INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS

NOT FOR PUBLICATION

JCB-9" The lechanics ofSystematic Separation

16 Dan I’- i enaar RoadDurban, NatalMay 25, 1962

Mr. Richard NolteInstitute of Current orld Affairs366 ,adison AvenueNew York 17 New York

Dear .r. Nolte-

Several pieces of legislation in, the works inthe ,resent Parliamentary session will effectively undercut telast of the liberties afforded tie Goloured peoFle and will serveto make them completely subservient to the ite community.

The term "Coloureds" covers a conglomeration ofdifferent groups which the Government has at best been able todefine as neither White norNative. By far the largestgrotp of Coloureds are thoseliving in the Western Capewho are descended from Whiteand non-White unions of acentury or more ago. Todaythe Coloureds are the fastestgrowing segment of the popu-lation and in the Cape Fenin-sula already outnumber theWhites and Africans ombined.

For fiftyyears before Union in 1909

(Estimated)

PRINCIPAL HOME LANGUAGES SPOKEN Each symbol indicates ,(one per" cent)of group

llllllllll llllllllll IIIIIIIIII IIIIIII1tAFRIKAAIIIIIIitliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

AND AFRIS

Each symbol indicates I00,000 persons

WHITE BANTU ASIATIC COLOURED

CAPE OF

IIIIIIIINATAL

ORANGEFREE STATE IIIIIIIIIISOUTH WEST

Waives 6aye, Windhoek

I SOUTH

WEST AFRICA

Kim/,)efleY/,endoemNSOUTH AFR.ICAr

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE

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Cape Coloureds were allowed to vote hold office and seek their ownemployment. The fact that they made little material progress duringthat time was more due to poverty and lack of education than to anylegal witholdng of rights.

Then came the Union Constitution which, among otherth.ngs,.deprived them of the right to serve in Parliament. Theycould still vote on a National level, but only for hite office seekers.This provision was a compromise with the northern Afrikaner provinces(Orange Free State and the Transvaal) whom the Cape representativeshoped could be influenced in time" to a more liberal racial attitude.(It is interesting to note that the Afrikaner trek from the Cape inthe first place was at least partially due to their dislike of theincreasing freedoms bestowed on the Coloureds by the nglish rulers.)

Since that time, slowly at first but with increasingurgency, legislation and admlnstrative acts have been passed todlmnish the rights and aspirations of the Coloured community. Theeconomic op.ortunties of Coloured laborers were drastically limitedby the formulation of the ’Civilized Labor Policy’ of the 1920’s.This policy, caused by the large influx of Whites from poVerty-strickenfarms into the industrial community, gave so-called ’civilized labor’(White) preference and higher pay than ’uncivilized’ (non-White). Atthe same time Africans were also migrating to the cities and under-cutting Coloured workers in the labor market. Thus they were caughteffectlvely in a vice between Africans who made little demand onemoloyers and Whites who wanted no competition from non-hites in thebetter jobs. ventually job reservation became law as well as custom.

A strong political voice might have helped remedythis situation. But in the 1930’s a number of legislative actswere passed which served to counteract the growing Coloured vote.T!e Women’s nfranchisement Act (1930) served to double the Whiteelectorate by giving the vote to all White women. (Before this the votewas exclusively male, Coloured and %hite.) The Franchise LawsAmendment of the following year again ncreased the %hite electorateby giving the vote to every White male over 21 without regard toeducational or [roperty qualifications which the Coloured male voterstill had to fulfll. At the same time an administrative act madeit posslble to challenge Coloured voters about their qualificationsand to strke them from the voter s oli if they dd not appearwithin a certain time to answer charges. In rural areas where greatdistances were involved tlis proved especially dfficult.

In the late 1940’s additional electoral laws, thelectoral Consolidation Act (1946) and the hlectoral Laws AmendmentAct (1948) made it more difficult for Coloured voters to register.In some instances the prospective Coloured voter, applying for

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registration before a magistrate or a police officer, foundliteracy requirements as varying and as difficult as those whichhave faced the Negro in the deep South.

In 1943 the Government attempted to establish aColoured Affairs Department under the linister of the Interior.Nost Coloured leaders saw this as another Native Aft airs Depart-ment, designed to separate them from the ’:hite community andeffectively protested the move. Although the Government abandonedits original plan and instead formed an advisory council (Councilfor Coloured Affairs) under the Department of Social ’ielfare, theprimary objection remained. It indicated to those in oppositionthat more segregation was to come. Economic and social problemsere alread7 well knon and reform not consultation was thedrastic need.

Nationalist Government comes into power- the speed-up.

This was how things stood when the NationalistParty came into power. Since 1948 the Government, Carrying outits policy of Separate Development, has segregated the Colouredsmore and more.

All but four members of the Council for ColouredAffairs resigned in 1950 5ecause they were not allowed to discusswhether or not they wanted Apartheid but only how best to imple-ment it. In 1951 the tationalists finally created a ColouredAffairs Deparmen under the Department of the Interior, headedby a former professor at the Universityof Cape Town and an expert on the cultureof the Cape !alay, Dr. I.D. du Plessis,ho said the purpose of the departmentwas to coordinate resources to deal withColoured interests and needs and to helpthem with their problems.

Also in 1951 the SeparateRepresentation of Voters Bill attemptedto take Cae Coloured voters off thecommon roll and put them on a separatevoter’s roll from which they would electtour White peDDle in the Itouse of Assemblyand one in the Senate. This act was twicedeclared unconstitutional by the HighCourt because of the manner in which itwas passed. The Coloured voter wasguaranteed a vote by the Constitution ofthe Union which could only be changed bya 2/3 majority vote of both houses ofParliament, a fact overlooked in the firstwo presentations of the measure. Itfinally became law in 1956 as the South Dr. I.D. du Plessis

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Africa Act Amendment Bill after the Nationalists had enlargedthe Senate to get the necessary 2/3 majority.

e_x.t s.teps, ,,in,. separationLaw had now deprived t!e Coloureds from any meaningful

national vote. Many Coloured voters, feeling the uselessness oftheir segregated vote, have not bothered to vote at all. Furtherlegislative acts have worked to deDrive them of the means by whichthey might have contact with the hie man on any equal basis.

The Prohibition of 3:!ixed Marriages Act (1950) andthe Ammended Immorality ACt (1950) made marriage and intimaterelations between White and Coloured illegal, extending existinglaws which had affected relationships between Whites and Africans.This law aimed at stopping infiltration of Coloureds into thehite community and, incidently, pointed out to Coloureds thefact that their existance was considered an affront to a Whitecommunity who considered miscegenation the worst possible of crimes.

The Population Registration Act (1950) made possibleindividual classification by race without wich Apartheid orRace Separation could not be effectively carried out. The classi-fication of Coloureds has always been a difficult business becauseof so many borderline cases. In the past ten years the decisionhas been made on 58,000 White/Coloured borderline cases. hile Idon’t have the exact figures, I’ve been told that the decision inmost of these cases has been a White classification.

The Group Areas Act (1950) restricted each definedgroup to its own particular area- an area to be decided by theGovernment’s Group Area Boards. It provided for special Colouredtownships to be established "enabling them to maintain theirnational identi,y." An estimated 80 to 0,000 Cape Coloueds havehad to give up their homes so far in this re-location project, ascompared to 7,000 Whites. While in some cases the homes providedfor them are better than their previous ones (see picture), mostof those who had to move resent having to leave neighborhoods wherethey have always lived and houses they have built up with their own"sweat and toil".

The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953)made into law the already-established practice of separation onbeaches, trains, buses, benches, counters in public places,phone booths, entrances, elevators, libraries, etc., and statedthat such facilities need not be equal. In most instances theColoured, to his consternation, is lumped togetler with theAfrican as a non-t,’hite.

JOB-9

HOusing builtby the Departmentof Communi tyDevelopment forColoureds nearAthlone, CapeTown. They c anbe purchased forR3)90- ach.($.S, 500)

ie Extension of University Education Act (1959)provided for the establshment of separate University Collegesfor Coloureds, Indians and tiree major African groups. Colouredsand other non-,’hites could no longer attend any of the previouslyopen White (English-speaking) Universities) except in specialcases where courses are. not available in the lome-color collegeand wiere s!.ecal permission has been given. The UniversityCollege for Coloured students is located at Bellville) nearCape Town.

In August) 1960, the Coloured Afairs Department wasraised to cabinet level.

Coloured studentsat the UniversityCollege of theestern Cape inBellille.

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Finally, the Suppression of Communism Act (1951)allowed police to enter and search anyone’s home or business atany time and gave the inister of Justice the right to prohibitanyone from attending meetings, going outside a certain geograhpi-cal area or holding office in a political group, trade union orin any or:anizatq:-n which the Minister might decide was helpfulto Communism. Obviously this has not encouraged the developmentof Coloured opposition to Government policy.

Anticipation of better things

About two years ago a wave of concern about theposition of the Coloureds had built up among many of the educatedWhite people of the Cape, especially the intellectual Afrikaners.This view was found in the leadership of the Afrikaner’s SouthAfrican Bureau of Racial Affairs (SABRA) who, because they regardedthe Coloured people "as an irremovable adjunct of the Whitepopulation" considered the policy of territorial separation forthe Coloureds neither feasible nor justifiable. Leadership ofthe Afrikaner teacher’s association agreed. In a lead article

"We can no longerof their magazine unie, in 1960, they said,afford to have people whose destiny is so closely linked withours dissatisfied and embittered in our midst."

In July, 1960, Dawie, the political commentator for,pie_ B,r,ger indicated the trend in Afrikaner thinking when hewrote, "The drive to a forward movement in Nationalist policyfor the Coloureds is becoming more and more strong. The mostdramatic idea of course is.,..that the Coloured voters mustbe permitted o elect hite or Brown members of Parliament. Thisof course is only one part of the complex of plans which arebeing discussed by thinking people...."

In November, 1960, eleven prominent professors andministers of the three Dutch Reformed Churches published a bookentitled Delayed Action in which they called for a new outlookon South Af’iCa’g’ "r’icial attitudes. A month later at a meetingof the South African membership churches of the World Council ofChurche held at the Cottesloe residence of the Univers%ty ofWitatersrand, certain major aspects of the Government’s racialpolicies were criticized. Among other things the conferencerecommended more consultation between he Government and non-Whites,and the reurn %o the Coloured people of their right to elect

their own Coloured representatives o Parliament.

However, in December the Prime .,!inister made veryclear that there would be no change in policy. He declared that

Na’l:ionalis leaders would have %0 stand "like walls of granite"on their color polic7 because the existance of the nation (a

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one of course) was at stake. Soon afterward the NationalistParty’s Federal Council explained, "It is the attitude of theNationalist Party that direct representation of the Coloureds byColoureds is a form of political integration which will lead tofurther concessions on that road."

Since then strong measures have been taken to keepparty dssidents in line. Under some pressure SABRA announcedin February, 1961, that it would postpone indefinitely the congressit was to have held n April on the position of the Coloured people.Dr. A.L. Geyer, the Chairman, said a great deal of feeling aboutthe Coloureds had been aroused and therefore they thought it wisenot to discuss such a matter at that time. When SABRA did meetlater in the year it was to discuss the much safer theme, "Relationsbetween English and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans". ProfessorN.J.J. Olivier, leader of the liberals within SABRA x.x,ho wanted topursue a course independent of the Government, was voted out ofhis long-held post of vice-chairman. His supuorters, seeing thetenor of the meeting, withdrew thei candidacies for other offices.

Meanwhile developments stemming from the PrimeIinister’s granite wall attitude were drawing people and :roupstogether within the Color,red community as never before. Planswere made to arrange a Coloured National Convention and someColoured leaders made statements publicly associating themselveswith plans made by Africans to demonstrate on Republic Day, ay 31st.The Coloureds had been rebuffed; the Afrikaner intellectual wasbeing told to be uiet and mend his ways. Many Coloured leadersindicated that if they were not %o be welcomed by Whites then theywould join the Africans whenever possible. In April o 1961an editorial in Die Burger asked them to be patient while theirWhite friends wo4d "b g:e-t the necessary changeg made. It statedthat many prominent "Afrikaners and Nationalists" were doing somehard thinking about the Coloured eople’s future. Leaders of theConvention replied in an open letter to pie Burger that they couldsee no reason o be optimistic about the fd’t’hre and while theyappreciated those Afrikaners who were thinking hard they had yetto see where this had removed a single hardship. They asked foruractical action.

None was forthcoming. The Government refused tohold any top-level talks with the Coloured leaders because itconsidered the Council for Coloured Affairs (appointed for themost part by the Government) adequate to consult about Colouredproblems. The Coloured Convention, to be held in Cape Town inApril, as crudely banned at the last moment after many of thedelegates had arrived or were on their way. Even ..r. GeorgeGolding, one of the major Coloured leaders who ,,,ill most often

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cooperate with the Government, reacted by saying that althoughhe and the Coloured People’s National Union (of which he was the

Presient) were opposed to the Convention, he wished the .inisterwould reconsider his banning decision. He asked, "Has Mr. Erasmusforgotten the trials and tribulations through which the Afrikanernation went in its struggle for freedom? They were never, however,denied the right to express their views and set forth their planswhether these were in line with the views of the rulers of the dayor nOlo..., tt

A number of the Convention delegates did meet inbalmsbury when they discovered that it was an area overlooked in thebanning order. Under the scrutiny of the security police they out-lined their policy:, that South Africa should be one country w_thone peor-le with a bill of rights protecting the freedoms of all;that there be universal adult franchise; that an all-South AfricaNational Convention be called; and that compulsory education shouldobtain for all children (at present only Whites have compulsoryeducation) with parents having the sole rigiat to decide how andwhere children should be educated. It was also decided that theColoured people were a group only because they were the victims ofdiscrimination.

Par_liamentay,, e,,s s., on,, 1,9_62

This was how things stood at the beginning ofthis parliamentary session. The banning of the Coloured Conventionfortold a bleak future for the Coloureds and this is being wellbrought out in the "big plans" the Government is now legislating.

The one spot where the Coloured voice can still beheard politcally is the municipal councils of the Cape. Cape Townhas Coloureds on its City Council and Coloureds at present stillhave the vote in municipal elections. V,lany Cape municipalities haverefrained from carrying out legislation separating the ColouredCommunity and have left it to the Provincial Council to force theissue of separate amenities.

But in December came the announcement that Col0uredmunicipal representation would come to an end. At the same timetb.e Prime h!inister announced Independence for the Transkei, heoutlined ambitious plans for Coloured self-government. hile noterritorial grant could be made ior a Coloured nation, as it hadbeen to the Xhosa, national identity could be encouraged withinscattered municipalities and farm areas in which all ColouredswouJd live, be educated, work and decide their own destinies,subject of course to the %.hite parliament.

This plan for territorial separation, the Group AreasAmendment Bill, will go nto affect this month. It will createColoured municipalities in which Coloureds can elect their own

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.Iembers of the Council for Coloured Affairs listening %o hePrime :inister outlining his plan for Coloured independence.

management and/or consultative committees. These committees,however, would be under the control of the Minister of ColouredCommunity Development as well as the neiglboring White municipalityof which it would be a part. (Up to this time Coloured people havebeen given little opportunity to learn from White example and ex-Derience s.nce they have tad no representation on the Group AreasBoard, the Group Areas Development Board, the Wage Board or theColoured Development Corporation. Nr.P.W. Botha, Ninister ofColoured Affairs, said that he could not consider them for anyof these ositions because he needed people with "a very soundbusiness sense and experience," Coloured people would becomevictims of pressure from other Coloureds. "We need people who willbe able to say ’no’.")

In the discussion of the bill, }.r.P.S. arais, aprominent ?’ationalist, gave what is undoubtedl.y tNe underlyingreason for this gift of- a Coloured nation. If Coloureds are allowedto remain on the municipal co::mon roils, he said, +/-hey would soonbe able to gain a majority in some ’estern Cape towns. The existingmunicipal voting system contained many anomalies where Whites werebeing represented on town councils by Coloureds who had no evenregistered on the separate roll for the Parliamentary vote. It ismuch safer, his 2ationalist collegues agree, to remedy this situa-tion by removing the Coloured voter from the municipal roll andgive him a little community of his own to rule than to allow himan equal franchise with the ,’hites in the Parliamentary vote.

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This isn’t the firsttime t!ls removal has been attempted.In 1958 the Provincial Administratorbrought the que.tion before the CapeProvincial Bxecutive Committee. Hesaid it had been decided in 194 thatonly names of municipal voters whowere also Parliamentary voters shoidappear on the municipal voters rolls.There was considerable protest atthis attem.)t and although it passedthe Provincial Council it has neverbeen a9olied. ’le present Parliamentdecides the matter for the Province,giving them no choice in the matter.Nationalist power is so entrencied inParliament that the President of theSenate was able to announce in re-lation to this bill that Parliament isabsolutely sovereign and not answerableto the courts- a law unto itself. Mr. P.W. Botha

IS _t h.e re__ any ,,,hOp_,e, le,,fj; ?

The Coloureds, a singularly diverse group (JCB-10)in most opinions, are uniform in their dislike of their presentsituation. They merely differ in how much of it they will allowthemselves to go along with. Whatever their feelings, however,any possibility of future protest appears to be cut off by oneof the most spine-chilling bills ever to reach the floor ofParliament; the General Laws Amendment Bill, commonly kno.vn asthe Sabatoge Bill. This bill enables the .inister of Jstice tolabel any protest against government policy, or any reportingof such a protest, or even possession of a report of such a protest,as an illegal act. All in all things look pretty grim.

Speaking in the Coloured municipalities debate(before the Saba+/-oge Bill was introduced), Senator H.A. Fagansaid the position had been reached in South Africa where aWhite person could not drink a cup of tea with a Coloured personor ride next to him in a tax to have a discussion without beingtol that he was comitting an offence. "What opportunity havewe to know what they think?.....It is almost impertinent for usto make laws for them." In response to Mr. Botha’s definition ofgood neighborliness as the maintalnance of good neighbor-relationswire,in proper boundaries, Fagan replied, "Good eighborliness with.proper boundaries, yes, provided the one neighbor does not issueprescrlptions to the other, but as soon as one says how the othermust live, then there mrs t be an opening in the fence to enable the

neglibors to talk the matter over."

Right now there would appear to be a block of granitein the opening that may be rather hard to remove.

Sincerely yours

Jawes C. Brewer

Pictures courtesy of South African Information Office and the

aPe.Ti_es