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Legislation, Ideology and Economy in Post-1948 South Africa

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Martin Legassick (1974). Legislation, Ideology and Economy in Post-1948 South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1. Taylor & Francis.
Type journal article
Scope Economics and economic history of apartheid
Method archival narrative
Period studied 1930s–1974
Regions South Africa, Bantustans/reserves, Witwatersrand and other urban industrial centres
Themes origins segregation, bantustans removals influx, manufacturing industrial policy, labour markets wages, business and state, politics ideology elections, inequality poverty unemployment, mining migrant labour, comparative theory
Citation key legassick1974

Argument

Legassick rejects the liberal view that 1948 pitted backward Afrikaner racial ideology against the modernizing, levelling logic of capitalist growth. He argues that apartheid is continuous with segregation and the state's 1940s planning for secondary industry, and that the Nationalist and United Party platforms overlapped far more than is usually claimed. Using parliamentary debates, commission reports and Board of Trade and Industries reports, he shows that influx control, job colour bars, border-industry decentralization, migrant (contract) labour and Bantustan welfare policy worked to cheapen and control black labour. They also moved the costs of reproducing that labour and of unemployment onto the reserves. He concludes that economic growth through capital intensification and separate development have been compatible, with the apartheid ideology evolving from racial hierarchy to 'nationhood' as the structure of exploitation changed. He criticizes Wolpe's segregation/apartheid distinction as paying too little attention to changes in capitalist production.

Evidence and method

Hansard (House of Assembly and Senate Debates), government commission reports (Van Eck, Fagan/Native Laws Commission, Tomlinson, Viljoen, Riekert), Board of Trade and Industries reports, the Survey of Race Relations, press reports (Rand Daily Mail, Financial Mail, etc.), speeches by Smuts, Verwoerd, Vorster and Malan, SABRA economists such as Sadie, and secondary literature (Wolpe, Johnstone, O'Meara, Wilson). Some primary citations are taken second-hand from digests.

Place in the debates

Findings

  • Post-1948 growth coexisted with intensified discrimination, which undermines the liberal thesis that growth would erode racial barriers. (p. 3)

    it is clear that South African economic growth since 1948 has proceeded apace-exceeded in the 1960s only by that of Japan-while at the same time the system of racial discrimination has grown more effective and pervasive.

  • Legislated job reservation was narrow in scope and was a backstop to collective bargaining, not a major brake on industrial growth. (p. 10)

    The legislation was there as a watchdog, a last line of defence: proclamations under it have never covered more than two per cent of the industrial workforce.

  • The gradual upgrading and cheapening of black work-roles within the colour-bar system is designed into apartheid rather than a sign of its breakdown. (p. 10)

    But this in no way represents a breakdown of apartheid, as conventional wisdom has argued: rather the institutions of apartheid are specifically designed to encourage this trend in a regulated manner.

  • Colour bars gained importance only when growth faltered, so they did not restrain the boom. (p. 9)

    Rather than restraining growth, in other words, job colour bars (legislative or not) acquire their importance within the structure of the South African labour market when growth is restrained by other factors.

  • Border industries in the reserves were formulated under Smuts and long delayed under the Nationalists because of the threat to white labour. (p. 14)

    Recommendations for establishment of industries within the reserves were rejected (for another decade and more) by the government

  • Apartheid structures directly supported growth by encouraging capital intensification in existing industrial areas. (p. 15)

    indeed insofar as capital intensification assisted the growth of productivity and output, the structures of apartheid here clearly and directly assisted economic growth.

  • Wage rises combined with influx control and capital intensification displaced Africans to the low-welfare-cost reserves while growth continued. (p. 18)

    In other words capital-intensification causes the displacement of blacks, via influx control, to the low-welfare-cost reserves, while economic growth continues.

  • The 1950s were a period of limited social change, with the 1960s bringing far greater restructuring and repression. (p. 21)

    remarkable about the first decade of Nationalist rule is the lack of large-scale social change, in comparison with the 1960s.

  • The 1967 Physical Planning Act pressed employers directly to change white-black employment ratios in established industrial areas. (p. 22)

    The declared aim was to reduce the white-black ratio in industry in established areas from the current figure of I: 2.2

  • Removals of 'surplus' Africans to the homelands were large-scale and legitimated by the nationhood ideology. (p. 24)

    it has been estimated that something of the order of 1 million Africans have been resettled during tho last decade or so.

  • Apartheid displaces unemployment and welfare burdens onto blacks and the Bantustans. (p. 25)

    Just as the structures of apartheid perpetuate the comparative cheapness of the black labour force, so do they ensure that the problems of unemployment are displaced sociologically onto blacks and geographically onto the Bantustans.

  • Economic growth via capital intensification and separate development are compatible. (p. 26)

    there can surely be little debate that the pursuit of economic growth, by continued capital intensification, and the pursuit of separate development, have been, and continue to be, quite compatible.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source Kind Period How used
Report of the Native Laws Commission, 1946-48 (Fagan Commission), UG 28 of 1948 commission or official report 1946-48 Establishes the United Party's 1948 platform on migrancy, urbanization, pass-law regulation, labour bureaux and class differentiation, which is compared with the Nationalist platform.
Third (Interim) Report of the Agricultural and Industrial Requirements Commission (Van Eck Report), UG 40-1941 commission or official report 1941 Shows state wartime thinking on mechanization, racial ratios in industry and substituting cheaper black labour for unskilled whites.
Board of Trade and Industries (BTI) Report No 282, Investigation into Manufacturing Industries in the Union of South Africa (1945) commission or official report 1945 Supports the claim that the state planned mechanization based on low-paid non-European labour, an 'aristocracy of labour', and decentralization.
BTI Report No 323, The Textile Manufacturing Industry, Part III (1951), and other BTI reports (No 219 on industries in Native Territories, 1936-37) commission or official report 1936-1951 Used for sectoral evidence on wage reduction when replacing white female labour and for earlier decentralization proposals.
Social and Economic Planning Council, Report No 9, The Native Reserves and Their Place in the Economy of South Africa (UG 32-1946) commission or official report 1946 Cited for proposals to locate industries in the reserves.
Hansard: House of Assembly Debates (HAD) and Senate Debates, 1947-1971 parliamentary debates 1947-1971 Main source of ministerial statements (Malan, Verwoerd, Vorster, Jansen, Ministers of Labour and Finance) that trace Nationalist policy and ideology on job colour bars, migrancy, taxation, resettlement and decentralization.
Commerce and Industry (journal of Federated Chamber of Industries/state publication), 1948-1953 newspapers periodicals 1948-1953 Source of ministerial speeches to industrialists on large production units, replacement of European by non-European labour and the 'civilized' labour policy.
Survey of Race Relations (SAIRR) and Handbook of Race Relations, 1948-1958 secondary literature compilation 1948-1958 Digest used for pass-law and influx control history, exemption certificates, unemployment insurance cuts, Native Affairs Department policy and the 1950s legislation outline.
Report of the Native Affairs Commission, 1937-38 commission or official report 1937-38 Source of Smuts's 1937 statement on cutting off the influx of Africans into towns.
Tomlinson Commission Report (March 1956), Viljoen Commission (UG 36-1958), Riekert and Geyser Commissions; Fact Papers (UG Fact Paper 17, 36, 50) commission or official report 1956-1972 Used to show later policy on border industries, rich peasant farmers, modernization and decentralization.
Report of the Social Security Committee (UG 14-1944) and Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Social, Health and Economic Conditions of Urban Natives (1942) commission or official report 1942-1944 Evidence for wartime reform proposals and liberal welfare policy.
General Circular No 25 of 12 December 1967 (Bantu Administration) and related 1960s legislation (Physical Planning and Utilization of Resources Act 88 of 1967, Bantu Laws Amendment Act 76 of 1963, Bantu Labour Act 67 of 1964, Native Taxation and Development Act 1958, Bantu Authorities Act 1951) legislation gazette 1951-1971 Documents the shift to labour-ratio controls, resettlement of 'unproductive' Africans, and decentralized labour bureaux and recruitment.
Government Gazette, Proclamations and Native Laws Amendment Act 56 of 1949 / Natives Abolition of Passes Act 1952 legislation gazette 1949-1952 Traces Nationalist introduction of labour bureaux and simplified passbooks.
Newspapers and periodicals (Rand Daily Mail, Cape Times, Star, Die Burger, Financial Mail, Cape Argus, Sunday Times, Guardian, South African Digest, Bantu) newspapers periodicals 1937-1974 Source of ministerial and employer statements on labour direction, job colour bars, the Riekert Commission and resettlement.
Evidence of SAFEMA to the Fagan Commission (Native Laws Commission, p. 42) employer association records 1946-48 Shows ambivalent engineering employer views on migrant versus permanent labour, with the 65/35 migrant-urban estimate.
Ernest Oppenheimer speech quoted in SAIRR Seventeenth Annual Report, 1945-46 employer association records 1945-46 Shows mining capital's preference for mechanization and married quarters.
D. Pursell, 'Bantu real wages and employment opportunities in South Africa', SAJE, June 1968 secondary literature compilation 1960s Relied on for the finding that higher real African earnings were accompanied by higher African unemployment.
SAJE conference report and L. P. McCrystal, and J. L. Sadie, 'Population and Economic Development in South Africa' (1972); Sadie in Finance and Trade Review (1954-56) secondary literature compilation 1954-1972 Source for economists' arguments on border industries, wage differentiation, and unemployment growth-rate requirements.
Minutes of Evidence of Parliamentary Select Committee on Wages and Conditions of African Workers Employed by British Firms in South Africa (HMSO, 1973) commission or official report 1973 Cited as the context of the contemporary debate on black wages versus jobs.

Inference

Quantification: Illustrative figures.

Interpretive political-economy argument built on close reading of legislation, commission reports and ministerial speeches (Hansard, press), comparing the 1948 United Party and Nationalist platforms and tracing policy change through the 1950s and 1960s, with a Marxist theoretical framework (Wolpe, Marx).

Key claims

Claim Basis Strength
Nationalist economic policy after 1948 was not archaic but directed at capitalist rationalization and mechanization, continuing wartime state planning (Van Eck, BTI). (p. 10) Van Eck Report, BTI Report 282, and Minister's 1948 speech to the Federated Chamber of Industries. Partial data
Nationalist job colour bar legislation differed little from 1940s Commission recommendations, came late (1956) and covered under two per cent of the industrial workforce, so did not restrain growth. (p. 13) Hansard debates of 1956 and 1964 ministerial statements; Van Eck and BTI reports. Partial data
The Fagan and Sauer platforms differed less than usually believed, both agreeing on regulation of African movement, labour bureaux and differentiation; differences concerned permanent urban residence in secondary industry versus migrancy. (p. 15) Fagan Commission report, Hansard speeches by Smuts, Verwoerd, Jansen and Malan. Partial data
Apartheid decentralization and social welfare policy shift the costs of labour reproduction and unemployment onto the reserves/Bantustans while capital intensification continues at existing growth points. (p. 17) Sadie articles, Hansard debates on the 1958 Native Taxation and Development Act, Native Affairs Department statement, Riekert Commission, General Circular 25, Pursell. Partial data
The 1950s were a period of relative restraint and slow implementation, while after 1958-59 (Verwoerd, Vorster) policy was strengthened through the Physical Planning Act, labour-ratio targets and large-scale resettlement. (p. 22) Surveys of Race Relations, legislation of 1960s, Rand Daily Mail and Hansard citations. Partial data
The Bantustan/'nationhood' ideology legitimizes removal of 'unproductive' Africans and treats workers as foreign labour units, while apartheid and growth remain compatible. (p. 27) General Circular No 25 of 1967, Hansard quotations from Froneman and Vorster, Bantu journal, and Sadie's admission. Illustrative or anecdotal
Economic growth since 1948 has proceeded alongside more effective racial discrimination, contradicting the liberal view of a conflict between growth and apartheid. (p. 6) Asserted from general growth record; Sadie's quoted admission. Asserted

The author's caveats

Notes that many citations of primary sources are drawn from secondary sources or digests such as the Survey of Race Relations and the Defence and Aid Fund's Southern African Information Service; says detailed pass-law legislation could not be examined and that sectoral and capital-labour substitution questions need more empirical research.

Gaps in the evidence

The argument about capital intensification, wage differentials and displacement of unemployment lacks any systematic quantitative series on sectoral capital-labour ratios, wages, employment by race or resettlement numbers; the one-million resettlement figure is merely an 'estimate'. Industry-level archives (employer associations, firms, Chamber of Commerce and Industries), Department of Labour/Bantu Administration files and census/Manufacturing Census data would test the claims better, and many of these now exist in archives and published censuses. Claims about interest-group positions (mining, commerce, engineering) rest on a handful of quotations rather than systematic evidence.

Replicability: Data described but not public.