The movement of workers from the rural to the urban sector
has been and continues to be an integral part of economic
development. The phenomenon is neither avoidable nor completely
preventable. Attempts to explain it have thus been concerned
largely with the rate of movement of rural workers to the urban
sector and the resultant urban unemployment.
The major cause of rural to urban migration is economic.
Essentially, this includes calculations about actual or expected
incomes and the existence of differences in employment
opportunities between the rural and the urban sectors. Workers
will normally migrate to a sector if that sector offers more
job opportunities and higher average wages. However, some
workers may be attracted to the urban sector by better welfare
and social facilities but these alone can not account for a
significant volume of rural to urban migration.
In South Africa, Black workers, as elsewhere, respond to
differences in employment opportunities and average wages
between sectors by moving to the sector which offers more.
However, the homeland policy controls and regulates the
movement, settlement and employment of African labor particularly
in the White controlled economy (urban sector). The policy
seeks to ultimately reduce the African population in the
White controlled economy and at the same time to develop the
homelands so that a larger number of Black workers would be
employed in the homelands or in border areas. Because of the
controls in the urban sector, the urban Black labor force has
remained largely unstabilized and resulted in a migrant labor
system.
Attempts to develop the homelands have not made much
headway. Since the 1930's their capacity to support their
populations has been deteriorating. Often maize and sorghum
(staple foods) have to be imported to supplement the little
that is produced locally. Rapid population growth and
widespread removal of Black workers from the White controlled
economy to the homelands in the 1960's created a serious
problem of overcrowdedness in the homelands. Population
density in these areas is among the highest in Africa.
The homeland modern sector is still in its infancy and
can only create a small number of jobs in a year. The majority
of the economically active African workers continue to seek
employment in the White controlled economy. The homeland
policy has thus not succeeded yet in its objective. What it
has succeeded in doing instead is to concentrate the dependents
of urban Black workers in the homelands thereby shifting
responsibility to them for providing the workers and their
dependents with social services. The homelands remain poor,
underdeveloped and cheap reserves of African labor for the
White controlled economy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/41835 |
| Date | January 1978 |
| Creators | Chizengeni, Tobias |
| Publisher | Boston University |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 79 pages |
| Rights | This work is being made available in OpenBU by permission of its author, and is available for research purposes only. All rights are reserved to the author. |
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