THE BREAKING STRAIN IN AFRICA
Lens, Sidney
The Breaking Strain in Africa by SIDNEY LENS \ This is the third of a series of articles by Mr. Lens on Africa. Others will follow in the February and March issues. A roving student of world...
...Thus, Sophiatown, a community inside Johannesburg which held 60,000 African inhabitants, many of whom owned freeholds, was declared a "European" area and its citizens forced to move to the specially constructed Meadowlands outside the city...
...THE SUN SETS on European As supremacy in Africa, tensions mount and rapport between the races becomes strained to the breaking point...
...Africans are approximately equally divided—one-third living in the native reserves, another third working on the white man's farms, and the remaining third clustered around the cities, either as servants, or mine and factory workers...
...We not only raise him into the world, but we earn his riches for him when he is an adult, and cover his grave when he dies...
...But in the Union of South Africa the ratio is three million Europeans against 9.5 million Negroes...
...Severe racial segregation here has been the accepted order of things since the country was unified in 1910, but what distinguishes the present period of apartheid—separate development of the races—from previous practice is the total rigidity, the almost religious purposefulness in carrying it out...
...Indians in Johannesburg are to be moved 20 miles...
...The practice of declaring an area "European" is becoming widespread...
...The Negroes in the reserves and on the farms are considered only a minor political danger, but those in and around the cities are a more formidable threat...
...Africans who live in the exclusively native Alexandertown or Sophiatown or Dube are afraid to go home after dark...
...The increasing tension in South Africa stems from an illogical but nonetheless compelling arithmetic...
...The Negro is relatively inefficient because he knows he cannot advance...
...To round out its policy, the Nationalist government has elaborated a program of "Bantustan"—a Negro homeland...
...South Africa could grow greatly if it could only expand its internal as well as its external market...
...As Chief Albert Luthuli, leader of the African National Congress, points out: "We have a weapon that can bring the white man to his senses...
...One hundred thousand Africans in Durban are scheduled to be pushed out of town to less propitious locations...
...But Dr...
...We are setting up five little Ghanas," they say...
...One of them, Transkei, is already in existence...
...Where the European has yielded political power, as in Morocco, he tries feverishly to hang onto economic power...
...And where the final battle for power is not yet fully joined, as in the Central African Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland or the Union of South Africa, he tightens his reign, either through artifice or naked terror...
...in Tanganyika 20,000 against nine million...
...Few people in these areas sleep with a window open...
...Each such "resettlement" leads to hundreds of tragedies...
...Many are deported to the reserves...
...The African, fearful of tricks and broken promises, is forced to overplay his hand...
...South Africa ranks among the highest crime areas in the world...
...If he is interrogated by police the burden of proof that he has been in the city less than 72 hours is on him—not the police...
...The Breaking Strain in Africa by SIDNEY LENS \ This is the third of a series of articles by Mr...
...As a mere "work-seeker" rather than "settler" this is considered sufficient...
...The Union of South Africa in a typical year has 14 times as many murders in proportion to population as does London...
...Families do take root in urban areas where they are legally forbidden...
...Patterns of rule that have been institutionalized over four generations do not die easily...
...Those that had freeholds are compensated only 65 to 80 per cent of the true value of their holdings...
...Indians who have operated stores and lived in Durban for generations are being forced into the hinterlands, where trade is enormously more difficult...
...When he finds a job he must have it entered on his papers, and when and if he changes jobs he must not only get official approval, but have it recorded...
...The laws, of course, are violated...
...The economy is hampered because the low wage standard for Africans seriously curtails the market...
...They affect production costs adversely and limit national expansion...
...The African worker is poorly paid—only one-fifth the average for white workers—but his labor costs come high...
...Almost all favor segregation, but they would like it in milder doses and with greater flexibility...
...f It has reversed the flow of Negroes from the reserve areas to the cities through the formation of so-called "Bantustans," ostensibly autonomous Negro "states...
...What the Nationalist government seeks is to reduce the politically threatening growing proportion of blacks to whites in the cities...
...Here, in the "Ghanas," the Negro is expected to have his permanent home, under a Negro government, to which he will return after a period of work on the white man's farms or in his mines and factories...
...If he wants to look for work in the city he must have written authorization to stay for more than 72 hours...
...It is the halter around his neck...
...But the government continues, deluded with the notion that total separation of the races means total security for the white man...
...He is the author of several books on foreign affairs and American labor and has contributed to many American publications, including the New Republic, Yale Review, and the Harvard Business Quarterly.—THE EDITORS...
...In Kenya there are 60,000 Europeans as against six million Africans...
...in the Belgian Congo 110,000 against 13.5 million...
...The Nationalists, led by Prime Minister H. F. Verwoerd, are consumed with the notion that salvation lies in statistical safeguards...
...Verwoerd and his associates intend to carve out five areas of South Africa where the Negroes, theoretically, will have autonomy...
...The second weapon in this new offensive for supremacy is the Group Areas Act, passed in 1950 and amended in 1956...
...Nowhere have the lines been drawn more taut than in that bastion of "white supremacy," the Union of South Africa...
...in Algeria one million French against nine million Moslems...
...others either pay a fine or work out a jail term on the white man's farms...
...The employer cannot upgrade a competent Negro nor choose the most efficient man for the job...
...His windows have burglar alarms and he does not go out at night except in his automobile...
...Not only is the country the richest and most industrialized of all Africa, but it has the greatest proportion of whites to Negroes...
...They are reconciled to paying whatever economic price is necessary to secure political domination...
...What has blinded the white man with fear is not only today's arithmetic, but, even more, tomorrow's...
...If he wants to leave his reserve he must have permission written into his pass book by the native commissioner...
...The rigid controls boomerang on the white man in many other ways...
...The system of job reservation, which allots the higher-paying positions to whites, makes both white and black labor chronically inefficient...
...f It has developed compact Negro suburbs through the Group Areas Act...
...As the winds of African nationalism blow in from the north the Negro becomes more daring in his demands for equality—and the white extremist reacts by putting up stronger dykes...
...Most thinking men in South Africa consider the plan a pipe-dream...
...Families that have been living "illegally" in their present abodes are sent back to the reserves...
...This new location boasts better housing but the African cannot own property—he can only rent from the government...
...Many members of the new manufacturing class oppose the Verwoerd policy...
...the white man, dreaming of a miracle which will preserve his privileged position, uses ruse or force—or both—to salvage what he can from the wreckage...
...Many thousands more live with servant girls in the huts provided for them behind the white man's home in the cities...
...A roving student of world affairs, Mr...
...Tens of thousands live illegally in the crowded quarters of fellow-tribesmen...
...Arrests, far from solving the problem, only aggravate social relationships, because the resulting disrepect for law creates a climate of criminality...
...In Transkei Negroes have actually been put into positions of power, but they have been carefully...
...Lens recently returned from an extensive journey through Africa...
...The state has mounted three major offensives to consolidate control over the African: f It has tightened the movement of the people through the hated "pass book...
...Verwoerd and his Afrikaner government (Afrikaner is the white descendant of the Dutch, not to be confused with African Negro) have no intention of relaxing...
...The bane of the native South African's existence is the "pass book...
...the white is inefficient because he knows he cannot be downgraded...
...A thousand Africans a day—almost 400,000 a year—are convicted of some irregularity in their books...
...Economically he is in our hands from birth to death...
...The regulations for the African are so complex—a 1,500 page book is being published compiling them— that no matter what he does he is "guilty" of something...
...The white man, too, lives under this strain...
...Where he is on the verge of giving up control, as in the Belgian Congo, he applies divisive pressures to get an agreement in advance that will guarantee him control of the mines, farms, and other holdings that made him rich...
...Colored people in Pretoria are to be resettled in the undeveloped area of Dererpoort...
Vol. 24 • January 1960 • No. 1
