Mass Removals and Separate Development¶
Alan Baldwin (1975). Mass Removals and Separate Development. Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2. Taylor & Francis.
| Type | journal article |
| Scope | Economics and economic history of apartheid |
| Method | mixed |
| Period studied | 1913–1973 |
| Regions | South Africa, Bantustans (KwaZulu, Bophutatswana, Ciskei, Lebowa), Natal, Western Cape, Pretoria, Durban, East London |
| Themes | bantustans removals influx, mining migrant labour, agriculture land, labour markets wages, demography urbanisation, politics ideology elections, origins segregation |
| Citation key | baldwin1975 |
Argument¶
Baldwin argues that the mass removals of Africans from 'white' areas into the reserves are central to Separate Development. They are the reverse side of an extended migrant labour system. He reads the policy as less about racial separation than about securing white domination and a controlled, cheap, rightless labour force. He catalogues six categories of removal, using SAIRR estimates, press reports and official statements, to show that the scale is large and planned to grow. He also argues that practice is more pragmatic than the rhetoric, and that the system contains contradictions: skilled-labour shortages, Bantustan resistance, and the eroding subsistence base of the reserves.
Evidence and method¶
SAIRR fact sheets and Horrell's reports, Financial Mail, Star and Daily News press reports, parliamentary (House of Assembly) debates, Leistner's urbanization data, Wilson's Migrant Labour, Hubbard on Cape Town, Desmond's The Discarded People, a small unpublished hospital survey from Nqutu, and the author's own calculations and a 1973 visit.
Place in the debates¶
- Is apartheid/Separate Development primarily ideological or economic (cheap labour thesis)? (see Cheap labour thesis and the function of the reserves). Holds that the ideological goal is real but that the policy serves to maintain white domination and a controlled cheap labour supply. Removals and migrancy are mechanisms of labour control; economic considerations are increasingly important.
- Is apartheid failing because of its internal inconsistencies (liberal critique)? (see Homelands, separate development, decentralisation and removals). Rejects the view that rhetorical impracticality means the policy has failed. He warns that underestimating the system's pragmatism and resilience creates dangerous illusions about change.
- Permanent urbanisation versus temporary sojourner doctrine (see Influx control, pass laws and African urbanisation). Official policy of reducing the urban black population has been softened and permanent urbanisation partly acknowledged. Nonetheless the thrust of legislation is to convert workers into migrants, including daily Bantustan-border commuters.
Findings¶
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SAIRR estimated that about 1.82 million people were removed in 1960-70 across five categories, which Baldwin extends to about two million Africans removed overall. (p. 3)
This makes a total of 1,820,000.
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Removals from white farms (labour tenancy abolition and squatter laws) were by far the largest category, with 340,000 and 656,000 people respectively. (p. 3)
656,000 people were removed by laws preventing squatters living on white farms;
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Planned reserve townships would house about four million people, implying resettlement of half the existing African population of the white areas. (p. 4)
that there are plans in the process of being acted upon which aim to resettle half the existing number of Africans in the white areas.
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Separate Development depends on cheap black labour as the basis of growth while seeking to preserve economic interdependence through migrancy. (p. 5)
Such industrial expansion depends largely on the use of cheap and plentiful black labour which has been the basis of the country's considerable economic growth over the past century.
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Migrant labour is the reverse flow of removals: families are pushed out of towns, and workers may return only as contract migrants without their families. (p. 5)
Migratory labour is thus the reverse flow of the mass removals: workers, who, with their families, are pushed out of the towns for a variety of reasons, are often allowed to come back to urban areas
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The late-1960s target of cutting the black population of white areas by 5 per cent a year was abandoned as impossible, showing policy adjusting to economic realities. (p. 6)
Official policy in the late 1 960s insisted that the black population in the 'white' areas should be reduced by five per cent per year. This is now regarded as impossible.
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Farm removals served farmers' interests: surplus workers were shed and replaced by contract migrants, with removed workers registered as 'farm workers' to bar them from higher-paid industrial jobs. (p. 8)
workers removed from the farms being registered with the labour bureaux in the reserves as 'farm workers', and hence ineligible for higher paid work in industry.
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In the Western Cape, Coloured preference and African reduction targets produced mass removals and a migrant-dominated African workforce. (p. 11)
85 per cent of the African workers in Cape Town are migrants, living in single accommodation, with their families hundreds of miles away in the reserves.
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Pass-law 'endorsing out' was a continuous individual removal mechanism, and Section 10 rights are fragile. (p. 12)
Under the pass laws, dating from 1952, 450,373 people had been removed into the reserves up to 1970;
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Migrants' cheapness rests on rightlessness, but the reserves' capacity to subsidise wages and reproduce labour has eroded, requiring tighter enforcement. (p. 13)
The rightlessness of migrants leads to their cheapness. They constitute a reserve army of labour.
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Baldwin concludes that removals are central to maintaining a controlled cheap labour supply and white domination, yet unlikely to be pushed to the point of serious disruption. (p. 14)
Mass removals are a central part of the process of maintaining a controlled and cheap labour supply.
Evidence ledger¶
Sources used¶
| Source | Kind | Period | How used |
|---|---|---|---|
| South African Institute of Race Relations Fact Sheet, 'African Population', 14 February 1972 | secondary literature compilation | 1960-1970 | Supplies the category-by-category estimates of people removed 1960-70 (labour tenants, squatters, Black Spots, endorsed out, resited townships), totalling 1,820,000. |
| Financial Mail, Johannesburg, 16 March 1973 (Black Spots removals figure) | newspapers periodicals | 1948-1973 | Gives a later figure for Black Spot removals since 1948 (175,788 removed, 69,000 still to be removed). |
| Financial Mail, Johannesburg, 2 March 1973 (Group Areas removals) | newspapers periodicals | 1950s-1973 | Source for the numbers of Coloured, Asian, White and Chinese people removed or to be removed under the Group Areas Act (593,325 total, at five persons per family). |
| Star, Johannesburg, 25 May 1973 (final Bantustan consolidation plans) | newspapers periodicals | 1973 | Source for the estimated 575,000 people who would have to move under the 1973 consolidation plans. |
| Dr Bruce Young, Natal University Geography Department, reported in Daily News, Durban, 5 June 1973 | newspapers periodicals | 1973 | Used to generalise the racial composition (94% African) of people to be moved under consolidation. |
| Author's calculations from SAIRR publications and other material (planned reserve townships) | secondary literature compilation | c.1973 plans | Builds the planned-township population figures summing to four million. |
| Cosmas Desmond, The Discarded People (Penguin, 1970) | secondary literature compilation | to 1970 | Provides an earlier estimate (about one million removed by 1970) and quotes the 1969 Koornhof House of Assembly statement. |
| House of Assembly debate, 4 February 1969 (Koornhof), quoted in Desmond | parliamentary debates | 1969 | Shows the official attitude to removing 'redundant' Africans from white areas. |
| G. M. E. Leistner, Economic and Social Forces Affecting the Urbanization of the Bantu Population of South Africa (Pretoria, 1972) | secondary literature compilation | 1946-1970 with projection to 2000 | Source of Table I on urban population by race and the 2000 projection. |
| D. G. Scholtz editorial, Die Transvaler 1964, quoted in Joel Mervis in N. Rhoodie (ed.), South African Dialogue (1972) | newspapers periodicals | 1964 | Evidence for the apartheid theorists' 1960s view that economic integration must lead to political integration. |
| Daily News, Durban, 27 June 1973 (Dr C. J. Jooste, SABRA) | newspapers periodicals | 1973 | Documents continuing hardline views on reversing urban African influx. |
| Star, Johannesburg, 30 June 1973 (Afrikaanse Studentebond resolution) | newspapers periodicals | 1973 | Shows differences of emphasis within the ruling group over removals. |
| House of Assembly Debates, 17 May 1973 (Janson and P. Z. L. Vuuren) | parliamentary debates | 1973 | Quotes the Deputy Minister and a Nationalist MP to show government positions on homelands and temporary sojourn of Africans. |
| Black Sash, February 1973 (Verwoerd's 1961 statement to parliament) | newspapers periodicals | 1961 (quoted 1973) | Source for Verwoerd's explanation of separate Bantu states as preserving white domination. |
| Unpublished survey from Charles Johnson Memorial Hospital, Nqutu | author survey or fieldwork | c.1970s | Shows the migratization of reserve-based labour among 517 families, most breadwinners working far away. |
| Murial Horrell, Housing Schemes for Urban Africans in Municipal Areas and the Homelands, SAIRR, January 1972; 1969 government circular; Star 19 May 1971 | commission or official report | 1969-1972 | Documents the 1969 government circular and planners' commuting-distance assumptions behind removal of urban Africans to homelands. |
| Francis Wilson, Migrant Labour (Johannesburg, 1973) | secondary literature compilation | c.1970-73 | Supplies figures on migrants in single accommodation (e.g. 85% of African workers in Cape Town) and farm labour recruitment. |
| Michael Hubbard, African Poverty in Cape Town, 1960-1970 (Johannesburg, 1972) | secondary literature compilation | 1960-1970 | Source for the African population of Greater Cape Town and the decline in family accommodation. |
| S. Duncan, The Plight of the Urban African (Johannesburg, 1970) | secondary literature compilation | 1952-1970 | Source for the number removed under pass laws up to 1970 (450,373) and for 1970 (34,000). |
| Newspaper reports on 1973 consolidation and removals (Daily News 6 June 1973; Rand Daily Mail 1 March, 7 Sept, 7 Nov 1973) | newspapers periodicals | 1973 | Documents specific removals (Drakensberg locations, Groblersdal), the 1973 Bantu Laws Amendment Act powers and the Umtata summit. |
| Statutes: Natives Land Act 1913, Land Act 1936, Group Areas Acts 1950/1957, Natives Resettlement Act 1954, Bantu Laws Amendment Acts, Bantu Authorities Act 1951, etc. | legislation gazette | 1913-1973 | Establishes the legal machinery for removals and the institutional framework of Separate Development. |
| Africa Publications Trust (London), series on Mass Population Removals, incl. The Section Ten People (1975) | secondary literature compilation | 1970s | Underlying project of which the article is a product; cited for Section 10 and endorsement material. |
New data¶
The author compiles his own aggregate figures for planned reserve-township populations (about four million) and sums the SAIRR categories and other press-reported estimates into overall totals of removals; no systematic new dataset is built.
Inference¶
Quantification: Descriptive tables.
Synthetic overview combining secondary estimates and press reports of removal numbers with parliamentary quotations and illustrative regional cases (Natal, Pretoria, Durban, East London, Western Cape), interpreted through a political-economy argument about Separate Development and migrant labour.
Key claims¶
| Claim | Basis | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| About two million Africans and half a million others had been removed by the mid-1970s, with further large removals planned. (p. 217) | SAIRR 1972 Fact Sheet categories, Financial Mail figures on Black Spots and Group Areas, and press reports of consolidation plans, summed by the author. | Partial data |
| The SAIRR estimates of 1960-70 removals sum to 1,820,000, but rest on projection and estimation rather than direct counts. (p. 216) | SAIRR Fact Sheet of 1972, 'working from official figures, projections, induction and estimates'. | Partial data |
| Plans exist for new reserve and border townships to house about four million people, aimed at resettling half the existing African population of the white areas. (p. 217) | Author's calculations from SAIRR publications and other material, flagged as more speculative. | Partial data |
| Government policy treats Africans in white areas as temporary sojourners, and legislation is turning black labour into migrants, with removals as the reverse flow of migrancy. (p. 219) | Parliamentary debate quotes (House of Assembly 17 May 1973), Scholtz editorial, government circular of 1969, and the legislative record. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| In the Western Cape, removals and the Coloured Preference policy have driven African migrancy up, with most African workers in Cape Town in single accommodation. (p. 224) | Wilson's Migrant Labour and Hubbard's study of Cape Town poverty. | Partial data |
| Mass removals are a central mechanism for maintaining a controlled, cheap migrant labour supply and white domination, rather than racial separation per se. (p. 227) | Interpretive argument drawing on the above evidence and theoretical literature (Wolpe), not tested against data. | Asserted |
| Individuals are continually 'endorsed out' of white areas under pass laws and Section 10 restrictions, with 450,373 removed to 1970. (p. 225) | Duncan's The Plight of the Urban African and the text of Section 10 of the Bantu (Urban Areas) Act. | Partial data |
The author's caveats¶
The author notes the SAIRR totals are 'rough conclusions' based on official figures, projections, induction and estimates, that the township-planning figures are 'more speculative' since the process is new, and that some resited townships may have involved no real removal, only a boundary redrawing.
Gaps in the evidence¶
The argument relies on press reports and secondary estimates with overlapping categories (potential double counting across rural, urban and consolidation removals) and no primary archival basis. Departmental records of the Department of Bantu Administration and Development, census data on population movement, and removal-by-removal registers would allow better testing of numbers. Systematic labour-market data on wages and migrant composition would be needed to substantiate the cheap-labour-supply claim; some such data existed at the time in official statistics and the 1970 Census.
Replicability: Data poorly documented.