From: South Africa's Radical Tradition, a documentary history, Volume Two 1943 - 1964, by Allison Drew
Document 52 - LA. Jordaan, "A Critique of Mr. W. P. van Schoor's.The Origin and Development of Segregation in South Africa" Discussion, 1, 3, June 1951
It was during the course of a Memorial Lecture held under the auspices of a Cape Province Coloured teachers' organisation in October, 1950, to honour the memory of one of its members, that Mr. W.P. van Schoor propounded his ideas on a subject which was finally published in booklet form [....] Except for the acclamation of the author as a new historian" by the sponsors of the book, and a brief report on it in the local press, Mr. van Schoor's work passed without comment, discussion or analysis. This cannot surely be the end of a historical work which represents a radical and decisive departure from all the histories hitherto written on South Africa. For here is an author who has boldly undertaken the task of writing a short history from the point of view and in the interest of a general evolution of South African humanity to higher social and political forms. The author himself epitomises the function of historiography in the first and last sentence of his booklet: "A people desiring to emancipate itself must understand the process of its enslavement." [...] the author attempts to explain not only how the present South Africa evolved out of the past, but how the genesis of this country has created the complex and intricate problems, the solution of which falls four-square on the people of South Africa themselves. The book is therefore not merely a matter of academic interest, of historical draughtsman ship and accuracy in the presentation of our historical past. No. The author clearly sees in history the key to the understanding of the present which in turn is the indispensable guide to the future. That is why Mr. van Schoor's work is an entirely new approach to South African history. That is why it demands the attention of all those who are interested in the continued evolution of South Africa. It is indeed a reflection on the inspirers of the Memorial Lecture that, for reasons best known to them, they have remained silent on a work which they merely dismissed by an unwarrantable and meaningless eulogy.
Mr. van Schoor has entered a field of study which has up to now been completely monopolised by the official historians in the service of the ruling classes and in the interests of the status quo. [....]
In the appraisal of Mr. van Schoor's work I will use the author's own dictum [....] as the yardstick for the critique. Having read the book one must therefore ask oneself the following questions: Do we now understand the process of our enslavement? Do we understand the evolution of modem South Africa and the present national set-up in the light of this work? Do we have a better understanding and appreciation of the manifold problems which face the peoples of South Africa in their democratic strivings? What theoretical and political lessons can one draw from the author's analysis of the process of our enslavement? Does Mr. van Schoor indicate the course of South Africa's future evolution? [....]
THE BANEFUL EFFECT OF THE AUTHOR'S ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH TO OUR PROBLEMS
1.The Need for a Social Approach to History
Political theory influences our political orientation, poses our practical tasks and clarifies our aims. It is the indispensable guide to political struggle. On the correctness of our theory depends the whole future of the liberatory movement. But what determines our political theory? The most painstaking historical and sociological analysis. Every political in the emancipatory movement, engaged in the interpretation of historical evidence and the assessment of the forces at work in society, must realise the cardinal importance of this work.
Documentary evidence is the raw material out of which the historian reconstructs e past to explain the present. But it is impossible to understand the present if one merely regards history as a series of events. [....] it is the fundamental task of the historian to discover the laws and the forces which generate events and which lead to the rise and fall of special institutions. It is on this basis that history becomes a science, id the indispensable aid in the interpretation of the present. And it is on the basis of determining the general laws underlying the social changes that the future becomes predictable. [....]
If politics is therefore the expression of fundamental class interests which have their basis in economy, then it is clear that economics is in the final reckoning the determining factor in social change. The question of race and colour, racialism and colour prejudice, while they often tend to have logic of their own, are finally merely the superstructure of basic class conflicts.
The temptation every student of South African history should therefore learn to resist is the temptation to conceive of South Africa's evolution and the process of our enslavement in terms of anthropological entities. [....] in South Africa, beset as it is with multi-racial problems, it is a great inducement - incidently the easiest way -to explain the nature of our historical and political problems in terms of race, racialism and colour. For it is precisely in this country that social or class conflicts tend to coincide vim the lines of the race and colour.
2. The Author's Preoccupation with Racial Categories.
The greatest weakness of Mr. van Schoor's book from which all its other weaknesses naturally flow is the author's inability to resist the temptation. The result is the other side of the coin of Herrenvolkism from which political poison can and must follow. While the official historians have hitherto attempted - and attempted with some degree of success - to paint the white whiter and the blacks blacker, Mr. van Schoor tries to paint the white black and blacks white. The result is the same. Not only does he not find any difference between the Dutch and the British policies in South Africa, not only does he regard the white workers, the white labour aristocrats and the mining magnates is a homogeneous white mass, but he proceeds on the basis of his racial approach to identify slaves with Hottentots, Hottentots with Bushman and the Bantu with the Cape coloured people. And how does he attempt to effect this? By approaching history in reverse. I am referring to his naive attempt to explain the past in the light of the present national set-up, rather than the present in the light of the past. [....] In his attempt to project preconceived political notions on to the historical past, the author forces historical facts into a political straightjacket and proceeds to write some questionable history. Let me illustrate. As a consistent democrat, the author rightly sees the political need for Non-European unity as the indispensable pre-requisite for the launching of a mass democratic movement. The only honest way of approaching such a question is to dwell on the indivisibility of Non-European oppression which has placed all the racial groups, Coloured, Indians, Malay and African in the camp of the oppressed. But the author seeks to "justify" the idea of Non-European unity by obliterating the lines of distinction between the Non-European racial groups and by transferring this idea into the historical past. Thus he writes that the institution of slavery "has had an extremely bad effect in retarding the Non-European struggle for liberation and is beginning to die out only now among the oppressed Non-European people of South Africa." It would therefore seem that the Non-European as a whole at one time existed in the state of slavery. History, however, has it that neither the Bantu, the Hottentots, the Bushman nor the Cape Coloureds were legally chattel slaves. Only a small percentage of the present black population, namely the Malays and a few Coloureds, has slave anteceÂdents. It was the policy of the Dutch not to enslave the indigenous people of South Africa. How this institution of slavery therefore hampered the struggle for liberation is difficult to understand.
A number of anachronisms creep into the book in the author's attempt to explain the slow development of Non-European unity. Thus we hear that it was because of "their relatively privileged position as artisan slaves that the Malay slaves "developed an I attitude of aloofness." As if they had then as slaves to unite with the tribal Bantu groups! As if the need for Non-European unity arose not in recent years but in 1652! Then we are asked to accept the idea that the "bad heritage of subservience and inferiority to the ruling class is due to the "intermediate position of the Hottentots as household servants...together with an isolation from the black workers"! Why the Hottentots should have united with other blacks, and who were tribalists, not workers, then is difficult to understand. [....]
3, The Author's Tribal "Heroes": an Example to Democracy?
The black chauvinist is as determined as the white chauvinist to create his stock of national heroes. [....] Thus at a time when the Non-Europeans cannot speak of any national heroes, Mr. van Schoor, in his attempt to give his racial approach to history a sort of moral sanction, turns the wheel of history back to fish out "national heroes" for the Non-Europeans. And from where? From the primitive Bantu and Hottentot tribes! It is difficult to understand why a consistent democrat like Mr. van Schoor should elevate a number of tribal chiefs to the position of "national heroes" and by implication deprecate the dissolution of the primitive tribal societies and the development of industrialism - the indispensable pre-requisite for a democratic society in South Africa. [....]
The study of the movements of various Bantu tribes clearly reveals that each tribe was bent on territorial expansion which it tried to realise at the expense of the extermination of another. The Zulu king, Chaka, had during the early nineteenth century extended his domains by a rigorous military system and a terrible discipline. The neighbouring tribes, particularly the Xhosa, were forced to flee in the face of Chaka's expansionist policy and rule of terror. [....] Mr. van Schoor [...] eulogises the work of Chaka who had terrorised Gaika and Ndlambi. [....] One must certainly defend the tribes against the land robbery of the Dutch and the British, but to eulogise and hold up as an example the primitive chiefs is not the work of a modem democratic movement.
To the black chauvinist van Riebeeck occupies the same place in South African history as the doctrine of "Original Sin" in theology. It is to this humble servant of a commercial company that all the ills of society are attributable. [....] And what is the upshot of it all? Every evil is laid at the door of the white man. [ ....]
SOUTH AFRICA HAD NO FEUDAL PHASE IN ITS HISTORY.
1. The Author Leaves the Door Open for the "Feudal Theory"
[...] having developed at a slow tempo under commercial capitalism from a half-way house to a commercial colony, the Africans were rudely torn away from their tribal mode of life and geared to a modem industrial machine as wage earners. The depend-ice of the mines on cheap labour made the task of expropriating the Africans from their tribal lands the unpostponable demand of the incipient capitalists. The disintegration of African tribal life was accordingly effected by taxation and wars and the subsequent need for European coinage and goods. In the course of a few decades after 1870, the Africans were violently hurled into the streams of capitalism by sword and fire. The Industrial Revolution in South Africa gave them no opportunity, no breathing space to settle down with the dissolution of tribal life as private landholders. Under the tremendous impact of capitalism, they were forced and absorbed into the economic veins of capitalism, bearing heavily the scars of tribalism. The Africans knew of no age between tribalism and the cash nexus.
It must not, however, be taken to mean that industrial capitalism destroyed every vestige of the pre-1870 institutions. [....] In South Africa the industrialists have judiciously preserved the outer forms of chieftainship, tribal categories and combine and integrated these with modem industrial forms. But this preservation of the shells, ' the relics of the past are not the fundamental characteristics, the essence of the social order. They are mere incidentals, mere reminders of the past.
The whole argument in Mr. van Schoor's book, as a few good passages indicate, rids to bear out the above argument. This is the author's best contribution. However, the author's characterisation of the Voortrekker republics, the African labourer and the migratory labour system, he draws certain unwarrantable conclusions which point the existence of feudalism at a certain stage in South Africa's development as well the existence of feudal elements today. One therefore gains the impression that he is living the door wide open for the theory that South Africa is feudal now seeking shelter from the intellectual storms. This makes it necessary to deal with some of his remarks on this subject. For from the theory South Africa was and is feudal, definite political conclusions must flow.
On the political plane this theory wears the ballroom dress of the "agrarian" slogan, Thus according to the advocates of this theory, the fundamental political task is to rid society of the feudal stalactites and stalagmites and achieve for the people the full and legal ownership of their land, like the August 4th decrees of the French Revolution. The fundamental demand of the people, according to them, is therefore for land. [....]
2 What is Feudalism?
[”¦] Feudalism is a state of society in which the political, economic and legal status of every individual came to be inextricably bound up with a contractual relationship based the tenure of land. [....]
In the Boer pastoral communities no feudal system could emerge, because the pastoralists lived in a semi-nomadic state. For feudalism, to quote Franck-Brentano, is agriculture without movement. They held land from the Company on a system of rent, not military, clerical or labour services. The Hottentot and Bantu servants rendered labour services in return for food, not for grants of land. In point of fact, until 1828, the Hottentots could not own land or work a plot of land. Under feudalism, personal services to one's master had to be territorialized, that is, they had to be accompanied by a grant of land. The Hottentots were, in short, not medieval serfs.
Politically, feudalism means the decentralisation of political power and its delegation to a number of strong feudal lords by the king. [....]
The Voortrekker states were, on the other hand, centralized in the People's Council or Volksraad which made laws for all the Boers. Everyone came under the jurisdiction of the central authority. The local authorities - the Landdrost and field comets - merely carried out the instructions of the central authorities to whom they were responsible. The tendency was always in the nature of centralization, which is inimical to feudal political theory.
A few liberal historians, notably De Kiewiet and Agar-Hamilton, are quick to draw comparisons between Voortrekker-Bantu relations and feudalism to show that the Boers established a stable system in which their relations with the blacks were based on reciprocity of rights and services. It is a pity that our "new historians" should fall into the same error, which is tantamount to the whitewashing of white-black relations.
The liberal historians have subtly tried to see in the practice of a number of chiefs to place themselves under the protection of white farmers a resemblance to the feudal practice of "commendation". But this is precisely why it is not feudalism. "CommenÂdation" or "recommendation" was merely the means whereby the feudal system was built up in the course of centuries during which the weak and helpless placed themselves under the protection of the strong. It is not a feature of feudal society itself. The practice of "commendation" must, in a word, be discontinued to end chaos and anarchy and stabilise the feudal structure.
The Voortrekkers could not carry the practice of "commendation" to a logical conclusion by integrating the Bantu into their pastoral economy. The very similarity of the Boer and the Bantu economies, based as they were on land and cattle, was hostile to such assimilation. Their interests were indeed so similar that they both constituted themselves into two armed camps. The result was territorial segregation. To be sure, Bantu children and adults were, through their chiefs, recruited as farm hands and domestic servants. But such services were not accompanied by grants of land. They were not feudalized. Some petty chiefs, on the other hand, seeking refuge from other tribal "heroes", were given temporary residence within the borders of the Transvaal Republic. But even the liberal historians have to admit that such protection as was offered them was a very insecure and hazardous one. At any time they could be expelled. Their temporary residence was therefore not part of perpetual feudal contracts, of feudal tenure and territorialisation.
Feudalism offered three main obstacles to the free development of capitalist commodity production. The abrogation of these barriers constituted the historic mission of the capitalist class.
Firstly, the capitalist entrepreneur was faced with the task of creating a proletariat [....] The solution of the first problem was the solution of the second: the creation of a home market for the mass-produced goods of the industrialists. [....]
The third problem was political: how to absorb the scattered political power that existed under feudalism into the hands of a central authority which could legislate in the interests of the capitalist class. The creation of the centralized political state was finally achieved.
In South Africa the mining magnates were faced with the same problems which were, however, complicated by the presence of a compact tribal system. They could not effectively achieve the expropriation of the Africans by an enclosure system. The indivisibility of primitive tribal communalism called for more bloody measures. Wars and taxation had to accomplish the dissolution of tribal life.
The call for Confederation of the various provinces was not a mere move for white unity to crush the Africans, as Mr. van Schoor alleges it to be. It was a political move by the mining magnates to create a centralized authority which could protect and legislate in the interests of the capitalist economy. The South Africa Act, 1909, created the central state power.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN SOUTH AFRICA
1. Modern South Africa is Rooted in the Industrialisation of 1870
The foundations of modem South Africa were laid neither by the Dutch East India Company in 1652 nor by the British liberal Cape in 1806. The present-day society of this country has its roots in the Industrial Revolution which began with the opening up of the diamond mines in Kimberley and the gold mines on the Witwatersrand towards the end of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. [....]
If twentieth century South Africa is not the product of either early Dutch society or the old liberal Cape, then neither is it the product of the patriarchal Voortrekker pastoral society. Moreover, neither is it a synthesis of the Voortrekker north and the liberal south. It is the creation of an entirely new economic system which, by its new techniques in the process of production, radically altered the old social relationships; evolved new classes rooted in the new process of production and produced a modem political structure to give expression to this change. Up to 1870 South African history is characterised by the slow tempo of her development; after 1870, this country took a tremendous leap which brought her within the course of a few decades into line with modem industrial forms. The introduction of new techniques for the exploitation of the mines is the driving force of this social revolution.
The Cape Colony, the basis of whose subsistence was agriculture, commerce and pastoralism, had no policy of residential, social and political segregation within the orbit of commercial capitalism. Neither did it have a colour bar. It finally and legally recognised the equality of all races. And although social differentiation in practice tool: the form of colour, this is because class and colour lines coincided. The Hottentots and early Cape Coloureds, in addition to the detribalised Bantu on the eastern frontier, came to be the exploited class within the framework of political and legal equality. When therefore, one compares the present national set-up with the British Cape, then it is clear that British liberalism was a force before 1870. The Industrial Revolution reversed this trend of political and economic assimilation, and gradually abrogated the time-halÂlowed liberal policy of political and legal equality.
The Voortrekker pastoral society, on the other hand, was economically and socially incapable of integrating the black into its subsistence economy lest it be consumed in the process. The very similarities of their respective modes of life, based as they were on land and cattle, precluded the possibility of such a development. The Boers therefore pursued a policy of what one can call territorial segregation. This segregation was based on the complete separation, socially and economically, of the Boers and the Bantu. Thus it has not connection with the modem system of social, residential and political segregation which flows from the integration and interdependence of black and white.
[....] The essential basis for South Africa's rapid industrialisation since 1870 was the presence of a large permanently settled white population in this country at the inception of mining. British Imperialism had to consider this white element when it embarked upon the intensive exploitation of the country, before as well as after the discovery of gold and diamonds. Without this population in 1870, Great Britain would have occupied this country on military lines and administered it on the same lines as the South American states or West African colonies. There would have been no such constitutional progress of the various colonies to responsible government which formed the basis for Union and complete political autonomy. There would have been no industrial progress in the form of manufacturing industries. For without the whites, South Africa would still perhaps have been a large mining camp. The presence of a large white population is intimately bound up with the rapid industrialisation of modem South Africa.
Let it be understood that Britain never really had it all her own way in South Africa. She was forced to grant the whites certain political and economic rights which would never have come, or at least come very much later, had they not been here in 1870. The Boers fought hard for and forced Britain after the Anglo-Boer War to give them those privileges which they today enjoy in the form of a colour bar, industrial and social, a labour aristocracy and a full democracy. Without them it is difficult to conceive the present-day South Africa with these social institutions.
In an analysis of the modem colour bar, it is necessary to pose and answer the following questions clearly: What is the colour bar? How and where did it originate? How was it consolidated? What are the conditions for its elimination? All these questions are of vital importance to the democratic movement. Yet our author fails to answer any one of these questions. [....]
2, The Foundations of the Modern Colour Bar
[....] The industrial colour bar and all its concomitants - social and political segregation -are the products of capitalist commodity production which began in Kimberley and on the Witwatersrand. The dependence of modern techniques of capital on labour called for the concentration of labour in the industrial centres. The Bantu had, in short, to be swung into the new industrial system. Skilled labour had to be imported from overseas. In this process of economic integration, economic circumstances, practice, white public opinion which were finally sustained by law, made a strict separation in the two types of labour employed; skilled work at high rates of pay was from the outset the monopoly of the whites; unskilled work at low rates of pay came to be associated with black labour. In the mining industry this practice finally received the sanction of the law by the Mines and Works Act of 1911. It was subsequently extended to other industries. This is the industrial colour bar. . .
Mr. van Schoor merely sees the hand of Herrenvolkism in this arrangement. "In Kimberley," he says, "Rhodes and his associates developed a 'civilised' labour policy for imported Europeans and maintained African wages at the lowest level. Out of this arose the high ratio between skilled and unskilled rates of pay, unique in the world." We do not know in what respects this high ratio between skilled and unskilled rates of pay is unique in the world. What is unique is the fact that in South Africa a large group of people is excluded from occupying skilled jobs in a modem industry. There is no parallel anywhere else. To see in this arrangement merely race and colour is meaning-less. One must take into consideration the class interests of the mining capitalists who are mainly concerned with quick profits. According to our author it seems that the industrialists were bent from the outset on raising the wage rates of the whites and correspondingly lowering the wage rates of the Africans. This then raises the question whether this arrangement was the cause or result of prejudice or whether the two interacted to cement both.
Let us understand that the Africans who appeared on the industrial field had no knowledge and skill in the use of modem instruments of labour. Unskilled work naturally fell to their lot in the formative stages of mining. Moreover, at the time of the opening of the diamond mines, the vast majority of the Africans came of their own accord in search of European goods and guns. The task of destroying African tribal life was not yet under way. Under such circumstances, the Africans worked for low wages.
On the other hand. South Africa had no skilled whites to operate the complex machinery. Skilled artisans had to be imported. To induce them to come high wage rates were offered. This division between white labour and black labour was therefore made more emphatic because skilled labour from Europe had to work alongside black workers who had just appeared on the scene of civilisation. Thus the wages the African workers received in the early days of mining were about ten shillings per week with rations, while the white workers received from £4 to £5 per peek in the case of overseers and from £6 to £8 in the case of mechanics and engine drivers. When African labour was scarce their wage rates rose to even thirty shillings per week. Coloured artisans were also employed in skilled occupations. It is therefore clear that this division between black and white labours is attributable to the Objective, economic circumstances of the time, and not to racialism and colour prejudice. "The white workers," writes De Kiewiet, "stood out more sharply because they were for the most part not of South African birth."
With the rapid dissolution of African tribal life after 1870 starving Africans appeared on the mines, eager to work at the lowest rates. This partly and temporarily solved the labour problem and depressed African wages still more. The gulf separating black from white wages consequently widened.
3. The Economic Interpretation of Colour Prejudice
...] While Mr. van Schoor finally says that the modem colour bar system "is essentially a British product", he wrongly attributes colour prejudice to the Voortrekkers. [....]
The colour prejudice we know today is not the product of the Boers but of the peculiar conditions and circumstances under which the Industrial Revolution developed in this country. The pastoral semi-nomadic Boers had a military hostility and fear of a similar economic group which they could only distinguish from themselves by religion and colour. The two groups could not be integrated into one society because their economic habits were so similar. The colour prejudice we know today flows from the integration of black and white in an industrial society in which the preferential treatment of the whites by the British has revolutionised the whole psychology of the Boers. The Anglo-Boer War was a sharp lesson to the British that without granting concessions, privileges and rights to the Boers, her rule over South Africa with its teeming millions would be unstable. [....]
Objective conditions themselves first inculcated the idea of colour prejudice into the white. The particular disposition of black labour, on the one hand, and white labour, on the other hand, produced the idea that the division between skilled and unskilled labour
and high and low rates of pay was a natural, permanent and immutable one. They came to regard this division as a legitimate institution imposed from above, and not the product of the peculiar circumstances from below. Shortly after the inception of a diamond mining, the whites of this country developed a strong feeling of colour in relation to the productive process. De Kiewiet says that before "the diggers were themselves reduced by the capitalist mining companies to the state of employees, they had decided that no other place was open to the native than that of low-paid and unskilled labour".
This colour prejudice rapidly become more intense when two important social forces arose out of the new techniques of production: a South African born white artisan class and a black proletariat.
The Industrial Revolution in South Africa not only led to the dissolution of tribal life, it also dealt a death blow to the isolation, the particularize of the Boer subsistence economy. For when the demand for agriculture and pastoral products to feed the industrial population became great, the white farmer began to exploit their farms as fully as possible to produce for a large market. The demand for agricultural produce had even led the mining companies to speculate in land and buy large areas which they began to exploit to feed the industrial population. Land prices rose rapidly; many farmers could not adjust themselves to this revolution in agriculture and sold out. The new capitalist farmers, in order to exploit every available stretch of land, were less and Mess inclined to give the ruined whites refuge on their estates. The white bywoners, who had, because of land hunger, taken refuge on the estates of the big farmers, were evicted. Black labour was preferred to white labour on the farms. And so the exodus to the industrial areas began. There they were confronted by a mass of cheap black labour with whom they could not compete in unskilled work. Neither were they trained for skilled work. The Industrial Revolution had produced the "Poor White Problem".
What does Mr. van Schoor say about the "Poor White Problem"? He writes: "...the inability to compete with Non-European labour in country and town was not simply due to the lack of training; it was due to an attitude of contempt for labour which was regarded as Kaffir work." This is a misunderstanding. The white employers of labour preferred the Bantu labourers to white labour. Economics overruled consideration of race and colour prejudice.
With the inability of the impoverished whites to compete with the blacks in industry, with the gradual acquisition of technical skill by the black workers and their utilisation to a small extent as semi-skilled and skilled workers, and with the preference of the mining companies for cheap black workers, there was a loud public outcry against this stage of affairs. The impoverished whites began to place the blame for their economic ruination on the shoulders of the blacks. This fed colour prejudice. Public and political opinion grew for the protection of the whites in industry. The position was aggravated by the cleavage of interests between white employer and white worker whose high wage demands the former would not meet. For the higher the wage rates demanded by the white workers became, the more limited became their opportunities to find employment and the more blacks were conscripted. To be sure, the encroachment of the blacks on skilled occupations was very slight indeed. But so sensitive were the white workers to the idea of associating white labour with skilled jobs and high wages that they began political agitation for the preservation and consolidation of the status quo. [....] Their racialism, their colour prejudice, had an economic content - their demand for a place, a protected place, in industry. Their colour prejudice was not the cause for the separation if black and white in industry but the product and consolidator of it. [....]
4. The Consolidation of the Industrial Colour Bar
Such is the genesis of the modem colour bar. Since its conception almost fifty years have elapsed during which it has shown no obvious signs of collapsing. On the contrary. it has permeated every industry which has developed in South Africa. It is being maintained despite the fact that the rationalisation in production which largely elimiÂnates the need for "skilled" operatives has developed at a rapid rate in South Africa. It is being maintained despite the fact that the African workers are becoming more and more acquainted with the production methods of modem industry and are capable of doing most of the so-called skilled work, or could do so with very little training. It is being maintained despite the fact that it is the chief source of annoyance and financial loss to the Chamber of Mines. Today, political expediency which had forced upon the Chamber of Mines the colour bar, is being mercilessly pounded by the laws of economic necessity which no longer sees the justification of the indefinite continuation of a while labour aristocracy. Profits are dwindling; cuts shall have to be made somewhere. This top-heavy social institution is being strained to the utmost. The economic base is now pounding the superstructure of political expediency, race and colour prejudice.
After the Great War of 1914-18, however, the colour bar has become more rigid. Not only did the extension of the statutory colour bar to other industrial field-consolidate the labour status quo, but the increase in power and co-ordination of the white trade unions and the corresponding lack of organisation, lack of rights and docility of the black workers led to increased rates of pay and better working conditions for the white workers.
"Segregation is more rigorous in the factory than in the mines," writes Mr. van Schoor. Is this really so? In the factory, to be sure, there is not the same rigorous enforcement of the statutory provisions of the colour bar. Non-European factory workers are more intimate with the technical processes of production and receive rates-of pay which are superior to those of the Chamber of Mines. The author, however, says that the "ratio of white to non-white wages in secondary industry" is evidently not decreasing. But a careful study of the wage rates of the two groups shows that there has been a definite narrowing of the gap. In 1915 the ratio was 4,85; in 1919 it was 4,84, and in 1924 it was 4,5. Then there was an increase to 4,27 in 1927, but in 1929 it fell to 4,08. In 1938 the ratio was 4,36 and it fell to 3,5 in 1944, rising to 3,47 in 1945. This decrease, slight though it is, proved that the economic demands of the Non-European workers are increasing. It vaguely foreshadows the future of the Industrial Colour Bar.
In the gold mining industry the colour bar is rigidly being maintained. From 1911 to 1915 European wages amounted to an average of £330 annually. In 1920 European wages averaged £501 and then declined to £372 in 1923. In 1938 it was £404, and in 1947 it was £579. As regards Non-European wages, the average cash wages for 1911 was £28 5s.; for 1923 it-was £34 1s., and in 1938 £36 6s. "In 1938 both average cash wages of Natives and average European wages were almost 21,3% above the 1911 level." The gap is being maintained. For example, the average increase of European wages in the diamond industry was 23% from 1911 to 1938, and for Non-Europeans for the same period it was 11,7%. In the coal mining industry the average increase of European wages from 1911 to 1938 was 39,4%, and for Non-Europeans 37,3%.'
In July 1918, the Chamber of Mines recognised the Status Quo Agreement, which reaffirmed the colour bar system in the mining industry. [....]
In an attempt to modify this agreement, the Chamber of Mines precipitated the 1922 strike. [....] In 1926 the Mines and Works Act was amended to exclude Africans and Asiatics from acquiring certificates of competency to do skilled work. For already, in 1925, the Mining Regulations Commission had spoken of the competition of the African labourer which would lead to the elimination of the European worker "from the entire range of mining operations".
There can be no doubt that the Chamber of Mines views the white worker with an ambivalence of emotions. For the conditions and circumstances under which the colour bar arose have vanished. Political considerations are, however, still stronger than the need to cut down on the heavy cost structure, either by reducing European wages or by replacing the whites in skilled jobs by black labour. But so great is the strength of the organised white working class, so strong their political voice, and so docile and rightless the unorganised workers that legislative and administrative measures are still the main props for the support of the colour bar in industry.
5. The Conditions for the Elimination of the Colour Bar
What then are the conditions necessary for the elimination of the colour bar? For this is the fundamental task of the political movement for democracy: to bring the wage rates of the black worker to the level of Europeans and to eliminate the artificial barriers separating "skilled from unskilled" in industry. Two factors combine to this end: in the automatic process outside human agency and in the political struggle through human agency to bring about its abrogation.
Mr. van Schoor only sees the former [....] The problem of raising the standards of life of the black workers does not enter the mind of the writer. Moreover, he ignores the rapid increase in the number of proletarians settled permanently in the towns where, it is clear, they will one day organise into a mighty social force and play the decisive part in the struggle of the abolition of the colour bar. [....] -The elimination of the industrial colour bar is inextricably bound up with the increase in the number of permanent black workers. For such a development will indubitably lead to the organiÂsation of the black proletariat and their participation as a force in the industrial struggles that lie ahead. Yet Mr. van Schoor only sees the objective factor of economic necessity. Such an automatic abolition of the colour bar is the dream of opportunism and the product of political abstentionism.
The Non-Europeans have up to now been putty in the hands of the employers, not only because they are voiceless and voteless, but because they are not an organised force that can struggle for higher wages and better working conditions. But Mr. van Schoor must not consider that they will remain a permanent, docile mass, incapable of any struggle. Such an attitude of mind is already the beginning of capitulation to the status quo. This striking omission of the role of the liberatory movement to wrench away the props that support the colour bar is the beginning of defeatism, of lack of faith and optimism in the democratic struggle. History is made by people under definite conditions. That history will only be made when the proletariat steps into the political arena as an organised industrial force.
6 The Economics of Black Chauvinism
Mr. van Schoor's anthropological approach once more reveals its baneful influence on author's assessment of black and white wages and the productive output of the respective labour groups. [....]
He argues that "the European worker in secondary industry is deadweight." [....] We are therefore given to understand that the South African capitalists are not really interested whether the white workers produce new social values. It seems that racialism and colour prejudice overrule all economic considerations. According to Mr. van Schoor, the black workers alone contribute towards the productive output. In other words, technical skill, the economic planning commissions, the skilled overseers and engineers play no part in the productive output. All production is dependent - on whom? On the semi- and unskilled black workers who are not allowed to handle modern machinery freely. Thus we finally have the formulae: Skilled workers = unproductive; unskilled work = productive; white = unproductive; black = productive.
Two statements on production prove that the author is not at all serious about the above statement: "When 80% of the population is forbidden to handle machinery, technical progress must necessarily slow." So? The Non-Europeans are not very productive after all! Technical skill is, after all, necessary to industry! The whites, after all, produce new values! [....]
Even in a democratic society, skilled workers will have to be paid more than workers who are less skilled. For without this technical skill production will be slow, poverty will continue to haunt democracy and elementary needs will not be satisfied. Does the writer imagine that unskilled workers and manual workers can build a democratic society? The reason for the low productivity of this country lies in the fact that the Non-Europeans are not allowed to participate fully in the process of production. The abolition of the colour bar, therefore, also means a tremendous increase in production.
7. The Proletariat as the Greatest Force in the Country.
[....] Since the opening of the mines, the establishment of factories and the beginning if capitalist agriculture, the areas allotted to the Africans have continually shrunk. The result is continued proletarianisation. Africans are forced by land hunger, the need for money to buy European goods and pay their taxes to seek work in the urban areas. The reserves were never set aside to sustain the Africans. Thus, before the depression of 1929-36, the income from production of African families in the reserves was £4 0s. Id. per annum. Today the reserves are a large creche for old woman and children and a short place of rest for the migratory workers.
Since Union the African population has continued to flow from areas of predomiÂnantly African population to the urban centres and European farms. They go yearly from the reserves to the towns; from the towns back to the reserves; from the reserves to European farms and back to the reserves and from farms to the towns and back to the farms. This perennial movement is a unique characteristic of the black proletariat. It is our task to understand how conditions, administrative measures and economic forces dictate this complex migratory labour system.
Once again Mr. van Schoor is unable to see the migratory labour system as a process of development. He simply says: "The Kimberley diamond mines gave rise directly to the vast system of migratory labour flowing between reserves and locations..." How and why this came about he is unable to tell us. Later we hear that, having been rendered homeless, the African was prevented from becoming a settled worker in the towns by the migratory labour system. Then he writes that this labour system also "prevents the settling down of a propertied (!) peasantry." The author here confuses cause and effect. The migratory labour system, contrary to the author, is not the cause of the inability of the Africans to become either a peasantry or a settled urban proletariat, but precisely the result of it. By various administrative measures the Africans are forbidden to settle permanently in urban centres. This is the meaning of the pass laws. After the expiration of his labour contract the pass laws forced him to return to the areas specially set aside for Africans. But here he cannot stay for long because the reserves were never meant to be self-sufficient areas. Poverty and land hunger compel him to seek work in the towns or on the white farms. The result is that he oscillates between reserves and urban areas for European farmers. [....]
Yet, in spite of these administrative measures which prevent the emergence of a permanent urban African proletariat, the very poverty of live in the reserve, the increasing economic demands of the Africans, and the consequent desperate need to augment their frugal incomes, are leading to more and more Africans into the ranks of permanent urban dwellers. Their labour contracts and their stay in the industrial centres are becoming larger. The extension of the urban localities themselves bears testimony to this fact. [....]
Mr. van Schoor: "...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. . ."[....]
The author does not give us the conditions under which the migratory labour system would break down. He cannot see that the labour and economic needs of the industriÂalists would finally force them to abolish the migratory labour system and allow the migratory African workers to become an integral part of urban life. This is an inescapable development in our social evolution. The wheel of history cannot be turned back either to the revival of tribalism or the settling of the Africans on the land as small producers. Such a development is repugnant not only to the historic process and the development of industry but also to the democratic movement, which can only triumph on the basis of increased industrialisation.
The African worker is not a proletarian in the true sense of the word. Firstly, he is not a permanent urban dweller and therefore does not form an integral part of industrial life, socially and culturally. Secondly, he is debarred by industrial legislation from participating in all the technical processes as a skilled and efficient worker. The development of capitalism will indubitable also lead to the development of a fully-fledged proletariat.
Of the great importance to the liberatory movement is a strict understanding of the forces which are driving more and more Africans irresistibly forward into the capitalist economy as proletarians. The great task of the liberatory movement is to facilitate this development by its struggle for the abrogation of all the administrative measures which prevent the Africans from becoming a settled proletariat; by calling for the abolition of the Industrial Colour Bar to raise the living standards of the African and develop his technical skill; and by demanding political and civil rights to make him a full citizen of this country. [....]
[....] This analysis has attempted to show that the weakness in the book flow from a wrong orientation and approach to our social and political problems, an approach which, taking racial categories as its point of departure, has the tendency, though not always, to go to the other extreme of Herrenvolkism - black racialism. It is a tendency that is all too prevalent in Colonial countries where class oppression and exploitation assume the form of and coincide with race and colour. But it is precisely the task of the democratic movement to strip this Colonial oppression of its racial garb and reveal its class content.
All the differences which this critique has with this book are consequential upon the author's anthropological approach. In many respects they are indeed slight, being a matter of emphasis, of underlying principles, of seeing the wood for the trees and objectivity. And although we have reached an important stage in Mr. van Schoor's work on the road to sociological clarification on our political problems, I still consider that our main task in the field of history at present is to deal with and refute the arguments of the official historians writing South Africa's past. They still reign supreme. We are grateful to Mr. van Schoor for having taken another step in this direction. For the clarification of our past is the condition for the clarification of our present, and the clarification of our present the condition for the clarification of political theory and our future. The leadership of the enslaved masses must first understand the process of enslavement before they can lead them on the road to emancipation.