Apartheid is based on the Bantustan and migrant labor system, and the color bar. The government declares that only 13 per cent of the land (the "Bantustans" or "homelands") is African, though three-quarters of the 24 million population is black. Africans may be citizens only of these areas, which are poor and eroded and contain neither towns nor mineral resources. This poverty forces them to find work in the "white areas." But as non-citizens in these areas they have no rights. They may not, in most cases, bring their families; they must stay in segregated "townships" and may be deported at any time.

Conditions in the Bantustans are so bad--for example, 60-70 per cent of children die before age six (4)--that thousands of Africans go, leaving their children to be looked after by wives or relatives. Africans must accept any wage offered just to be able to send something home to their families.

The system is enforced through pass laws. Every adult African must at all times carry a pass with his picture in it, properly signed and stamped. If he loses or forgets it, he is liable for several months in jail and deportation to the starving homelands. To remain in the white areas, the pass must be signed by a white employer.

The color bar reserves better paying jobs for whites. As increasing industrialization demands more skilled workers, Africans have been moved up the job scale, but their wages are kept to a fraction of whites'.

The result of the apartheid system is that African wages are extremely low. Most Africans do not get enough to live on. In this, the most industrialized country in Africa, a country which exports food worldwide, cases of disease due to malnutrition--kwashiorkor, rickets, etc.--are common, but only among blacks. In some areas in the Bantustans women and children can afford to eat only three times a week. (5) Four out of five African workers in the urban areas show signs of malnutrition. (6)

Of course, this system can be maintained only through extreme repression. By law, any attempt to change the status quo is "communist" and punishable with long jail sentences, even death. The justice minister can detain anyone in solitary confinement for as long as he likes.

But resistance has risen dramatically. Illegal strikes are common--50,000 Africans struck in 1973 despite brutal government oppression. The African National Congress of South Africa, South Africa's liberation movement has waged an underground struggle for 15 years, but was hampered by a lack of safe bases on South Africa's borders until Mozambique won independence last July.

The seven largest companies in South Africa, all based on gold mining, dominate the South African economy and are closely intertwined with the government. These are the "mining finance houses." They are multinationals in their own right, controlling basic industry throughout southern Africa, and have close links to U.S. and British firms.

After Britain, the U.S. is the largest investor in South Africa. In 1974, U.S. investments in South Africa totalled $1457 million, up from $692 million in 1969. The rate of profit on these investments was over 18 per cent, officially--and probably far higher in fact, as the firms routinely understate profits so as to avoid paying taxes. More importantly, almost 80 per cent of U.S. investment in African manufacturing--which is generally regarded as key to development--is in South Africa. U.S. investors have helped South Africa develop important basic industry. In the rest of Africa, they concentrate on primary production and last-stage processing, with few linkages or benefits for the rest of the economy. As U.S. firms contribute to an advanced technological foundation for the South African industrial sector, they become more and more involved in South Africa's structure of exploitation. Eight of the top ten U.S. firms have major investments in South Africa.

U.S. firms use South Africa as a base for investment throughout southern Africa, often in cooperation with South African firms. For example, Chase Manhattan controls the British bank, Standard, one of the two largest banks in South Africa, through another British bank, Midlands. Standard established a bank in Angola together with Totta Alianca, a Portuguese bank. Angola American, the largest South African company with assets of over $7 billion, has a major share in this bank.

South African and U.S. firms were able to take full advantage of Angola's resources because colonialism shaped the economy to benefit above all the Portuguese and other foreign investors there.

Over 80 per cent of Angola's exports were sold in unprocessed form in 1973, mostly petroleum ($230 million), coffee ($205 million), diamonds ($80 million) and iron ore ($49 million). The major industry is all foreign owned. Gulf produces the petroleum; most of the coffee plantations are Portuguese, but they sell almost entirely to large American companies; diamonds are produced by Diamang, a South African, British and Portuguese consortium. Even the main railroad, which runs from Lobito to Zaire, is British and South African owned.

In colonial economies, it is most profitable for private industry to invest in production of raw materials and agricultural products. Manufacturing requires heavy initial investment with less of a profit margin. Therefore, most transnational corporations invest only in primary goods production in most African countries, leaving the countries vulnerable to economic instability as prices fluctuate. To break this pattern of uneven development, the government must intervene.

To change Angola's economic structure, MPLA has written into its constitution the need for state planning and production. It is this that bothers companies such as Gulf Oil; it is this that Kissinger et. al. label "communist." But all that MPLA wants is for the Angolan people to take control of their own country and economy, to attain higher living standards and levels of employment, and to avoid the results of state capitalist development in South Africa and other African countries.

For South Africa's government, and for several of the largest corporations in this country, the existence of any independent state on South Africa's or Namibia's borders is a threat. Mozambique is independent, but economically dependent on South Africa. Angola, with its rich minerals and relatively large industrial base, has far more potential for independent action.