Social work under apartheid

Marjorie Hope Young, MSW, is As sistant Professor of Social Work and Sociology, Wilmington College, Wil mington, Ohio. The identities of the so cial workers quoted in this article must remain confidential. If you tiy to apply basic social work Among the most important laws is principles in this country, you run the Group Areas Act, which zones land against the laws. so rigorously that millions of African, A Caseworker Colored, and Asian people have been Republic of South Africa ordered out of their homes and busi nesses and moved miles beyond the All over the world, social workers city limits to dreary housing in experience the gap between theory and "townships" (locations outside white practice. But nowhere, perhaps, is the cities for Africans who work in urban disparity as great as in the Republic of areas). According to the Black Sash, an South Africa. This report of conditions organization of middle-class white there is based on interviews with social women volunteers specializing in workers from eight agencies in South helping Africans with pass law Africa. For obvious reasons, their problems, "over 2,115,000 people have identities must remain confidential. been removed, all but 7,000 of them Black and white South African social black. Still to be removed are 1,727,000 work students follow similar curricula people, all but 1,600 of them black."1 (in separate schools). The great Moreover, if African workers lose their majority of authors they read are job, they may be "endorsed out" to the great names in the American tradia tribal homeland, even if they have tion: Perlman, Garrett, Friedlander, never seen it and even if they have a Konopka, and others, together with a working spouse who remains behind, few British writers such as Turner and splitting the family. Laws require all Younghusband. "The only work by an Africans over age 16 to carry a docu African I ever read consisted of a few ment detailing their name, tribal origin, articles by Moses Bopape, the acting where they are allowed to live, and head of the social work program at the what sort of work they are permitted to blacks' University of the North," an do. Africans cannot move without this African social worker told me on one of "pass," and failure to have an official my two recent visits to the republic. He stamp on it entitling them to be where continued: they are can lead to imprisonment or cr , ce . being "endorsed out" to a homeland. Sure, some of the stuff we study is r L.( .i,, „ In 1977, over 200,000 Africans were ar usetul, but the theories are based on , ' „ the situation in America or Britain. reste or Pass 'aw °^enses' and t e Many of these principles should be statistics for 1978 show an increase of universal—"common human needs" 100,000 in those arrested for pass of ure common, and self-determination fenses, indicating increased oppres is a basic right. As for the importance sion.2 Laws forbid interracial marriage, of the family in human development, and sex across the color line is a crime, that s as true of blacks as whites, a job reservation policy, which actu But we have a government that ofa[|y differentiates between "civilized ten breaks up African families-delabor and that done b .. |e who liberately. And almost all training, harhi,miK " .-t sets aslde the best jobs whites, almost all of whom are conwhites. servative. So what we learn is pretty Despite official rhetoric about sepa irrelevant when you get into the real rate development," the entire South world. African economy depends on cheap black labor, hence, the millions of The "real world" of South Africa Africans—servants, laborers, and a few seems unreal to anyone born anywhere professionals—who live in townships, else. Some 4.5 million Afrikaansand In addition, blacks come to the cities to English-speaking whites control the work in white-owned enterprises as mi destiny of 17 million voteless black grant workers. They must leave their Africans, 2.5 million mixed-race Colfamilies behind in the homelands and oreds, and 770,000 Asians (mostly Inlive in huge concrete "hostels," the dians). This is accomplished by scene of prostitution, venereal disease, means of a complex edifice of legislaalcoholism, and malnutrition. The tion. Bantu Education Act confines blacks to