Open minds and closed systems: Comments on the functions and future of the ‘urban’ ‘English‐speaking’ university in South Africa
The paper is in two parts. The first part is a specific critique of Orkin, Nicolaysen and Price''s paper entitled ‘The Future of the Urban University in South Africa’ (Social Dyna‐mics 5(1)). In particular, the critique draws attention to Orkin et aVs failure to understand (1) the complexity of the relationship between poverty, fertility and urbanization, (2) the relationship between economic growth and developmentjunderdevelopment, and (3) the nature of the capitalist mode of production, and, more specifically, how this mode of production has developed within the S. African social formation. The first part of the paper also presents evidence to show how the overall economic condition of the Black working class in South Africa, contrary to widely held beliefs, has deteriorated during the second half of the 1970s. Part 2 of the paper questions many of the ‘liberal’ assumptions about the role and functions of the ‘urban’ ‘English‐speaking’ universities in SA. In particular, it shows that the University's co...
Capital restructuring and the modification of the racial division of labour in South Africa
Recent months have seen a number of signs that a process of restructuring involving certain modifications to the racial division of labour and job colour bar regulations is currently under way in South Africa. In December 1977, for example, a number of statutory job reservation determinations were scrapped by the Minister of Labour. In June of this year an agreement between the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation (SEIFSA) and the white trade union bureaucracies abolished previous closed shop agreements which had the effect of barring Africans from certain grades of work; and similar agreements have also been entered into in other industries, notably furniture making.1 But the most significant moves in this direction are expected to follow the publication of the report of the Wiehahn Commission of Inquiry into industrial legislation later this year. Informed guesses suggest that the Commission will, in addition to recommending a strategy aiming at the incorporation of the African trade union movement into a bureaucratic and rigidly controlled 'industrial relations' system, also recommend the repeal of all statutory job reservation legislation and the prohibition of closed shop agreements which have the effect of restricting certain places in the division of labour to members of particular racial groups. 2 Although these moves in no way foreshadow the final end of the job colour bar in South Africa (the alternative forms of 'protection of minority rights' -which the Commission will recommend will probably amount in practice to a more concealed and less comprehensive but none the less real job colour bar), they are important moves in the class struggle with potentially significant effects on the class structure and future trajectory of class struggle. Furthermore, it is quite clear that this particular aspect of the restructuring of capitalist social relations in South Africa will figure prominently in resurgent reformist ideologies directed both inside the
White Prosperity and White Supremacy in South Africa Today
IN THE PAST decade, extensive economic development has taken place in South Africa, and the visitor to that country quickly becomes aware of the affluence of the whites, who enjoy one of the highest material standards of living in the world.' But the political significance of this economic expansion is less obvious and the subject of growing debate. It is the view of many observers that this economic development is undermining the government's racial policies of apartheid and the system of white supremacy, or that it is likely to do so in the not too distant future. For while the official goal of apartheid is increasing racial segregation and 'separate development ', economic expansion is seen to mean continued racial integration and inter-dependence at the economic level, which is seen to be subversive to apartheid policies. The desire of the whites for both prosperity and apartheid is thus seen to be basically contradictory, and their determined quest for the former and apparent failures of the latter are thought to be undermining white supremacy.2 It would appear, however, that this prevailing thesis has serious limitations. The purpose of this study is to assess the relations between economic development, apartheid labour policies and white supremacy in South Africa today, and to develop a critique of this thesis. It is not a detailed examination of any particular aspect of the subject, but rather an attempt at a broad and integrated over-view, which might suggest directions for further research. At the outset, two important distinctions which underlie the whole analysis need to be made. First of all, ' apartheid' must be distinguished from ' white supremacy'. 'Apartheid' refers to the South African government's racial policies and ideology, while 'white supremacy' refers to the overall power structure in South Africa, which is partly maintained by apartheid policies. The blurred use of the terms together, however, often seems to imply that the power structure of white supremacy is the product of apartheid policies alone, Frederick Johnstone is a graduate student at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and recently spent six months engaged in research in South Africa. He is working on a thesis on class and race relations in the South African gold mining industry in the earlier part of this century. This is a revised version of a paper presented to a seminar at St. Antony's College. 1. For more information on the South African economy and its development, see D. H. Houghton, The South African Economy (Cape Town, 1967, second edition). Between 1962 and 1966 South Africa had the second highest real growth rate in the world (nearly seven per cent per annum surpassed only by Japan's nine per cent). (Financial Mail, Johannesburg, 6 September, 1968, p. 833). 2. The tenets of this thesis will be set out more fully in the third section.