Capitalism and cheap labour-power in South Africa: from segregation to apartheid 1

Conventionally, Apartheid is regarded as no more than an intensification of the earlier policy of Segregation and is ascribed simplistically to the particular racial ideology of the ruling Nationalist Party. In this article substantial differences between Apartheid and Segregation are identified and explained by reference to the changing relations of capitalist and African pre-capitalist modes of production. The supply of African migrant labour-power, at a wage below its cost of reproduction, is a function of the existence of the pre-capitalist mode. The dominant capitalist mode of production tends to dissolve the pre-capitalist mode thus threatening the conditions of reproduction of cheap migrant labour-power and thereby generating intense conflict against the system of Segregation. In these conditions Segregation gives way to Apartheid which provides the specific mechanism for maintaining labour-power cheap through the elaboration of the entire system of domination and control and the transformation of the function of the pre-capitalist societies.