Black Tax

Every South African black man over the age of 18 must pay a "head tax" of -L-1 ($2.80) per year. Since even a black industrial worker's average yearly wage is only $369, more than 150,000 blacks are jailed every year for failure to pay. Last week South Africa's House of Assembly passed a bill that will nearly double the head tax on blacks this year.

South Africa's white men do not start paying taxes until they are 21, and half pay no taxes at all if they earn less than $420 a year. But to Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, it was merely a matter of "morality." In the next five years $140 million would be needed for native schooling. The natives should pay for it. "What," cried Verwoerd, "would satisfy the highest demands of morality? Would it be to spoon-feed the natives constantly, allowing them to be beggars who go on their knees to the white man? All they have to do is save 3 1/2 pence [4-c-] by drinking half a pint less of Kaffir beer a week."

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