Page 55 - Afrika Must Unite

40 AFRICA MUST UNITE

prefers h im to rem ain as fit as a horse or an ox. H ere the native is
no t bought, he is h ired from th e S tate, although he is called a
free m an. A nd his em ployer cares little if he sickens or dies, once
he is w orking, because w hen he sickens or dies his em ployer will
sim ply ask for another.
These opinions he backs up with horrifying statistics showing
in some cases a death rate of 40 per cent among the forced
labourers.
The situation has recently been made much worse by the
introduction of a large settler class. The precarious state of the
Portuguese economy at home makes it necessary for Portugal to
export its own poverty and to compensate citizens for the work
which the State cannot provide them with at home, by dis­
possessing the African population of the colonies and by provid­
ing for Portuguese immigrants land and cheap African labour.
Just as the farmers of South Africa are even harsher and crueller
employers than are the mine owners and big industrial magnates,
so are the Portuguese settlers, in the main, even more ruthless
and cruel than the international big-business men who have
established themselves in Angola.
The Portuguese consider the continuance of forced labour
essential as it helps to feed the neo-colonial economy of neigh­
bouring states and territories. In 1959, the last year for which we
have statistics, only one-third of the labour force of nearly half a
million workers employed in the South African mines came from
within the borders of South Africa.
At the beginning of the century, in the early days of South
African mining and before pass laws and the policy of repression
of Africans generally had really got under way, it was impossible
to recruit in South Africa free labour to work in the mines. The
Portuguese colony of M ozambique was used, therefore, as a
source of forced labour and in 1903, for example, provided no
less than 89 per cent of the total labour force of the South African
mines. This supply of conscript labour is still an economic
necessity to South Africa if wages are to be kept down and trade
unions prohibited.
Accordingly, the South African Government has entered into
an actual treaty with the Portuguese Government to supply
labour for the mines. The basis of the agreement is that in return