The Atlas of Apartheid

Literature › Works

A. J. Christopher (1994). The Atlas of Apartheid. Routledge (London and New York); Witwatersrand University Press (Johannesburg).

Type	book
Scope	Wider apartheid literature
Method	descriptive quantitative
Period studied	1652–1992
Regions	South Africa, Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, Orange Free State, Port Elizabeth, Witwatersrand
Themes	origins segregation, mining migrant labour, agriculture land, bantustans removals influx, demography urbanisation, politics ideology elections, inequality poverty unemployment, business and state, methods data sources
Citation key	christopher1994a

Argument

Apartheid was fundamentally a spatial policy. Racial separation operated through petty apartheid, urban segregation and grand apartheid, and these were expressed in lines drawn on maps at many scales. The text supplied here (the Introduction, all of Chapter 1 and the opening of Chapter 2) argues that apartheid was rooted in colonial and Union segregation and marked 'a remarkable degree of continuity'. What distinguished it was the scale and ruthlessness of state intervention. The economy is treated as a context for segregation: mining created migrant labour and compounds, state intervention shaped the space economy, and the Land Acts and urban segregation laws fixed the racial division of land and towns. The method is a mix of thematic text and maps built from censuses and official sources, with indices of segregation computed for 1951.

Evidence and method

Population censuses (1904, 1946, 1951), manuscript enumerators' returns of the 1911 and 1951 censuses, official topo-cadastral maps, delimitation commission reports, municipal and deeds office records, and parliamentary debates quoted from Hansard-type sources. It also draws on secondary works such as Adam and Giliomee (1979), Browett (1976) and the author's own earlier studies of Port Elizabeth.

Place in the debates

• Continuity vs rupture between segregation and apartheid (see Origins, coherence and ideology of apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism). Stresses continuity from the colonial and Union segregationist eras. Apartheid differed mainly in the scale and ruthlessness of state intervention, and in its ideological codification.
• Was there an apartheid 'grand design'? (see Origins, coherence and ideology of apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism). Notes that one author called the 'Grand Design' a myth and that the National Party was ambivalent at first. It argues that Verwoerd's partition policy gave direction by the 1960s and 1970s, so the work treats state partition as the official aim by then.
• Racial job reservation vs economic laws (ideology vs economic rationality) (see The job colour bar, white labour and its erosion). Quotes the Minister of Labour, Schoeman (1954), as showing that job reservation was tied openly to preserving white rule rather than to economic efficiency.

Findings

• White economic dominance: in 1946 the white fifth of the population controlled about two-thirds of personal income. (p. 15)

  the White one-fifth of the population controlled two-thirds of personal income

• The Minister of Labour explicitly subordinated economic laws to the preservation of white rule, in the debate on the Industrial Conciliation Bill. (p. 16)

  Is it to maintain the economic laws or is it to ensure the continued existence of the European race in this country

• The compound and migrant system allowed mining companies to shift the cost of reproducing labour onto the reserves' agricultural sector. (p. 40)

  The mining companies therefore did not have to bear the costs of supporting the families of the migrants, which were borne by the agricultural sector in the reserves.

• Compound control is linked to a long decline in mining wages from the late nineteenth century. (p. 50)

  Thus the steady decline in mining wages in the late nineteenth and early

• Manufacturing overtook mining as the largest contributor to national income during the Second World War, driven by import substitution. (p. 42)

  efforts to achieve a degree of independence from uncertain overseas suppliers resulted in the sector overtaking mining as the most significant contributor to the national income

• Wartime urbanisation was rapid, and by 1945 Africans in towns outnumbered whites. (p. 42)

  Black rural-urban migration was on such a scale that by 1945 there were more Blacks in the urban areas than Whites.

• A 1948 United Party commission recognised the integral place of urban Africans in the economy, in contrast to official ideology. (p. 43)

  It further noted that the national economy was racially integrated and that the Black community formed an integral part of it.

• The 1913 Land Act reserved only a small area for Africans and the 1936 Act added a modest extension. (p. 46)

  Under the Natives Land Act of 1913 some 8.9 million hectares were defined as Native Reserves

• The 1936 Native Trust and Land Act added land, but mostly by recognising existing African occupation, in a fragmented pattern. (p. 48)

  the Native Trust and Land Act finally provided for the extension of the Black areas by some 5.2 million hectares

• Reserves never held most Africans in the Union period. (p. 49)

  It should be noted that the Native Reserves and the Trust Lands accommodated less than half the total Black population during the Union period.

• The apartheid state continued earlier interventionism, differing in degree rather than kind. (p. 46)

  The apartheid era was accordingly a continuation of the State interventionist policies of the previous era.

• Urban residential segregation was already high by 1951, before the Group Areas Act took effect, as shown by median segregation indices. (p. 56)

  The median national index of segregation for the White community registered 74.8.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Population Census 1951 (South Africa 1955), published returns	population census	1951	Basis for maps of the percentage of the population returned as White, Black, Asian and Coloured, and of Cape Malay population.
Population Census 1946 (South Africa 1954)	population census	1946	Used to map the percentage of the White population that was Afrikaans-speaking.
Census of the Colony 1904 (Cape of Good Hope 1905)	population census	1904	Used to map the distribution of the Khoisan population and to describe the census racial classification categories.
Manuscript enumerators' returns of the 1951 census (Central Statistical Services, Pretoria)	population census	1951	Author computed town-level indices of residential segregation for Whites, Coloured, Asians and Blacks, which carry the claims about pre-apartheid urban segregation.
Manuscript location returns in the 1911 and 1951 censuses (Central Archives Depot / Central Statistical Services, Pretoria)	state archives	1911 and 1951	Used to map Black locations recorded in the 1911 and 1951 censuses.
Port Elizabeth municipal records and Deeds Office, Cape Town (title deed covenants)	state archives	c.1950	Used to map the extent of racial zoning by title-deed covenant in Port Elizabeth in 1950.
Official 1:250,000 topo-cadastral maps, Government Printer	maps spatial data	various dates	Used to redraw the areas designated under the 1913 and 1936 Land Acts.
Parliamentary debates (Hansard) quotations: Schoeman 1954, Malan 1950, Swart 1953, Verwoerd 1953, Malan 1954, Verwoerd 1959	parliamentary debates	1950-1959	Ministerial statements are quoted to establish the white-supremacist intent behind job reservation, group areas, separate amenities, Bantu education and partition.
Apartheid and segregation legislation (Natives Land Act 1913, Natives (Urban Areas) Act 1923, Native Trust and Land Act 1936, Slums Act 1934, Housing Act 1920, Population Registration Act 1950, Group Areas Act 1950, etc.)	legislation gazette	1913-1992	The legislative framework is described as the basis of rural and urban segregation and as the source of the 1913/1936 land designations.
Beaumont Commission report (1916)	commission or official report	1916	Used for the acreage of White-owned and Crown land exclusively occupied by Blacks and for the recommended additions to the reserves.
Transvaal Local Government Commission 1922 report	commission or official report	1922	Quoted to show that urban areas were seen as the 'domain of the White Man'.
1948 United Party government commission of enquiry on urban Blacks	commission or official report	1948	Cited to show that official opinion recognized Blacks as a permanent part of the urban population.
Browett (1976) spatial model of South Africa's development regions	secondary literature compilation	1870-1960	The regional classification is redrawn to illustrate the development of the space economy in 1870, 1911, 1936 and 1960.

New data

Author-computed town-level indices of residential segregation (White, Coloured, Asian, Black) for 1951, derived from census manuscript enumerators' returns; also compiled maps of title-deed zoning in Port Elizabeth and of census-recorded locations, 1911 and 1951.

Inference

Quantification: Descriptive tables.

Thematic atlas combining cartographic presentation of census and archival data with narrative and quotations from ministers' statements and legislation. The method is historical-geographical description, and comparison across regions (the provinces) and over time. There is no formal statistical testing, and continuity is argued from legislation and spatial patterns.

Key claims

Claim	Basis	Strength
Apartheid was a spatial policy that continued, and intensified in scale, the segregationist state intervention of the colonial and Union eras. (p. 32)	Legislation (1913, 1923, 1936 Acts), maps of land and location patterns, and narrative synthesis.	Partial data
Urban residential segregation was already high by 1951, with a median White index of 74.8 and Coloured 49.3 (44.3 in 1936), and varied by region as a result of colonial legacies. (p. 42)	Segregation indices computed by the author from 1951 census manuscript enumerators' returns.	Systematic data
The White population never became demographically dominant and by 1946 held two-thirds of personal income, with the share falling only in the 1980s. (p. 1)	Census-based population series and the Adam and Giliomee and SAIRR spending statistics.	Partial data
Land Acts and related legislation fixed the rural division: 8.9 million ha of reserves in 1913, with 5.2 million ha added in 1936, yet reserves held less than half the Black population. (p. 35)	1913 and 1936 Acts, Beaumont Commission report, and topo-cadastral maps.	Partial data
The mining industry transformed the economy and introduced the migrant labour and compound system, so that families' support costs fell on the reserves, with manufacturing overtaking mining in WWII. (p. 26)	Narrative synthesis from secondary sources and the Browett regional model; no data series presented.	Asserted
Political malapportionment and gerrymandering favoured rural and Afrikaner interests before 1948. (p. 30)	Ninth Delimitation Commission statistics, 1948, mapped.	Partial data
Apartheid ideology was explicitly aimed at preserving White rule and racial separation, as stated by ministers. (p. 1)	Parliamentary debate quotations from Schoeman, Malan, Swart and Verwoerd.	Illustrative or anecdotal

The author's caveats

The author notes that racial statistics often exclude Blacks or refer only to Whites, that the territorial definition of 'South Africa' varies, that sanctions made statistical material sensitive and unavailable, and that political turmoil since 1976 makes post-1970 census results suspect. He says examples from Port Elizabeth recur because he knows the city, not because it was typical. He also says segregation indices may understate contact because segregated suburbs were often separated by only a road.

Gaps in the evidence

The excerpt gives no systematic economic data on wages, labour markets, or state expenditure to support the economic claims about mining and manufacturing. Citations are largely to secondary sources, and sourcing of the maps is generic ('various sources'). Establishing causation would need archival records of policy implementation and district-level census tables, most of which exist in South African archives and published census volumes.

Replicability: Data described but not public.