result of industrial growth, pervasive color bars, and state aid, white pover-
ty was being phased out and individual Afrikaners were getting a foothold
in top positions throughout the economy.3
That was the period when colonialism and segregation, reinforced by
racist assumptions, prevailed elsewhere in Africa and also in much of Asia
and the Caribbean, and racist ideas and practices were widespread in the
United States, In South Africa, though Whites were embroiled in internal
quarrels, they dominated every sector of the capitalist economy and did so
with the use:of cheap black labor. The categories Race and Class coincided
closely: with few exceptions, black people, however able, were subordinate
to white people, however feeble. Blacks did the manual work in the white
household and the mining stope, the arable field, and. the factory floor.
Many Africans in the agricultural areas outside the reserves were being
transformed from renters and sharecroppers into tenant and wage la-
borers." La.nd shortage, population
increase, and taxation
were im-
poverishing the families in the African reserves, many of which could
survive only by sending the men out to work for Whites for months at a
time. Yetmost Wllites spoke no African language and 'never set foot in an