Page 402 - The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology

9781412934633-Chap-25 1/10/09 8:56 AM Page 373

COOPERATION IN KWAZULU NATAL 373

Confucianism and Buddhism became obsta- finds that he cannot wriggle any longer out of
cle to modernity. They did not facilitate the his work ... he simply walks out to find an
self-discipline amongst entrepreneurs and easier job ...’ (Brecknell, 1949: 1127).
workers to achieve the savings, investment The Board of Trade and Industries and the
and growth of Europe. Federated Chamber of Industries disagreed:
By the 1960s Weber’s explorations of Natives possess a natural aptitude for the perform-
world religions, economic rationality and ance of repetitive tasks, which are the basis of
development were turned into crude parodies mass production manufacture. … The facts of
monotony and consequent fatigue, so important a
through theories of ‘modernization’. These
problem in mass production is virtually non-
theories described a necessary evolution existent as far as the Native is concerned, espe-
from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’ societies which cially if he is employed on machines with rhythmic
demanded a change in occupational roles motions (Federated Chamber of Industries, in
and cultural values, since as long as the com- Greenberg, 1980: 191).
munal ties of the past marked the lives of By 1959, W. Hudson (1959: 54), a person-
ordinary people, backwardness was to be nel specialist could write through the pages
their lot. of Engineer and Foundryman that
The flattening of the world’s cultures and
there are signs that the genesis of African
their histories into a ‘traditional society’, or a Industrial Man has already taken place. The tradi-
‘pre-capitalist’ mush, was not only ‘Euro- tionalist may still survive in remoter areas. The
centric’ in conception, empirically wrong, migrant labourer may represent a half-way house
and self-serving; it also missed the point that in the development, a stage that may be accept-
able under certain tropical conditions. But in the
other values could be more dynamic as envi-
transition to industrialization, the urban African
ronments for accumulation than European worker has already passed the point of no return.
ones. Islam, Buddhism and Confucianism
have not been strangers to economic growth; From the perspective of black intellectuals
since World War II, such a claim would in the 1940s and 1950s, the above opinions
sound preposterous. must have felt like the dialogue of the deaf
In South Africa, social analysis was and the blind. The notions of ‘African
marked by the many apologists of segrega- Industrial Man’, of the tribal ‘Native’, of the
tion and Apartheid. The notion of a culturally ‘problem’ and ‘cipher’ was at the heart of
backward black labour in South Africa, the ‘mass murmurings’ and conflicts of the
marked by the chains of ‘traditionalism’ has period. It was to the credit of Natal
been common fare throughout the twentieth University’s sociology department, through
century. Similarly, the connection between the leadership of Leo Kuper, to have rejected
race, culture, control and productivity has not the Apartheid commonsense of ‘tribal
been new either. It has always been reworked Africans’. Instead of an inferior culture
and re-presented as a peculiar problem and a he spoke of colonial domination and cultural
constant debate: the capacity of black people pluralism. Instead of the ‘detribalized Native’,
to be modern, to be good workers, to be dis- he saw the frustrated aspirations of a black
ciplined employees. It has been the dominant middle-class; and as a liberal, he stared at the
monologue of white supremacy. Blade ‘mass murmurings’ of defiance and struggle
Nzimande (1991) has fingered such ideas as and highlighted the passive resistance tradi-
the core of our distorted minds and unfortu- tions of the region. Instead of accepting the
nately too our managerial commonsense: fences between people that Apartheid
‘The Native in industry is an incredible prob- erected, he explored spatial patterns and
lem’, mused a Foundry Manager in 1946. racial forms of urban poverty.
‘He’was uncontrollable, disinterested in wage For our understanding of the sociology of
incentives, making unreasonable demands industry though we have to turn to the semi-
and ‘once you have nailed him down and he nal work of Pierre Van Den Berghe (1964)