Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T10:28:41.106Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Municipal Transformation in Soweto: Race, Politics, and Maladministration in Black Johannesburg

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Philip Frankel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The growth of Johannesburg is synonymous with that of South Africa's gold mining industry and the expansion of the metropolitan area from a ramshackle collection of huts to one of the continent's major urban concentrations attests to the impact of visions quickly accumulated wealth on patterns of human movement. This is particularly true of the city's early white community, the prospectors and later the purveyors of capital and mining technology, to whom the imminent possibility of riches compensated for the rigors of existence on the geographically featureless Witwatersrand. Yet similar imaginings of affluence also partially explain the historic drift of blacks to “N'goli” (the city of gold) where today they constitute the overwhelming majority of its population. The opening of the gold reefs in 1884 brought unprecedented wealth to white South Africa (if not to the legions of black labor responsible for the precious metal's extraction). At the same time the discovery of gold set in motion the process of black urbanization of which Johannesburg is the epitome. By 1896 approximately half of the fledgling town's population were blacks seeking refuge in mine wage labor from growing poverty in the country areas and by 1913, with rural dispossesion aggravated by the Natives Land Act, an irreversible momentum was set in motion. Twelve years after the striking of the first successful claims Johannesburg's population of 102,000 was roughly divided between black and white (Lewis, 1966: 3). A mere 80 years later, despite the barriers to black urban influx institutionalized by successive white governments, the racial distribution of population was of the order of 3 to 1 with blacks the predominant element of the ratio.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , September 1979 , pp. 49 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Sash, Black. (1971) Memorandum on the Application of the Pass Laws and Influx Control Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations.Google Scholar
Bloom, L. (1964) “Some Problems of Urbanization in South Africa.” Phylon 25 (Winter): 347–62.Google Scholar
Botha, M. C. (1964) “Ons Stedelike Bantobeleid Teen die Agtergrond van ons Landbeleid.” Journal of Racial Affairs 15 (January): 12–22.Google Scholar
Bundy, Colin. (1977) “The Transkei Peasantry, 1890-1914,” pp. 201–220 in Palmer, Robin and Parsons, Neil (eds.) The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Carr, W.J.P. (1959) “Raising the Standard of South African Urban Natives.” Optima 9 (December): 219–29.Google Scholar
Cloete, J. N. (1971) Sentrale, Provinsiale en Munisipale Instellings van Suid-Afrika. Pretoria: Van Schaik.Google Scholar
Creamer, Martin. (1977) “City without a Heart.” Sunday Times 1 May 1977: 15.Google Scholar
Davenport, T.R.H. (1971) “The Beginnings of Urban Segregation in South Africa.” Occasional Paper No. 15, Rhodes University.Google Scholar
De Villiers, Richard. (1978) “The State, the Johannesburg Municipality and the Reserve Army.” Paper presented at the workshop on The Witwatersrand: Labor, Townships and Patterns of Protest, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, February 3–7.Google Scholar
Duncan, Sheena. (1970) “The Plight of the Urban Africans.” Topical Talks No. 23, South African Institute of Race Relations.Google Scholar
Frankel, Philip. (1978) “Status, Group Consciousness and Political Participation: Black Consciousness in SOWETO.” Paper presented at the workshop on The Witwatersrand: Labor, Townships and Patterns of Protest University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, February 3–7.Google Scholar
Hellman, Ellen. (1967) Soweto: Johannesburg's African City. Durban: South African Institute of Race Relations.Google Scholar
Hellman, Ellen. (1969) “Urban Bantu Legislation.” New Nation 3 (September): 7–11.Google Scholar
Hellman, Ellen. (1971) Soweto. Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations.Google Scholar
Hellman, Ellen. and Goldblatt, David. (1973) “Soweto.” Optima 23 (March): 14–46.Google Scholar
Horrell, Muriel. (1971) Legislation and Race Relations. Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations.Google Scholar
Horrell, Muriel. (1974) Legislation and Race Relations Supplement. Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations.Google Scholar
Koornhoff, P. J. (1972) “Urban Bantu Policy,” pp. 315–35 in Rhoodie, N. (ed.) South African Dialogue: Contrasts in South African Thinking on Basic Race Issues. Johannesburg: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Leistner, G. (1972) “Economic and Social Forces Affecting the Urbanization of the Bantu Population of South Africa.” Occasional Paper No. 32, Africa Institute, Pretoria.Google Scholar
Lewis, Patrick. (1969) City Within a City: The Creation of SOWETO. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press.Google Scholar
Philips, R. E. (1938) The Bantu in the City. Lovedale: Lovedale University Press.Google Scholar
Maud, John. P. R. (1938) City Government: The Johannesburg Experiment Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Mathewson, J. E. (1969) “Policies and Practices of Native Participation in Municipal Government in South Africa.” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pretoria.Google Scholar
M'timkulu, D.G.S. (1955) “African Adjustment to Urbanization.” Unpublished address to the South African Institute of Race Relations.Google Scholar
Rich, Paul. (1978) “Ministering to the White Man's Needs: The Development of Urban Segregation in South Africa, 1913-23.” Paper presented at the workshop on The Witwatersrand: Labor, Townships and Patterns of Protest, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, February 3–7.Google Scholar
South African Bureau of Racial Affairs. (1974) “Bantoeadministrasierade: Hul Plek en Funksies.” Memorandum No. 2/74.Google Scholar
South African Institute of Race Relations. (1953) The Western Areas Removal Scheme. Johannesburg.Google Scholar
South African Institute of Race Relations. (Annual) A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa. Johannesburg.Google Scholar
Stadler, A. W. (1978) “Birds in the Cornfield: Squatter Movements in Johannesburg, 1944-47.” Paper presented at the workshop on The Witwatersrand: Labor, Townships and Patterns of Protest. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, February 3–7.Google Scholar
Stark, Felix (ed.) (1956) Seventy Golden Years, 1886-1956. Johannesburg: Johannesburg Municipal Public Relations Bureau.Google Scholar
Swanson, M. W. (1968) “Urban Origins of Separate Development.” Race 10 (July): 31–41.Google Scholar
Thomas, W. (1971) “Verstedeliking van die Bantoe en Stadsontwikkeling.” Unpublished paper, School of Economics, University of Cape Town.Google Scholar
Welsh, David. (1971) “The Growth of Towns,” pp. 172–245 in Wilson, Monica and Thompson, Leonard (eds.) The Oxford History of South Africa. Volume II. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Woldheim, O. D. (1966) The New Townsmen: The Legal Position of the African in the White Areas Today. Cape Town: Civil Rights League.Google Scholar