The Economics of the Colour Bar

ALTHOUGH the ‘civilised labour’ legislation had erected the most formidable barriers to non-white advancement in the industrial sphere, the profit urge – coupled with entrepreneurial ingenuity – still disclosed ways round some of the barriers. The result was to bring about, from the middle 1930s, significant changes in the racial composition of the industrial labour force. Two important stimuli enhanced prospective yields and hence the free market incentives for the avoidance of colour bar obstacles.

The first was the 1934 rise in the dollar price of gold, which enormously increased the ability of South African secondary industries to compete successfully against the rest of the world for her own and imported raw materials. The second was the need to offset the labour shortage caused by the Second World War.

Encouraged by the increased gold price, investors sought out new fields of industrial employment (such as the clothing industry) which had not been monopolised by white labour unions. To obtain labour cheap enough to permit the product of this employment to be priced for mass consumption, managements began, broadly speaking, by successfully competing with the occupations of housewife or domestic servant and attracting first white women and then Coloured women into the new factories. The resulting expansion of real income caused a general expansion of demand for the product of all industries, which made it possible for many Coloured employees who had been working as mere labourers to progress by stepping into jobs from which Whites had been promoted, whilst Africans took over the jobs from which the Coloureds were promoted. The fact that the Coloured people had, despite the Wage Act, relatively little power1 to protect themselves against the competition of the relatively very much poorer African labourers undoubtedly worked to their collective benefit, since the rapid increase in the number of Africans in factory employments, by making industrial growth profitable, multiplied openings for Coloured women as well as men.

The Second World War enhanced the stimulus. The impetus to economic development which has so often occurred in wartime has puzzled some economists. In spite of the destruction and patent waste of resources in war, the real income of a nation has often been larger at the end than at the beginning of the conflict. One reason is that the emergency forces the abandonment of scarcity-creating practices by such policies as ‘dilution’ which overcome restraints on labour utilisation and reduce the valuation of leisure (and of services such as those of the housewife). In South Africa after 1939, not only were non-Whites admitted to better-paid (and hence more productive) kinds of industrial employment in private industry, but even in government activities they were permitted to take on many jobs previously performed by Whites.

EVASION OF ‘CIVILISED LABOUR POLICY’

The avoidance of the ‘civilised labour policy’ through these developments was accompanied, since 19332, by some measure of actual evasion, particularly in the smaller factories. By ‘evasion’ I mean that some ‘unqualified’ Coloureds and even Africans managed to find skilled or responsible employment without apprenticeship.

The sociological effects over the space of three decades have been far-reaching. The Coloureds have become incomparably better dressed, better fed, better housed, better behaved, more literate, more efficient, more articulate and more resentful. Indeed, following the quiet circumvention from 1933 onwards of the restrictive laws of the middle 1920s, a social revolution has occurred among the urban Coloured people – a change expressed in the most striking manner in the achievement of a large measure of ‘equality of aspect’. Within the space of a decade or so, Coloured women, formerly drably or poorly dressed on the whole, have become pleasingly, neatly and even fashionably dressed. With Coloured men, who still mostly perform various kinds of unskilled or rough manual work, this revolution in dress and aspect has been rather less obvious.3 But the general appearance, as well as the health, of this group has improved remarkably since entrepreneurial enterprise, under the stimulation of the ‘profit motive’, succeeded in dodging the state-imposed barriers. Increased income made possible other forms of social progress unimagined three decades ago. For example, the phenomenally successful ‘Eoan Group’, a multi-racial but mainly Coloured organisation, has produced excellent operas,4 ballets,5 musical comedies, plays, oratorios, etc. And non-white participation in sport (officially segregated)6 has increased rapidly although facilities are still markedly inferior. All these developments have created a growing feeling of respect for the urban Coloured communities and, what is even more important, growing self-respect among them.

The revolution in aspect, the astonishing improvement in the general standard of dress, coupled with improved health from childhood, seems to have caused Coloured women to grow in attractiveness for white men. It has, I believe, provided an important motivation for the Immorality Act (which forbids sexual relations, within marriage or otherwise, between Whites and non-Whites), whilst the continued economic progress of Coloured men and women has, I feel, been one of the main motivations also for the ‘job reservation policy’ and labour direction on the Communist model inaugurated in 1955.7

ENTERPRISE AND LIVING STANDARDS

But the whole prosperity and economic expansion of South Africa has been due to the use of non-white labour in occupations and grades of work which would have been prevented for all time if the restrictionist-minded Labour Party members of the ‘Pact’ Government of 1924 had had their way. That is, the rapidly improving material standards of all classes since the middle 1930s, but particularly of the Poor Whites, the Coloureds, the Indians, and (above all) the Africans, were the consequence, wholly and entirely, of profit-seeking enterprise and ingenuity, factors which were obstructed in every possible direction by state action to protect the earnings of favoured races or groups against capitalists’ attempts to purchase labour at wage-rates which consumers could afford.

If the intentions of the Labour-Nationalist coalition had not been circumvented, if entrepreneurial ingenuities had not by-passed restraints on the profit system, the poorer Afrikaners would have been forced to acquiesce much longer in their economically and socially backward state of the late 1920s. Not realising the sacrifice they were making, they might then have been prepared to shoulder the burden of ‘separate development’, which they are definitely not prepared to do today. It may indeed have been practicable, until the 1930s, to dispense with African labour entirely, except on the mines and on the farms, where the Africans had already become indispensable. The cost would have been the acceptance of more or less permanent Poor Whiteism.8 But the consequent persistence of urban impoverishment among the Whites and the Coloured people would then have made it easier to blame the avarice of ‘profit-seeking employers’; whilst the Africans, excluded from industrial opportunities, would have been aware of fewer grievances than they now believe they have against the Whites and, mistakenly, against the ‘capitalist system’.

9See Chapter 8, p. 73.

10A new coalition government acquired power in 1933. It merged into one ‘United Party’, the former Opposition Party (the South African Party), some Nationalists and some Labour Party members. Fortunately, the Labour representatives seem to have failed to perceive what was happening.

11The change was facilitated because the Coloured women largely worked in the new clothing factories from which they could buy cheaply. The progress of Coloured women preceded that of Coloured men, creating some curious sociological problems in the middle 1930s, when Coloured women were often earning more than their husbands.

12Due credit should be given to the College of Music and the Ballet School of the University of Cape Town for these achievements.

13Unpublicised sporting events involving participants of more than one racial group have been increasing. Such activities have not yet been declared illegal. The excellent achievements of non-Whites in the sporting sphere have increased considerably the respect in which they are held.

14See Chapter 15.

15It is difficult to conceive of any form of technological progress which could have compensated for the loss of the Africans’ contribution to the dynamics of expansion (in the form of an accelerating increase in the supply of industrial labour) since 1930.

• 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.
• 5See Bibliography, p. 183.
• 6There 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.
• 7In Natal there was some possibility of non-Whites qualifying for the franchise but only a handful did, in fact, qualify.
• 8Cape Times, 20 August, 1937. The exchange ceased on 31 August, 1937.
• 9Some 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.
• 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.
• 11I 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.
• 12Without 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.
• 13Now 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.
• 14Of 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.
• 15But 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.