Martine Mariotti

Labour markets during apartheid in South Africa

Conventional wisdom holds that international political pressure and domestic civil unrest in the mid-1970s and 1980s brought an end to apartheid in South Africa. I show that, prior to these events, labor market pressure in the late 1960s/early 1970s caused a dramatic unraveling of apartheid in the workplace. Increased educational attainment among whites reduced resistance to opening semi-skilled jobs to Africans. This institutional change reflected white economic preferences rather than a relaxation of attitudes toward apartheid. I show that whites benefited from the relaxation of job reservation rules and that this is the primary cause of black occupational advancement.

The state and scope of the economic history of developing regions

ABSTRACT This paper examines the state and scope of the study of economic history of developing regions, underlining the importance of knowledge of history for economic development. While the quality of the existing research on developing countries is impressive, the proportion of published research focusing on these regions is low. The dominance of economic history research on the North American and Western European success stories suggests the need for a forum for future research that contributes to our understanding of how institutions, path dependency, technological change and evolutionary processes shape economic growth in the developing parts of the world. Many valuable data sets and historical episodes relating to developing regions remain unexplored, and many interesting questions unanswered. This is exciting. Economic historians and other academics interested in the economic past have an opportunity to work to begin to unlock the complex reasons for differences in development, the factors behind economic disasters and the dynamics driving emerging success stories.

Fathers’ Employment and Sons’ Stature: The Long-Run Effects of a Positive Regional Employment Shock in South Africa’s Mining Industry

I exploit the unexpected increase in employment in 1975, 1976, and 1977 in the South African homelands to compare the long-term adult outcomes of children whose fathers benefited from the employment increase to those who did not. Using a standard difference-in-difference approach, I find that the shock affected males who were either newborn or in utero at the time, providing support to the fetal-origins hypothesis and showing the importance of mother’s nutrition. The income increases did not raise household income above the poverty datum line, explaining why older individuals were not affected. This study provides previously unmeasured individual-level information on the quality of life in the homelands during apartheid, an era when African living standards were neglected but unmeasured because of a lack of data collection.

ESTIMATING THE SUBSTITUTABILITY OF AFRICAN AND WHITE WORKERS IN SOUTH AFRICAN MANUFACTURING, 1950–1985

ABSTRACT In this paper I estimate the elasticity of substitution between African and white workers in the South African manufacturing industry during Apartheid. I find that the elasticity of substitution remained fairly high despite changes in the technology used in manufacturing, despite changes in the allocation of jobs to African and white workers, and despite the increasing skill differential between white and African workers. The elasticity of substitution for production workers declined from 9.81 in 1950 to 4.64 by 1985. This result shows that African and white workers were substitutes throughout Apartheid notwithstanding legislation restricting the types of jobs that African workers could do.

The economics of apartheid: An introduction

ABSTRACT Twenty years after apartheid was formally abolished it continues to shape South African society. Its legacy persists over and above interest in it as a perverse phenomenon. We therefore find it timely, as part of our introduction to this special issue, to review some important studies of the economic aspects, and particularly some newer research by young scholars. Since so much about the apartheid system remains unexamined, Economic Research Southern Africa (ERSA) organized a workshop in March 2013 to bring together people who work on the economics of apartheid. This special issue is partly the result of papers presented at this workshop or collaborations developed there.

‘Poor South Africa! Will No Nice English People Ever Come Out Here?’ The South African Constabulary of the Anglo-Boer War

ABSTRACT Using newly digitised and transcribed attestation records, we provide a detailed description of the composition of the South African Constabulary, a volunteer force of mostly English recruits during and after the Second South African War. These records contain personal particulars such as age, country of origin, occupation and religion for 10,399 service terms. We also match these attestation records to the discharge records for each recruit, providing evidence about cause of exit and length of service. The records not only provide a wealth of genealogical data, they also enable us to compare living standards in the various colonies.

Policy, practice and perception: Reconsidering the efficacy and meaning of statutory job reservation in South Africa, 1956–1979

ABSTRACT Building on a long history of racially discriminatory labour practices, South African governments instituted statutory job reservation through the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1924, and extended its scope through Section 77 of its successor Act in 1956. Section 77, which provided for direct government intervention in reserving certain occupations for specific racial groups, attracted widespread condemnation from apartheid critics throughout its tenure, and has been vilified in the historiography as one of the cornerstones of racial discrimination in apartheid South Africa. This paper evaluates contradictions between the application of the job reservation policy in practice and its perceived power amongst sections of organized labour. We contribute to the discussion on job reservation in South Africa in two ways: first, by assessing the actual impact of Section 77 on racial employment practices, and second, by examining the reaction of certain groups of organized labour to efforts to scrap the policy from the late-1970s. It shows that the impact of job reservation determinations in the period 1956 to 1979 was very limited in practice – yet a number of constellations of minority workers strongly defended the policy because of the perceived protection it offered them as workers vulnerable to competition from African labour. We conclude that, in this sense, Section 77 primarily provided symbolic rather than actual job protection to organized labour.