Contradiction and Uneven Development in South Africa: the Constrained Allocation of African Labour-Power

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Abstract
In the post-World War II period, South African capitalism is considered by many to have been reproduced on the basis of ‘cheap’ African labour-power. This is generally understood to mean that the prosperity of capitalism in the Republic depended on the poverty of the African majority. On the one hand, between 1950 and 1979, gross domestic product grew (in constant 1970 prices) from R4·4 billion to R15·5 billion. On the other hand, Africans on average earned wages that were below subsistence levels as defined by such minimal indices as the poverty datum line, and that were only 5 to 25 per cent as large as those earned on average by whites – see Tables 1 and 2. As generally analysed, both overall growth and the absolute and relative poverty of Africans were the direct result of the apartheid policies of the régime, in particular those responsible for the so-called cheap labour system.

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