by Guy Arnold
During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
He was condemned to life imprisonment, along with other African leaders, and sent to Robben Island.
APARTHEID
By 1960 the word apartheid had become an international term of abuse and so South Africa’s rulers resorted to euphemisms: separate development, parallel streams, self-government, Bantu homelands within a South African Commonwealth. Dr Verwoerd described the policy as ‘four-streamed vertical separate development’. The apartheid legislation turned black distaste for the Boers into detestation while those whites who could not stomach ‘Christian Nationalism’ emigrated to Britain or elsewhere. There was a considerable loss of white professionals at this time. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the government extended its repressive legislation to outlaw all forms of African political activity. The 1950 Suppression of Communism Act was one of the most repressive pieces of legislation. This was followed by the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1953 and in 1967 the Terrorism Act with many others in between. Crucial to the whole concept of the separation of races was the 1959 Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act that laid the foundations for the separate homelands or Bantustans. These were to be farming communities, providing sustenance and acting as dormitories and retirement homes for the black men whose labour was needed in the white towns. In 1967 the Department of Bantu Administration and Development stated its policy of herding blacks into the homelands with chilling bluntness: ‘It is accepted government policy that the Bantu are only temporarily resident in the European areas of the Republic for as long as they offer their labour there. As soon as they become, for one reason or another, no longer fit for work or superfluous in the labour market, they are expected to return to their country of origin or the territory of the national unit where they fit ethnically if they were not born and bred in their homeland.’9 The 1963 Bantu Laws Amendment Act in effect reduced the country’s seven million Africans, living and working in the 87 per cent of the country designated for whites, as guest workers or loan labour, to the level of chattels.
During Verwoerd’s premiership apartheid became the most notorious form of racial domination that the post-war world was to know. One of the greatest evils under the apartheid system was the government’s policy of eliminating ‘black spots’: that is, land owned or occupied by Africans in white areas. The numbers involved is uncertain but the Surplus People Project, which studied the removals, estimated that 3,548,900 people were removed between 1960 and 1983; 1,702,400 from the towns, 1,129,000 from farms, 614,000 from black spots, and 103,500 from strategic development areas.10 The endless stream of repressive apartheid legislation gave the police virtually unlimited powers of arrest and those arrested could be held indefinitely without trial in solitary confinement without access to anyone except government officials.
South Africa in the apartheid era was unique. It became increasingly distinctive from other countries as decolonization and desegregation spread elsewhere. South Africa was a partly industrialized society with deep divisions based on legally prescribed biological criteria. As the economy expanded, industry absorbed more and more black workers, but racial categories continued to define primary social cleavages.11
The relative longevity of the apartheid experiment was ensured because there was no powerful economic interest willing to oppose the system. Apartheid ensured a virtual white monopoly of skilled jobs, high wages and the right to industrial (trade union) bargaining. Despite the argument that became much more important in the 1980s – that the requirements of capitalism – labour and markets – would erode apartheid, during the 1960s capitalism thrived on apartheid and sustained it.
Between 1948 and 1970 the NP increased its strength at each election. The United Party gradually disintegrated – it had no alternative policy to offer – and the small Progressive Party, which was eventually reduced to the solitary figure of Helen Suzman who became the lone voice of liberalism in the apartheid state, honoured by Africans as their spokesman in Parliament against racial segregation. Prime Minister Verwoerd was assassinated in 1966, stabbed to death in the parliamentary chamber by a temporary messenger, Demetrio Tsafendas, a Mozambican of mixed racial descent. J. B. Vorster became Prime Minister in his place; he was an equally dedicated white supremacist, who stamped ruthlessly upon any opposition and used the 90-day detention rule extensively. In 1962, while Minister of Justice, Vorster (who on taking office had used the memorable phrase that ‘rights are getting out of hand’), said: ‘United Party policy held the same future for South Africa as that of Progressives and Liberals: total destruction of white leadership.’12 In 1968 security controls were centralized under the Bureau of State Security (BOSS). The NP, for all practical purposes, had become the monolithic wielder of all power in South Africa.
The preamble to the 1961 Republican Constitution began: ‘The people of the Republic of South Africa acknowledge the sovereignty and guidance of God.’ The constitution was conceived, drawn up, discussed, approved and adopted as an Act of Parliament by whites only, to the deliberate exclusion of all other South African inhabitants, and its provisions expressed their wishes and nobody else’s. White hopes during the 1960s were based increasingly (and they worked hard at it) on the assumption that the Republic was and would remain essential to Western interests. As a consequence, the government relentlessly projected two themes: the mineral wealth South Africa had to offer; and the strategic value to the West of having the southern tip of the African continent in friendly hands. The first of these themes was sustained by apartheid, which was the cornerstone of investment profitability; the result was the creation of a vicious circle in which the interests of both sides in the equation depended upon the maintenance of a brutally unjust system. After he became Prime Minister, Vorster expanded the so-called ‘outward looking’ policy to make allies in Africa. The exchange of diplomats with Malawi and the subsequent offers of substantial aid were seen as an important breakthrough. His hopes of making equal breakthroughs with the three High Commission territories after they became independent as Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland were not to be realized, however. At the end of the decade the hard-line NP supporters of apartheid opposed any policy that would dilute it and did not look with favour upon a policy that would allow black diplomats white privileges in South Africa. They became known as the Verkramptes (cramped ones) as opposed to the Verligtes (enlightened) but in the election of 1970 the hard-liners were annihilated. As a result they broke away to form the Herstigte Nasionale Party (Refounded National Party) under Dr Hertzog. This represented the first break in the monolithic power of the NP but it made little difference to the overall position.
The homelands policy was Verwoerd’s most distinctive contribution to apartheid. In 1958 he offered ‘separate development’ as a formula to save South Africa from political integration and external intervention. It promised the white man baaskap (racial domination) in 87 per cent of the country (the white areas) while blacks would achieve eventual baaskap in 13 per cent of the country. However, partition in any meaningful sense was never intended for the Bantustans were not viable political or economic units. They were designed to provide the white economy with its black labour. From 1960 onwards the projected Bantustans – Bophutatswana, Ciskei, Gazankulu, KaNgwane, KwaNdebele, KwaZulu, Lebowa, Qwaqwa, Transkei and Venda – were created and encouraged to pursue separate development. In fact, the most dramatic aspect of the homelands policy was to be the mass removal of black populations from the white areas of South Africa to the various homelands. The hardships involved in this policy were usually appalling and the brutality with which it was pursued focused increasing international attention upo
n the inequities of the apartheid system, despite the fact that the government now spent more money on development in the homelands while also allowing (a reversal of earlier policy) white investments in them as well. The homelands continued to be seen as labour reserves for white South Africa. The homelands policy allowed the denial to Africans of equal rights to be justified on the grounds that they were aliens only temporarily sojourning in South Africa for purposes of work, rather than South African citizens of inferior race, which was the basis of apartheid. The fallacy inherent in this policy was always the need of white South Africa for black labour on the one hand, and the fact that the 13 per cent of the land area which had been assigned to the homelands was not only totally inadequate in terms of the size of the black populations it was meant to serve, but was also the least viable land agriculturally, and by and large lacking in mineral resources. In 1963 Transkei was given internal self-government with Chief Kaiser Matanzima as Prime Minister.
ECONOMIC SUPPORT FOR THE APARTHEID STATE
External funds in the 1960s found their way most readily into the white-controlled territories of Africa – South Africa, Rhodesia, the Portuguese territories – rather than the newly independent black states. There were two explanations for this pattern: the first, that investors were doubtful of the long-term political stability of the new states; the second, that investors preferred dealing with longstanding partners which, in the case of South Africa, meant established white-controlled enterprises. Such attitudes were reinforced by overtones of racism, the assumption that white business partners were more likely to be dependable. Official South African estimates in 1961 indicated that US$1,507 million had been invested there by Britain, US$590 million by the US, US$235 million by France. Other estimates put the figures higher: US$2,800 million for Britain, US$840 million for the US with West Germany and Japan rapidly increasing their stakes in the country. Despite apartheid and the white determination to enforce segregation, South Africa had become an integrated industrial society in which the four races – African, Indian, Coloured and White – could not survive without each other. Economic differentials, however, were vast with an average African income of US$75.50 a year against a White income of US$1,398 a year, then the third-highest in the world after the US and Canada. The emergence of the modern, non-mining, sector was heavily dependent on foreign investment and the growth of this sector was essential if the country’s prosperity was to be maintained and increase. In the early 1960s over 300 British companies had associates or subsidiaries in everything from mining to textiles and engineering and 7 per cent of Britain’s overseas investments were then in South Africa. US manufacturing investment in Africa was primarily concentrated in South Africa, which was the most industrialized country on the continent, with mining and smelting as the most profitable areas. According to M. D. Banghart, the Vice-President of American Metal Climax which was then expanding its operations in both South Africa and South West Africa, American firms could make an average profit of 27 per cent on investments in South Africa, more than double the profit from comparable investments in the US, principally because apartheid depressed the African wage bill. The low cost of labour provided a built-in incentive to Britain, the United States and other Western countries to invest in South Africa; they condemned apartheid, but lightly, while doing nothing to bring it to an end. In 1963 wages earned by South African black miners were US$216 a year, while Zambian miners earned US$810 a year and American white miners earned US$2.70 an hour. Apart from ethical considerations, South African labour policies made bad economics; had the system been an open one the economy would probably have been twice as strong as it was when black majority rule was finally achieved in 1994. The outflow of investments that followed the scare of Sharpeville in 1960 had largely ended by 1965 when it was clear that the government had regained control and equilibrium; thereafter, Western money flowed back into the system, further encouraged by strategic considerations concerning South Africa’s role in the Cold War.
South Africa’s economy was then, and later, enormously dependent upon inflows of foreign capital. Between 1965 and 1970 it received a total of US$2,546 million from the West: the average annual net inflow rose from US$260 million a year in 1965/67 to US$562 million in 1968/70 and reached a record US$786 million in 1970. Western business was attracted to South Africa because investments obtained such large returns, sometimes (according to American Business Week) between 17 and 26 per cent. Apart from the major Western investors, South Africa also attracted smaller ones and, for example, by 1970 Canada had invested Canadian $70 million there. By the beginning of the 1970s the number of British companies operating in South Africa had risen to 500 and those from the US had increased to 300, including most of the best-known names from both countries.
The United Nations 1963 arms embargo on South Africa might have made a substantial dent in Western exports but in fact it was either ignored or largely circumvented. It was totally ignored by France, which as a result became a major new investor in the country. Other countries, and notably Britain, found ways round the embargo by the indirect licensing of South African firms to produce British arms. As the South African Defence Minister, Jacobus Fouché, said in 1963, the problem was no longer that of getting the arms manufacturers of other countries to produce arms in the Republic, but rather one of deciding whose requests to establish factories should be allowed. There was clearly an element of bravado in this statement but not a great deal. French exports to South Africa rose from US$33 million in 1960 to US$100 million in 1970 while its investment rose at a faster rate. The attitude of British commercial institutions and companies towards South Africa was instructive. Sir Charles Hambro of Hambro’s Bank said in 1963 that he had ‘not lost confidence in the long-term future of the country’ and that ‘one of the best ways of strengthening Western civilization in Africa is to strengthen South Africa’. ICI argued slightly more guardedly that while in theory it would be possible to withdraw from South Africa in practice it was not and, in any case, ICI was contractually bound to partnerships with South African interests. In 1968 the Palabora Mining Company (an offshoot of RTZ) announced an Educational Bursary Scheme of up to 10 bursaries for a maximum of £647 a year, open to all European children. Its annual report the following and succeeding years said: ‘A scheme is being formulated for African children.’ Many industries saw South Africa as the base for expansion into the rest of the continent and in 1969 Lord Stokes of Leyland said in Johannesburg: ‘You have to take the long-term view in business. We want, therefore, to be established here in our own right.’ In a remark that gave away more, perhaps, than intended, Sir Val Duncan of RTZ said his company confined itself to the ‘mature democracies’, which for him included South Africa with 80 per cent of its population denied the vote by law while its African workers were paid desperately low wages. By the end of the decade South African companies were establishing themselves on the borders of the Bantustans for convenience of access to black labour. ‘The example of the border areas is only one more confirmation that apartheid is an extremely flexible device for using Africans in the white economy while denying them political power. Mr Harry Oppenheimer put it well when he said: “There is no evidence so far that economic integration has led to any improvement in political or social integration.”’13 A purely economic view of apartheid made a great deal of sense: ‘Apartheid is not primarily about the separation of the races at all, since the economy has always been, is now, and probably always will be dependent on African labour; apartheid is a device for making sure that that labour is in constant supply and total subjection.’14 As Prime Minister Vorster told the House of Assembly on 24 April 1968: ‘It is true that there are blacks working for us. They will continue to work for us for generations, in spite of the ideal that we have to separate them completely… The fact of the matter is this; we need them because they work for us… But the fact they work for us can never entitle them to claim political rights. Not now, nor in the future… under no circumstances.
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