African advancement under apartheid
Date
1995-10-16
Authors
Crankshaw, Owen
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Abstract
At the end of the 1960s, after South African capitalism had experienced a decade of
unprecedented economic growth, scholars were deeply divided over the impact of this
economic growth on racial inequality. Although the deepest differences were between
liberal scholars who argued that economic growth would erode racial inequality and
revisionists who argued the converse, there was little agreement even among
revisionists on the extent and pattern of changes to the racial division of labour in
South Africa. I shall argue that the reasons for the different estimates of the extent and
pattern of African advancement are due to the limitations inherent in neo-Marxist
theories of class and of the sources of data used by revisionists. To provide a reliable
estimate of the extent and pattern of African advancement that overcomes some of
these limitations, I have relied on a somewhat eclectic classification scheme that
incorporates insights from labour process theory and Weberian class theory.
Following the example of Simkins and Hindson, I turned to the Manpower Survey data
instead of the Population Census because it provides a more detailed occupational
classification and time series.
The results of my analysis are restricted to the formal urban workforce. Following
earlier analyses of African advancement, this study does not deal with the question of
African unemployment. Although an analysis of unemployment would greatly enrich
this study, there are no data which provide an occupational breakdown of the
unemployed population. A study of the inequalities caused by unemployment therefore
has to be conducted through an analysis of trends in wages and income which I have
dealt with elsewhere.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 16 October, 1995