Industrial colour bar in South Africa

This study is an attempt to provide a general view of the structure and stratification of the contemporary industrial labour market in South Africa, and to explain the pattern it has assumed by isolating some of the more important forces which have influenced its development since the discovery of diamonds in the 1870's, when South African industrial history may fairly be said to have begun.

What I have tried to do, within the compass of this work, is to indicate the factors and influences which by accident or design have moulded the industrial labour market into its present shape, and I make no claim to have written a complete account of the role played by labour in the development of industrialism in the Union. Such a work would have required very detailed historical research and study, and also a different line of approach from the one I have adopted.

It may be helpful to visualize a 'map' of the labour market in the same way as we look at the map of a town. Most modern cities are the result of a certain amount of deliberate planning superimposed on a haphazard design originally dictated by economic and social forces of various kinds: geographical situation probably determined the initial site, and the subsequent disposition of streets, buildings and open spaces was the result of a multitude of individual and corporate decisions, themselves motivated by ideas and intentions of many different natures. An over-all plan for urban development has become fashionable only in fairly recent years, but today, in most large towns, new development is subject to the requirements of town-planning regulations.