THE BLACKS; POLITICAL ANATOMY AND BIO-POWER

Section 1

In the later nineteenth century, political and economic developments in South Africa drastically transformed the lives of its population, both black and white: the discovery of diamonds, the annexation of the diamond fields by the British; the attempts to confederate South Africa; the destruction of African societies which were still independent; the striking of gold on the Rand; the extension of British supremacy into the interior; the political struggles of Afrikaner and British; the Anglo-Boer war and the unification of South Africa.

This dissertation has throughout sought to enquire how a 'generalised' view of blacks was formulated. From establishing African 'otherness', to the 'civilising mission', to the management of blacks, each intervention carried forward the typology of advanced and backward societies, cultures and races. Blacks were designated as savage, barbaric, uncivilized, degenerate and backward, categories which marked their separateness; they tended also to be associated with alienated elements in western society such as delinquents, criminals, the poor or the insane, all pejorative designations.

Concern about blacks came now to be not merely explanatory; their passions, instincts, drives, desires, maladjustments and infirmities as well as the effects of environment, and heredity upon them were now assessed and judged. This represented a change. The corpus of knowledge about the black, his relations with the past and the expectations for the future,¹ all came under examination. It was recognised that blacks could no longer be isolated from European progress in the sciences, arts, industry and commerce. In the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the problem of how to organise and manage blacks commanded a growing interest in South Africa's 'native policy'. This was the background to the emergence of modern racial practices in South Africa, and is the focus of this chapter.

The Native Question
In 1883, A.F. Caldecott asserted that the 'Native Question' - 'the most difficult and intricate problem in South Africa |being| the position which the European Governments and the Native Races of South Africa, hold to each other' - was 'the most momentous question a nation has ever had to solve....'² He also saw it as a political question: how 'to reduce to a practical shape the position we - the European races - should occupy politically and otherwise towards the natives by whom we are surrounded.'3 Blacks were no longer perceived in isolation, but as a threat to the white social order. As Hertslet put it, the nub of the 'Native Problem' was how to preserve white racial purity and the virtues of a white society surrounded as it was by a sea of native 'ignorance, laziness, sensualism and superstition':

given two races living in close relationship, the one, European and civilised, the other negro and savage, how best may racial purity be preserved, righteous government maintained, and the proper development of morals, religion, industry, education, commerce and agriculture be ensured?⁴

Implicit in the formulation of the problem was a negative perception of black society defined and typified as irredeemably 'primitive', and the self-evident 'truth' that European society was superior and progressive. Every aspect of the behaviour of the 'native' was validated and interpreted in terms of some pre-existing 'native' essence, or some universal 'native' element.

Central to the native problem was the emergence of a new discourse, the articulation of the concern with preserving white racial purity.⁵ This in its turn required whites to share an ensemble of discourses on African societies: it involved the white as speaker and the black as spoken of. The problem centred on the future of the relationship between the two races. In 1907, Shepstone after a lifetime of experience, put the question bluntly:

where are two races to be found more dissimilar and more divergent, even in colour, than the enlightened white, and the savage or black races of Africa? And is it possible that amalgamation can be desired or wished for in the near future to the extent of equality and inter-marriage?⁶

The 'Native Question' was thus addressed specifically to the question how the black populations were to be to governed, managed and administered in order to maintain white supremacy. The issues involved in the 'Native Question' were summed up by Lewis Hertslet in subsidiary questions, many of which warrant being reproduced below:

1. What is to be the eventual relationship of white and black, socially, politically and industrially?..2. How may the evil influences of civilisation be counteracted and the evil results (blade peril etc.) be checked? 3. What is to be done with the rapidly increasing native population that will soon overfill the present reserves and locations?... 4. What methods can be adopted to improve the natives' way of living (moral, social and industrial)? 5. How may the vested interests of the mine-owners, farmers and others be synchronised with the best interest of the natives? 6. Are the present powers of the chiefs to be increased or diminished? Or, in other words, is the present clan system to be conserved, altered, or gradually broken up? 7. By what methods can the supply of labour for the towns, sugar estates, farms, railways, roads, and Government departments be kept in a satisfactory ratio to the demand? 8. What kind and what degree of education should be given to the native? Should it remain in the hands of the missionaries, with Government supervision? 9. Ought polygamy and 'lobola' (payment of cattle for wives) to be abolished? 10. How far is segregation advisable, and if advisable, is it possible? 11. To what extent should natives be allowed to buy or rent land? 12. Should the Government definitely assist in teaching the natives industries that at present are more or less limited to white men? 13. What is to be the social and political status of the half-caste?... 14. Is the native always to be denied political representation? 15. How may the natural abilities of the native be utilised for his benefit, and for that of the State? How may the many disabilities under which he labours be successfully removed?...16. What steps can be taken to stop the creation of half-castes?17. How may the rightful desires and ambitions of the large 'kolwa' |converts| population be properly guided and utilised for the benefit of the State? 18. What legitimate stimuli may be applied to the kraal native to make him work?... 19. How should new laws be satisfactorily promulgated among the people?... 20. How may the influence and power of the missionary bodies be best utilised in the solution of the whole problem? 21. Is the native to have a vote. If not, how are his political aspirations to be satisfied?⁷

These questions show, first, how the 'Native Question' was a response to the breakdown of traditional relations between black and white. Contact between the races was no longer deemed capable of being regulated by frontier zones. Industrial development was bringing black and white populations into direct contact at every level. This called for new systems to regulate that contact, and to protect whites from the 'evil' effects of integration.

Secondly, these questions, though specifically addressed to the South African context, reflect the dominant concerns of the late nineteenth century about 'alien' societies: how they were to be governed and how the history and culture of 'lower races' were to be studied. Whether in ivory towers or in the bargain basements of theorising, theses about mankind, biology, language, race and history, came increasingly to be influenced by science; and Europe in the nineteenth century learnt about the African more scientifically and colonized Africa with greater authority than ever before.⁸ Economists, educationalists and administrators began with the assumption that whites were inherently superior. In the opinion of an eminent anthropologist, Alfred Court Haddon, South Africa proved

that the most efficient people must ultimately prevail.... The history of South Africa affords us a striking example of this process in the mutual relations of Bushmen, Hottentot, Bantu, Boer and Briton.⁹

Since Africans were a subject race, they had to be subjected. Theorists of empire, such as Charles Temple who argued that 'nature having endowed mankind unequally, the weaker had to be controlled by the stronger' and on this depended 'not only the maintenance of the positions we now occupy, but our very existence as a distinct race', reflected the influence of Social Darwinism.¹⁰ This was just one example of how the analysis of anthropologists, informed by biological determinism, interacted with imperial theory to constitute and to keep the African as inferior. In the later nineteenth-century, theories about other races were less concerned with understanding them, but with the control and manipulation of what was manifestly different. These ideas were not simply academic. By inspiring various projects of African social rehabilitation and influencing 'native policy', they had a practical impact upon South Africa.¹¹ A web of so-called 'objective end consensual' distinctions were established at every level to separate from black. It was assumed that blacks, their minds, culture, blood, Intelligence, potentials and even bodies, were different from those of Europeans: and this assumption was held to possess the quality of ontological and empirical truth, a valid demonstration of the need to reorganise African life.

Thirdly, a procedure for judging blacks came gradually to be established, founded on the truth of their inferiority/savagery. By determining their nature, culture and society as savage, uncivilized, unequal and inferior, blacks could be rejected and excluded. But now a quite different question came to be posed: not only 'is the black transformable?' but also, 'how can the black be transformed and into what?'. It was no longer 'why are blacks different from whites?', but 'how can the process that produced these differences be precisely located?'. Where did it originate? Was it instinct, heredity or environment? It was no longer simply the question 'what kind of treatment is required?' but 'what would be the most appropriate means to take? What would be the most effective way to rehabilitate the black and effect his entry into industrial society?' An entire programme of assessing, diagnosing, prescribing, and judging blacks came to be lodged within the framework of the problem of how they were to be dealt with. The result was a mass of legislative enactments, the starting point for the revaluation that the state and its legislation was to precipitate in the twentieth century.

Fourthly, these questions and the answers they elicited were closely identified with the development of capitalism in South Africa. They related to the problem of persuading Africans to work which in its turn required compulsion, or, in Foucault's terms, a system of sequestration. It involved the appropriation of black bodies, forcing them to adapt to the needs of industrialisation in South Africa. This called for an apparatus to achieve the sequestration of African life, and the constitution of labour power. Its aim was to discipline and compel. Africans and to force them out of their bad customs and habits. The compound system, the Pass system, the division between mental and manual labour (which created an hierarchical division between white and black workers), and pushing blacks into domestic work were all aspects of a power-apparatus to encourage blacks to acquire the habits of discipline and industry. The 'Native Question' became in part the question of how an apparatus of black sequestration, the fixing of blacks to the system of production, the creation of habits by means of compulsion, teaching and correction, was to be formed.

Fifthly, these questions pointed to the limits of morality and established new prohibitions against the entry of blacks into the white social order. Since blacks outnumbered whites,¹² a system was needed to dominate and restructure them. By investing the body, the family, and the kinship of the black man with a multiplicity of prohibitions, he would be taught his 'proper place' in relation to the white:

He must be kept under complete control, and made to conform in every respect to all laws, rules, and regulations in force. He must also be taught to show proper respect to his superiors, and to our women especially.¹³

Accordingly, the Native Question, and the policies to which it gave rise from the 1890s to the 1930s, must be approached from the point of view of their discursive conditions. The Question will be viewed from the standpoint of how the managing and governing of blacks was formulated and how racist discourses such as segregation were constituted and transformed in this period.

Native Policy
In the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries most discourse assumed that a 'Native Policy' was needed: this was evident from the reports of government commissions, missionary societies, the Mine Managers Association and other organs of local opinion, as well as from writings of 'experts' such as Brookes, Loram and Evans. The debate about 'Native Policy' culminated in the South African Native Affairs Commission 1903-5 (SANAC), appointed by Milner.¹⁴ Its aim was to impose a coherent and unified policy for blacks upon the divergent approaches of the four South African colonies. Its recommendations, most of which gradually were enacted into law,¹⁵ had a significant influence on the phases of segregation. The commission, whose membership included missionaries, educationalists and administrators who had long worked amongst blacks, was dominated by English-speaking whites. The commissioners visited black and white areas throughout the country, and took evidence from farmers, colonists, as well as from a wide range of black witnesses. As its preamble explained,

in view of the coming Federation of South African Colonies, it is desirable that a South African Commission be constituted to gather accurate information on certain affairs relating to the Natives and Native administration, and to offer recommendations to the several Governments concerned, with the object of arriving at a common understanding on questions of Native Policy.¹⁶

A 'common understanding' would help achieve the close regulation of African life throughout the Federation. Among other matters, the report dealt with the following:

1) The status and condition of the Natives; the lines on which their natural advancement should proceed; their education, industrial training and labour;
2) The tenure of land held by Natives and the obligations to the state which it entails;
3) Native Law and administration;
4) The prohibition of the sale of liquor to Natives;
5) The extent and effects of polygamy.¹⁷

The way in which knowledge about blacks was measured and authenticated by those who discussed the 'Native Question' helps to explain the meticulous procedures which were elaborated for the exercise of power over blacks, and which underpinned the strategy to make 'Native Policy' more regular, effective and constant. In effect the SANAC represented a new 'political economy' for governing blacks. The Commission's recommendations were influenced by representatives of many different interests, whether mining, agricultural, missionary, educational or administrative. Their aim was to find a way by which white community divided, by a bitter war, could reconstruct, unify, and modernise a South Africa capable of surviving as a white man's country; and they laid the foundations on which South Africa's modern racial, practice's have been built.

In this period there emerged three distinct unities of knowledge, or discursive unities, which underlay the demand for a coherent 'Native Policy' and for 'improving' blacks. They can be grouped according to their predominant concerns as follows:

1) the administration of blocks, (The State of the African Population);
2) the threat posed to European civilization and values by the extent of contact, interaction and integration between whites and blacks, (The State of Public Morals);
3) the improvement of blacks, as a discursive unity (The Deculturized African).

These formed the fields within which 'Native Policy' was defined, criticised and elaborated. In discussing these three discursive unities, it will be shown that each formed its objects of concern in precisely the same way, and together they created the necessary conditions for a demand for a racially structured 'Native Policy', and crystallised in due course into segregation, which was to become the organising principle of South Africa.

This analysis is not historical but archaeological, in the Foucaudian sense. It is not so much a history of 'Native Policy' as an effort to delineate the archaeological unities and the discursive conditions governing 'Native Policy'. Early native policies sought to ensure public morality, prevent racial degeneration, and secure white domination. By deploying European principles of goodness, virtue, superiority and truth, government's authority would be given a moral foundation and a black population with useful habits would be achieved. From 1910 onwards, native policies came increasingly to be seen as institutional levers to modify the moral typography of the people. Segregation in all its forms, territorial, residential, economic, political, social and sexual, was a technique specifically designed to perpetuate a separate white racial identity. Together with other racist discourses to which segregation contributed, they formed a new regime for the management and control of the black populations.

The State of the African Population
A 'Native Policy' was considered necessary in order to solve the problem of administering the black populations. The various responses to this problem which focussed upon the principles and habits of life of the blacks, had several characteristics in common:

1) Administering the African populations would have to ensure

... the permanent purity of the races, the definite safety of our children, the commercial prosperity of the country, the satisfactory development of the native tribes, and the ultimate security of the State.¹⁸

As William Scully, a Resident Magistrate, argued,

... what will be good for the Natives will be good for ourselves, and what will be evil for them, will be equally evil for us.... The task... is this, namely... 1. To improve the moral and social condition of those masses of humanity stagnating in savagery... 2. To provide for the distribution of population from unduly congested centres to localities where labour is required.¹⁹

2) Some sought to discover the best way of administering blacks by learning from traditional African societies. Black and white forms of government were seen as distinct, the former despotic and the latter democratic.²⁰ Accordingly, African systems, adapted to the principles and habits of the population, were despotic, but might nonetheless be the most efficient way to control and discipline blacks since they were the only ones they 'understood'. As Shepstone argued in 1907, the traditional, despotic, African system 'prohibits and guards against immorality, |it| exacts obedience and respect, all three essentials to good government and order'.²¹ By retaining this traditional system the white community could be protected from direct contact with blacks and the potential threat of assimilation, which was a recurring anxiety of the white population. Shepstone concluded: 'We are foreign to each other and so will it continue, for blood is thicker than water'.²²

Missionary activities, the absorption of Africans into industry, and their general contact with whites had produced groups of westernized blacks. Distinctions were drawn between the 'raw' and 'civilised' or 'city' native, who 'has changed from the law-abiding and submissive subject to practically the reverse'.²³ Colonists preferred the 'raw native' for his docility and malleability, a recurring theme in South Africa to this day: 'The "raw kaffir" is usually held to be more manageable, reliable, and useful, than one who has been educated up to a certain degree of consciousness of the value of his services.'²⁴ By giving the traditional system its head and allowing it to develop along its own lines, the black labour force would be more effectively managed and more productive. Western influence was perceived as having a demoralizing impact on blacks: 'The native is a natural mimic, and will more readily copy anything evil than anything good.²⁵ The deterioration of morals was particularly pronounced in urban and mining centres and was attributed to the inherent lack of self-restraint amongst blacks. Some witnesses concluded that 'tribalism', a system suited to their habits, was the best, perhaps the only, restraining influence on blacks.

The mining industry had a different angle of vision upon 'Native Policy'.²⁶ Labour in the mines required blacks to be detached from the land, and this called for a fundamental change in African society. Attacking polygamy would 'force the native man to work, and thus habituate him to labour'. It would change 'the basis upon which the present native social system rests...'; it would deprive blacks of 'the cheap labour which now maintains him in idleness'; and it would 'raise the status of women'.27 By transforming the habits and principles of African society, blacks would be forced into the production apparatus. Since blacks were seen as primitive, the breaking up of their traditional communal system was justified as an advance in evolutionary and progressive terms.

3) The third feature of this domain was an analysis of the 'backwardness' of the African population and the means to 'improve' it. According to Scully, Africans, 'like all uncivilized races, are easily influenced'. So the remedy

lies in education.... the application, gradually and consistently, of such civilised principles as will wean the savage from barbarism, destroy the evil influence of tribal tradition, and bring him generally into harmony with his at present unnatural environment.²⁸

The 'tribal system' had to be weakened and blacks compelled to work.²⁹ According to Hertslet, the aim should be to 'provide definite stimuli for industry'.³⁰ The familiar theme about the inherent idleness of Africans, the need to induce them to work continued to be a characteristic of most analyses. Getting blacks to work was to be achieved by precise procedures for the surveillance and policing of social networks through 'panoptic' systems of workshops and factories.

4) Another characteristic argument was that the improvement along these lines would be good for the economy and also good for the blacks. Hertslet described a typical black dwelling as,

dark, dirty, insanitary, and often overcrowded.... The character of the dwelling is the result of ingrained habits of laziness; the style of living caused by such a dwelling eventuates in further laziness.³¹

As knowledge of black society, its health, conditions of life, housing and habits, began to develop, it gave rise to sociological explanations that eventually came to constitute a series of prescriptions, about the existence and behaviour of blacks: for example, their diet, sexuality, hygiene, and even the layout of their living space.

Once the problem of administering blacks had been equated with a concern for their 'improvement', this fitted in well with the demand by farmers and mine owners for black labour. The effects of this discursive structure were evident in many of the projects and laws to encourage blacks into the labour market, including the proposals of the SANAC Commission and the imposition of a personal hut tax.

The argument here is that it was precisely because the administration of blacks was seen as a problem (whether to retain or abolish the 'tribal' system; how to encourage habits of industry and avoid the demoralising effects of interracial contact) that a discourse of the State of the African Population was constituted. As the SANAC commission advised, that discourse would have to take account of 'the process of evolution and the effect of changes upon people passing from semi-savage life to enlightenment.'³² Significantly, the concern for the state of the African population was expressed in a vocabulary which depicts both 'traditional' and 'Westernised' blacks as childlike, immoral, idle, depraved, backward, while the white is described as rational, virtuous, and mature. Across a spectrum of opinion which ranged from those who saw advantages in the 'traditional' systems to those who desired its obliteration, everyone shared certain common ideas about blacks. These ideas, or assumptions, were used to explain the behaviour of Africans and imposed upon them a particular construct of character and history. They also strengthened the sense of superiority among whites. A vision of reality was structured around the difference between the familiar (white, us) and the aberrant (blacks, them).

The State of Public Morals
A 'Native Policy' was considered necessary to tackle the problems caused by the deterioration in the moral character of the blacks, and the threat this posed to the entire white population. It is through a discourse on the State of Public Morals that this relation was constituted. There was a general concern about the extent of licentiousness, irreligion, depravity and bad habits among blacks. The absence of morals (or immorality) was regarded to be an essential trait of the African,

There is no question that conversations, actions, and customs which are quite outside the pale of white morality are regarded as normal and proper in native society.... In consideration of the so-called 'black peril' problem, these facts are worthy of attention.³³

Black society was perceived as saturated with immorality. Since the eighteenth century, blacks had been associated with a deviant sexuality.-Blacks outnumbered whites, and daily contact between blacks and whites was unavoidable, so the dangers of the 'black peril' seemed increasingly real. This ethical evaluation of blacks meant they were seen to constitute a threat to the very basis of the white moral order. Strategies were urgently needed to protect the whites. The policy which, for example, Evans proposed; had:

for its definite object a separation of the races as far as was possible, to reduce instead of increasing the points of contact, .... To our utmost power we must carry out the doctrine that white must keep white and black must keep black.³⁴

The SANAC Commission proposed residential segregation 'to prevent close contact between European and Native'. Its concern about the morals of the black population was fundamentally a political concern to retain the purity of the white race and the standards of 'civilised morality'. The Commission proposed the use of tribal authority to control the 'proper standards of morality' and 'other vices'.³⁵ As Hoernle emphasised,

to maintain white domination is the deepest aim of South African Native Policy.... To protect white South Africa against 'The Native Danger' - die donkergevaar or die swart-gevaar - is, beneath all superficial complexities, the simple pole towards which the needle of Native Policy steadily points.³⁶

Another characteristic of this domain was its investigation into the sources of black corruption. The prevalent vices of the blacks formed one great field of corruption,

Heredity is a potent factor in determining the present condition of the race. Behind them are centuries of conservatism, generations of idleness, superstitions, war, lust and gluttony. It was the correct thing for a man to be lazy.... The idea is ingrained in the natives mind that work, for work's sake is unnecessary and foolish. Only many years of teaching and example will remove the conception.³⁷

The natural tendencies and developed bad habits of the African were seen as another source of corruption. Caldecott quoted Walter Bagehot:

Pre-historic man was substantially a savage... but he differed in this from our present savages, that he had not had time to ingrain his nature so deeply with bad habits, and to impress bad beliefs so unalterably upon his mind as they have.³⁸

The solutions were placed in three categories, Religion ('perhaps that which has proved the most powerful factor in the world to affect man for good or evil, to mould his character, to determine his future, is religion')³⁹, Industry ('manual work should bulk large in the education of the coloured people, whose minds cannot really be awakened except through intelligent industry'),40 and Education ('Since the mental, social, and moral development of ourselves and of our children is inextricably bound up with that of the Natives, we must, if only in self- preservation, see to it that the "essential Kafir is educated"').⁴¹

If African principles and habits were a breeding ground for all kinds of immorality, then white society would have somehow to distance themselves from blacks, not only politically and economically, but also at the social level, since they provided the most dangerous points of contact.⁴²

Blacks were seen as degenerate and untrustworthy; and their sexual behaviour aberrant and immoral. The focus on black sexuality was not only macro-structural; it was directed at the everyday lives of blacks and whites and the intercourse between them. The aim was to gain access to the bodies of individuals, their acts, their attitudes, their language and their everyday behaviour. From this followed the importance of distancing blacks from whites and disciplining them by refined techniques of conditioning and manipulation. But the sexual mores of blacks required new techniques of power to tackle vices which the entire population shared. The political significance of the problem of black sexuality was that sex and morality were located at the point of intersection between the discipline of the individual and the control of the population as a whole. Strangers were known to meet on trains, and the SANAC went as far as to propose separate amenities for black passengers.⁴³ Taking as its starting point existing laws on sexual offences which included the Cape's prohibition of sexual relations between black men and white prostitutes in the Cape, or Natal where sexual intercourse between black men and white women was a criminal offence, or the Transvaal where such relations were totally forbidden,⁴⁴ the Commission recognised that public policy would have to probe into the innermost details of everyday life if private morals were to be protected. Experts on 'Native Policy' recognised this and suggested that,

the individual treatment of the native by members of the ruling race will count, for more in the solution of the problems than punitive legislation or administrative regulations.⁴⁵

If white racial solidarity was to survive, then every individual member of the community was exhorted to remember that 'for the time being, you stand to your native servant as the representative of all that "white man" should mean'.⁴⁶

Another source in the corruption of morals was found in the 'demoralising' effects of civilization upon 'primitive races'. The SANAC Commission reported that,

It is clear that the Native year by year is becoming familiar with new forms of sexual, immorality, intemperance and dishonesty, and that his naturally imitative disposition, his virility and escape from hone and tribal influences provide a too congenial soil for the cultivation of acquired vices.⁴⁷

Industrialization shifted the main arena of racial conflict to the towns.⁴⁸ Already in the 1880s the bad effects of towns upon blacks had been noted,

The raw, untutored, unclad kaffirs, fresh from their 'kraals' up the mountains, are by far the best and most trustworthy workmen. The contact of civilization seems to be almost invariably pernicious and demoralizing to the peculiar organization of our kaffir friends. Above all things, mistrust a kaffir who speaks English and wears trousers.⁴⁹

The 'civilised' black, everyone agreed, was not as docile or manageable as the 'raw kaffir'.

This analysis of the sources of corruption also recognised the demoralising consequences of the cities upon white workers as well as upon blacks, and how 'poor whites', or 'bad whites', might undermine the 'respectability' of the white community.⁵⁰ The bad behaviour of 'poor whites' could lead blacks no longer to respect their white masters. The visible vices of whites provided examples of bad-conduct which an impressionable black population might imitate when exposed to the influences of city life, and would undermine black perceptions of white superiority.

However, this discourse was not simply concerned with the extent of corruption and depravity. It also enquired into the reasons why blacks were particularly susceptible to corruption. Part of the answer was seen to be the disruptive transition that blacks underwent when they moved from their traditional systems which exercised complete control over each member to the quite different environment of the city which had as yet no system of authority and control that they would 'understand'. Experts on 'Native Policy', feared the consequences for the white race were potentially

disastrous, and probably result in our own towns and industrial centres being overrun by a horde of vagabonds, unrestrained by any ties or control excepting the law of the white man, not understood and unrecognized.... For our own ultimate good,... the points of contact of the races are already too many and too close, and to multiply and intensify them for what is, at bottom, our economic gain is a policy likely to be fraught with evil for both races.⁵¹

The absence of moral discipline amongst city blacks provided the reasoning behind a policy to protect the white race, and to regulate and limit the points of contact with them.

The discourse on the state of public morals was intimately connected with the concern for the welfare of the white community. The effects of the war, changes in land tenure and the shortage of farming land produced a generation of unskilled Afrikaners, commonly referred to as poor whites.⁵² The proletarianization of Afrikaners took on a specific form in South Africa. Black and white workers alike who migrated to the towns and industrial centres were unskilled and competed for the same jobs. However, government sought to protect and assist poor whites; aid for farmers, social welfare measures, increased educational facilities for whites and protection for them against black competition in industry. Poor whites in any event refused to perform menial jobs, referring to such labour as 'kaffirwerk'⁵³ This anxiety about the predicament of the poor whites reflected the general concern about their deterioration, which was likely to result in the intermingling of the races. This would endanger the very basis of white civilised standards. As De Kiewiet has pointed out,

The degradation of the poor whites became therefore of vital interest to the entire white population. There was no ideal to which the country was more firmly attached than to the maintenance of a white South Africa.⁵⁴

The moral concern for the state of the poor whites thus became a political concern. Inter-racial contact threatened to promote social intimacy between poor whites and blacks, and this eventually would erode race consciousness, and the continued subservience of the blacks. As one Afrikaner put it, not only did the poor white,

sink from the social and communal standards of the white community to those of the non-whites, but the non-white, as a result of these contacts and this social intimacy, lost the necessary respect for whites in general, and developed in his heart a feeling of defiance and a dangerous desire for equality with the whites.⁵⁵

At issue was the problem of how to stamp the authority of white government over the entire black population. Shepstone was among the many contemporary witnesses who felt that the black no longer regarded the white man with respect. Since the authority of the Governor, the native department and chiefs and leaders had been undermined, Shepstone found this 'reckless disregard of authority and contempt for the white man' hardly surprising.⁵⁶ Since authority was derived from the moral sentiment of the people, anything which subverted this sentiment ultimately subverted that. The 'first law of nature, viz 'self-preservation' demanded that the government act to restore white authority.57 The analysis of the causes of deterioration in public morals thus turned into an analysis of why authority over blacks was coming to be eroded; the increasing lack of black respect for whites served to define a political problem and the strategy to remedy it.

A part of this strategy is illustrated in SANAC's recommendation that there be a territorial separation, a division of the country into white and black areas, for purposes of residence and ownership. It proposed the establishment of segregated 'locations' for urban blacks; it also urged the political separation of blacks from whites, with Africans to be represented by whites in the federal legislature.⁵⁸ South Africa was going to be a white man's country, 'for good or ill the white man and what he stands for must be paramount'.⁵⁹ This was the central objective of the SANAC and its recommendations on segregation provided the basis for both a 'Native Policy' and for the regulation of relations between the races. Maurice Evans, a proponent of segregation, agreed with the Commission that:

The white man must govern... The main line of policy must be the separation of the races as far as possible, our aim being to prevent race deterioration, to preserve race integrity, and to give to both opportunity to build up and develop their race life.⁶⁰

This concern to preserve the racial purity of the whites and promote collective welfare on racial lines was to regulate contact between whites and blacks through practices which divided the population into distinct racial compartments. This involved a binary division of the population, and the expulsion of blacks into self-enclosed domains on the other side of the divide; it also lay behind the restoration of the 'tribal' system and the setting up of locations, reserves and compounds in the apartheid period. From 1910 onwards, measures which divided the population racially and made blacks exiles in their own country were consistently pursued.⁶¹ Towns were to be the white man's abode,⁶² blacks were to be 'distinctly discouraged' from residing permanently in towns; their status should be that of 'mere visitors'.⁶³

In 1910 a commission on native affairs condemned the 'heterogeneous settlements which have sprung up in the towns where there exists no organised state of society nor recognised code of public morals'. It prescribed that blacks must periodically return to their rural homes in order to be rehabilitated as 'reformed and law abiding members of the community'.⁶⁴ The restoration of the traditional African systems was another device to protect the state of public morals, and became an integral part of 'Native Policy' and the system of segregation.

The aim of the segregation programme was summed up in these words: 'By one and the same stroke we are to protect white civilization from the native and to protect the native from white civilization.'⁶⁵ This was the point at which the concerns of the discourse on the State of the African Population overlapped with the discourse on The State of Public Morals. The former transformed the management and administration of blacks into a moral discourse about the habits and thinking of the Africans. It was precisely this transformation which permitted 'Native Policy' to be perceived in terms of the system of segregation, and enabled segregation ultimately to emerge as solution to the 'Native Question'.

The Deculturized African
During this period many statements on the need for a 'Native Policy' to achieve the rehabilitation of Africans were founded on a discourse on the deculturization of the African. This discourse was formed along the same general lines as the discourse on public morals - the specific nature of the individual black was related to a multiplicity of sources of corruption: the African traditional system, the bad effects of contact with white civilization, life in the cities, and the absence of any principle of conduct in the mind of the deculturised African which explained his lack of respect for whites and their laws. Shepstone contrasted the 'moral training' of centuries which kept the European law-abiding, with 'the native' who knows no law but the law of necessity.' He conceded 'that under restraint, and the discipline of contact with the right class of European, the native becomes a useful and law-abiding servant or citizen', but 'the undeveloped native', no more than 'our original ancestors' had no 'conscience as we understand the word.'⁶⁶

This discourse had two principles around which projects to improve and discipline blacks were organised, the first the good influence of traditional systems upon blacks, and second, the effects upon the blacks of the erosion of these systems. The African or traditional system was seen as in impediment to the social and economic progress of blacks, since it was based on a lifestyle of idleness. It was objectionable because it gave rise to false principles of conduct (such as sensuality and lust) and rendered slacks incapable of working.⁶⁷ The African had no idea of the work ethic because,

In their tribal society they seemed to have reached a stage at which incentives to progress failed them. They lived under easy climatic conditions; their wants were few; and the communal policy and rigid customs of tribal life gave individual tribesmen little opportunity or inducement to improve their lot.⁶⁸

Every white condemned the idleness of the black, but more importantly, they viewed it as an inherent trait. Work was justified morally, since it would have a 'civilising effect' over blacks. As the SANAC reported,

The many thousands of Natives constantly employed on farms, railways and public works, and in mines and workshops are inevitably being brought under what is, in the wider sense of the word, an educational influence, and are therefore becoming more useful and productive members of the community.⁶⁹

This plan to improve the black by inducing him to work embodied the main project of the white community, namely, the moulding of black behaviour. The compound-system was a means of disciplining blacks and exercising social control over them and it was used by mining companies, factories and the railways. It was a technique for organising and training blacks, and was also as a means of exercising economic power over them. Projects to 'educate' and 'improve' blacks were in broad consonance with the new strategy of power relations: whites discovered the means to extend fine nets of control over the lives of individual blacks.⁷⁰

The traditional African system, it was generally accepted, produced no stimulus to work, nor any desire for improvement among individual blacks.⁷¹ The paramount objective was to devise measures to induce blacks to work. One obvious solution was to have forced labour.⁷² This was supported by those mining companies, farmers and others who needed to recruit black labour. As one commentator put it, 'I certainly think it necessary to compel the native to work'.⁷³ During this period Africans were persuaded to work in the mines either by physical force, or by a system of debt-inducement which mining companies encouraged by their links with traders in rural areas.⁷⁴ The 1913 Land Act drove blacks off the land and at a stroke transformed them into a rural proletariat. The measures which the demand for labour promoted mark the transformation of blacks into drones serving the needs of the white man. And it was precisely because African life was perceived as backward and stagnant, and because of the prevalent view of the African as indolent, that it was possible to argue that the destruction of African life would be the very means of its regeneration.

The main effect of the erosion of the traditional African systems was seen to be the weakening of 'tribal' discipline over individual blacks. The black was a socialist, incapable of conceiving 'that he has rights against those of the tribe.'⁷⁵ The disruptive transition from a socialistic system to the individualistic society of whites in cities, for example, weakened the black sense of responsibility, his disciplined acceptance of collective duties and his moral constraint.⁷⁶ Consequently blacks were 'deteriorating and being rapidly spoiled.... unabashed impudence... accompanied by selfishness and lack of consideration for others, qualities foreign to native character' were now regrettably common faults among them.⁷⁷

It has been seen that some experts on 'Native Policy' looked to traditional African systems as a potential stabilizing force which could now be utilised by whites to discipline and control blacks.⁷⁸ There was, of course, a potential contradiction here. Traditional African society was seen to generate idleness and obstruct the flow of labour; yet its disintegration led to an erosion of moral sense and discipline among blacks. These contradictory impulses influenced the proposals put forward by the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association, the Labour Bureau, and other groups involved in labour recruitment and control.⁷⁹ After the 1890s mining companies learnt to co-operate to secure labour, their most urgent need,⁸⁰ and the ideologists of capital began to fashion the arguments upon which the coercive recruitment of black labour could be justified. The Labour Bureau, a central body, attempted to co-ordinate control over blacks coming from all parts of South Africa. It organised contracts, settled wage levels and distributed black workers to various mines. But more importantly it functioned as a body which transformed blacks into a labour force. This transformation involved the sequestration of blacks, fixing them to the production apparatus by instilling habits through compulsion, teaching and correction: in short the disciplining of blacks.

'Knowing the native' was the basis for these disciplinary measures. In the 1890s the compounds which were being introduced in the Witwatersrand were viewed as the most effective means to manage and control the black labour force. Perceived as being like a 'child', the black could be disciplined by the white since children are regulated by adults. It was in their own interest that Kaffirs, just as children, should have 'special control and supervision when exposed to temptations to which, in their natural condition, they are unaccustomed.' Without a compound system the black would 'roam unrestricted, and not improbably inebriated.'⁸¹ Compounds would provide instruments of total control over black workers, with the additional advantage that by confining blacks, the rest of the white community would be protected from the ill-effects of contact.

Knowledge of the habits and nature of the black worker also governed the formulation of the proposals about how they should be treated. In general, these proposals included the establishment of what can best be described as a moral police, the white supervisor of t