Sting in the Tail: Superstition in India (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Superstition in India

Superstition still flourishes in India as elsewhere. Guru Busters (BBC2, 10 September) showed how hordes of self-styled “Gods”, Fakirs, fortune tellers, quacks, etc., hoodwink millions by using simple conjuring tricks, elementary chemistry and seemingly impossible physical feats.

It was amazing to hear wealthy, educated men justifying their allegiance to one God-man, Sai Baba, on the ground that he had given them gold trinkets which he had created “out of nothing”. Strangely, this God’s poorer followers received no gold, only “holy ash”.

Opposing these frauds are the Rationalists who tour the countryside showing audiences how anyone can perform the various “miracles. What they do is worthwhile, but it will be the continuing development of capitalism in India which will most effectively attack the ignorance and backwardness on which superstition feeds.

Meanwhile, our comrades in India get on with the really worthwhile work of spreading the ideas of scientific socialism there.

Must do better, Desmond

So disappointed is Archbishop Desmond Tutu with South Africa’s ANC-led government that he can only award it an alpha minus for its performance so far. (The Herald, 4 September).

The well-publicised scramble by some ANC leaders to climb aboard “the gravy train” was bad enough, but now the government has been caught selling arms to Rwanda through Armcorp, the state arms corporation.

The Archbishop notes that: "Almost everywhere, and certainly in Africa, armies are not for the defence of the citizenry, they are instruments of repression. ”

For this he deserves an alpha plus, but he continues:

“What we want ultimately is to see Africa demilitarised. If you have countries that claim to he democratic, and are friendly with one another, what do you need huge armies for? We should start by dismantling Armcorp. ”

Archbishop Tutu is a humane and well-meaning man, but for being so naive as to imagine that demilitarisation can occur within the conflict-ridden, money-grubbing capitalist system, well, we can only award him a beta minus for that.

Greens in dreamland

Many “Greens” pin their hopes for a greener world on persuading governments to become eco-friendly within the profit- motive economy.

An article in the Observer (17 September) shows what forlorn hopes they are. The British government’s pollution watchdog. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Pollution (HMIP), reports that a severe shortage of inspectors meant that it carried out only 60 percent of scheduled checks on factories during 1994-5, and as a result pollution spills into the air and rivers doubled.

And the government’s response to this? It is to merge HMIP with the National Rivers Authority next year, a cost-cutting measure which is expected to reduce the number of inspectors still further.

The outlook of these Greens surely amounts to the triumph of hope over experience.

Who are they kidding?

Some Labour MPs have been complaining about Tony Blair’s undemocratic style of leadership, but when was the Labour Party ever democratic?

At the top, Labour’s leaders have a long history’ of simply ignoring conference decisions they didn't like, while trade union bosses cynically cast millions of votes at Labour conferences on behalf of their members, many if not most of whom didn't even support Labour.

At local level there are claims that an influx of new Asian members into Govan Labour Party is connected with the ambition of an Asian councillor to replace the present MP as candidate at the next election. A party official explained on TV that nothing unusual was happening as vote-rigging is the norm prior to candidates being selected.

And West Renfrew MP Tommy Graham has been trying to secure his re-selection by

“recruiting pensioners in pubs and at Linwood DayCare Centre. Many did not even know they were joining the Labour Party" (Observer, 3 September).

Those dissident Labour MPs will be well aware that their party is undemocratic from top to bottom.

Tunnel vision

As commuters and lorry drivers race through the tunnels under the Tyne and the Clyde few of them will think about the crippling condition of osteonecrosis. The victims of this condition, who constructed these tunnels in the sixties, can think of little else.

Osteonecrosis is the direct result of working in compressed air pumped into the tunnels when they were built to stop the walls collapsing. The workers were not warned of the dangers and they were not properly decompressed before returning to the open air.

"Hugh Davey, A Tyne tunneler said: There's about 50 of us from the Tyne. We look like a bunch of old men. I'm 56: I look like a man of 70. I've already had one hip done and I’m on constant pain killers. I had to stop work in 1981. We didn't know what would happen. We thought, we can't come to no harm—they must know what they were doing. We thought they’d look after us. It's destroyed my life ’ ” (Observer, 17 September).

The firms did know “what they were doing”. They were producing a commodity as cheaply as possible. Cutting corners on the health and safety of the working class is just “good business practice”. It is not the function of capitalism to “look after” the welfare of the workers—it’s the profits and the shareholders that have to be looked after.

Retrospective. (1916)

From the November 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

While politicians and newspaper scribes are foaming at the mouth over the “rights of small nations” and “our national liabilities”—to say nothing of “our” army, “our” navy, “our” allies, etc., etc., ad absurdum—the present writer took it into his proletarian head to delve among his books and cuttings relating to past history in order to find out something about the above-mentioned mysterious things. Hereunder you will find set out “All the Harvest that I reaped.”

Let us take a mental tour of the world and witness some of the doings of the British Empire (the apostle of freedom) during the last fifty years or so, and examine some of the benefits that have accrued to those who have had the good fortune (!) to be born within its pale.

We will commence with Africa, the land opened up by the Holy Trinity : Bible, Whisky, and Gunpowder.

In 1852 the control of the British Government in South Africa was limited to Natal and Cape Colony, while the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic were in the hands of Dutch settlers. The most powerful native tribe in South Africa was the Zulu nation, under their chief Cetewayo, whose territories bordered Natal. Cetewayo and the Transvaal Republic quarrelled over a certain strip of land and the matter was referred to England (with whom Cetewayo was on the most friendly terms) for arbitration. Four English arbitrators decided that the disputed strip of territory properly belonged to the Zulu nation. Yet in spite of this the English Lord High Commissioner, Sir Bartle Frere, kept back the award for several mouths. This aroused Cetewayo’s suspicions and convinced him that his territory was going to be annexed and he himself sent to prison, as had already happened in the case of Langalibalele in 1864. Eventually Bartle Frere announced the award to Cetewayo, accompanied with an ultimatum that the Zulu army must be disbanded. This was immediately followed by the invasion of Zululand, when the English troops were completely defeated ! (Jan. 22nd, 1879.) In the end, however, the Zulus were vanquished, Cetewayo transported, and the territory divided up. Thus were the “sacred rights” of a small and trusting nation safeguarded. The whole matter in detail will be found in Justin McCarthy’s “Short History of Our Own Times,’ p. 427.

The desire of English capitalists to obtain possession of the rich gold and diamond mines of the Transvaal and their attempted annexation of the Republic’s territory led to the war which culminated in the victory of the Boers at Majuba Hill in 1881.

As the riches of the Transvaal in gold and diamonds became known to the world swarms of adventurers began to invade it and claim full citizenship of the Republic on entry—a claim which the Boers would not grant. The Chartered Company (founded in Cape Colony by Cecil Rhodes) wanted a finger in the pie, and one of their officials, Dr. Jameson (now Sir Starr Jameson, a man of great respectability !) attempted a raid on the Transvaal which was a failure. No doubt a good many readers will recall the famous trail of a few years ago, when. Von Veltheim, adventurer and sometime member of the Cape Mounted Police, was convicted of the attempted blackmail of the Joels. In this case interesting sidelights were thrown on the attempt to provoke war between England and the Transvaal on behalf of the diamond and gold magnates of South Africa.

Perhaps a quotation from Justin McCarthy would be useful at this point :

“The discovery of the gold mines had brought into South Africa a rush of adventurous immigrants from various parts of the world, especially from England and from British territories, whose principal object was to make themselves the absolute rulers of all that vast tract of country which was teeming with limitless sources of wealth. The established republics were not strong enough to secure themselves against the internal disturbances to be expected from such an invasion. The invaders may not have had in the beginning any intention or desire to make themselves the rulers of the whole region, yet it soon became evident that they would endeavour to sweep away from their path any obstacles the existing systems might set up. The rulers and people of the Transvaal Republic were determined so far as they could to manage their State according to their own ideas. The newcomers were equally determined to secure a free-way for the promotion of the principal objects they had in view when they sought for settlement in South Africa.”— (P. 538.)

Such was the material out of which the Boer War arose, resulting in the defeat of the Boers and the triumph of the British capitalists, who immediately proceeded to exploit the rich regions gained with, as I will soon show, disastrous results to the workers. Thus were another small nation’s liberties—defended !

In July 1913 a strike broke out in the Rand Goldfields (part of the region Jameson was knighted for trying to pinch). For many years native labour had been recruited for the mines by the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association and the British South African Native Labour Recruiting Corporation at the rate of about 6,000 per month, and, being cheaper and more easily obtained than white men, the natives were gradually displacing the latter. The strike was chiefly for the eight hours day, better underground conditions, and the restriction of the introduction of native labour.

In the House of Assembly (South Africa), May 28, 1913, the Minister of Mines gave the following figures :

“During the ten years ended December 31, 1913, of those employed in Transvaal mines 52,205 native died and 16,556 were killed or injured in accidents. Between 1907 and 1912 32,103 natives were sent home unfit for work. In 1900 6,900 men died at mines of pulmonary disease alone. . . . No less than 10,000 people die in these mines every year—men in the prime of health.”

Well, the miners struck and the following is a report culled from the columns of the “Morning News and Leader” (11.8.13) as to the result:

“A prominent business man of Johannesburg, writing to Mr. Joseph Fels, gives a graphic description, of the terrible happenings there during the recent conflict between the military and the civil population.

He tells how the police and soldiers rushed a peaceful meeting of strikers, bludgeoning and batoning all and sundry. . . .

Though there were miles of plate glass-fronted shops to loot, very little damage was done, although at this time the crowd had complete control !

On Saturday, in the Rand Club in the afternoon some members were jeering at the crowd, when about 25 of them “rushed” the building.

Fifteen to twenty soldiers formed at the junction of two streets, facing four ways, and fired for 4½ hours intermittently. Everyone who attempted to cross the road was shot. Men were shot down who were merely trying to get away. Two children (one of twelve and the other younger) were shot whilst standing on the side walk. One poor fellow, in a spirit of bravado, stepped into the road and dared them to shoot. He was dead before he had finished speaking. The correspondent adds that an advocate of the Supreme Court told him that he watched three men shot as they were running away. A young man who was sauntering along with his hands in his pockets towards the line of fire was shouted to by the police to go back again. When nearly out of danger he stopped and looked at the soldiers and was shot dead.

A portion of the crowd who were peering round the corner at the soldiers, bulged into the street, and the soldiers fired into the thick of them, killing one man and wounding two others.

It is insisted that there was no more danger in the watching crowd than in a “parcel of school children,” as the unruly element had gone. Sixteen were killed, 150 wounded were treated in the hospitals besides scores who were treated by their own doctors.”

Other figures give the killed as 20.

By 1914 the capitalists, who had originally the control of the diamond and gold mines only, had become the owners of nearly all the land in the Transvaal as well, so that the early fears of the Dutch farmers were justified by the passing years. A writer in the “News and Leader” of 31.3.14 made the following statements on the position in South Africa :

“There are five companies, euphoniously termed ‘Land and Exploration’ companies, which between them own over thirteen million acres, mostly in the Transvaal, The biggest has a four and a half million, the smallest a paltry million, acreage. There are fifteen other companies, each of which has an acreage running into six figures, and seven with areas of tens of thousands of acres. All told these twenty-seven companies own seventeen and a half million acres, or 23 per cent. of the Transvaal.”

The land these companies possess is the very best in the country.

“These ‘land and exploration’ companies were generally floated in the first instance to secure mining rights over very large areas. Thus one company has coal rights over 201 square miles, and possesses in addition a township site. . . .”

The writer concludes as follows :

“The fate of South Africa, then, lies still in the hands of a clever, far-sighted, not too scrupulous coterie of financiers, who have now drawn into their web the farming (and this in Africa means the landowning) community.”

Now in view of the above perhaps the working-class reader will commence to wonder what 20,000 of his class laid down their lives for on the yellow South African veldt— and perhaps he will carry parallel reasoning to the existing case, where his follows are pouring their blood out on the Continent.

Before leaving Africa to continue our personally-conducted tour we will just, notice a further article relating to South Africa which appeared in the “News and Leader” for 26.7.13.

It appears that the Chartered Company (founded by Cecil Rhodes) proposed leasing to an international company one million acres in Rhodesia (that’s a decent chunk of “our” Empire to give away !) and the writer waxes somewhat indignant on the matter. He says :

“These grants of land are far too common in the British Empire. They are made too readily, and with much too little regard for native interests.

The prevalent land-owning custom in Europe is private ownership. In Africa it is communal ownership. Therefore, if we hand over great tracts of this territory to private owners and those private owners proceed to exact rents or grazing dues, the African native does not regard that as a normal economic development. He regards it as an act of aggression, of conquest—an arbitrary charge wrung from him in bitterness, and leaving behind a deep sense of injury. That resentment has been the cause of most of the African wars and rebellions since the presence of the white man in Africa.

Take this great concession in the country of the Chartered Company. The company assert that the black population in that territory is thin. But there is a considerable population—perhaps some hundred thousand or so human beings—especially as the concession allows the new company to choose selected areas throughout Rhodesia. What would be the use of the concession to the new company—a company for extracting the essence of oxen and delivering it to the invalids of Europe—if they do not possess power both over the cattle and over the labour of the country which is handed over to them ? Plainly if they are going to pay one shilling an acre for this land they will expect to possess powers of this kind. In other words, the Chartered Company is not merely leasing the territory: it is selling the people.”

Such has been the fate of small nations in South Africa under the British Empire.

Gilmac.

(To be Continued.)

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here is a number that should stop us cold: 64 percent. That is the share of Black families in America who, right now, lack the income and resources needed to meet the true cost of economic security. Not poverty or survival, but genuine stability. On the heels of the 63rd anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, that number tells us how far we have to go… 49 percent of all Americans — nearly half the country — lacks the resources they need to be economically secure. Economic insecurity cuts across racial lines, affecting families of every background and in every part of the country. 

[The Hill]

‘Commodities must be sold, profits must be made, capital must accumulate. Short-term corporate gains are more important than long-term social losses. Capitalism, in short, is incompatible with the maintenance of the conditions that have made human civilisation possible for more than ten thousand years’. 

[Yorkshire Bylines]

The future of Babylon 5 shows time and time again that life may be different in the far future, but humanity’s problems remain much the same. There’s a long history of labor strikes and riots throughout the world, making the dock workers in ‘By Any Means Necessary’ another footnote in the ongoing battle between those who control the means of production and those who do the actual production.

[Giant Freakin Robot]

The leader of the Norwegian Union of Trade Unions, Helene Harsvik Skeibrok, expresses her condolences to the royal family and the entire Norwegian people. ‘It is very sad to hear that King Harald has passed away. Our thoughts go out to Queen Sonja, the rest of the royal family and everyone who mourns the loss of a king who has meant a lot to very many, says Skeibrok’.

[Fagforbundet]

‘Marxist Meghan’s’ list of demands for her kids’ school exposed.

[YouTube]

In 2026, the ‘rainbow nation’ will face the longest wave of organized xenophobic violence since the end of apartheid in 1994.

[rosalux]

Mason quotes the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, with an obituary of his state on the last day of its existence in 1991: Sixteen per cent of the national income went on armaments; another four on the KGB … the country was ruined, the people were kept half starved … And this was called the class approach. If that is socialism it can go to hell.

[The Spectator]

‘I’ve been sounding the alarm about how Tyson treats their workers for years’, said Nana Ouro-Agoro, founder of Akwaaba, a nonprofit organization that provides support to the Quad Cities’ immigrant population. Originally from Togo, Ouro-Agoro came to the Quad Cities after winning the immigration lottery in 2008. She learned that many of her neighbors worked at Tyson, where they were frequently injured on the job and afraid to speak out. Workers told her they were being treated ‘worse than the cattle’.

[Labornotes]

(These links are provided for information, target sites don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

The Last Hottenhot and the First Bushmen (1957)

From the September 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists used to be asked whether it was necessary to wait for “the last Hottentot” to become a Socialist before Socialism could be established. It was not really necessary to answer, for expanding South African capitalism did it for us and swept him in. He probably goes back to his tribe at intervals, but, in general, he is a wage worker like most of us.

Like the rest of us, he, or his children, will eventually be introduced to Socialist ideas, and will accept them. Having no illusions about social or economic equality with his white bosses, he may even accept the ideas with startling rapidity.

There is an even more primitive group than the Hottentots—the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. Living in an arid, almost waterless region, they have acquired many of the characteristics of the camel, being able to consume very large quantities of meat and water when available, and then existing for days, or even weeks, until the next meal is obtained.

So remote are their habitations that little has been known about them until recently. But the pressing need of South African industry for labour has caused this difficulty to be overcome, as reported in the Johannesburg Star of March 1st, 1957:—

"Bushmen, the wild, near-Pygmy tribe of the Kalahari Desert, who have always been considered too backward to learn how to work, are playing an important role in the production of gold at Stilfontein in the Klerksdorp District.

"At this highly productive, two-year-old mine yesterday, I watched primitive tribesmen, fresh from their nomadic life in the desert, sorting out the freshly crushed gold-bearing reef from waste rock with an unerring eye.

"We reckon that since employing Bushmen on this work, not one piece of gold reef has been wasted,’ Mr. J. V. Penberthy, the personnel officer, told me, ‘ Their eyesight is fantastic' . "

The report goes on to describe the delight of the employers with their new source of labour, and the delight of the new labourers at the novelties of capitalism—boots, regular meals and cinema shows. It does not tell us what pay they receive, but it is safe to assume that this is considerably less than that obtained by other non-European workers, low as that is.

A hopeful sign, from the Socialist point of view, is the fact that the Bushmen are quick to “catch on” when a new concept is put to them. When our ideas reach South Africa in any quantity, we do not think the Bushmen will be unduly backward in understanding them.

J. O. B.

The Passing Show: Our way of life (1953)

The Passing Show Column from the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our way of life

Mr. Blundell, leader of the European elected members of the Kenya legislature, has been devoting deep thought to the cause of the Mau Mau trouble. He has reached his conclusion: the disturbances stem from the fact that one section of the people in Kenya is trying to impose its rule on all the rest. Does this mean that Mr. Blundell is now an opponent of the rule of a small white upper class over all the original inhabitants of the country? Not a bit of it. This is what Mr. Blundell had to say:

The problem is one we have had since 1916. Since we brought British administration to this country, for more than fifty per cent. of that time we have had reluctance by the Kikuyu to accept the benefits of law and order and our way of life, with the prosperity which can stem from it, except on their own terms. This is a challenge by the Kikuyu people—whether actively or passively sustained—to impose their rule on all the other people this country. (Times, 25/7/53).

This accusation by a member of a ruling class which has recently come into Kenya and stolen the best land there, that some of the original inhabitants are trying to do what Mr. Blundell and his class have already done themselves, would be merely funny if its implications were not so serious. In fact the speech, by showing the attitude of mind of the whites in Kenya, goes far towards explaining the outbreak of violence on the part of the Kikuyu.

 

* * *

 

Reservation of amenities

 

While Mr. Blundell upholds the cause of white supremacy in Kenya, Dr. Malan upholds it in South Africa. The latter's policy of apartheid, when presented by a skilled exponent, can be made to sound almost harmless. All it means, it is said, is that the white people and the black people of South Africa are to keep themselves to themselves, and are to develop along their own lines in their own areas. No superiority is implied of one race over another, it is alleged. But recently some courts in South Africa have been taking this kind of propaganda at its face value, and have been refusing to convict Negroes of offences against the apartheid laws unless it was shown that amenities of equal comfort have been reserved for them in railway stations, trains, post offices, etc. Dr. Malan has now given his answer. His Minister of Justice (sic) has introduced a Bill which rules that “reservation of amenities for a particular race or class of people cannot be invalidated merely because no similar amenities have been reserved for any other race or class’’ (The Times, 4-8-53). This reveals the apartheid policy for what it is. The South African ruling class has the same feeling towards the working class it oppresses and exploits as any other ruling class has: it fears them, because they are in a numerical majority. But this fear has been developed to a higher pitch in South Africa because the workers there have a different racial origin, and a different colour of skin; and because, for historical reasons, the workers of South Africa have not yet achieved the level of education and the standard of living which the workers of Western Europe and America have gained. The desire of the South African ruling class to keep the workers in subjection, and to maintain inviolate the present class-structure of South

African society, bears fruit in the racial superiority theories, and the apartheid policy, of Dr. Malan.

 

* * *

 

Public ownership à la Morgan Phillips

 

In those industries which were taken over by the Labour Governments from 1945 to 1951, some changes were made, but the basic capitalist structure was preserved intact. Since the 1951 defeat and the loss of ground at subsequent bye-elections, the Labour Party have had to face the fact that the workers, having experienced what the Labour Party called “Socialism” —that is, nationalisation—are for the present less prepared to support them at the polls in sufficient numbers to return them to power. So they have been casting round for new ideas. And their new proposals show that they contemplate making even fewer changes in industries they take over in future. Instead of making (for example) the mining machinery and machine tools industries wholly state-capitalist, Morgan Phillips proposes that a future Labour Government should merely acquire a fifty-one per cent. shareholding in certain key firms within these industries (in an article m the August issue of the Labour Party magazine, “Fact”). Mr. Phillips continues to use the term “public ownership” to describe the projected organisation of such industries, but at least he is now more chary of calling such plans “Socialist.” And so he should be; the Labour Party is more and more revealing itself as merely another capitalist party.

 

* * *

 

The work-insiders

 

Incidentally, what of all those people who have told us in the past that they disagreed with us, but that they were going to join the Labour Party in order to “work from within,” and change it into a Socialist party? They are clearly failing to do this, as could have been forecasted (and was). There is only one party for Socialists, and that is the Socialist Party.

Alwyn Edgar

The Struggle in South Africa (1976)

From the October 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a little over a month at least 250 African men, women and children have been butchered by South Africa's armed police. In the first day alone, 25 — mainly children — were slaughtered in Soweto. At the end of a week it was 176 killed, 1,139 injured and 1,298 arrested.

The rioting and demonstrations have continued in many other African townships and even the Coloured and White universities. The immediate cause of the big Soweto demonstration of school-children and parents was the Government’s insistence on Afrikaans being used as the language of instruction. In the reserves, however, schools are free to choose English instead. There is little doubt that Africans regard Afrikaans as “the symbol of our oppression.’’ It is the language of the police, of the pass laws, of the job reservation rules, of all that they detest. It is the boss’s language, not theirs.

The Nationalists would prefer to have no blacks at all. But they recognize that industry, mining etc. would collapse without black labour. So they built townships outside the big cities, outsize council estates with minimal amenities. In Soweto “fewer than 20% of their tiny, boxlike houses have electricity, no more than 5% have hot running water.” (Time, 28th June 1976.)

Government policy decrees that all Africans belong to the tribal reserves and should settle there. In a 1947 pamphlet on Apartheid, the Nationalists declared: “the Bantu in the urban areas should be regarded as migratory citizens not entitled to political or social rights equal to those of the Whites” (quoted in Apartheid, ed. Alex La Guma, 1972) In 1969 a Nationalist MP justified the townships on the grounds that the urban Africans ”are only supplying a commodity, the commodity of labour . . . it is labour we are importing and not labourers as individuals . . . numbers make no difference”.

In Guilty Land, P. van Rensburg sums up the policy: “at the moment the Blacks are still necessary for the urban labour force . . . but they must not be allowed to gain the impression that they a permanent part of the town and city population. When they are moved to residentially segregated areas, they can have no freehold rights ... for otherwise the Government fears they would regard themselves as something more than temporary sojourners.”

The urban Africans have no security of tenure. If they lose their jobs or get in any kind of trouble they can be "endorsed out” or jailed. A Pretoria survey showed that only 15 per cent of the township’s residents were “born and bred” there. The African worker is merely a migrant. The government denies him either the vote or the right to strike or belong to a registered trade union. He is thus nearly helpless in the hands of the capitalists. One such migrant was John Mvalo: “John was conceived during one of his father’s visits home from the mines . . .  Of his working life from the age of 16 to 47 (31 years) 36% of his time was spent at home and 64% in employment away. He had had 34 different jobs and the average length of a job had been 47 weeks.” (Geographical Review, Jan. 1968.)

Workers' Wages

The pay of Johannesburg Africans is only one-fifth of that earned by Whites in the same area, according to Time. A survey in 1957, after the bus boycott, indicated that for the bare essentials a family of five needed £27.10s. per month but the average income of such a family was only £18 per month. Ten years later a Johannesburg survey revealed that more than two-thirds of African families had incomes below R53 per month — the absolute minimum.

The next year the minimum figure rose to R59.70: “the effective minimum level of income is generally estimated at one and a half times the poverty datum line figure, which would mean that a family at Soweto should have at least R95.63 a month.” (Hilda Bernstein, in Apartheid.)

In 1969 a survey gave these figures for all urban African households:

Monthly incomes between   R1 and R19   25%

   ” ” ” R20 and R49   40%

   ” ” ” R50 and R79   20%

                                over      R80                   15%

In other words, 85 per cent of urban African families were living below “the effective minimum level of income” and about half were trying to survive on incomes below even the poverty datum line! A survey of African schoolchildren, by the South African Institute of Race Relations, found that 60-70 per cent. were “recognizably malnourished”, 50 per cent. “needed nursing and medical attention” and almost 10 per cent. “required hospitalization for diseases directly or indirectly attributable to malnutrition”.

But if the urban African is badly off, note how much worse off he could be. If he worked on a farm he could earn an average of £50 per annum or, possibly, nothing at all: “the African works for a fixed number of days in a year, between 90 and 180 days, in return for the right to live on the farm, to graze cattle, and to cultivate the land.” (M.B. Yengwa, in Apartheid.) In 1972 there were about 2 million African workers on White farms.

Out of Town

The urban African worker’s insecurity is increased by the fear of being sent back to the Bantustans or tribal reserves. These comprise a mere 13 per cent. of South Africa’s land and only the Transkei has any coastline or is sizeable. Its only port, however, is zoned for Whites. “The land is impoverished and overcrowded with people and livestock; practically no economic development has taken place, and the primitive subsistence agriculture cannot at present support even the small proportion of resident Bantu; there are almost no mineral resources and no industry; and the population has acquired neither skills nor capital.” (Geographical Review, Jan. 1968.)

The Government refuses to allow White capital investment inside these areas. Instead the Government have insisted on the development of Border Industries just outside. The Border Industries, in spite of the cheap labour force, are unable to compete effectively against the heavy concentration of industry and capital in the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging area, which in 1969 housed 17 per cent. of the population and produced about 55 per cent. of S.A.’s industrial products. “The Reserves remain an economy without manpower. The men live in two worlds . . . More than 2 million people spend their lives circulating between industrial centres in White areas and in the subsistence life of the Reserves.” (Geographical Review.)

The same writer is anxious to point out how harmful this is: “only about half of the annual potential manpower resource of the Reserves is economically applied in White areas”. Moreover, according to a 1960 writer in the South African Journal of Economics, “a total annual potential of 1.140 000 man-years is available in the Bantu areas, of which 600,000 are not economically applied”. Now that’s what really hurts the bourgeois boffins: all that “cheap, docile” labour-power and it’s not being exploited. Just think of the loss of surplus-value involved!

In 1954 the Tomlinson Commission recommended that industry in the reserves should be financed by White capital investment. But the Government cut its own investment fund by two-thirds, refused to allow White capital investment and insisted on agriculture being based mainly on the tribal system.

Tomlinson proposed that 50 per cent. of the population of the reserves should be removed to enable the rest merely to get a living of 168 dollars per annum. Others suggested “a minimum subsistence figure three, for our even five times the Commission’s figure” (Geographical Review).

M. B. Yengwa describes life in the reserves in Apartheid: “Here grinding poverty and the resulting malnutrition, disease and squalor have become a way of life. This is the land of women, children and old and sick people. The healthy and active are the only exports “the Reserves have in the form of cheap ‘Bantu’ labour which they sell to the mining, agricultural and secondary industries in the White areas. In the Reserves — all Reserves — famine and starvation are the usual seasonal visitations.”

African Education

The government’s view of African education is clear. "The school must equip him (the Bantu pupil) to meet the demands which the economic life of South Africa will impose on him . . . There is no place for him in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour.” (Dr. Verwoerd, 1953.) Also: "Who will do the manual work if you give the Natives an academic education? . . . We should so conduct our schools that the Native who attends these schools knows that to a great extent he must be the labourer in the country” (Mr. le Roux, Nationalist MP).

To ensure that Africans don’t get too much education, the Government instituted a system of “academic ceilings.” The result is a phenomenal dropout rate. In 1968, of the 78 per cent. of African children in school, only 4 per cent. were getting secondary education. Other factors which prevent Africans from getting adequate schooling are lack of money, inadequate classrooms, gross overcrowding and double sessions in most schools (even triple sessions in some). Africans are forced to pay one-fifth or more of teachers’ salaries themselves, to raise half the cost of school building (from higher primary up) and to pay for school maintenance.

In 1969, the Johannesburg Star reported that the cost of education in Soweto schools had risen 50 per cent. The teacher-pupil ratio went from 1:42 in 1949 to 1:72 in 1969: “ill-fed families throughout South Africa cut down on the skim milk powder and mealie meal and contribute cents saved to pay thousands of extra teachers privately, thus improving the teacher-pupil ratio to the still appalling 1:58.5” (The Failure of Bantu Education, 1970).

In farming areas the policy is to have only primaries and these can only be established if the farmer wishes. The schools can be useful to the farmer. In 1969 the Minister of Bantu Education told the Senate: “we have made it compulsory that where the farmer wants these facilities, part of the school instruction . . . must be training in the normal activities on the farm . . . any farmer who has a farm school on his farm and who wishes to make use of the school children under the supervision of the teacher to assist with certain farm activities, this can be arranged . . .” The success of the Government’s policy has resulted in there being “no registered non-White veterinarians, architects, civil, electrical or mechanical engineers” (UNESCO). Dr. Birley visited the 4 secondary schools of the African township of Johannesburg: "I have recently surveyed their laboratories and equipment carefully. The schools have . . . between them 13 Bunsen burners, six balances and three microscopes.” Literacy among Africans dropped from 80 per cent. in ’59 to only 40-50 per cent. in ’63 (Government figures). In addition, the Government bans “unregistered” teaching, including night schools, and reduced its grant for night schools from R46.000 (’58-9) to zero (’65). The wonder is that any Africans learn to read at all!

Effects on the Economy

Some of these facts go to explain just why the world capitalist class condemns Apartheid. Here are some typical criticisms:

“The very idea of separateness is a renunciation of market forces . . . it denies the non-Whites the right to advance industrially in existing fields where their skills can be fully used productively to the benefit of the community as a whole; it inhibits the development of consumer purchasing power and therefore it discourages new investment” (Fridjohn, quoted in The Geographical Review.)

In this context “productively” means of course “profitably”, the “benefit of the community as a whole” really means “the benefit of the employing class and the greater exploitation of the wage-slave class”.

The low wages which are preserved by job reservation, the pass system, denial of the right to strike or to organize in trade unions, lack of any political power, and concentration in the starvation areas of the reserves, these low wages which are so helpful to the farming and mining sections of the capitalist class in S.A. spell “wastage” to the manufacturers. (In S.A., industry has only got ofF the ground recently: in 1972 it still accounted for only 28 per cent. of the Gross National Product.) By the year 2000, it is estimated there will be more than 20 million Africans in S.A. Are they never to be allowed colour TV, washing machines, hi-fi, DIY gadgets, cars, holidays abroad and so on? After all, it’s a poor sort of a home market which specialises in mealie meal and skim-milk. Not much profit in them.

The “liberal” Patrick van Rensburg deplores apartheid because it means extra costs for “the taxpayer” (those poor capitalists!): all those dual bus services, separate park benches, loos, exits and entrances, the enormous bureaucracy needed to administer the Population Register, and the pass laws, not to mention boss’s army of police, spies and paid informers. Also he points out that “if the burden and worry of undernourishment were removed at once, Africans would immediately produce more”. Which shows us whose interests he really has at heart! Greater productivity means greater profit-making for bosses, greater exploitation for workers. Another point he makes is that job reservation, preventing the Africans from competing for skilled jobs, cushions inefficient Whites.

Quo Vadis

As Socialists we do not concern ourselves with the plight of the capitalists, and their dispute with South Africa’s White farmers. The pass laws exist to protect the farmers from the effect of higher wages in the urban areas. In South Africa political power is held by the representatives of the farming and business community, and working-class Whites support them. The Government’s policy has been successful in dividing the workers of S.A. on grounds not only of race but also of language — English or Afrikaans speaking.

It is a fallacy to suppose that the ending of Apartheid would mean the ending of slums, hunger, unemployment, and insecurity. Nowhere can you find a country which has eliminated these miserable features of the profit-producing system. The Africans of South Africa will remain second-class citizens as long as they are part of the international wage-slave class. Their poverty is a result of their class position in society, only made worse by the fact that they as a group have been selected for the low-paid jobs in the economy and that they are denied the right to organize for better living and working conditions, either politically or through trade-union action.

The Socialist attitude has nothing in common with the Pan Africanist Congress which operates on racially divisive lines, or the African National Congress, one of whose goals is “equal pay for equal work”. Both are reformist organizations. Neither is based on class-consciousness, and an awareness that the African worker is a part of the international working class, just as the South African boss class is a part of the international brotherhood of bosses. The workers of S.A. have a long way to go in discovering that their real enemy is our class-divided social system, and that unity on the basis of the common interests of all workers everywhere, “without distinction of race or sex”, is the real key to their liberation from misery and exploitation.

Charmian Skelton

Running Commentary: Death throes? (1985)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Death throes?

As the killings in South Africa continue, the question must be — is this apartheid's last spasm of life?

Prime Minister Botha is faced with a massive problem. On the one hand the system of racial discrimination which his government is pledged to maintain and to develop into the establishment of separate states for blacks and whites is clearly in conflict with the demands of South Africa's expanding capitalist economy. A recent report by a quasi-governmental body condemned apartheid as obsolete and warned of the need for the government to act positively in the matter in the near future. According to some reports. Botha himself is aware that this is true.

This reality is slowly being accepted among even sections of the Afrikaaner population, which is a developing section of the capitalist class, impatient with the obstacles which apartheid must place in the way of profitability. Concessions have already been made and more must follow soon; in particular the government may recognise the need for an authentic negotiator for the Africans.

But the very concession of reforms, such as the recognition of black trade unions, the abolition of the ban on inter-racial marriage and sex and the plans to give South African citizenship to the blacks, can itself be a weakening factor for the government. This is all too obvious to some National Party supporters, who view Botha's attempted appeasement of the protest movement with angry contempt and who may turn their support to even more extreme racist policies in an effort to stem the tide of reform. So Botha is trying to ride a tiger — the ferocious animal of racist bigotry which his party whipped into action in the first place.

The situation now is that, paradoxically, many South African capitalists have political views described as to the "left" of the government. For the South African white workers. this is a time for decisions which their bigotry promises to make extremely painful for them. If or perhaps it should be when the black movement wins, a new sort of reality will emerge which in many ways will be as difficult as the present. There will be yet another rising capitalist state in Africa where the ruling class is dominantly black. The workers, whatever their skin colour, will have exchanged one set of exploiters for another.

Vultures

As if they had not suffered enough already, the survivors of the Manchester airport disaster were immediately subjected to the additional stress of the vulture-like attention of eminent persons such as Prince Charles (trying to prove that the royal family are a useful, caring influence in society); Margaret Thatcher (trying to win. or perhaps recover, some votes); and Manchester's Chief Constable James Anderton (of whom the less said the better).

These migrants were soon followed by another species, also seeking to prey on the victims' distress, as lawyers descended on Manchester and set up shop in the hope of handling claims against the airlines. From Philadelphia came Jim Pearce, countered by Manchester's own Rodger Pannone. Generous Malcolm Mason put an advertisement in a Sheffield newspaper inviting reverse-charge calls from anyone willing to let his New York firm handle their claims for damages. Naturally, the lawyers asserted that they were all acting in the victims' best interests; money, they reason, does not bring back the dead but it does an awful lot to soothe the grief of the bereaved. In the form of commission on a successful law suit, it also injects a healthy blush into a balance sheet.

But these were not the only vultures involved in this tragedy. Holiday charter aircraft are crammed with passengers; if this were not so, the operators say, the business would not be profitable — and the trade is savagely competitive. The extra seats mean narrower aisles in the aircraft, which means a more difficult, slower exit in an emergency.

British Airways (the World's Favourite Airline, say Saatchi and Saatchi) have taken the matter further than this. They have blocked some of the exits on some of their aircraft to make way for more seats. Then there is the matter of the materials used in the seating, which in most cases is little better than deadly in a fire. There is a flame-retardant covering available but this at present costs quite a bit more than the present stuff, which brings the airlines up against the demands of profit again.

Finally, the aircraft themselves are worked to their limits, to schedules designed to extract the maximum of profit from them. Servicing intervals must be crammed into these demands. Even after the disaster at Manchester, a representative of the Federal Aviation Administration announced that checks on the suspect engines would have to . . coincide with airline maintenance and flying schedules".

It might be some consolation to the people who died in the fire, and to their families and friends, to know that they died to keep a schedule, to protect the profits of the airlines and the holiday operators. The drive for profit allows no peace for human beings, alive or dead.

On the rampage

It is by now an established routine that after each inner-city riot, such as that last month in Handsworth, the experts run amok brandishing their theories, explanations and remedies.

Some Labour politicians attribute the riots to the effects of unemployment and therefore, by implication, to Thatcher's policies. The left wing put the blame onto heavy-handed police techniques and argue that the remedy is a democratically accountable police force, ignoring the fact that the police are already accountable to the class whose interests they exist to protect — the capitalists.

Blacks are certain that it is all caused by racial discrimination and offer the policy of "smashing" racism, which usually means substituting one type of repression for another, with little to choose between them. The police — and most Tories — insist that the riots are matters of simple criminality, of the perverse drive of a minority to disrupt what is called civilised life. Their remedy, pronounced with varying degrees of ghoulish thrill, is harsher punishment and more of it.

All of these are agreed on one thing. There must be An Enquiry To Get To The Bottom Of It. When the Enquiry has reported and all the experts have read the report we shall be able to re-organise things so that it never happens again.

It is all as if history never happened, as if Handsworth has not already suffered a riot, as if St. Pauls, Brixton, Toxteth are places where peace has reigned undisturbed. Is it really necessary to go through all this agony, just to get a visit from a cabinet minister and the promise of a few new buildings, a few square yards of grassland, a few trees planted?

The flaw which is shared by all the arguments of the "experts" is that they are based on a superficial view of society and its problems. All of them presume that a social system based on the class ownership of the means of life is logical, efficient and pretty well eternal. This might be all very well except that this system must throw up social ailments which will come to some very nasty crises.

Capitalism separates the majority of people from access to the means of life except as employees, workers for a wage. It denies them access to wealth except as buyers; however much we need it we can't get hold of anything without in some way paying for it.

One result of this is that the majority of people are in a state of alienation — from their employment, from their environment, from their human prospects. This alienation is at its most acute where poverty is deepest, in the grimmer places of working-class life such as inner city areas whose grime, slums and apathy are material expressions of frustration.

Capitalism cannot be a society of harmony.

Blogger's Note:

The November 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard carried an article by Ron Cook on the recent riots in Handsworth and, also, his memories of growing up in Handsworth in the 1930s.

Apartheid the background (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following article first appeared as a chapter in our pamphlet The Problem of Racism: A Socialist Analysis that we published in 1966. We republish it today not only because it outlines the historical background to the situation in South Africa but also because recent events there bear out our analysis that apartheid, far from being in the interests of the South African capitalist class, was an attempt to go against the logic of the capitalist system and so doomed to collapse sooner or later.

A number of changes — all in the same direction — have occurred since the article was written: the virtual disappearance of the industrial colour bar, the legalisation and recognition of African trade unions, the emergence of the Progressive Federal Party as the main white opposition party in place of the United Party, the admission of Coloureds and Indians to some, albeit a paltry, say in national political matters, the abolition of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. All these changes represent victories for the logic of capitalism — "the market is colour blind", or better "exploitation is colour blind" — over the system of apartheid. And now sections of the South African capitalist class are calling for negotiations with African nationalists to bring about political reform.

The present population of the Republic of South Africa are descendants of people who came from many parts of Africa. Europe and Asia. The latest census figures, those of 1960. show that out of a population of 16 million some 11 million (68 per cent) are Bantu or Africans. 3 million (19 per cent) Whites. 1 l/z million (10 per cent) Coloureds and nearly half a million (3 per cent) Asians, mainly Indians. The principal race problem arises over the relations between Whites and non-Whites, especially the Africans, though this is not the only race problem as the African anti-Indian riots in Durban in 1949 show.

White people first came to South Africa in 1652 when the Dutch East India Company established a post at the Cape. Settlers, mainly Dutch, came not long after. Within a few years slavery was also introduced. The original Hottentot people were not actually enslaved but were reduced to a servile status by various laws which forced them to work for the Whites. The slaves in South Africa came from many places: West and East Africa. Madagascar. India. Ceylon, Malaya. In the early days there was much intermarrying between Whites and Hottentots and slaves and eventually emerged the group now known as the Cape Coloureds. In the 150 years after the original settlement a pattern emerged: the whites were the masters and people of colour the servants. This colour division marked off groups that were almost castes, and the habit of thought became deeply rooted and still survives. In this period there was a self- sufficient pastoral economy with sheep and cattle farming, which required wide ranges of land and led to expansion inland. But as the White farmers or Boers moved inland they met Bantu tribes coming in from the north for much the same reasons. There were clashes, the first major one being that of 1779.

A further complication was introduced in 1806 when the British government finally acquired control of the area from the Dutch. The new governors tried to introduce an efficient governmental machine by streamlining taxation, the law courts, land registration. etc. They also interfered with the traditional master-servant relationship. In 1828 the Coloureds were given the same legal status as Whites and, in 1834, the slaves were freed. In 1820 the first immigrants from Britain arrived. As a result of these measures many Boers, together with their servants, moved inland in the Great Trek and away from British rule setting up the two Republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. As the Boers advanced they came increasingly into conflict with the Bantu tribes, and generally, but not always, the Boers triumphed. In doing so they did not drive the Bantu back before them; these Africans were reduced to being landless squatters and labourers on European held land. Denied access to the land the Africans became entirely dependent on their Boer masters. In 1877 the British government intervened, annexing the Transvaal and setting up Native Reserves. After a revolt four years later the Boers achieved independence under British sovereignty. The Orange Free State was now also independent, the territory having been first annexed by the British in 1848 and abandoned six years later.

The Indians were introduced into South Africa in the 1860s as indentured labourers on the sugar plantations of Natal. When their contracts expired many stayed on while others came of their own accord.

In 1867 occurred the discovery of diamonds which was to transform the South African economy. It was not long before diamond mining fell into the hands of big capitalists like Cecil Rhodes. The independent diggers were reduced to wage-workers; skilled workers were introduced from Europe and America, while the unskilled work was done by Africans. When gold was discovered in the Transvaal 17 years later the same pattern emerged: whites got the skilled high-wage jobs and blacks the unskilled low-wage jobs. This was not purely a matter of discrimination as the whites were the more skilled but eventually the pattern became fixed. The caste division of the farm was introduced into industry.

The coming of capitalism to South Africa had a serious effect on the self-sufficient pastoral communities of the Boers. In the Transvaal under President Kruger they did all they could to prevent capitalism breaking up their way of life. In the end it came to war in 1899. This war, which lasted for three years, was a classic imperialist war with gold as the prize for British imperialism. Although the Boer Republics were incorporated on equal terms into the Union of South Africa in 1909, anti-British, anti-imperialist Afrikaner Nationalism survived.

The advent of capitalism not only had its effect on the Africans, turning many into urban wage-workers, but had a similar effect on the Boers. Many became landless themselves, reduced like the Africans to being squatters on European-held land. After the first world war many drifted to the towns creating a poor white’ problem. Unlike the workers who had been imported into the diamond and gold mines these Whites were unskilled and unused to industrial discipline; left to compete with Africans on equal terms they would have been reduced to the level of destitution of the Africans. The government adopted various measures to deal with this problem. One of these measures was the extension of the industrial Colour Bar. Some skilled and semi-skilled jobs were legally barred to Africans. Jobs were reserved for Whites in the State-run railways and public services.

Striking by Africans had been a criminal offence since 1911. The pass laws, the beginnings of residential segregation and other restrictions date from this period. In 1936 the African voters on the Cape Province electoral roll were removed to a separate roll. The various inter-war governments were, in effect, trying to protect white society’ from the effects of capitalism. In other words, the pre-industrial farm ideology of the Whites as masters and Blacks as servants was surviving and reacting on capitalism. At the time most of the capitalist class were prepared to go along with this policy as segregation and the colour bar were not pursued in a systematic fashion but were a series of patchwork measures not ruling out change in the future. Some did protest. They protested at State interference in the market. They pointed out how wasteful and unprofitable it was to deny Africans access to skilled jobs. They protested at having to pay wages on a colour basis rather than on the quality of the labour-power.

The capitalists and their economists took the same orthodox liberal line as does W.H. Hutt in his "The Economics of the Colour Bar’’, published in 1964. In a chapter entitled "The Market is Colour-Blind”. Hutt puts the capitalist case against colour and other forms of prejudice quite plainly.- "When we buy a product in the free market, we do not ask: What was the colour of the person who made it? Nor do we ask about the sex, race, nationality, religion or political opinions of the producer. All we are interested in is whether it is good value for money" (page 173).

The present Afrikaner Nationalist government was first elected in May 1948 with a race policy of preserving the domination of the white people come what may. The somewhat haphazard segregationist policies of previous governments was succeeded by a policy of ruthless apartheid, social and political. While previous governments had preferred mainly to rely on custom to separate the races’, the Nationalists believed in using the law and the full power of the State machine. In implementing their policies the Nationalist government, amid protests from the conservative opposition United Party, has shown scant regard for the traditional parliamentary procedure or for academic freedom or for established civil liberties. The so-called Communist Party was banned in 1950.

The names of the Acts passed since 1948 show the pattern of apartheid: Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Population Registration Act, Group Areas Act. In 1956 the Coloureds were removed from the Cape Province electoral roll as the Africans had been 20 years previously. Other acts provided for a separate, inferior education for Africans, encouraged tribalism and restored the powers of the chiefs in the reserves. The Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 provided for the establishment of so-called Bantustans. The first of these has been in the Transkei where elections took place in 1963.

The Nationalists have enforced their policy with a logic that is sometimes cruel and sometimes ridiculous, as in the reported case of the bleaching of two Chinese women before moving them to a White hospital ward — or perhaps not so ridiculous as when Japanese are classified as White so as not to embarrass visiting Japanese businessmen. Today the non-Whites live apart from the Whites; are provided with separate entrances, park benches, buses, railway compartments, schools, beaches, etc. The African is given an education which does not allow him to compete on equal terms with Whites in the labour market; he is forbidden to strike; his trade unions are not recognised; he has to carry a degrading pass and is always subject to the petty arrogance of the police. By and large the non-White, and especially the African, is inferior socially, economically and politically. This policy has not been enforced without resistance.

In 1952 a large-scale civil disobedience campaign ended in violent rioting — in 1956 began the notorious Treason Trials. In 1960 at an anti-pass laws demonstration at Sharpeville police opened fire on an unarmed crowd killing and wounding many. The provisions of the Suppression of Communism Acts have been freely applied against all advocates of racial equality. Other Acts, such as the Sabotage Act. have made great inroads into traditional civil liberties.

In South Africa a government deriving its inspiration and programme from the racial attitudes of a pre-industrial society is trying to force a policy of racial separation on an economy which is becoming increasingly dependent on non-European labour. Today it is no longer only a primary producer of diamonds and gold; it has also developed other secondary industries. In both mining and other industries the bulk of the workers are non-White, and these make up the majority of the population of most of the large cities. A permanent non-White urban factory proletariat has been created.

The tendency of capitalism everywhere is to reduce all previous social divisions to the one great division between owners and non-owners of the means of production and distribution. In South Africa it is working against the traditional white/non-white caste division. The Nationalist government is trying to prevent this effect of capitalism working itself out. The capitalist class itself appears to be perturbed at the restrictions that apartheid places on its profit-making activities; it wants to pay wages according to skills not skin colour; it wants to train Africans as skilled workers to meet the acute and ever-growing shortage of skilled labour in South Africa (indeed there is evidence that non-whites are already illegally doing jobs reserved for whites).

This appears to be happening also on the State-run railways and in the public services. The Times (23 November 1964), under the headlines 'Manpower shortage causes breach in apartheid: job reservation by colour unworkable', reported that as a result of shortages "and apparently with the tacit approval of the Cabinet — non-White labour is beginning to infiltrate into these public services. The railway colour bar has already been breached in Durban where non-Whites (mainly Indian) are being employed in semi-skilled work. They are to do rivet-heating and coach-washing, jobs formerly reserved for white staff'. Others "are already employed on shunting operations without either official approval or protest".

In 1959 a number of leading capitalists broke with the opposition United Party because of its ineffectual opposition to apartheid and formed their own Progressive Party with the slogan merit not colour'. Unfortunately for them the White, mainly Afrikaans, working class is solidly behind the Nationalists. Should the Progressives or the more radical Liberals triumph then the main effect would be to simplify the class situation in South Africa. Pre-industrial caste attitudes would be pushed aside and the working class (of all colours and races) would stand opposed to the capitalist class (of all colours and races). In this respect a class of wealthy Indians has long been in existence; wealthy Africans are also beginning to appear. Thus the ground would be cleared for the final struggle between these two classes.

The present policy is a bid to preserve the values and attitudes of the old agricultural order. Afrikaner Nationalism tried once before to hold back capitalism when gold was discovered in the Transvaal; they failed that time — and. soon or later — they will fail this time too. By trying to divide the Africans through tribalism, by building up vast internal security forces and by repressive legislation the Nationalists may ward off the inevitable for a time. But sooner or later apartheid will go; the question is when and how. Although the Progressives and Liberals still hope for a peaceful solution, many of the African Nationalists have come to accept that violence is the only way. In any event capitalism must triumph in South Africa, peacefully or violently.

Blogger's Note:

As mentioned previously on the blog, sadly, the text of this pamphlet is not on the SPGB website. I'm not sure what happened. 

Report from South Africa (1963)

Book Review from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

I Will Still be Moved: reports from South Africa. Edited by Marion Friedman. (Arthur Baker, 24s.).

Dr Verwoerd claims that his policy of apartheid is aimed, not at subjugating the Negro and Coloured Peoples of the Republic (who constitute the vast majority of its population), but that the Bantustan developments he plans is for “separate but equal development along the lines most suited to them.” It is doubtful whether even he and his Ministers still believe this—if they ever did—with the glaring evidence to the contrary which comes to light every day. He himself, when Minister of Bantu Affairs, explaining his Government’s policy on African education said: “There is no place for him (the African) . . . above the level of certain forms of labour.”

The case histories in this book were chosen to show in how many different ways this glaring untruth is constantly being demonstrated.

The case of Nelson Langa gives a brief insight into the terrible conditions obtaining in farm jails, where “convicted” Negroes are “sold” to European farmers to work in conditions of abject slavery. The fact that, in the majority of cases, they have never been in front of a magistrate, much less convicted, has no relevance to the treatment they receive. In a rounding up of “unemployed Africans who were roaming the streets,” Nelson Langa was taken, in spite of the fact that at the time he was wearing the badge of the municipal authority which employed him as a street cleaner and was actually carrying his broom. On the other hand, he was not carrying his pass for which, on conviction, the maximum penalty is a £1 fine. However, the small formality of charging him was dispensed with and with many others he was put on a lorry and “sold” to a farmer in the Bethal district. After long enquiries, his brother found out what had happened and, with the aid of a lawyer, managed to get him released. There was, of course, no question of compensation yet Mr. Langa was “lucky” in having his freedom restored, in most cases family and friends never find out what has happened to their breadwinner or whether, in fact, he is still alive.

Patrick Duncan, a White editor, now a prohibited person and living in England, said in his address to the magistrate when charged with contravening the emergency regulations:

“. . . How else can one explain the cruel cancellation of the African school-feeding scheme, while White children continue to be fed by the State? How else can one explain the mean attempt to abridge and constrict, by administrative action, the pension scheme for non-Whites which this government inherited from its predecessors? How else can one explain the present intention of this government to institute family allowances—for Whites only?”

Later in his speech he enumerated some of the unjust legislation, which shows up any claims for “separate but equal developments” for what they are; the Group Areas Act, the Separate Amenities Act (separate and unequal facilities), Urban Areas Act which, with its “influx control” splits up families, the Land Act of 1913 under which 85 per cent. of the surface of the land in South Africa is closed to ownership to 66 per cent. of the population; the feudal pass law, under the misleading title of Abolition of Passes Act, the Job Reservation Law, Bantu Authorities Act, the Bantu Education Act.

The case of Nelson Mandela, the “Black Pimpernel” received quite a lot of publicity outside South Africa. It is from his speech in his own defence against a charge of “inciting people to strike”—it is illegal for African or Coloured workers to strike—as well as leaving the country without a valid travel document, that the title of this book is taken. He concluded with the words:

“. . . rest assured that, when my sentence has been completed, I will still be moved, as men are always moved by their consciences; I will still be moved by my dislike of the race discrimination against my people when I come out from serving my sentence, to take up again, as best I can, the struggle for the removal of those injustices, until they are finally abolished once and for all.”

As explained in the Acknowledgements, the editor’s comments and the introduction, the purpose of this book is twofold; to give voice to the voiceless in South Africa, and to raise funds to aid them in their fight. Although of course, the book is banned in South Africa, the hope is expressed that “one day (it will) be read where if most matters . . . and that this evidence of folly, injustice and irrationality will provoke action even from those who are not directly its victims.”

There is certainly plenty of evidence on all these indictments and many others. This small volume can, obviously, cover only a very few of the many cases of injustice and persecution over the last decade, and this review can only mention one or two of these. How one section of people can treat another in such inhuman ways, seems incredible at first sight. However, Chief Albert Luthuli, in his address when presented with the Nobel Peace Prize, put his finger on the explanation when he said:

“There is nothing new in South Africa’s apartheid ideas, but South Africa is unique in this: the ideas not only survive in our modern age, but are stubbornly defended, extended and bolstered by legislation at the time when, in the major part of the world they are now largely historical and are either being shamefacedly hidden behind concealing formulations, or are being steadily scrapped . . . These ideas survive in South Africa because those who sponsor them profit by them . . . They are the moral whitewash for the conditions which exist . . .” (our emphasis).

It is quite obvious that, whether by peaceful means, or—as seems more likely now—through civil strife and violence— one day in the not too distant future, the vast Negro and Coloured majority will achieve their objects. But, although many of the inhuman and impossible conditions imposed on them, now will have disappeared, they will still be faced with the problems and troubles which beset workers in a capitalist society. When they have achieved a way of life on a par with that of their fellow workers, both White and Black throughout the world, they will be able to listen to and accept the case for Socialism and join with us in the struggle to establish it.

Eva Goodman 

Editorial: General Smuts (1950)

Editorial from the October 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

As in this century it has become a widely accepted convention for professional politicians to speak well—and indeed flatteringly—of their party opponents when they die it would perhaps be unreasonable to expect obituary judgments to be well balanced and critical. With this in mind we could pass over the exaggerated praise of the work and qualities of the late General Smuts but still demand that those who attempt to assess him should give a recognisable portrait. But to do that the writers need to recognise what part Smuts played and the background against which he played it. In particular they need to see that he was a figure in the world of capitalism, thrown up by class interests and strictly limited in his action by the social system in which he lived and by the forces he represented. Instead many of the writers, including some who might have been expected to have at least some understanding of the reality, try to interpret him as if he had complete freedom of action to behave according to some abstract ideal, and as if therefore his seeming inconsistencies had to be explained as defects of character or courage or as errors of judgment.

A line taken by many who paid tribute to Smuts is that he was a man above class and national prejudices. To Mr. Attlee there was “in his large heart . . . a place for all humanity. His great contribution to the creation of the United Nations is but one example of his breadth of view and world statesmanship." (Daily Herald 12/9/50). The Prime Minister of Canada described him as having “adopted the world as his nation,” and Mr. W. N. Ewer (Daily Herald 12/9/50) credited him with “imaginative genius and liberal instincts . . .  His real greatness lay, perhaps, in his imaginative understanding of wider issues.”

These and many similar opinions explain nothing and merely fog the issue. The picture of the errant genius, usually triumphing over obstacles and the stupidity of lesser men, but occasionally falling below his own high ideals is and must be fundamentally false. The real Smuts started as a representative of the Boer farmers in their unsuccessful war against British imperialism and then came to power in South Africa as a capitalist politician, trying, as all administrators of capitalism must do, to reconcile divergent propertied class interests while defending South African capitalism against white workers and the non-white majority of the population. When we are told that he represented “all humanity” we need only remind Mr. Attlee of his own position as a caretaker of British capitalism—there is no room in capitalist administration for a “Minister for the welfare of all humanity.”

Attlee and Ewer cannot have forgotten how the Trade Union Congress condemned Smuts for his part in the crushing of the striking gold miners on the Rand in 1922. Mr. Ewer does in fact refer to it but interprets it (as also Smuts' attitude towards the natives) as “limitations” of his character. “His iron-fisted handling of the great Rand strike . . . cannot be forgotten in any judgment of him. And, though he opposed the ‘native' policies of Herzog and Malan, he was always a rigid up-holder of the idea of ‘white supremacy.' " 

The miners on the Rand in 1922 faced an attempt by the owners to force down wages and to undercut their standards by employing more low-paid native workers. In the strikes and rioting that followed it was Smuts who declared martial law and used troops, artillery, tanks and bombing planes to crush what he called a “reign of Red Terror.” Many lives were lost and many workers imprisoned.

The aspect of this that interested the writer of the lengthy tribute in the Manchester Guardian (12/9/50) was the bold way in which Smuts handled it. “Smuts’ personal courage and decision in this emergency are still the subject of talk in South Africa; after proclaiming his intention to impose martial law, he made his way secretly to Johannesburg, took command, and within a few days restored order.”

No noticeable evidence of the much praised love of “all humanity” there!

The Times gets nearer to a recognition of the class nature of Smuts’ activities and interests when it points out how his party was defeated at the election in 1924 and he lost his own seat: —

“Of the many charges brought against Smuts, who had been in power for so long a time, two of the most widely circulated and effective were, based on his use of troops in suppressing the Johannesburg strike in 1922 and his connection with the Chamber of Mines, whose agent he was declared to be.”—(Times, 12/9/50.)

The South African workers had not forgotten how Smuts’ intervention strengthened the hand of the Chamber of Mines in their attack on wages.

It may be that Smuts had what Mr. Ewer calls liberal instincts but a capitalist politician cannot serve two masters, he cannot sacrifice the interests of the class for whom capitalism functions in order to serve the interests of those whom capitalism exploits. His love of all humanity did not include the white workers and the native population when their actions in their own interests clashed with those of the ruling class, and it would not be far wrong to say that a large element in the universal scope of Smuts’ vision was the necessarily world-wide interests of a country the main economic basis of which is the production of gold for world trade. South Africa had grown from a Boer farming community to an expansionist capitalism and Smuts’ horizon expanded with it.

News in Review: Berlin again (1962)

The News in Review column from the October 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Berlin again

Berlin seems to be developing into one of capitalism’s nastier perennials.

With each year’s squabbles over the divided city — some of the more minor ones being prime examples of the ridiculous lengths to which capitalist powers go in the risky game of international tit-for-tat–the Russians advance their cause in Germany a little further.

Last year’s wall, a temporary-seeming structure then, is now solider and more permanent. The East German police range their guns along it. This year the Russians have withdrawn their commandant in East Berlin, leaving the Western powers to negotiate with the civilian administration there, or else with nobody.

In retaliation the Western powers have forced the Russians to use a more direct route when taking the guard to their war memorial which stands in West Berlin.

This petty and undignified bickering is only the detail of a more serious situation.

The Soviet object, it seems, is to force the Western powers to acknowledge that Berlin — and indeed Germany — is permanently divided. (Permanently, that is, until another European war draws out the frontiers again, creating new zones of dispute and tension.) If they can do this, the Russians will have won a new foothold in Europe and another buffer state will be between her and any threat of a re-emergent German capitalism.

There was a lot of indignant sob-stuff in the press about Peter Fechter, the 18 year old who was shot down by the East Berlin police and left by them to bleed to death beneath the Wall.

None of the papers recalled that when Fechter was born they were all busily telling us that it was heroic and laudable to kill Germans. At that time the Allied air offensive against Germany was at its height; the persistent bombers killed thousands of Germans quite indiscriminately. It was not their fault that the infant Fechter survived, to die so horribly later.

Berlin is typical of capitalism’s international rivalries. It is fought out over apparently minor details. But its potential is frighteningly dangerous.

And it is all sustained by cynical lies.

Chinese Bomb

Although they were quick to retract it, the statement from the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in Washington that China would be able to set off a nuclear explosion in a few months was enough to send a shiver down our spines.

More bombs. More tests. More fallout. More suffering. More death.

That is the immediate prospect. For the longer run, China’s bomb will mean a fiercer arms race and an increase in the tension in any dispute between her and the other great powers. And perhaps in the end a bigger and more destructive war.

China, like any aspirant capitalist power, has long been determined to make nuclear weapons. And, just like the others, she will excuse them with any sort of lying propaganda.

Last year, the general manager of Reuters persuaded the Chinese Foreign Secretary to talk on this subject. Marshall Chen Yi said that China’s having the bomb would actually decrease the chance of a war, because when only a few powers had it they were more tempted to throw their weight about.

We may permit ourselves a grim smile at this, for it is the very reverse of the deterrent theory which the nuclear powers now use to justify their having the bomb. These countries have always claimed that what stops a war is the fact that they have an almost exclusive possession of the biggest of all sticks.

Who should we believe in this? London, Washington and Moscow? Or Peking? In fact, nobody need worry about the answer to that question.

For what will China do when she has got the bomb? Will she follow the logic of Chen Yi’s argument and give the secret to the world? To India, for example? To Japan? If all the other nuclear powers are anything to go by China will forget her big-talk and keep her secrets to herself.

And perhaps we may permit ourselves a grim smile at this, too.

Capitalism will always have its ghastly weapons and it will always have its paid liars to excuse them. While they are spinning their lies the weapons get bigger and more horrifying and the conflicts grow more agonising.

Still feel like smiling?

Farnborough

Apart from the little-boy excitements of the machines themselves, what was the interesting and significant thing about this year’s Air Show at Farnborough?

Not so long ago it was a popular working-class idea that the aircraft industry was bound to expand into the future and that nobody who made his career in it could fail. This was the reason for many workers—among them graduates from universities—taking jobs with the aeroplane manufacturers.

But like many working-class assumptions, this one took no account of the nature of the beast called capitalism.

There were no turbo-prop aircraft on show this year. Yet the British aircraft industry once calculated that these would be more economical to run than the big jets and would therefore sell better to the airlines which, for all their superficial glamour, must have a sordid capitalist interest in cheap operating costs. Boeing, Douglas and Sud-Aviation in France proved this calculation wrong. So the turbo-prop is a dead-end and all the money tied up in it has gone down the drain. BOAC has its last Britannias up for sale for next to nothing.

Now the British industry is gambling on the future success of the VC10 and the de Havilland Trident. For neither of these are the prospects golden. If the fears which are expressed for them come to reality there will probably be another big cut-back in the aircraft industry and a lot more of its workers unemployed.

The airlines, too, are facing their problems. To stay in the race, each of them is forced to buy the latest, biggest, fastest (which usually also means the noisiest) machines on offer. The result up to now is that the number of seats available far exceeds the passengers who want them. So there is fierce competition, especially on the Trans-Atlantic runs.

This has caused most airlines in the world to fail to make a profit. Last month BEA one of the few profitable lines up to the present—announced that interest payments had turned a working profit of £550,000 into a loss of a million and a half pounds.

We all know what capitalism says must happen to an industry which does not make a profit. Aircraft are something of a special case; there are elements of national prestige and strategy to take into account. But in the end, in one way or another, the rule will apply.

For a lot of aircraft workers it looks like being a very bumpy ride.

Fasten your safety belts, please.

Nkrumah strikes

Doctor Nkrumah has succeeded in battling many people with his latest round of deportations and imprisonments.

It is simple enough to discern the reason for his expelling the Bishops Roseveare and Patterson. Both of them were involved in criticising the Young Pioneers, a nationalistic youth organisation whose members are required to chant, among other nonsense, that “Nkrumah never dies.”

Nobody who knows anything about Ghana under Nkrumah expected the Bishops to get away with suggesting that in the country’s youngsters should spend less time in worshipping the god in Accra and more in the (equally futile) worship of the god who they say is in a place called heaven.

But it is harder to explain the detention of Mr. Adamafio, Mr. Cofie Crabbe and Mr. Ako Adjei. The first two of these men were up to the hilt in Nkrumah’s campaign against the churches. We might have thought them safe in their jobs.

Perhaps they were involved in the bomb-throwing which has been going on in Ghana of late. Or perhaps they were just becoming too great rivals to Nkrumah’s supremacy.

Now they have gone and Krobo Edusei, famous for his wife’s £3,000 bed, is back in the government after his dismissal six months ago. Nkrumah, already overloaded with jobs (among others, he controls the Convention People’s Party, the Ghana Civil Service and the Volta Dam project) has taken on the Foreign Secretaryship.

These moves may be difficult to explain to our entire satisfaction, but one or two things can be said for sure.

Nkrumah is a dictator. His Young Pioneers are a copy, albeit a weak one, of the Hitler Youth movement. In taking on totalitarian powers, Nkrumah has betrayed the promises he made when he was fighting the British for Ghana’s independence.

There is nothing new in this. Postwar history is full of examples of nationalist dictators who ousted their country’s occupiers and came to power themselves with slogans of eternal liberty.

Many people outside Ghana were taken in by Nkrumah’s propaganda in the old days. Shocked though they may now be, they still lend their ears to the nationalists who are currently banging the independence drum.

Let Nkrumah’s Ghana stand as a warning that national independence has nothing to offer the ordinary people who are misled into supporting it and who end up by being oppressed and exploited by it.

Dr. Soblen

The death of Doctor Soblen brought to a close another of capitalism’s nasty little episodes.

Soblen killed himelf because, above everything else, he did not want to go back to the United States to serve his sentence for spying for Russia. The British government, perhaps at the insistence of Washington, were determined that he should be sent back. To get their way, they were prepared to break some of the legalities which at other times they hypocritically defend.

Great Britain has signed a treaty of extradition with, among others, the United States. This treaty means that if, say, a murderer escapes to America the government there will catch him and end him to this country for trial.

This treaty expressly excludes spies. The reasons are obvious, all countries have their network of espionage and it would be embarrassing for all of them if, should one of their agents flee, he could be extradited by the country he had been spying on.

Soblen should have been covered by this provision; in a sense, he was. The government never fought his case on the grounds that he was to be extradited. They only insisted that he should be deported.

But deportation only means that a person is sent out of a country—it does not mean that he must be sent to any particular other country. He can choose, in fact, the frontier by which he leaves, if Soblen had been deported he might have chosen to go to one of the Iron Curtain countries where, no doubt, he would have been welcomed as a hero.

The government were, of course, aware of this. In the name of the Anglo-American alliance they ignored the laws which they themselves have made to make their system run more smoothly.

Soblen was a tragic dupe to the illusion that Russian capitalism is worth working and dying for. This does not obscure the fact that he was a victim of the callous cynicism which all capitalist powers—including Russia fall back on when it suits them.

South Africa

At the time of the Sharpeville shootings and the “Boycott South African” campaign many anti-apartheid spokesmen went to great lengths to show how South Africa’s economy would suffer as a result of world opinion and moral indignation.

Up to the present the owners of the means of life in South Africa are no more or less affected by trials and tribulations than their brothers in less race-prejudiced countries. In fact, some foreign industrialists think the place has some attraction?.

Textile chief Mr. Cyril Lord intends to move the contents of two cotton mills from Lancashire to the Bantu areas of the Union. He says the British Government has failed to protect textile interests against cheap Asian competition. Some 100 key men are offered jobs abroad; the rest face the sack.

A South African official in London said: “Mr. Lord will have the advantages of cheap labour among others.” (Daily Herald, September 12th, 1962.)

Will Mr. Lord continue to demand that the British Government protect their textile interests by keeping out his cheap South African cotton goods? Boycotters and “Ban this and that” mongers may note that, while workers may be threatened with ills such as unemployment, propertied groups do not suffer economically, even though they sanction or commit acts which are quite anti-social.