Capitalism and Race in South Africa

Semester and Year Offered: Semester Winter and since 2013

Course Coordinator and Team: Dr Dhiraj Kumar Nite

Email of course coordinator: dhiraj[at]aud[dot]ac[dot]in

Pre-requisites: None

AIM: It presents an elaboration on the liberal and Marxian approaches to the emergence and development of capitalist farming, animal husbandry, industrial economy, and the racial division of labour in South Africa (1850s-2000s). The former approach has harped on the discourse of ‘white man’s burden’ and a privileged claim of the conqueror to resources. With time, the radical-liberal approach has also come into existence to present a humanitarian, utilitarian and constitutionalist emphases (Beinart 2001, Thompson 2001). In contrast, the Marxian approach has revealed the fact that the dynamics of capitalist development has been entwined with the instrument of racial differentiation and division of labour in its quest for cheap labour of black/African ‘natives’ in the colony or settler society. The demands for cheap black labour accompanied the attempt of white working men at preservation of their privilege by continually reinforcing the denial of skill and fraternal status to the black people (Wolpe 1972, Legassick 1974, Crush 1992, Alexander 2000). This course engages with debates: How did graduation of the segregation regime into the apartheid regime since 1948 eye on addressing the challenges to the system of cheap black labour? How did the new intellectual and skill attainment by the black population sap the cultural and political bases of the apartheid rule and lay the foundation for a multiracial democracy (Allen 2002, Moodie 1994, 2011) The black consciousness movement, as propounded by Steve Biko, expressed this underlying shift. The course also dwells on the interface among class, race, gender, and immigrants; thus, it incorporates new social history, which questions the simple Afrikaans and nationalist historical tropes. It delves into debates, and reveals the strength, limitation, and silence, as it were, found in available literature. It encourages the participant to reflect upon both historical literature and other reference materials.

Course Outcomes: On successful completion of the course:

1. Students acquire the tools of analysis of everyday life, society and economy in terms of racial identity, labour, land, capital, development, freedom and equality.
2. Students engage with a discussion on the significance of connected and comparative historical perspectives.
3. Students attain concepts and analytical design, as indicated under the subhead of aim of the course, useful for comprehending changes and continuities of our world in a comparative context.
4. Students work on the reference materials in a critical and comparative manner in order to grasp the sources of divergent viewpoints on historical episodes.
5. Students begin to work out a research plan.

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

1. Discussions on Human Nature, Capitalism, Race, and Historiographies of the Nine Myths
2. The African Social Formations; Colonisation of South Africa, Slavery, the Formation of a Settler Colony, the Frontier Tradition, the Racially-ordered Social
3. Farming, Industrialisation, the Segregation Regime
4. Worlds of the Rural and the Plantation People, the Location Tax, the Land Bank, the Native Land Act 1913
5. Worlds of Industries, the Cheap Labour, the Pass Laws, the Hut Tax and Poll Tax, the Native Labour Act, the Colour Bar, the Industrial Conciliation
6. Farmers, Capitalism, and Apartheid Nexus
7. The Defiance Campaigns; the Sharpeville Massacre, ‘the Spectre of A Black Revolution’ (1950s-60s)
8. ‘the Myth of European’s Liberalising Influence’
9. A Social History: Men, Women, Gender, Domestic services
10. Education, Arts, Critiques
11. African/Black Resistance, ‘the Black Consciousness Movement’, Emancipation
12. Black Empowerment Programmes, a Developmentalist-State, the Post-Soviet World order

Assessment Details with weights:

Reading List:

• I. Discussions on Human Nature, Capitalism, Race, and Historiographies of the Nine Myths
• Christopher Saunders, The Making of the South African Past: major historians on race and class, Cape Town: David Philip, 1988.
• Franz Fanon, White Masks, Black Skin, 1952
• McCall Teal, The Compendium of South African History and Geography, 1874,
• WM Macmillan, Bantu, Boer, and Briton, London, 1929/1963
• FR Johnstone, Class, Race and Gold, 1976
• Harrison Wright, The Burden of the Present, 1985
• Peter Alexander, Racism, Resistance and Revolution, 1987
• Alexander, Peter and Rick Halpern (eds.), Racialising Class, Classifying Race: Labour and Difference in Britain, the USA, and Africa, Palgrave Macmillan, Britain: 2000.
• Greenberg, Stanley, Race and Class in Comparative Development: South Africa in Comparative Perspective (Johannesburg: 1980).
• LeGoff, J. Medieval Civilisation.
• Braudel, F. Capitalism and Civilisation, Vol. II.
• Harvey, David. The Limits of Capital.
• Pikettey, Thomas, Capital of the 21st Century, 2013.
• II. The African Social Formations; Colonisation of South Africa, Slavery, the Formation of a Settler Colony, the Frontier Tradition, the Racially-ordered Social
• Marks, Shula and Atmore (eds.), Economy and Society in Preindustrial South Africa, (London: Longman, 1981/1987). [Various chapters]
• Walker, Cherryl (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945, (Cape Town: David Philip, 1990). [Various chapters]
• Thompson, Leonard. A History of South Africa, New Haven: Yale Uni. Press, 2001 [Chapter 1 & 2].
• Beinart, William. Twentieth Century South Africa, New York: OUP, 2001 [Chapters 1 &2].
• T Devenport and C Sounders. South Africa: A Modern History, Macmillan, 2000. [Part I]
• Wilson, M. and L. Thompson. The Oxford of South Africa, vol. I, 1969. (NMML)
• Allen, V.I. The Techniques of Resistance: The History of Black Mineworkers, Vol. 1, 1871-1948, England: Moore Press, 1992.
• Walker, C, ‘The women’s suffrage movement: The politics of gender, race and class’, in Walker (ed.), Gender and Women in Southern Africa, 1990, pp. 313-45.
• Marks, Shula, ‘Natal, the Zulu Royal Family and the Ideology of Segregation,’ in W. Beinart (ed.), Segregation and Apartheid in 20thc South Africa, 1995, pp. 91-112.
• III. Farming, Industrialisation, the Segregation Regime
• Marks, Shula and Rathbone (eds.), Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class Formation, Culture and Consciousness, 1870-1930, (London: Longman, 1982/987). [Various chapters]
• Alexander, Peter. Workers, War and the Origin of Apartheid, 2000.
• Beinart, W and Saul Dubow (Eds.), Segregation to Apartheid in 20thc South Africa, (London: Routledge, 1995). [All chapters]
• Walker, Cherryl (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945, (Cape Town: David Philip, 1990). Chapters 8: Walker, Cherryl, ‘Gender and the development of the migrant labour system c. 1850-1930: An overview’, in Walker (ed.), Women and Gender…, pp. 168-196.
• 9. Bonner, PL. ‘Desireable or undesirable Basotho women?’ Liquor, Prostitution and the migration of Basotho women to the Rand, 1920-1945’, in Walker (ed.), Women and Gender, pp. 221-50.
• Jonathan Crush and Charles Ambler (eds.), Liquor and Labour in Southern Africa, (Athens: Ohio Uni. Press, 1992). [Various chapters]
• Bienart, 20thc South Africa
• Herold Wolpe, Capitalism and Cheap Labour in South Africa: from segregation to apartheid, 1972.
• Martin Legassick, ‘Race, Industrialisation, and Social Change in South Africa: The Case of RF A Hoernle, African Affairs, 74, 1976
• Davies, Labour, Capital and State,
• IV. Worlds of the Rural and the Plantation People, the Location Tax, the Land Bank, the Native Land Act 1913
• Beinart, William. The Twentieth Century South Africa, New York: OUP, 2001. [Chapter 1,
• Bundy, Colin. ‘The Emergence and Decline of a South African Peasantry’, in African Affairs, Vol. 71, No. 285 (Oct., 1972), pp. 369-388
• Trapido, Stanley. ‘Landlord and Tenant in a Colonial Economy: The Transvaal 1880-1910’ in Journal of Southern African Studies (JSAS), Vol. 5 (1), 1978, pp. 26-58.
• Trapido, Stanley. ‘Reflections on Land, Office and Wealth in the South Africa Republic, 1850-1900’, in Shula Marks and A. Atmore, Preindustrial South Africa, 1987, pp. 350-368.
• Keegan, Tim. ‘Restructuring of Agrarian Class Relations in a colonial economy: the Orange River Colony, 1902-1910’, in JSAS Vol. 5 (2), 1979, pp. 234-54.
• Keegan, Tim. ‘The Sharecropping Economy, African Class Formation and the Natives’ Land Act of 1913 in the Highveld Maize Belt’, in Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone, Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African class formation, culture and consciousness 1870-1930, London: Longman, 1982/87.
• van Onselen, Charles. Kas Maine: The Seed is Mine, 2005
• Francis Wilson, ‘Farming in South Africa 1866-1966’ in Thompson, Oxford History of South Africa, vol. I, 1971.
• First, Ruth. The Farm Labour Scandal, 1959, New Age Pamphlet.
• Bozzoli, B. Transvaal Countryside and Towns, 1982
• Cook, Allen. Akin To Slavery: Prison labour in South Africa, 1982.
• Mbeki, Govan. South Africa: The Peasants’ Revolt, 1984.
• V. Worlds of Industries, the Cheap Labour, the Pass Laws, the Hut Tax and Poll Tax, the Native Labour Act, the Colour Bar, the Industrial Conciliation
• Marks, S and R Rathbone (eds.), Industrialisation and Social Change, 1987.
• Legassick and Hemson, 1976
• Bienart, 20thc South Africa, Chapter 8.
• Devenport and Sounders. A Modern History of South Africa, 2000.
• Fine, Ben and Zavareh Rustomjee. The Political Economy of South Africa, 1996.
• Lewis, John. Industrialisation and Trade Union Organisation in South Africa 1924-1955, 1984 (NMML)
• Innes, Anglo-American, 1984 (NMML)
• Marais, Hein, South Africa Pushed to the Limits: the Political Economy of Change, 2011 (NMML).
• VI. Farmers, Capitalism, and Apartheid Nexus
• Julia C Wells, We Now Demand! The History of Women’s Resistance to Pass Laws in South Africa, Johannesburg: Wits Uni. Press, 2001/1993.
• Wolpe, H. 1972. ‘Capitalism and cheap labour power in south Africa: from segregation to apartheid’, economy and society, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 25-56.
• Merle Lipton, Capitalism and Apartheid, 1986
• Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Mask, Pluto Press, London: 1986.
• Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, the Grove Press, 2004.
• Charles van Onselen, The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, A South African Sharecropper 1894-1985, Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publ., 2005/1997
• Alexander, P, Origins of Apartheid,
• Wolpe, Harold. Capitalism…, 1972
• Martin Leggassick, 1976.
• Legassick, Martin and David Hemson, Foreign Investment and the Reproduction of Racial Capitalism in South Africa, 1976.
• Keith Somerville, Southern Africa and the Soviet Union, London: 1993
• Ruth First, J Steele, and C Gurney, The South African Connection, 1972.
• VII. The Defiance Campaigns; the Sharpeville Massacre, ‘the Spectre of A Black Revolution’ (1950s-60s)
• M Lipton, Capitalism and Apartheid 1910-86, England: 1986
• Innes, Anglo: Anglo-American and the Rise of Modern South Africa, Johannesburg: 1984
• J Lang, Bullion Johannesburg: Men, Mines and the Challenge of Conflict, Johannesburg: 1986
• T Karis and GM Carter (ed), From Protest to Challenge: A documentary history of African politics in South Africa 1882-1964, volumes 1-4, California: 1977
• Mandela, No Easy Walk to Freedom, 1990
• Baruch Hirson, Revolutions in my Life, 1995
• Ronnie Kasrils, Armed and Dangerous: My underground struggle against apartheid, 1993
• Bunting, 1975.
• Allen, Dissent and Repression 1948-1982, England: 2002
• VIII. ‘the Myth of European’s Liberalising Influence’
• van Onselen, Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1982.
• Crush, Alan Jeeves and David Yudelman, South Africa’s Labour Empire: A History of Black Migrancy to the Gold Mines, 1991.
• Monica Cole, South Africa, 1961.
• Jonathan Crush and Charles Ambler (eds.), Liquor and Labour in Southern Africa, (Athens: Ohio Uni. Press, 1992).
• JK McNamara, Black Workers’ Conflict in the 1973-1982, University of Wits, 1985
• VI Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers in South Africa Vol. I, II, & III, 2002.
• Ruth First, Black Gold: The Mozambican miner, proletarian and peasant, 1983.
• RH Davies, Capital, State, and White Labour in South Africa 1900-1960, Brighton: 1979
• Katz EN, 1976. A trade union aristocracy: A history of white workers in the Transvaal and the general strike of 1913, Institute for African studies, UW, Joburg.
• Katz EN, 1994. The white death: Silicosis on the Witwatersrand gold mines 1886-1910, UW Press, Joburg.
• Katz EN, 1995. ‘The underround route to mining: Afrikaners and the Witwatersrand gold mining industry from 1902 to 1907 miners’ strike’, The Journal of the African History, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 467-489.
• Freund, Bill, ‘Labour Studies and Labour History in South Africa’, IRSH, 58 (2013): 493-519.
• Webster, Edie, Essays in Southern African Labour History (Johannesburg, 1978).
• IX. A Social History: Men, Women, Gender, Domestic services
• Dunbar Moodie, Going for Gold: Men, Mines and Migration, 1994
• Peter Alexander, ‘Challenging Cheap Labour Theory: Natal and Transvaal Coal Miners, c 1890-1950’, Labour History, 49 (2), pp. 47-70, 2008.
• JP Léger, ‘Safety in South African Gold Mines’, University of Witwatersrand, 1992.
• Dhiraj Kumar Nite and Paul Stewart, Mining Faces: An Oral History of Work on the Gold and Coal Mines in South Africa, 1950-2011, Johannesburg: Jacana Publ., 2012
• Gasa, Nomboniso (Ed.), Women in South African History: They remove boulders and cross rivers, Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2007. [chapters: Gassa, ‘The motherist movement’].
• Walker, Cherryl (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945, (Cape Town: David Philip, 1990).
• Bozzoli, B. Women of Phokeng: consciousness, life strategy and migrancy in south Africa 1900-1983, Ravan, 1991/2006.
• Nite, DK, ‘Refashioning Women’s Self and Mining: The Homemakers and Producers on South African Mines,’ in Moving the Social: Journal of Social History and Social Movement, Vol. 56 (1), 2015, pp. 7-35.
• Berger, Iris, Threads of Solidarity: Women in South African Industry 1900-1980 (Bloomington, 1992)
• X. Education, Arts, Critiques
• Diana Wylie, Art plus Revolution: The life and death of Thami Mnyele, a South African Astist, 2008.
• Jonathan Hyslop, ‘State education and the social reproduction of the urban African working class, Southern Transvaal 1955-1976’, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 14 (3), 1988.
• Allan Morris and J Hyslop, ‘Education in South Africa: the present crisis and the problem of reconstruction’, Social Justice, vol. 18 (1-2), 1991.
• Pan Christie, The Right to Learn, 1991.
• Samuel, ‘A Comparative Study of Teachers Unions in South Africa and Ghana’, University of Johannesburg, 2012
• Burman, S and Pamela Reynolds, Growing up in a Divided Society, NWUP, 1986.
• Medalie, David, Encounters: an anthology of south African short stories, UWP, 1997
• Shava, PV, A People’s Voice: black south African writing in the 20thc, ZCS, 1989
• XI. African/Black Resistance, ‘the Black Consciousness Movement’, Emancipation
• Peter Alexander, Racism, Resistance and Revolution, 1987.
• Donald Woods, Steve Biko, London: 1987
• Jonny Steinberg, The Number: The Gangs of Cape, 2005.
• Bienart, 2001
• Allen, The Rise and Struggle of the National Union of Mineworkers 1982-1994, England: 2002
• Allen, The Techniques of Resistance, England: 1992
• R Davies, D O’ Meara and S Dalamini, The Struggle for South Africa: A reference to movements, organisations and institutions, vol. I & II, London: 1985
• F Meli, A History of ANC: South Africa Belongs to Us, London: 1989
• XII. Black Empowerment Programmes, a Developmentalist-State, the Post-Soviet World order
• Webster, E and Von Holdt, Beyond the Apartheid Workplace, KUP, 2005.
• Beinart, W and M Dawson, Popular Politics and Resistance Movements in South Africa, WUP, 2010
• Legassick, ‘Whose Liberation? A Partly-Forgotten Left Critique of ANC Strategy and Its Contemporary Implications’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2011
• Legassick, M. Towards Socialist Democracy, 2008.
• Steven L. Robbins, Revolution to Rights of Social Movement, 2008.
• Heinz Klug, Constituting Democracy: Law, Globalism, and Political Reconstruction in South Africa, Cambridge: 2000
• Crush J, Ulick T, Tseane T and J van Veuren E, 2001. ‘Undermining Labour: The rise of sub-conracting in the South African Mines’, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 27, pp. 5-31.
• Hyslop, ‘Political Corruption Before and After Apartheid’, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 31 (4), 2005.
• Benya, AP, ‘Women in Mining: A challenge of the occupational culture in mines’, MA thesis, UW, Johannesburg. 1999.
• Bezuidebhout A, 1999. ‘Restore Profitability or We Pull the Trigger: the politics of productivity in the South African gold mining industry in the 1990s’, South African Sociological Association, Saldanha Bay, South Africa.
• Beckman, Bjorn et al., Trade Unions and Party Politics (Cape Town, 2010).
• Barchiesi, Franco, Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State and Contested Social Citizenship in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Albany, NY, 2011).
• Webster, E, ‘There Shall be work and security’, Utopian thinking or a necessary condition for development and social cohesion’, Transformation, 72/73 (2010): 225-246.
• Alexander, Peter et al (eds.), Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer, Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2013.
• Alexander, Johnston. South Africa: Inventing the Nation, Ohio University Press, 2014. (NMML)

ADDITIONAL REFERENCE:

• Historical Documents:
• Sol Plaatje, A Native Life in South Africa, 1916.
• Steve Biko, I write what I Like, San Francisko: 1986
• Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: An Autobiography, Johannesburg: 1994
• Mandela, Conversation with Myself, 2011.
• Joe Slovo, The Unfinished Autobiography, 1995.
• Brian Bunting, Moses Kotane, South African Revolutionaries, 1975.
• Masilla Shales, Robert Sobukwe: South African Liberation Hero
• Baruch Hirson, Revolutions in my Life, 1995
• Ronnie Kasrils, Armed and Dangerous: My underground struggle against apartheid, 1993
• Jay Naidoo, Fighting for Justice, 2011
• Anthony Butller, Cyril Ramaphosa: A Biography, 2005
• Preez Bezdrob, Winnie Mandela: A Life, 2003
• Ken Luckhardt and Brenda Wall, Organise or Starve! The History of the South African Congress of Trade Unions, 1980.
• Hirson, Baruch, Revolutions in my Life, 1995.
• Kasrils, Ronnie, Armed and Dangerous: My undercover struggle against apartheid, 1993.