The Politics of Inequality: South Africa since 1948

Literature › Works

Gwendolen M. Carter (1958). The Politics of Inequality: South Africa since 1948. Frederick A. Praeger (New York); printed by Northumberland Press, Gateshead (2nd rev. ed. 1959).

Type	book
Scope	Wider apartheid literature
Method	mixed
Period studied	1910–1958
Regions	Union of South Africa, South West Africa, Cape Province, Transvaal, Natal, Orange Free State, High Commission Territories
Themes	politics ideology elections, origins segregation, bantustans removals influx, labour markets wages, unions strikes, resistance social movements, education human capital, sanctions divestment, business and state, manufacturing industrial policy
Citation key	carter1958

Argument

Carter offers a political study of the first decade of National Party rule (1948-58), centred on the 1953 election, party organisation, and the legislative construction of apartheid. She argues that apartheid was an attempt to preserve white supremacy and Afrikaner power against the integrating pressure of industrialisation and dependence on African labour. The Nationalists legislate decisively and doctrinally while the United Party, bound by the same racial framework, objects mainly on procedure and the constitution. The book is built from parliamentary debates, press digests, interviews with party officials and election returns. She concludes that law backed by force may not be able to hold back economic forces, and that polarisation is rising. Economics appears mainly as background in Chapter 1 and as justification in debates.

Evidence and method

Hansard debates, the Government Gazette, press digests (chiefly the Jewish Board of Deputies digest), daily Afrikaans and English papers during the 1953 campaign, interviews with party leaders and officials over 1952-53, party constitutions and programmes, election returns and expenditure returns from the Electoral Office, UN documents, and government commission reports (Fagan, Eiselen, Tomlinson, Industrial Legislation Commission).

Place in the debates

• Can apartheid be sustained against economic integration (liberal vs. later revisionist reading of apartheid and growth) (see Liberal vs revisionist: was apartheid functional or dysfunctional for capitalist growth?). An early liberal-leaning view: apartheid is meant to preserve racial divisions in a dynamic economy, but dependence on African labour makes strict separation doubtful. It does not use the later 'cheap labour' framework.
• Territorial or 'ideal' apartheid vs. practical restrictive apartheid (see Origins, coherence and ideology of apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism). Argues ideal apartheid works as a rationalisation and long-range goal. In practice Nationalist policy is mainly restrictive, protecting white farmers and workers, with little Reserve development behind it.
• Nationalist vs. United Party approaches to African labour and trade unions (see Origins, coherence and ideology of apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism). Both accept white supremacy. The United Party accepts partial economic integration and limited union recognition, while the Nationalists ban recognition and create state-controlled dispute machinery.

Findings

• Apartheid is presented as a means of preserving racial divisions against the pressures of industrial change. (p. 27)

  apartheid, as the Nationalist sees it, is the means for preserving, and even intensifying racial and social divisions in a dynamic economic situation.

• Reserves could not support their population, undermining territorial separation. (p. 12)

  the r r per cent of South African territory which is at present reserved solely for African occupancy (and thus known as the Native Reserves) cannot even support at subsistence level

• Africans were already a majority of secondary-industry labour and filled semi-skilled posts under disguised grading. (p. 24)

  Africans now constitute more than 5o per cent of the labor force of secondary industry, outnumbering white workers by more than zoopoo

• The colour bar operates mainly through wage differentials rather than skill. (p. 24)

  The wide difierential between the wages paid to white workers, whether skilled or unskilled, and non-European workers is sometimes as great as seven to one, and nearly always as high as three to one.

• The 1953 Native Labour Act kept the ban on African strikes and withheld union recognition, setting up state-run machinery instead. (p. 112)

  It retains the ban on suikes by Africans, and goes beyond the provisions of War Measure I45 to prohibit people from instigating strikes or engaging in sympathetic suikes

• The Minister of Labour defended non-recognition of African unions in racial terms. (p. 112)

  we would probably be committing race suicide if we give them that incentive

• Bantu Education Act: Verwoerd tied the schooling of Africans to their expected place in the economy, in a context of very unequal state spending per pupil. (p. 98)

  the State spent an average of {43'88 for each European student, and {r8-sa for Asian urrd colorr.d pupils, but only {7.58 for each African in school.

• The Treasury fixed its contribution to African education, shifting the burden onto the African community. (p. 104)

  henceforth the Treasury would contribute only a fixed sum, {6,5oo,ooo a year, to African education

• The Government did not adopt the Tomlinson Commission's proposed spending on the Reserves, which undermines the claim that separate development was serious. (p. 414)

  it was not prepared to adopt in large measure either the administrative or financial proposals of the Commission, in particular its long range Program of spending {ro+ million over a ten year period

• The Nationalists win with a minority of the vote because of the electoral system, even while the vote share rises. (p. 15)

  It is true that no Nationalist Government in South African history has yet received a majority of the votes casr in a general election, but 1953 indicated a Nationalist swing

• Economic change is expected to draw more Africans into skilled work, with raised expectations rather than reduced discontent. (p. 415)

  With the serious shortage of European skills6 labor, non-Europeans will have to take over :Lu increasing number of semi-skilled and even skilled positions.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Author's field study and interviews with party officials, MPs, editors, non-European leaders (1948-49, 1952-53, 1957)	interviews oral history	1948-1957	Underpins the account of party organisation, candidates, campaign and non-European politics, which the author says was gathered through personal investigation rather than records.
Parliamentary debates: House of Assembly Debates (Hansard) and Senate Debates	parliamentary debates	1946-1957	Main source for party positions and arguments on the Citizenship, Suppression of Communism, Group Areas, Bantu Education, Separate Representation of Voters and other bills.
Daily and weekly South African press (Afrikaans and English, and non-European papers) and Jewish Board of Deputies Press Digest	newspapers periodicals	1948-1957	Used to show party and group opinion on legislation, elections and constitutional issues; daily press for the 1953 campaign, digests for other periods.
Government Gazette election returns, and Chief Electoral Officer data (postal votes, expenditures)	election returns	1910-1958	Source for seats and vote percentages by province, postal votes, and party/press expenditures in the 1948 and 1953 elections.
United Nations General Assembly records and Commission reports (South West Africa, treatment of Indians, Commission on Racial Situation in South Africa)	commission or official report	1946-1955	Documents the United Nations debates, votes and reports on South West Africa, Indians and apartheid, and South African responses.
Commission for the Socio-Economic Development of the Bantu Areas (Tomlinson Commission), Summary of the Report, U.G. 61/1955, and Government White Paper (1956)	commission or official report	1955-1957	Used for the carrying capacity of the Reserves and the Government's rejection of a ten-year development programme.
Native Education Commission (Eiselen) Report, U.G. 53/1951	commission or official report	1949-1951	Basis for the account of the Bantu Education Act and the history of African schooling.
Industrial Legislation Commission of Enquiry Report (U.G. 62/1951), Witwatersrand Mine Native Wages Commission (1944), Inter-departmental Committee on Urban Natives (1942)	commission or official report	1942-1951	Used to show official views on African trade union recognition preceding the Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act.
Fagan Report (Native Laws Commission, 1948)	commission or official report	1948	Cited for the finding that more than half the Africans live outside the Reserves.
Commission of Inquiry on Separate Training Facilities for non-Europeans at Universities (Holloway), 1954	commission or official report	1953-1954	Source for enrolment figures of non-European university students and the Commission's stand against segregation.
Legislation and statutes (Citizenship Act 1949, Suppression of Communism Act 1950, Group Areas Act 1950, Bantu Authorities Act 1951, Bantu Education Act 1953, Native Labour Act 1953, South Africa Act 1909, etc.)	legislation gazette	1909-1957	Texts and provisions of the apartheid laws are analysed and compared throughout.
Court judgments (Harris v. Dönges 1952, Minister of Interior v. Harris, Ndlwana v. Hofmeyr, Rex v. Abdurahman, Railway apartheid case)	legislation gazette	1937-1953	Establishes the legal course of the Coloured vote crisis and the courts' stance on separate amenities.
Official Year Book of the Union of South Africa and Bulletin of Statistics (incl. 1951 census, 1946 census)	official statistical series	1946-1956	Source for marriage statistics, population, and religious census figures, and the basis of the Population Register.
Party programmes, constitutions, pamphlets and election propaganda (National, United, Labour, Liberal, Federal, ANC, SAIC, Torch Commando)	union or movement records	1919-1957	Used to describe organisation, principles and campaign material; reproduced in Appendices III and IV.
Delimitation Commission and Torch Commando memorandum (1952) and Loyalist/organisation documents	commission or official report	1910-1952	Used for rural/urban weighting of seats and constituency allocation.
Unpublished thesis on religious affiliation (Eric Gargett, Witwatersrand, 1953) using 1946 census	secondary literature compilation	1946	Used to compare census religious affiliation with church rolls.
Delegation/church documents (D.R.C. reports, Christian Council, Rosettenville Conference, Visser 't Hooft report) and Afrikaner organisation publications	other	1937-1953	Used for the doctrinal and organisational basis of Afrikaner nationalism and church positions.

New data

The author compiled election data not otherwise available: party-specific vote counts for the 1948 and 1953 elections from Gazette returns, election expenditure figures from the Electoral Office, biographical data on 1953 candidates, and a press circulation/readership survey (Appendix I), plus tables on electoral weighting and seat majorities.

Inference

Quantification: Descriptive tables.

Qualitative political analysis built on close reading of parliamentary debates, press comment, party documents and interviews, supplemented by descriptive electoral tables; claims are established by narrative comparison of party positions over time rather than statistical testing.

Key claims

Claim	Basis	Strength
Nationalists won power and extended it in 1953 with a minority of votes, aided by rural weighting and delimitation. (p. 15)	Election returns, delimitation tables and Charts I-III compiled from Gazette and Electoral Office.	Systematic data
Apartheid legislation was designed to preserve European supremacy while retaining African labour for an industrialising economy. (p. 27)	Parliamentary debates on each Act, minister statements, plus brief economic figures on mining and manufacturing.	Partial data
The Nationalists pursued the Coloured vote removal by questionable constitutional means, prompting a legal and political crisis. (p. 117)	Hansard debates, court judgments (Harris v. Dönges), press reactions.	Systematic data
The Suppression of Communism Act was used broadly against trade unionists and non-European leaders, not only Communists. (p. 72)	Hansard debates, Liquidator's list figures reported to Parliament, select committee reports, press.	Partial data
African education was severely underfunded relative to European education and the Bantu Education Act shifted control to the Native Affairs Department. (p. 101)	Official per-pupil expenditure figures for 1951-52, school enrolment statistics, Eiselen Commission report and Hansard.	Partial data
The English and Afrikaans press form separate, politically aligned systems with little cross-readership, reinforcing group divisions. (p. 38)	Author's circulation questionnaire and readership survey, press digest reading.	Partial data
The United Nations became the main arena of external pressure on South Africa, but its resolutions hardened South African resistance. (p. 382)	UN General Assembly records, Commission reports, vote tallies.	Systematic data

The author's caveats

The author notes that party records are sparse and poorly kept, election returns lacked party designations, expenditure records were hard to obtain, press circulation figures are secret so all estimates are approximate, and material on non-European groups was virtually impossible to obtain (police raids removed documents).

Gaps in the evidence

The economic claims about apartheid and industrial change rest on a few aggregate figures and secondary reports; census occupational data, wage statistics and Chamber of Mines or Department of Labour records would test them better and existed at the time. Claims about African and Coloured attitudes and voting rest on impressions from interviews and press rather than survey or voting data; individual-level data were unavailable then, though later archival sources exist. The study could also use ministry and cabinet archives to test the stated intentions of policy, which are now open.

Replicability: Data described but not public.