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‘NOT A SINGLE WHITE PERSON SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO UNDER’: SWARTGEVAAR AND THE ORIGINS OF SOUTH AFRICA'S WELFARE STATE, 1924–1929

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 November 2007

JEREMY SEEKINGS
JEREMY SEEKINGS
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
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Abstract

The origins of South Africa's distinctive welfare state lay in the late 1920s, not in the 1930s as has generally been suggested, and long predated the quite different turn to social welfare in late colonial Africa. For the National Party and Labour Party – partners in the coalition Pact Government of 1924–9 – non-contributory old-age pensions were a crucial pillar in the ‘civilized labour’ policies designed to lift ‘poor whites’ out of poverty and re-establish a clear racial hierarchy. Welfare reform was thus, in significant part, a response to the swartgevaar or menace of black physical, occupational and social mobility. African political elites, although distracted by other reforms at the time, were quick thereafter to protest at their exclusion from the nascent welfare system.

Keywords

South Africaapartheidsocialstate
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , November 2007 , pp. 375 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

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11 Union of South Africa, Second Report of the Commission on Old Age Pensions and National Insurance (Cape Town: UG 50 of 1928; henceforth ‘Pienaar Commission, Second Report’); Third Report of the Commission on Old Age Pensions and National Insurance (Cape Town: UG 26 of 1929; henceforth ‘Pienaar Commission, Third Report’).

12 Two exceptions, which note the Pienaar Commission in passing, are Sagner, ‘Ageing and social policy’, and C. Meth and S. Piper, ‘Social security in historical perspective’ (Conference paper no. 250, Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development in Southern Africa, University of Cape Town, 1984).

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14 H. Bradford, A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924–1930 (New Haven, 1987).

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16 Pienaar Commission, First Report, 10. See also J. Bottomley, ‘Public policy and white rural poverty in South Africa, 1881–1924’ (Ph.D. thesis, Queen's University, Kingstone, 1990); Iliffe, The African Poor, 115–23; Pienaar Commission, Second Report.

17 Quoted in Parnell, S. and Hart, D., ‘Self-help housing as a flexible instrument of state control in 20th century South Africa’, Housing Studies, 14 (1999), 372CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Berger, ‘White poverty’, 214–30, 267–82; Lewis, Industrialisation, 25–7.

19 W. K. Hancock, Smuts: The Fields of Force, 1919–1950 (Cambridge, 1968), 155; M. Creswell, An Epoch of the Political History of South Africa in the Life of Frederic Hugh Page Creswell (Cape Town, 1956), 93–4; Berger, ‘White poverty’, 193–7.

20 Cape Times, 4 June, 9 June, 14 June 1924.

21 Hancock, Smuts, 160.

22 Cape Times, 13 June 1924.

23 Cape Times, 19 May, 4 June 1924.

24 Giliomee, Afrikaners, 391–3.

25 Hancock, Smuts, 159.

26 See, for example, S. Dubow, Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919–36 (Basingstoke, 1989).

27 Hansard, House of Assembly (hereafter ‘HoA’), 12 Aug. 1924, cols. 429–32.

28 Circular no.5, 31 Oct. 1924, quoted in Year Book of the Union of South Africa, vol. 9 (1924), 203.

29 South Africa, Report of the Economic and Wage Commission, paras. 332–3.

30 Lewis, Industrialisation, 76, 80; Simons and Simons, Class and Colour; Davies, Capital, State and White Labour.

31 Morrell, ‘South African state’; A. Jeeves and J. Crush, ‘Introduction’, in Jeeves and Crush (eds.), White Farms, Black Labor: The State and Agrarian Change in Southern Africa, 1910–1950 (Pietermaritzburg, 1997); S. Schirmer, ‘Mechanisation motives in South African agriculture: c. 1940–1980’ (unpublished paper, 2003).

32 Pienaar Commission, Third Report, 23–9.

33 Union of South Africa, ‘Memorandum on the subject of an Old Age Pension Scheme for the Union of South Africa, together with a brief description of various existing schemes’, by J. Collie (1924).

34 At no stage does there seem to have been any discussion of gender discrimination, presumably because a large proportion of the deserving elderly poor were widows.

35 Hansard, HoA, 1925, cols. 1,987–95.

36 The findings of this committee (the Hancock Committee) are summarized in Year Book of the Union of South Africa, vol. 9, 201; South Africa, Report of the Economic and Wage Commission, 112 and 339.

37 Pienaar Commission, First Report, 10.

38 Ibid. 9–10.

39 Ibid. 32.

40 Ibid. 34.

41 Data on wages from South Africa, Report of the Economic and Wage Commission.

42 Pienaar Commission, First Report, 24.

43 Hansard, HoA, 1928, col. 1,250.

44 Ibid. col. 1,252 (Watt; see also Blackwell).

45 Bill no. 26 of 1928.

46 Hansard, HoA, 1928, cols. 3,982, 3,993–4 (Havenga); 4,182, 4,305–12, 4,351–2 (criticisms).

47 Hansard, HoA, 1928, col. 3,982.

48 Pienaar Commission, First Report, 22 and 40.

49 Pienaar Commission, Second Report, 7–8.

50 Pienaar Commission, First Report, 15; also 32.

51 Hansard, HoA, 1928, col. 3,998.

52 Pienaar Commission, Second Report, 48; Third Report.

53 Pienaar Commission, Second Report, 22–4, 26, 63.

54 Pienaar Commission, Third Report, 33–4.

55 C. Meso-Lago, Social Security in Latin America: Pressure Groups, Stratification and Inequality (Pittsburgh, 1978); J. Malloy, The Politics of Social Security in Brazil (Pittsburgh, 1979).

56 Carnegie Commission, The Poor White Problem in South Africa: Joint Findings and Recommendations (Stellenbosch, 1932), paras. 112, 122.

57 J. F. W. Grosskopf, Economic Report: Rural Impoverishment and Rural Exodus (Stellenbosch, 1932), 229.

58 Ibid. 229–30.

59 South Africa, ‘Memorandum’.

60 Pienaar Commission, Third Report, 15.

61 See also Giliomee, H., ‘The non-racial franchise and Afrikaner and Coloured identities, 1910–94’, African Affairs, 94 (1999), 199–225CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Hansard, HoA, 1928, cols. 4,000–1. See also cols. 4,188–9 (Chaplin).

63 Ibid. col. 2,990.

64 Ibid. col. 4,194.

65 Union of South Africa, Report of the Native Economic Commission (Pretoria, 1932); W. M. Macmillan, Complex South Africa (London, 1930).

66 The NP is also likely to have been influenced by lobbying by struggling farmers in poorer rural districts. When magistrates distributed maize to impoverished African people during a famine in 1927, white farmers protested that this prevented them recruiting cheap farm labour and selling their own grain. White farmers denounced what they called the ‘pusillanimous petting of the natives’ by magistrates, and tried to blockade shipments of relief maize. See D. Wylie, Starving on a Full Stomach: Hunger and the Triumph of Cultural Racism in Modern South Africa (Charlottesville, 2001), 77.

67 C. Kadalie, My Life in the ICU (New York, 1970); E. Roux, Time Longer Than Rope: A History of the Black Man's Struggle for Freedom in South Africa (London, 1948), 199–200.

68 See T. Karis and G. M. Carter (eds.), From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, vol. 1 (Stanford, 1972).

69 Pienaar Commission, First Report, 8.

70 Report of T. D. Mweli Skota, Secretary-General of the ANC, document 48h, in Karis and Carter (eds.), From Protest to Challenge, 307; Bradford, Taste of Freedom; Roux, Time Longer Than Rope.

71 ‘Report on proceedings and resolutions of the Non-European Conference, in the Cape Times, January 4 and 6, 1930’, document 45 in Karis and Carter (eds.), Protest to Challenge, 273.

72 ‘Proceedings and reports of Select Committees at the Session of 1930’, Transkeian Territories General Council, 24 April 1930, 73.

73 Minutes of Native Conference, 9–12 Dec. 1930, included in Report of the Native Affairs Commission for the Years 1927–1931 (UG 26 of 1932), 17, 34–5.

74 Non-European Conference, Minutes of Third Conference held at Bloemfontein during January 5th, 6th and 7th, 1931 (Lovedale, 1931), 13.

75 P. Walsh, The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa (London, 1970), 85.

76 Opening address by the chief magistrate, Proceedings of the United Transkeian Territories General Council, 19 April 1937, 82.

77 Hansard, HoA, col. 3,997 (Henderson).

78 Ibid. 14 Aug. 1929, cols. 890–2.

79 D. F. Malan, ‘Foreword’, to Creswell, An Epoch.

80 T. Marshall, ‘Citizenship and social class’, in T. Marshall and T. Bottomore, Citizenship and Social Class (London, 1992 [1949]), 8.

81 Seekings, ‘The Carnegie Commission’.

82 Gray, J. L., ‘The comparative sociology of South Africa’, South African Journal of Economics, 5 (1937), 270CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 Year Book of the Union of South Africa, 1941.