Economic History of South Africa - 'Poor Whites'

'Poor Whites'

Among the white population there were many sharecroppers, tenant farmers who shared their crops with their landlord in lieu of rent. Drought and the forced sale and consolidation of farms led to many being forced off the land. What were described as 'Poor Whites', almost exclusively of Afrikaner origin, flooded to the towns competing with blacks for jobs on the mines.

This was the period of the global Great Depression so all sections of the community were in fact impoverished but special attention was paid to white poverty.

The Carnegie Corporation founded by Scots-born, American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, conducted a study into white poverty that was published as the report of the Commission on the Poor White Problem in South Africa in 1932.

It led to the alleviation of white poverty but to some it also laid the foundations for the formalised system of racial discrimination against blacks that became known as apartheid.

Blacks had no vote and the whites used their political power to force the mining companies to protect skilled jobs for whites.