A History of South Africa: Social and Economic¶

C. W. de Kiewiet (1941). A History of South Africa: Social and Economic. Oxford University Press.


Type	book
Scope	Economics and economic history of apartheid
Method	synthesis review
Period studied	1652–1939
Regions	Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, Orange Free State, Witwatersrand, Union of South Africa
Themes	origins segregation, mining migrant labour, agriculture land, manufacturing industrial policy, labour markets wages, inequality poverty unemployment, unions strikes, business and state, macro fiscal finance debt, politics ideology elections, demography urbanisation, education human capital, bantustans removals influx
Citation key	`kiewiet1941`

Argument¶

De Kiewiet's classic liberal-Cape-school economic and social history argues that South Africa's central theme is the growth of a single interdependent society in which white and black are bound together economically. Land dispossession, taxes and the lure of cash drove Africans into servile labour, first on farms and then in the diamond and gold mines, where cheap native labour became the foundation of mining and industry. The same agricultural revolution produced 'poor whites', whose entry into industry prompted the colour bar and 'civilized labour' policy of the 1920s and 1930s. He holds that this order made a high-wage white elite dependent on low-wage black labour, and that segregation is therefore 'a myth' that the economists have shown to be inefficient. The book is narrated chronologically, with comparisons to the other British dominions.

Evidence and method¶

Published British and Union commissions (Native Economic Commission, Economic and Wage Commission, Industrial Legislation Commission, Low Grade Mines Commission, Beaumont Land Commission), censuses of 1904-1936, the Official Year Book, secondary works (Macmillan, Walker, Frankel, Robertson), and travellers' accounts such as Lichtenstein. Statistics are scattered through the text; there are no footnoted archives.

Place in the debates¶

Liberal vs revisionist/radical interpretation of segregation and growth (see Liberal vs revisionist: was apartheid functional or dysfunctional for capitalist growth?). Writing before the revisionist school, he takes the liberal economists' line: the colour bar and civilized-labour policy are economically irrational, costly protection of white privilege, and race discrimination has psychological and social roots as well as economic ones. He also stresses frontier ideology and poverty, and is sympathetic to white fears.
Cheap labour thesis (role of cheap African labour in mining and industrial development) (see Cheap labour thesis and the function of the reserves). Treats cheap native labour as the central resource of South African mining and industry, comparable to wool or wheat elsewhere, and links high white wages directly to low black wages.
Causes of the Great Trek and Boer War (see Pre-Union colonial economy, the mineral revolution and the South African War). Rejects the simple grievance narrative of the Trek and the pure capitalist-conspiracy reading of the Boer War, which he sees as caused both by gold and by Britain's search for South African unity.
Poor whites: moral failing vs structural causes (see Pre-Union colonial economy, the mineral revolution and the South African War). Combines agrarian backwardness, land subdivision, the labour tenant system and competition from cheap black labour; both poor whites and poor blacks are seen as products of the same causes.

Findings¶

Mines systematically split labour into a skilled white tier and an unskilled black tier, with no intermediate rungs. (p. 105)

It became a doctrine of South African labour economics that skill and high wages were a privilege of the white race
Gold's weight in the economy: Frankel estimated half the population and half of government finances depended on mining. (p. 165)

one-half of the population obtained their livelihood directly or indirectly from the gold-mining industry
Reserves could not sustain their populations, so migration of labour was structural; about half the African population lived outside them. (p. 200)

Half the population lived permanently outside the reserves and locations, in the towns and upon the land of Europeans.
Segregation is declared a myth contradicted by economic integration. (p. 242)

Segregation is a myth, a fancy, anything but a fact.
The civilized labour policy is criticised as an inefficient hidden subsidy. (p. 244)

it was inefficient and uneconomical to pay wages corresponding with differences in colour instead of differences in skill.
Industrial conciliation and wage legislation excluded most Africans through the definition of 'employee'. (p. 274)

the word 'employee' was defined so as to exclude all natives who were required by law to carry passes.

Evidence ledger¶

Sources used¶

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Report of the Native Economic Commission, U.G. 22 of 1932	commission or official report	1932	Supplies evidence on native taxation burden, farm-labourer diet, rural wages, education provision and the case for developing the Reserves.
Report of the Industrial Legislation Commission, U.G. 37 of 1935	commission or official report	1935	Used for international per capita income comparisons, skilled/unskilled wage ratios in building, and the criticism of semi-skilled labour provision.
Low Grade Mines Commission reports (1920 and 1932)	commission or official report	1919-1920; 1932	Establishes the mines' marginal profitability and recommendations to increase native employment and remove the colour bar.
Report of the Mining Industry Board (1922) and 1925 commission on mining	commission or official report	1922-1925	Used to show that economy and cheap native labour were held to underlie white employment on the mines.
Beaumont Land Commission (1916)	commission or official report	1915-1916	Estimates native land capacity and the numbers of natives living on European-owned land.
Drought Commission report (1923)	commission or official report	1923	Supports claim that kraaling of sheep was harmful and that fenced paddocks would raise carrying capacity by over 50 per cent.
Mining Regulations Commission, U.G. 36 of 1925	commission or official report	1925	Shows machinery workable by natives threatened European workers across mining operations, motivating the 1926 Colour Bar Act.
Interdepartmental Committee on the Labour Resources of the Union (1930)	commission or official report	1930	Establishes that the great majority of able-bodied reserve males spent part of each year in European service.
Union censuses (1904, 1911, 1918, 1921, 1931, 1936)	population census	1904-1936	Documents urbanization, rural white decline, native urban share and natives outside native areas.
South Africa Official Year Book (Union Year Book) 1932 and 1937	official statistical series	1930s	Used for native maize production, gold output forecasts and expenditure on white versus native education.
Professor S. Herbert Frankel's research for the Gold Producers' Committee of the Chamber of Mines	secondary literature compilation	c. 1930s	Supports claim that half the population and half of government finances depended directly or indirectly on gold mining.
Professor Shannon's article, South African Journal of Economics vol. v, 1937	secondary literature compilation	1937	Source for most of the urbanization figures on native and white urban population.
Chamber of Mines and Union mining/labour statistics (wages, employment, costs, fatalities, phthisis)	official statistical series	1897-1937	Quantifies wage gaps, working costs, accident and phthisis rates, labour composition and government revenue from mines.
Official trade, tariff, subsidy, and agricultural/state expenditure figures (Land Bank, irrigation, railways, exports)	official statistical series	1910-1937	Documents agricultural state support, export subsidies and the limited results of agricultural planning.
Union and colonial legislation (Mines and Works Act 1911, Natives Land Act 1913, Native Urban Areas Act 1923, Industrial Conciliation Act, Wage Act 1925, Representation of Natives Act 1936, etc.)	legislation gazette	1894-1937	Traces the legal construction of the colour bar, segregation, and industrial and agricultural regulation.
Brigden Commonwealth Committee report on the Australian tariff (1929)	commission or official report	1929	Cited as comparative economic reasoning about protection in a country dependent on low-grade gold ore.
Contemporary and earlier commentary: Lichtenstein's Travels, Handbook of the Cape Colony (1875), Imperial dispatches, Carnarvon's cabinet memorandum, Malherbe, Leipoldt, Brand	other	1803-1935	Quoted as contemporary witness for frontier conditions, Carnarvon's federation case, poor whites and native policy.
Carnegie Commission, The Poor White Problem in South Africa (1932)	commission or official report	1932	Listed in bibliography as basis for poor white analysis; the text cites 'best available evidence' of 160,000 poor whites.
Reports of the Natal Native Commission (1881) and Native Laws and Customs Commission, Cape (1883)	commission or official report	1881-1883	Cited as first steps to scientific understanding of native life in an otherwise neglectful period.

Inference¶

Quantification: Illustrative figures.

Narrative interpretive history combining chronological argument, comparative analogy with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the American South, and scattered official statistics, commission findings and quotations used to illustrate a thesis that land, labour and race made South Africa's society and economy interdependent.

Key claims¶

Claim	Basis	Strength
Dispossession, taxation and loss of tribal resources drove Africans into wage labour, creating a landless proletariat and making cheap native labour the basis of mining and industry. (p. 82)	Illustrative statistics on land, taxes and diet, Native Economic Commission, Beaumont Commission and Interdepartmental Committee; largely narrative argument.	Partial data
Gold mining was the foundation of the South African economy, stabilizing revenue and exports and financing state policy. (p. 155)	Frankel's research for the Chamber of Mines, export and revenue figures, taxation share of mining.	Partial data
Poor whites and poor blacks resulted from similar causes: landlessness, subdivision, drought, erosion and absence of skills, with native competition blocking a white labouring class. (p. 182)	Census data on rural depopulation, commission findings, qualitative description and analogies to the American South.	Partial data
The civilized labour policy, colour bar and segregation legislation after 1924 protected white labour but were economically inefficient and segregation was a myth given native dependence on white economy. (p. 242)	Legislative record, commission reports, census figures on natives outside native areas, economists' arguments.	Partial data
South Africa was poor in agriculture and industry, so protection and subsidies were costly, and dependence on gold, diamonds and wool made tariffs burdensome to export industries. (p. 259)	Official figures on export subsidies, land bank, tariffs and agricultural exports, plus Australian tariff reports.	Partial data

The author's caveats¶

Acknowledges unreliability of the 1921 census evidence on native increase, notes that income comparisons are not precise, that economists' techniques cannot lay bare a country's economic anatomy, and that native tribal history suffers from a lack of records.

Gaps in the evidence¶

The argument lacks systematic household, wage and production series; national income and wage comparisons rest on a few commission estimates, and claims on tribal economy, diet and native motivation rest on assertion. Mining company records, Chamber of Mines recruiting files, census microdata and magisterial archives that could test the labour and land claims existed in the 1930s and are now available. Systematic land-tenure and tax-revenue data by district would better test the dispossession-to-labour mechanism.

Replicability: Data poorly documented.