BLACK LABOUR

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 152, 29 June 1914, Page 15

BLACK LABOUR

TO OUST THE WHITE ? A SINISTER PROPOSAL MINE MAGNATES APPROVE. (Specially Written for The Post.) (By "A South African.") South Africa has at length embarked upon a momentous but inevitable undertaking. It is an undertaking destined, ifc may be, to more profoundly affect thg country than all the ■ years of discords, jealousies," and -wars of Dutch and British. What the final outcome may bo no man is capable of foretelling. In the near future there may be blacks and whites living together in concord ; on the other hand, the prosent movement may terminate in ruin and disaster. For the proposal, now ' brought before the Union Parliament for the first time, means no less than the removal of what is known in South Africa ns " the colour bar." And the removal of the colour bar will mean the placing of black and ! white upon a basis of equality. During recent years tho fact has been perfectly obvious that not philanthropists alone were bestowing serious thought upon the black man. The natives of late have been the subject of sympathetic and quite friendly references in quarters wherein, formerly, they assuredly wore not esteemed or looked upor^ as very useful members of the community. THE PHILANTHROPIC MOTIVES. Very different have been the motives which animated, and which continue to animate, the advocates of granting "equality with s the _ whites" to _ the blacks within the Union. The philanthropists desire to abolish all obstacles in the way of the natives rising in f the scale of civilisation. This, the philanthropic class, is rarely unreasonable, its plea being that, once a native has ; by education, reached a degree of civilisation approximate to that of the average working classes of the whites, he should obtain the social, municipal, Parliamentary, and religious privileges possessed by the said white workmen. These privileges have been granted and given almost entirely to the native and coloured (half-caste) inhabitants of the Cape Province; granted on a liberal sfale, but almost entirely withheld, in Natal; and, generally speaking, altogether refused in the two ex-RepubJlcs, the Free State and the Transvaal. LABOUR PARTY'S OVERTURES. After the philanthropists, the Labour Party became interested in the natives. Members of trade unions, especially on the Eand, found themselves in a most difficult, and in some respects a remarkable, position with respect to the black labourer. Tho white worker, and trade unionist, as a rule, on the Rand, is the aristocrat of labour. He is the skilled, highly-paid workman : the _ machinery, the blasting, and the oversight of the natives are in his charge. In the meantime his position is safe. By the Mines and Works Bill, passed by the Onion Parliament in 1911, the employment of coloured workers in the different divisions of labour, classified as skilled, is prohibited. The natives have been, and ai'e, employed in the mines in performing strictly rough, unskilled labour. But Labour had the idea that its cause would be advanced and strengthened were the natives, by some means, enrolled as unionists, and so, to that extent, brought under the sway of the Labour leaders. Still, Labour's overtures to the blacks" seemed not unanimous, and certainly they were not hearty. The question of equality and wages naturally arose, and that difficulty was proposed to be got over by the provision that, if the native performed the work of a white man, he should receive the pay of a white man. Tom Mann, in Johannesburg, has declared that he would not regret though, the colour bar were 'rem6ved. " Only," he adds, "the whites, by common action, must ensure that the coloured man does not jeopardise the whites' standard of wages." THE MAGNATES STEP IN. Then the magnates disclosed their high appreciation of all that was being done for the elevation of the poor, black, fast-dying, 'Unskilled workers on the Rand. That the Act should be amended they considered only right. It is a singular, but well-attested, circumstance that any scheme favoured by the mine magnate's is always suro to receive support from what seem to bo totally disinterested bodies and individuals. Modest people not addicted to prying into other folk's- affairs have, before now, been greatly surprised by the zealous assistance proffered the mine owners from most unexpected places and equally unexpected people. Of course, politicians of a kind sneer at the magnates, declaring this ever-ready assistance to be merely part of their " game." Mr. Winston Churchill, Post readers may recall, flatly refused to believe either statements or statistics which were placed before the Imperial Government when the magnates desired to obtain cheap Chinese labour, On behalf of the magnates it was said, and sworn to, that South Africa, with its 10,000,000 of natives south of the Zambesi, was unable to supply 200,000 of the number to work on the Rand. "The native labour supply," commented Mr. Churchill, "is regarded by the mine owners as something they can turn off and on, just as they would ihe tap of a water barrel." All the same, the magnates got their Chinamen, for a time Now, when the Chinese have been expelled, ■ and the white workers are joining unions, and demanding high wages, the magnates, strange to say, have discovered that there is a plentiful supply of black labour in the country. More, they find that the black man has progressed, so rapidly within the past few years that no adequate reason exists why he should not undertake the skilled work on the mines now performed exclusively by whites. , MR. MERRIMAN'S MOTION. Petitions from blacks and from whites, from political bodies and from religious bodies, poured into the Union House of Assembly, all praying for the removal of the colour bar,^ and thereby making the black equal with, the white. Bui/— and this is the significant part of the movementr— the bar is tto be removed only within the industrial sphere. Politically, tho native is apparently to remain for tho present bereft of all rights and privileges. Mr. John X. Merriman was chief spokesman in the House of Assembly ( on behalf of whom? On behalf of the natives, asserts Mr. Mom* man. Mr. Creswell, Labour member for Jeppe, on the other hand, expresses the. opinion that the versatile ex-Premier is but the mouthpiece ol the mine magnates. Mr. Merriman's motion was, in itself, not alarming, being simply that one of the petitions be referred to the Government "for consideration," with a view, as far as possible, of granting the prater of the petitioners. Mr. Merriman, it may be explained, is wealthy, but his fortune was made at Kimberley, not on the Rand. His sudden'interest in the black workers in the gold mines is, many things considered, not a littlo surprising. Three classes, as stated, are at present particularly; in-.

terested in the natives — the philanthropists, tho Labour Part} . and tho mineowners. By a coincidence, doubtless, Mr. Merriman finds himself an exponent of the aims of both philanthropists and the mineowners. His motion., lie said, went to the very root and foundation of one of the greatest questions that they, as white people, had to deal with. Unless they dealt with ifc wisely and rightly ifc would be a source of infinite trouble and danger in, the future to South Africa. They, the whites, claimed to be tho freest people in tho world ; yet they refused freedom to the race for whose welfare they were responsible. And so on, in this strain, for two or three columns. Mr. Creswell bluntly described the petitions as got up by the magnates, their one object being to secure cheap labour and get rid of the white workers. The debate was proceeding when the latest-received mail leffc South Africa, but the indications were that the motion would be adopted.