The Economics of the Colour Bar

A WIDE discrepancy between the earnings of Africans and the earnings of virtually unskilled white overseers seems to have been established as a tradition in the 1880s in the diamond mines. I have suggested that this discrepancy could be partly explained by the market forces of supply and demand. White supervisors were needed, whilst they had better-paid alternatives than the Africans.

In so far as the notion of what was a ‘fair and proper’ remuneration for a white man may have influenced the ratio during the early years of this century, it limited the scope for white employment in mining and so reduced the socially beneficial effects of mining development in mitigating the emerging Poor White problem. But new factors gradually became operative as the country advanced. Whilst the early mines had been relatively unsystematically exploited, later operations became more scientific, better organised and mechanised. The demand then was for ever-increasing expertness in artisans and intermediate management personnel. For such reasons the average productivity of Whites appears to have risen at least in proportion to that of Africans. Hence, wage comparisons for this century must allow for the fact that average wage-rates for the Whites cover not only the remuneration of virtually unskilled supervisory work, but that of highly skilled artisans, most of whom had to be attracted from abroad; whereas the remuneration of Africans, although it covers tasks of some responsibility and skill performed (sometimes more or less surreptitiously) by a small minority, is almost entirely for labouring tasks.

Because of the shortage of skilled personnel in South Africa at the beginning of the century, artisan immigrants, reared in the traditions of the emergent restrictionist ideologies and British trade unionism, were brought to fill artisan and foreman posts. It is hardly surprising that, after the Boer war (and together with their Afrikaner comrades after 1907), they should have endeavoured to enforce a sort of closed shop which denied all opportunities for advancement to their non-white comrades. The political background of the period had produced stereotypes which actively encouraged the formation of labour unions, and the strike power so created seems to have enabled the Whites to perpetuate the ratio of white to non-white wage-rates which had been established by the 1880s. In this way, the unions managed not only to preserve the remuneration of their members against the competition of their fellow Whites, but later to forbid the training of Africans for employment in responsible, supervisory and skilled occupations.

What was probably at that time the most blatant colour bar of history (although by no means the most burdensome) received the force of law in 1911. The motive was industrial peace; but it was sought via an appeasement of the militant white labour organisation, which appeared then to be growing in strike power and political support.

MILITANT WHITE TRADE UNIONISM

The beginnings of militant unionism date from the 1880s and 1890s when branches of British labour unions were opened in South Africa.1 The leadership was in the hands of typical union officials of the British type – hard, ruthless but scarcely Marxist. Quite early in South African labour history, however, the influence of the extreme Left seems to have been discernible, and resort to violence in support of strike action was not uncommon. This tendency was probably due to infiltration of the class-war idea from foreign countries rather than from the relatively respectable British trade unionism of the day.

In the 1880s an organisation known as the Knights of Labour, which had its origin in the United States, seemed to be acquiring a following. Two of the leaders of the South African branch were sentenced to eight months hard labour in 1890 for their part in a strike on the diamond mines which had led to bloodshed and the blowing up of the De Beers offices.

That same year a young Englishman from Suffolk, W. H. Andrews, a fitter by trade, joined the labour union movement. He was destined to become one of the chief leaders of the extreme Leftist or Marxist wing. Superficially, he gave the impression of being a typical industrial unionist, but in 1915 he broke with the Labour Party and formed the International Socialist League (a sort of South African ILP) and a few years later he became the first Secretary of the Communist Party in South Africa. He was concerned in several of the more violent strikes and is known to have taken part in a strike (which was ruthlessly crushed by Kruger) on the Randfontein gold mines in 1897. He remained active in aggressive unionism until the state took over from the labour unions the task of protecting white privilege.

After the Boer war, the prospects of militant unionism caused grave misgivings, particularly on the Rand. The Transvaal Miners Association (later the South African Mine Workers Union) was founded in 1902 and a successful strike on the Crown Reef Mine followed. The organisers of the labour unions were then persuaded by their extremist wing to think in political terms. In 1904 the first Labour Day demonstration took place in Johannesburg, and the Wit-watersrand Trades and Labour Council was founded to provide rather loose machinery for the co-ordination of the different unions, and to undertake ‘agitational work’ with political aims.

In the early years of the century, contemporary French syndicalism seems to have fired the imagination of some of the South African labour leaders, and even the ‘anarchist’ American IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), which urged the use of the general strike to overthrow capitalism and did not hesitate to advocate violence, is thought to have played some part in the formation of ideologies – possibly through the influence of a fiery Scot named Norrie, who was chairman of the Social Democratic Federation. The history of strikes in the South African mines is remarkably similar to that in the American mines which the IWW organised during the same period.2 In 1910, an IWW missionary named Webber visited South Africa;3 but although some seeds were sown, the organisation itself never took root in South Africa. In 1919, however, another advocate of violent class war, Tom Mann, visited South Africa and addressed meetings for several months.

How far the ideas from all these sources were indirectly responsible for strike violence is uncertain.

In 1907, a turbulent strike occurred on the Rand mines. It involved some bloodshed4 and much sabotage. The importance of this strike is that it prepared the way for colour bar legislation. The goverment of the day, that of Smuts and Botha, had obtained office with the support of the white miners who, up to that time, had been mainly of British origin. Nevertheless, the government seized the opportunity created by the strike to bring Afrikaners into the mines as trainee miners – i.e., as ‘scabs’ in the eyes of the Miners’ Association. At the same time, almost as though the state felt the need for some compensating gesture towards the existing skilled miners, the Transvaal Ordinance No. 17 of 1907 was introduced to protect the Whites against skilled competition from the Chinese (many of whose employment contracts did not expire for a couple of years or more). Through this Ordinance a precedent for the two ‘Colour Bar Acts’ was created.

The following year a long and bitter strike – in which Andrews appears to have been the leading organiser – occurred at the Kimberley diamond mines. The next year there was another strike, caused by opposition to piece work in the workshops of the Natal Government Railway System. Again, Andrews appears to have been the leading spirit. And in 1911, a strike of Johannesburg tramwaymen took place leading to violence and allegations of attempted dynamiting which Andrews, who was again involved, claimed was a frame-up.

INDUSTRIAL COLOUR BAR TO APPEASE UNIONS

In these circumstances, it appears to have been thought politic, for the sake of harmony, to confer by law those privileges which white miners might otherwise have been encouraged to seek by strike action. It was felt that, unless Africans were excluded from opportunities by legislation, intermittent and violent private steps would be taken to enforce the exclusion. Against this background, the Mines and Works Act of 1911 (which has been aptly termed the ‘Colour Bar Act’) was passed. This legislative sanction for the colour bar was, however, a concession not only to socialist and labour union pressures, but equally an appeasement of Afrikaner sentiment.

Whilst the provisions of the Act were superficially innocuous, it authorised arbitrary governmental action through delegated legislation. The government was given power, in the interests of safety, to make regulations relating to the issue of certificates permitting certain kinds of work to be undertaken. But the regulations actually promulgated (against which it was thought there could be no appeal) provided that a large variety of mining occupations, which outside the former Boer republics (for example, in the Cape and Natal) could be performed by artisans of all races, could not legally be performed by Africans in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. At the same time a ratio was specified between foremen (Whites) and mining labourers (Africans) who could be employed in the activities covered.5

The general secretary of the white workers’ labour union, typically blaming ‘the capitalist class’, explained that whilst he was ‘a Socialist as far as all the workers in the globe are concerned’, he believed that his union had the right to fight against and oust the Africans if they were ‘used as semi-slaves for the purpose of keeping others down’. The paradox was that the employment of white miners depended upon what he called the ‘semi-slavery . . . of . . . dirty, evil-smelling Kaffirs’;6 for without their unskilled work the great majority of the mines would have had to close. What he was in fact objecting to was the desire of ‘the capitalist class’ to achieve economies by bringing better remunerated and more responsible work within reach of the Africans. The fact that this would disturb the relative earnings of the skilled Whites appeared to him to be a sufficient justification for insistence upon the colour bar.7

One can sympathise with the mine workers, indoctrinated against ‘the capitalist’. They felt, sincerely enough, that their privileged position was precarious by reason of the search for profits. At the same time, they were unprepared to permit any form of levelling up because it would have threatened their relative status. If the earnings of the ‘dirty Kaffirs’ rose, it was essential, they felt, that their earnings should rise at least in proportion to preserve their self-respect as white men. The most virulent among the white miners seem to have been those who had not troubled to qualify themselves for promotion. Their highly paid status had come to depend not upon their qualifications but upon their power, through union action and political pressure, to exclude African competition.8

MINE OWNERS’ EXPEDIENCY

Is there any sense in which the blame for the obvious injustices to Africans of the Mines and Works Act might be laid on the shoulders of the employers – the mining corporations? It could perhaps be held that corporation directorates and managements have been more concerned with the appeasement of their present staff – ‘maintenance of good industrial relations’ – than with the less easily envisaged interests of the community as consumers and the interests of the under-privileged classes. That is, directorates and managements may have failed in their duty to resist attempts by labour unions to enforce wage-rate increases which have priced much potential output beyond the reach of income,9 thereby destroying employment opportunities for less fortunate persons, classes or races who have been striving to improve their material condition.

But is it not even more the duty of the state than it is of managements to resist any private coercion which frustrates the natural tendency of the market to break down customary and historical obstacles to equality of opportunity? And has it not in fact been legislation which has robbed the entrepreneurial classes of most of their power to act for the common interest? Not only has their effectiveness against labour union exploitation been gravely hindered, but their incentive to defend the community has been largely sapped.

If managements are blamed for colour injustices in South Africa, through weakly appeasing instead of resisting labour union pressures, we must remember, first, that they have equally been acting against the interests of the shareholders to whom they have been responsible; and, second, that public opinion, reinforced by professional moralists in pulpit, press and parliament, has not only condoned the private use of the coercive power of the strike but almost invariably praised arrangements under which corporations have agreed collusively to surrender to that coercion. Any action taken by the mines which would really have furthered the interests of the Africans would, indeed, have called forth the strongest condemnation from the growing ‘progressive’ opinion in Britain and the Western world generally.

Moreover, when the mining managements have thought in terms of cheapening output by offering opportunities for Africans to cheapen skills, in all probability they themselves have always felt an uneasy sense of guilt. Moral stereotypes have seemed therefore to coincide with expediency. In so far as the mines, by failing to fight labour union demands, have sacrificed the interests of their African employees and their shareholders, they have acquired the reputation of being ‘generous employers’ and of having served the cause of industrial peace!

The notion that low wage-rates for non-Whites enables the payment of higher wage-rates to Whites because employers can then ‘afford’ to pay them more, needs careful examination. It is true that in, say, mining, the source of the privileged earnings of the Whites would disappear if the cheap African labour ceased to be available, because the majority of the mines, if not all, would then have to close. It is equally true that the removal of colour bars in mining would slowly result in the ousting of certain categories of white employees from their present tasks. But this would greatly enhance the aggregate value of the product of mining. ‘Employers’ would be able to ‘afford’ to pay even more for white labour. Whether they could be forced to do so either through the market (competing demands for labour), through strike coercion or through legal edict is another matter.

The ratio system, under which a fixed numerical relationship between different categories of labour (defined by race or otherwise) with stipulated wage-rates is laid down,10 cheapens the lower paid categories only by restricting demand for their services. In this sense alone may the better paid classes be said to be ‘exploiting’ the lower paid. Even so the ratio system has always been imposed (by the state or private coercion) on a free enterprise system. There is no inherent tendency for it to arise from within.

11The Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners was opened in 1881; the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in 1886. The first permanent purely South African labour union, the South African Typographical Union, apparently dates from 1898.

12When the Transvaal Afrikaners came to constitute the bulk of the white miners, a cause of the similarity may be what F. R. Dulles (Labour in America, p. 209) calls ‘the independent and often lawless spirit of the frontier’.

13Dr. the Hon. T. H. Boydell tells me that, in June 1910, he debated publicly with Webber.

14Two members of the Miners’ Association executive were charged with murder, but the evidence was inconclusive and they were acquitted.

15If the Transvaal had been under British rule and administration from the outset, the old Cape tradition may well have prevented either the passing of the Mines and Works Act of 1911 or the regulations issued under it.

16Quoted in Doxey, op. cit., pp. 118–119.

17At times, the labour union argument against permitting the Africans to progress was that they were incapable of taking responsibility and handling complex mechanical tools. But if that had been true they could have expected the mine-owners to stand with them on this issue.

18On the Rhodesian copper belt, where the privileges of the 7,000 white miners have been protected solely by the formidable power of their labour union, the absence of any legal colour bar has meant that more than 2,000 Africans have succeeded (very gradually) in getting employment of an order of skill and responsibility which would never have been permitted in the Republic of South Africa, although there has been nothing yet resembling equality of opportunity. The recent achievement of independence by Northern Rhodesia is likely to prove that the power of the state may be used to crush union-enforced colour bars. One can only hope that nationalistic fanaticism will not lead to gross injustices to the Whites. Kaunda and Nkumbula, the leaders of the present African coalition, have given assurances that they will not wish to dispense with the know-how and experience of the Whites. But they will have to compete with extremist rivals who have already thought it profitable to make rather reckless threats.

19In the case of the gold mines, of course, the effect has been to reduce payable output without affecting the price.

20This is now very common in South African industry as a result of the traditions established by the so-called ‘civilised labour policy’: see Chapter 8.

• 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.