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.

Although African earnings in secondary industry are considerably higher, and the wage gap between White and Black correspondingly lower (approximately 5 to 1), nevertheless the same tendency is apparent there. In his book South African Predicament, the economist F.P. Spooner states that between 1949 and 1954 there was a decline in the real income of Africans, in all sectors of the economy, of 6 5 percent. In the same period, the real income of Whites rose by 46 percent.

In a paper presented to a conference of the National Development Foundation in October 1961, Mr G.C.V. Graham, President of the Midland Chamber of Industries, stressed that the government's labour legislation was unable to deal with the problem. This, he said, was 'amply demonstrated by the fact that the gap between non-European semi-skilled and unskilled wages and that of European wages has been widening steadily since 1945, and that they are, on average, still well below subsistence level'.

Figures quoted by Professor Houghton in The South African Economy show that in 1936 the average African wage in industry was about 18,5 percent of the average White wage, rising to about 25 percent in 1945 but declining to about 19 percent again by 1961.

Nor has the African benefited much, if at all, from the so-called 'great boom' from 1961 to 1967. We have seen that real gross domestic product during this period increased by an average of 6 percent a year, and that real income per capita (all races) rose by an average of 3.75 percent a year between 1961 and 1965. Analysis of the figures shows once again, however, that the lion's share of the increase has accrued to the Whites. Dr Wilson's analysis of African mine wages shows that 'since 1960, although Black earnings have increased in real terms, White earnings have gone up much more. Thus, in current terms, the average Black mineworker in 1966 was earning 16 cents more a shift worked than in 1960. But the average White in the industry was earning R2.88 more'.

As for industry, figures published by the Bureau of Statistics in Pretoria on 24 August 1968 showed that the average wage of Africans working in factories had increased by thirty percent between 1960_1 and 1965-6, compared with a twenty-five percent increase for White workers in factories. But in 1966 the average African factory worker earned only R480 a year compared to the White worker's R2,500. The Bureau stated that in the five-year period covered by its survey the number of Whites in factory work increased from 174,000 to 213,000, while the number of Africans increased from 254,000 to 361,000.

African factory workers are, of course, the labour aristocracy of the community, and the figures quoted for them are not applicable to other groups.

A survey of the incomes of African families in Soweto Johannesburg's main African township, housing over 900,000 people), conducted by the non-European Affairs Department of Johannesburg City Council in 1967, showed that, although average wages had risen by about 14 percent since 1962, 67.6 percent of African families were living below the breadline. The minimum monthly expenditure on bare necessities for a family of five was calculated to be R53.32. In the case of families with only one wage-earner, the estimated monthly shortfall was R12.57 a month (compared with 13.56 a month in 1962).

An earlier report, compiled jointly by the Johannesburg City Engineer and the Manager of the Non-European Affairs Department of the Johannesburg City Council, stated that the efficiency of the African labour force was unlikely to improve in 'the foreseeable future' because the worker's productivity was limited by his lack of education.

Comparing the increase in African wages with the rise in the cost of living, the report said that since 1930 the latter had doubled over each twenty-year period. 'Bantu wages barely keep pace with the rising cost of living and are a matter for extreme concern. The general mass of Bantu have not really improved their positions financially in the two decades 1946-66.' Because of this, the report said, few Africans could afford to give their children much education. 'Poor families, once they have paid for their housing, food and travelling, have virtually nothing left over for clothing, household goods or other amenities (Rand Daily Mail, 29 March 1967).

Commenting on the Johannesburg situation, the Financial Mail said: 'lest it be thought that Soweto is a special case, countrywide surveys conducted by the Trade Union Council (TUCSA) aver the somewhat longer period 1958-67 show a similar picture' (2 February 1968).

A similar admission was made by Mr H. Goldberg, President of the Bantu Wage and Productivity Association, who in his 1967 report to the association's annual meeting estimated that for the first time in ten years there had been a fall in the average real wages of African workers. 'In the past 12 months figures produced by the Bureau of Statistics show that average Bantu wages in manufacturing industry have risen only by about 3 percent - which is less than the rise in the consumer price index.' Mr Goldberg blamed employers for having done less in 1967 than for many years past to raise the living standards of their African employees (Star, 19 December 1967).

The government itself, though constantly boasting of what it has done for the Africans, is one of the worst employers. The Rand Daily Mail of 10 February 1965 reported:

Startling revelations of the low standard of wages paid to non-White civil servants and railway employees have resulted from a series of questions put to members of the Cabinet in the last week.... Mr Schoeman replied that 96.6 percent of the 111,035 African, Coloured and Indian railway workers were earning less than R2 a day. Senator de Klerk said 59 percent of the 83,434 non-White civil servants were also below that level. The R2 a day figure in each instance included salary, rations and quarters allowances.

The report of the Controller and Auditor-General for 1965-6 stated that direct expenditure by the State during that year on behalf of Africans in the Republic (excluding the Transkei) had totalled R137,195,815 - approximately ten percent of the total budget. Of this amount, R16 million had been for general administration and R54 million for capital expenditure, leaving only R67 million for social services. The Transkei Budget had entailed a further R16 million, most of which had been advanced by the central government. Calculations by Dr G.M.E. Leistner, published in the journal Stats of 15 December 1966, estimated that a further R108 million were spent on behalf of Africans by provincial administrations and local authorities. This would give a total White' expenditure on 'Blacks' of approximately R262 million for the year 1965-6 - approximately twenty percent of the total Budget.

Yet even this expenditure has been criticised as wasteful by right-wing Nationalists, who have over the years constantly accused the government of paying more attention to the Blacks than to the Whites. To its shame, the United Party has also joined in these attacks, thinking in this way to embarrass the government and attract votes from disgruntled Nationalists who feel that the government is handing over their patrimony to the Africans.

Dr Verwoerd himself, when Prime Minister, had to defend his concept of Bantustan against the critics in his own ranks. Opening the Nationalist Party's election campaign in March 1966, he said: 'Anyone who uses his intelligence will see that it is absolutely wrong to accuse us of giving too much to the Bantu at the cost of the Whites.' He assured his audience that every penny of the money would be paid back to 'White' South Africa in the course of time. 'It's like a loan,' he explained.

In a speech made to the Assembly on 28 March 1957, Dr Verwoerd said that, in addition to income tax, general tax, and local tax, the amount contributed by Africans in various ways to the national revenue amounted to between R60 and R80 million a year. However this figure was calculated, it will undoubtedly have increased in the subsequent decade; the figure for direct and indirect taxation and levies alone in 1965-6 was approximately R42 million (calculated by Muriel Horrell in the 1967 Survey of Race Relations), and in his speech quoted above Dr Verwoerd indicated that contributions by Africans more or less balanced the cost of the services they received.

Other cabinet ministers have been even more blatant in their defence of government policy. The Minister of Bantu Administration and Development, Mr M.C. Botha, at a Nationalist Party election meeting in Pretoria, said that one of the false stories which was being spread by the Nationalist Party's opponents was that too much was being done for the Bantu. He compared the housing programme for Whites, of the government, Railways, ISCOR and Defence in 1961-2 (7,852 houses costing R38,845,000), with that for the 'Bantu' (R3,560,000) (Die Transvaler, 22 March 1968).

In May 1968, the information officer of the Nationalist Party, Dr C.P. Mulder, M.P. for Randfontein, replying to 'certain Nationalists who complained that the Government spent too much money on Africans', said: 'But do these people realise that the Government spends as much money on pensions for the Whites as it spends on the Africans as a whole?' (Rand Daily Mail, 6 May 1968).

Figures of income tax paid in the 1967 tax year reveal the extent of the gap between White and Black living standards:

The riches of South Africa, which enable the Whites to enjoy one of the highest living standards in the world (only the U.S., Canada, and Sweden have a higher per capita income than White South Africa), are based on the poverty and exploitation of the Blacks. This was indirectly acknowledged by none other than Dr H.J. van Eck, Chairman of ISCOR and of the Industrial Development Corporation, who said in a speech at Vereeniging in April 1967 that South Africans were too fond of boasting about the Republic's mineral wealth - gold, diamonds, coal, copper and other minerals. The fact was that these riches were not relatively so abundant, and the ore content was often so low that in other countries it would not be possible to mine it economically. South Africa's wealth lay not in its so-called natural riches but in the remarkable quality of its human material. South Africa was able to achieve all that it had done ' because of extremely efficient organisation and the skill, enterprise and initiative of her engineers and scientists. So all this talk about our natural riches should be qualified. We must glorify not the metals of the earth but our remarkable human material' (Rand Daily Mail, 22 April 1967).

No doubt South African White engineers and scientists are as capable as Dr van Eck makes out; but only the most chauvinistic Nationalist can really believe that they are innately superior to American, British, German, or Swedish engineers. The human material that Dr van Eck should glorify is the African workers, whose underpaid labour is what really makes South African mining 'economic'.

The wealth of the Republic is extracted at the cost of the blasted lives and health of the non-Whites.

On 26 May 1967, the Minister of Planning gave the House of Assembly the following figures of life expectancy:

No figures are available for Africans, because the registration of African births and deaths is too incomplete to provide a basis for calculation. But perhaps the worst feature of the Minister's answer is that it refers to figures calculated for the period 1950-2. Apparently no calculation has been made since then. Whatever the reason for this omission, it at least prevents the government from claiming that under Nationalist rule the Africans live longer than they did under the United Party government which preceded it.

Early mortality among non-Whites is preceded by a high incidence of the poverty diseases. The following table shows the incidence of some such illnesses which occurred in the four racial groups in 1965. Infant mortality is expressed as deaths per 1,000 live births. All other figures are notifications per 100,000 of the population group.

No statistics are published of African infant mortality rates.

(Article by an unidentified doctor in the magazine Sechaba, June 1968)

A survey conducted by Professor J.D.L. Hansen, Associate Professor of Child Health at the University of Cape Town, showed that Coloured and African children were dying at fifteen and twenty-five times the rate of White children, with gastro-enteritis, pneumonia, and tuberculosis as the greatest killers. 'Recent studies in hospital showed that it was undernourished, protein-deficient children who died of these diseases' (Cape Argus, 31 October 1962).

A Pretoria survey conducted a few years later by the National Nutritional Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research showed that, age for age, African children lagged behind Whites in height and weight. An eighth of the African schoolchildren between the ages of seven and fifteen years, living in the Pretoria area, suffered from protein deficiency, and a further fifty-six percent were in the 'low' category. In a previous survey it had been established that only 0-2 percent of White children suffered from protein deficiency. The survey also showed that twenty-five percent of African children were deficient in Vitamin B2, while nearly half were deficient in the anti-pellegra vitamin, nicotinic acid (Star, 3 January 1966).

These are the realities of 'separate development' in South Africa, too often concealed from the gaze of the world. Until these disparities in wealth and health between the various racial groups are eliminated, one cannot even begin to speak of a just social order.

[Contents] [Chapter 17]