as may be offered to them through the District Labour Bureaux’.

At times it seems to be admitted that a distortion of the location of industry must be accepted as part of a courageous economic sacrifice needed for the political and sociological advantages of separate development. Thus, the diversion of industrial integration to new districts appears sometimes to be demanding that favourably located areas, such as the Western Cape, must acquiesce in damage both from labour shortage and from privileged development in poorly-located districts. But the Government has fought shy of calling upon the community as a whole (the supposed beneficiaries) to pay directly for these advantages through open subsidies to border industries. By such open transfers, everybody would have known what the border industries were costing the community in taxation. Similarly, if the plan had set up state-owned ‘border’ industries, the public would at least have known the annual losses (or profits) from the investment. The Prime Minister has claimed, however, that the South African economy is founded on the principle of private initiative, and that state-owned activity would violate that principle.15

CONTRADICTIONS, EVASIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES

At other times it is argued that there will be no damage to existing industrial areas (e.g., the Western Cape) which, although they will in due course lose their traditional form of unskilled labour, will be relieved from ‘over-employment’; or that mechanisation, or the substitution of the labour of Whites or Coloureds, will rectify any labour scarcity; or that established industries will not be allowed to suffer from under-cutting in the sale of output from the privileged areas;16 or that the process will be so gradual that no disruption will occur. The assurance of the present chairman of the Board of Trade and Industries that any special ‘assistance’ accorded these areas will not be ‘unfair’, because the developments fostered will be ‘on a complementary basis and not competitive’,17 is hardly convincing. For even if the form of investment in ‘border’ development is determined, not by assessments of profitability but according to the extent to which it is believed the projected output will not compete with existing kinds of output in the Republic, the new factories will still be competing for the scarce resources of the community.

There is much evidence that the policy has never been carefully thought out. Thus, although ministers have hinted at the possibility of white people having to do without black domestic service, to which household economies have been adjusted in many parts of South Africa, householders have been assured that they will not be robbed of their African servants.18 As the Cape Times remarked:

‘if the Government told the country flatly that for the sake of separate development housewives must make do without servants, like the vast majority of their sisters in Europe, the United States and Australia . . . we would have vastly more respect for the Government’s sincerity about separate development. It would then be possible to believe the implications of apartheid were actually being faced.’

The Western Cape has been chosen as a guinea-pig area, in which the Government can seek to prove that it is practicable, without disaster to the Whites, to dispense with African labour. Yet it is here that wage-rates for unskilled work (which reflect marginal productivity) are the highest in the country. Does this not suggest that African labour has become vital for the continued prosperity of the area.19 Possibly the Western Cape has been chosen because it is politically the least powerful, returning relatively few Nationalist members to Parliament.20 To those who object that the economic growth of this area is to be restrained for the benefit of, say, the Pretoria region, the Minister replies that such critics put a little economic growth before a matter of great principle. But industrial progress in the Western Cape has already been lagging for some time behind the other main industrial areas of the Republic, due I believe mainly to stricter enforcement of influx control plus ‘endorsement out’. From the beginning of 1959 until April, 1962, about 26,000 Africans (of whom 7,000 were women) were ‘endorsed out’ of the Western Cape against their will, and only a small proportion are likely yet to have found employment in the reserves or border areas. Some will probably be working on farms, in other established industrial regions, or in the mines; and some will be virtually unemployed – which is quite unusual for Africans.21

Worried industrialists and farmers have been assured that the removal of Africans will be gradual because, in the meantime, their labour is still needed by the white man. It will take place, they are told, without disruption of industry and over a long period. But if the Blacks are told that, although they are needed now in, say, the Western Cape, in the long run they must regard themselves as unwanted there, feelings of insecurity, resentment and even desperation must result. Some commentators have suggested – not without plausibility – that the threat of ‘endorsement out’ had been a major cause of the emergence of the Poqo organisation (relying upon violent resistance) which, apparently, originated in the Western Cape.

Despite government denials, it is really not unreasonable to infer that only the deepest sense of injustice could have induced the sudden change of attitude during the last decade by urban Africans who had formerly been happy, smiling, patient, submissive, respectful and courteous in their dealings with Whites.22 No doubt trouble-making agitators have played a role; but they have always been active, and we should be asking ourselves why they have suddenly had so much success in recent years. The causes of the new unrest, which have goaded the Government into the most extreme forms of repression, can hardly be unconnected with the administration of doctrinaire apartheid.

It has been claimed for the border industries policy that the proximity of the border regions to the reserves will ameliorate the admittedly unsatisfactory sociological conditions under which urban Africans have so far had to live. Certainly some of them will be able to visit their families over week-ends or, at any rate, over long week-ends; and it may well be possible to provide better living quarters and amenities. Otherwise, nearness to the reserves or the Bantustans is hardly likely to cause material improvement. Of course, if Africans were allowed to bring their wives and families to the border areas, it would mean an enormously important compensating advantage. But that is definitely not what is intended; established industries elsewhere could complain of unfair competition with even more justification and demand similar privileges for their employees. Furthermore, it would defeat one of the chief apparent aims, namely, the preservation of the Africans’ handicap of primitive tribalism for as long a period as possible, and violate what has recently become a basic tenet of apartheid. Yet if urban Africans are to lose their feeling of ‘rootlessness’, with a consequent mitigation of unrest, they must be allowed to acquire land and to live normally within an hour’s journey of their place of work.

ATTEMPT AT CULTURAL ISOLATION?

The drastic attempt at geographical canalisation of industrial development into border areas – a facet of ‘separate development’ – is believed by some to be aimed at achieving more cultural isolation for the African than is believed possible in other urban areas and especially in the Western Cape. Such an aim, weighed against the material sacrifice it must entail, might have some measure of justification if the mere avoidance of troublesome conditions could be accepted as a defensible ideal. But as E. C. Banfield has recently put it,23 dealing generally with the underdeveloped peoples of the world, ‘economic development, by hastening the decay of tradition and other forms of authority’, tends to create ferment and disorder; whilst ‘urbanisation, another indispensable condition of growth, also tends to produce political instability’. Thus, ‘in India, Asia, Africa and Latin America the economically developed regions have been more prone to violence than the less developed ones’.

Such has been the dilemma of all rapidly progressive régimes. For instance, the enormous improvements in standards of living, health, security and equality of opportunity for the common people which were continuously engendered under the laissez-faire of the British industrial revolution produced unrest, discontent, occasional resort to strikes and violence, and opprobrium from superficial historians. Similarly the transition of urban employed Africans from tribalism must be expected to create trouble and unmerited criticism. But unrest and discontent do not mean disaster. The problems of adjustment – including those of the maintenance of public order – although formidable, are soluble. On the other hand, the attempt to isolate our Africans from the cultural heritage of the Western world does, I think, threaten ultimate disaster. It does so because it seeks to perpetuate injustice in the sense in which I am using that term.

The widely held conviction that the decision to direct African labour away from the Western Cape has been announced mainly for external propaganda purposes (in the hope that some means might yet be found for making at least some gesture towards its implementation without ruin) is not based on mere political bias. The critics do not believe that any government which actually tried to carry it out would survive a free election. It would mean that every farming constituency in the Western Cape would turn against the Government; for if urban Africans are to be replaced by Coloureds, as is often suggested, these Coloureds would have to be attracted (or directed by future legislation) away from the farms; and if, at the same time, the farms are to lose their African labour they will face ruin.

 

24The latter project is discussed in Chapter 17.

25In the first half of 1963, the Government’s own labour bureau recruited more Africans from the Transkei than in any of the previous three years, and mostly from the Western Cape. Moreover, as this is being written, the state railways are employing a record number of Africans.

26For instance, presumably through efforts to remove Africans from the Western Cape, in the five chief municipal areas of the Cape Province the non-white population grew by only 36 per cent from 1951 to 1960 (as against the 50 per cent for all urban areas). But the number of African workers in industry as a whole increased by 41 per cent (as against a 26 per cent increase in the number of white workers).

27I am confirmed in this opinion by reason of the surprising lack of familiarity with the official statistics relevant to his department shown recently by the Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs (see my letter in the Cape Times of 5 April, 1963, the Deputy Minister’s reply on 11 April, 1963, and my rejoinder on 19 April, 1963), and some absurd claims about the statistical implications of border industries development which have been made by the Prime Minister (see letters from Dr S. van der Horst, Cape Times, 9 April, 1963, and Cape Argus, 25 April, 1963).

28The Prime Minister has recently admitted that the progress of border industries has been slow, but he claims that it is gaining pace.

29These areas were (partly by reason of access to raw materials) destined to attract industries in any case. Indeed, in my judgment they would, on the whole, have progressed industrially more rapidly under the prosperity likely in the absence of apartheid. They might be termed the ‘pseudo-border areas’. It is not clear why the economic integration of Blacks and Whites is to be welcomed in, say, the Pretoria district but not in the Cape Town district.

30Including the leasing of factories at heavily subsidised rentals.

31In wage-board determinations and in extensions to the border areas of industrial council agreements.

32Much of the talk about the need for centralisation of industry emanates from a doctrinaire belief that the centralisation of industrial activity, which has led to the growth of towns, has for some reason been uneconomic. But such concentration has been the consequence of the decisions of those who have stood to gain from wise decisions and to bear heavy losses when their forecasts have turned out to be wrong.

33This is evidenced in South Africa in such things as the enormous mileage of uneconomically provided branch railway lines.

34Cape Times, 4 October, 1963.

35Whilst this book was in the press the Minister of Labour was more explicit. He announced in the Senate (13 February, 1964) that there would be no ceiling to the skills Africans could acquire in the border areas.

36As distinct from certain areas near the reserves which were, in any case, destined to develop industrially. In the last year for which the Industrial Development Corporation has reported, an additional 1,850 Africans obtained employment in border industries out of 400,000 employed in industry as a whole. The IDC is a state-financed body which assists the financing of industry and has been instructed to do everything possible to develop the border areas.

37Donald Molteno, QC, a leading constitutional authority and member of the Progressive Party, Cape Times, 10 March, 1963.

38One can understand the Government’s unwillingness for these economic activities either to show a loss or be blamed for ‘unfair’ competition with old established industrial areas. But one can hardly describe as ‘private enterprise’ a system under which, before any industrialist can contemplate the inauguration of any large-scale industry, he must first consult government departments and Ministers to find out where he may locate the development in order to escape penalties or enjoy privileges which can make the difference between success and failure.

39E.g., cotton and rayon textiles to be segregated in the border areas and woollen or nylon textiles to be permitted to continue in existing areas.

40Apparently, therefore, the intention is that the new industries shall enjoy just sufficient privilege to off-set their locational disadvantages.

41But in the future only one African servant will be permitted to live in without a special permit.

42Already by the 1880s, considerable numbers had been attracted to the Western Cape for labouring work; and shortly after the Boer War it became expedient, mainly for public health reasons, to provide a location for them at Ndabeni. During the present century, the influx continued slowly until the First World War, when the growing African population began to give rise to misgivings. But since 1934 the number employed in the Western Cape has grown by more than five times. Today, over 180,000 find employment in this area where they make up about one-eighth of the population, about 40 per cent of them being in rural areas and 60 per cent in urban areas.

43The Western Cape envisaged is the area west of a line running from Humansdorp through Pearston, Middelburg, Colesburg, Hopetown, Prieska and Namaqualand.

44See Chapter 10, pp. 95–6.

45I am not suggesting that they had not felt deep resentments for many years.

46American Foreign Aid Doctrines, pp. 14–17.

• 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.
• 10Cape Times, 13 May, 1963.
• 11See Chapter 17, pp. 158–160.
• 12Wilson and Mafeje, op. cit., p. 148.
• 13In more general and less misleading terms, this has meant seeking the achievement of each economic objective with a minimum sacrifice of alternative objectives. If every entrepreneur were able to pay the lowest wage-rates needed to acquire labour in the free market, not only would the dispersion of wage-rates between low and high levels be reduced to a minimum but the aggregate flow of wages would be maximised. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that, through such an economising of labour, the proportion of wages to other incomes in the division of the value of the product would be reduced.
• 14The Coloured labour unions have tended to be dominated by leaders from the extreme Left.
• 15See Chapter 11, pp. 105–6.
• 16I am not suggesting that it is not an appropriate function of the state to finance education, both general and technical.
• 17In part this idea was based on the fallacy that rapacious employers could exploit the non-Whites because their ‘needs’ were less than those of the Whites.
• 18This Table may, unless qualified, leave a wrong impression. Average earnings (salaries and wages) per head of Africans, as a proportion of the average earnings of Whites, rose steadily from 12% in 1933–4 to 24.7% in 1946–7. After that year, mainly because of “influx control”, a bigger proportion of Africans than the free market would have determined, found employment in less productive and less well paid areas. Hence, the percentage of African to white earnings per head fell steadily to 18% in 1958–9. Since then it has recovered to 18.5% in 1960–1.
• 19Provided, of course, that the necessary disciplinary structure and the market determination of wage-rates are not frustrated.
• 20There is no law to forbid the apprenticeship of Africans who have managed to acquire the necessary educational qualification. But any attempt to do so would almost certainly be quashed by the Registrar of Apprenticeship, responding to labour union pressure.
• 21It need hardly be stressed that the farming vote is more powerful than the industrial vote.
• 22By 1961, 3, 153 Africans had been authorised to do building work (under these restrictions) and there were 566 official learners.
• 23The present policy of gradually transferring Africans from the urban areas in which their earnings are highest (such as the Western Cape) to badly located ‘border areas’ (in which their earnings are planned to be much lower – see Chapter 16, pp. 142–3), or to the’ Bantustans’, or to farm and mining pursuits, is likely to weaken this source of economic security.
• 24Some 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.
• 25Some 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.
• 26I 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.
• 27Without 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.
• 28Now 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.
• 29Of 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.
• 30But 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.
• 31But 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.
• 32When 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.
• 33When 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.
• 34If policy had been to encourage the investment of private capital in the reserves, however, the scant natural resources of these areas would have been more rapidly and intensively developed; and again the material benefits would have been largest among the Africans themselves. But the sociological consequences of the rising standards of living – the inevitable weakening of tribal customs and tradition – would not have been welcomed either by the South African Government or by the chiefs. And one of the principal objects of recent policy has been the prevention of any such developments. Thus, in recently granting some measure of local autonomy (so-called ‘self-government’) to the Transkei, the necessity to protect the Africans from the ‘wolves’, the white capitalists, has been emphasised by spokesmen for apartheid. There is a familiar, contemporary ring about the catch-phrases used to justify a policy which permits only such forms of material progress as the state finds expedient. Yet in curbing the profit incentive to investment (and in causing therefore a slowing down of the material advancement of the Africans), apartheid has warded off the emergence of a situation which is, on the whole, regarded as unjust. That is, it has (within the reserves) prevented a minority of Whites or foreign investors from becoming the owners of a large part of the physical resources which provide employment for Blacks.
• 35A serious difficulty confronted in any attempt to interpret experience of race relations arises out of a tendency for resentments aroused by unquestionable injustices, as I have defined them, to be directed against wholly innocent parties, through whose agency unjust discriminations happen to be applied. For instance, Africans are apt to blame the officials whose duty it is to enforce the pass laws or influx control for the decisions required by those controls or laws. Again, ‘when fares are raised or transport inadequate . . . the crews are liable to be treated as scapegoats’. Equally irrationally, the Africans tend to blame ‘employers’ for the relatively low wage-rates they can command rather than the legal enactments (such as the Wage and Industrial Conciliation Acts), social institutions (such as labour unions), or the customs which are responsible.
• 36Those who have said that capitalists want to maintain a supply of ‘cheap docile labour’ misconceive the interests of entrepreneurs. Certainly the co-ordination of complex activities demands ‘discipline’, and there may be no harm in describing willingness to accept entrepreneurial commands (themselves subject to the stern discipline of the market) as ‘docility’. But it does not mean passivity in face of injustice, which is what is usually implied. In a competitive society, entrepreneurs have every incentive to produce at least-cost, which means acquiring the services of people as well as of physical agents as cheaply as possible.
• 37The Industrial Conciliation Act appears, on the whole, to have favoured the Whites in a grossly unfair manner, especially in occupations dominated by the Whites when it was passed in the early 1920s. But it would be wrong to suppose that all industrial councils have represented white employees alone, or have been dominated by them. In the new industries such as clothing which emerged in the 1930s (through entrepreneurial avoidance of the spirit and aims of the ‘civilised labour policy’), the Coloured employees came to be strongly represented; and in industries where the labour unions are dominated by Coloureds, the incentive to bring Africans into semi-skilled occupations seems to have been weakened. On the other hand, the organisation of the Coloureds through industrial councils may have had the effect (before job reservation in 1956 and 1959) of protecting them not only against the potential competition of Africans but also against moves to oust them from their existing channels of employment for the benefit of Whites.
• 38The Industrial Conciliation Act appears, on the whole, to have favoured the Whites in a grossly unfair manner, especially in occupations dominated by the Whites when it was passed in the early 1920s. But it would be wrong to suppose that all industrial councils have represented white employees alone, or have been dominated by them. In the new industries such as clothing which emerged in the 1930s (through entrepreneurial avoidance of the spirit and aims of the ‘civilised labour policy’), the Coloured employees came to be strongly represented; and in industries where the labour unions are dominated by Coloureds, the incentive to bring Africans into semi-skilled occupations seems to have been weakened. On the other hand, the organisation of the Coloureds through industrial councils may have had the effect (before job reservation in 1956 and 1959) of protecting them not only against the potential competition of Africans but also against moves to oust them from their existing channels of employment for the benefit of Whites.
• 39By comparison, the initial disadvantages of the non-Whites due to home background and lack of resources for investment in their own education have in themselves been a minor hindrance to their progress. It will generally pay private enterprise to see that education, both general and technical, is made available where openings for the employment of the attributes and skills acquired are not likely to be suppressed. But powerful custom or prejudice, collusive action and legal enactment, by closing potential avenues of employment may destroy the motive for investment in human capital. Indeed, it will be wasteful for the state, for business concerns or for parents to devote resources to training and equally pointless for individuals to devote their energies and limited incomes to such purposes. But there would have been an irresistibly strong demand for developing the industrial usefulness of the Coloureds if it had not been for fears that any such move would have encountered other legislative steps to render unusable the skills so developed. The profit motive is powerful; but when it is likely to be overruled by legislation or regulation its power to serve the community is hamstrung.
• 40Of course, there were sincere supporters of the ‘civilised labour policy’ who believed it would truly raise the Coloureds and Africans to the white man’s standards, and equally sincere opponents who objected to it for precisely this reason. Thus, some of the most effective parliamentary criticism of the Wage Act (from the parliamentary Opposition – then the ‘South African Party’) arose from the belief that it would have its claimed effects and raise the earnings of the non-Whites, thus disturbing the existing non-white subservience. Other Opposition members believed (equally fallaciously) that employers could afford to pay high wage-rates to Whites because of the economies achieved in paying low wage-rates to non-Whites; and they opposed the Wage Act because they thought it might be used to raise Coloured and African wage-rates and hence ultimately reduce the earnings of Whites.
• 41PROPORTION OF AGGREGATE SALARIES AND WAGES PAID TO EACH RACE IN PRIVATE INDUSTRY IN THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
• 42Hence, although the free market system has assisted the productive use of unskilled African labour, it has been allowed a very limited success in circumventing legislation, official action, or collusive action tolerated by the state, which has denied opportunities for the Africans to use skill and so effectively destroyed their incentive to acquire skill. This has been wholly to the detriment of industry. For instance, one important form of economy frustrated by regulations under the Mines and Works Act, by closed shop agreements under the Industrial Conciliation Act, and since 1956 by the ‘job reservation’ clauses of that Act, has been that attainable through ‘work studies’, under which ‘skilled jobs’ are analysed and broken down into ‘skilled’ or ‘semi-skilled’ operations on the one hand, and truly skilled operations on the other. In South Africa such analysis would normally have led to Africans being allowed to undertake (at first) the ‘semi-skilled’ parts of the work, thereby releasing Whites and Coloureds for employments demanding relatively more skill. This process, which has been fruitfully utilised in some measure on the Rhodesian copper belt, has been virtually suppressed in the Republic of South Africa. Experience in Northern Rhodesia provides some indication of South Africa’s loss in industrial and mining pursuits, and the near future may teach even more salutary lessons about the ability of Africans to contribute to output.
• 43The apartheid policy has been increasingly represented as implying separate development, including the provision of facilities for African advancement (economic and political) in ‘their own areas’. But when this policy was introduced Africans, who were denied the effective right to be apprenticed, could not – even in the townships and locations where they were living – legally perform any of a wide range of skilled tasks, in building and other industries, for which many had, often rather surreptitiously, acquired skills.
• 44In 1951, when the conditions under which many Africans were living outside the reserves and mine compounds had led to irritating external criticism, the Native Building Workers’ Act was passed to help rectify this disability by providing training facilities in building crafts for Africans. In an industry in which, as labourers, they make up four-fifths of the total labouring force, qualified Africans may now legally act as brick-layers, painters, etc., in ‘their own areas’ and on farms. They are, however, prohibited from doing this skilled building work in most other urban areas and the government retain complete discretion to determine the maximum number of Africans who may be allowed to acquire building skills.
• 45In 1951, when the conditions under which many Africans were living outside the reserves and mine compounds had led to irritating external criticism, the Native Building Workers’ Act was passed to help rectify this disability by providing training facilities in building crafts for Africans. In an industry in which, as labourers, they make up four-fifths of the total labouring force, qualified Africans may now legally act as brick-layers, painters, etc., in ‘their own areas’ and on farms. They are, however, prohibited from doing this skilled building work in most other urban areas and the government retain complete discretion to determine the maximum number of Africans who may be allowed to acquire building skills.
• 46Even as unskilled labourers, Africans absorbed into the urban economy have obtained considerable benefits, not least in economic security. The tribal life is precarious in the extreme because crop failure (due to drought or pests) or cattle epidemics may cause famine. But because they have no effective labour unions, Africans can easily obtain employment (in urban as well as mine or farm occupations) when they face adversity in their homelands, so long as legislative obstacles do not prevent it. Hence the urban source of income tends to be highly elastic, and acts as a remarkably effective stabiliser in the economy of the reserves.