Abstract
While the rest of sub-Saharan Africa witnessed the expansion of merchant capital in relation to a commodity-producing peasantry, South Africa went through the early stages of an industrial revolution. Fundamental economic changes clustered around the expansion of mining whose needs had spurred the imperial thrust into the South African interior. Colonial conquest intensified dependence on the world market, but brought wide-ranging economic growth and ultimately a variegated industrial development. South Africa is one country whose history suggests that there is little truth to the assertion by dependency theory radicals that imperial conquest and economic ‘dependence’ necessarily leads to national poverty, the ‘development of underdevelopment’ of indeed any determinate set of social and political arangements.
There are others again, and these are found among the advanced class of Europeans, who maintain that the solution of the problem will be found in segregation. They say: ‘Segregate the native so as to enable him to develop according to his own lines.’ But this policy cannot be successfully carried out today when the interests of both races are so interwoven, when there is no land in South Africa which is not occupied by Europeans, and when the industries of the country cannot be developed without native labour . . . To my mind, between this policy and that of repression there is no difference.
R.V. Selope Thema (1922), in Gwendolen Carter and Thomas Karris, From Protest to Challenge, I (Hoover Institution Press, 1972),p.213.
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The best currently available survey of modern South African history is T.R.H. Davenport, South Africa: a Modern History (Macmillan, 2nd edn., 1978) by a liberal scholar who at least refers to a wider range of perspectives. The second volume of
Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson, eds, Oxford History of South Africa (Oxford University Press, 1969–1971) is interesting in parts.
For a general introduction to the fundamental features of South African development, Bernard Magubane, Political Economy of Race and Class in South Africa (Monthly Review Press, 1979) is good. A classic liberal analysis of the political economy can be found in Sheila van der Horst, Native Labour in South Africa (Frank Cass, 1971 edn.). See also
Herbert Blumer, ‘Industrialisation and Race Relations’ in Guy Hunter, ed., Industrialisation and Race Relations (Oxford University Press, 1965). Early Marxist critiques and attempts to link the racial system in South Africa to industrial capitalism as a whole were Frederick Johnstone, ‘White Prosperity and White Supremacy in South Africa Today’, AA, LXIX (1970) and
Harold Wolpe, ‘Industrialism and Race in South Africa’ in Sami Zubaida, ed., Race and Racialism (Tavistock, 1970). Among a number of seminal pieces that extend the argument, see Stanley Trapido, ‘South Africa in a Comparative Study of Industrialization’, JDS, VII (1971); Harold Wolpe, ‘Capitalism and Cheap Labour-Power in South Africa: From Segregation to Apartheid’, Economy and Society, III (1974). An interesting critique of the Marxist perspective can be found in David Yudelman, ‘Industrialisation, Race Relations and Change in South Africa’, AA, LXXIV, (1975).
The work of a second generation of South African Marxists has a preliminary outlet in Taffy Adler, ed., Perspectives on South Africa, African Studies Institute Publications, 4 (1977). See also the Review of African Political Economy, 7 (1977) and subsequent debate. From this school has come Michael Morris’ outstanding ‘The Development of Capitalism in South African Agriculture’, Economy and Society, V (1976) and Robert Davies, Capital, State and White Labour in South Africa, 1900–60 (Harvester Press, 1979). Straddling both generations is the work of Martin Legassick, much of it unpublished but otherwise scattered in, among other journals, the Review of African Political Economy, African Affairs and the Journal of Southern African Studies. ‘South Africa: Capital Accumulation smd Violence’ in Economy and Society, III (1974) is an important example. On the economy in general there is a useful series of documents published in four volumes,
D. Hobart Houghton and Jennifer Dagut, Source Material on the South African Economy (Oxford University Press, Cape Town, 1972–3).
There is a large sociological and anthropological literature on African society in South Africa. Deserving special attention are the books of Bengt Sundkler on separatist churches, Bantu Prophets in South Africa (Oxford University Press, 1961 revised edn.) and Zulu Zion and Some Swazi Zionists (Gleerups, 1976) and those of Philip Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen (Oxford University Press, 1961) and his recently edited collection, Black Villagers in an Industrial Society (Oxford University Press, 1981). Outstanding accounts of community life in South Africa include
Monica Wilson and Archie Mafeje, Langa (Oxford University Press, 1963);
Pierre van den Berghe, Caneville (Wesleyan University Press, 1964);
J.B. Loudon, White Farmers, Black Labourers (Afrikastudiecentrum, Leiden and Africa Studies Centre, Cambridge, 1970) and
Rob Gordon, Mines, Migrants and Masters (Ravan Press, 1977). On social change in the reserves, William Beinart, ‘Joyini Inkomo’: The Origins of Migrancy from Pondoland’,/S4S, V (1979) is impressive.
Colin Murray, Families Divided (Cambridge University Press, 1981) is a major study of labour migration.
The political history of struggle is described by three moving if unbalanced accounts: Edward Roux, Time Longer than Rope (University of Wisconsin Press, 1964);
H.J. and R. Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa (Penguin, 1969) and ‘A. Lerumo’, Fifty Fighting Years (Inkululeko, 1971). There is a competent narrative history of the ANC in
Peter Walshe’s The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa, 1912–52 (University of California Press, 1970).
Gwendolen Carter and Thomas Karis, From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882–1964 (Hoover Institution Press, 1972–7), is an invaluable documentary collection in four volumes.
Marion Lacey, Working for Boroko: The Origins of a Coercive Labour System in South Africa (Ravan Press, 1981) covers the years of this chapter specifically. On the war and reconstruction, a recent article by Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido, ‘Lord Milner and the South African State’, HWJ, 8 (1979) is itself of great importance and also refers extensively to a large controversial literature on the period. Among the most important are also
Donald Denoon, A Grand Illusion (Longman, 1973); A.H. Jeeves, ‘Control of Migratory Labour on the Gold Mines in the Era of Kruger and Milner’, JSAS, II (1975) and Tim Keegan, ‘Restructuring of Agrarian Class Relations in a Colonial Economy: the Orange River Colony 1902–10’, JSAS, V (1979). The political history of unification is skillfully assessed in
Leonard Thompson, The Unification of South Africa (Clarendon Press, 1960). Shula Marks has written a history of the
Bambatha Rebellion, Reluctant Rebellion (Clarendon Press, 1970).
For the post-World War I period, the Rand Revolt serves as the central focus of a major analysis, Frederick Johnstone, Class, Race and Gold (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976).
Francis Wilson, Labour in the South African Gold Mines (Cambridge University Press, 1972) is a detailed liberal assessment of gold-mining labour. A recent history of the ICU,
P.L. Wickins, The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa (Oxford University Press, 1978) is the best available study. It may be supplemented with Kadalie’s own account, My Life and the ICU (Frank Cass, 1970). There is little equivalent material about other African politicians of this period, but see
D.D.T. Jabavu, The Black Question in South Africa (Negro Universities Press, reprint 1969) and the documents in Carter and Karris. Perhaps the most interesting assessment of the African petty bourgeoisie comes out of Shula Marks, ‘John L. Dube of Natal: The Ambiguities of Dependence’, JSAS, I (1975). See also her important study, ‘Natal, the Zulu Royal Family and the Ideology of Segregation’, JSAS, IV (1978).
Davenport, among others, can be used as a guide to the vagaries of ‘White’ politics and the large literature on the subject. The imperial historian Keith Hancock has written an authorised two-volume biography of Smuts (Cambridge University Press, 1965–8). The novelist Alan Paton produced an engaging and attractively written biography of his chief lieutenant, Hofmeyr (Oxford University Press, 1964). A classic statement of the liberal capitalist outlook is contained in R.F.A. Hoernle, South African Native Policy and the Liberal Spirit (Negro Universities Press, reprint, 1969). His career has been explored by Martin Legassick, ‘Race, Industrialization and Social Change: The Case of R.F. Hoernle’, AA, LXXV (1976). On capitalist ideology in South Africa more generally, there is an important new study,
Belinda Bozzoli, The Political Ideology of a Ruling Class (Routledge & KeganPaul, 1981).
The 1940s are only beginning to receive adequate historical attention, but see two articles that start to convey its turbulence: David Hemson, ‘Dock Workers, Labour Circulation and Class Struggles in Durban 1940–59’, JSAS, IV (1977) and Alf Stadler, ‘Birds in the Cornfield: Squatter Movements in Johannesburg, 1944–7’, JSAS, VI (1979).
Stadler’s piece is also included in the collection, Belinda Bozzoli, ed., Labour, Township and Protest (Ravan Press, 1979). With Eddie Webster, ed., Essays in Southern African Labour History (Ravan Press, 1979) it marks the growing development of social and labour history in South Africa which will soon be capped by the publication of Charles van Onselen’s major study of the early history of the
Rand. Jacklyn Cock, Maids and Madams (Ravan, 1981) takes on a neglected aspect of South African society impressively. The best guides to the unfolding historical study of South Africa have been the Journal of South African Studies, the South African Labour Bulletin and the collected seminar papers of the South African seminars of the University of London.
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© 1984 Bill Freund
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Freund, B. (1984). Industrialisation and South African Society, 1900–1940. In: The Making of Contemporary Africa. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17332-7_8
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