The Origin and Development of Segregation in South Africa (A.J. Abrahamse Memorial Lecture, delivered 1950, published 1951, reprinted 1986)

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W.P. van Schoor (1986). The Origin and Development of Segregation in South Africa (A.J. Abrahamse Memorial Lecture, delivered 1950, published 1951, reprinted 1986). Unity Movement History Series. APDUSA Views, Cumbernwood.

Type	primary source
Scope	Economics and economic history of apartheid
Method	theoretical or conceptual
Period studied	1652–1950
Regions	Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, Orange Free State, Kimberley, Witwatersrand, Transkei
Themes	origins segregation, mining migrant labour, agriculture land, manufacturing industrial policy, labour markets wages, business and state, politics ideology elections, resistance social movements, education human capital, bantustans removals influx
Citation key	schoor1986

Argument

Van Schoor argues that the colour bar is not accidental but grew out of the labour and land needs of capital. The slave society of the Cape supplied the attitudes, but the real foundations were laid from 1870 by the Natal sugar plantations, the Kimberley diamond mines and the Rand gold mines. British imperial policy (Shepstone, Rhodes, Milner) is presented as the main source of segregation, and the Boer republics are cast as junior partners who added the psychology. After 1910 the system is said to have been consolidated by a series of laws on mines, migrant labour, land, factories, wages and the franchise. These laws kept Africans landless, migratory and low-paid, and bought off a white labour aristocracy. The lecture is a Marxist-inflected political polemic from the Non-European Unity Movement. It ends with a call for non-collaboration and unity among the oppressed.

Evidence and method

Secondary histories (de Kiewiet, Hofmeyr, van der Horst, Walker, Marais, Hailey, Millin), official reports (Mixed Marriages Commission 1937, Economic and Wage Commission 1926, Carnegie Commission), Union statistical bulletins, Eybers's Select Documents, the Milner Papers and quotations from Rhodes, Shepstone and Milner. Figures on wages, productivity and employment are quoted without full sourcing.

Place in the debates

• Cheap labour thesis and the origins of segregation (liberal vs revisionist/radical) (see Cheap labour thesis and the function of the reserves). Firmly radical: segregation is a product of the mining revolution and capitalism's demand for cheap landless labour. It is not a Boer atavism or an accidental departure from Cape liberalism.
• Cape liberalism vs the Boer North as the source of the colour bar (see Pre-Union colonial economy, the mineral revolution and the South African War). Rejects the liberal view that the North imposed the colour bar on the Cape. Claims the Cape laid its military and economic foundations, and that the so-called Boer native policy was really British.
• Does segregation retard economic growth and productivity? (see Liberal vs revisionist: was apartheid functional or dysfunctional for capitalist growth?). Says segregation retards technical progress and productivity (excluding non-Europeans from skilled work, a protected white labour aristocracy, cheap farm labour). It also says the mines subsidise the rest of the economy.
• Reform and liberal collaboration vs non-collaboration (see Resistance and liberation movements). Rejects reformism, liberal trusteeship and participation in segregated bodies. He argues for independent organisation and Non-European unity.

Findings

• The mining revolution, not the earlier Cape or Boer periods, is taken as the real foundation of the modern colour bar. (p. 15)

  The present day system of colour bars, 'segregation and discrimination is basically the product of the Industrial Revolution in South Africa

• Kimberley diamond mining generated the migrant labour system linking reserves and locations. (p. 13)

  The Kimberley diamond mines gave rise directly to the vast system of migratory labour, flowing between reserves and locations

• Cape annexation and land dispossession are tied to the supply of mine labour. (p. 10)

  Between 1872 and 1894, the Cape annexed more Bantu territory than during the whole preceding century

• The search for cheap labour drove dispossession, and the Glen Grey Act is cited as an instrument for supplying the mines. (p. 16)

  The endeavour to secure local Union labour for the mines was one of the dominant factors in the policy underlying the Glen Grey Act of 1894

• The 1911 Labour Regulation Act legalised migrancy, which serves to block peasant and permanent urban working-class formation and to keep wages low. (p. 19)

  The migratory labour system received the stamp of law. It serves a threefold purpose. In the first place, it prevents the settling down of a propertied peasantry.

• Migrant labour is presented as the linchpin of cheap labour. Its breakdown would end the system. (p. 20)

  If the migratory labour system were to break down it would at once polarise into a landed peasantry

• Migrancy is described as near-universal in mining by 1948. (p. 20)

  By 1948 the migratory labour system had expanded to such an extent that 100 per cent of the African miners were migratory labourers

• The 1913 Land Act is read as a device to create a landless labour force and a labour-serf tenantry on farms. (p. 20)

  This Act was clearly designed to keep the African landless, to deprive him of his cattle and to convert him into a labour serf or a labourer.

• African mine wages are said to have been frozen. A large white-black wage ratio is shown on the mines. (p. 18)

  African wages on the mines have remained practically stationary since the opening of the gold mines.

• Large wage gaps between white and black workers are quoted. (p. 23)

  On the mines the white worker gets 12 times as much as the black worker.

• Cheap farm labour is blamed for agricultural backwardness. (p. 21)

  Technical progress has been slow and methods of production have remained as primitive as in any other backward country in the world.

• Manufacturing growth is dated to departure from the gold standard in 1933 and linked to a segregated factory system. (p. 22)

  By 1948 there were two and a quarter times as many factory workers as in 1935.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Mixed Marriages Commission Report (1937)	commission or official report	1937 (describing early Cape colonial period)	Establishes that early Cape society had no colour feeling and that the first colour-discriminatory marriage laws came in 1686.
Economic and Wage Commission, U.G. 1926	commission or official report	1926	Quoted to show white artisan wages depend on masses of lowly paid native labour.
Year Book of the Union of South Africa, 1926	official statistical series	1926	Quoted for the official definition of 'uncivilized labour' under the civilized labour policy.
Carnegie Commission Report on the Poor White problem	commission or official report	c.1932	Supplies the estimate of 300,000 poor whites after the civilized labour policy, compared with 160,000 official figures earlier.
Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, U.G., May 1948	official statistical series	1934-1948	Supports claims on growth of factory workers, power use and output after leaving the gold standard.
S. van der Horst, Native Labour in South Africa	secondary literature compilation	1911-1917; wage comparisons over sixty years	Source for non-European factory employment in 1911 and 1917 and for mine wage figures (£3 per month plus food).
J.H. Hofmeyr, South Africa	secondary literature compilation	1931 comparisons	Source for comparative irrigation costs and agricultural output per person, and for the claim that most wage earners are non-white.
C.W. de Kiewiet, History of South Africa, Social and Economic	secondary literature compilation	1870-1900	Source for gold extraction rates (mercury vs cyanide) and the capital needs of deep-level mining.
Rose Innes, The Glen Grey Act and the Native Question; Butterworth magistrate's report 1902	commission or official report	1902	Shows that three of every four able-bodied men in the district went out to work after the Glen Grey Act.
Eybers, Select Documents (South African constitutional documents)	legislation gazette	1865-1881	Quoted for Basutoland annexation terms, Shepstone's native policy, and the 1865 Natal franchise decision.
Milner Papers, Vol. II, ed. C. Headlam	state archives	1901-1904	Quoted to show Milner's view on political equality and the dependence of South African prosperity on the mines.
Selborne Memorandum on the Union of South Africa (1908)	commission or official report	1908	Cited for the purpose of settling British settlers in the Eastern Province.
Rhodes speeches and statements (via S.G. Millin, 'Rhodes'; Sir I.G. MacDonald, 'Rhodes - A Heritage')	secondary literature compilation	1887-1899	Quoted to show Rhodes' deliberate native policy of class legislation, pass laws and despotism.
Speech by J.C. Smuts, House of Assembly, 13/3/45	parliamentary debates	1945	Shows cross-party consensus on maintaining white supremacy.
The Torch, 18/9/50 and 'History of Despotism' series (30/1/50)	newspapers periodicals	1950	Source for the content of the Urban Areas Act and its 1937 amendment and for early Cape law.
E. Roux, Time Longer Than Rope; E. Walker, Lord de Villiers and His Times	secondary literature compilation	1908-1936	Source for quoted statements by Molteno and for the 1908 de Villiers-Selborne exchange on a whites-only Parliament.

Inference

Quantification: Illustrative figures.

Polemical Marxist-inflected historical interpretation: a narrative periodisation (slavery, Cape liberalism, mining revolution, consolidation) that argues from quoted statements of officials and statesmen, a chronology of discriminatory legislation, and a handful of statistics drawn from secondary books. The argument is largely theoretical and asserted, with no systematic data analysis.

Key claims

Claim	Basis	Strength
The modern colour bar was founded on the Natal sugar, Kimberley diamond and Rand gold industries' demand for cheap African labour, not on Boer republican traditions. (p. 5)	Quotations from Rhodes, Shepstone, Carnarvon and Milner (secondary compilations), plus legislative chronology; no systematic data.	Illustrative or anecdotal
Cape annexations and wars of conquest, together with the Glen Grey Act and land legislation, dispossessed Africans to create a migrant labour supply for the mines. (p. 16)	Marais quote on annexations, Hailey and Rose Innes on the Glen Grey Act, a single Butterworth magistrate's estimate, and Land Act provisions.	Partial data
The migratory labour system, institutionalised by the 1911 Labour Regulation Act, keeps wages low and prevents both a settled peasantry and a permanent urban working class. (p. 19)	Statute descriptions, an unnamed official quotation on wages, and unreferenced percentages of migrant workers by sector for 1948.	Partial data
African mine wages have been practically stationary since the opening of the mines while white wages are many times higher (12 times on the mines, 3.5 times in secondary industry). (p. 23)	Van der Horst for the £3 per month wage; the ratios and per-worker value-added figures are not sourced.	Partial data
White workers are an economic burden: the average white gold miner receives four times the new value he produces, while Non-European workers produce three to three and a half times what they earn. (p. 23)	Unsourced per-worker output and earnings figures; no source named for the £106 and £350 value-added numbers.	Asserted
The civilized labour policy and Wage Acts eliminated poor whiteism within about 15 years at the expense of non-Europeans, absorbing poor whites into railways, roads and public works. (p. 25)	Official figure of 160,000 and Carnegie estimate of 300,000 poor whites; the absorption claim is asserted without data.	Partial data
Segregation retarded technical progress and productivity in agriculture and secondary industry (English industrial productivity three times South African), while industry expanded rapidly after leaving the gold standard in 1933. (p. 22)	Monthly Bulletin of Statistics (May 1948) for output indices; Hofmeyr for the agricultural comparisons; the productivity comparison is unsourced.	Partial data
Political and social segregation (1910 Act of Union, 1920 and 1936 Acts, Urban Areas Act) followed from and consolidated the economic colour bar, driven by British policy at least as much as Boer policy. (p. 18)	Chronology of statutes and Eybers, Milner and de Villiers quotations; no archival research.	Illustrative or anecdotal

The author's caveats

The author acknowledges few data limits. He notes that for farm labour 'the ratio has still to be worked out' and that 'the present position is probably much worse' for agriculture.

Gaps in the evidence

The argument would need systematic wage, productivity and employment series by race and sector (mining, manufacturing, farming), together with Chamber of Mines recruiting and wage records and the censuses, to test the claims about stationary African wages and white labour as a burden. Many figures are given without source (value added per worker, wage ratios, migrant shares), and the causal story rests on quotations of statesmen rather than archival evidence of motive. Most of the required data (Census of Industrial Establishments, Chamber of Mines annual reports, population censuses) existed in 1950 and is now widely available.

Replicability: Data poorly documented.