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From: vassos@utcsri.UUCP (Vassos Hadzilacos)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: South African Blacks
Message-ID: <1552@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Oct-85 17:49:11 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.1552
Posted: Mon Oct 28 17:49:11 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 28-Oct-85 19:47:02 EST
Distribution: can
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 38

In <1534@utcsri.UUCP> I said:

>> What's free about an economy that can "offer" starvation wages
>> at gunpoint?

To which Riel Smit replied:

> Please explain how the South African economy offer starvation wages at
> gunpoint.  Apart from the fact that the wages are not offered at gunpoint,
> they are much better than in most of the rest of Africa. (Which still
> does not make it acceptable, but that is not the point I am arguing.)

Well, in that case let's stick to the point you *are* arguing: How does
SA's economy offer starvation wages at gunpoint. I must admit that was
a poorly stated sentence. What I meant is:

  The apartheid system forcibly creates the conditions that enable
  white employers to offer starvation wages to black workers.

Substantiation: Wage differentials between blacks and whites are
extraordinarily high in South Africa: On the average they are 1:4;
in mining they are 1:5.5; in manufacturing 1:3.7; in construction 1:5.4.
[1981 figures. Source: *Bulletin of Statistics*, Department of Statistics,
Pretoria, March 1982.]

I assert that it is impossible to sustain such wage differentials in the
absence of force. If you have any alternative explanations I shall be
happy to hear them.

Maybe some concrete examples are in order: Blacks in South Africa have
no political rights. This is being imposed on them by violence
(including, quite literaly, "gunpoint") and is certainly relevant to
the issue of why black workers get such low wages.

A more direct example: Black strikers are summarily fired and forcibly
removed to the bantustans. I know of at least two such occasions.

--Vassos Hadzilacos.