The Economics of the Colour Bar

CHAPTER 2 THE SOUTH AFRICAN BACKGROUND

THE racial composition of the population of the Republic of South Africa may be summarised briefly. The Whites (inappropriately termed ‘Europeans’) make up about one-fifth. The home language of about 60 per cent – the Afrikaners – is Afrikaans, and of the remainder, English. History has created and the politicians have perpetuated a political, and to some extent an economic, cleavage between the two white sections. Africans (formerly called ‘Natives’ but now officially, although rather inappropriately, termed ‘Bantu’1) form about two-thirds of the population; the Coloureds, a race of half-castes, about one-tenth of the total; and Asiatics, mainly Indians, about 2 to 3 per cent.

THE ORIGIN OF RACE CONFLICT

To understand the relations between these groups, it is essential to grasp the remarkable complexity of the colour situation; but any attempt adequately to explain the origins of that complexity would involve a long excursion into history. It is possible in this Chapter only to sketch the background.

In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck established a white settlement in Cape Town for the Dutch East India Company, to serve as a half-way house to the Dutch East Indies. The company had no intention of establishing a colony in Africa. It merely wanted an assured supply of water, vegetables, fruit and wine to preserve the health of their crews sailing to or from its East Indian possessions. Nevertheless, its employees spread into the interior of the Cape and by the end of the eighteenth century a virtual colony had emerged. But partly because of the company’s reluctance to colonise, and partly because the aboriginal Hottentots and Bushmen did not make good servants, it imported slaves to the settlement, mainly from Malaya. At that period, the aversion to inter-marriage was much less strong than it became later. Almost from the foundation of the Cape settlement, there was inter-breeding between White and non-White. As a result (together with a later inter-mixture of African blood) there emerged the race of half-castes known today as the Coloured people. It constitutes the most unjustly treated, the most cheerful and the most lovable group of people I have ever known.

The British occupation, which dates from 1806, differed from the Dutch in that colonisation was, in a sense, its purpose, more obviously so after the arrival of the 1820 settlers. The existing white community, mainly of Dutch origin (with more numerous subordinate classes of Hottentots, Coloureds and Malays, free or enslaved) was taken over by Britain. This white community, usually known as ‘Boers’ at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, tended to regard itself as subject to ‘imperial domination’, until the declaration of republican status in 1961. Yet the new regime was relatively liberal (‘liberal’ in the old sense2); no attempt was made to suppress Dutch institutions;3 the use of the Dutch language was permitted, and it survived in the form of Afrikaans (which, together with English, is today one of the official languages of the Republic); and Roman Dutch Law remains the law of South Africa. Moreover, in their relations with non-Whites the British authorities developed a policy which has often been described as humanitarian. Slavery was abolished in 1834.

THE GROWTH OF AFRIKANER DOM

The spirit of tolerance in British policy had the defects of its virtues. Whereas the Dutch East India Company had suppressed the French language of the Huguenot settlers who had arrived in 1688, forcing the submergence of their culture into the Dutch, the survival in the Cape of the Dutch language and the traditions of the Dutch colonists permitted a separate white community to persist, with its own language, church and sociological background. This development profoundly influenced subsequent history. For the ‘Dutch’ section – the Boers or Afrikaners – came to feel that they were in danger of losing their identity. They thought their culture, ideals and way of life were threatened by the more aggressive and more self-confident traditions (backed by habits of industry, thrift, commercial knowledge and capital) of the British. Yet influences which tended to spread the advantages enjoyed by the British immigrants were normally represented as ‘Anglicisation’. Moreover, many o, the Boers were inclined to think of the enforcement of a régime in the Cape which failed to entrench white privilege and recognise the reality of an inherent white superiority as ‘imperial domination’. In the pages which follow we shall see how the gradual emancipation of the Boer nation (the Afrikaners) from the bonds of ‘British imperialism’ was followed by an equally gradual introduction, by those liberated, of laws and administration which sought to subject the non-Whites to permanent inferiority of status and condition.

After the 1830s, it is inappropriate to refer to the ‘Dutch’ community of South Africa, although they continued to be known as that until this century. Except through their religion, they had little in common with the people of their original homeland, and their language, having become almost entirely spoken and not written, was rapidly simplified to what is now recognised to be a separate language, Afrikaans. I shall henceforth refer to this section of the white people as ‘the Afrikaners’.

THE VOORTREKKERS

The most serious cause of the schism among the Whites was the indignation of the Afrikaners at the mildest official tendencies towards liberalism in respect of colour. The ideal of equality of treatment for all in a multi-racial society was anathema to a group which had become used to slave-owning; and, following the freeing of the slaves in 1834, many of the Afrikaner families fled into the interior, thus initiating, in 1836, what has become known as the Great Trek. The advancing ‘Voortrekkers’, as the colonising Afrikaners are called, occupied a more or less empty interior, at first obtaining the areas they settled by treaty rather than by force of arms. But in the course of the Trek, they eventually came into violent conflict with African tribes, and because the Voortrekkers were victorious in the wars, the Africans were eventually driven into demarcated areas known as ‘reserves’, which have survived until today.4

Moving deeply into the interior, the Voortrekkers formed two new large, independent republics known as the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. These republics adopted democratic constitutions except for the provision that there should be no equality in church or state between Black and White, a principle that perpetuated attitudes of mind and conviction with which policy-makers still have to contend to this day. The trekking Afrikaners had also moved into Natal, but that area fell under British control very soon afterwards (in 1843) and the emigration of colonists from Britain eventually caused it to become the most homogeneous English-speaking part of South Africa.

During the British régime in Natal, large numbers of Indians were brought to South Africa. Very shortly after settlement had begun, sugar showed prospects of becoming a vital product in the economy. But much labour was required, and at first attempts were made to persuade the local Africans to undertake the job. For various reasons they did not succeed, and it was then decided to arrange for indentured labour to be brought from India for work on the plantations. Indian immigration began in 1859 and was finally ended in 1911. In the meantime, traders from India had followed the indentured workers and a settled Indian community (some of whom moved out of Natal to better opportunities in other parts of South Africa) had come into being.

UNION AND DISUNITY

At the end of the century, the Boer War, with the rights and wrongs of which we are not concerned, brought the Orange Free State and the Transvaal under British sovereignty. At the settlement in 1902, the victors granted self-government to the vanquished, subject to the safeguarding of political rights for non-Afrikaners, which the war had ostensibly been fought to bring about. In 1910, all four colonies, the Cape, Natal, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, were merged into the Union of South Africa.

Under the Act of Union, political independence was conferred upon the four colonies, which were joined under a unitary constitution; but non-white franchise and language rights were reserved by the British Crown. The British connection remained important henceforth for two main reasons only: first, sentiment, which had made the transfer of power acceptable to the British electorate; and second, because of the attempt to entrench constitutionally (a) the political rights of the non-Whites – which had traditionally existed only in one part of the new Union, the Cape, and (b) equal rights for English and Dutch (later Afrikaans) as ‘official languages’. Nevertheless, the Afrikaners’ fight against ‘British imperialism’ continued and was inspired by the generation and maintenance of an atmosphere of dogged resistance against forces which were held to be threatening ‘die Boerenasie’ (the Boer nation). The Nationalist Party achieved power and have sought to maintain themselves permanently in power by indoctrination through education, by exploitation of nationalist emotions and by the maintenance of a continuous atmosphere of emergency and struggle against ‘external enemies’.5

Of the four colonies merged, it was in the Cape alone that the non-Whites had any sort of effective political rights;6 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.

In 1931, mainly in the hope of appeasing Afrikaner Nationalism, the British passed the Statute of Westminster which quietly removed (although this was not clear at the time) the authority of the British Crown to veto any dishonouring of the entrenched clauses. The Status Act, passed by the South African Parliament in 1934, took a further step in this direction. What confused the leaders of the coloured people and their friends at this time was that the provision requiring a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Parliament to amend the entrenched clauses remained in the constitution. Moreover, even the Nationalist leaders gave the most solemn assurances that they would regard the entrenchments as binding. Indeed, they expressed deep resentment at those who ventured to suggest that the clauses in question might not, in fact, be honoured. The Speaker of the House of Assembly went so far as to assure the Africans (who, through a resolution of the Transkeian General Council, had expressed grave concern at the move) that the entrenchments had been strengthened. Public opinion was temporarily reassured. Gradually, however, the implications of the change began to sink home and grave perturbation developed.

But 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 issues7) for irresponsibility.8 I had charged that we had carelessly ‘torn up our Constitution’. But no steps to rectify the position were taken, or even seriously considered.

DEMOCRACY DISHONOURED

When 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.9 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’.10 But their removal from the common roll has been felt as a humiliating deprivation of status.

Now although the absence of political rights does not necessarily mean the loss of freedom, it does imply that one factor is missing which, together with others, may guarantee freedom. Groups with no voting rights may well be subject to the rule of law and enjoy full equality before law. This is in fact the position of foreigners in most democratic countries. It would be absurd to suggest that, when we decide to live in foreign, democratic countries, where we have no voting rights, we are less free than we are at home. Similarly, it would be absurd to suggest that Swiss women, who do not enjoy the franchise, are less free or feel less free than their husbands or brothers. But I am not defending the revocation of the entrenched clauses. On the contrary, I believe that that step, breaking as it has done respect for constitutional entrenchments, may well prove disastrous for the white minority in South Africa, and perhaps in other African States.

We do not easily think of the African, Coloured or Indian subjects of the Republic of South Africa as being subject to colonial rule. But some writers have regarded ‘the Native Reserves’ of South Africa as colonised areas. This notion is far from satisfactory; for, as we shall see, policy in the Republic has aimed with increasing deliberateness at preventing those forms of development to which the profit motive would direct investment; whereas it has been the essence of the colonialism which has fallen into such disrepute that commercial incentives have been allowed to determine the course of economic advance. The influx of private capital into the ‘Native Areas’ of South Africa has been controlled with growing stringency, and for several years now it has been brought virtually to an end. Admittedly, white traders and a few hotel keepers, garage proprietors, and others have been permitted in the African territories; many of them have, indeed, made fortunes through the phenomenal growth of the African’s purchasing power during the last few decades; but on the whole the acquisition of property by Whites – including the establishment of industries – has been restrained.

The motive of these restraints has in part been that of preserving ownership for the Africans, and it has not been entirely unsuccessful. For instance, if the purchase of land by the Whites had not been forbidden, given the other restrictions on the productivity and hence on the incomes of the Africans, it is likely that a large proportion of the most valuable land would have come to be owned by the Whites. That would not have been an outcome to be deplored from all points of view; for it would almost certainly have meant a large increase in the agricultural productivity of the reserves, an incomparably larger internally-earned income, and hence a much larger permanently resident African population within their homelands. But it would have created one of the chief apparent injustices of colonialism, a minority race acquiring ownership of the bulk of a conspicuous form of capital.

EFFECTS OF THE RESTRICTIONS ON INVESTMENT

If 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.11 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.

But are not the wiser social critics those who perceive that the fundamental injustice suffered by the Africans originates in those hindrances to private investment which have condemned them as a whole to avoidable backwardness, ignorance, illiteracy, poverty and high mortality. This is indeed the central theme of the book.

 

12The present government wishes to avoid the word ‘African’.

13That is, what the Americans are now calling ‘libertarian’. I propose in this essay to follow the example of Professor Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago, using the term ‘liberal’ in its original connotation, and avoiding the term ‘libertarian’.

14For instance, in spite of the British Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, the administrative system of ‘Landdrosts and Heemraden’ (as distinct from Mayors, Aldermen and Councillors), which had been inaugurated under the Dutch East India Company, persisted until late in the century and influenced the whole pattern of administration and justice in South Africa. Liberal influences from Europe seem, in fact, to have been introduced a few years before the British occupation, during the brief regime under which the Cape was subject to rule by the Dutch (from 1803 to 1806), largely through the enlightenment of the Governor of the Cape, de Mist.

15The British settlers in the Eastern Province experienced similar conflicts.

16See Chapter 5, p. 42.

17In Natal there was some possibility of non-Whites qualifying for the franchise but only a handful did, in fact, qualify.

18Cape Times, 20 August, 1937. The exchange ceased on 31 August, 1937.

19In 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.

20They 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.

21Cape Times, 13 May, 1963.

22See Chapter 17, pp. 158–160.

• 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.
• 12Some 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.
• 13Some 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.
• 14I 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.
• 15Without 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.
• 16Now 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.
• 17Of 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.
• 18But 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.
• 19But 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.
• 20When 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.
• 21When 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.
• 22If 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.