The Race for the Job
$y JEROME CAMINADA 'Johannesburg WHILE Parliament and the nation in South Africa, and at times the world outside, hotly debate what is to be done about the non-European in the Union, 'A.he forces inherent in a young, expanding economy are shaping 'events their own independent way. The spoken word, and Politically and socially, not much has changed. The flooding tide—so far—is economic only. It is not a freak wave, raised by some upheaval of Nature, but a steady, tidal movement.
If political look-outs have failed to see it, this is because many of them, even today, refuse to look its way. Some believe they can turn it back. The spread of industry, the growth of towns, the drift of the African to those towns, and the scarcity of white labour are the forces underlying the move- ment. Figures now available show how, in spite of the Nationalist Government's cry of apartheid, non-Europeans are becoming an integral part of the European economy.
The United Party, which is the Opposition, -is thus able to say to the Government that while it preaches separation it is inescapably practising integration. It cannot help doing so. Some members of the United Party do not like this argument, because it sounds almost as if the party regretted the failure of apartheid. But whatever the argument used, the figures do show that more and more non-Europeans are working for and in the place of Europeans. They are doing not only unskilled work, but also semi- skilled and even skilled work. The returns of the Department of Census and Statistics and of the Wage Board demon- strate that about 16 per cent. of the skilled labour and 67 per cent. of the semi-skilled labour is non-European. Of 4,000,000 people in industry, commerce, mining, agriculture and fishing about 3,500,000 are non-Europeans, and half of the strength of the police, the departments of health and native affairs and the railways are non-whites.
On the Witwatersrand the Africans have not only seeped . , into industry but, for the past twenty years, have also been :,; quietly climbing to better jobs. This does not apply so much J in the gold mines, where there is a statutory colour bar to the 1:more responsible work, but in other industry. lt has been ,E going on without advertisement since 1948 because the !employers and the Africans have not wished to make too public a mockery of the present Government, and also because they : are wary of the white trade unions. there is not enough white labour to go round, certainly insufficient for the work below the skilled level. Neither unions, therefore, nor employers have at the moment reason to worry.
I stood in a factory a week ago and watched Africans working. They had advanced to the stage of minding machines, and their employers sincerely assured me that, without taking into account the difference in wages, they now genuinely prefer black labour for this work. As they expressed it: " We would rather have a high-grade African than a low-grade European." In the face of these facts most people would say that there is not much the Government can do about it. But the Government is not convinced. It declares it must try, and go on trying, to undo economic integration.
One method it will use apparently is to decree the race for the job, i.e., designate which work shall be closed to non- Europeans. By this means it believes it can bring about economic separation—though a better word would surely be disintegration.
With the facts of economic integration established, the next question is whether political integration must inevitably follow. By political integration is meant, baldly, whether the African must be given a common vote, or at least begin gradually to acquire some political authority. On this question the Government and the Opposition are both, in their different ways, marvellously agile. The United Party, having argued that economic integration is a fait accompli, is still not too anxious, as a party, to add that political integration must follow. The Nationalists, contrariwise, while turning a blind eye to-economic integration, and stipulating still a programme of social, economic, and political apartheid, yet declare enthusiastically that if economic integration were an accomplished fact, then political advance- ment for the non-European would be bound to follow. This is their trump bogey. They conjure it up to frighten their supporters against the thought of even economic integration.
The United Party's standpoint on the political rights of the African is, then, still not definite, but there is no denying that it is crystallising. What is called in South Africa the left, or liberal forces in the party are in the ascendant, and are pulling it towards granting the African a political voice, or at least letting him be heard in a whisper.
So far the only concrete suggestion the party has made is that outlets for African opinion—at first advisory, but gradually growing in authority—should be revived. Whether the Africans would co-operate is another matter. They lost their principal platform, the Natives' Representative Council, because they refused to meet,unless they were given more than advisory powers; whereupon the Nationalists simply swept the institution away. Mr. Strauss, the United Party leader, suggests that once this Council were revived there should be a further " substantial forward move." This is ambiguous, but he adds that the United Party is prepared to learn from the experiments across the border in the Central African Federation. There Africans have been admitted to the Federal Parliament. At present the only representation Africans have, in the Union Parliament is a limited number of Europeans deputed to speak for them. In going even so far, Mr. Strauss virtually turned his back on a substantial group composed, firstly, of seven United Party M.P.s who lately broke away to form an Independent United Party, and secondly, of others still within the Party but ideologically on the side of the rebels. This group stands very close to the Nationalists in wishing to exclude the African from the political scene. It hates the opposite liberal wing in the United Party even more than the Nationalists do, and it was their 'rebellion' which precipitated a new crystallisation of ideas.
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