Black urban employment and Coloured labour preference ; Development Studies Working Paper, no. 1

Abstract

State control over the labour market usually results in the creation of different categories of labour, each having partial and unequal access to that market. In the Third World, typically, justification for control arises from an over-supply of unskilled rural labour and a small demand for such labour in the wage economy. To reduce massive urban unemployment, the state attempts to control the process of rural-urban migration by, inter alia, manipulating the labour market. ^ In South Africa, the civilised labour policy of the Pact government and the highly sophisticated system of black influx control introduced after the Second World War are two examples of such state control. In these cases, racial categories of labour, having differential access to the labour market, were created. The policy of Coloured Labour Preference is another South African example which is of particular interest since it is applied solely to one region of the Republic. Since 1962, when it was administratively coordinated for the first time, this policy has been applied in the Western Cape, a region comprising the 68 magisterial districts situated south-west of Port Elizabeth, Kimberley and the Orange River. In this region, black work-seekers' access to the labour market is severely curtailed. A series of regulations, particular to the Western Cape, are applied with the object of restricting the number of blacks resident in the region; denying blacks permanent rights of sojourn in the region; restricting the scope of employment for blacks in the region; and favouring coloured above black work-seekers throughout the region. In short, the policy aims to replace black by coloured labour and thereby aims to reduce to a minimum the number of blacks in the region. ; Digitised by Rhodes University Library on behalf of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER)