GOLD AND NATIVES

Grey River Argus, 12 August 1944, Page 7

GOLD AND NATIVES

300,000 natives in the South African gold mining industry receive an average cash wage of 16s 3d. a week. Not that industry could not afford a better wage. It pays an average of £ll 4s per head per week to its 35,000 European employees. It pays no less than £17,000,000 annually in dividends to its shareholders, £5O per year for every person, native and European employed in the industry:. In addition, it pays £B2 per year for every person employed in the form of taxes out of profits. Thus it would seem that there is £132 per employee, which to-day goes into profits and taxes, and a part of which might be used to increase the abominable wages of the natives.

The Native Wages Commission has now had the audacity to suggest that 6 per cent, of these £231, i.e., about £8 .out of £132, should be used for improving native wages to an average of £1 a week, involving a total of £2,642,000. This seems a modest enought proposal. But the South African Government has decided not to accept it. It has made a “compromise proposal,” reducing the amount to £1,850,000 and providing that it should be paid out of Government funds, not out of the companies’ profits.

These are figures of the case. Even more interesting are the arguments. Mr. Hobson of the “News Chronicle” exemplifies the apologetic '‘economic expert.” First he tries to make out that the disparity between native and European wages "is not quite as fantastic as it would seem at first sight” by referring to the native workers as "boys,” which is, of course, a misleading description, since the majority of them are family men like the Europeans.

He tells us that they are "housed in compounds and are fed and medically cared for at the cost of the corm 1 panies.” But he omits to say that the value of these provisions is no more than about 4s 6d a week; that the mines maintain an odious truck system whereby they force the native to spend the major part of his wages in beer halls kept by The mine storekeeper, thus making a further profit out of him. “TRIBUNE”