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The Historical Roots of Post-Apartheid Intra-Working-Class Racism

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The Historical Roots of Post-Apartheid Intra-Working-Class Racism PEER REVIEW The Historical Roots of Post-Apartheid Intra-Working-Class Racism By Tlhabane Mokhine ‘Dan’ Motaung | Peer Review Abstract oth European colonialism and apartheid shaped labour and white labour, whose world outlooks were the economic history of South Africa, at the heart deeply immersed in racist metaphysics. Post-apartheid Bof which was the super exploitation of Black South Africa has inherited this dual, contradictory, and labour for the benefits of capital, the state, and white mutually antagonistic historical consciousness. This labour. While the early mercantile and agricultural has been exacerbated by poor economic performance economic stages influenced South Africa’s racial based on a neo-liberal framework, the social visibility capitalism, it was the era of the mineral revolution in the of the often-self-assertive emerging Black middle late 19th century – as well as the attendant imperative class resulting from government affirmative policies, for cheap, Black labour – which formed the bedrock of and the relative impoverishment of the white working the Union of South Africa in 1910 and later necessitated class as they begin to face the cut and thrust of labour the rise of the apartheid state. With vested interests in market with no preferential state cover. In view of this the racist and later racialist order, which constituted history of racialised capitalism, racism in post-apartheid them as the racialised labour aristocracy, white South Africa is largely located within the Black and labour conceived of its identity – in racial and cultural white working-class socio-economic space, as the latter terms – as part of European society. Consequently, an forfeited its racially vested interests while the former increasing social gulf emerged between Black/African derive the benefits of corrective state action. Volume 86 / 2021 1 PEER REVIEW Introduction ‘Who controls the past controls the future. And who controls the present controls the past.’ – George In view of this history of Orwell racialised capitalism (where a South Africa’s history was shaped within the context racist philosophy legitimated of European colonialism, beginning in 1492, a period officially sanctioned material which ‘gave the world a centre and a periphery’ inequities), racism in post- (Blaunt, 1992: 2). In this racialised global geography, apartheid South Africa is largely the former was white and European and the latter located within the Black and was African, Asian, and Latin American. As the global white working classes. climate of racism and racialism began to hold sway as the order of things, the South African localised version of this racialisation phenomenon evolved the socially and economically visible upward mobility within an economic context: first of mercantile of some sections of the Black population (i.e. the Black capitalism, followed by agricultural capitalism, and – middle class) by dint of affirmative legislation and the with the discovery of minerals in the mid-19th century attendant process of post-colonial elite formation. At – industrial capitalism (Terreblanche, 2000, 1994; the interface of this epochal social change, marked by Magubane, 1979; Elphick and Giliomee, 1979). the reassertion of scarred African/Black identities and an economy wilting in the doldrums, an undercurrent Both British colonialism (which took on the hue of of hostile intra-working-class relations have emerged. racism during the segregation era) and the era of apartheid racialism (starting in 1948) racialised society This essay confines itself to the historical period within the capitalist logic. Black people were turned starting with the formation of the Union Government into a labouring class at the service of the white in 1910. This moment was largely a synthesis of historical master population: their super exploitation, land currents (mercantile and agricultural capitalism) that dispossession, and structured low-paid employment moulded the evolution of race and class materially and guaranteed better remuneration for both capital ideologically, sculpting the enduring character of the and the white working class (McDonald, 2006; emerging society as a racialised capitalist order based Terreblanche, 2002). The result of this structured on the mineral revolution of the late 18th century. subordination of Black labour was the creation of racialised capitalism, at the heart of which lodged the This essay argues that through both the historical practice of labour aristocracy. The white workforce, phases of British segregation (racism, 1910–1948) culturally and racially differentiated from the Black and apartheid (racialism, 1948—1980s), the white workforce, was given tangible stakes in the defence working class consciousness was infused with what and continuance of the system of racial oppression Fukuyama calls megalothymia (2018: 22), ‘something (Magubane, 1979, 1996; Terreblanche, 1994; De Kiewiet, that by its very nature cannot be shared because it 1959). Anchored on the ideology of racism at the level is based on one’s position relative to someone else’. of the superstructure, this system of racial privilege Megalothymia, as Fukuyama further elaborates, ‘is fed off prevailing global notions of racial superiority the desire to be recognised as superior’ (2018: 22). In (De Kiewiet, 1957; Magubane, 1979; Fredrickson, 1981). the case of South Africa, it can be understood as a sanctified racial category in which British colonialism In view of this history of racialised capitalism (where and apartheid placed white people. a racist philosophy legitimated officially sanctioned material inequities), racism in post-apartheid South Still drawing on Fukuyama, I contend that the Africa is largely located within the Black and white rising assertion of African nationalism following the working classes. The latter forfeited its racially vested dissolution of apartheid reflected isothymia, the interests, while the Black working class derive benefits ‘demand to be respected on an equal basis with from corrective state action. Compounding matters is other people’ (2018: xiii). Framed in egalitarian terms 2 THE THINKER PEER REVIEW and expressed through constitutional dispensation, ‘alliance of gold and maize’. The formula on African nationalism was inclusive in its central tenets which this alliance was built – a formula that was despite its new-found, post-apartheid euphoric inherently exploitative – remained the economic exuberance. However, the need for historical redress foundation of the system of racial capitalism until meant consciously adopting racially affirming the early 1970s. policies. This seemed to rouse the resentment of the white working class, who were just beginning to From Terreblanche’s analysis, it follows that racial confront biting post-apartheid capitalist conditions capitalism is a definite social order characterised without the familiar protection of the state. Economic by a plethora of racist laws meant to first entrench stagnation, which failed to either keep up with or the vested interests of capital (gold and maize), and bankroll transformation aspirations, meant that the second the interests of white workers above those of white working class’ thymos, ‘the part of the soul that Black workers. Fukuyama’s theory indicates that these craves recognition of dignity’ (Fukuyama, 2016: xiii), asymmetrical racial relations enrooted megalothymia and isothymia were negatively impacted. within the people of European descent, while impairing the thymos (‘the demand of the soul craving Some scholars ascribe the apparent failure of the recognition and dignity’) as well as the isothymia post-apartheid state to grow the economy, and (‘the demand to be respected on an equal basis with thus ensure a fairly commensurate distribution and other people’) of Black people. White supremacy was consumption of public goods to all South Africans, to implanted within white working-class consciousness the neoliberal economic choices the governing party and tendentiously anchored on material incentives to adopted shortly after assuming power (Turok, 2008; sustain it within the overall logic of the racist order. Mohammed, in Mbeki, 2011). Stagnant economic conditions in a society with hyper-sensitive racial Within the context of developing modernisation and ethnic self-consciousness meant not just the in South Africa, the white working class was always exacerbation of inherited mutual resentment between protected against competition from the Black Black and white people, especially of working-class working class on the grounds of race (De Kiewiet, 1957; provenance, but also sharpened contradictions Magubane, 1996). Magubane argues that ‘an abstract within the ethnically differentiated Black labour itself class analysis not only liquidates the national question, (an equally apposite sub-theme which is beyond the but ignores critical differences in the exploitation of scope of this essay). Black and white workers which are due specifically to racism’ (1996: 4). Throughout the period of racial British Segregation and Racial Capitalism, domination, from segregation to apartheid, the white 1910–1948 and Black proletariats never joined forces; instead, the two working class forces dichotomised racially, what A closer look at the history of South Africa reveals with the collaboration between the state and the intense intra-class animosities preceding but pernicious hand of capital (MacDonald, 2006). congealing into clearly discernible form in the period after the South
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