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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 9. 1ts May 1973

African labour vital

African labour vital

The implementation of the Apartheid policy seems to imply an increasing separation of races on every level, but the opposite has taken place during the last 23 years. More and more African workers have come to the cities, not to live, but to work there and to go back to the rural areas. The importance of the African labour force has increased. Africans are employed in semi-skilled jobs and as operatives, although they are not paid the rate for the job. These trends indicate a greater degree of economic independence between the races. The African workers appear to be increasingly part of one social structure. This greater integration suggests to some that apartheid is not really working. It further suggests that the goals of apartheid are impossible ones, and leads to the conclusion that apartheid is bound to disintegrate on its own. This thinking is based on incorrect premises.

Apartheid is not concerned with separate development. It is in reality an indirect system of forced labour. Africans constitute more than 70 per cent of the labour force in South Africa. The South African economy cannot do without them. So there is nothing surprising about some recent changes in the occupational distribution of the African labour force. These are the normal results of economic growth. This does not signify a breakdown of apartheid at all. The changes have taken place within the South African traditional way of life—that is, white supremacy. The social system remains the same. Whites are wealthy and free. Blacks remain poor and oppressed. Their lives are controlled by laws made by whites in Parliament.