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Apartheid's ‘Testing Ground’: Urban ‘Native Policy’ and African Politics in Brakpan, South Africa, 1943–19481

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Hilary Sapire
Hilary Sapire
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
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Extract

Although studies of both state ‘urban native’ policy and African life on the Witwatersrand in the 1940s have increased in volume and sophistication over the last decade, these two themes have generally been treated discretely in the literature. While a regional focus has yielded a complex and differentiated picture of urban African politics and culture, studies of the state still tend to miss this complexity by focusing on the ‘view from above’, from the vantage point of central state institutions.

This article draws together these two separate historiographical threads to examine state policy from the perspective of local state officials, those individuals most intimately concerned with day-to-day administration of urban African communities in the rapidly industrialising Witwatersrand of the 1940s. Through the narrative of a deep personal antagonism between an African politician in the Witwatersrand location of Brakpan and a white administrator, the article explores the intersection of two microcosms: the world of the Afrikaner intellectual, educated in the tradition of ‘volkekunde’ and thereby claiming expert knowledge of the African, and the real worlds of the Africans the expert claimed to know—themselves shaped by new, radical currents in the changing wartime urban context. Using the Brakpan case study, the article also shows that in contrast to the national government's fumbling indecision in the face of the urban crisis, it was the municipalities which agitated for state control over all Africans, tighter influx and efflux controls and the more efficient distribution of African labour between different economic sectors. In voicing their discontent with state policy and in their policy improvizations, local officials anticipated much in the apartheid order of the 1950s.

Type
Politics in the Townships
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , March 1994 , pp. 99 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

2 Brakpan Herald, 2 Apr. 1948.

3 This organisation was established in 1948 at the behest of the Afrikaner Broederbond to study the country's ‘racial problem’.

4 Central Archives Depot [CAD], Native Affairs Department [NTS] 4319 179/313, Hyman Basner to the Secretary for Native Affairs, 26 Dec. 1947.

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7 Sondagnuus, 19 Oct. 1947.

8 See Bloom's, Harry remarkable novel, Transvaal Episode (London, 1956)Google Scholar, which explores the emotional currents and racial tensions in the Transvaal location through the powerfully drawn central characters of a white superintendent and an African leader.

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27 Even after confronted by the realities of African urbanization and the full extent to which Africans were integrated into urban political economies, Language's views, expressed to the Native Laws Commission in 1946, departed little from the essence of the pamphlet.

28 For a discussion of the ‘purist’ strain within SABRA, see Lazar, J., ‘Verwoerd versus the visionaries: the South African Bureau of Racial Affairs and apartheid, 1948–1961’ (paper presented to the ‘South Africa in the 1950s’ conference, University of Oxford, 09. 1987.)Google Scholar

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31 H. Sapire interview with Mrs F. J. Language, Pretoria, August 1988.

32 Between 1936 and 1946, the urban African population in the country as a whole grew by 57·2 per cent, from 1,141,642 to 1,794,212, outstripping the white urban population. See Report of the Native Laws Commission. 1946–1948, U.G. 28/1948, 6.

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48 H. Sapire and A. Cobley, interview with D. Bopape, Johannesburg, Aug. 1983.

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58 CAD, BMR N3/1, Minutes of the Native Affairs Sub-Committee Meeting, 12 May 1944.

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61 For a detailed account of these events, see Sapire, H., ‘The stay-away of the Brakpan Location, August 1944’, in Bozzoli, B. (ed.), Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg, 1987), 358–400.Google Scholar

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64 BMA, BMR 14/1/1, Evidence of Dr Language to the Native Laws Commission, 1946–1948.

65 In 1942, the NAD dispatched a circular letter to municipalities urging them to ‘hold in abeyance’ those aspects of urban legislation ‘as may be deemed not wholly essential to the establishment and maintenance of good order’. See Bell, M. M. S., ‘The politics of administration: a study of the career of Dr D. L. Smit with special reference to his work in the Department of Native Affairs, 1934–1945’ (M.A. thesis, Rhodes University, 1980), 149.Google Scholar

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71 BMA, BMR 14/7/7, Minutes of the Meeting of the Finance and General Purposes Committee [FGPC], 18 June 1945. See also BMA, BMR 14/1/8, Manager of Non-European Affairs to the Town Clerk, 8 Mar. 1946.

72 H. Sapire, interview with Mr E. Pakade, Tsakane, Jan. 1985.

73 BMA, BMR 14/7/7, Undated letter to the Town Council from the Secretary of the Locations Joint Organisations Committee, n.d., but c. Nov. 1947.

74 Ibid.

75 BMA, BMR 14/7/7, C. Joffee (solicitor) to the Town Clerk, 14 Feb. 1949.

76 BMA, BMR 14/7/7, Location Superintendent to the Manager of Non-European Affairs, 13 Dec. 1946.

77 BMA, BMR 14/7/7, Native Commissioner, Benoni to the Town Clerk, 28 Jan. 1947.

78 BMA, BMR 14/7/7, Native Commissioner, Benoni to the Town Clerk 25 Feb. 1947.

79 In 1942, the Association of Reef Managers of Non-European Affairs had resolved to ‘provide assistance’ to the NAD by non-action in the matter of removing ‘redundant’ African residents. See Bell, , ‘The politics of administration’, 49Google Scholar; BMA, BMR 14/7/7, Minutes of the Meeting of the FGPC, 17 May 1948.

80 BMA, BMR 14/7/7, Secretary, Brakpan Location Joint Organisations Committee to the Administrator, 1 Oct. 1947.

81 Rand Daily Mail, 6 Oct. 1947.

82 BMA, BMR 14/7/7, Manager of Non-European Affairs to the Town Clerk, 7 Feb. 1948; CAD, NTS 4320 179/313, Secretary for Native Affairs to the Director of Native Labour, 21 Oct. 1947.

83 Native Advisory Boards were bodies set up in most urban locations in terms of the 1923 Natives Urban Areas Act. They contained both elected and nominated African representatives who acted in an advisory capacity to the [white] local authorities who were responsible for the day-to-day administration of urban African communities. The Boards, however, did not have any power to change policy.

84 Inkululeko, 4 March 1944; CAD, BMR S4/7, Superintendent to the Manager of Non-European Affairs, 7 Sept. 1945.

85 Brakpan Herald, 20 Apr. 1945.

86 CAD, BMR N3/74, Interview with the Minister at Cape Town: Memo Covering Points for Discussion between the Minister of Native Affairs, Major P. V. G. van der Bijl and Deputation from Brakpan Town Council, 5 Apr. 1945.

87 Brakpan Herald, 21 Apr. 1945.

88 Brakpan Herald, 21 Apr. 1945.

89 BMA, BMR 14/3/2, Minutes of the Meeting of the Advisory Board, 14 Feb. 1946.

90 BMA, BMR 14/1/3, R. Khanoe, ANC branch secretary, Brakpan, to the Mayor and Members of the Town Council, 1 July 1946.

91 BMA, BMR 14/3/2, Statement by Councillor F. C. Davey before the Brakpan Native Advisory Board, 8 Aug. 1946.

92 CAD, NTS 4320 170/313, Native Commissioner, Benoni to the Director of Native Labour, 11 Oct. 1946.

93 BMA, BMR, 14/3/2, Minutes of the Meeting of the Advisory Board, 28 Nov. 1946.

94 CAD, NTS 4320 170/313, ‘Report of Special Brakpan Advisory Board Meeting’, 22 Oct. 1947, and ‘Assault of Bopape by the Manager of Non-European Affairs’, Confidential Report.

95 CAD, NTS 4320 170/313, Records of Proceedings of Rex v F. J. Language charged for assault [common], 28 Nov. 1947.

96 As in the case of Bopape's dismissal in 1944, location organizations raised funds for legal proceedings and enlisted the support of Senator Basner.

97 CAD, NTS 4320 323/179, Records of the Proceedings of Rex v Language, charged for assault [common], 28 Nov. 1947. See Brakpan Herald, 2 Apr. 1948.

98 Nel, C. J., ‘Gedenkskrif: F. J. Nothling’, Journal of Racial Affairs, XXXII (1981)Google Scholar. See for example, Language, F.J., ‘Kennis van rasseprobleme noodsaaklik’ [Knowledge of racial problems essential], Sondagnuus, 19 10. 1947.Google Scholar

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102 CAD, NTS 4320 170/313, Minister of Native Affairs to the Native Commissioner, Benoni, 10 Dec. 1947.

103 Similarly, as Deon van Tonder has shown in his study of the genesis of the scheme to destroy the mixed suburb of Sophiatown in Johannesburg, while the United Party councillors were not as ideologically zealous and programmatic as their Nationalist counterparts, they were in essential agreement over the need to enforce spatial racial segregation; Van Tonder, ‘Sophiatown: removals and protest’, chs 1–3.

104 H. Sapire, interview with T. Mosuku, Tsakane, Jan. 1985.

105 CAD, NTS 4320 179/313, Statement of the Location Residents to the FCPC, n.d., but c. Sept. 1944.

106 Evans, , ‘The political economy’, 119–20.Google Scholar