Class and colour in South Africa (concluded)

Hands off our workers
The South African Capitalist looks on the Negro not as competitive but as complementary. Already many Negroes have been drawn into industry as wage-workers; and those who have not form a valuable reserve on which to draw for future expansion, and to use as a threat in order to keep down wages. To the factory-owner in Cape Town or Durban, to the shareholder in the Rand mines or the Port Elizabeth car-assembly-works, Negro labour is an essential ingredient in his profits. He is, therefore, resolutely opposed to the Nationalists’ schemes for apartheid.

The Government, although theoretically committed to apartheid, is thus faced with the fact that its opponents regard it as anathema, and that its own supporters are unenthusiastic about translating the ideal into the practical. Few whites are prepared to attack separate seating in buses or separate queues at the Post Office counter, but serious measures of apartheid have a much more mixed reception. Even the removal of the Sophiatown Natives to a distance of no more than 11 miles outside Johannesburg, with rail transport available to bring the workers into Johannesburg, has roused much hostility in English-speaking circles. British Capitalists sympathised with South African Capitalists over this interference with “their” workers, and British workers were able to enjoy the spectacle of the English Conservative Press apparently defending the rights of the South African proletariat.

Stagnation of Industry
In all their seven years of power, the Nationalist Government have only produced one serious plan for apartheid. In the western part of Cape Province, the numbers of Negroes have increased since 1921 from 30,000 to 178,000. But in this area of South Africa, there was already a large population of Cape Coloured people. If apartheid was possible anywhere in South Africa, a start might be made on it here—so the Government reasoned —because even if the Bantu were removed, there would still be Cape Coloureds to do the work. Even this scheme, it will be noted, is not full-blown apartheid: for even if all the Negroes were forcibly ejected from western Cape Province, the whites would still rely on the Cape Coloured population; the Government did not dare propose that the Cape Coloureds too should be sacrificed to “apartness.” As could have been expected, the plan came under heavy fire from the industrial interests. “The long-term Government plan for the removal of Africans from the western Cape which was announced on Friday by Dr. Eiselen, the Secretary for Native Affairs, has received a hostile reception from the spokesmen of industry, which depends heavily on native labour. . . . The Cape Times to-day attacks the proposal on the ground that it is impracticable, as commerce, industry, and agriculture, are too dependent on African labour. .. . Natives at present do nearly all the unskilled labour in the western province. . . . The Cape Times also argues that, if the new policy is seriously implemented, it must be accompanied by a control of industry as drastic as in any totalitarian country to avoid increasing labour needs” (18-1-55). In Parliament a former Minister for Native Affairs strongly attacked the Eiselen plan “as impracticable and likely to depress the living standards of both Coloured and Europeans, through the stagnation of commerce and industry” (21-5-55).

Where can it be done?
What was even more significant was that the proposal, although it was for only partial apartheid in only one part of a single province, and although the long-term nature of its implementation was stressed by Dr. Eiselen, received nothing more than lukewarm support from the Nationalist Party newspaper itself, Die Burger. Die Burger, the Nationalist newspaper, applauds the plan, but does not gloss over the difficulties. “Let us not be under any illusions,” it says. “The natives are here because of the economy of the western province as it has evolved, and as it is to-day it needs their labour.” . . . Die Burger sees this matter as an important and perhaps decisive test of apartheid. There are fewer Africans in the western Cape than elsewhere in the European areas, and the western Cape has a large coloured working population. If the plan to reduce the number of Negroes here fails, where in South Africa, Die Burger asks, can it be done, and what then of the policy of progressive territorial separation?” (18-1-55).

The Nationalists receive electoral support not only from the Afrikaner farmers but also from the “poor whites” in the towns. These failures of white society listen eagerly to a party which proclaims that, low as they are, they can still look down on men of a different coloured skin. And those of them who work for wages fear that the Negroes will soon be able to do their jobs for less pay. With these people “apartheid” is a valuable rallying-cry for the Nationalists. But the landed interest is the mainstay of the Nationalist Party, and in the long run determines its policy. In these circumstances it seems probable that thorough-going apartheid will remain a word on the Nationalist banners rather than an item of their practical policy, just as in this country the Conservative Party, while remaining theoretically opposed to all nationalisation, nevertheless makes no effort to restore the coal mines and the railways to their private owners.

Education
The difference of opinion between the landed class and the industrial interest over apartheid or the lack of it is then, perhaps, more apparent than real. But there are other issues where the two classes are divided by a deep gulf. Whereas the Afrikaner farmer will not hear of African ownership of land outside the Native Reserves, the capitalist has no such objection to it. Indeed, a worker who feels he has a stake in the country by his ownership of his house and garden is often a better worker than the completely propertyless man. He is rooted to one spot, and is less likely to go off to another job, leaving his employer with the trouble of training a successor. He can only buy a house with the help of a mortgage, and a worker who has regular repayments to make is less likely to go on strike than one who hasn’t. On this question, then, there is a clear division of opinion.

But the self-interest of the two classes is most clearly in opposition in the sphere of education. In the eyes of the Afrikaner the Negro is and must remain merely a hewer of wood and a drawer of water; he should have the very little education needed to fit him for his task, and no more. For more education would lead him to consider himself as good a man as the Afrikaner, and would tempt him to agitate for a share in the land of South Africa more consonant with his numbers. But the Britisher sees the Negro as a workman at a modern factory bench or conveyor-belt; and modern methods of production need skilled and educated workers. Which view is to prevail? In the long run, there seems little doubt that capitalism’s inevitable demand for educated workers will become more vocal and will eventually carry the day; but at present, the Afrikaners seem to be trying to put their theories, in this field at least, into practice. As a start, the Nationalist Government is making a determined effort to get all education into its own hands. Under the Bantu Education Act, the subsidies which previous governments have paid to high schools and industrial schools, are to be cut immediately by a quarter of their former figure, and may ultimately be stopped altogether (8-1-55). The Act is designed to take native education out of the control of the provincial authorities and the English-speaking churches, and put it into that of the State. In the State-run schools, the Bantu will have a “special education”—that is to say, an education which the Afrikaners hope will ensure that they never rise above their present lowly status.

Mr. Strauss, leader of the United Party, indicated recently that his party might be prepared to accept a compromise on the Native question. “The Native as such,” he remarked in a speech at Bloemfontein, “is not even a homogeneous entity. What is right for the primitive tribesman in Pondoland may be wrong for the educated and cultured Native professor. What would be necessary for the Native urban worker in Johannesburg would not be desirable for the labour tenant on the Transvaal platteland ” (13-1-55). This naive “You do what you want with your workers if we can do what we want with ours” offer has so far, it seems, awakened no response among the Nationalists.

Religion
The question of education is bound up with the question of religion. As usual, each of these two contending upper classes has the support of its own churches. The Afrikaners’ church is the Dutch Reformed Church, of which, it will be remembered, the former Prime Minister Malan, Doctor of Theology, was a pastor. The divines of this Church bend their energies to demonstrate, with the aid of Biblical quotation, how the white man is by nature superior to the black, and how he is thus clearly designated, in the eternal order of things laid down by the Almighty, to rule over him. This kind of rubbish is refuted by the Anglican and Catholic Churches, which depend for their existence on the support of the capitalist class; they therefore select other Biblical quotations to “show that the Bantu, with the help of and under the suzerainty of the particular church concerned, can become a reliable and responsible member of society. In mid-twentieth-century South Africa this means, in effect, that he can become a trustworthy wage-slave. The English-speaking churches are supported in this by their brethren overseas: many British clergymen have been able to gain a cheap reputation for liberality by descanting on the evils of the Nationalist administration in South Africa, while closing their eyes to the exploitation of the workers on their own doorsteps.

Colour and Class
The colour problem in South Africa is not distinct and separate from the other problems which arise inevitably out of a society which is based on private property. Under Socialism there will be no landowner, no capitalist, no poor white, no “worker”: there will be no fear of competition for land or for jobs, no fear of a rival class, no fear of loss’ of dividend, and therefore none of the hatred to which these fears give rise. When South Africans understand and want Socialism, their hatred for persons of a different colour will disappear; for no man, black or white, can continue any longer in his hatred when he understands the real reasons for it. To treat the colour-bar as an issue outside of and beyond the class- struggle, and to believe that it can receive any real solution while the class-divisions in society remain unresolved, is to stultify oneself at the very outset. The answer to South Africa’s problems is the same as the answer to the problems of Britain, America, Russia: it is the introduction of a Socialist system of society.

JOSHUA