Race and class in South Africa

Abstract

Social scientists must help man understand his situation. South African social scientists should not ignore the implications of the various analyses of their country.

The intellectual highpoint of pluralist theorizing was perhaps Kuper and Smith's Pluralism in Africa, published in 1969. They sought to both sharpen and elaborate pluralist concepts, firmly attempting to incorporate race and ethnic divisions in a theoretical framework.

Scholars have severely criticised the inadequacies of the pluralism hypothesis. It postulates a one‐category division (ethnic) for classifying society. It offers a static categorization of a particular stage in a society's evolution rather than analysing the dynamics of that society's evolution.

The inadequacies of the pluralism hypothesis are more important as some writers seek to utilize it to legitimize multi‐national development neé apartheid in South Africa. Such theoreticians argue that “multi‐national development” is a logical, justifiable response to cultural diversity. This adaption of the pluralism hypothesis reifies entities which are neither static nor given. It ignores or minimizes the role of coercion, forced ethnic identification imposed from above, and ethnically‐related class stratification. It classifies as static, ascribed categories social formations undergoing continual change in the industrial conurbations.

Analysis utilising a class perspective by Simons, Legassick and Trapido has been regarded in the past decade as increasingly successful in explaining and predicting major trends in South African history. These scholars’ point of departure is to scrutinize:

1. conflict over scarce resources (eg pastures) between groups in South Africa's history;

2. the victory of one of these groups, and the consequent re‐ordering of society to consolidate its position, by manufacturing the institutions and ideology reinforcing its hegemony (eg a volknasionalisme based on language, race and religion).

3. The ruling class's altering institutions and ideology as South Africa moves through conflict from being a colonial agrarian society to an industrial capitalist state.

Marxian emphasis on the importance of modes of production, classes, and labour‐control techniques enables them to address themselves to, and answer, questions which pluralism theorists evade or unsatisfactorily gloss over. Scholars such as Pierre Van den Berghe note that “pluralist” divisions of race are only one dimension among class and other divisions in real societies. A ruling class may as an instrument of policy, “pluralize” and “depluralize” a society, eg by imposing or abolishing a colour bar.

In analysing the why's of society, and the dynamics of change, the pluralism hypothesis is inadequate, and explains less than alternative approaches.