The Economics of the Colour Bar

THE earlier economic backwardness of the Afrikaners in relation to the comparatively prosperous English-speaking section of the South African population contributed to anti-British resentment. In this Chapter it is proposed to consider briefly the reasons for the persistence of relative poverty among the Afrikaners during this century, and the feelings of injustice which it created. The Poor White problem – mainly the poor Afrikaner problem – appeared to be the product of a familiar phase of emergent industrialism which is rather inappropriately known as ‘the drift to the towns’, a phenomenon which we must view in perspective.

ATTRACTION TO TOWNS

The rise in the economic, social and health standards of the people during the 18th and early 19th centuries in Britain necessitated the creation of town proletariats. It created thereby unprecedented community circumstances and hence new problems,1 and seemed to engender social evils as less conspicuous older evils were dissolved by the process. Likewise, the influx to the South African urban areas (of Coloureds and Africans, as well as of Whites) precipitated novel sociological problems, especially during the first 25 years of this century, as it raised the material well-being and aspirations of the majority. Matters such as housing, policing, sanitation, health and education had to be considered under circumstances in which previous experience could give relatively little guidance. Nevertheless, there is one vital difference between British experience under the laissez-faire background of the industrial revolution and South African experience under the relatively collectivist mentality of the present century. Whereas developing capitalism during the 18th and 19th centuries released unparalleled equality of opportunity (‘never were the barriers so down’, says a leading historian of the age),2 in South Africa the egalitarian forces of the free market were deliberately suppressed for the Coloureds, Indians and Africans.

The drift to the towns may be said to have begun in South Africa as the great mining regions opened and grew, with co-operant industries to serve them.3 The great flow of people, white and black, first to the mining areas and later to the secondary industrial and trading regions, was hardly a ‘drift’. Only the most powerful attracting or expelling forces could have led the custom-bound, conservative country dwellers to uproot themselves from their farms and rural village communities. But while the new urban areas seemed to offer much higher immediate standards of living and even more promising prospects, the rural areas were offering declining relative incomes and inferior prospects to all but the inheritors of farms.

It is common to describe the ‘expelling force’ as ‘rural impoverishment’. That is rather misleading. It leaves an impression of falling absolute average standards of living on the part of white rural dwellers; but there is much evidence to suggest that this was not really the case. What did happen was that the comparative standards of living of the rural population fell, that is, in relation to urban communities. The maintenance of rural standards was largely due, of course, to the outflow, which was an expression of free choice by both the non-Whites and the Whites who migrated.4 The ‘expelling forces’ and the ‘attracting forces’ were, on the whole, one and the same – the relative advantageousness and productiveness of urban life and pursuits.5

INABILITY TO ADAPT TO URBAN LIFE

The urban Poor White problem was a consequence of imperfect adjustment to the migration so induced. But the resulting apparent impoverishment among formerly rural Afrikaners did not mean that their average material standards were not almost universally higher than they could have been on the farms or in the villages of the countryside. Quite probably many had been misled about prospects and were bitterly disappointed in what they found the town could actually offer them as untrained Whites. Yet virtually none of the Afrikaner town dwellers returned permanently to the countryside, in spite of a natural nostalgia for the homes and playgrounds of their youth. Having once become accustomed to the urban environment, they had no real longing for the life which the material rewards they could expect on the farms were offering them; whilst they, and especially their children, were much better cared for than would have been possible in the rural districts.

But rural traditions (whether of the Afrikaners, the Coloureds, or the Africans) were badly adapted to urban life. The virtual illiteracy of so many of the Afrikaners who left the farms, their high birth rate, their habits of living, their trusting simplicity which made them easy prey to sharp practice, and their aversion to manual work (which they had been brought up to regard as the function of an inferior, non-white caste), gradually brought into being the urban ‘Poor White’ problem. The main features of this problem showed themselves very early in the mining era, but it began seriously to worry the community only after Union (in 1910) when unskilled Whites, and to a small extent unskilled Coloureds, flowed into the towns. It was the contrast in standards which prompted the misgivings.

The skilled artisan classes employed in industry and commerce consisted then mainly of persons with a European background (chiefly British) but including, in the Cape, certain groups of Coloured artisans. The rural Afrikaners who sought town employments not only lacked industrial skills initially; they seemed to have no powerful urge to acquire these skills, nor were they well adapted by experience and education for training in them. What was worse, after the First World War industrial legislation, particularly the Apprenticeship Act, stood in their way as a formidable legislative barrier.

The situation could probably have been mitigated if the newcomers had been eager to enter industry via simple labouring work, using such employment as an avenue for training in skilled operations.6 But they had been taught to regard any form of labouring as ‘Kaffir work’ and hence as beneath the white man’s dignity. Some commentators have suggested, for this reason, that at the root the Poor White problem was psychological. It took the form of a growing class of relatively impoverished Whites, resentful of their low social standing but unfit for any kind of urban employment other than that of overseer of unskilled African or Coloured labour; and there was a tendency for the earning ability of this class – unless subsidised in some way – to fall to that of the Coloured people, or even as low as that of the Africans.

These circumstances gave rise to the gravest forebodings until, in the 1930s, the problem seemed suddenly to solve itself. What had happened was that entrepreneurial ingenuities, under the profit incentive,7 had broken through some of the barriers of custom and law which had been restraining the more effective economic integration of the white and non-white races. In so doing, successful profit-seekers created – almost miraculously – opportunities for the absorption of the Poor Whites into relatively well-paid industrial or commercial occupations. The barriers had had their origin in tradition and prejudice, but they had survived through labour union pressures and measures such as the Wage Act, the Apprenticeship Act and the Industrial Conciliation Act. In Doxey’s words:

‘the concept of trade unionism, and, for that matter, of socialism’, had gradually become ‘accepted in the minds of European artisans as the means of maintaining their own position against non-white inroads.’8

The barriers were evaded through the effective search for profitable spheres of development in which neither labour unions nor legislation could prevent openings for well-paid employments being offered to non-Whites. For the success of efforts to find the cheapest labour available raised average real wages for labour generally and – without subsidy – attracted even the Poor Whites into commerce and industry.

ECONOMIC INTEGRATION OF THE POOR WHITES

It was racial integration, which official policy always discouraged or actively opposed, that activated the economic expansion through which the Poor White problem has largely disappeared.9 And it was market forces which provided the powerful incentives for those ingenuities which succeeded in evading the demand-destroying industrial segregation that legislative restraints were trying to enforce.10

Moreover, the same factors which, by providing opportunities for non-white advancement, created the real income flow that demanded the formerly Poor Whites’ services, reacted more directly in dissolving the immediate barriers to the absorption of these initially unskilled white workers. The new industries and trades (unprotected at the outset by labour unions) gave easy access to industrial and commercial employments for Afrikaners of both sexes who had previously been excluded by apprenticeship requirements, the standard rate principle and the closed shop. But the basic cause of the astonishing solution of what had previously appeared to be a completely intractable problem was the increased contribution to the source of real income created by the industrial employment of previously excluded races.

Unfortunately, whilst the economic integration of races largely mitigated poverty problems, particularly among the Whites, it exacerbated the sociological problems created by fears of non-white competitors and the aversion of the Whites to social contact with non-Whites. It was these factors which had originally led, first, to attempts to preserve white standards, and second, to attempts to ensure the permanence of non-white inferiority (because it was felt that any economic ‘levelling up’ would inevitably lead to demands for social equality and equality of treatment in all respects).

11For a balanced study of the problems of the large 18th century towns, see M. D. George, London Life in the 18th Century, Kegan Paul, 1925.

12M. C. Buer, Health, Wealth and Population in the Early Days of the Industrial Revolution, Routledge, 1926, p. 39.

13Whilst the population of South Africa as a whole has doubled since the beginning of the century, the urban population has increased five-fold.

14The poll tax on Africans implies some qualification of this assertion. The purpose was, in part, to force them to seek wage-paid employment outside the reserves.

15In the Cape Province, the attraction of the Whites to the towns not only maintained the standards of those Whites who remained in the rural areas but almost certainly raised the standards of the poor rural Coloureds who had provided the bulk of farm labour. The mobility of the rural Coloureds was restricted by ignorance, custom and prejudice; but there seems to be little doubt that, in the Cape, the relative scarcity of farm labour, caused by the departure of so many Whites, has progressively improved the rather low standards of the rural Coloureds. Growing resort to African labour for farm work in the Cape (which has increased African earnings) has mitigated the tendency to rural ‘labour shortage’, and may be thought to have worked in the opposite direction. But that inference would rest upon an unduly static view of the reactions. The increase in African employment on the Cape farms and recourse to labour-saving economies (including gradual mechanisation of some branches of farm work) has, through the operation of the ‘Say Law’, actually enhanced the marginal productivity of coloured labour and the Coloureds’ real earnings. (In accordance with the ‘Say Law’, the demand for the product of labour in one field is increased through cheapening the product of labour in any non-competing field.)

16That this is possible is proved by many instances of Africans who have learned and (more or less surreptitiously) actually performed various kinds of skilled or responsible work in industry, after having become adapted to the industrial environment.

17This profit incentive was stimulated by the increased dollar price of gold brought about in 1934, and by the dynamic effects of the rapid economic integration of non-Whites in response to the labour scarcity created by the war effort of 1939–45.

18Doxey, op. cit., pp. 23–24.

19 Some aspects of the problem remain. The Minister of Transport recently declared that 10,000 to 11,000 Whites who are employed on the state railways are in fact so employed in order to prevent them from becoming a burden on the community. He could have added, 10,000 to 11,000 voters, who may be expected to support any political party which can be trusted to pay them most at the community’s expense.

20See Chapter 9.

• 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.
• 11Some injustices may be due more to class barriers than to colour barriers. For instance, there is much resentment felt against Portugal as an intransigent colonial power. But no legally enacted colour bars exist in any Portuguese territory; and a South African who crosses into Mozambique is at once struck by the wholly different attitude, at least superficially, towards colour. Yet the overwhelming majority of the Africans of Mozambique are extremely poor. Some critics conclude that Portugal maintains a de facto if not a legal colour bar. But there are approximately an equal number of Whites and non-Whites with ‘assimilado’ status (that is, who have achieved both literacy and the ability to live at defined civilised standards) who have long enjoyed absolute equality of rights before the law. Yet only 160,000 out of the population of 6.6 million enjoy this status and only 5 per cent of the non-white assimilados are Africans (the rest are Indians and half-castes). If the evident backwardness of the masses is caused by deliberate policy rather than by unrestrained population growth and a paucity of natural resources, there is certainly cause for complaints of class injustice, but not of colour injustice. But educated and responsible non-Whites are not subjected, in the Portuguese territories, to the indignities and humiliations they suffer in South Africa.
• 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.
• 13I 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.
• 14Without 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.
• 15Now 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.
• 16Of 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.
• 17But the South African government in the middle and late 1930s was an unholy and uneasy coalition, and if the liberal-minded members of the coalition had raised the issue it would have threatened cabinet unity. Indeed, when I myself tried to arouse public opinion in 1937 by referring to the manner in which the public had been misled, I was strongly attacked by the Cape Times (in a controversy which went into several issues) for irresponsibility. I had charged that we had carelessly ‘torn up our Constitution’. But no steps to rectify the position were taken, or even seriously considered.
• 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.
• 19When 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.
• 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.