Any Space for Apartheid? (review of David M. Smith, ed., Living Under Apartheid: Aspects of Urbanization and Social Change in South Africa; and John Western, Outcast Cape Town)

Literature › Works

Jonathan Crush (1984). Any Space for Apartheid? (review of David M. Smith, ed., Living Under Apartheid: Aspects of Urbanization and Social Change in South Africa; and John Western, Outcast Cape Town). Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, Vol. 18, No. 3. Canadian Association of African Studies.

Type	journal article
Scope	Wider apartheid literature
Method	synthesis review
Period studied	1948–1982
Regions	South Africa, Cape Town, Western Cape, Johannesburg, Durban, Bophuthatswana
Themes	bantustans removals influx, demography urbanisation, comparative theory, politics ideology elections, labour markets wages
Citation key	crush1984

Argument

Crush reviews two geographical studies of apartheid's spatial logic. He welcomes their empirical mapping of apartheid space but criticises Smith's edited volume for empiricism and functionalist explanations, in which function merges into cause, including the claim that spatial form guarantees cheap labour. He judges Western's Outcast Cape Town the more scholarly book, but faults its dated liberal, race-centred framework, which treats whites as undifferentiated and ignores class analysis. He calls for a 'geography from below' that treats struggle, conflict and contradiction as central.

Evidence and method

Review of two books: Smith's edited collection (chapters on unequal development, urbanization, industrial decentralization, frontier commuting, the informal sector, domestic service, housing and riots), and Western's study based on interviews with 100 mixed-race (Coloured) families formerly of Mowbray, Cape Town, plus reconstruction of Group Areas Act geography.

Place in the debates

• liberal vs class-analytic (revisionist) interpretations of apartheid (see Liberal vs revisionist: was apartheid functional or dysfunctional for capitalist growth?). Crush criticises Western's 'orthodox, and dated, liberal' race-centred reading and favours a class analysis linking race to the social relations of production.
• functionalist explanation of apartheid spatial form (cheap labour thesis) (see Urban segregation, Group Areas and the apartheid city). Rejects functionalist accounts, both racial-domination and cheap-labour variants, as reductionist and not borne out by historical scrutiny.
• structure vs agency in studying apartheid space (see Historiographical approaches). Argues for a 'geography from below' attentive to struggle and the everyday responses of the dominated.

Findings

• Crush criticises functionalist explanations of apartheid's spatial form, including the cheap-labour variant, as reductionist and historically weak. (p. 3)

  Both arguments, in which function merges into cause, are highly problematical because they are reductionist in nature and do not generally bear close historical scrutiny.

• Struggle and contradiction, not functional design, should frame the geography of apartheid. (p. 3)

  Struggle, conflict and con- tradiction are the ink in which the geography of apartheid has come to be written.

• The Smith collection covers urbanization, decentralization, labour-supply reorganization and the informal sector, but is uneven. (p. 3)

  the reorganization of South Africa's internal labour supply through "frontier commuting" and urbanization in the bantustans.

• Contributors to the Smith volume disagree even over how to describe the bantustans. (p. 2)

  far from complementing one another, the authors often seem to be talking at cross-purposes. This is nowhere more evident than in the plethora of terms and qualifications used to describe the South African bantustans.

• Western's sample is unrepresentative of Cape Town's most marginal people. (p. 4)

  it tells us little of the real outcasts of Cape Town; that is the many thousands of forcibly resettled and immigrant Capetonians who have no Mowbray to hark back to

• Western documents the Group Areas Act's power to remake urban geography, and white property owners benefited from removals. (p. 4)

  white property owners have done well out of Group Areas removals, although he is careful not to confuse cause with effect.

• Western's liberal framework neglects class analysis and treats whites as undifferentiated. (p. 5)

  The end result is a tendency to view "Whites" as an undifferentiated category who do things, such as the Group Areas Act, to "Non-Whites" in the single-minded and irrational pursuit of racial protection and privilege.

• Beavon and Rogerson's study of Johannesburg street dwellers ties survival strategies to economic structure and shows how people circumvent spatial controls. (p. 3)

  weave the survival mechanisms of a marginal social group into the broader fabric of structural forces in the South African economy.

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Western's interviews with 100 mixed-race (coloured) families, former residents of Mowbray, Cape Town (as described in the review)	interviews oral history	mid-1970s	Forms the core of Western's study, documenting the experience and deprivations of forced resettlement under the Group Areas Act.
Western's reconstruction of Cape Town's changing residential geography under the Group Areas Act (maps, diagrams, comparison with an 'ideal' Group Areas city)	maps spatial data	1948 to c. 1970s	Shows how the Group Areas Act refashioned the city's geography, compared with an 'ideal' Group Areas city.
Group Areas Act (as applied in Cape Town and Mowbray)	legislation gazette	1950s-1970s	The legislation whose implementation and effects Western reconstructs, including forced removals and property-owner outcomes.
Contributions to Smith (ed.), Living Under Apartheid: edited collection of chapters on urbanization, decentralization, frontier commuting, informal sector, domestic service, housing and riot geography	secondary literature compilation	contemporary, 1970s-early 1980s	The review assesses the collection's empirical reconstruction of spatial form and its themes, without naming the underlying datasets.

Inference

Quantification: None.

A book review. It assesses two geography books by critical reading, with judgements on method, representativeness and theoretical framing; the reviewer produces no data of their own.

Key claims

Claim	Basis	Strength
Western's sample of 100 ex-Mowbray families is unrepresentative, drawn from the less underprivileged end and the borderline between mixed-race and white groups, and so says little about the real outcasts of Cape Town. (p. 625)	The reviewer's reading of the sample description in Western's interview-based study; no sampling data are cited.	Asserted
Western's strength lies in his empirical description of how the Group Areas Act refashioned Cape Town's geography, including the finding that white property owners benefited from removals. (p. 625)	Western's reconstruction of the residential geography of Cape Town and his analysis of Mowbray, as described by the reviewer.	Partial data
Functionalist explanations in Smith's collection, in which spatial form serves racial domination or cheap labour, are reductionist and do not bear close historical scrutiny. (p. 624)	The reviewer's theoretical critique of the chapters; no specific historical evidence is presented.	Asserted
Western adopts a dated liberal, race-centred interpretation and neglects class analysis, treating whites as an undifferentiated category. (p. 626)	The reviewer's reading of Western's theoretical framing, plus an appeal to unspecified 'recent research'.	Asserted
Western's study lacks a distanced analysis of the social and cultural composition of the Cape Flats townships, which limits understanding of the violence his informants fear. (p. 625)	The reviewer's assessment of the gaps in Western's interview-based account.	Asserted

The author's caveats

The reviewer questions the representativeness of Western's interview sample and cautions that empirical reconstruction without explicit assumptions risks a covert empiricism; neither book's own data caveats are discussed.

Gaps in the evidence

As a review it cites no primary data; its claims about sample bias and the neglect of class rest on the reviewer's judgement. The assessment would be stronger with the actual sampling frame and interview methodology, plus Group Areas Board records, deeds and valuation data on property transfers, and census data on the Cape Flats townships. These existed in the 1980s in state archives and official series, and many are now accessible.

Replicability: Not applicable.