From: South Africa's Radical Tradition, a documentary history, Volume Two 1943 - 1964, by Allison Drew
Document 51 - W. P. van Schoor, "The Origin and Development of Segregation in South Africa A. J. Abrahamse Memorial Lecture, Cathedral Hall, Cape Town, 5 October 1950
A people desiring to emancipate it must understand the process of its enslavement, In South Africa this process begins far back, but it is in the last 80 years that the history of centuries has been condensed. During this period, the systematic exploitation and oppression of the Non-European people on a deliberate and highly organised basis has been developed to a degree of near-perfection.
In "Rhodes", S. G. Millin says:
If no white man had come to South Africa before 1870, the South Africa of today would have been materially little different.... South Africa did not exist for the world, and hardly for itself until its gold and diamonds were discovered.
The real foundations of the modem colour bar system in South Africa began to be laid with the development of the sugar plantations in Natal - where large-scale wage "ns confronted the ruling class for the first time - the opening up of the Kimberley diamond mines and, later, of the Rand gold mines. Into this foundation were thrown the methods of exploitation and the traditions which had previously existed. Only in this context is the history of 1652 to 1870 significant for us.
Period of Slavery in South Africa
The slaves were brought to the Cape by Dutch commercial capital which tore them away from West Africa, the Malay Archipelago, and Mozambique. During the first five years of European settlement at the Cape, there were hardly any slaves. [....] Within 70 years such a change had come about that Baron van Imhoff, Batavian Governor, could castigate the local regime in 1743 by saying: "The majority of the farmers in this colony”¦ consider it a shame to work with their own hands," and, that the European workers at the Cape: "does not do as much as a half-trained artisan in Europe...But having imported slaves, every common or garden ordinary European becomes a gentleman." This slave-owning attitude to labour has persisted, and the Industrial Revolution in South Africa, far from abolishing it, intensified it. The 1925 "Civilized" Labour Policy enshrined this attitude as a law of the land. This transformation within 70 years was brought about by the exploitation of imported slave labour.
The negro slaves, demoralised by their mode of capture, and enslaved with little resistance, developed a fatalistic acceptance of slavery as a permanent institution. Through the years, this attitude has had an extremely bad effect in retarding the Non-European struggle for liberation, and it is beginning to die out only now among the oppressed Non-European people of South Africa.
The imported Malay slaves, many of whom were sent here to serve sentences for resisting the Dutch in the East Indies, did not forget their resistance to enslavement. On the other hand, their relatively privileged position as artisan slaves, with the right to work for wages, developed an attitude of aloofness which likewise has been an obstacle in our struggle for liberation. It is only because of the growing idea of Non-European unity over the past 10 years that this bad heritage is crumbling.
The intermediate position of the "Hottentots" as household servants and farm help also left a bad heritage of subservience and inferiority to the ruling class, together with an isolation from the black worker. These attitudes, arising out of the conditions of the slave system, were intensified and fully exploited by the British in the period which began in 1870. [....]
The Coming of the British and the Decline of Slavery
The landing of the British changed practically nothing at the Cape. The 1796 instruction to McCartney ordered the abolition of certain tortures and stressed the need to build fortifications against "the natives of the interior". At the same time, this instruction hinted at a new method of exploitation by ordering the Governor to investigate the possibilities of trade with the "natives". The first British occupation was noteworthy for a merciless war against Ndlambe, with the assistance of the missionaries. The Xhosas, however, still remained undefeated. [....]
The second British Occupation continued from where the Dutch had left off. In 1807 the Slave Trade was abolished (legally, at any rate) in order, among other things, to keep up the price of slaves and to prevent the devaluation of Britain's slave empire in the West Indies, Africa and the East, on the basis of which the wealth of England accumulated. England's Industrial Revolution, which led to the abolition of slavery, would have been utterly impossible had England not practised slavery for two centuries before. [....] The much-boosted Ordinance 50 amounted to nothing other than a labour ordinance to regularize and legalise wage labour for "Hottentots and other free persons of colour at the Cape of Good Hope." It did not abolish apprenticeship, but merely limited it - the slaves remained slaves, and the freed slaves were haltered by Ordinance 50 to a new form of slavery under legal trappings of pseudo-equality. The 1834 Ordinance emancipated the British Government and the slave owners from the burdens of an expensive slave economy. Thus the final period of slavery from 1806 to 1834 may be summed up as [...] the transition from chattel slavery to wage slavery.
British followed their age-old policy of first depriving the indigenous people of an independent source of livelihood - above all, of their land and cattle. The land wars of 99,1811,1819,1834and in the 'forties against the Xhosas, opened the way for their dispossession by the British. In the middle of this series of brutal aggression, robbery and rapine, the frontier Boer took fright and fled from his protector and defender, the British Government, and its handmaidens, John Philip and Co. This event has gone down into our history books under the official designation of "The Great Trek". The heroes of this period of land robbery known as the "Kaffir Wars", were not the pathetic and small-minded Retiefs, Maritzes and Pretoriuses, but the great defenders of the common property of the Africans, viz., Ndlambe and Makanda, who thwarted for half a century the unholy combination of Briton and Boer. This they did despite treachery from within, and the demoralising conversions to Christianity by the missionaries lose creed was summed up by Dr. Philip in 1828 as follows: "All that is wanted for the Hottentots, more correctly for the natives of South Africa is liberty to bring their labour to the best market." This, be it noted, was the essential contribution of the missionaries to the history of South Africa during the period of expropriation of the African.
The military defeat of the Ama-Xhosa tribes was incomplete after 70 years of merciless warfare by the invaders. The African resisted every effort to enslave him by depriving him of the land. The 1820 Settlers, sent out as "soldiers" to crush the African resistance, were forced to throw away their muskets and become soldiers of fortune in safer fields: "The primary motive in colonising the Eastern Province with settlers of British nationality was to establish a permanent outpost against the aggression of the native tribes." The tragedy of the Nonquase mass-suicide coincided almost miraculously with the interests of Grey's policy: "The self-destruction of the natives helped Grey to carry out his policy... enabled him to fill up the empty and confiscated reserves with European settlers." Tragedy, duplicity and cunning finally succeeded in bringing the Xhosa to his knees within a few years, when the might of arms had failed for tree-quarters of a century.
The period 1834-1872 is usually thought of as the period during which, in 1854, the Cape achieved representative government and finally reached the pinnacle of colour-blind democracy with the granting of responsible government in 1872. The meaning this legal equality has been analysed earlier as the equality of the oppressed with the oppressor. Severe property, income and educational qualifications effectively debarred the mass of the population from the enjoyment of the full franchise. This class and caste political segregation made it easy for the rulers later on to introduce their colour segregation. Actually, this much-vaunted period of early Cape "liberalism" was really period of the land robbery of the African, carried out by a series of colonial wars which wrought havoc upon the lives and institutions of the African pastoralists. This period was the first serious period of military conquest.
While the Xhosa was being expropriated, the Boers, abetted by British settlers from Natal, tragically defeated the Zulu, under Dingaan. The work of Dingiswayo and Chaka was not completely undone by this defeat. After their miserable vassalage under Mpanda, the Zulu people were to rise in defence of their land under Cetewayo and, later, Bambatta. The British did not achieve by the Boer, but the final military destruction of the Zulu after the discovery of diamonds. The same applies to the Basuto, the Bechuana, Matabele, Swazi and Mashona. It is a significant fact that the major military conquest of the African , with the exception of the Xhosas was achieved only after the opening of the sugar plantations and the mines. [....] During the years 1877 to 1895 the Transkeian territories, Griqualand West, Pondoland, Bechuanaland and Matabele-Mashonaland were annexed. Without these annexations by the British in the "liberal" Cape, the gold mines of the North would never have been able to get their cheap labour. The military conquest by the Cape cleared the way for the recruitment of cheap labour and for the building up of the whole colour bar system which arose on the foundation of cheap labour on the mines. The "liberal" Cape made a most substantial military contribution to the colour bar structure of South Africa, which is said by liberal historians to be the work of the Boer Republics. The theory that the complex colour-bar system was forced on the Cape by the Transvaal in 1909 is designed to cover up the contribution which the Cape made to set Colour-Bar South Africa on its feet. EconomiÂcally, likewise, the Northern Colour-Bar System around the gold mines was based upon the practices of Rhodes in the Kimberley mines of the Cape. The Cape laid the military and economic foundation of the modem Colour-Bar System, and this in the heyday of Cape "liberalism",
The Voortrekker Republics
The late Dr. A. Abdurahman, in the course of a speech in Kimberley on September 29th, 1913, said:
The Northward march of the Voortrekker was a gigantic plundering raid. They swept like a desolating pestilence through the land, blasting everything in their path, and pitilessly laughing at the ravages from which the native races have not yet recovered.
It is difficult to paint a more graphic and more accurate picture of the Trek in fewer words. It is impossible to remember the Voortrekker for any contribution they are supposed to have made to the progress of South Africa. But they will always be remembered for their attitude of simple and barbarous brutality towards the African. This attitude has become an integral part of the present-day colour psychology of the South African Herrenvolk. The Voortrekker attitude to colour and religion was the central feature of their conception of the universe and life. Their attitude towards the Non-European was that of a master (baas), this attitude being partly a heritage from slavery, arising partly out of the military subjugation of the African and in part from their employment of conquered labour on their farms. In the constitutions of their republics, the Non-European was not considered as a member of the community. In line with the fear-complex of Relief's Manifesto, the Grondwet of 1858 laid down, as one of its basic principles that "the people desire to permit no equality between coloured people and the white inhabitants of the country, either in church or state". Only a handful of chiefs were granted burger rights. This primitive colour outlook was based more on the military factor than on a system of large-scale labour, as is the case to-day. Labour itself was often a form of tribute, like cattle and ivory. [....] Labour was a punishment to intimidate the African. The crude Voortrekker farmer did not from the beginning see the African as a source of cheap labour, but continued for a long time to regard him as an enemy. Gradually, however, the labour requirements of the farmers grew. Labour tax was introduced in return for the use of ground occupied by the Africans in the country which the Voortrekkers had taken from them. The effect was to convert the conquered African into a labour serf. On his own farm the Voortrekker farmer-was employer, judge, jury and policeman, as had been the case in the Cape prior to the trek Northward. Based on labour serfdom, this amounted to a crude reproduction of an undeveloped feudal system. In the Transvaal and Free State this narrow feudalism large-scale squatting which has continued until recent times despite the 1913 Land Act. Under the Voortrekker land and labour system the African became shackled and of the land which, ironically, he had been dispossessed.
Transvaal Republic was quite incapable of completely subjugating the unconquered African. [....] Just as the British had saved the frontier farmers in the Cape ' again and again against the Xhosa, so once more they came to the rescue of the Voortrekkers in the Transvaal. Without British intervention less might have been of "Voortrekker civilization" than is to-day known about Zimbabwe. Shepstone Natal-born Britisher laid down policy for the Transvaal. This policy was in effect the Grondwet of Kruger' s Republic. The "native policy" of the Transvaal Republic after Pretoria Convention of 1881, was the continuation of the policy of the British in The so-called Boer policy was in reality a British policy. Under the British in here was at first no legal discrimination. But in 1865, nine years after the granting of Representative Government for Natal, the growth of the sugar plantations made political segregation necessary. A black labourer could not have the same vote as his white overlord. Only exempted Africans could vote. Shepstone introduced in Natal the reserve and location system and began to regard African territories as reserves of cheap. This Natal British policy was applied to the Boer Transvaal, and was not repealed when the Boers regained their independence. [....]
We can see that the anti-African legislation of the Boer Republics was not so much the work of the Boer as of the British and that the so-called policy of the North was fundamentally a British policy. The Union of 1910 amounted to a fusion of British as developed in the Cape, with British policy as developed in Natal and the Transvaal.
The Industrial Revolution in South Africa
In 1870 the diamond pipes of Kimberley began to transform South Africa. In order to obtain and preserve a constant supply of cheap African labour, Cecil John Rhodes introduced into Kimberley, features of the British Native Administration in Natal. Around the De Beers diggings, he erected locations for the African miners. This was ginning of real residential segregation in South Africa, and of the vast network of labour concentration camps which are to-day to be found in every town, village and farm South Africa. To crush the spirit of these African labourers, Rhodes introduced us liquor measures. [....] The Kimberley diamond mines gave rise directly to the vast stem of migratory labour, flowing between reserves and locations, which is the kingpin of the cheap labour system of South Africa.
[”¦] In Kimberley, Rhodes and his associates developed a "civilized" labour policy ported Europeans, and maintained African wages at the lowest level. Out of this arose the high ratio between skilled and unskilled rates of pay in South Africa, unique world. Rhodes disarmed the African. [....] To prevent traffic in diamonds from the locations, and to control his supply of cheap labour, Rhodes introduced a stringent curfew and a pass. With Kimberley as its industrial hub, the troops of the British Chartered Company radiated out in all directions to conquer the indigenous people, to rob them of their land and, having rendered them propertyless and impoverished, to recruit them as cheap labour for-the mines. In his conquest of Rhodesia Rhodes appointed Native Commissioners as "eyes of the Queen" to guard the newly-won reserves of cheap labour. These were later to become the District Magistrates who today preserve "law and order" in the Territories. Realising that the British Empire required a local European population to manage its affairs in South Africa, Rhodes developed the idea of converting the Boer into the policeman and foreman of Britain, a role that has been assiduously and conscientiously fulfilled by each and every government in South Africa up to the present day. [....] From Rhodes' labour needs in Kimberley he realised that the African had to be rendered voteless, rightless and voiceless, and became the father of the policy of trusteeship. This great brigand, brandishing his guns all over Southern Africa, declared of the Africans: "At present they are children only and must be treated patiently and sympathetically". [....]
The policy of "baasskap" is as much a British as an Afrikaner policy. [....] Kimberley was the birthplace of ideas and practices which were later to become the law and policy of the land. The present-day system of colour bars, segregation and discrimination is basically the product of the Industrial Revolution in South Africa which began in 1870 with the opening of the diamond mines.
With the opening up of the diamond mines the railways began to spread throughout the country [....] The fact that Kimberley diamonds were not alluvial made the importation of vast sums of capital necessary. South Africa became a market for the export of capital from Britain. The deep mining operations needed to unearth the gold of the Rand, also required an enormous combine of capital to operate the diggings with heavy equipment. Only monopoly capitalism, concentrated in the hands of the vast concern now known as the Chamber of Mines, could dig out the gold thousands of feet below the surface of the earth and organise its shipment to every comer of the world. "The Spaniards who worked the great mines of the 16th and 17th centuries would have stood helplessly before the gold deposits of the Witwatersrand." The gold mines of the Rand continued the industrial revolution begun by the diamond mines of Kimberley. A network of railways radiated out of Delagoa, Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth, Natal and the Cape. By 1896, 97 per cent. of Transvaal exports was gold. Rhodes' policy of the Kimberley diamond mines was applied in detail to the Rand. The gold mines consolidated the foundation of the colour system which had been laid in Kimberley. The modem colour bar travelled from the Cape to the North.
The rise of the diamond and gold mines caused a network of recruiting corporations which stretched their tentacles to all parts of the country. The search for cheap African labour was the driving force behind the various measures to drive the African off the land of which he had been robbed by the wars of conquest which I have mentioned. The first important land Act to render the African landless was the Glen Grey Act of 1894 [....] This Act was not designed to create a small African peasantry, nor was it designed to give local government to Ciskei Africans. Its aim was the destruction of the African peasant, to deprive him of land and cattle and to smoke him out to the mines to work. [....] The labour tax was Rhodes' method of smoking the African out of the reserves.
With the opening of the mines in Kimberley the idea of Union was put forward as practical policy by Lord Carnarvon. The basis of his Confederation Scheme, as of the Act of Union, was the unity of the Europeans of the four provinces in order to subjugate the African completely. [....]
The mining revolution, based on cheap African labour, paved the way for a united white Africa. There are few laws to-day, which were not common practice in the "the sugar plantations, diamond mines and gold mines. The financial magnates the mines drew up regulations for their black workers which were later consolidated into nation-wide colour laws. The colour-bar system, as I have stated essentially a British product. The colour prejudice of the Boer was to become the psychology of the system. The British contribution was material; the Boer contribution emotional.
Union had a secure economic foundation in the diamond and gold mines. The British statesmen Carnarvon essentially developed the idea of Union, Shepstone, Selborne and Milner. The Boer statesmen Hofmeyr, Botha and Smuts carried the idea d put it into effect under the watchful eye of Westminster. Britishers like mean, Phillip Kerr and Lionel Curtis, were organised by Smuts to work out the details of Union [....] It is often claimed that the Act of Union was a compromise the "liberal" Cape and the Boer North. Actually it was the union of British-controlled Kimberley with British-controlled Johannesburg. The infamous clause of it debars Non-Europeans from sitting in Parliament was discussed as far back as October 1908, between Lord de Villiers and Selborne. [....] In 1901 Lord Milner
A political equality of White and Black is impossible, though I do think that .any South African parliament the interests of the Blacks should be specially represented. Perhaps white men can do this.
Notice that here we have the comer-stone of the idea of special Native Representation of notorious 1936 Bills. [....] The Act of Union, 1910, was the gravestone of Non European political rights, fashioned by Carnarvon, Selborne and Milner, and put tion by Botha and Smuts. The Afrikaner victims of the British in the Anglo-Boer became beneficiaries of the British estate handed over to their care, first in the Treaty of Vereeniging, later in the Act of Union, and still later in the Statute of Westminster.
The period 1870 to 1910 saw the construction of the economic and political foundations of the Colour-Bar system and the final destruction of the independence of the indigenous peoples. While segregation had existed in South Africa in various forms before 1870, it was the Industrial Revolution which elaborated it into a system and gives it its character as the expression of the Colour Bar in South Africa. From 1910 onwards the superstructure of the Colour Bar was built up systematically; weaknesses in the foundation were reinforced and the system of modem exploitation and oppression consolidated by means of a series of colour laws unique and unparalleled in the whole history of mankind.
The Economic Consolidation of the Colour Bar, 1910-1950
Apart from the Immigration Act of 1913 and the secondary legislation affecting Coloureds and Indians, the major legislation from 1910 to 1940 was directed against the African. Fundamentally, all Non-Europeans had been enslaved politically by the Union. But having done this, the Herrenvolk first concentrated their attention on the African and then, applying the "divide and rule" policy of crushing the oppressed people group by group, found it easy to mop up the remaining rights of the Coloureds and Indians
In the Botha-Smuts Government of 1910 to the outbreak of the first World War, three major laws were passed. These dealt with mine labour, the migratory labour system and the land question. In 1911 the Mines and Works Act was passed which, amended in 1925, shut the Non-European out of skilled occupations; it applied not only to mines and works, but to railways, roads and buildings. The Chamber of Mines had by this time a sufficient control of a vast supply of African labour. In the mines these Africans did skilled work for unskilled rates of pay. In the mines, particularly, this Act operated as a law to exclude the African from skilled pay rather than to shut him out from skilled work. African wages on the mines have remained practically stationary since the opening of the gold mines. At the same time the skill and productivity of the African miners have grown by leaps and bounds. Technical improvements increased the efficiency of production. [....] The greater producÂtivity of African labour and the intensification of his exploitation made it possible for the Chamber of Mines to bribe off the white labour aristocracy without materially affecting its profits. This trend continued after 1911.1nl914an African miner could unearth 250 tons in six months. After the introduction of the light jackhammer drill his output rose to 800 tons in six months by 1930. The super-exploitation of the African miner was increased by the very technical development which should lighten labour in any civilized country. Improved technique, more intense sweating of labour, and a freezing of African wages permanently, made the white labour policy possible. [....] However, even the greatest technical development and the harshest exploitation of African labour have not sufficed to support the uneconomic burden of this white aristocracy of labour. The Chamber of Mines itself has more and more felt the pressure of this burden and has been able to relieve it of late only through artificial measures such as devaluation, at the expense of other sections of the exploited classes. The 1911 Mines and Works Act created a major economic problem for the rulers of this country, viz., the burden of an expensively paid but comparatively unproductive white labour aristocracy. This system of privileged white labour was later to extend to secondary industry as well.
The second major legislation was the Labour Regulation Act of 1911. Having tied down the African miner as an "unskilled" worker, the Botha-Smuts Government set out to continue building up the labour-recruiting network which Rhodes had estabÂlished. The African, who had previously been rendered landless, was now prevented from becoming a settled worker in the town. The effect of this Act was to keep the African in a constant state of movement between the reserves and the mine compounds. The migratory labour system received the stamp of law. It serves a threefold purpose. In the first place, it prevents the settling down of a propertied peasantry. Secondly, it prevents the settling down of a permanent urban working class. Thirdly, the migratory labour system is bound up with the system of low wages. In any other country an industry paying high wages would attract a great supply of labour. With the mining industry in South Africa it is the opposite as far as the African is concerned, since an increase in wages would enable him to stay in the reserves for a longer time. In order to preserve a steady supply of labour and to prolong his stay in the mines, low wages are paid. [....] If the migratory labour system were to break down it would at once polarise into a landed peasantry in the country and an organised working-class in the town, thereby sounding the death-knell of the cheap labour system whose foundation is the landless worker.
The 1911 Labour Regulation Act gave an impetus to the Chamber of Mines labour recruiting agencies to recruit for labour from the Transkei from the Belgian Congo.
One-third of African mine labour is recruited from outside the Union, and the Rand ramifications throughout Southern Africa. [....] It has been estimated that 70 per cent. of the urban African workers are migratory labourers; the corresponding figure for African farm labour is nearly 20 per cent. Of the entire African population, less than one-quarter is settled permanently in towns, on farms, on privately owned land or on Crown Lands.
The infamous Land Act supplemented the Mines and Works Act and the recruiting Act of 1911 in 1913. This Act prohibited Africans from purchasing land, renting land squatting in return for money rent, and or-share-cropping. Farmers could evict squatters who refused to become labourers or servants. Farmers were forbidden to draw up new leases with Africans. There was a fine of £100 and £5 for each day that the stock was left on the farm. This Act was clearly designed to keep the African landless, to deprive him of his cattle and to convert him into a labour serf or a labourer. Sol T. Plaatje has recorded the terrible plight of the African who was thus forced off the land. But the plight immediately after the Act, of thousands who were rendered homeless on their own was but the beginning of a series of miseries which attended the various Land Acts which followed. The Glen Grey Act, the 1913 Land Act, the 1936 Native Land and Trust Act were part of a series of laws to deprive the African of his independent means of subsistence, his cattle and his land, and to strip him of every possession except his labour power. Farm wages after the 1913 Land Act dropped suddenly and to-day the farm labourer earns from £5 to £18 a year. The rural squalor, aggravated in the Western Cape by the "tot system", is better imagined than described.
The presence of a large, cheap farm labour supply has preserved the ignorance and sloth of white farmer. Technical progress has been slow and methods of production have remained as primitive as in any other backward country in the world. In 1931 the average cost of irrigation in India was £3 an acre compared with a corresponding cost in South Africa. [....] The present position is probably much worse. The presence of a large has decreased relatively. Almost the whole of farming is subsidised by the labour of the African mineworker. The Segregationist Land Acts have kept agriculture in a state of abysmal backwardness. This has thrown almost the whole Africa into the clutches of the Chamber of Mines which is not only the largest employer in the world - of workers concentrated together - but completely dominates every other enterprise in the country. [....] If in general we can say that the system of segregation has retarded the free development of technical progress by confining 80 per cent. of the population to unskilled work, this is particularly true of s the real meaning, the real effect of the policy of Milner [....]
The First World War, as far as the Non-Europeans were concerned, ended where it had begun, viz., with the consolidation of segregation. In 1918 the Factories Act, subsequently amended in 1941, introduced segregation into the factories, culminating in the maximum "apartheid" inside the factory. Workbenches, rest rooms, entrances, South African factory unique in the world. Of late, separate factories for Europeans and Non-Europeans have been built. Segregation is more rigorous in the factory than in the mines! Secondary industry, the pride and hope of the Liberals, flourishes on the basis of segregation and encourages colour discrimination as much as farming. Like agriculture, secondary industry is heavily subsidised. The development of mines of the mines eventually led to the growth of manufacturing industries.
[”¦.] Rapid development of secondary industry in South Africa took place when South Africa left the gold standard in 1933. By 1948 there were two and a quarter times as many factory workers as in 1935. The power used increased two and a half times. The volume of the output doubled from 1934 to 1939 and is to-day three and a half times as much as when South Africa left the gold standard. The heavy sector of industry, steel, iron and engineering, increased its output three and a half times between 1936 and 1948. Heavy engineering, directly connected with the gold and coal mines, is the greatest single section of so-called secondary industry. This section has compounds and even labour recruiting like the gold mines. Although secondary industry to-day employs 150,000 more workers than mining, it is less monopolised, less concentrated and copies the labour policy of the Chamber of Mines.
The factories of South Africa have been built on the basis of segregation, for the 1918 Factories Act coincided with the rapid growth of secondary industry. At the same time, segregation has shut the Non-European factory workers, who form two-thirds of the workers in secondary industry, out of skilled employment. This has retarded the natural progress of technique and modem methods of production in industry. The result of segregation in secondary industry is that the productivity of the average industrial worker in England is three times that of the industrial worker in South Africa. This is due to two factors directly connected with the segregation policy of White South Africa. The f i rst factor I have mentioned, viz ., the exclusion of Non-Europeans from skilled work. When 80 per cent. of the population is forbidden to handle modem machinery, technical progress must necessarily be slow. When the bulk of the remaining 20 per cent. is engaged more in the role of overseers, clerks, managers, directors, coupon clippers, etc., technical progress must be slower still. This is the second factor which r etards technical progress, viz. the fact that the average white worker in South Africa produces less than he receives. [....]
On the gold mines the average worker produces £106 of new value every year. The white worker receives four times this value in salary! He receives four times as much as he produces! He costs the country at least £300 a year. The average Non-European worker on the mines produces three times as much as he ea rn s. The wealth of South Africa is created by its Non-European labour which has to support on its back the European employers as well as the European workers. In secondary industry the average white wage is equal to the average value added per year by the worker. Economically the European worker in secondary industry is dead weight. According to the figures, it would make no difference if he were there or not. In secondary industry the average Non-European worker earns less than £100 per year and produces £350 per year - three and a half times as much as he ea rn s ! Segregation has thrown the entire burden of production on the shoulders of Non-European labour. The Non-European receives for this labour the most oppressive, humiliating and degrading treatment that is possible, and is left to pick up a living while the white worker lives off the luxury of the colour bar. In secondary industry the European worker receives three and a half times as much as the Non-European worker. On the mines the white worker gets 12 times as much as the black worker. Sixty years ago the white worker earned seven times as much as the black miner who then earned exactly as much as he earns to-day, viz ., £3 per month plus food. On the farms the ratio has still to be worked out.
There is no evidence that the ratio of white to non-white wages in secondary industry is decreasing. Secondary industry houses its Non-European workers in compounds, locations and townships, working together with municipal authorities. The segregation housing schemes and locations preserve the poverty of the worker and keep wage' down. On the mines and in some heavy engineering enterprises, company and concession stores provide a minimum calorie diet as cheaply as possible to depress wage;. The migratory labour system further depresses the living standards and wages of the Non-European. These low living standards of Non-European labour are at present the basis for the high standard of living and wages of the European workers. [....]
While in depression the employers will squeeze every ounce they can out of Non-European labour before they attack the living standards and wages of European workers, there is no doubt that this heavy cost structure of the white worker will not be permanently tolerated by the employing classes. In depression the low wages of the Non-European will fall still lower and eventually will act like a magnet on the wage' of the whites. Poor whiteism was a product of these low wage levels of the Non-European. All the "apartheid" in the world will not save the white worker in the long run from crashing headlong into the abyss of poverty which is the lot of the Non-European-in South Africa. As long as the economic and political structure is stable and car withstand the great stresses and strains which segregation imposes on it, this fate will not overtake the white worker. But nothing is permanent, not even, and least of all, the elaborate segregationist economic structure of white South Africa.
The 1911 Mines and Works Act and the 1918 Factories Act formed the corner stone of the 1922 Apprenticeship Act, the 1924 Industrial Conciliation Act, the 1925 "Civilised" Labour Policy and the 1925 Wage Act. The Apprenticeship Act further debarred Non-Europeans from becoming skilled workers. The Industrial Conciliation Act prevented the free organisation into recognised unions of African labour. The Wage Act regulated wages and excluded the majority of Non-European workers - those in mining, agriculture and domestic service. The "civilized" labour policy regarded the Non-European labour on which white civilization was built up as uncivilized. [....] The Anglo-Boer war had ruined many transport riders, small farmers, etc., and separated thousands of Europeans from the land. The First World War continued this process. The rural European "bywoner" and labourer could not compete with the African, Coloured and Indian farm worker. They migrated in thousands to the towns where, faced wife the only work of which they were capable, unskilled labour, they once again failed against the Non-European industrial worker. This inability to compete with Non-EuroÂpean labour in country and town was not simply due to lack of training; it was due to an attitude of contempt for labour, which was regarded as "Kaffir work". It was due to a long separation from, and an almost lost acquaintance with, the process of labour [...] The Wage Acts and the "civilized" labour policy were designed to drive out enough Non-Europeans from unskilled occupations to make room for the so-called poor whiles Two years before the "civilized" labour policy, these numbered 160 000, according official figures. The Carnegie Commission Report, published after the "civilized labour policy, estimated the number at 300 000. Within 15 years of the "civilized" labour policy almost all the poor whites were absorbed on the railways, roads, transport, defence and public works. The Non-European had to pay the bill for the elimination of poor whiteism from South Africa, which was achieved by means, of the segregaÂtionist "civilized" labour policy. Today, the former poor white earns about twice as much as the average Non-European industrial worker. To-day the former rural poet white is mainly an urban dweller who receives compulsory education, first-class housing, and all the other amenities of an urban civilization, whereas less than one generation ago his forebears were living under conditions in many ways as bad as those of the average Non-European of to-day. The offspring of the erstwhile poor white has become a pillar of support for the policy of white supremacy. [...] to-day the former poor white has been converted by the "civilized" labour policy into a full-blooded European. The 1935 Workmen's Compensation Act and the amendments to the Factories Act, the 1937 Amended Wage Act - these further consolidated the legislation, binding the economic colour bar dealt with in the Acts described up to now.
The Social and Political Consolidation of Segregation
Having laid a secure economic foundation in the legislation of the Mines Act, the Labour Recruiting Act, the Land Act, the Factories Act, the Wage Act and the "civilized" labour policy, the oppressors built up a complicated system of social and political segregation on the legislative foundation of the 1910 Act. The major political segregation laws after 1910 flowed from the Native Affairs Act of 1920. This Act made room for local African councils under European control, formed a Native Affairs Commission and segregated the Africans administratively. The 1920 Act was the forerunner of the 1936 Representation of Natives Act which removed the remaining Cape Africans from the common roll, created the Native Representative Council and segregated the African politically by means of separate European representation in Parliament and Provincial Council. It also extended the local Advisory Boards.
In general it completed the political segregation of the African. This was the logical result of having rendered the African landless and, on the basis of this landlessness, having enslaved him on farm, in factory and on the mines. The Herrenvolk could not allow the labour which created its wealth to have a say in the affairs of the country and, [hereby, in the distribution of this wealth for the benefit of all. Milner and Selborne had long before indicated the general plan for the Native Affairs Act. The Liberals fully approved of these measures. [....] To-day the Liberals work the Slave Acts, continuing in the tradition of John Philip who regarded the African only as cheap labour. Not a single European party disagreed with the policy of political segregation and white supremacy. [....] Unfortunately, the Liberals, working through African quislings of the Native Representative Council and the African National Congress, dragged so-called organisations of the people, including the late Communist Party, into collaboration with the 1936 slave bills. The British and their "Liberal" handmaidens had for long conceived of the political segregation embodied in the 1920 and 1936 Acts. [....] With the African emasculated politically, the rulers proceeded to segregate the Coloured and Indian politically.
The first serious step in this direction was the introduction of the Coloured Advisory Council in 1943. After being rendered unworkable by the boycott movement initiated by the anti-C.A.D., the C.A.C. collapsed, but the idea of working through a quisling Coloured Council was continued by the present Nationalist Government. The adminÂistrative segregation of the Coloured people is to-day practically complete with the provision, recently, for the establishment of a Coloured Affairs Department. The pre-Union Coloured male franchise was rendered worthless in the 1910 Colour Bar Act of Union. The Coloured vote was further emasculated when European women were given the vote about 20 years ago. It was still further reduced when the Cape African voters were removed on to a separate voters' roll. To-day the pathetic remnants of the Coloured man's vote are on the threshold of removal from the common roll. The administrative and political segregation of the Coloured people is rapidly nearing final perfection.
The Cape Indian vote falls into the same category as the Coloured vote in the Cape [....] In the case of the Indians, two policies can be discerned, one affecting the Indian plantation labourer, the other the Indian merchant class. Useful though this merchant class is to the Herrenvolk in preventing the Indian from coming into the Non-European Unity Movement, at the European businessman is coveting the same time the wealth of this class. Today the Indian businessman cannot invest freely, cannot acquire property freely, cannot trade freely and is facing expropriation, ruin and repatriation. The dispossession of the Indian merchant class would bring new wealth to the Herrenvolk of South Africa and enable them to continue the policy of bribing off the white workers. This is the economic content of the anti-Indian segregation policy. Political enslavement of the African, Coloured and Indian is practically complete. The oppression of Communism Act of 1950, smashing the few remaining rights of free speech, assembly and organisation which had previously been undermined by the Riotous Assemblies Act, brings the system of dictatorship to a point of completion and makes South Africa the perfect totalitarian state in relation to the Non-European. [”¦.]
From 1910 to 1950 the system of segregation in every walk of life was consolidated on the foundation of the industrial revolution in South Africa. This period of the basic construction of South Africa was preceded by the period of the wars of conquest and the dispossession of the African peasant. Into this economic foundation were thrown all the prejudice and oppressive practices of two centuries of slavery at the Cape. This is the history of South Africa.
We have had a long struggle against tyranny. Hundreds of thousands of Non-Europeans perished as the heroes of this struggle. Gonnema, Stuurman, Ndlambe, Makanda, Dingaan, Moshesh, Cetawayo, Bambatta, resisted their military conquest and the expropriation of their land. Hundreds of Non-Europeans perished in the struggle against tyranny at Bulhoek, Bundelswarts, Marabastad and on the Rand. But in all these niggles the Non-European people have been defeated, and the history of South Africa is been the history of blood and tears. Yet this system of unparalleled despotism has unified the Non-European on the basis of a terrible common oppression. Out of the common interests of the oppressed people of South Africa have arisen new cries, new ideas, and new methods of struggle. The ideas of Non-European unity, non-collaboration with the oppressor and full democratic rights have become deeply rooted in the minds ' thousands of the oppressed. Out of these new ideas the struggle for freedom will grow into a reality. We who have thus far been the victims of South African history, will play the major role in the shaping of a new history. In order to make that history, we must understand history. A people desiring to emancipate it must understand the process of its enslavement.