African Urbanisation on the Rand between the 1930s and 1960s: Its Social Character and Political Consequences¶
Phillip Bonner (1995). African Urbanisation on the Rand between the 1930s and 1960s: Its Social Character and Political Consequences. Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Special Issue: Urban Studies and Urban Change in Southern Africa). Taylor & Francis.
| Type | journal article |
| Scope | Wider apartheid literature |
| Method | mixed |
| Period studied | 1930s–1960 |
| Regions | Witwatersrand (Rand), Johannesburg, East Rand (Benoni, Germiston, Springs, Daveyton), Lesotho, Northern Transvaal |
| Themes | demography urbanisation, bantustans removals influx, mining migrant labour, labour markets wages, resistance social movements, origins segregation, politics ideology elections |
| Citation key | bonner1995 |
Argument¶
Bonner argues that the literature on South African urbanisation has neglected first-generation immigrants, favouring migrant labour and second-generation urbanites, and has explained urbanisation through economistic push-pull models. He argues that large-scale settlement on the Rand in the 1930s-40s resulted from a mix of trivial and grand factors: women's independent migration, wartime inflation and mine wages, weekly factory pay, housing shortages, and squatter movements. Policy shifts then locked this in: site-and-service housing conditioned on 'family circumstances'. He uses life histories to show that immigrants formed parochial, ethnically inflected associations (churches, squatter movements, gangs) that fragmented the urban population in the 1940s. From the mid-1950s shared immiseration and pass laws began to homogenise it and prepared the political ferment of 1959-61.
Evidence and method¶
Oral history interviews conducted by the author (Daveyton, Johannesburg, etc., 1984-94); a University of the Witwatersrand study of Johannesburg pass records, 1936-44 (Native Urban Employment); Johannesburg municipal reports; municipal archives of Germiston, Benoni and Springs; Central Archives Depot Pretoria files and commission reports; 1947 Afrikaans press cartoons; secondary literature (Mayer, Posel, Lewis, Coplan, Delius).
Place in the debates¶
- Push-pull and economistic explanations of African urbanisation (stabilised semi-skilled industrial labour drawn by manufacturing wages) (see Influx control, pass laws and African urbanisation). Critiques them as abstract and unable to explain why migrants settled rather than oscillated; stresses women's agency, housing, wage-payment forms and culture.
- Whether apartheid aimed to turn all urban Africans into rightless temporary sojourners (conventional wisdom on apartheid) (see Influx control, pass laws and African urbanisation). Disputes this: the new Nationalist government decided to stabilise the existing urban population in family units while tightening influx control against new arrivals, partly to serve farmer and mining labour demands.
- Migrant-to-urban continuum / 'semi-urbanised' category and indices of urbanisation (see Influx control, pass laws and African urbanisation). Rejects the view that first-generation immigrants are merely transitional and that urbanisation has a clear point of completion; urban commitment often remained conditional.
- Political capacity of the urban black population in the 1940s-50s (see Resistance and liberation movements). Heterogeneity and parochialism fragmented 1940s politics, but stabilisation, rent rises and pass laws produced a common identity by the late 1950s.
Findings¶
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Most Rand African male workers in the 1930s-40s were first-generation immigrants or migrants, not town-born. (p. 4)
more than 90% of African workers registered in Johannesburg came from a home outside of the Witwatersrand and that the overwhelming bulk of these came from rural rather than other urban areas.
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Employment in Johannesburg was extremely unstable, with very high labour turnover. (p. 5)
caused Johannesburg's entire male African labour force to replace itself every 20 months.
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Only a minority of the 1938 African labour force lived settled in locations and freehold townships; most were domestic servants or in compounds. (p. 5)
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Despite rapid industrial growth, African urbanisation lagged behind it by 1944. (p. 6)
the value of manufacturing output, most of which was concentrated in the Southern Transvaal, had trebled over the previous 10 years
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Mine wage stagnation during wartime inflation pushed miners into town jobs, especially after the 1946 strike was crushed. (p. 6)
steeply rising prices brought on by the Second World War were not cushioned by any increases in the wages paid to African workers in the mines.
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Weekly factory wages, unlike mine remittance arrangements, weakened ties to rural homes. (p. 6)
Weekly wages, however, represented a standing temptation to neglect sending remittances home.
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Squatter movements from 1944 housed over 100,000 people and forced a shift in state policy. (p. 8)
wave after wave of squatter movements swept over different areas of the Rand until in excess of 100,000 persons had housed themselves in these settlements.
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The Nationalist government chose to stabilise existing urban families while restricting new influx, contrary to conventional wisdom on apartheid, partly because of farmers' labour concerns. (p. 8)
the new Nationalist Government decided to stabilise the existing urban population in family units and family accommodation and use this to provide for the city's labour supply.
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Site-and-service access required 'family circumstances', pushing migrants to bring or find wives in town and weakening rural ties. (p. 9)
Once a man's wife was living with him in the town, his ties with his natal home invariably weakened and he tended to return much less frequently.
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Verwoerd's economic rentals and rising transport costs, amid falling real wages, created shared economic grievance by the mid-1950s. (p. 15)
Verwoerd, imposed economic rentals on all municipal housing, causing rentals to rocket up to 75% of their previous level.
Evidence ledger¶
Sources used¶
| Source | Kind | Period | How used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industrial Research Section, Dept of Commerce, University of the Witwatersrand, Native Urban Employment: A Study of Johannesburg Employment Records, 1936-44 (1948) | secondary literature compilation | 1936-1944 | Pass-record survey of 20,000 African men supplies origins, job duration, turnover, dismissal rates and regional/occupational patterns underpinning the claim that the urban workforce was first-generation or migrant. |
| Annual Report of the Manager of the Non-European and Native Affairs Department, Johannesburg City Council (1938) | commission or official report | 1938 | Gives the breakdown of the 88,000-strong male African labour force by residence (domestic backyards, compounds, locations/townships). |
| Germiston, Benoni and Springs Municipal Archives: Reports of the Managers of Non-European Affairs (1948-1954) | state archives | 1948-1954 | Confirms that the African male urban population elsewhere on the Reef was predominantly of non-Reef origin. |
| F. W. C. Buitendag, 'The Organisation of Labour Bureaux by Local Authorities', Race Relations XX (1953) | newspapers periodicals | 1953 | Cited as one of the less detailed sources corroborating the origin of African workers outside Johannesburg. |
| Benoni Chamber of Commerce and Industry Archives, President's Report (T. D. Thompson, 2 December 1953) | employer association records | 1953 | Supports the estimate of the share of unskilled African industrial labour. |
| D. Posel, The Making of Apartheid 1948-1961 (1991), pp. 24-25 (manufacturing output data) | secondary literature compilation | c.1934-1944 | Source for the claim that the value of manufacturing output trebled in the decade to 1944. |
| Die Vaderland cartoons, March-December 1947 | newspapers periodicals | 1947 | Frames white fears of African urbanisation and the 'direct move' misconception the paper challenges. |
| Author's oral history interviews, Daveyton and Rand (Kolobe, Sefako, Zwane, Kgopo, Komane, Mthembu, Mbulane, Mqiba, Khoesnoe, Mrs K, Nkadimeng, Sisulu etc., 1984-1994) | interviews oral history | 1984-1994 (recalling 1930s-1960s) | Life histories supply the journeys, motives, wage-timing, squatter experience, associations and politicisation central to the argument. |
| Central Archives Depot, Pretoria, NTS 6687, File 310/332, Vol. 2: Report of the Commission on the Disturbances of 30 August 1947 at Moroka Emergency Camp | commission or official report | 1947 | Establishes that virtually all camp dwellers were in bona fide employment on the Rand. |
| Central Archives Depot, NTS 6470, File 51/313/JI, Vol. I, Minutes of a discussion, 12 March 1946 (Brigadier Palmer) | state archives | 1946 | Source for police testimony that men 'picked up any odd woman' to qualify for site-and-service plots. |
| P. Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen (1961), East London research team | secondary literature compilation | 1950s | Quotation and findings used on the effects of township housing and on retained rural ties. |
| Bonner's own prior studies: 'The Politics of Black Squatter Movements on the Rand, 1944-1952'; 'The Russians on the Reef'; Basotho women article; 1993 symposium paper | secondary literature compilation | 1944-1957 | Supply the squatter numbers (100,000+), squatter origins, gang histories and hostel policy that the paper summarises. |
| Johannesburg Non-European Affairs Dept, Survey of the Western Areas of Johannesburg (1950) and other urbanisation-index studies | official statistical series | 1950 | Cited among works proposing indices of urbanisation that the author critiques. |
New data¶
Author-collected oral history interviews (c.25 named and anonymised informants, 1984-1994, mostly Daveyton) and archival notes; no systematic dataset built.
Inference¶
Quantification: Illustrative figures.
Qualitative historical argument combining reuse of a published survey of Johannesburg pass records and municipal statistics with oral life histories and archival policy documents; claims are made by narrative illustration rather than systematic comparison.
Key claims¶
| Claim | Basis | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| The African urban male population on the Rand in the 1930s-50s was overwhelmingly first-generation immigrant or migrant, not born in town. (p. 117) | Pass-record survey of 20,000 Johannesburg workers (Native Urban Employment) plus municipal reports for the East Rand. | Partial data |
| Labour turnover in Johannesburg was extremely high and employment short-lived, indicating a predominantly migrant working population in the 1930s-40s. (p. 118) | Native Urban Employment pass records on job duration, returns to reserves and dismissals; 1938 residence breakdown. | Systematic data |
| Weekly industrial wages, housing shortages, subletting and new relationships in town eroded remittance ties and pushed mine migrants towards settling in the towns. (p. 119) | Oral interviews (Kolobe, Sefako, Zwane) and the author's earlier work on squatters and the Russians. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| The 1940s squatter movements, with over 100,000 residents, forced the state to accept and stabilise a permanent urban population in family housing, shaping early apartheid policy. (p. 121) | Moroka commission report (NTS 6687), Johannesburg City Council policy as described in the author's earlier articles, and Bonner/Delius/Posel. | Partial data |
| Site-and-service schemes requiring 'family circumstances' prompted men to bring wives or acquire substitute partners, weakening rural ties and producing broken marriages. (p. 122) | Interviews (Komane, Kgopo, Mr M, Erasmus, Sefako), police quotation from NTS 6470, and Mayer's East London study. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| Immigrants formed ethnically and regionally based occupational niches, churches, squatter movements and gangs for security, making Rand society heterogeneous and politically fragmented in the 1940s. (p. 126) | Native Urban Employment pp. 874-875 for regional-occupational patterns; interviews and author's earlier work on the Russians and squatters. | Partial data |
| From the late 1940s and 1950s township stabilisation, rent and transport squeezes, and pass law enforcement produced a shared urban identity that fed 1959-61 political ferment. (p. 128) | Secondary work (French dissertation), policy statements and political leaders' interviews (Nkadimeng, Sisulu), with no quantitative series for rents, wages or transport. | Asserted |
The author's caveats¶
Author notes that 'other less detailed sources' only confirm the pass-records picture and that the semi-skilled share is an estimate ('probably no more than one-half'; 'no evidence that it grew to more than 30-40%'). He also admits that oral testimony is individual and that examples could be 'multiplied'.
Gaps in the evidence¶
The argument leans on one Johannesburg pass-record survey (1936-44) and a few municipal reports, with no Reef-wide census series on African urban sex ratios, birthplace, or family composition to show timing and scale of settlement. The claims on women's independent migration, wage-payment effects and the political consequences rest on a small, unsystematic set of interviews that cannot show representativeness. Census returns (1936, 1946, 1951), municipal location registers, influx-control and housing waiting-list records, and wage and rent series exist and could test the timing, scale and political effects.
Replicability: Data described but not public.