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Locating the location of a South African location: the paradoxical pre-history of Soweto

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2013

HOWARD PHILLIPS
HOWARD PHILLIPS*
Affiliation:
c/o Dept of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa
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Abstract:

This article examines the decisive role of the pneumonic plague epidemic of 1904 in re-shaping the racial geography of Johannesburg after the South African War. The panic which this epidemic evoked swept away the obstacles which had blocked such a step since 1901 and saw the Indian and African inhabitants of the inner-city Coolie Location forcibly removed to Klipspruit Farm 12 miles outside of the city as a health emergency measure. There, the latter were compelled to remain, even after the epidemic had waned, making it henceforth the officially designated site for their residence. In 1963, now greatly expanded, it was named Soweto. From small germs do mighty townships grow.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 311 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

1 A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles (Oxford, 1996).

2 Bonner, P. and Segal, L., Soweto: A History (Cape Town, 1998), 7Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., 13. Note that the figure of 600 given on this page for Indians removed to Klipspruit is wrong; it should be 1,612.

4 For instance, Lewis, P.R.B., A “City” Within a City: The Creation of Soweto (Johannesburg, 1969)Google Scholar; Shorten, J.R., The Johannesburg Saga (Johannesburg, 1970), 240–1Google Scholar; Venter, P.C., Soweto: Shadow City (Johannesburg, 1977)Google Scholar; Magubane, P. and Lee, M., Soweto (Cape Town, 1978)Google Scholar; Gorodonov, V., Soweto: Life and Struggles of a South African Township (Moscow, 1988)Google Scholar; Carr, W.J.P., Soweto: Its Creation, Life and Decline (Johannesburg, 1990)Google Scholar; Magubane, P., Bristow, D. and Motjuwadi, S., Soweto: Portrait of a City (Cape Town, 1990)Google Scholar; Braun, A. and Dhlomo-Mautloa, B. (eds.), Soweto: A South African Legend (Stuttgart, 2001)Google Scholar.

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10 This name had been given to the site when it had been set aside for Indians in 1893. However, by 1904 its population consisted not only of some 1,600 Indian leaseholders, but also of about 1,300 African and 140 Coloured tenants and sub-tenants (Rand Daily Mail, 1 Apr. 1904).

11 JIAISC Report, vii, #11.

12 Ibid., 15, #13.

13 Ibid., 170, #3715.

14 The Star, 21 Mar. 1904.

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16 Rand Daily Mail, 30 Sep. 1904.

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19 JIAISC Report, 62–5, #896. For biographical information on Porter, see Dictionary of South African Biography, vol. III (Cape Town, 1977), 691–2

20 S.M. Parnell, ‘Johannesburg slums and racial segregation in South African cities, 1910–1937’, unpublished University of the Witwatersrand Ph.D. thesis, 1993, 23.

21 JIAISC Report, 59, ##838, 840, 847, 846.

22 Ibid., 61, #882.

23 www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html (accessed 6 Apr. 2011): The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publication Division Government of India, 1999 (CWMG), vol. III, document 127, Indian Opinion, 13 Aug. 1903.

24 JIAISC Report, 193, #4469. When asked if he meant precisely what he had said, the doctor added confusingly, ‘I should have burned everything they wore’ (#4471), before going back to his previous extremist stance by answering counsel's follow-up question, ‘But you would keep them all in, and put a fence round and burn all those inside?’ with the response, ‘Only for sanitary purposes’ (#4473).

25 Ibid., 218, #5130.

26 Ibid., Annexure 8 (Plan C).

27 Johannesburg Municipality, Minute of His Worship the Mayor for 1903–4, Report of the Medical Officer of Health for 1903–4 (JMRMOH), 36.

28 Ibid., 37.

29 Transvaal (Colony), Rand Plague Committee: Report upon the Outbreak of Plague on the Witwatersrand March 18th to July 31st, 1904 (1905) [RPC], v.

30 Rand Daily Mail, 21 Mar. 1904.

31 The Star, 16 Mar. 1904.

32 Ibid., 16 Mar. 1904.

33 Rand Daily Mail, 22 Mar. 1904.

34 JIAISC Report, 74, ##102, 103.

35 CWMG, vol. III, letter 303, Indian Opinion, 9 Apr. 1904.

36 Rand Daily Mail, 22 Mar. 1904.

37 CWMG, vol. III, letter 303, Indian Opinion, 9 Apr. 1904.

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39 RPC, 15, 20, 25, 39.

40 Ibid., 7–12, 15.

41 South African Medical Record, 2, 3 (15 Mar. 1904), 49.

42 Rand Daily Mail, 24 Mar. 1904 (letter from V.G. Naidoo and V. Kathanpillay, on behalf of Madrassa and colonial-born Indians). ‘Soorthy’ (someone hailing from Surat in Gujarat) was a pejorative term used by Indians from Madras for a menial labourer from Surat who had come to southern Africa via Bombay. (My thanks to Professor Rajend Mesthrie of the University of Cape Town for this information.)

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44 Rand Daily Mail, 22 Mar. 1904 (editorial).

45 Ibid., 28 Mar. 1904 (letter from C.M. Pillay, late secretary of Indian Congress Pretoria and Johannesburg).

46 RPC, 2.

47 South African Medical Record, 2, 4 (15 Apr. 1904), 70.

48 Rand Daily Mail, 21 Mar. 1904.

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50 To add to the drama, Porter had been laid low by a severe attack of typhoid fever on 17 Mar.

(JMRMOH, 34). Only his stricken state would have prevented him from feeling that his warnings for the last 18 months about the dire conditions in Coolie Location had been vindicated with a vengeance.

51 RPC, 2. For biographical information on Pakes see his obituary in South African Medical Journal, 9, 11 (8 Jun. 1935), 397.

52 Rand Daily Mail, 22 Mar. 1904.

53 The Star, 19 May 1904; Transvaal Chamber of Mines, Annual Report for 1904, Appendix No. 1: Health of Miners, 148.

54 Searle, G.R., The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and Political Thought 1899–1914 (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar.

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56 Public take-up was, however, poor, so in Aug. 1903 an expert rat-catching team was appointed (JMRMOH, 35).

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58 JMRMOH, 34. Porter's concrete models for such steps were Bombay in 1896, Honolulu in 1899/1900, Sydney in 1900, San Francisco in 1900/01, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth in 1901 and Durban in 1902/03. Echenberg, M., Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague, 1894–1901 (New York and London, 2007), passimGoogle Scholar.

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60 Ibid., 23 Mar. 1904.

61 The Star, 28 Mar. 1904. By this time, 30 South African Constabulary troops had replaced the policemen manning the cordon. The would-be incomer, Mr Maramattee, was sentenced to 14 days in prison with hard labour, the magistrate taking into account his ‘natural anxiety to see his wife and children’.

62 Rand Daily Mail, 22 Mar. 1904.

63 The Star, 21 Mar. 1904.

64 RPC, 76.

65 CWMG, vol. II, letter 296, The Star, 21 Mar. 1904; Rand Daily Mail, 22 Mar. 1904.

66 National Archives Repository, Pretoria (NARP), TAB, C 19 (Rand Plague Committee Minutes), vol. 1, minutes of meeting, 22 Mar. 1904; The Star, 13 Oct. 1904.

67 The Star, 22 Mar. 1904.

68 NARP, TAB, C 19 (Rand Plague Committee Minutes), vol. 1, minutes of special meeting, 22 Mar. 1904.

69 Rand Daily Mail, 23 Mar. 1904.

70 Ibid., 28 Mar. 1904.

71 The Star, 24 Mar. 1904.

72 Laundry belonging to white customers was retrieved from Indian laundrymen in Coolie Location and disinfected before being returned to their owners (CWMG, vol. III, letter 305, Indian Opinion, 9 Apr. 1904.)

73 CWMG, vol. IV, letter 108, Indian Opinion, 10 Dec. 1904.

74 CWMG, vol. III, letter 309, Indian Opinion, 16 Apr. 1904.

75 NARP, TAB, C 19 (Rand Plague Committee Minutes), vol. 1, minutes of meeting, 31 Mar. 1904. By then, destroying apparently infected premises by fire had already been applied to several huts and the porter's house at Johannesburg Hospital where plague victims had been temporarily accommodated (Johannesburg Municipality, Minute of His Worship the Mayor for 1903–4, Report of the Chief Officer, Fire Department for 1903–4, 64.)

76 www.cyberspacei.com/jesusi/authors/gandhi/autobiography/mg . . . (accessed 7 Apr. 2011): M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography, Part IV, ch. XVII, p. 1.

77 CWMG, vol. IV, letter 103, Indian Opinion, 26 Nov. 1904.

78 RPC, 20, 76.

79 Rand Daily Mail, 8 Apr. 1904.

80 Ibid., 8 Apr. 1904.

81 CWMG, vol. III, letter 309, Indian Opinion, 16 Apr. 1904.

82 Rand Daily Mail, 25 Mar. 1904.

83 The Star, 25 Mar. 1904.

84 Ibid., 8 Apr. 1904.

85 RPC, 12, 15.

86 CWMG, vol. IV, letter 70, Indian Opinion, 8 Oct. 1904.

87 Rand Daily Mail, 30 Sep. 1904.

88 The Star, 23 Apr. 1904, 27 Jul. 1904 and 25 Aug. 1904; Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce, Annual Report for Year Ending 28 February 1905, 42.

89 The Star, 26 Mar. 1904, letter from ‘British Africander’.

90 Rand Daily Mail, 22 Mar. 1904, editorial.

91 The Star, 10 Oct. 1904, editorial.

92 Ibid., 13 Oct. 1904.

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94 Cited in ibid., 64.

95 Rand Daily Mail, 30 Sep. 1904.

96 About sanitary conditions in these private locations, Dr Pakes had been scathing: ‘If the incidence of plague varies directly as the filth and overcrowding’, he declared, ‘it is terrible to contemplate what might have happened had plague broken out in some of these locations’ (RPC, 85).

97 Johannesburg Municipality, Mayor's Minute for 1903–4, 5.

98 Rand Daily Mail, 30 Sep. 1904.

99 The Star, 13 Oct. 1904.

100 Ibid., 13 Oct. 1904 (petition by T. Gumza, E. Trewn, L. Mahlamvu, E. Ntusi, J. Mtshula and 270 more).

101 Ibid., 13 Oct. 1904.

102 Swan, M., Gandhi: The South African Experience (Johannesburg, 1985), 97Google Scholar.

103 Rand Daily Mail, 30 Sep. 1904.

104 Such was the extent to which Klipspruit was seen at this time as offering the solution to all the white citizens’ concerns about the ‘colour question’ in Johannesburg that the zealous social engineers expressed the hope that ‘locations for low class Asiatics, Syrians and all other coloured people of similar habits will also be eventually provided at the same place’ (Johannesburg Municipality, Mayor's Minute for 1903–4, 39).

105 CWMG, vol. IV, letter 70, Indian Opinion, 8 Oct. 1904.

106 Union of South Africa, Report of Transvaal Asiatic Land Tenure Act Commission, U.G. 7–1934,

88, paras. 29–30; The Star, 13 Oct. 1904.

107 CWMG, vol. IV, letter 139, Indian Opinion, 28 Jan. 1905; N. Kagan, ‘African settlements in the Johannesburg area, 1903–1928’, unpublished University of the Witwatersrand MA thesis, 1978, 127.

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109 The Star, 21 Jul. 1904.

110 Kagan, ‘African settlements’, 54–5.

111 Ibid., 56–7, 60.

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114 Cited in Bonner and Segal, Soweto, 16.

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116 Bonner and Segal, Soweto, 31.

117 Beavon, Johannesburg, 78.

118 The Star, 13 Oct. 1904.

119 Results of a Census of the Transvaal Colony and Swaziland, 17 April 1904 (London, 1906), 26–7, 390–1.

120 Swanson, ‘The sanitation syndrome’, 408.

121 Craddock, S., City of Plagues: Disease, Poverty and Deviance in San Francisco (Minneapolis, 2000), 124Google Scholar.

122 Parnell, ‘Johannesburg slums and racial segregation in South African cities’, 18.