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

Laws provide cheap labour

Laws provide cheap labour

The basic purpose of Apartheid is, and always has been, to secure an abundant supply of cheap labour, and this can only be realised by forcing people to do what is required of them. There are laws which are only applicable to Africans. Apartheid entails an elaborate system of rules for regulating the lives of the blacks.

Labour laws include the Pass Laws, which send thousands of African workers to jail every year. For the year ending June 30, 1967, the Commissioner of Police reported 315,756 prosecutions of Africans under the heading "Registrations and Production of Documents by Bantu". The following year the number was 352,517. In 1969 the number was 318,825—an average of 870 prosecutions a day. In 1970 alone 600,000 were prosecuted.

Photo of South Afican man

Job Reservation: Under the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1956, the Minister of Labour may bar anyone from any job because of race. Very few Africans have the chance of moving up the occupational ladder, and even those few who do, do not get the same rate for the job as whites.

Labour Bureaux: Mostly created in the so-called "homelands". Here Africans have to register and be re-employed to be dispatched to an industrial area.

All are part of this system. The essence of Apartheid is to be found in the complex of rules and the arbitary force with which whites have used to dominate Africans and to make them their servants. This reduction of human beings to fuel bricks in an economic machine is acheived in several ways:-
a)Africans are denied the right to join or form recognised Trade Unions.
b)Africans are denied the means necessary to enable them to live independently of the white economy.
c)Africans have no right of permanent residence near the industrial area except in those areas designated by the Government, which are in most cases exceedingly poor. In fact no industries exist in some of these areas. They lie outside the bounds of modern South Africa.