South Africa: The Great White Laager

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is the rubber-stamp marks in his passbook. He needs one stamp to hold his job, another to maintain "temporary residence" in his African township, still others to allow his wife and children to live with him. If he loses his job, he must apply to the police for a stamped permit to seek work. If he wants to visit relatives in another city, he needs a stamp before he can get on the train. The government can cancel any of his stamps at any time for any reason, move him far away from his home, job and family. Above all, he must carry his passbook at all times, since the penalty for being caught without it is usually jail.

Thanks mostly to the pass laws, South Africa has one of the highest prison populations in the world: one out of every 236 South Africans is behind bars. Every day more than 1,000 Africans are herded through the Bantu Affairs Courts, where it usually takes less than a minute to be tried, found guilty and sentenced.

The effect of the vast complex of apartheid laws is often ridiculous. The Japanese, who trade heavily with South Africa, are officially classified as "whites"; East Indians, who are descended from Caucasian stock, are '"Asians." A Greek immigrant from Cyprus was nearly refused entrance to South Africa recently because he had acquired a deep suntan on the ship. Since white athletes are forbidden to compete against nonwhites, South Africa has had to cancel its longstanding rugby rivalry with New Zealand—which allows Maoris to play on its team.

New Bills. In its inherent madness, apartheid breeds more apartheid. Recent government edicts have ordered professional associations to expel African doctors and lawyers and have imposed segregation on charitable institutions. Before the current session of Parliament is a bill to further restrict the voting rights of the Cape Coloreds by allowing the government to select the candidates for their four white representatives in Parliament.

Despite the Bantustans, the pass laws and the massive police organization, Africans are still flooding into the cities looking for work. The African townships surrounding Johannesburg now have a population of 650,000 (v. the city's 450,000 whites). And, for all the restrictions, the regime does not seriously try to stop the flood. The whites cannot get along without them.

The reason is economic. South Africa is in the middle of a massive boom. Attracted by cheap labor, a gold-backed currency and high profits, investors from all over the world have plowed money into the country, and the new industries that they have started have sent production, consumption—and the demand for labor—soaring.

Such are the proportions of prosperity that there are not nearly enough white South Africans to keep the factories going. The government advertises for white immigrants in newspapers throughout Europe, attracts more than 3,000 a month. Its propaganda organs beat the drums for "more white babies." Last month a Cape Town scientist declared that, with proper training, baboons could replace Africans in menial tasks—a suggestion that led the Rand Daily Mail to quip that Verwoerd would soon offer them their own Baboonstan. But so hungry is the nation for manpower that employers everywhere are forced to give non-whites ever more and ever better jobs.

Shortage of Skills. Africans now