Influx control policy and the interests of manufacturing and commerce in South Africa in the 1950's¶
Deborah Posel (1990). Influx control policy and the interests of manufacturing and commerce in South Africa in the 1950's.
| Type | other |
| Scope | Economics and economic history of apartheid |
| Method | archival narrative |
| Period studied | 1948–1962 |
| Regions | South Africa, Johannesburg, urban areas (prescribed areas), Durban |
| Themes | bantustans removals influx, labour markets wages, mining migrant labour, manufacturing industrial policy, business and state, origins segregation, comparative theory |
| Citation key | posel1990 |
Argument¶
Posel asks why organised industry and commerce denounced the migrant labour system while urban employers often preferred migrants for unskilled work. She argues, with Hindson, that the paradox reflects heterogeneous employer interests: stable urbanised workers for semi-skilled jobs, cheap migrants for unskilled jobs. Against Hindson, she argues that influx control did not serve this differentiated demand. The urban labour preference policy (ULPP) was designed to cut across it by putting urbanised workers ahead of migrants in both skilled and unskilled jobs. In practice employers bypassed or defied the labour bureaux and the ULPP became largely inoperative. The practice of influx control, especially section 10(1), then made migrants even more vulnerable and cheap. Employers therefore had little economic interest in influx control as designed or as applied, with the partial exception of its restrictions on foreign Africans.
Evidence and method¶
Submissions of the Federated Chamber of Industries (FCI) and ASSOCOM to the Tomlinson Commission, FCI memoranda and surveys (1955-57), Johannesburg Non-European Affairs Department (NEAD) files and minutes, and Institute of Administrators of Non-European Affairs (IANA) congress papers. Also the Botha interdepartmental report (1962), Senate debates, the Tomlinson Commission summary, an interview with W J P Carr (former Johannesburg NEAD manager) and an anonymous ex-NEAD manager, plus secondary sources (Norval, Sadie, Simkins, Hindson's thesis, Lipton, Legassick, Wolpe).
Place in the debates¶
- Liberal vs revisionist apartheid-capitalism debate (is the migrant labour system functional for urban industry?) (see Cheap labour thesis and the function of the reserves). Rejects both Lipton's claim that manufacturing and commerce opposed migrant labour policy and the Wolpe/Legassick view of full functional fit. Sides partly with Hindson that employer interests were differentiated, but denies that influx control matched them.
- Hindson's thesis that influx control resolved a crisis of reproduction of urban African labour power and served differentiated employer demand (see Influx control, pass laws and African urbanisation). Rejects the functional-compatibility claim. She argues the state's administrative categories cut across employers' skill-based demand, and that industrialists could have raised wages themselves rather than rely on state barriers.
- Employers' preference for stable urbanised versus migrant labour (see Cheap labour thesis and the function of the reserves). Employers' preferences were skill-dependent: urbanised workers for semi-skilled work, and cheap, docile 'raw' migrants for the numerically predominant unskilled work. Many employers refused to raise wages and so tolerated shortages.
Findings¶
-
The state's influx control design conflicted with employers' interests, and the outcome depended on how that conflict was resolved in practice. (p. 5)
The decade therefore saw a continuing conflict between the state's interest in restructuring the urban labour market and employers' interest in retaining existing patterns of employment.
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The ULPP required employers to exhaust resident urban labour before importing migrants, cutting against their preference for migrants in unskilled jobs. (p. 6)
White employers in any given town would therefore be compelled to exhaust the resident labour supply before being permitted to import additional, migrant, labour from outside the town.
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Hindson's claim that industrialists needed state barriers to resolve a wage crisis for urban labour is implausible. (p. 5)
If industrialists were so concerned that urban wages were so low as to jeopardize their labour supply, they would surely have raised wages of their own accord
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Manufacturing demand for African labour remained overwhelmingly unskilled despite growing semi-skilled employment, and unskilled labour was cheap and weakly bargained. (p. 8)
employed in manufacturing - 84 per cent in 1960 - remained unskilled workers.
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Employers' low wages and poor conditions produced high turnover and low productivity, perpetuating the preference for migrant labour. (p. 10)
Instead, persistently poor wages and working conditions reproduced a high labour turnover, which in turn hindered labour productivity and thereby reinforced the original barriers to labour
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Employers largely bypassed the labour bureaux; few firms used them, and these were mostly seeking unattractive jobs. (p. 12)
only 38% of the firms surveyed used labour bureaux to obtain labour
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Employer power made the ULPP largely inoperative in practice. (p. 12)
Although the ULPP was central to the design of the state's influx control policy, employers in the towns were sufficiently powerful to have rendered the ULPP largely inoperative in practice.
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Section 10(1) of the Urban Areas Act made migrants more vulnerable and willing to accept poor jobs, reinforcing the market forces the ULPP was meant to override. (p. 13)
thereby reinforced the very market forces which the ULPP had been designed to override
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The state was strictest against employment of foreign African migrants in the metropolitan areas, which contributed to unskilled labour shortages. (p. 14)
in regard to Foreign Natives we are merciless
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Persistent unskilled labour shortages reflected employers' refusal to raise wages rather than any failure of the labour market. (p. 14)
determination to keep wages down, even if it meant enduring the inconvenience of labour shortages in certain categories.
Evidence ledger¶
Sources used¶
| Source | Kind | Period | How used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tomlinson Commission (Commission for the Socio-Economic Development of the Native Areas) report, as summarised by Houghton, incl. submissions by AHI, FCI, ASSOCOM | commission or official report | 1950s (data to 1951-52) | Supplies estimates of foreign African workers by sector, the share of unskilled in wholesale/retail trade, and the contradictory evidence on migrant versus settled worker stability. |
| Federated Chamber of Industries (FCI) memoranda and survey reports, 1951-1957 (e.g. 'Native Labour Availability and Influx Control' 24.11.55; 'Memorandum on Results of the Survey on the Availability of Native Labour' 21.6.56; 'Native Labour Mobility' 18.3.57; Circular 21.3.56) | employer association records | 1951-1957 | Shows organised industry's views on stable urbanised labour, its 1956 survey on labour bureaux use, and complaints of labour shortages and non-enforcement of the Bureaux Regulations. |
| Johannesburg Municipal Non-European Affairs Department (NEAD) files and Johannesburg City Council minutes (File A78/5 vol 1; File A78/2/2; Minutes of 832nd Meeting, 30.8.55) | state archives | 1950s | Documents municipal administrators' reports that employers preferred migrants, the Secretary for Native Affairs' circular on foreign Africans, and employer submissions on unregistered workers. |
| Interdepartmental Committee of Enquiry into 'Idleness and Unemployment Among Urban Bantu' (Botha Report), 1962 (unpublished) | commission or official report | 1962 | Used to show that work seekers from outside the towns were admitted despite an urban surplus, i.e. the ULPP was not enforced. |
| Interview with W J P Carr, Manager of Johannesburg NEAD in the 1950s, 23.11.84 | interviews oral history | 1984 | Provides testimony that employer demands for migrant labour usually prevailed over the urban labour preference policy at the labour bureaux. |
| Interview of 6.11.84 with unnamed ex-Manager of Johannesburg NEAD | interviews oral history | 1984 | Supports the point that illegal work seekers had weak bargaining power and accepted obnoxious employment. |
| Native Laws Amendment Act 1952, Urban Areas Act (1945) s10(1) and s12, and Labour Bureaux Regulations | legislation gazette | 1952 | Establishes the legal design of influx control, the residence-right categories, and the labour bureaux and urban labour preference policy. |
| Senate Debates, 22.5.51 col 4069; 23.5.51 col 4157 (Verwoerd) | parliamentary debates | 1951 | Shows Verwoerd's statement that the ULPP overrides employers' rights to specify a preference for migrant labour. |
| Native Affairs Department conference papers and W Eiselen, 'The Demand for and the Supply of Bantu Labour in Johannesburg', Bantu 1958 | commission or official report | 1950s | Documents state aims of the ULPP, rationalising urban labour supply and tolerating only 'small' surpluses. |
| Institute of Administrators of Non-European Affairs (IANA) annual congress proceedings, 1953 and 1957 | employer association records | 1953, 1957 | Supplies municipal administrators' assessments that employers resisted modernisation and preferred cheap migrant labour. |
| Municipal administrator writings: F J Language, 'Native Housing in Urban Areas', Journal of Racial Affairs; C W Prinsloo, 'Stedelike Naturelle-Administrasie' (Ziervogel Papers, UNISA Accession 147) | secondary literature compilation | 1950s | Provides administrators' testimony that employers preferred cheap 'raw' immigrant labour to town natives. |
| A J Norval, A Quarter of a Century of Industrial Progress in South Africa (1962) | secondary literature compilation | 1948/49-1958 | Provides manufacturing statistics on establishments, gross output and capital intensification used to describe industrial expansion in the 1950s. |
| J Sadie estimates of skill composition of the African manufacturing work force, 1936-1960 | secondary literature compilation | 1936-1960 | Shows the share of skilled and semi-skilled Africans in manufacturing rising from 10.5 to 16 per cent. |
| Simkins, Four Essays on the Past, Present and Possible Future Distribution of the Black Population of South Africa (SALDRU 1983), pp 70-74 | secondary literature compilation | 1950s-60s | Statistics on foreign African populations show restrictions were looser in small towns than in metropolitan areas. |
| Commerce sector and employment statistics via Innes, Greenberg, Klerck (commerce workforce 1946-1960; small establishment size 1953/54) | secondary literature compilation | 1946-1960 | Supplies figures on small factory size and African employment in commerce growing from 69,281 to about 138,000. |
| Trade and employer periodicals and other texts: Commercial Opinion (ASSOCOM) 1957-58; R C McLean, How to Use Industrial Native Labour Efficiently (1958); Glass and Ngobo studies; Federated Hotel Association and Master Builders' Association memoranda | newspapers periodicals | 1954-1960 | Documents employers' stereotypes of tribal versus detribalised workers and categorisation of the urban workforce, and employers' preference for vulnerable illegal workers. |
| Hindson, 'The Pass System and the Formation of an Urban African Proletariat in South Africa' (unpublished PhD thesis, 1983) | secondary literature compilation | 1983 | Principal interlocutor whose argument on influx control and differentiated labour demand is reconstructed and criticised. |
Inference¶
Quantification: Illustrative figures.
Qualitative historical argument based on close reading of employer-association memoranda, municipal and state documents, legislation and a few interviews. It compares the design of influx control policy with the practice reported in the sources and with employers' stated interests, and contrasts the competing liberal and revisionist theses. Only a few supporting statistics are used, mostly drawn from secondary compilations.
Key claims¶
| Claim | Basis | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| Employers' interests were heterogeneous: organised industry (FCI) favoured stable urbanised labour for semi-skilled work, while the numerically predominant small employers preferred cheap migrant labour for unskilled work. (p. 14) | FCI memoranda and surveys set against municipal administrators' reports, IANA proceedings and Language's testimony. | Partial data |
| The urban labour preference policy, which required urbanised workers to be placed ahead of migrants in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs, was designed to cut across employers' differentiated labour demand. (p. 11) | Texts of the 1952 Act, Labour Bureaux Regulations, NAD and Eiselen documents, and Verwoerd's Senate statements. | Partial data |
| In practice employers by-passed or defied the labour bureaux, rendering the ULPP largely inoperative. (p. 12) | The 1956 FCI survey (38% used bureaux), Carr's interview and the FCI's 1956 report, plus the 1962 Botha Report. | Partial data |
| The application of s10(1) and s12 made temporary and illegal migrants more vulnerable and willing to accept low wages and obnoxious jobs, reinforcing the market tendency the ULPP aimed to override. (p. 13) | Statutory categories plus quotations from the Johannesburg NEAD, Master Builders' Association and an anonymous NEAD manager. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| The state enforced its restrictions on foreign African labour more strictly in metropolitan areas than in smaller towns, contributing to shortages in menial jobs. (p. 14) | Simkins' statistics, Verwoerd's remarks and the Secretary for Native Affairs' circular. | Partial data |
| Persistent unskilled labour shortages resulted from employers' refusal to raise wages, not from lack of labour. (p. 14) | FCI statements on low pay and unpleasant conditions; employer complaints of shortages in manual jobs. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| Manufacturing expanded and capital-intensified in the 1950s, but most manufacturing establishments remained small and most African workers (84% in 1960) remained unskilled. (p. 8) | Norval, Sadie, Innes and Houghton figures. | Partial data |
The author's caveats¶
Acknowledges that the Tomlinson Commission's evidence on migrant versus settled worker stability was 'contradictory', that employers' own categorisation did not separate newly arrived settlers from oscillating migrants, and that the African work seekers' defiance of the ULPP is beyond the paper's scope.
Gaps in the evidence¶
The claims about employer preferences rest on selected memoranda and quotations, with no systematic data on actual hiring patterns by skill and origin, or on wage differentials between migrants and urbanised workers. Labour bureaux placement records, firm-level employment and wage data, and Native Affairs Commissioner files showing how often migrant requests were granted would test the argument better. Some of these archives existed at the time and may survive in municipal and Native Affairs holdings, while the interviews cannot now be replicated.
Replicability: Data described but not public.