Socio-economic Origins of the Apartheid Regime in South Africa

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the economic dimension of the apartheid regime in South Africa by studying the role of socio-economic processes in its formation and development. The author describes the situation on the labor market and in the economy of the country at the beginning of the XX century and covers the first steps of the white government to establish segregation of Africans in the economy before the official establishment of apartheid. Particular attention is paid to the problem of deep socio-economic contradictions within the white community (between Afrikaners and descendants of English colonists), which seriously motivated Boers with low education and qualifications to fight for political domination in the state to comply with their own economic interests. The author also highlights the role of the local population in the economic development of the country and labor migration processes in the context of the ongoing industrial transformation of the South African economy. On the example of the situation in education the beginning of the processes of forced emancipation of Africans is demonstrated, which, however, was a limited one. In conclusion, it was the economic (and not ideological or political) dimension of apartheid that was key in its development and largely determined the essence of the regime, designed to preserve the existing system of maintaining the economic potential of Afrikaners in confrontation with the non-white population (by restricting their rights and using them as cheap labor) and competing English-speaking residents of the country (by creating conditions for the redistribution of capital in favor of Afrikaners). At the same time, the priority of the economic motives of apartheid predetermined its well-known flexibility, manifested in the permissibility of moving away from following strict ideological constructs for the sake of economic expediency, which resulted in a certain gradual emancipation in the field of education of Africans and the inability to achieve complete segregation of racial groups. The more intensively the economy developed, the more significant the role of the black population in supporting its growth became, and the weaker the ideological dogma of the apartheid regime was.