The Economics of the Colour Bar

CHAPTER 3 COLOUR PREJUDICE AND COLOUR RESENTMENT

THE racial problems of the Republic of South Africa are, I believe, incomparably more complex than those of any other country in the world. There is more ethnological and sociological variety; wider dispersion in the standards of education, earning ability and money incomes per head; and the difficulties which arise in any attempt to design an institutional framework under which peaceful relations can be achieved among the members of this conglomeration appear at first almost insuperable. What further complicates the problem is a schism between the English-speaking and the Afrikaans-speaking sections of the white people. It is desirable to deal with this division among the Whites in order to understand the broad relations between Whites and non-Whites.1

The feelings of injustice which are so often harboured by white or non-white classes or races do not originate wholly from a feeling that economic opportunities are unfairly withheld by custom, collusive action or legal enactment. If the social segregation of the races survived the general achievement of economic equality (which, in my judgment, it would not), it would still evoke resentments. The longing for improved rank, status, prestige and respect appears to be of greater relative importance. Thus, the break-up of the Rhodesian Federation may be interpreted as evidence that African leaders place a higher value on the dignity of their race than they do upon prospective material advantages (like a falling death rate, improving nutrition and rising real income)2 or political advantages like freedom of expression; for those benefits are less likely to survive with the passing of colonial responsibility. Yet as we shall see later on,3 recent legislation in South Africa seems to have been deliberately aimed at humiliating the non-Whites, particularly in the Immorality Act and the Group Areas Act.

RACE HATRED: PREJUDICE AND RESENTMENT

We can, I think, classify racial hatreds into (a) colour prejudice, i.e., prejudice against and contempt for races of ‘inferior’ status to ourselves, and (b) colour resentment, i.e., envy of (yet reluctantly admitted respect for) races of superior status to ourselves. After 35 years of observation in South Africa, I should say that there is no colour prejudice on the part of an under-privileged or backward race against a privileged or advanced race, or against those of lighter skin or ‘European’ type features. Envy, resentment and indignation, yes; hatred, possibly; but ‘prejudice’, no. Lightly coloured persons take every possible opportunity of passing for white and although there is a big economic advantage for them if they succeed, that is by no means the whole reason for their wishing to do so. The standards of beauty among non-Whites appear to have been subtly moulded by the prestige which attaches to a white skin and white features.4

Liberal-minded white leaders have sometimes said: ‘the non-Whites no more wish to mix with us than we wish to mix with them.’ That is wishful thinking and wholly wrong. There is no group horror at inter-marriage on the part of Africans, Asiatics and Coloureds comparable to that which exists among the Whites, provided it occurs within the bounds set by their marriage codes and is in the right colour direction. Of course the Africans, living as they do under a régime in which racial inter-mixture is condemned by powerful social convention, tend to inhibit thoughts of it; and the psychological discipline so exerted is strengthened by the ties of tribal custom. Moreover, Africans in the Western Cape tend rather to despise the Coloureds as the inferior group among the privileged and envied classes, an attitude which is reinforced or rationalised by their disapproval (from the standpoint of the sturdy morality of pagan behaviour and its associated dignity) of the addiction of many Coloureds to drink and dagga-smoking and their frequent boisterous conduct. But that is a disapproval of breeding rather than of breed; and the conservative among the Africans regard equally unfavourably their own ‘tsotsi’, whose behaviour pattern is not so different from that of the Coloured ‘skollies’.5 Some Africans have tried to pass for Coloured or succeeded in so doing, whether mainly for the economic advantages (which are not inconsiderable) or in order to enjoy the higher status it is difficult to tell; others have married Coloured women or live with Coloured concubines. And there are innumerable evidences that the attitude of races towards inter-marriage differs considerably according to whether it is viewed from the side of the poorer or subordinate races or from the side of the wealthier or privileged races.6 Thus, among the Whites it tends to be regarded with what appears superficially to be a natural repugnance, so insidiously have prestige factors affected moral judgments.7

The African intelligentsia have certainly tried to model their manners and demeanour upon that of Whites, particularly of the English-speaking,8 which is not surprising since they are in process of absorbing western civilisation, which the Whites have borne. The cinema seems to have been a major influence in this respect. The apparent result is that social standing among the African intelligentsia has depended largely upon the degree to which the dress, fashions, bearing and conduct of the Whites have been admired and borrowed.

There is an almost exact parallel in class prejudice. The poorer classes in countries of homogeneous population may envy and be taught to hate the middle classes and the rich, especially if politicians play on their acquisitive instincts. It is often easy to foster jealousy against those whose clothes, living environment, education, speech, manners, dignity, self-assurance and ability to command respect are accepted as superior. But the classes which resent the higher social standing of others normally welcome rather than avoid friendships or contacts among those of higher station. They like to associate with people who, by reason of luck or merit, move in the upper circles.

But when Whites form the dominant class, it is not very easy for the more meritorious and able among the non-Whites to progress far in social prestige and esteem, even within their own group. One reason lies in the fact that the more successful among all the non-white races – Coloureds, Asiatics and Africans – are inclined to emulate the dominant white races. They are not content with rank in their own group. They may inhibit their feelings but they want to associate with their white equals in intellectual achievement and responsibility. This is all too often denied; yet is it not all too likely that, in this very human attitude, we have the origin of the intense bitterness which has emerged among so many of the leaders of the non-Whites? And does it not suggest that, even if it were otherwise practicable, no policy of ‘separate development’ would be likely to offer a solution?

ECONOMIC PRIVILEGE THE CAUSE OF DISCRIMINATION

We do not, however, find in colour prejudice as such the main origin – nor, perhaps, even the most important cause – of most economic colour bars. The chief source of colour discrimination is, I suggest, to be found in the natural determination to defend economic privilege (the preservation of ‘customary economic relationships between the races’), non-Whites simply happening to be the essentially underprivileged groups in South Africa. Certainly colour custom and colour prejudice have been persistently exploited in efforts to win electoral support for measures which seek to curb the tendency of the profit system to admit the poorer races to better opportunities; but such casuistic exploitation of custom and prejudice does not make it the prime motive for the exclusion of competition from the despised or feared Coloureds, Asiatics or Africans. It resembles, indeed, the incitements which, in countries of homogeneous population, are so often exploited by trade union leaders in order to arouse those organised in ‘closed shops’ to hostility against interlopers – the unapprenticed or ‘unqualified’.

The naturalness of the fear of competition which the dissolution of colour privilege threatens is emphasised by the attitude of many of the Coloured community of South Africa when they feel that they may have to meet competition from Africans. In my judgment, the Coloured people have had the greatest cause to complain of unfair discrimination in their country. Yet, as Mr. G. V. Doxey has correctly reported,

‘while on the one hand they [the Coloured people] have sought equality of opportunity with the white man, the majority of them, in turn, refuse to see the need for the same treatment to be given to the African population’.9

The present government has tried, not entirely without success, to obtain the support of some of the Coloured leaders for its apartheid policy by capitalising on the apprehensions of so many of the Coloured people that they may be reduced to the standards of the despised Africans.10

Lurking in the background of the complex of custom and prejudice which the power of the state has been used to appease is genuine alarm at the prospect of ultimate domination of the Africans in the political sphere, with spoliation of the Whites. These misgivings cannot be dismissed as illusory. They may not justify the means adopted to protect the future of the white minority, but they do, at any rate, help to explain it. And although the natural fears of the Whites have been exploited by machiavellian politicians concerned mainly with winning the votes of a badly misinformed and indoctrinated electorate, the fears themselves are wholly well-founded. The determination to preserve ‘white civilisation’ is not ignoble. But the unwillingness to share it is incapable of defence and the methods used expose that ‘civilisation’ to contempt. It is the cause of resentment among the non-Whites. And it is the consequence both of colour prejudice and of the not unfounded fear of ultimate domination by the Blacks.

But if we do not find in colour prejudice the chief incentive for legislative or collusively enforced colour bars, we do find in the consequences of economic exclusiveness a cause for the persistence of irrational race prejudice. I argue later that in a free economic system the rising economic standards of the non-Whites would have led to a gradual dissolution of prejudice, following periods of unavailing resistance, intransigence, disillusion and finally reappraisal of the realities of a changing world.

The effect of a sudden improvement in the material well-being of a socially subordinate race seems to be at first the intensification of prejudice. Thus, it often angers the poorer Whites in South Africa to see well-dressed Africans, or to hear them speak in a cultured manner. They regard it as presumption, as the assertion of a spurious claim to a higher social status. But an ‘equality of aspect’ which persists for any length of time slowly promotes social respect unless propaganda successfully prevents the abandonment of traditional attitudes.

A 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.11 Again, ‘when fares are raised or transport inadequate . . . the crews are liable to be treated as scapegoats’.12 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.

EXPLOITING INTOLERANCE TO PRESERVE INFERIORITY

If we are to consider all these issues in fair perspective, it is essential also that we shall continuously remind ourselves of how intolerant we human beings all tend to be, even within racially homogeneous communities, of groups who differ from us in status, speech or custom. This intolerance is greatly magnified when the other group appears to be rising or even aspiring to rise in status relatively to ourselves. Thus, urban Africans tend to speak disparagingly of the ‘uskuse me’ class – their intelligentsia or middle class, the more cultured, better dressed group among them. Subtle feelings of envy and the urge to see the relative status of one’s group preserved account for such resentments. Naturally, these factors complicate the race-engendered irritations and tensions which contribute to feelings of colour injustice.

The broad conclusion suggested, which the following chapters will illustrate, is that the survival of colour prejudice is more a consequence than a cause of economic colour discrimination and injustice. But demagogic exploitation of the moral weaknesses from which all races suffer has perpetuated restraints on the competition of the non-Whites and thereby maintained them in a position of economic inferiority.

There are some who believe that the origins of the economic injustices perpetrated in the name of apartheid lie in deep, innate racial incompatibilities, explicable only by the social psychologists and anthropologists. Of course, psychological and anthropological factors cannot be ignored in any attempt to understand the problems of South Africa. But those who have observed, as I have, the natural friendliness of children of vastly different colours and racial characteristics playing happily together unless reprimanded by their parents and teachers, are unable to regard colour antipathies as inherent human characteristics. After 36 years of observation, I have been led to believe that colour prejudice has persisted through economic factors – through the perpetuation of the economic inferiority of the non-white peoples. In the pages which follow, I shall try to explain why I regard the economic colour discriminations in the Republic as an independent cause rather than a symptom of colour injustices.

 

13I discuss it in Chapter 4.

14But what these leaders have failed to perceive, I think, is that the rise in standards of living and the growth in equality of opportunity which the maintenance of the Federation could have promoted, was likely to have engendered (albeit gradually) the respect which they felt had been withheld from them. Their pride and resentments, however natural, may have inspired actions which the rank and file of their people, at any rate, may come to regret.

15See Chapter 12.

16A well-meaning English lady who had assisted at a nursery school for Coloured children in Cape Town once decided to buy in London a consignment of brown coloured dolls to distribute as Christmas presents to children of more or less the same colour. To her horror, she found that she had blundered. The Coloured children all wanted white dolls!

Many years ago, a quite distinguished, rather lightly coloured headmaster of a secondary school for children of his race, was most embarrassed when he had to accept on his staff a brilliant young schoolmaster whose skin happened to be nearly as black as an African’s. Yet this headmaster had been a doughty fighter against colour prejudice. When this perfectly respectable but darkly coloured member of his staff began to get friendly with his nearly white daughter, the headmaster, who in other matters had always been a man of principle and courage, felt compelled to forbid the friendship.

Not long ago my wife was invited to act as one of the judges in a beauty contest for African girls in Cape Town. The competitors all wore elegant and fashionable (if cheap) evening gowns. As an artist, my wife was most struck by the dignity and fine bearing of girls with typical African features; but she was warned by her more experienced fellow judges that it would be tactful to accept the standards of the hundreds of Africans who formed the audience, the consensus of whose opinion was expressed in applause as the competitors filed past. Judged by this criterion, there was no doubt that many Africans in the towns have already come to assess the beauty of their girls, in figure and features, in the light of the currently accepted white standards. This phenomenon is strikingly illustrated in the ‘pin-up’ pictures and advertisements in magazines published expressly for Africans.

17The ‘tsotsi’ among the Africans and the ‘skollies’ among the Coloureds correspond more or less to the ‘leather-jackets’ of Britain and America.

18In comparison with Africans, the Coloureds are privileged. The latter may live under more pleasant circumstances, in less unpleasant districts and nearer to their work; they do not have to carry passes; they are not liable to be ‘endorsed out’; and they have some chance, at least, of getting apprenticed. Nevertheless, because they belong culturally among the Whites (they are mainly Afrikaans-speaking) I regard the Coloureds as the most unjustly treated group in the Republic.

19On the other hand, a sense of injustice against the Whites certainly does exist among all non-Whites; it tends to be directed indiscriminately against the Whites, particularly by the Africans; politicians of whatever colour are inclined to foster and exploit this resentment and fan it into race hatred; and it has been the apparent inspiration of the resistant Poqo movement which, as I write, is being ruthlessly suppressed.

20Compare Wilson and Mafeje, Langa, p. 146: ‘English carries status rather than Afrikaans, and the educated people think of it as the lifeline linking Langa with the outside world’.

21The Industrial Colour Bar in South Africa, O.U.P., 1961, p. 99.

22In fact, increasing African employment has been essential for the rise in the real earnings of the Coloured people themselves over the last few decades. Without it, the industrial growth which has occurred in the Western Cape, and which has raised their average standards of living so rapidly and remarkably, could never have taken place.

23I do not suggest that Africans (in the Republic of South Africa) have not frequently had good cause for feeling resentment against the police or other officials who have had to administer obnoxious laws as well as against the laws themselves.

24Wilson and Mafeje, op. cit., p. 148.

• 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.
• 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.
• 14Some 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.
• 15I 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.
• 16Without 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.
• 17Now 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.
• 18Of 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.
• 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.
• 20But 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.
• 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.
• 22When 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.
• 23If 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.
• 24A 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.