21.

From the 1930s onwards, the neo-Calvinist Boers were strongly influenced by German National Socialism and Italian Fascism. They called their version "Christian Nationalism", and they openly spoke about blood as being either "pure" or "mixed".

    Long before, the "Afrikaners" had tailored neo-Calvinism to suit "race prejudices". Their republics, founded in the second half of the 19th century, were divinely created and ordained by God, (34) as was, later, the apartheid State itself, together with its "racist" ideology. This was even mentioned in the South African Constitution Act of 1961 -  the Almighty was credited for giving "South Africa, this their own land" to a special people. Under the "baasskap" (white domination) policy, which preceded the apartheid doctrine, the rulers of South Africa had to be kept "a pure white race", equality would lead to "national suicide of the white race". (35)
 

3.4.2. The various "races" in the Republic of South Africa

    Although the apartheid government, supported by its Nazi "race" philosophy, is very keen to divide and subdivide the "non-Whites", it has no interest in differentiations within the "White race": On the contrary, it does everything to create one "white race", although the present European population of South Africa is made up of various historic constituent elements.
 

                            1960                             1980                             2000

Africans         10,927,923                     22,500,000                 33,000,000
Coloureds        1,509,258                       3,000,000                   4,200,000
Asians                477,125                          880,000                  1,200,000
Europeans       3,088,492                        4,400,000                   6,400,000

Total             16,002,798                      31,588,000                44,800,000

    According to South African "race" vocabulary, a "Coloured" is a person who is neither "White", nor "Bantu" nor "Asiatic". According to the Population Registration Act of 1950, there are five types of "Coloureds" or specific racial mixtures. (38) (In reality, nearly the whole population of South Africa is "Coloured", the groups that are least "mixed" being the "Bantu" and "Indian" groups). The "Coloureds" had formed a rather "privileged" group until about 1945, but thereafter their socioeconomic situation deteriorated, and since 1976 they have been active in the liberation struggle as "Blacks", demanding "Black Power". (39) Of course, as in all other "race" groups, a thin layer of "capitalists" exists, which is co-operating with apartheid.

    Because of the relevance of the East Indians to the analysis of Guyana, it is necessary to deal with them in more detail here. When the British had occupied the Boer Republic Natalia in 1842/43, they decided to import indentured labourers from India. They already had experience with such projects in

British Guiana.The first group of Indians arrived in 1860; by 1910, 150,000 lived in South Africa, and today they number nearly 900,000. Encouraged to stay after the termination of their contracts, many of them accepted employment in the tea and wattle industries or as fishermen, coalminers; railway workers or domestic servants. After 1900 many migrated from Natal to other provinces.

    The first groups which had arrived, mainly came from Madras, were generally of "low-caste" families and were semi-literate. After 1910 a new stream of Indians came, mostly merchants and businessmen from Bombay, many of whom were Muslim. Also other Asian groups, especially Chinese, emigrated to South Africa, setting up chains of small businesses all over the territory. The Boers were the first to protest against this economic infiltration. In the Orange Free State, they had passed a law, as early as 1890, which declared "that no Arab, Chinaman, Coolie or other Asiatic Coloured" could settle there. Attracted by the gold rush, and the uitlander industries, by 1900 over 17,000 Indians were settled in the Transvaal. Also in the Cape Colony, where settlement was not restricted, the figure of Indian settlement reached about 20, 000 by 1957. (40) The majority of Indians are found today in Natal. Except for the businessmen and traders, the majority of Indians have been integrated into the South African economy as cheap wage-labourers. A wealthy Indian class does not exist.

Various "racial" laws, as in the case of other "non-white races", had led to impoverishment of the Indians, and even they are supporting the "Black Power" liberation movement at present. (41)

    Numerous works have been published about the long liberation struggle of the Africans or Blacks, the largest "race" group in South Africa. Generally, their history is well-known, as is the fact that they are the most discriminated against and exploited group in South Africa. They are also the most active group within the political and guerrilla struggles raging at present. (42)

3.4.3. Apartheid: Theory and Praxis

    We have shown that, theoretically and practically, the concept "race" has no scientific validity. Also, we can find no "races", least of all "pure races", with "pure blood", in the whole history of South Africa, 1652 till today. In fact, this was so obvious, even to the "Herrenvolk" (master race) of South Africa, that the whole system of apartheid had to be constructed, fortified by numerous "racial laws" and the use of police and military power." (43)

    The "races" as well as the "classes", of South Africa, did not come into existence by means of a natural historical evolution but due to forced industrialization by foreign capital and to "race" legislation. (44) The 

institutionalized "race ideology" was called "baasskap" at first, and today "apartheid" - soon this name will be changed again. The fact is simply, that in South Africa there exists a neo-colonial capitalist system, which is camouflaged by "racism", as part of the general ideology of capitalism and imperialism on a world scale. The South African "Afrikaners" have only given "racism" a specific Boer flavour; now Premier Botha wants to remove this so-called "petty apartheid" through "reforms", under the pressure of the liberation movements and foreign capital.

    Hence "racism" in South Africa was developed in the first half of this century to veil the class exploitation of the so-called "non-Whites," and sections of the "poor Whites" (the latter group has become more and more a "labour aristocracy" in Marxist terminology). Monopoly capitalism in South Africa needs cheap labour in an abundant, steady supply. For this reason, and only for this reason, an apartheid system was established, to secure the necessary control over the means of production, and to perpetuate the economic and social relations which guarantee cheap "non-White" wage-labour, extravagant standards of living for the "whites", and super profits for the multi-national corporations. As long as the oppressed accept concepts like "race" or "racial prejudice", feel themselves to be members of a specific "race", and perpetuate and nurture "racism", then so long can the status quo be maintained, and a slave mentality cultivated - the master-slave consciousness.

    Thus in South Africa, "racism" is the ideology, and apartheid is the system, the practice. This is the example par excellence of "racism" being applied to the "Third World" to institutionalize neo-colonialism, in the epoch of "late capitalism" (Ernest Mandel). As a prototype of future "race relations" in the "developing world", for example in Guyana, a fundamental study of full-grown "racism" in South Africa is a sine qua non; all the more, because such countries, with a colonial inherited "multiracial" population, are in the international forefront against apartheid.

    Apartheid, as we know it since 1903, is a historically accumulative and organized system of "racial" containment. Its operational component parts consist of four distinctive but inter-twined categories: "race prejudice" and "racial discrimination"; "racial segregation" and "race separation"; economic exploitation of human and natural resources; and legal, administrative, police and military terror.

    In contradiction to ancient and contemporary "group antipathy" (for example, Egyptians and Nubian slaves, Boers and Britons in South Africa), "race prejudice", which leads to "racial discrimination" is a sentiment, an attitude, which is systematically converted into a social act, into oppression of one social group by another, put into practice to sustain "racial containment". (45)

 This was legalized in South Africa by the following Acts:
    The Land Act of 1913, including subsequent amendments robbing the
    indigenous peoples of over 86% of their most fertile land; restricting
    membership of parliament solely to "Whites"; the Colour Bar Act of 1927,
    which reserved skilled jobs for "Whites" and condemned 80% of the
    population to dirty, menial, unskilled labour; the Settlement of Disputes
    Act of 1953 which forbid "Bantu" trade unions, and denied Africans the
    right to strike; the various Education Acts (1955, 1959, etc.), giving the
    various "races" separate schools and universities.

    The following laws constructed invisible walls between the various "races", but also concrete barriers, which created a "colour-caste" society:

    The Population Registration Act of 1950, compelling every "citizen" to
    obtain a "race classification", and to be registered as such; the Prohibition
    of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949; the Immorality Act of 1957 making sexual
    relations between different "race" groups a crime; the Bantu Homelands
    Act of 1969 which created "'Bantustans", pseudo-states for the Africans,
    causing them to loose all remaining "rights" in the Republic.
 

    "It is clear that the proletarianized blacks and whites of South African
    extraction, together with immigrant white workers and indentured
    labourers of Indian origin, constituted (and their descendants continue to
    constitute) a working class-in-itself, i.e., their objective relationships to
    the means of production make them into a class simply by virtue of the
    fact that their labour is appropriated by the ruling classes. ...  By means
    of the colour-caste system, and its sub-systems such as the reserve
    system and the Bantustan system, the proletariat are disorganized by the
    dominant classes, and therefore unable to constitute a class-for-itself . ...
    It is inevitable that the working class of South Africa will become
    increasingly 'black'. However there is as yet no coincidence of colour
    and class. This does not mean, as the pluralists and liberal caste theorists
    will have it, that 'race' and not 'class' is the motor of South African
    history." (46)
 

4. "Racism" and "Cooperative Socialism" in Guyana

4.1. Historical background, 1499 - 1833

    Unlike the South African case, we possess very little information concerning social relations between early European settlers on the one hand, and the Amerindians and "Negro" elements on the other, between the "discovery" of Guiana in 1499, and "emancipation" in 1833. However, an assessment of the general treatment of slaves in the Caribbean region and the Americas during that time, clearly shows that social relations developed from "group antipathy" towards "anti-Negro prejudice", and to open "racism" against all "coloured" peoples by 1833. "Racism" slowly grew between 1833 and 1900, and by the middle of the 20th century had reached full maturity.
 

    As is well known, sugar was introduced into Southern Europe from India by the Arabs, Columbus carried sugar cane to the West Indies, and later sugar was cultivated on a small scale in Hispaniola. After the Portuguese had introduced sugar cultivation in Brazil, and the Dutch had occupied north-eastern Brazil, many Dutch and Jewish planters migrated to Guiana in the 1650's. (48) The Dutch colonists were neither interested in indentured "white" labour, nor in Amerindians, for large scale sugar production. In the latter case, it would have undermined their original policy of establishing "friendly" relations with the native peoples. In any case, it was very difficult to bend the nomadic Amerindian to the routine and discipline of plantation life. This policy proved helpful later, when runaway "Negro" slaves, the so-called "Bush Negroes", established villages in Amerindian territory, and the Dutch needed the help of the Amerindians to capture them again. This was the root of the "divide and rule" policy in Guiana, playing off one oppressed group against the other, under the cover of supposedly beneficial "privileges". The Zeeland Chamber, in fact, prohibited the "unauthorized seizure of Indians" in 1644, and in 1686 the Dutch West India Company declared the "enslaving of Indians by Europeans illegal unless the person enslaved was already a slave among his own people". (49)

As for social relations between master and slave, around 1720, the following situation existed:

     "Each of the planters at this time had two or three
     overseers, a carpenter, and a cooper, all of whom
     were whites, and they superintended the twenty or
     thirty slaves which each estate had. Most of the
     slaves were Negroes, but there were also a few
     Amerindians and a few persons of mixed parentage,
     being the offspring of Negro men and Amerindian
     women." (50)

    There were relatively few female slaves or European women in the Guiana colonies. The male Europeans considered it their right to  have intimate sexual relations with their female slaves -  in this field, as in South Africa until the "Immorality Act" of 1957, there was no "racial prejudice" or "racism".

    "Women who had a presentable appearance were employed
    as domestics, end they were the first to acquire refinement
    and culture. Their children were still regarded as slaves and
    often had to toil alongside other slaves." (51)

    As the family ties of slaves were disrupted, new modes of behaviour developed, especially a tendency to rebel. The first serious slave rebellion took place in 1731 at the plantation Poelwyck on Caria Island. While the manager, one Sunday morning, went to receive blessings for his deeds in Church, the slaves revolted, hacking the four white overseers to pieces, setting loose their long-repressed anger and desire for revenge. Later the "trouble-makers" were arrested, four were sentenced to be severely flogged, and one was sentenced to death - fastened by chains to a post, and burnt over a low fire. (52)