ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the concepts discussed in the part 2 of this book. The part looks at some important historical events and developments concerning class analysis of the racial system and the groups involved in it. It deals with the historical relations and conflict between the two white groups operating the system. This conflict was explained as a class struggle over the specific mode of operation of a class system of racial discrimination, over the relative scope of operation of the class colour bars. This struggle, which is an on-going feature of South African history since the late nineteenth century, went through a particularly turbulent phase during and following the First World War. The part shows how the mining companies, in response to an intensifying profitability crisis, came to seek to resolve this crisis through a reduction of the scope of the job colour bar and a maximisation of the ultra-exploitation of non-white labour.
