Apartheid and Capitalism

The apartheid era in South Africa was a period of oppression and inequality that had attracted capitalism. To uphold racist order requires continuous scrutiny and recurring doings to brutally dismiss any effort that aimed at defying or posing any form of challenges towards apartheid or capitalism. The apartheid system served, both, to defend as well as to preserve the rights and capital of the previously white dominant class. The apartheid system also certified to maintain the cheapest potential labour supply not only for local capitalists but also for foreign corporations. This essay will discuss how racism was functional to South African capitalism during the apartheid era by looking at the Bantustans, Bantu education system, passport systems and inequality amongst the oppressed black citizens and how they played a role in capitalism under the apartheid regime in South Africa.

During the apartheid era, South African economic development was profoundly structured by racial labour policies, shaped by ideology and a violent racially repressive socio-political environment thus it was inevitable for the state to become capitalist because apartheid and capitalism had similar features that complimented each other such as inequality, oppression, exploitation, a distinction between those regarded as superior and those regarded as inferior whereby in the apartheid system, the inferior were the black people, who would take the role of proletariats (workers) in a capitalist system, and the superior were the white people who would take the role of the bourgeoisie, those who own the means of production, in a capitalist system.. Capitalism can be understood as an economic structure whereby capital resources are privately owned. In order to ensure a sustainable profit in a market economy, goods and services are produced. In a capitalist system, those who own the means of production determine the prices that goods and services are traded. The main features of capitalism