African Laborers are paid poor wages; for example, even when mine owners found large quantities of gold they paid the extra profits to the shareholders opposed to the miners. Workers not earning enough money puts extra stress on an economy. Because the workers are exploited and earn very little money, they are not able to spend money on luxury items. When there isn’t money to be circulated around an economy, the economy struggles to grow. Evidence of Johannesburg struggling with economic growth is riddled throughout Cry, the Beloved Child. The first example is that there are not enough schools for all children to be able to get an education. There is also little to no housing available in Johannesburg. Paton wrote that a person could wait five years for a home and still not be anywhere near the top of the wait list (Paton, 85). The miners are the best example of worker exploitation in Cry, the Beloved Country. Miners were separated from their families, paid low wages, and given terrible working conditions. Arthur wrote that it was once permissible to move women and children into compounds away from the town, but it is not anymore (Paton, 178). He stated that it is not allowable to knowingly destroy family life (Paton, 178). Miners were forced to leave their families because mining was the only job that they could find. White males were preventing Africans from getting a …show more content…
As defined by the Meriam- Webster dictionary, an apartheid is, “a former policy of segregation and political and economic discrimination against non-European groups in the Republic of South Africa,” (Meriam- Webster dictionary). 1950 was when the group area ach was passed (BBC News). This began segregation of blacks and whites. Violence began in 1960 when 70 black Africans were killed (Ibid). 3 million people were forcibly moved to black homelands (Ibid). Then in 1976 there were 600 black protestors that were killed by security forces (Ibid). The apartheid led to violence in South Africa, but it also had an impact in other parts of the world. Gold Krugerrands in circulation were tainted solely because they were produced in South Africa (Rothbard, 345). The apartheid had a large impact in the United States as well. Students on college campuses were protesting and having sit-ins in an attempt to get universities to disinvest in South Africa (Rothbard, 383). The United States legislature considered doing the same thing (Ibid, 384). They contemplated setting an embargo against South America and prohibiting the import of South American Krugerrands. There were protests in the United States by people that thought these would only cause harm to the already exploited black males in South Africa (Ibid, 383). For this reason, the United States did not implement either of these