'Not a single white person should be allowed to go under': Swartgevaar and the origins of South Africa's welfare state, 1924-1929

Journal of African History

Volumn 48, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 375-394

  Seekings, Jeremy ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN   (South Africa)

Author keywords

Apartheid; Social; South Africa; State

Indexed keywords

APARTHEID; SOCIAL HISTORY; STATE; WELFARE REFORM;

AFRICA; SOUTH AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

EID: 37049027935     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: 14695138     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853707002836     Document Type: Article

References (131)

1. Recent notable comparative contributions include: E. Huber and J. Stephens, Development and Crisis of the Welfare State (Chicago, 2001);
2. P. Swenson, Capitalists against Markets: The Making of Labour Markets and Welfare States in the United States and Sweden (Oxford, 2002);
3. I. Mares, The Politics of Social Risk: Business and Welfare State Development (Cambridge, 2003);
4. H.-J. Kwon, The Welfare State in Korea: The Politics of Legitimation (London, 1999);
5. J. Wong, Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea (Ithaca, 2004).
6. A. Hicks and G. Esping-Andersen, 'Comparative and historical studies of public policy and the Welfare State', in T. Janoski, R. Alford, A. Hicks and M. Schwartz (eds.), Handbook of Political Sociology (New York, 2005), 509-25.
7. F. Cooper, Decolonisation and African Society (Cambridge, 1996);
8. A. Eckert, 'Regulating the social: Social security, social welfare and the state in late colonial Tanzania', Journal of African History (JAH), 45 (2004), 467-89.
9. J. Lewis, Empire State-Building: War and Welfare in Kenya, 1925-52 (Oxford and Athens OH, 2000);
10. A. Burton, African Underclass: Urbanisation, Crime and Colonial Order in Dar es Salaam (Oxford, 2005);
11. L. Fourchard, 'Lagos and the invention of juvenile delinquency in Nigeria, 1920-1960', JAH, 47 (2006), 115-37.
12. On welfare policy, see: A. Sagner, 'The 1944 Pension Laws Amendment Bill: Old-age security in South Africa in historical perspective, ca. 1920-1960', Southern African Journal of Gerontocracy, 7 (1998), 10-14;
13. A. Sagner, 'Ageing and social policy in South Africa: Historical perspectives with particular reference to the eastern Cape', Journal of Southern African Studies, 26 (2000), 523-53;
14. J. Seekings, 'The origins of social citizenship in South Africa', South African Journal of Philosophy, 19 (2000), 386-404;
15. J. Seekings, '"Visions and hopes and views about the future": The radical moment of South African welfare reform', in S. Dubow and A. Jeeves (eds.), Worlds of Possibility: South Africa in the 1940s (Cape Town, 2005), 44-84;
16. D. Posel, 'The case for a Welfare State: Poverty and the politics of the urban African family in the 1930s and 1940s', in Dubow and Jeeves (eds.), Worlds of Possibility, 64-85.
17. On health, see S. Marks and N. Anderson, 'Industrialisation, rural health and the 1944 National Health Service Commission in South Africa', in S. Feierman and K. Janzen (eds.), The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (Berkeley, 1992).
18. J. Simons and R. Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa, 1850-1950 (London, 1969, republished in 1983 by the International Defence and Aid Fund);
19. R. Davies, D. Kaplan, M. Morris and D. O'Meara. 'Class struggle and the periodisation of the state in South Africa', Review of African Political Economy, 7 (1976), 4-30;
20. D. Kaplan, 'The politics of industrial protection in South Africa', Journal of Southern African Studies, 3 (October 1976), 70-91;
21. R. Davies, Capital, State, and White Labour in South Africa: 1900-1960; An Historical Materialist Analysis of Class Formation and Class Relations (Brighton, 1979);
22. M. Lacey, Working for Boroko (Johannesburg, 1981);
23. B. Bozzoli, The Political Nature of a Ruling Class: Capital and Ideology in South Africa, 1890-1933 (London, 1981);
24. D. Yudelman, The Emergence of Modern South Africa: State, Capital, and the Incorporation of Organized Labor on the South African Gold Fields, 1902-1939 (Westport CT, 1983);
25. J. Lewis, Industrialisation and Trade Union Organisation in South Africa, 1924-55 (Cambridge, 1984);
26. R. Morrell, 'The South African state in 1924', Transformation, 4 (1987), 39-53.
27. W. Korpi, The Democratic Class Struggle (London, 1983);
28. F. Castles, The Working Class and Welfare: Reflections on the Political Development of the Welfare State in Australia and New Zealand, 1890-1980 (Sydney, 1985);
29. G. Esping-Andersen, Politics Against Markets: The Social Democratic Route to Power (Princeton, 1985);
30. A. Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy (Cambridge, 1985).
31. D. Duncan, 'The origins of the "Welfare State" in pre-apartheid South Africa' (unpublished seminar paper, 1993), 72;
32. B. D. Fleisch, 'Social scientists as policy-makers: E. G. Malherbe and the National Bureau for Educational and Social Research, 1929-1943', Journal of Southern African Studies, 21 (1995), 357;
33. Posel, 'The case for a Welfare State', 65;
34. D. L. Berger, 'White poverty and government policy in South Africa, 1892-1934' (Ph.D. thesis, Temple University, Philadelphia, 1983).
35. See also J. Iliffe, The African Poor: A History (Cambridge, 1987), 117-22;
36. H. Giliomee, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (Cape Town, 2003), 353;
37. G. Davie, 'Poverty knowledge in South Africa: The everyday life of social science expertise in the twentieth century' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2005), 82-5;
38. J. Tayler, '"Our Poor": The politicisation of the Poor White problem, 1932-1942', Kleio, 24 (1992), 40-65.
39. J. Seekings, 'The Carnegie Commission and the backlash against welfare state-building in South Africa, 1931-1937', Journal of Southern African Studies (forthcoming).
40. Union of South Africa, First Report of the Commission on Old Age Pensions and National Insurance (Cape Town: UG 21 of 1927; henceforth 'Pienaar Commission, First Report').
41. 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')
42. Third Report of the Commission on Old Age Pensions and National Insurance (Cape Town: UG 26 of 1929; henceforth 'Pienaar Commission, Third Report').
43. 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).
44. J. Krikler, The Rand Revolt (Manchester, 2005);
45. Simons and Simons, Class and Colour; Davies, Capital, State and White Labour; Yudelman, Emergence of Modern South Africa.
46. H. Bradford, A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924-1930 (New Haven, 1987).
47. Union of South Africa, Final Report of the Unemployment Commission (UG 17 of 1922) and Report of the Economic and Wage Commission (1925 (UG 14 of 1926), 105-20 and 334-5o,
48. respectively; Berger, 'White poverty'; Davie, 'Poverty knowledge'; Pienaar Commission, Third Report, 27.
49. Pienaar Commission, First Report, 10.
50. See also J. Bottomley, 'Public policy and white rural poverty in South Africa, 1881-1924' (Ph.D. thesis, Queen's University, Kingstone, 1990);
51. Iliffe, The African Poor, 115-23; Pienaar Commission, Second Report.
52. Quoted in S. Parnell and D. Hart, 'Self-help housing as a flexible instrument of state control in 20th century South Africa', Housing Studies, 14 (1999), 372.
53. Berger, 'White poverty', 214-30, 267-82;
54. Lewis, Industrialisation, 25-7.
55. W. K. Hancock, Smuts: The Fields of Force, 1919-1950 (Cambridge, 1968), 155;
56. M. Creswell, An Epoch of the Political History of South Africa in the Life of Frederic Hugh Page Creswell (Cape Town, 1956), 93-4;
57. Berger, 'White poverty', 193-7.
58. Cape Times, 4 June, 9 June, 14 June 1924.
59. Hancock, Smuts, 160.
60. Cape Times, 13 June 1924.
61. Cape Times, 19 May, 4 June 1924.
62. Giliomee, Afrikaners, 391-3.
63. Hancock, Smuts, 159.
64. See, for example, S. Dubow, Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919-36 (Basingstoke, 1989).
65. Hansard, House of Assembly (hereafter 'HoA'), 12 Aug. 1924, cols. 429-32.
66. Circular no. 5, 31 Oct. 1924, quoted in Year Book of the Union of South Africa, vol. 9 (1924), 203.
67. South Africa, Report of the Economic and Wage Commission, paras -332-3.
68. Lewis, Industrialisation, 76, 80;
69. Simons and Simons, Class and Colour;
70. Davies, Capital, State and White Labour.
71. 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);
72. S. Schirmer, 'Mechanisation motives in South African agriculture: C. 1940-1980' (unpublished paper, 2003).
73. Pienaar Commission, Third Report, 23-9.
74. 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).
75. 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.
76. Hansard, HoA, 1925, cols. 1,987-95.
77. The findings of this committee (the Hancock Committee) are summarized in Year Book of the Union of South Africa, vol. 9, 201;
78. South Africa, Report of the Economic and Wage Commission, 112 and 339.
79. Pienaar Commission, First Report, 10.
80. Ibid. 9-10.
81. Ibid. 32.
82. Ibid. 34.
83. Data on wages from South Africa, Report of the Economic and Wage Commission.
84. Pienaar Commission, First Report, 24.
85. Hansard, HoA, 1928, col. 1,250.
86. Ibid. col. 1,252 (Watt; see also Blackwell).
87. Bill no. 26 of 1928.
88. Hansard, HoA, 1928, cols. 3,982, 3,993-4 (Havenga); 4,182, 4,305-12, 4,351-2 (criticisms).
89. Hansard, HoA, 1928, col. 3,982.
90. Pienaar Commission, First Report, 22 and 40.
91. Pienaar Commission, Second Report, 7-8.
92. Pienaar Commission, First Report, 15; also 32.
93. Hansard, HoA, 1928, col. 3,998.
94. Pienaar Commission, Second Report, 48; Third Report.
95. Pienaar Commission, Second Report, 22-4, 26, 63.
96. Pienaar Commission, Third Report, 33-4.
97. C. Meso-Lago, Social Security in Latin America: Pressure Groups, Stratification and Inequality (Pittsburgh, 1978);
98. J. Malloy, The Politics of Social Security in Brazil (Pittsburgh, 1979).
99. Carnegie Commission, The Poor White Problem in South Africa: Joint Findings and Recommendations (Stellenbosch, 1932), paras. 112, 122.
100. J. F. W. Grosskopf, Economic Report: Rural Impoverishment and Rural Exodus (Stellenbosch, 1932), 229.
101. Ibid. 229-30.
102. South Africa, 'Memorandum'.
103. Pienaar Commission, Third Report, 15.
104. See also H. Giliomee, 'The non-racial franchise and Afrikaner and Coloured identities, 1910-94', African Affairs, 94 (1999), 199-225.
105. Hansard, HoA, 1928, cols. 4,000-1.
106. See also cols. 4,188-9 (Chaplin).
107. Ibid. col. 2,990.
108. Ibid. col. 4,194.
109. Union of South Africa, Report of the Native Economic Commission (Pretoria, 1932);
110. W. M. Macmillan, Complex South Africa (London, 1930).
111. 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.
112. C. Kadalie, My Life in the ICU (New York, 1970);
113. E. Roux, Time Longer Than Rope: A History of the Black Man's Struggle for Freedom in South Africa (London, 1948), 199-200.
114. 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).
115. Pienaar Commission, First Report, 8.
116. Report of T. D. Mweli Skota, Secretary-General of the ANC, document 48h, in Karis and Carter (eds.), From Protest to Challenge, 307;
117. Bradford, Taste of Freedom;
118. Roux, Time Longer Than Rope.
119. 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.
120. 'Proceedings and reports of Select Committees at the Session Of 1930', Transkeian Territories General Council, 24 April 1930, 73.
121. 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.
122. Non-European Conference, Minutes of Third Conference held at Bloemfontein during January 5th, 6th and 7th, 1931 (Lovedale, 1931), 13.
123. P. Walsh, The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa (London, 1970), 85.
124. Opening address by the chief magistrate, Proceedings of the United Transkeian Territories General Council, 19 April 1937, 82.
125. Hansard, HoA, col. 3,997 (Henderson).
126. Ibid. 14 Aug. 1929, cols. 890-2.
127. D. F. Malan, 'Foreword', to Creswell, An Epoch.
128. T. Marshall, 'Citizenship and social class', in T. Marshall and T. Bottomore, Citizenship and Social Class (London, 1992 [1949]), 8.
129. Seekings, 'The Carnegie Commission'.
130. J. L. Gray, 'The comparative sociology of South Africa', South African Journal of Economics, 5 (1937), 270.
131. Year Book of the Union of South Africa, 1941.