1.4 THEORISING THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION IN S OUTH A FRICA
1.4.3 Alternative conceptions of capitalist accumulation in South Africa
to theorise contradictions not outside (or as counter capital), but as integral to the systemic contradictions of capitalist accumulation. Bill Freund (2009) for instance, dismisses both Lipton and Nattrass, asserting that their naivety was premised on separating apartheid as a political apparatus from the capitalist mode of accumulation. To further elucidate contradictions in apartheid capitalism it is important to look at the works of Freund (1988, 2007), Gelb (1991), Legassick, (1977), Morris (1991) and Fine and Rustomjee (1996); what Fine (2009) calls the
‗Minerals and Energy Complex‘ (MEC). The minerals-energy complex (MEC)
examines a core set of industries associated with large-scale mineral extraction, energy provision, and associated downstream sectors; to develop an expanded theorising of a broader system of accumulation underpinning the incorporation, or not, of other sectors and socio-economic development more generally. Core MEC industries are closely linked, with energy being supplied predominantly through increasing coal extraction, with mining and extraction industries absorbing a large proportion of the energy supplied. Martin Legassick (1974, 1977; Legassick &
Wolpe, 1975) looks at the historiography of systems of accumulation in South Africa and argues that from as early as the Anglo-Boer War, mining capital was at the centre of the system of accumulation in South Africa. He argues that South African capitalism was built and depended on cheap labour and that it achieved its strength and functioned (not without contradictions) by bending the state to its purpose as well as re-investment in the forced labour economy. In his critique to Nattrass and Lipton he argued that manufacturing was never able to tear itself away from dependence on this system of accumulation, mostly because the advantages of the system outweighed the disadvantages. The South African system of accumulation without free labour was maintained throughout the 20th century. Apartheid as a social formation brought increasing prominence of the state in integrating capitalist interests and harmonising its contradictions (Legassick, 1977).
Another useful contribution to understanding capitalist accumulation in South Africa is David Harvey‘s (2003) notion of accumulation by dispossession. It builds from Luxemburg‘s (2003) work on primitive accumulation (what is called imperialist accumulation) as a mode of accumulation to address contradictions of under-accumulation and over-accumulation. Accumulation by dispossession explains imperialism as a feature of accumulation. Presently, global capitalism and what Bond (2004, 2005) calls the looting of Africa as well as what he terms uneven and combined development, are shown to be aspects of accumulation by dispossession28. Marxist scholars clearly showed how apartheid was a social
28 I will revisit the concept of accumulation by dispossession in the conclusion, to develop a basis for what I call reconstitution of accumulation through cheap labour in post-apartheid South Africa through mechanisms of neo-liberal state policies and an economic system that renders citizens as surplus labour (Hart 2001, 2006, Webster et al 2008, Barchiesi 2011).
formation, a construction form of capitalist accumulation in a concrete historical time and space. While in the 1970s and 1980s capitalist social formation presented many contradictions for the manufacturing industry, it still maintained the overall thrust of a mode of accumulation based on cheap labour power. The crises of the 1970s and 1980s that led to the dismantling of apartheid can be attributed to the deterioration of a mode of reproduction based on pre-capitalist subsistence agriculture in the countryside. This means that the crisis of capitalism in South Africa was driven by the crisis of reproduction of labour power over time, culminating in the crisis of accumulation in the economy especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Gelb 1986, 1991).
Evidently then, while apartheid was a consequence of concrete class struggle, facilitated by the state machinery for the farming capitalist class and Afrikaner nationalism, it should not be analysed only as a political system of control, but as representing a distinct phase and form of capitalist accumulation, organised and enforced through the state apparatus of control. Through apartheid policy, mining and farming capital was able to enforce and perpetuate the reproduction of cheap labour power through the preservation of an articulated system of accumulation between capitalist production and some reconstituted pre-capitalist modes of reproduction. Literature notes that the supply of cheap labour was always a challenge for the capitalist class, especially for farming capitalists due to competition and pressure coming from the fact that higher wages were paid to African labourers working in industry (Callinicos, 1985, 1987; Morris, 1980;
Terreblanche, 2002).
Wolpe (1980, 1988) argues that the crisis of capitalism in South Africa was a consequence of contradictions in the system of accumulation. As forces of production grew, contradictions in accumulation also increased, ranging from statutory policies that further eroded African households‘ access to agricultural land (means of subsistence), and deterioration of farming land-use in African reserves due to natural and social factors. The unrests of the 1950s can be and should be viewed as forms of class struggle emanating from the beginning of the contradictions of accumulation. The capitalist class was able to resolve class
struggles utilising state oppression, leading to another decade of capitalist accumulation in South Africa throughout the 1960s.
Contradictions of accumulation re-surfaced again from the 1970s, growing and leading to a crisis of capitalism in South Africa in the 1980s, leading to the end of apartheid in 1994 (Fine 1988, Gelb 1991). There is consensus amongst Marxist commentators that the apartheid crisis was the crisis of capitalism, because apartheid represented a social formation of capitalist accumulation (Fine, 2009;
Fine and Rustomjee, 1996; Legassick, 1974, 1977; Wolpe, 1972, 1980, 1988).
While in the 1960s and 1970s capitalist social formation presented many contradictions for the manufacturing industry, it still maintained the overall thrust of a mode of accumulation based on cheap labour29. The crisis of the 1970s and 1980s that led to the dismantling of apartheid can be attributed to the complete deterioration of the mode of reproduction based on pre-capitalist subsistence agriculture in the countryside. This means that the crisis of capitalism in South Africa was driven by the crisis of reproduction of labour power over time, culminating in the crisis of accumulation in the economy especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s.