Bell, Trevor : Unemployment in South Africa

vii) Finally, amongst the causes of unemployment in South Africa, some
mention must be made of controls on the geographical distribution of
both population and economic activity. The recent Government White
Paper (1984 : 11) puts the matter as follows:
"Another restriction on the ability of the South African
African economy to create jobs has to do with the spatial
distribution of jobs and that of the available labour,
which do not always correspond. It is well known that
certain kinds of economic activity in Southern Africa,
such as industry and trade, are concentrated largely in
certain urban areas; the distribution of others, such as
agriculture and mining, are determined by the occurrence
of natural resources. It often happens that there is a
shortage of a particular kind of labour at the places
concerned, while in other parts of the country such
labour is unemployed. To the extent that administrative
or other restrictions, or a lack of reliable data on
labour surpluses or shortages in particular occupations
or regions, hinder the movement of labour from surplus to
shortage areas, the unemployment rate in the country will
be higher than it would otherwise have been".
Indeed, as is implied by some of our earlier discussion, legal and
administrative restrictions on the geographical mobility of Black
labour in South Africa, and in particular restrictions on permanent
migration by whole families, may well be a major reason for the high
absolute level of the unemployment rate in South Africa. This factor
would, fqr instance, largely amount for such unemployment as that due
to migrants spending periods of rest in the homelands, mentioned
above. However, what may perhaps be more relevant in view of our
interest in trends is that legal and administrative restrictions on
the nobility of labour, may well have contributed to the persistent
tendency for the unemployment rate to rise. For, coinciding with
the end of the great boom of the 'sixties, during which the rate of
Black urbanisation had been very rapid, the authorities resorted to