from a South African correspendent. Compulsory Whipping from a recent editor’.x1 in The Cape Times.
In the 10 years since compulsory corporal punishment has been in force the number of whipping has climbed steadily, nauseatingly and uselessly. During this decade 850,000 lashes have been delivered to 170,000 miscreants, thst is, at the rate of 85,000 a year to 1,000 recipients. The latest statistics available show the figues to be approximately up to average-slightly fewer strokes were delivered upon just about the same number of bodies. “’e are glad, therefore, that Mr, Vorster and his advisers have read the %essage of these grim figures. Perhaps the Minister will also ask his officials to reflect uwoon ancther sbeadily climbing figure which he announced at the same time the daily average number ef people held in South African prisons, It is now 70,000. A year ago it was 66,000. Ten years ago it was 355,000, and five years > before that 25,000, This is very near a 200 per cent increase in 16 years,. and our population has hardly risen 20 per cent. Poverty Yages froma recent editorial in the Rand Daily Mail.
It is not often that a single fact can tell a massive story but there was a case of it this week. At the annual meeting of the Bantu “ages and Productivity Association in Johannesburg, it we reported that more than LS per cent of African workers in commerce and industry were still being -paid less than the accepted poverty datum level of R48 a month,
This is a startling, damning revelation, fully supporting the complaints of people such as Dr, Edgar Brockes and lirs. Helen Sugman recently that the current boom is largely a ‘ihite man's boom and that nonJ’hites are only marginally sharing in it. eeeece
The worst offender is the mining industry whose 558,000 Africanworkers accerding to the latest figures earned just under R&m a month, or the princely figure of RU, a man for one of the hardest, dirtiest and by no means least dangerous jobs anywhere, It is true that the industry houses, feeds and clothes its workers, takes care of their health and recreation, and generally tries to be a good employer in all respects; other than pay. It is a subject the industry prefers not to discuss, and we can understand why.
In other sections ef commerce and industry also there are trends, sloy and faltering, towards better scales of pay for non whites, But these latest figures show how far the move has yet to go and how urgent is the overall problem.....This is an indefensible situation, especially in a period of prosperity. It is precisely at such a time that far greater efforts should be made to raise the earnings of our basic labour force to acceptable , civilised levels..ceses
Editorial notes One Rand equals 10 shillings sterling.
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THE WEEK Vol.3. No.14 Pare 3