IS THERE COMPULSORY LABOUR IN SOUTH
AFRICA AT THE PRESENT TIME ?
In the Labour Office Report the following principle is
suggested to cover a variety of forms of “legal indirect
compulsion.”
* Taxation, vagrancy or ‘ pass ’ laws, the deprivation of
lands, the restriction of lands cultivation or cattle-owning,
and other measures, when adopted with the intention of
forcing workers into employment, are methods of insti-
tuting forced labour for private employers, and should be
condemned equally with the direct form of compulsion
for this purpose.”
The saving clause “ when adopted with the intention of
forcing workers into employment >’ may be found to cover
all existing agencies in South Africa even though they are
of the nature specified in the above paragraph and are
actually having the effect of compelling labour. What
are these agencies ?
INDIRECT COMPULSION BY DEPRIVATION
AND RESTRICTION OF LAND.
In the Union of South Africa roughly speaking a mil-
lion and a half Europeans own 87 per cent of the land,
while five million Natives own the balance. Efforts on
the part of the Natives to rectify this disparity are in great
measure defeated by the operation of the 1913 Natives
Land Act which makes it illegal, with certain limited
exceptions, for Whites or Blacks to purchase or even to
hire land in each other’s areas. This limitation, as the
population increases, compels men to leave the more
congested areas of the reserves for work, and prohibits
many of those who have already left from returning.
These men form a proletariat, obliged to accept what
wages and conditions they can get on the mines, on the
farms or in the towns.
It is too late now to go into the question of the justice
or the reverse of the numerous Kafir wars which make
up so large a part of South African history. It is suffi-
cient to say, in the present connection. that the net result