The Economics of the Colour Bar

THE facts about ‘Chinese slavery’ are, briefly, as follows. During the Boer War, the bulk of the Africans who, as we shall see, had provided the larger part of mining labour, ceased to trek to the mines for employment. The habit thus disturbed took a long time to restore.1 Under those conditions, resort to indentured labour was essential for the recovery of gold-mining (a recovery which was, incidentally, to the advantage of the whole South African economy, and especially of the poorest classes). Accordingly, 50,000 indentured Chinese labourers were recruited to overcome the serious shortage of African labour.

The Chinese themselves certainly did not welcome their forced repatriation from 1907. From their point of view they were being sacked from their jobs for political reasons.2 But hardly anyone in Britain worried about the 50,000 Chinese who had been thrown out of an employment they did not want to leave and deported. They had been rescued from ‘slavery’, and the conscience of the self-righteous British voters was satisfied.

The next step of the ‘Liberal’ British Government which had been responsible for this noble action was to grant self-government to the Transvaal, where the whole political and religious tradition was known (by the politicians, not the British voters) to have been based on the principle of ‘no equality between Black and White’. Of course, the British ‘Liberals’ were wholly well-intentioned. They sincerely thought they were restoring rights to the poor, simple, pious Boers, who had been innocent victims of Chamberlain’s imperialism.3 But the Boers made no secret of their intention to perpetuate the subordination of the non-Whites. And, after Union, methods were immediately adopted (at first in 1911) which restrained developments (mainly in mining) which at that time were threatening to facilitate the economic advance of the African.

If the ‘Liberal’ British Government had been more interested in the welfare of the unrepresented non-Whites of South Africa for whom it still held responsibility, it could have insisted upon a full and careful enquiry into the future economic and political rights of non-Whites before handing over political power to the Boers. But it would have been politically dangerous for it to have adopted any form of policy which conflicted with the ‘Liberal’ electorate’s stereotypes about ‘Chinese slaves’, the South African mines, or the deeply-wronged, Christian Boers.

4I discuss the reasons in Chapter 6, pp. 54–5.

5As their contracts ran out.

6In case I should be misunderstood, I must explain that I deplore the policies of Chamberlain, Rhodes and Jameson at least as much as the equally deplorable mis-rule and corruption of the Kruger regime.

• 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.
• 4Some 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.
• 5Some 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.
• 6I 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.