THE ILLUMINATI - THE RISE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN REICH

Chapter 16

The Other Side of the Boom: African Living Standards

The South African government constantly justifies the policy of apartheid on the grounds that the Africans in the Republic have a higher standard of living than Africans anywhere else in the continent. This they attribute to the existence of White leadership in South Africa, and then argue that the maintenance of White leadership is essential if the living standards of all sections, including the Africans, are to continue rising.

The first proposition - that Africans in South Africa live better than Africans elsewhere - is impossible to establish with statistical accuracy. Since approximately ninety percent of Africans in the whole continent still derive whole or part of their income from a subsistence economy, neither population nor income totals can be properly determined. Even in South Africa, for example, the size of the African population is only an estimate because registration of African births and deaths is incomplete. In his book The South African Economy, Professor D. Hobart Houghton writes: 'The fact is that we have at present insufficient details of the earnings of the various racial groups to make any accurate estimate of the distribution of the national income between them' (second edition, published by Oxford University Press, 1967).

Houghton quotes figures showing that in 1960 the Republic had the highest net national income per capita in Africa, with 372 U.S. dollars a year, followed by Ghana with 224 dollars. But since the Tomlinson Commission estimated that in 1952 the average African income in South Africa was only about one tenth that of the average White one, this would leave the African income per head in the Republic some way behind that of the average Ghanaian. There is also a wide range in subsistence levels from one country to another. However, even if one accepts the proposition that Africans in South Africa are better off than most Africans in other countries, this does not mean that their living standards are satisfactory; nor should it distract attention from the glaring inequality in living standards between Black and White.

South Africa's gross domestic product increased from R5,315 million in 1960 to R7,881 million in 1965; or, at constant (1958) prices, from R5,109 million to R6,738 million, according to figures issued by the South African Reserve Bank. In his Budget speech on 27 March 1968, the Minister of Finance, Dr Diederichs, said: 'Our gross domestic product, adjusted to exclude price movements, increased by almost 7 percent in 1967, compared with 6 percent in 1966, and an average of just over 6 percent during the years 1960 to 1966' (Hansard, col. 2886). Real per capita income increased by 3 6 percent in 1962, 5 4 percent in 1963, 3 4 percent in 1964 and 2-6 percent in 965 (Houghton, op.cit.).

These figures, of course, cover the total population, Black as well as White. When it comes to calculating the living standards of the various racial groups, accurate statistics are not available, and one is back again in the realm of estimates and guesswork, although the over-all picture is not in dispute.

The fact is that the share of the gross national product which accrues to the Africans has remained static for a generation. The Industrial Legislation Commission of Inquiry reported in 1951 that, based on 1936 figures (which were the latest available to it at the time), the Africans earned 19.6 percent of the national income.

The Tomlinson Commission estimated that in 1952 the average income of the Whites was ten times that of the Africans, eight times that of the Coloureds, and five times that of the Asians. On these proportions, Professor Houghton has calculated that the percentage of the total national income accruing to each group in 1952 would have been: Whites, 71 percent; Africans, 23 percent; Coloureds, 4 percent; and Asians, 2 percent. (The 1960 census gave the racial composition of the population on a percentage basis as: Whites 19.3, Africans 68.3, Coloureds 9.4, Asians 3.0.)

In February 1966, the Managing Director of the Industrial Development Corporation, Mr G.S.J. Kuschke, said that the earnings of the Africans constituted between twenty and twenty three percent of the net national income (South African Digest, 25 February 1966). Since the growth rate of the African population is greater than that of the Whites, these estimates themselves would indicate that the per capita income among the Africans has not increased at the same rate as that of the Whites, and that the gap between White and Black living standards has increased, not diminished, in the last thirty years.

What do these estimates mean in terms of hard cash? The Tomlinson Commission's calculations would have given the following per capita incomes for the various groups in 1952: Whites, R631; Asians, R133; Coloureds, R86; Africans, R63. These figures must be compared with those given by the Minister of Finance in the House of Assembly on 15 February 1961 as current at the time: Whites, R820; Asians, R160; Coloureds, R116; Africans R92.

A later figure was given by Dr H.M. Stoker, past director of the Bureau of Statistics, in an address to the congress of the Institute of Public Health held at East London in November 1968: 'He said the White national income was R1,400 to R1,500 a year - more than 10 times that of the other three races combined. The national income per head for urban Africans was R120 to R130 a year, and for Bantustan Africans R30 to R35 a year' (Rand Daily Mail, 21 November 1968).

The journal of the South African Foundation, Perspective, in its May 1965 issue quoted Dr S. P. du Toit Viljoen, Chairman of the South African Board of Trade, as stating that ' the income of South Africa's African population is now about £600 million a year, of which about £500 million is in cash and the balance in kind.' With the African population estimated at roughly 12 million at that time, this would mean a per capita income of £50 annually. This figure is the same as that established in a study by Professor 0. P. J. Horwood of Natal University in 1960.

Even this figure is misleading, however, because it conceals wide variations in the incomes of Africans employed in different sectors of the economy. Official figures for the number of persons in each racial group who were economically active in 1967 were as follows:

(Minister of Planning, Assembly, 2 April 1968; 1 March 1968; and Bulletin of Statistics, September 1967.)

The average cash salaries and wages per head in the mining industry during April 1967, and in private manufacturing industry in March 1967, were as follows

(Bulletin of Statistics, September 1967, and calculations by Muriel Horrell in 1967 Survey of Race Relations.)

The 36th Agricultural Census report showed that, as at 30 June 1962, the number of employees on farms (excluding the Reserves) was: Whites, 15,983; Coloureds, 246,667; Asians, 7,418; Africans, 1,524,796. The report gives the total payments made by farmers to various categories of farm employees; but commenting on these figures, Muriel Horrell in the 1966 Survey of Race Relations says: 'No meaningful figures showing the average cost per employee can be worked out, since some of the workers were on a part-time basis - labour tenants for example; some, especially women, did merely occasional seasonal work; and the statistics include wages paid to juveniles.' She quotes, however, figures made available to the Institute of Race Relations by Professor H. I. Behrmann, of Natal University, showing that the highest, lowest, and approximately median monthly costs of a full-time male adult worker on farms surveyed in certain areas of Natal in 1965 were R16.78, R9.94, and R13.41 respectively.

There is no wage-regulating machinery for farm labourers, and the level of wages together with the conditions of work may vary from area to area and from farm to farm. According to a 1958 survey conducted in the Albany and Bathurst Districts of the Eastern Province for the South African Institute of Race Relations, the average annual family income was £107. S.J. du Toit, Senior Professional Officer of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Marketing, has given a figure, for families in the central Orange Free State, of £176. Professor J.L. Sadie is reported to have stated that the average annual income of African families on farms in the Western Province is £145; and of Coloured families, £196. Professor Hobart Houghton, who edited the book Economic Development in a Plural Society, based on a survey in the Eastern Cape, gives incomes of rural Africans at R14 a head per year, compared with R90 a head per year in the neighbouring town of East London. According to Professor Houghton in his book The South African Economy, the study showed that 'the earnings of urban Africans were found to be about five times those of rural Africans, and in the large industrial centres like Johannesburg and Cape Town, the disparity must be even greater'.

The Tomlinson Commission estimated African peasant family income at between R84 and R194 per year, depending on the method of calculation and the allowances made for various items in kind. In his study mentioned above, Professor Horwood gave the average per capita income of occupied persons in the Reserves as between £7 and £13 a year. Professor Houghton states that, because of the difficulty in assessing subsistence income, the estimates of African rural earnings vary by as much as eighty percent.

Nor should government claims that the African standard of living is rising steadily be accepted at their face value. In a study summarized in the Financial Mail of 10 May 1968, Dr Francis Wilson, a Cambridge Ph.D. working in the Department of Economics at Cape Town University analysed the wages of Africans working on the mines between 1936 and 1966. He concluded:

In real terms (using 1938 as the base year), the cash wages which Africans earn in the gold mines are, on the evidence, no higher (and possibly even lower) today than in 1911. Over the same period the real earnings of Whites in the industry have increased substantially.

Secondly, the gap between average White and Black earnings approximately the same in 1936 as in 1911 - has widened rapidly since the beginning of the Second World War.

Tables compiled by Dr Wilson show that, whereas in 1911 the African miner earned 72 Rand a year in cash, in 1966 he earned only 71 Rand. In the same period, the cash earnings of the White miner had increased from 850 Rand to 1,241 Rand (all figures adjusted to the value of the Rand in 1938). The cash-wage gap between White and Black miners had, therefore, widened from 11.7:1 in 1911 to 17.6:1 in 1966.

Calculating average earnings per shift between 1936 and 1966, and including in the African wage the food supplied by the mining companies, Dr Wilson showed that the figure for the African miner had risen from 28 cents to 30 cents over the thirty years, while the figure for the White miner had risen from 3 Rand to 4.52 Rand (adjusted to 1938 Rands). The earnings gap had, therefore, increased from 10.7:1 in 1936 to 15.2:1 in 1966.

The real iniquity of the position was revealed, unintentionally it is true, by no less a person than Mr T.F. Muller, Chairman of the Afrikaner mining house of Federale Mynbou, who in a public lecture at Stellenbosch University in 1966 claimed that there had been a notable increase in the productivity of labour in the mining industry. In gold mining, he said, the yearly tonnage mined by an African labourer had increased from 222 tons in 1920 to 417 tons in 1965 (Star, 19 September 1966). The reward of the African miner for almost doubling productivity has been a cut in his real wages. This is the harsh reality which underlies the great 'boom' in the gold-mining industry during the postwar period.

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