Thread by @ShakaRaSpeaks

Labour & Wage Disparities under European Colonialism cont...

Colonial governments discriminated against the employment of Africans in senior categories; and, whenever it happened that a white and a black filled the same post, the white man was sure to be paid considerably more.

This was true at all levels, ranging from civil service posts to mine workers. African salaried workers in the British colonies of Gold Coast and Nigeria were better off than their brothers in many other parts of the continent, but they were restricted to the ‘Junior staff’

level in the civil service. In the period before the last world war, European civil servants in the Gold Coast received an average of £40 per month, with quarters and other privileges. Africans got an average salary of £4. There were instances where one European in an

establishment earned as much as his twenty-five African assistants put together. Outside the civil service, Africans obtained work in building projects, in mines and as domestics – all low-paying jobs. It was exploitation without responsibility and without redress. In 1934,

fortyone Africans were killed in a gold mine disaster in the Gold Coast, and the capitalist company offered only £3 to the dependants of each of these men as compensation.

Where European settlers were found in considerable numbers, the wage differential was readily perceived.

In North Africa, the wages of Moroccans and Algerians were from 16% to 25% those of Europeans. In East Africa, the position was much worse, notably in Kenya and Tanganyika. A comparison with white settler earnings and standards brings out by sharp contrast how incredibly low

African wages were. While Lord Delamere controlled 100,000 acres of Kenya’s land, the Kenyan had to carry a kipande pass in his own country to beg for a wage of 15/- or 20/- per month. The absolute limit of brutal exploitation was found in the Southern parts of the continent;

and in Southern Rhodesia, for example, agricultural labourers rarely received more than 15/- per month. Workers in mines got a little more if they were semi-skilled, but they also had more intolerable working conditions. Unskilled labourers in the mines of Northern Rhodesia

often got as little as 7/- per month. A lorry-driver on the famous copper-belt was in a semi-skilled grade. In one mine, Europeans performed that job for £30 per month, while in another, Africans did it for £3 per month.

In all colonial territories, wages were reduced during

the period of crisis which shook the capitalist world during the 1930s, and they were not restored or increased until after the last capitalist world war. In Southern Rhodesia in 1949, Africans employed in municipal areas were awarded minimum wages from 35/- to 75/- per month.

That was a considerable improvement over previous years, but white workers (on the job for 8 hours per day compared to the Africans’ 10 or 14 hours) received a minimum wage of 20/- per day plus free quarters, etc.

The Rhodesians offered a miniature version of South Africa’s

apartheid system, which oppressed the largest industrial working class on the continent. In the Union of South Africa, African labourers worked deep underground, under inhuman conditions which would not have been tolerated by miners in Europe. Consequently, black South African...

workers recovered gold from deposits which elsewhere would be regarded as non-commercial. And yet it is the white section of the working class which received whatever benefits were available in terms of wages and salaries. Officials have admitted that the mining companies could

pay whites higher than miners in any other part of the world because of the super profits made by paying black workers a mere pittance.*

[*As is well known, those conditions still operate. However, this chapter presents matters in the past tense to picture the
colonial epoch.]

- The Great Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Afrika