South Africa: a slave colony for the Blacks... and a Dominion for the Whites

produced that gave rise to both red and white peas in characteristic any one cell. in These are the (loosely labelSOUTH AFRICA is rather different from the other countries of Africa.

The other countries are plain and simple economic colonies (semi-colonies) of Britain, western Europe and the United States, in the main, with Japan a more recent addition to the list of imperialist powers operating in Africa.

South Africa, on the other hand, is, to use a definition which Trotsky made in a letter to South African Fourth Internationalists during the 1930s, 'a slave colony for the Blacks and a Dominion (partner of imperialism) for the Whites'.

It has all the features of a semi-colony as far as the PAGE

The next two articles in 'Scientific World' will deal with the controversy over the origin of life in the universe and genetics under Stalinism-the Lysenko period. 14 million people whom the Dutch, British and Boers classify as 'non-European', or 'non-White' or 'Black' or 'Coloured' or 'Kaffirs' or 'Natives' or whatever the mood of the term used in the hundreds of racial laws on the Statute Books of South Africa.

All sub-divisions of the soclassified non-White 'races' are both super-exploited and superoppressed.

The vast majority of the Ilt million so-classified 'Bantu, of the two million soclassified 'Coloured' (defined as 'neither White nor Black' by the 1951 Population Registration Act) and of the 750,000 classified as 'Asians' , are landless, rightless, voiceless, propertyless, segregated and regimented cheap labour working mainly for big companies with headquarters in London or other 'Western' capitals.

Virtual slaves They are, virtually, the slaves of absentee monopolycapitalists.

For this majority, forming some three-quarters of the population, the country is a semi-colony, more: a 'slavecolony. Their daily lives prove that Trotsky's definition was no exaggeration.

But for the other quarter, the four million, approximately, of so-classified 'Europeans' or 'Whites', South Africa is a 'Dominion', like Canada, Australia or New Zealand in the days of the 'White' Commonwealth of (British) Nations.

For they have full legal rights, a parliament, own or occupy property, earn superprofits if they are employers and super-wages if they are workers and live on top of the colour bar beneath which they keep down the non-whites.

They live in a Greek democracy of virtual slave-owners and freemen, of 'patricians' and 'plebians'. , excluding from their citizenship every single 'slave'.

For the 'non-white' majority the country is much like any other semi-colony in Africa— very much worse from the "legal' point of view, of course.

Extension

For the 'White' minority, South Africa is like Canada, Australasia, Britain or western Europe.

It is, for all practical purposes, an extension or annexe of Britain, in particular, almost like an additional, vast, British ...and a Dominion for the Whites PROPRANS MINO county—with one main difference, for them, namely that oceans separate oppressor nations like Britain from the nations they oppress; but in South Africa the 'oppressor nation' sits immediately on the necks of the oppressed, regarding the oppressed people as the subject part of their 'White'-ruled 'nation'.

The imperialism of 'White' imperialism worldcapitalism, especially of Britain.

One of the things this column will try to do is to show hat British imperia m is very real and is by n means 'dead'.

That it is dying is clear, but its death-throes are no joke in Africa, any more than in Asia or parts of 'Latin' America. bastion or world imperials a fore-runner and huge versio 1 otner Dastions ol lie isid type.

It is a military bastion of i.l. The revolutio i in Atrica in continuation of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions Shares fell It is maJor economic bastion, especially of British capital, a fact which was borne out in the autumn when shares of British companies on the . South Africa Exchange fell nominally by £2 billion and this was estimated by South African economists to be nearly one-third of the nominal capital in stocks and shares.

Which means that Britain's nominal quoted capital was some £6 billion in South The 'plunge' in Johannesburg shares gave some idea of the extent of British capital in South Africa, enough, at any fate, to show that it is massive.

There are many other and more reliable ways of estimating the depth and extent of British economic 'participation' in South Africa's economy; all of which show that the economy is 'very British indeed', and that the South African' economy is very much a part of the 'British' economy, which extends far beyond the shores of Britain.

At the moment, with sc much 'public attention' on the Springbok Rugby tour of Britain, the deep, basic, economic, political and also military facts are covered up and hidden, especially the fact that at the base of the South African economy lie British investments.

The cry of the anti-apartheid demonstrators in Wales: 'Springboks Out' (of Britain) can even be a misleading one.

For the problem of liberation in South Africa, as in many other parts of Africa is, rather, how to get 'Britain out' (of However, in order to understand this better, it is necessary to find out to what extent and in what way Britain is 'in' South Africa.

Using the nominal sharefigures mentioned, of f6 billion, and known rates of profit in South Africa, would give British capital more than a billion pounds (£1,000 million) profits a year trom South Some of this is re-invested, part is exported back to the UK or elsewhere.

But this is one rough indication of the scope of British economic control over South Africa-that is of the superexploitation by British capital ot the prisoners of the 'slave colony.

To give an idea of Britain's profits from South Africa: they amount to about a quarter of the profits of the capitalist class in Britain itself.

Which means that about a quarter to a fifth of what is called 'Britain' or the 'British economy' is not here but in South Africa.