The Economics of the Colour Bar

IN ANY study of colour injustice in the Republic of South Africa, it is essential to explain the traditional, but by no means unchanging, colour attitudes of the Afrikaners; for the nearly universally condemned apartheid policy has come to be identified with a government which represents especially (but not entirely) the Afrikaner voters.

STEREOTYPES AND DOGMA

Whilst attempting this task, I have been worried by the difficulty of dealing fairly, objectively yet succinctly with this question. In ordinary social life the Afrikaners are, like the white Americans of the ‘deep South’, a generous, hospitable, kindly, honourable and courageous people, for whom I have the most genuine regard. For themselves, they have created over the years a way of life which many would describe as a good society, in the best sense of that term. Within their group they constitute a virtually classless community, great differences of income, education and breeding not having given rise to the more obvious forms of snobbery. Their cultured élite – whose literary achievements are, in my judgment, impressive – are deeply attached to their language which, even now, they feel is in danger of being swamped by English. The emotions so aroused have become a powerful factor in politics and have encouraged the êlite to identify themselves with the Afrikaners as a whole and to accept the stereotypes of the masses uncritically, especially in religious and colour issues.

Until recently, the Afrikaner intelligentsia have, I think, felt compelled to be loyal to, rather than to claim the loyalty of, the rank and file of their own people. They have seemed reluctant to undertake the formidable task of constructive leadership through a dangerous era. The long inculcated, obstinately held tenets and dogma of the Afrikaner populace have been crying out for adjustment to the realities of a shrinking world; but their trusted leaders seem to have been caught in the dilemma that any attempt to disturb the stereotypes of the majority would threaten to undermine the trust on which they had always relied for their power to lead. This dilemma has confronted not merely the Afrikaner literati, but the politicians; and only in the last few years has there been clear evidence that the ‘winds of change’ have been causing statesmen, editors and predikants (clergy of the Dutch Reformed Churches) deliberately to attempt to modify (without weakening voting loyalty) some of the basic convictions of ‘the Afrikaner nation.’

To develop this thesis effectively and show its relation to apparent colour injustice in the Republic, I must run the risk of offending many Afrikaner friends whom I would not wish to offend. If I tried to avoid giving offence I should weaken the clarity and objectivity at which I am aiming.

Races which grumble about the ‘injustices’ or ‘oppressions’ to which they are subjected can often be observed to be inflicting not dissimilar injustices upon other races. We find a very clear case of this in any study of the grievances of the Afrikaners against ‘British imperialism’ and their fight against the threat of ‘Anglicisation’. In their policies towards the non-Whites, they are inflicting injustices which are remarkably similar to those of which they themselves have complained.

Following the British occupation of the Cape in 1806, official policy was more or less in conformity with the liberal ideals of the early 19th century – acceptance of the common rights of man and (the true hall-mark of British colonialism) an antipathy to any form of domination. I have already referred to the retention of Roman Dutch Law, Dutch institutions and tolerance of the Dutch language (Afrikaans) as it had developed in the Cape. This expression of European liberalism was, however, anathema to the settled Dutch community as a guide to the attitude to be taken towards the non-white races. The Afrikaners, mainly descendants of the Dutch, had quite naturally developed rigid socio-psychological attitudes during a régime in which the non-Whites (slave or free) constituted an inferior caste destined to do all the heavy, unskilled manual work. The attitude so acquired tended to be strengthened by the teachings in South Africa of the Dutch Reformed Churches. The Afrikaner, who had long been isolated from European influences, was encouraged to cling to the ancient superstitions, long discarded in most other creeds, which associate white with goodness and purity, and black with sin, evil, dirt and death.1 His naïve sincerity on this issue has tended to sanctify for him what would otherwise appear as an unchristian and unashamed discrimination against those of non-white skin pigmentation.

RELIGION AND POLITICS

As a religious doctrine the Afrikaner form of Calvinism, preached by the Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa, is dominated by the idea of predestination and original sin. The Afrikaners have been taught to believe that in maintaining the subordinacy of the non-Whites they are fulfilling the will of God. Their churches have taught that policies (both economic and political) which have appeared incidentally to serve the short-term material interests of the white man are sanctioned by the highest moral law; and further that it is the duty of the state to use its power for this great purpose without inhibition.2

I do not suggest that all the Afrikaner leaders have shared these comfortable ethical convictions. But the Calvinistic churches of South Africa have, as a result of history, become almost as completely subservient to a political party, the Nationalist Party, as the exponents of Marxism appear to be to the Communist parties behind the Iron Curtain. The occasional protests of a few courageous predikants and mounting uneasiness within their churches merely highlight a necessary qualification of my assertion.3 But very nearly the full power of the Afrikaner churches has been used for the benefit of the Party. Not only do they pray for victory at elections, but afterwards, when there has been a victory for the Party, there have actually been prayer meetings to thank the Almighty for having answered their supplications.

A powerful influence in ensuring that the Afrikaners’ religious institutions shall serve the Party seems to be the activities of a secret society known as the Broederbond. Members of this society, bound by a disciplined secrecy, are believed to have obtained all the key posts in the three Calvinist churches,4 and more than 40 per cent of the predikants are believed to belong either to the Bond directly or to its subsidiary, the Ruiterwag.5

The Afrikaner’s conservatism—his bondage to attitudes, ways of thinking and modes of living which had developed in the insularity of remote farms and the small villages of the back-veld – together with the isolating factor of his language (which has often given poor access to the ideas of the contemporary world) have, in the whole course of this century’s history, hindered his assimilation into the rapidly modernising agricultural and industrial economies of the present age.

What aggravated the disadvantages from which the Afrikaner suffered for these reasons was the political success of the Party which had won his allegiance. There was genuine sentiment in the desire to retain Afrikaans as a living language and the desire to avoid ‘Anglicisation’, by which was meant the gradual relinquishment of typical Afrikaner characteristics. But what most of their leaders termed ‘Anglicisation’ meant nothing more than their adaptation to the emerging era. Moreover, the organisers of the Nationalist Party, which has exploited Afrikaner sentiment, appear to have perceived shrewdly that the general backwardness of their supporters facilitated the task of vote-winning. Skilful political leaders found it profitable tactics to create and maintain an exclusive Afrikaner group, ‘die Boerenasie’. This group was persuaded to regard itself as engaged in a life and death struggle against ‘Anglicisation’, a ‘backs-to-the-wall struggle’ to preserve its language and traditions. A disciplined allegiance was therefore demanded of its members, an allegiance which amounted almost to a naïve subservience on the part of the grievance-fed, ill-informed Afrikaner masses.

SEGREGATION OF AFRIKAANS AND ENGLISH

One of the most effective means of preserving the atmosphere of a fight for survival was that of preventing the growth of mutual respect and understanding between the English- and Afrikaans-speaking sections. This has been achieved throughout largely by the segregation of the two groups during their school years. The widespread wish of the English-speaking section to create a truly bi-lingual nation, through dual medium schools, was bitterly and successfully opposed. In the Transvaal, the complete separation of Afrikaans- and English-speaking children in schools was fortified by the removal from parents of the right to determine in which language their children should receive school instruction. Yet the root dissensions between the two white groups have for long been wholly superficial. The gulf remains formidable only because it is still thought to be politically important to perpetuate it, and because continuous effort has been devoted to this end.6

The pity of it is that the circumstances which the Afrikaner was persuaded to regard as unjust were partly of his own wholly innocent creation,7 and partly the not so innocent fault of political leaders who, in the process of bidding for votes, have fostered grievances and hostility to the English-speaking section. The Party leaders wanted to prevent and succeeded in preventing the rank and file of” their supporters from sharing in European culture and European values, in much the same way that attempts are now being made – for quite different reasons – to discourage the Transkei Africans from becoming ‘Europeanised’, by making Xhosa an official language for that area.8

I know of no legal or collusively imposed restraints to the disadvantage of the Afrikaners; and in so far as sheer prejudice on the part of the English-speaking managements of private firms may have meant injustice to them, that prejudice was of a kind which would have dissolved rapidly under the pressures of the free market, if they had been encouraged by their leaders to prepare themselves for the modern world.

RELIGIOUS APPROVAL OF RACIAL POLICY

In their efforts to maintain the subjection or the subordinacy of the non-Whites, the Nationalist Afrikaners have been able to use methods of which Afrikaner Calvinism has tended to approve. Professor H. M. Robertson of the University of Cape Town has recently pointed out that the Afrikaner Calvinist tends ‘to be consciously anti-capitalistic, the ‘‘capitalist spirit” virtually being regarded as idolatry.’9 He quotes in this connection a contribution made by a well-known Afrikaner to a symposium published by the Federation of Calvinistic Student Unions in South Africa which argues that ‘. . . Socialism is a justified reaction against the abuses of capitalism . . .’ I shall be showing that this is essentially because the Calvinists in South Africa have thought in terms of an established order based upon non-Whites being the hewers of wood and drawers of water, an order which ‘capitalism’ has always appeared to be disturbing. When Afrikaners refer to the ‘abuses of capitalism’ they think of its lack of respect for privilege and historically determined race and class structures; and they think of the latter as having been more or less heaven-ordained.

It is an ironic comment on the politics of this century that the ‘Liberal’ British Government which won the 1906 general election largely on the allegation (quite false) of ‘Chinese slavery’ in the South African mines should, as one of its first acts, have granted sell-government to the Transvaal, whose rulers in church and state believed in the inherent inferiority of non-Whites and their right and duty to maintain the supremacy of the Whites.

10A student of mine who has been conducting research into the changing purchasing patterns of the urban Afrikaner reports that, for this reason, white fish and chicken – ‘especially the white meat’ – are regarded as ‘extremely suitable for invalids and children’.

11 A resolution of the World Council of Churches of 1960, to the effect that ‘no man who believes in Christ may be excluded from any church on the grounds of his race or colour’, was explicitly rejected at all five synods of the Dutch Reformed Church in 1961, and the Church left the World Council.

12An anti-apartheid stand by Professor A. S. Geyser of the Nederluitse Hervormde Kerk (one of the major Dutch Reformed Churches) who lectured on theology at the University of Pretoria, led to a recent heresy trial at which he was found guilty and unfrocked. He was reinstated after a successful appeal to the Supreme Court.

A recently started monthly religious journal, Pro Veritate, edited by the Rev. C. F. B. Naudé, presents a different interpretation of the scriptures. There is no doubt that many predikants are deeply embarrassed on the race issue. A motion introduced at a synod in October, 1962, demanding disciplinary action against clergy ‘who do not show the necessary loyalty towards synodal decisions which lay down policy on racial matters’ was not put to the gathering.

13In a recent pamphlet entitled Church and Secret Organisation, Professor A. van Selms (head of the Department of Semitic Languages at the University of Pretoria) says that Broederbond members of the Church are subject to secret decisions taken before meetings. Consultation, therefore, serves no purpose. On the secrecy factor he comments: ‘It has happened that people have told me they are Freemasons, but it has never happened that someone has told me he is a member of the Broederbond’.

14The Ruiterwag is a ‘Youth Wing’. The Communist parallel is obvious. It is widely rumoured also, in spite of emphatic government denials, that the Broederbond is the controlling influence in determining promotions in the public service, whilst the Ruiterwag is said to have acquired effective control over the composition of students’ representative councils in the Afrikaans language universities. The methods used against independent-minded Afrikaners are said to be whispering and smearing campaigns.

15It is for this reason that television has not been permitted in the Republic.

16We can take two parallels. The Indian community of South Africa would have progressed economically very much more over the last three decades if their traditions had not frowned so strongly upon the employment of women. Similarly, the Africans could well have benefited considerably had they resisted less stubbornly attempts to encourage them to grow and consume more nutritious kinds of food. The ‘blame’, if ‘blame’ is the correct word, in these cases lies in traditions and, in the case of the Africans, in the complex psychological factors which determine food choice.

17See Chapter 17, pp. 165–6.

18‘Marx, Menger, Mercantilism and Max Weber’, in Studi in Onore di Anitore Fanfani, Vol. VI, 1962.

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