The carnegie commission and the backlash against welfare state-building in South Africa, 1931-1937

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 515-537

  Seekings, Jeremy ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN   (South Africa)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; SOCIAL POLICY; SOCIAL WORK; STATE BUILDING; WELFARE REFORM;

AFRICA; NORTH AMERICA; SOUTH AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 50449086454     PISSN: 03057070     EISSN: 14653893     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03057070802259688     Document Type: Article

References (153)

1. Union of South Africa, Report of the Department of Social Welfare for the Financial Years 1937-1939 (U.G. 15 of 1940), pp. 10-11.
2. J.L. Gray, 'The Comparative Sociology of South Africa', South African Journal of Economics, 5 (1937), p. 270.
3. On Britain, see, for example, P. Thane, Foundations of the Welfare State 2nd edn (Harlow, Pearson Longman, 1996).
4. R. Davies, Capital, State, and White Labour in South Africa: 1900-1960; An Historical Materialist Analysis of Class Formation and Class Relations (Brighton, Harvester, 1979)
5. D. O'Meara, Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital, and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934-1948 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983)
6. D. Yudelman, The Emergence ofModern South Africa: State, Capital, and the Incorporation of Organized Labor on the South African Gold Fields, 1902-1939 (Westport, CT, Greenwood, 1983).
7. J. Iliffe, The African Poor: A History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 116-21.
8. J. Tayler, '"Our Poor": The Politicisation of the Poor White Problem, 1932-1942', Kleio, XXIV (1992), pp. 40-65.
9. D. Duncan, 'The Origins of the "Welfare State" in Pre-Apartheid South Africa' (unpublished seminar paper, 1993).
10. 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 [hereafter JSAS] 21, 3 (September 1995), p. 357.
11. M. Du Toit, '"Co-workers of State and Church"? Female Afrikaner Nationalists and Gender Conflict in the Making of Social Welfare Policy, 1928-1939' (Africa seminar paper, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 1996).
12. 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), p. 42.
13. C.J. Groenewald, 'The Methodology of Poverty Research in South Africa: The Case of the First Carnegie Investigation, 1929-1932', Social Dynamics, 13, 2 (December 1987)
14. Fleisch, 'Social Scientists as Policy-Makers'
15. S. Dubow, 'Scientism, Social Research and the Limits of "South Africanism": The Case of Ernst Gideon Malherbe', South African Historical Journal, 44 (May 2001)
16. D. Posel, 'A Mania for Measurement: Statistics and Statecraft in the Transition To Apartheid', in S. Dubow (ed.), Science and Society in Southern Africa (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000).
17. Davie, Poverty Knowledge, pp. 75-6. Davie rightly corrects the emphasis in previous studies on the statistical work of the Commission, and has pointed out to me (personal communication) that the Commission did not define or conduct a poverty line.
18. D. Posel, 'The Case for a Welfare State: Poverty and the Politics of the Urban African Family in the 1930s and 1940s', in S. Dubow and A. Jeeves (eds), Worlds of Possibility: South Africa in the 1940s (Cape Town, Double Storey, 2005), p. 65.
19. T.R.H. Davenport, South Africa: A Modern History (3rd edn, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1987), p. 319
20. T.R.H. Davenport and C. Saunders, South Africa: A Modern History (5th edn, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000), p. 655.
21. This historical inconvenience has not stopped scholars from absurdities such as this: 'The introduction of the first old-age pension in 1928 followed the Carnegie Commission of Inquiry into the "poor white" problem'.
22. J. Triegaardt, 'The Child Support Grant in South Africa: A Social Policy for Poverty Alleviation?', International Journal of Social Welfare 14 (2005), p. 250.
23. J. Bottomley, Public Policy and White Rural Poverty in South Africa, 1881-1924 (Ph.D. thesis, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, 1990)
24. D.L. Berger, White Poverty and Government Policy in South Africa, 1892-1934 (Ph.D. thesis, Temple University, Philadelphia, 1983)
25. J. Seekings, '"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, 48, 3 (November 2007).
26. Union of South Africa, First Report of the Commission on Old Age Pensions and National Insurance (U.G. 21 of 1927).
27. Seekings, 'Not a Single White Person'.
28. Union of South Africa, Second Report of the Commission on Old Age Pensions and National Insurance (U.G. 50 of 1928)
29. Union of South Africa, Third Report of the Commission on Old Age Pensions and National Insurance (U.G. 26 of 1929).
30. Union of South Africa, Report of the Economic and Wage Commission (1925) (U.G. 14 of 1926), p. 105.
31. Union of South Africa, Report of the Economic and Wage Commission (1925), pp. 105-20.
32. Ibid., pp. 334-50.
33. South Africa, First Report of the Commission on Old Age Pensions and National Insurance.
34. South Africa, Third Report of the Commission on Old Age Pensions and National Insurance, pp. 27-8.
35. See further Seekings, 'Not a Single White Person'.
36. Act no. 22 of 1928.
37. Carnegie Commission, The Poor White Problem in South Africa: Report of the Carnegie Commission: Joint Findings and Recommendations (Stellenbosch, Ecclesia, 1932), para 22-5, 49.
38. It is therefore puzzling that the Carnegie Commission was assessed so favourably, 50 years later, by Wilson and Ramphele - who had no time for cultural or psychological explanations in their study of poverty under apartheid, i.e. the second Carnegie inquiry (F. Wilson and M. Ramphele, Uprooting Poverty: The South African Challenge (Cape Town, David Philip, 1989).
39. Groenewald ('The Methodology of Poverty Research') analyses the 'methodology' of the investigation in terms of social pathology theory, missing the roots of the Commission's ideas in distinctly nineteenth-century thought.
40. Carnegie Commission, Joint Findings and Recommendations, para 52. This may have been a retort to the arguments made by W.M. Macmillan, who described poor whites as 'demoralised beyond redemption' in his lectures on the Agrarian Problem.
41. Ibid., para 53.
42. J.R. Albertyn, with A.D. Luckhoff, T.F. Cronje and M.E. Rothmann, Sociological Report: (a) The Poor White and Society, Part V (a) of The Poor White Problem in South Africa: Report of the Carnegie Commission (Stellenbosch, Ecclesia, 1932), p. 21.
43. Fleisch, 'Social Scientists as Policy-Makers', p. 358
44. H. Giliomee, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2003), p. 348
45. see also the references in Tayler, 'Our Poor', p. 46.
46. Klausen's study of the politics of birth control reveals the complexity of these issues. Was the Carnegie Commission reacting to the eugenicists, who had formed the Race Welfare Society in Johannesburg in 1930, arguing that 'poor whites' were mentally defective and should be sterilised or, if sufficiently responsible, taught to use contraceptives? Carnegie Commissioners Malherbe, Rothmann and Murray all supported birth control, but perhaps for environmental rather than eugenicist reasons - see S. Klausen, Race, Maternity and the Politics of Birth Control in South Africa, 1910-39 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
47. Carnegie Commission, Joint Findings and Recommendations, para 85-7
48. R.W. Wilcocks, Psychological Report: The Poor White, Part II of The Poor White Problem in South Africa: Report of the Carnegie Commission (Stellenbosch, Ecclesia, 1932), Chapter 12
49. E.G. Malherbe, Educational Report: Education and the Poor White, Part III of The Poor White Problem in South Africa: Report of the Carnegie Commission (Stellenbosch, Ecclesia, 1932), Chapter 8.
50. Carnegie Commission, Joint Findings and Recommendations, para 101-3.
51. Berger, White Poverty.
52. Carnegie Commission, Joint Findings and Recommendations, para 68.
53. Ibid., para 110, emphasis in the original.
54. Seekings, 'Not a Single White Person'.
55. Wilcocks, Psychological Report, p. 95.
56. Ibid., p. 171.
57. Malherbe, Educational Report, p. 259.
58. Ibid., p. 99.
59. Albertyn et al., Sociological Report, pp. 75-6.
60. Ibid., p. 141.
61. Wilcocks, Psychological Report, p. 96.
62. Ibid., p. 97.
63. Ibid., pp. 97-8.
64. Albertyn et al., Sociological Report, p. 80.
65. Ibid., p. 80.
66. Ibid., p. 81.
67. Carnegie Commission, Joint Findings and Recommendations, para 115, emphasis in the original.
68. Ibid., para 116.
69. Ibid., para 123.
70. Albertyn et al., Sociological Report, pp. 107-9.
71. Ibid., pp. 68-71.
72. Carnegie Commission, Joint Findings and Recommendations, para 37.
73. Albertyn et al., Sociological Report, pp. 141-42.
74. Ibid., p. 141.
75. Carnegie Commission, Joint Findings and Recommendations, foreword.
76. R.B. Miller, 'Science and Society in the Early Career of H.F. Verwoerd', JSAS, 19, 4 (December 1993), p. 642.
77. See the website of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which grew out of the Agricultural College: www.umass.edu/pastchancellors/ butterfield.html
78. K.L. Butterfield, The Country Church and the Rural Problem (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1911). This raises the question of why the Carnegie Commission sent the retired Butterfield, rather than one of the younger and mostly female advocates of professional social work. Bell reports that the Carnegie Corporation sent a sociologist because of Albertyn's lack of academic expertise, and they were asked not to send an English scholar (Beveridge had been approached but was unavailable); but she does not explain why they chose Butterfield in particular.
79. M. Bell, 'American Philanthropy, the Carnegie Commission and Poverty in South Africa', JSAS, 26, 3 (2000).
80. Scholars that emphasise the scientific, 'fact-finding' approach of the Commission (such as Groenewald, 'Methodology of Poverty Research'; Fleisch, 'Social Scientists as Policy-makers'; Posel, 'Mania for Measurement') tend to focus on Malherbe's research on education, and pay little attention to the relationship between 'facts' and recommendations in the Reports as a whole. The 'fact' most often cited - including by Malherbe himself - was the figure of 300,000 'poor whites' (Carnegie Commission, Joint Findings and Recommendations, para 9): This was one of the most questionable findings made by Malherbe and the Commission, based as it was on an extrapolation of estimates provided by school teachers as to the family incomes of school-children. Malherbe and many others had good reason to use the positivist discourse of 'facts' rather more than was warranted by their actual methodology.
81. Carnegie Commission, Joint Findings and Recommendations, para 37, 114.
82. Albertyn et al., Sociological Report, p. 119.
83. Ibid., 117-18
84. Miller, 'Science and Society', p. 643.
85. M.E. Rothmann, Sociological Report: (b) The Mother and Daughter in the Poor Family, Part V (b) of The Poor White Problem in South Africa: Report of the Carnegie Commission (Stellenbosch, Ecclesia, 1932).
86. Rothmann's report does not have references nor a bibliography. It does not reveal whether she was familiar, by 1932, with work such as Richmond's Social Diagnosis or the 1921 Shepperd-Towner Act (i.e. the Infancy and Maternity Act) which introduced mothers' pensions in the United States. It is possible that she was influenced after completing her investigation by her colleague in the ACVV, Erika Theron, and Theron's mentor, Hendrik Verwoerd.
87. Malherbe, Educational Report, p. 48.
88. E.G. Malherbe, Handbook on Education and Social Work in South Africa (Pretoria, New Education Fellowship, 1934).
89. Davie, Poverty Knowledge, pp. 72-5.
90. J. Ehrenreich, The Altruistic Imagination: A History of Social Work and Social Policy in the United States (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 61
91. M. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York, Basic Books, 1996), Chapter 3
92. W. Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State (6th edn, New York, the Free Press, 1989), Chapters 4 and 5.
93. South Africa, Report of the Department of Social Welfare, pp. 39-40
94. Du Toit, 'Co-Workers of State and Church', p. 19.
95. South Africa, Report of the Department of Social Welfare, pp. 40-2.
96. Du Toit, 'Co-Workers of State and Church', p. 14.
97. Rothmann, The Mother and Daughter.
98. By way of comparison, the first school of social work in the USA was founded in 1898, and all five maijor American cities had schools by 1910. The first journals dedicated to social work had already been started;
99. the first professional journal (Social Casework) started in 1920 (see Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State, Chapter 11).
100. Quoted in Du Toit, 'Co-Workers of State and Church', p. 20.
101. Miller, 'Science and Society', p. 637.
102. Quoted in Giliomee, The Afrikaners, p. 351.
103. Giliomee, The Afrikaners, p. 351.
104. Miller, 'Science and Society', in her otherwise detailed analysis of Verwoerd's academic career, does not discuss his attitude to the church, and limits her analysis of his attitude to the state to a summary of his view that social workers should be employed by local councils (i.e. the ACVV position).
105. South Africa, Report of the Department of Social Welfare, p. 23.
106. Tayler, 'Our Poor', pp. 52-61
107. Miller, 'Science and Society'.
108. Du Toit, 'Co-Workers of State and Church', pp. 21-34
109. Miller, 'Science and Society', p. 656.
110. South Africa, Report of the Department of Social Welfare, pp. 24-32. Comparison with the United States again reveals the infancy of social work in South Africa. In the USA there were as many as 30,000 social workers by 1930 (Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State, p. 296).
111. South Africa, Report of the Department of Social Welfare, p. 42.
112. Act no. 34 of 1931.
113. Hansard, House of Assembly, 26 March 1931, col. 4,307-13.
114. Hansard, House of Assembly, 26 May 1931, col. 4,307-45 and 27th May 1931, col. 4,367-88
115. also, col. 4,491-516.
116. Figures are based on data in successive volumes of the Yearbook of the Union of South Africa.
117. Act no. 34 of 1937.
118. Act no. 11 of 1936.
119. Hansard, House of Assembly, 26 March 1936, col. 2,056.
120. South Africa, Report of the Department of Social Welfare, pp. 98-105.
121. Given the detail in the ensuing Bill, it seems that the Committee must have been familiar with the 1921 American legislation, and was thus both way ahead of, and in stark contrast to, the Carnegie Commission.
122. South Africa, Report of the Department of Social Welfare.
123. Ibid., p. 53.
124. Ibid., p. 60.
125. Ibid., pp. 81, 8, 11-12, 31, 12.
126. Gray, 'Comparative Sociology', pp. 278-80.
127. Quoted in South Africa, Report of the Department of Social Welfare p. 8.
128. Quoted in South Africa, Report of the Department of Social Welfare p. 8.
129. Ibid., pp. 10-11.
130. Union of South Africa, Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Poor Relief and Charitable Organisations (U.G. 61 of 1937).
131. Union of South Africa, Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Invalidity Scheme, Pulmonary Tuberculosis Cases and the So-called 'Burnt-out' War Veterans (1940).
132. Hansard, House of Assembly, 14th August 1929, col. 892.
133. Union Yearbook volume 19 (1938)
134. see also Hansard, House of Assembly, 15th February 1935, col. 1,647.
135. Hansard, House of Assembly, 22 January 1935, col. 417.
136. South Africa, Report of the Department of Social Welfare, p. 3.
137. The Depression was the cause of the transformation of the American welfare state through the New Deal, between 1933 and 1937. See Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State;
138. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse.
139. Klausen, Race, Maternity and the Politics of Birth Control, p. 23.
140. Hansard, House of Assembly, 18 April 1935, col. 5,225.
141. Ibid., 26 March 1936, col. 2,057 (Le Roux) and 2,058 (Alexander)
142. see also 18 April 1935, col. 5,225 (van der Merwe)
143. also Yudelman, Emergence, p. 252.
144. South Africa, Parliamentary Register, 1910-1961 (Cape Town, House of Assembly, 1970).
145. O'Meara, Volkskapitalisme
146. Tayler, 'Our Poor'
147. Giliomee, The Afrikaners.
148. Posel, 'A Mania for Measurement'
149. also Fleisch, 'Social Scientists as Policy-Makers'.
150. Fleisch, 'Social Scientists as Policy-Makers'.
151. Posel, 'The Case for a Welfare State'.
152. J. Seekings, 'The Origins of Social Citizenship in South Africa', South African Journal of Philosophy, 19, 4 (2000)
153. 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, Double Storey, 2005).