THE STRUCTURE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN ECONOMYAND ITS MILITARY IMPLICATIONS P.D. Ncube+ and M. Mlonyeni++ 1.0.Introduction The present paper aims at giving a brief history of the structural features of the South African economy. This will be shown to depend on the exploitation of the working class and the peasantry. The structure of the working class Will be shown to be fragmented and distorted by the racial question, and it is divided into white and black. The paper shall also indicate that the South African bourgeoisie (which is white) and its international al- lies (including western n:mltinational corporations) stand to gain from this system of economic exploitation. The paper shall also touch upon the military apparatus that is necess'al'Y to maint1l.inthe above mentioned status quo. The resistance offereQ.by the exploited and oppressed people of South Africa shall not be dealt with here. In general terms, the history of the relationship between Western countries and Africa has been characterised by the former's expropriation of the African manpower, land, minerals as well as agricultural resources. The resultant political, social and economic transformations invariably led to the disruption of traditional economic relationships and the reduction of the indigenou's African societies into reserves of cheap labour. This fact is docu- mented by the International Labour Review of 1958 which states: Whenin the early stages of African economic development large numbers of wage earners were first required, notably to exploit the new mineral discoveries, employers were faced with the problem of great labour scarcity. " Pressure amountin~ to compulsion was applied to obtain labour wh1chthe offer of wages atone could not attract in sufficient quantities. In different areas and at dif- ferent times there was resort to such various means as slavery, direct statutory compulsion, pressure through the imposition of personal ta'lC,the curtailment of native lands, assistance given by administrative officials to the efforts of the private rOecruiters and the use of 'chiefs to recruit their people as labourers. 1 +Department of Economics, University of Dar es Salaam. ++African National Congress of South Africa, Dar es Salaam. 342 It is evident from the above excerpt that the strategy of reducing African societies into resevoirs of cheap labour was threefold: (i) Direct slavery That slavery was an integral part of the South African economic develop~ ment is well documented. For example, Freda Troup writes that "th", first slave on record, Abraham of Batavia, was in the colony the year after van Riebeeck landed. Twelve slaves were recorded in 1657, from Madagascar and Java. The next year 174 Angolans were taken off a captured Portuguese ship and later in the year another 228 arrived. From then on, slavery was to be the practice of the Cape until Emancipation in 1834, the best part of 200 years. All slaves were imported by the Company, which kept those it needed, hired out some of the remainder and sold other at 6 pounds per head, payable in wheat. For the most part Angolans were not favoured. They frequently escaped into the interior to be harboured by the Khoikhoi or Nguni and, with a sufficient knowledge of conditions in the country, often made their getaway. The colonists relied more on East Africans and Madagascans and on Malays from the Dutch East Indies" . 2 Although slavery was formally abolished in 1834, institutions of s~i- slavery continued to be part and parcel of the economic development of South Africa. With the discovery of diamonds (1867) and gold (1886', it became necessary to introduce various laws regarding apprenticeship and the recruit- ment of cheap labour for the mines. Agricultural labour recruitment has remained remarkably similar to the recruitment efforts before the abolition of slavery. (ii) Expropriation of African Land The transformation of Africans into cheap labour whether they were hunters, pastoralists or agriculturalists, demanded that they be deprived of their land. A land expropriation policy must be seen as an indespensable tool in any successful colonialisation. This.policy was followed rigorously in South Africa where according to Jack Woodis, 87 per cent of South Africa's land area was taken away from the Africans who remained with only 13 per cent. Elsewhere in Africa, either because of adverse climatic conditions or lack of mineral resources, the land relationships were less severe, so that, in Rhodesia only 50 per cent of the land was taken away from the Africans, whereas in Zaire the case was 9 per cent, 7 per cent in Kenya, and 5 per cent in Malawi, Ghana and Namibia. 3 Invariably, the land allocated to the Africans was of poor quality, as Ken Brown, a former land development of- ficer in Rhodesia describes, "poor soil, usually the poorer types of granite sand knowntechnically as class III land, while the European area contains near- ly all the areas of fertile soil in the colony" . 4 In some cases the land from which Africans were evacuated remained unused. The 1938 PIM report on Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) states that "large areas from which natives were evacuated are practically empty of inhabitants ... one third of Ndola district and two thirds of Mkushi are practically uninhabited as well as large areas in other districts such as Broken Hill". 5 The massive absence of Africans in productive age groups from their own communitiesdeprived these communities of possibilities for economic grovth. As John Noon observed in the case of Nyasaland (now Malawi), "the villages of Nyasaland are threatened with the collapse of their entire economic structure by the absence of as high as 70 per cent of the adult males". 6 What is today called the underdeveloped countries can be shown to be communitieswhich became underdeveloped because of the absence of the population in production age-groups among many other factors. Or as Basil Davidson puts it, "whole territories such as Nyasaland, Ruanda- Urundi have becomelittle more than reservoirs of migrant labour, and their consequent impoverishment is visible for all to see". 7 (iii) Personal Tax A number of histOrians hav~ described how "heavy taxation" was imposed on the Africans so that they could work for wages. In 1928 Bell wrote that "large n1,1mbers of witnesses before the labour commission of 1913 believed that native taxes should be raised to increase labour supply" •8 Schapera's study also reveals a similar causal relationship. In 1957 he questioned 297 unemployedAfricans in Rhodesia as to why they left their communities to seek employmentin the city and he obtained the results given in table 1 below: Table 19 To pay taxes ............................••.... 119 To pay taxes and buy clothes .....••..•.••..•••.. 83 Because of poverty ..••.•.....•.•...•..••....... 39 To purchase clothes •••.••....•.•..••...•....... 29 To buy cattle, clothing etc ...•••..•..•...•.••... 16 TOgive money to pa rents ..•.•.•..........••..••. 5 Miscellaneous ....•.•.•..•.•••..•.•...••..••.... 6 TOT ALS..•..••...•..••.•.•••••.••....•••••.•• 297 2. 0. Identification and specification of an explanatory model As the economy of South Africa developed, the labour pool created by forces discussed above gave rise to the social classes of proletariat, lumpen proletariat, agricultural working class and the peasantry. The quantitative relationship between these groups depends on business cycles, further indicating the social insecurity of these groups. The groups that gain out of these relations are the local white bourgeoisie, international imperialism (mainly through the mining and manufacturing sectors), agricultural estate owners (also white), and the petty-bourgeoisie both black and white, new and old. 10 The fragmentation of traditional African society is given by the data fron the 1970 census as follows: Table 211 Black population of South Africa - White (farm) areas, Urban and Homelands (Bantustan) South Africa Urban and white (farms) Homelands (Bantustans)" 15,036,360 (100%) 8,032,200 (53.3%) 7,003,160 (46.7%> Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural 4,962,300 10,074,060 4,368,920 3,664,280 593,380 6,409,780 33% 67% 54.4% 45.6% 1;.5% 91.5% From the above table 2 it is evident that the black working class is made up ap- proximately of urban workers (33%), rural. workers (27%)tllld peasants (40%). 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