Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T10:38:53.877Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

POVERTY AND RESPECTABILITY IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY CAPE TOWN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2019

WAYNE DOOLING
WAYNE DOOLING*
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cape Town's black population of the early twentieth century actively pursued lifestyles that might be described as respectable. But respectability was expensive, and poverty —characterised by poor housing, ill health and shortened lifespans — stood in the way of some of its most essential elements: cleanliness, sexual restraint, sobriety, and the creation of nuclear and gendered households. Black respectability, therefore, could not simply replicate that of the dominant white bourgeoisie. Most challenging was the development of rampant black criminality, often seen by contemporary observers as the result of the failure of black women to realise respectable households. Even attempts on the part of the state to create respectable citizenries floundered, partly because these initiatives were incompatible with the policies of racial segregation. The state and the dominant bourgeoisie put their faith in the black elite as the standard-bearers of respectability, but the reality was that the respectability of the ‘superior’ class was frequently indistinguishable from those below, a consequence of the fact that the boundary between these classes was highly porous.

Keywords

South AfricaSouthern Africapovertycrimealcohol
Type
Forum on Poverty
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , November 2018 , pp. 411 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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.)

Footnotes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at Leiden University to celebrate the brilliant career of Professor Robert Ross. I am grateful to participants of that workshop, as well as to members of the Wits History Workshop and the Department of History at the University of South Africa for their insightful comments. I am especially indebted to Ruth Watson, Nicholas Southey, Angus Lockyer, and Shabnum Tejani for their critical reading of respective drafts. Author's e-mail: [email protected].

References

1 For a thought-provoking and comparative synthesis, see J. Iliffe, Honour in African History (Cambridge, 2005), 246–61. For explicit statements about the imitative nature of African respectability, see L. Spitzer, The Creoles of Sierra Leone: Responses to Colonialism, 1870–1945 (Madison, 1974), esp. 15–16, 40–41. The violence of colonial conquest could result in nineteenth-century identification with the middle-class values of Victorian Britain giving way to the construction of a twentieth-century ethnic nationalism, though these tendencies were not exclusive; see P. La Hausse, Restless Identities: Signatures of Nationalism, Zulu Ethnicity, and History in the Lives of Petros Lamula (c.1881–1948) and Lymon Maling (1889–c.1936) (Pietermaritzburg, 2000), 9–15.

2 Worden, N., van Heyningen, E., and Bickford-Smith, V., Cape Town, the Making of a City (Cape Town, 1998)Google Scholar; Bickford-Smith, V., van Heyningen, E., and Worden, N., Cape Town in the Twentieth Century: an Illustrated Social History (Cape Town, 1999)Google Scholar.

3 Goodhew, D., ‘Working-class respectability: the example of the western areas of Johannesburg, 1930–55’, The Journal of African History, 41:2 (2000), 214–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goodhew, D., Respectability and Resistance: a History of Sophiatown (Westport, 2004)Google Scholar.

4 Ross, F., Raw Life, New hope: Decency, Housing and Everyday life in a Post-apartheid Community (Cape Town, 2010)Google Scholar; Jensen, S., Gangs, Politics and Dignity in Cape Town (Chicago, 2008)Google Scholar.

5 Especially, see Wicomb, Z., You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (New York, 2000)Google Scholar; Wicomb, Z., David's Story (New York, 2001)Google Scholar.

6 ‘Plight of the city's poor’, Cape Argus (Cape Town), 13 Jul. 1935.

7 Iliffe, Honour, 246–48. On the importance of books in the making of African colonial respectability, see Watson, R., ‘“My desire is to be the possessor of all the best books in this world of struggle”: respectability and literary materialism in colonial Ibadan’, Africa, 88:2 (2018), 312–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Thomas, L.M., ‘The modern girl and racial respectability in 1930s South Africa’, The Journal of African History, 47:3 (2006), 461–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Callaci, E., ‘Dancehall politics: mobility, sexuality, and spectacles of racial respectability in late colonial Tanganyika, 1930s–1961’, The Journal of African History, 52:3 (2011), 365–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thornberry, E., ‘Rape, race, and respectability in a South African port city: East London, 1870–1927’, Journal of Urban History, 42:5 (2016), 863–880CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Iliffe, Honour, 247–49.

10 Lonsdale, J., ‘Town life in colonial Kenya’, in Burton, A. (ed.), The Urban Experience in Eastern Africa (Nairobi, 2002), 218Google Scholar.

11 See, for example, Bradford, H., ‘Mass movements and the petty bourgeoisie: the social origins of the ICU leadership, 1924–1929’, The Journal of African History, 25:3 (1984), 295–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bradford, H., A Taste of Freedom: the ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924-30 (New Haven, 1987), 65–74Google Scholar; La Hausse, Restless Identities, 259–60.

12 Ross, R., Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony 1750–1870: a Tragedy of Manners (Cambridge, 1999), 173CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Trapido, S., ‘The friends of the natives: the origins of the Cape franchise qualifications of 1853’, The Journal of African History, 5:1 (1964), 37–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dooling, W., ‘Reconstructing the household: the northern Cape Colony before and after the South African War’, The Journal of African History, 50:3 (2009), 399–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Bickford-Smith, Van Heyningen, and Worden, Cape Town in the Twentieth Century, 44.

15 Hausse, P. La, ‘“The cows of Nongoloza”: youth crime and Amalaita gangs in Durban, 1900-1936’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 16:1 (1990), 79–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mager, A., ‘Youth organisations and the construction of masculine identities in the Ciskei and Transkei, 1945–60’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 24:4 (1998), 653–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Glaser, C., Bo Tsotsi: the Youth Gangs of Soweto, 1935–1976 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

16 Davie, G., Poverty Knowledge in South Africa: a Social History of Human Sciences, 1855–2005 (Cambridge, 2015), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further analysis of the conceptual history of poverty in Africa, see Rhiannon Stephens’ contribution to this forum, Stephens, R., ‘Poverty's pasts: A case for longue durée studies’, Forum on Poverty, The Journal of African History, 59:3 (2018), 425–35Google Scholar.

17 Throughout this paper I use the term ‘black’ to collectively refer to all persons not white. The word ‘coloured’ first came into general use after the ending of slavery and was almost always used to describe the former slaves, indigenous Khoisan and the descendants of these groups who had coalesced into a single underclass during the second half of the nineteenth century. The term was only one of a number of words used to describe such peoples, but one that became increasingly commonplace, and was, importantly, taken up by the more elite members of this class as a form of self-identification. See Bickford-Smith, V., ‘Black ethnicities, communities, and political expression in late Victorian Cape Town’, The Journal of African History, 36:3 (1995), 443–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adhikari, M., ‘“The product of civilisation in its most repellent manifestation”: ambiguities in the racial perceptions of the APO (African Political Organisation), 1909–1923’, The Journal of African History, 38:2 (1997), 285Google Scholar. The term ‘African’ is used to refer to first-language speakers of Bantu languages. As used here, these descriptors do not, of course, denote reified racial categories, but it is important to recognise that the forms of state-sponsored racial discrimination ensured that the lived experiences of Africans and coloureds could differ significantly.

18 Iliffe, J., The African Poor: a History (Cambridge, 1987), 114CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the global association of poverty with the African continent, see Vincent Bonnecase's contribution, Bonnecase, V., ‘When numbers represented poverty: the changing meaning of the food ration in French colonial Africa’ trans. Kantrowitz, Rachel, Forum on Poverty, The Journal of African History, 59:3 (2018), 489–507Google Scholar.

19 Published Government Papers, Union of South Africa (hereafter, UG) 22-’32, Report of Native Economic Commission, 1930-32; UG.54-’37, Report of Commission of Inquiry regarding Cape Coloured Population of the Union of South Africa (Wilcocks Commission). In addition to the published report of the Wilcocks Commission, I have also drawn on evidence submitted to that commission, copies of which are held in the African Studies Library, University of Cambridge.

20 UG 35*-1904 (Cape Parliamentary Papers), Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the Colony, John Gregory, together with the health report of district surgeons and local authorities, for the half-year ended 30 June 1904; UG.34-’14, Report of the Tuberculosis Commission.

21 UG 40-’24, Report on the Third Census of the Population of the Union of South Africa, Enumerated 3 May 1921, Part X; ‘In the underworld of Cape Town’, Cape Times, 13 Feb. 1922; ‘“Black October” ten years ago’, Cape Argus, 24 Oct. 1928; H. Phillips, ‘Black October’: the Impact of the Spanish Influenza Epidemic of 1918 on South Africa (Pretoria, 1990).

22 National Archives of South Africa, Cape Town (hereafter, CA) 3/CT 4/1/9/1/9, Report of the Government Departmental Committee to Explore Ways and Means of Improving Health and Social Conditions of Natives in Urban Areas other than Increasing Wages (Smit Committee), 1941.

23 CA 3/CT 4/1/9/1/9, Report of the Smit Committee, 1941.

24 W. Dooling, ‘“Cape Town knows, but she forgets”: segregation and the making of a housing crisis during the first half of the twentieth century’, Journal of Southern African Studies, forthcoming.

25 ‘Raiding the dope sellers of Cape Town’, Cape Argus, 16 Oct. 1926; CA 3/CT 4/1/5/1258, ‘City native at “home”’, 29 Apr. 1931.

26 ‘Slum menace in Cape Town’, Cape Argus, 9 Feb. 1927; ‘Clean up Cape Town's plague spots’, Cape Times, 2 Sep. 1933; University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) Historical Papers, Digitised Collections, Native Economic Commission, Cape Town, vol. 4, Evidence of Sir Clarkson Tredgold, 23 Apr. 1931.

27 ‘Clean up Cape Town's plague spots’, Cape Argus, 2 Sept. 1933.

28 CA 3/CT 4/1/5/576, Evidence of Dr. T. Shadick Higgins, 16 Apr. 1934.

29 CA 3/CT 4/1/5/576, Housing Survey, Interim report, Wards, 2–6, 1934.

30 Wits Historical Papers, Native Economic Commission, Cape Town, vol. 4, ‘Historical, Ndabeni Location, Maitland,’ written evidence presented, 1931.

31 ‘A walk round Ndabeni’, Cape Argus, 22 Sept. 1930.

32 ‘The creation of Langa’, Cape Argus, 5 Jan. 1924.

33 CA 3/CT 4/1/5/1248, Ndabeni location, Report of the Medical Officer of Health: general health conditions, 21 Dec. 1934.

34 ‘Big police raid at Windermere’, Cape Times, 15 Sept. 1930.

35 CA 3/CT 4/1/9/1/7, T.S. Higgins to General Purposes Committee, City of Cape Town, 9 Sept. 1941.

36 Cited by Lewis, G., Between the Wire and the Wall: a History of South African “Coloured” Politics (Cape Town, 1987), 132–3Google Scholar.

37 ‘Native unrest at the docks’, Cape Argus, 11 Feb. 1926; ‘Natives ousting coloured workers’, Cape Argus, 27 Oct. 1925.

38 ‘Economic and Wage Commission’, Cape Argus, 21 May 1926.

39 ‘Native unrest at the docks’, Cape Argus, 11 Feb. 1926; ‘Coloured labour at the docks’, Cape Argus, 12 Feb. 1926; ‘Natives ousting coloured workers’, Cape Argus, 27 Oct. 1925.

40 ‘Urban natives’, Cape Argus, 17 Jan. 1936.

41 ‘Plea of coloured railwaymen’, Cape Argus, 16 Feb. 1935.

42 ‘When the last penny has been spent’, Cape Argus, 29 Jul. 1929.

43 Wits Historical Papers, Johannesburg, South Africa. Native Economic Commission, Cape Town, vol. 4, Statement by Rev. A. Mtimkulu, 24 Apr. 1931.

44 Wits Historical Papers, Native Economic Commission, Cape Town, vol. 4, Evidence of N.R. Veldsman, 25 Apr. 1931; ‘Coloured people “robbed” of their rights’, Cape Argus, 25 Jun. 1937; Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall, 152.

45 ‘House rents still too high’, Cape Times, 4 Feb. 1933.

46 ‘Cape Town's cost of living’, Cape Argus, 1 Aug. 1930. For detailed discussion of the relationship between dietary measurement and living standards, see Vincent Bonnecase's contribution to this forum, Bonnecase, V., ‘When numbers represented poverty’. Forum on Poverty, The Journal of African History, 59:3 (2018), 489–507Google Scholar.

47 Wits Historical Papers, Native Economic Commission, Cape Town, vol. 4, Evidence of Sir Clarkson Tredgold, 23 Apr. 1931.

48 ‘Langa can only succeed as a slum’, Cape Argus, 15 Jun. 1935.

49 CA 3/CT 4/1/9/1/8, Report of the Smit Committee, 1941.

50 CA 3/CT 4/1/9/1/8, Native Affairs Commission, Use and supply of Kaffir Beer in urban areas and removal of redundant natives from urban areas (1941/42), 10 Oct. 1941; ‘White women visit Ndabeni’, Cape Argus, 17 Aug. 1928; UG.22-’32, Report of the Native Economic Commission; ‘Domestic servants must be better treated’, Cape Argus, 10 Feb. 1938; Iliffe, Honour, 279.

51 UG. 54-’37, Wilcocks Commission Report, 69–70.

52 CA 1/CT 420, 20/8/12, Probation Officer's Monthly Report, 29 Mar. 1935.

53 University of Cambridge, African Studies Library, Wilcocks Commission Evidence, ‘Memorandum by J. de Kock, Probation Officer, Cape Town, 29 Mar. 1935; D. Pinnock, ‘From Argie boys to skolly gangsters: the lumpen-proletarian challenge of the street-corner armies in District Six, 1900–1951, in C. Saunders and H. Phillips (eds.), Studies in the History of Cape Town, 3 (1980), 147.

54 ‘The hell in which the Coloured man lives’, by Bishop S.W. Lavis, The Sun, 8 Jul. 1938.

55 ‘The slum menace in Cape Town’, Cape Argus, 13 Aug. 1927.

56 ‘Overcrowding in Cape Town’, Cape Argus, 10 Jun. 1929.

57 ‘Living in degrading conditions’, Cape Argus, 25 Aug. 1928.

58 University of Cambridge, African Studies Library, Wilcocks Commission Evidence, Memorandum by Joseph de Kock, 29 Mar. 1935.

59 ‘Marion Institute’, Cape Argus, 15 Feb. 1922.

60 ‘Where Cape Town's clothes are washed’, Cape Argus, 15 Jan. 1929.

61 ‘Housing shortage in Cape Town’, Cape Argus, 25 Aug. 1928.

62 ‘The Hell in which the Coloured man lives’, by Bishop S.W. Lavis, The Sun, 8 Jul. 1938.

63 UG. 54-’37, Wilcocks Commission Report, 20.

64 University of Cambridge, African Studies Library, Wilcocks Commission Evidence, Statement of Dr. T. Shadick Higgins, 1 May 1935; Iliffe, Honour, 264.

65 Gittins, D., Fair Sex: Family Size and Structure, 1900–39 (London, 1982), 42–49Google Scholar, 60–61, 183.

66 Iliffe, Honour, 273.

67 D. Gaitskell, ‘Housewives, maids or mothers: some contradictions of domesticity for Christian woman in Johannesburg, 1903-39’, The Journal of African History, 24:2 (1983), esp. 241–43, 245, 250, 252, 255. Similarly, the rearing of white children in South Africa was shaped by the secular, imperial mothercraft movement; see Duff, S.E., ‘Babies of the empire: science, nation and Truby King's Mothercraft in early twentieth-century South Africa,’ in Robinson, S. and Sleight, S. (eds.), Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World (London, 2016)Google Scholar.

68 Wits Historical Papers, AD 843 B56.4, ‘Bantu juvenile delinquency conference’, 1939.

69 ‘The Marion Institute’, Cape Argus, 18 May 1922.

70 ‘Work of the Marion Institute’, Cape Argus, 12 Mar. 1930.

71 Cobley, A., The Rules of the Game: Struggles in Black Recreation and Social Welfare Policy in South Africa, (Westport, 1997), 82–83Google Scholar.

72 ‘Work of the Marion Institute’, Cape Argus, 12 Mar. 1930.

73 University of Cambridge, African Studies Library, Wilcocks Commission Evidence, ‘Memorandum by Joseph de Kock’, 29 Mar. 1935.

74 UG. 54–’37, Wilcocks Commission Report, 19.

75 ‘A new township in the making’, Cape Argus, 4 Jun. 1927; ‘The creation of Langa’, Cape Argus, 5 Jan. 1924.

76 Davenport, T.R.H., ‘African townsmen? South African Natives (Urban Areas) legislation through the years’, African Affairs, 68 (1969), 95–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 ‘The native township’, Cape Argus, 21 Dec. 1923.

78 ‘“Smelling out” 2,000 natives’, Cape Argus, 9 Sept. 1927; ‘The luxuries of Langa’, Cape Argus, 15 Sept. 1927; ‘Stage set for next location move’, Cape Argus, 10 Jul. 1930; Wits Historical Papers, Native Economic Commission, vol. 4, Cape Town, Written Evidence, 1931.

79 ‘The development of Langa’, Wits Historical Papers, Native Economic Commission, Vol. 4, Cape Town, Written Evidence, 1931.

80 ‘A new township in the making’, Cape Argus, 4 Jun.1927.

81 ‘The new Langa location’, Cape Argus, 5 Dec. 1925.

82 ‘Native protests’, Cape Argus, 4 Jul. 1927.

83 ‘The new Langa location’, Cape Argus, 5 Dec. 1925.

84 ‘Removing natives from the city’, Cape Argus, 19 Dec. 1923.

85 ‘The new Langa location’, Cape Argus, 5 Dec. 1925.

86 ‘A new township in the making’, Cape Argus, 4 Jun. 1927.

87 Wits Historical Papers, Native Economic Commission, Evidence of Dr. T. Shadick Higgins, vol. 4, Cape Town, 28 Apr. 1931.

88 CA CSC 1/3/1/15, Appeal in case of Ida Sikupela vs Rex, 4 Oct. 1930.

89 Wits Historical Papers, Native Economic Commission, Evidence of Dr. T. Shadick Higgins, vol. 4, Cape Town, 28 Apr. 1931; CA 3/CT 4/1/9/1/7, Report of P.G. Caudwell, Inspector of Urban Locations, 30 Apr. 1941.

90 CA 3/CT 4/1/9/1/138, S.A. Rogers to Secretary, Labour Consultative Committee, Cape Town, 21 Aug. 1957.

91 ‘The Langa Fiasco’, Cape Argus, 1 Feb. 1928.

92 ‘A new township in the making’, Cape Argus, 4 Jun. 1927; ‘The weak spot at Langa’, Cape Argus, 7 Jun. 1927; CA 3/CT 4/1/5/1266, Meeting at Langa, 25 Oct. 1930.

93 ‘Like a village of the dead’, Cape Argus, 27 Sept. 1930.

94 CA 3/CT 4/1/5/1266, Meeting at Langa, 25 Oct. 1930.

95 CA 3/CT 4/1/5/1266, Meeting at Langa, 25 Oct. 1930; see also M. Musemwa, ‘Aspects of the social and political history of Langa Township, Cape Town, 1927–1948’, (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1993), 52.

96 CA 3/CT 4/1/5/576, Slums Bill, 1934, Evidence to be submitted before the Parliamentary Select Committee by delegates representing the Council of the City of Cape Town; ‘Klipfontein Road Scheme Rejected’, Cape Argus, 28 May 1930.

97 ‘Non-European housing scheme’, Cape Argus, 29 Dec. 1928.

98 ‘City's housing policy’, Cape Times, 30 Mar. 1933; ‘Escape from the slums’, Cape Argus, 19 Jun. 1935.

99 CA 3/CT 4/1/5/1021, Bokmakirie Township, Athlone, Reports of Medical Officer of Health re Insanitary Conditions of Dwellings in Cape Town.

100 ‘Suburban homes at Athlone’, Cape Argus, 14 Jan. 1929.

101 ‘Escape from the slums’, Cape Argus, 19 Jun. 1935.

102 University of Cambridge, African Studies Library, Wilcocks Commission Evidence, ‘Memorandum by J. de Kock’, 29 Mar. 1935.

103 ‘Suburban homes at Athlone’, Cape Argus, 14 Jan. 1929.

104 ‘200 Years to rid city of slums’, Cape Argus, 22 Feb. 1935; ‘Move to speed up city housing schemes’, Cape Argus, 27 Feb. 1935.

105 CA 3/CT 4/1/5/576, Slums Bill, 1934, Evidence submitted before the parliamentary select committee by delegates representing the Council of the City of Cape Town.

106 ‘Suburban homes at Athlone’, Cape Argus, 14 Jan. 1929.

107 ‘Tackling the slums’, Cape Argus, 31 May 1929.

108 ‘How slums are made’, Cape Argus, 17 Apr. 1926.

109 ‘City housing plan at standstill’, Cape Argus, 23 Feb. 1929.

110 ‘City's housing policy’, Cape Times, 30 Mar. 1933.

111 CA 3/CT 4/1/5/1042, Bokmakirie Caretaker - Town Clerk, Reports on tenants who are in arrears with rents by more than £1, 11 Aug. 1933.

112 CA 3/CT 4/1/5/1042, Bokmakirie Caretaker's Report for week ending 9 Dec. 1933.

113 CA 3/CT 4/1/5/1021, Town Clerk - 33 Bokmakirie residents, 7 Sept. 1932.

114 CA 3/CT 4/1/5/1042, Bokmakirie Caretaker's Report for weeks ending 9 Dec. 1933, 29 Oct. 1933; 1 Oct. 1933; 10 Sept. 1933.

115 ‘Plight of the city's poor’, Cape Argus, 13 Jul. 1935.

116 ‘Clean up Cape Town's plague spots’, Cape Times, 2 Sept. 1933.

117 ‘Homes at 7/- [shillings] a week’, Cape Argus, 25 Jul. 1929.

118 ‘Work of the Marion Institute’, Cape Argus, 12 Mar. 1930.

119 ‘Ndabeni's days numbered’, Cape Times, 1 Jul. 1933.

120 ‘Native followers of European fashions’, Cape Argus, 15 Nov. 1924; W. Beinart, Twentieth-century South Africa (Oxford, 1994), 193.

121 CA 3/CT 4/1/9/1/8, Smit Committee Report, 1941.

122 Wits Historical Papers, Native Economic Commission, Cape Town, Evidence of Rev. Charles Savage, Cape Town, vol. 4, 25 Apr. 1931.

123 Wits Historical Papers, Native Economic Commission, Cape Town, Statement by Mr. G.P. Cook, Cape Town, vol. 4, 24 Apr. 1931.

124 ‘Langa township toured’, Cape Argus, 11 Jan. 1929.

125 ‘Like a village of the dead’, Cape Argus, 27 Sept. 1930.

126 Wits Historical Papers, Native Economic Commission, Evidence of T. Shadick Higgins, Cape Town, vol.4, 28 Apr. 1931.

127 ‘When the last penny has been spent’, Cape Argus, 29 Jul. 1929.

128 Bickford-Smith, Van Heyningen, and Worden, Cape Town in the Twentieth Century, 39.

129 ‘Haunt for Cape Town's criminals’, Cape Argus, 8 Mar. 1930.

130 ‘“No epidemic of crime”’, Cape Argus, 14 Nov. 1922; ‘The native influx’, Cape Argus, 1 Aug. 1923; ‘Increase in crime’, Cape Argus, 24 Jun. 1926; ‘Wave of burglary in Cape Town’, Cape Argus, 19 Nov. 1930. These developments are most vividly analysed in Pinnock, D., The Brotherhoods: Street Gangs and State Control in Cape Town (Cape Town, 1984)Google Scholar.

131 ‘Increase in crime’, Cape Argus, 24 Jun. 1926.

132 ‘The causes of the skolly menace’, Cape Argus, 10 Aug. 1937.

133 ‘Wave of burglary in Cape Town’, Cape Argus, 19 Nov. 1930.

134 ‘Increased crime in Cape Town’, Cape Argus, 22 Jan. 1931.

135 Wits Historical Papers, SAIRR AD843 B52.3, Proceedings of a Departmental committee of inquiry into the alleged increase of serious crime in the Cape Peninsula, 20 Dec. 1943; O.D. Wollheim, ‘The Cape skolly’, Race Relations, 17, 1950, 47; ‘The knife’, Cape Argus, 26 Jun. 1935.

136 ‘Gang warfare in the city’, Cape Times, 28 Jul. 1933.

137 ‘District Six crime revelations’, Cape Times, 21 Feb. 1933; ‘How the Iron gang operates’, Cape Times, 25 Feb. 1933; ‘Raiding the dope sellers of Cape Town’, Cape Argus, 16 Oct. 1926; ‘Room awash with kafir beer’, Cape Argus, 26 Oct. 1926; ‘Dagga traffic on the increase’, Cape Argus, 29 Aug. 1928.

138 ‘Dagga traffic on the increase’, Cape Argus, 29 Jun. 1928; ‘£600 dagga fire’, Cape Argus, 20 Apr. 1935; ‘Story of dagga patch on farm’, Cape Argus, 27 Feb. 1935; Wits Historical Papers, SAIRR AD843 B52.3, Proceeding of a Departmental Committee of Inquiry appointed to inquire into the alleged increase of serious crime in the Cape Peninsula, 20 Dec. 1943, Evidence of Robert Hoedemaker; ‘Possession of dagga’, Cape Argus, 19 Oct. 1935; UG.31-’52, Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on the Abuse of Dagga, 6; Bickford-Smith, Van Heyningen, and Worden, Cape Town in the Twentieth Century, 105.

139 ‘Dagga traffic on the increase’, Cape Argus, 29 Jun. 1928; ‘£600 dagga fire’, Cape Argus, 20 Apr. 1935.

140 ‘Crime in Union's liquor dens’, Cape Argus, 21 May 1926; ‘Raiding the dope sellers of Cape Town’, Cape Argus, 16 Oct. 1926; ‘Room awash with Kafir beer’, Cape Argus, 26 Oct. 1926; ‘District Six crime revelations’, Cape Argus, 21 Feb. 1933; ‘Peninsula riddled with shebeens’, Cape Argus, 22 Apr. 1944.

141 Wits Historical Papers, SAIRR AD843 B52.3, Proceedings of a Departmental Committee of Inquiry into the alleged increase of serious crime in the Cape Peninsula, 20 Dec. 1943, see especially evidence of Sam Kahn and Betty Sacks.

142 ‘Clean up Cape Town's plague spots’, Cape Times, 2 Sept. 1933.

143 ‘Crime due to the bad housing’, Cape Argus, 7 Aug. 1925.

144 CA 1/CT 420, 20/8/12, Probation Officer's Monthly Report, 29 Mar. 1935.

145 ‘The hell in which the coloured man lives’, The Sun, 8 Jul. 1938.

146 University of Cambridge, African Studies Library, Commission Evidence, Memorandum by J. De Kock, 29 Mar. 1935.

147 UG. 54–’37, Wilcocks Commission Report, 19.

148 University of Cambridge, African Studies Library, Wilcocks Commission Evidence, Memorandum by Josep de Kock, 29 Mar. 1935.

149 CA 1/CT 420, 20/8/2, Probation Officer's Monthly Report, 29 Mar. 1935.

150 Adhikari, ‘“The product of civilisation in its most repellent manifestation”’, 287, 290; Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall, 12; Bickford-Smith, Van Heyningen, and Worden, Cape Town in the Twentieth Century, 38.

151 Cobley, Class and Consciousness, 39, 43, 61; Report of the Third Census of the Population of the Union, Part X, 3 May 1921.

152 Wits Historical Papers, Native Economic Commission Evidence, Evidence of Baronson Walton Mama, 25 Apr. 1931; Evidence of G.P. Cook, 24 Apr. 1931.

153 ‘Needs of natives at Langa’, Cape Argus, 17 Aug. 1925.

154 On Durban, see La Hausse, ‘Message of the warriors’, 24; La Hausse, Restless identities, 47.

155 ‘A new township in the making’, Cape Argus, 4 Jun. 1927; Musemwa, ‘Aspects of the social and political history’, 36–38.

156 Musemwa, ‘Aspects of the social and political history’, 167.

157 ‘Economic Commission visits slums’, Cape Times, 29 Apr. 1931.

158 ‘Coloured people and education’, Cape Argus, 7 Dec. 1922.

159 ‘Housing week’, Cape Argus, 3 Jun. 1929.

160 ‘Scandal of Cape Town's slums’, Cape Argus, 27 Jun. 1929.

161 Adhikari, ‘“The product of civilisation in its most repellent manifestation”’, 288.

162 Ibid. 287–89.

163 Wits Historical Papers, SAIRR AD843 B52.3, Proceedings of a Departmental Committee of Inquiry into the alleged increase of serious crime in the Cape Peninsula, 20 Dec. 1943, Evidence of Robert Hoedemaker.

164 Wits Historical Papers, SAIRR AD843 B52.3, Proceedings of a Departmental committee of inquiry to inquire into the alleged increase of serious crime in the Cape Peninsula, Evidence of Major Claude Myles, 20 Dec. 1943.

165 ‘The Cape Town skolly menace’, The Sun, 20 Aug. 1937.

166 CA CSC 1/3/1/15, Appeal in criminal case of Achmat Salie, 10 Oct. 1930; On Trafalgar High School, see Adhikari, M., Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community (Cape Town, 2006), 117Google Scholar.

167 Iliffe, African Poor, 137–8.

168 Bickford-Smith, Van Heyningen, and Worden, Cape Town in the Twentieth Century, 43.

169 CA 4/CT 4/1/71, Letter from Medical Officer of Health – Sanitary Inspector E. Hadley, 16 Jul. 1934, enclosing letter from ‘Inhabitants’ of the Kensington Estate, 15 Jul. 1934; B. Kinkead-Weekes, ‘Africans in Cape Town: state policy and popular resistance, 1936–73’, (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 1992), 14.

170 Ibid. 338–45.

171 ‘Among the wilds at Windermere,’ Cape Argus, 9 Aug. 1930.

172 ‘Crime menace on the Cape Flats’, Cape Argus, 9 Sept. 1930.