Sustaining Life. Theodore Powers
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and growth in black urban communities.43 The rural reserves had never had sufficient arable land to support subsistence agriculture, and black South Africans increasingly depended on urban employment as soil qualities degraded and the rural population grew.44 As the pressure to garner urban wages to supplement subsistence agriculture in the rural reserves intensified, so did the size, scope, and complexity of black urban social formations.45 The growth of black urban settlements in response to employment opportunities led to new forms of social organization and decisive shifts in South African history.46
The early history of Soweto offers a useful example for understanding how black urban settlement expanded and developed in social and political terms. Squatter leader James Mpanza played a central role in Soweto’s settlement and in the development of mechanisms for self-governance,47 including the collection of fees for trading licenses that supported social policing initiatives and funeral arrangements, among other functions (Stadler 1979; Bonner 1990). However, many of those who settled in black urban areas were temporary residents, as black South African men were recruited to work in urban areas or the mines for a period of six to nine months, after which time they would return to their ethnic homelands (Mayer 1980; Sharp and Siegel 1985). While these areas of “separate development” were key sources of mining labor, women-driven agricultural production in the homelands subsidized social reproduction, since mining wages alone were inadequate to support a family. Despite the transience of some residents, urban communities such as Johannesburg’s Sophiatown blossomed with cultural expression during this time, including the publication of magazines such as Drum and the development of influential music scenes (Coplan 1985).
The question of black urbanization had long figured in debates on traditional authority. Political leaders such as Jan Smuts were ardent supporters of racial segregation due to a belief that detribalized black South Africans would destabilize the country. British experiences with the issue of precolonial social organization had deeper roots, as their attempts to unravel the caste system in India had informed their subsequent colonization of the African continent. Indirect rule, which maintained traditional laws and customs in the native reserves and reinforced the power of traditional rule, was formalized following the violent suppression of African social formations during colonization.48 Debates on detribalization had simmered during the latter half of the nineteenth century, highlighted by a series of “rape scares” in several cities across South Africa (Etherington 1988; Scully 1995). That black urbanization was primarily male was a central component of growing white fear and mistrust, encompassed by the term swart gevaar (black peril).49 While many of the reported cases of sexual assault appear to have been baseless, the image of young black South African men roaming urban areas stoked fears of the tsotsi (youth gangster).
As the black urban South African population grew, the political divide between the liberal-leaning British South Africans and nationalist-leaning Afrikaner South Africans expanded. Following urban industrial growth and commensurate increases in the demand for black urban labor during the Second World War, the South African public was faced with a clear choice on how to address racial segregation. A vote for the liberal United Party in 1948 would unravel the two-tiered racial structure of the labor market and move South African society toward desegregation. Conversely, a vote for the National Party would reverse black urbanization and deepen existing policies of racial segregation and “separate development.” Here again, South African history was marked by continuity rather than a break with the political, economic, and institutional dynamics of the past.
Apartheid, Traditional Authority, and Urban Revolt
The dynamics of racial segregation, social inequality, and expropriation continued and expanded during the apartheid era in South Africa. The National Party’s rise to political power intensified racial segregation, exacerbated racial inequality, increased state violence toward black South Africans, and led to South Africa’s immersion into Cold War proxy conflicts. Support for African traditional elites was central to the apartheid state’s project of maintaining ethnically distinct reserves. The apartheid state supported and expanded the power of traditional leaders, designating customary areas as the basis for “separate development.” The process of reconstructing urban space along racial lines was contingent upon forced removals and the development of periurban townships, fundamentally changing urban sociospatial relations across South Africa. However, the “ordering” ethos of the apartheid system was never fully realized, and political opposition to the apartheid state grew in the black urban social formations that the National Party aimed to control.
After coming to power via national elections in 1948, the National Party initiated the apartheid project of racial separateness. The apartheid system built on and expanded institutions developed during the colonial period to control the movement and residence patterns of black South Africans. The National Party’s strategies of segregating urban space and expanding the role of traditional authorities aimed to unwind South Africa’s rapid urbanization during the 1940s.50 In Johannesburg, the number of black South Africans living in the city increased from 244,000 in 1939 to 400,000 in 1946 (Harrison 1992). The industrialization of the rural farming sector and a growing urban economy meant that opportunities for wage labor had shifted, and rapid urbanization led to the proliferation of informal settlements in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban. Among other legislation, the Group Areas Act (1950) and the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act (1951) were enacted by the National Party to address the growing black South African urban population. The policies created separate residential areas for different races and legalized forced relocation to achieve this end.
However, the apartheid system was created through a piecemeal process that was never complete. As Deborah Posel (1991) has emphasized, policies associated with apartheid were amended repeatedly, highlighting the gradual intensification of segregation rather than the imposition of a grand vision. For example, the Group Areas Act was enacted by Parliament in 1950 and amended five times before being repealed and reenacted in a new form in 1957. The 1957 version of the Group Areas Act was amended a further three times before being repealed and reenacted in 1966. The policy was amended an additional nine times before being repealed a final time in 1991 during the negotiated political transition. All this underscores Posel’s claim that “ordering” according to the logic of racial separateness was never fully achieved. Still, although racialized social engineering was left unfinished, the violent restructuring of urban space had destructive and lasting effects on black urban social formations in South Africa.
The Group Areas Act’s implementation extended the apartheid state’s power to reorder urban space by enabling forced removals of black residents to periurban townships. The newly created Native Resettlement Board announced plans to destroy the area of Sophiatown in Johannesburg and remove the community in 1953 before initiating the process in 1955. Another famous instance of forced removal occurred in Cape Town with the community of District Six in 1968. The mass removal of black inner-city inhabitants across South Africa was accompanied by the development of periurban townships, such as Soweto (Johannesburg), Nyanga and Gugulethu (Cape Town), and Umlazi and KwaMashu (Durban). Primarily built by municipal authorities, the townships became overcrowded almost immediately. Indeed, the apartheid state directed new construction to occur in the rural reserves rather than build sufficient urban housing. The density of the townships was due also to the efforts of black South Africans to remain in urban areas and maintain their social, economic, and political ties. Thus, forced removals and relocations to the townships were accompanied by an increase in subletting, the construction of backyard shacks, and general periurban densification (Mabin 1992).
However, apartheid’s scope extended beyond the reordering of urban space and into the domain of social reproduction. The Bantu Education Act (1953) mandated racially segregated educational facilities and limited black South African education to vocational skills associated with low-wage professions. Universities that provided education for black South Africans were also affected by the policy. For example, the University College of Fort Hare, where Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe studied, was transformed by the apartheid state despite its history as an independent university. The Bantu education system was modeled on the “separate but equal” education system that was developed in the southern United States during the segregationist era. Policy development within the Union government had been