Racism and South African Capitalism

The National party's notion of separating race groups was helped by pre-apartheid policies called the native land acts of 1913 and further revisions in 1923 which created homelands for the various black ethnic groups that inhibit South Africa (Christopher, 1994, 65).The apartheid government would further strengthen this act by making black individuals in South Africa citizens of their ethnically designated homelands and therefore foreigners to white South Africa to further instigate racist policies . .
             Homelands would initially spark concern by capitalist constituencies of agriculture and mining since it was believed that it would lock away labor into their own independent state entities. This was a genuine and credible concern since over 60 percent of blacks lived in areas in South Africa not regarded as homelands and in fact lived alongside white South Africa (Christopher, 1994, 65).This isolation of manual labor was a major concern since at that time big capital was already faced with chronic labor shortages and issues on profitability. These concerns by capital would quickly be answered by the basic structuring of these homelands and how they would operate to the benefit of a white South Africa. .
             Bantustans quickly became the biggest source of labor within South Africa due to the economic and political pressures enforced on these pseudo states Despite the fact that black people made the overwhelming majority of South Africa's population they where only allocated 13 percent of its land for the creation of these Bantustans in which they would later be forced to live in (Karis and Gerhart, 1997, 222). This land was not only grotesquely small for the huge population that was supposed to live in it but also lacked basic industry for any viable economy to grow. Such racist policy would be extremely functional for south African capitalism since the creation of Bantustans fostered an environment in which marginalized bantu workers were forced into migrant labor due to their being no industries within their allocated Bantustans(Christopher, 1994, 65) .