Cheap native labor, not gold, was South Africa’s permanent attraction

Evidence

The abundance of natives, of cheap labor, was the first and perhaps most important difference between this gold rush and others of its type. It was soon apparent that the mob from the four corners of the earth would not even have to do the digging; at any rate, the permanent attraction of South Africa, the permanent resource that tempted the adventurers to permanent settlement, was not the gold but this human raw material which promised a permanent emancipation from work. The Europeans served solely as supervisors and did not even produce skilled labor and engineers, both of which had constantly to be imported from Europe. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 513

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Islamophobia scaffolding — the racialized labor economy as material basis for race-thinking, a mechanism later field readings assume. — connects to: Cheap native labor was South Africa’s natural resource — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2334; Gold mining sustained half of South Africa’s people and state revenue
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 513

Broader Connections

• Cheap native labor was South Africa’s natural resource #corroborates (0.95) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2334
• Gold mining sustained half of South Africa’s people and state revenue #qualifies (0.72)