Comprehensive Segregation: the Origins of the Group Areas Act and its Planning Apparatuses¶
Alan Mabin (1992). Comprehensive Segregation: the Origins of the Group Areas Act and its Planning Apparatuses. Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2. Taylor & Francis.
| Type | journal article |
| Scope | Wider apartheid literature |
| Method | archival narrative |
| Period studied | 1923–1960 |
| Regions | South Africa (national), Cape Town and Cape Province, Durban and Natal, Johannesburg and Transvaal, Pretoria, East London, Uitenhage |
| Themes | origins segregation, demography urbanisation, bantustans removals influx, politics ideology elections, business and state |
| Citation key | mabin1992 |
Argument¶
Mabin argues that the Group Areas Act (1950) did not issue from a pre-planned National Party master plan. It emerged from several earlier threads: municipal and Cape demands for segregating 'Coloureds', the Smuts government's 1946 Asiatic Land Tenure Act and Land Tenure Advisory Board, and wartime and post-war planning thought, especially the Social and Economic Planning Council's 1944 report. Civil servants, notably D.S. van der Merwe, gave these threads legal form in the Joint Committee report and the Bill. The Act's implementation then worked through the Land Tenure Advisory Board, whose procedures closely resembled routine town planning. This drew in town planners and local authorities, which sometimes resisted at first but largely complied. The Act is also shown to have introduced several changes beyond Indian property restrictions, including centralisation and segregation of 'Coloureds'.
Evidence and method¶
Archival work in the South African Central Archives (Land Tenure Advisory Board, Group Areas Board, Department of Planning, Social and Economic Planning Council and Natural Resources Development Council series), the Cape and Transvaal Archives, and municipal files. Also parliamentary debates and select committee reports, the Thornton and Wilcocks commission reports, the SEPC 5th Report, newspapers, two interviews (T.J.D. Fair, R.J. Davies), and secondary literature.
Place in the debates¶
- Origins of the Group Areas Act: grand apartheid master plan vs. contingent, multi-source genesis (see Urban segregation, Group Areas and the apartheid city). Rejects the master-plan view. Argues the Act grew out of earlier segregatory measures, planning bureaucracies and pressures that were wider than the Act itself.
- Whether Durban's council and anti-Indian agitation in Natal explain the Act (see Urban segregation, Group Areas and the apartheid city). Says Natal and Indian property restrictions were part of the story but are inadequate as the explanation. It stresses the Cape 'Coloured' segregation push and national planning thinking.
- Strategic (white domination) vs. material motives for spatial separation (Western; Kuper, Watts and Davies) (see Urban segregation, Group Areas and the apartheid city). Criticises these accounts for glib assumptions about the Act's background. It adds a bureaucratic and planning-professional dimension.
- Continuity between the United Party and National Party segregation policy (see Origins, coherence and ideology of apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism). Stresses substantial continuity, with Smuts-era agencies (Land Tenure Advisory Board, Natural Resources Development Council) as precursors. The Herenigde Nasionale Party supplied cohesion, comprehensiveness and retroactivity.
Findings¶
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Central thesis: group areas were not the product of a unilateral Nationalist master plan. (p. 3)
A theme of the article, then, is that 'group areas' did not follow from some master plan conceived and applied in any unilateral fashion by the Nationalist government after 1948.
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Planning procedures preceded the Act and drew planners into comprehensive racial segregation. (p. 4)
This article shows that procedures developed under the Act both derived from established planning practices, and enticed town planners into the implementation of comprehensive racial segregation.
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The Act's effect on Indian property rights was not simply restrictive; it guaranteed rights within defined areas. (p. 4)
Indeed, the Group Areas Act effectively guaranteed property rights to Indians, albeit in narrowly defined areas, reversing the legal tendency of the previous quarter century.
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Cape demands for 'Coloured'-white segregation were a major impetus for group areas. (p. 8)
The Cape thus provided, contrary to the protestations of United Party MPs in 1950, a strong impetus for 'group areas', specifically to segregate 'Coloureds' from whites.
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The 1946 Asiatic Land Tenure Act and its Board were the institutional precursor of the Group Areas Act. (p. 14)
the Asiatic Land Tenure Act of 1946 was the direct precursor of the Group Areas Act
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The 1946 census alarmed white administrators with majority-black cities, feeding a climate favouring compulsory segregation. (p. 16)
which for the first time showed nervous white administrators that the cities all had majority black populations
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The United Party offered no alternative to segregation as the solution to urban problems, so planned compulsory segregation appeared to work. (p. 16)
In short, the United Party government failed to deal through planning with very real urban problems; and it failed to offer any alternative at all to segregation as the prime means by which the problems of the cities would be solved.
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Official D.S. van der Merwe, chairing the committees and drafting the report, was a key architect of group areas. (p. 17)
In some respects, therefore, this little known figure was the Eiselen of 'group areas'.
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The Land Tenure Advisory Board lacked an explicit spatial model, so racial zoning was developed town by town. (p. 22)
But positive evidence is lacking in the records of the Land Tenure Advisory Board to suggest that this model was explicitly present in its policies, still less communicated to planners at local authority level.
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Central control over African housing finance was used to force municipalities into group areas planning. (p. 22)
Without a 'group areas' plan for their area, municipal officials found that they could not raise funds through the National Housing Office for housing Africans.
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Conclusion: comprehensive segregation was not a pure product of a grand apartheid plan, though its harm was no less. (p. 26)
The comprehensive segregation policies which emerged in 1950 and after were hardly a pure product of a grand apartheid plan
Evidence ledger¶
Sources used¶
| Source | Kind | Period | How used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Land Tenure Advisory Board series (ARG 12, Act 1/1/2/7), typescript Joint Report of the Asiatic Land Tenure Laws Amendments Committee and the Land Tenure Act Amendments Committee | state archives | 1949-1950 | Shows the committees' evidence, the history of segregation measures and the proposals for retroactive, comprehensive segregation that fed the Group Areas Bill. |
| Draft Joint Committee report, 28 February 1950 (author's photocopy of original formerly in SA, BEP 60) | state archives | 1950 | Establishes that Van der Merwe drafted the joint report and its unpublished chapters, a central piece of the Group Areas origins argument. |
| Land Tenure Advisory Board representations series (ARG 10, Act 1/1/2/3/9, /14, /16), incl. Germiston, Ventersdorp and Johannesburg Council correspondence | state archives | 1938-1949 | Shows municipal appeals and assurances that Van der Merwe marshalled as evidence for racial zoning and retroactive segregation. |
| Asiatic Land Tenure Committee series (ALTC 5), D.S. van der Merwe personal file ('DSvdM file') | state archives | 1944-1946 | Provides Van der Merwe's marginalia, meeting notes and memoranda used to profile his outlook, influence and the Committee's views on Indian segregation. |
| Department of Planning series (BEP) 131, 146, 192 - group area applications for Pretoria, Johannesburg and Lydenburg, incl. hearing records | state archives | 1950-1955 | Documents hearings, council positions and planner-Board cooperation in implementing group areas. |
| Group Areas Board series (GGR) 23/2, 23/16, 49/15/10, 63, 64 | state archives | 1939-1955 | Evidences LTAB procedures, linkage of group areas plans to African housing finance, and pressure on local authorities; also CPMA 1939/1948 congress extracts. |
| Cape Archives, East London Municipal series (3/ELN 886, 1370, 1371, 137, 371) incl. T.B. Floyd's Preliminary Report on Proposed Group Areas, 1953 | state archives | 1938-1953 | Shows municipal planners' integration of race zoning into town planning, LTAB circular procedures and council resistance. |
| Cape Archives, Provincial Secretary series (PAS) 3/171 and PAS 2/1151; Simonstown Municipal series 3/SMT | state archives | 1920-1939 | Documents Cape municipal demands for powers to segregate 'Coloureds' in the 1930s. |
| Transvaal Archives, Colonial Treasurer series (CT) 152, T34/8 'Transfer of Asiatic Bazaars from Government to Municipalities' | state archives | post-Anglo-Boer War | Supports the claim that Asiatic Bazaar control was transferred to municipalities. |
| Social and Economic Planning Council series (SEC 47, 12/5 Vol 2) correspondence | state archives | 1945-1946 | Shows officials' private intent for national residential segregation planning. |
| Natural Resources Development Council series (RNH) 279, First Annual Report to 31 December 1948 | state archives | 1947-1948 | Establishes the NRDC's powers and its role in racial zoning in new goldfield towns. |
| Other LTAB files: ARG 144 (Cape land tenure enquiry, January 1949), ARG 1 A1, ARG 228 (Benoni native location) | state archives | 1949-1951 | Shows the Board's tour of the Cape and its administrative expansion. |
| Report of the Select Committee on the Areas Reservation Bill (S.C.9-1926) | commission or official report | 1926 | Source for the Natal Municipal Association's demand for compulsory Class Areas. |
| Report of the Committee to investigate the administration of areas becoming urbanised (Thornton), UG.8-1940 | commission or official report | 1939-1940 | Shows official concern about uncontrolled peri-urban settlement and racial mixing. |
| Social and Economic Planning Council Report No. 5: Regional and Town Planning, UG.34-1944 | commission or official report | 1944 | Establishes the planning rationale for racially separated, buffered neighbourhoods. |
| Group Areas joint committee report (published chapters), UG.49-1950 | commission or official report | 1950 | Notes that only two of five chapters were published when the bill reached parliament. |
| Report of the Murray Commission into Evasion of the Law, 1939 | commission or official report | 1939 | Cited for the institutional lineage of the Feetham Commission and the Asiatic Land Tenure Committee. |
| Reconstruction and planning reports: Department of Agriculture and Forestry Reconstruction Committee (1944-5); Natal Post-War Works and Reconstruction Committee Ninth Interim Report (1945); Durban Post-War Development Special Committee report (1943) | commission or official report | 1943-1945 | Illustrates the spread of reconstruction and planning thinking, including racial zoning in Durban. |
| Hansard, House of Assembly, Vol. 33 (1939) | parliamentary debates | 1939 | Documents Hertzog's and Stuttaford's 1939 proposals for servitude-based segregation. |
| Group Areas Bill debates and Donges's citations; Votes and Proceedings of the Cape Provincial Council, July 1940 | parliamentary debates | 1940, 1950 | Shows defeat of the Cape segregation ordinance and Donges's later reliance on Cape demands. |
| Draft Further Powers of Local Authorities Ordinance, Cape Provincial Gazette, 22 July 1938; 1946 Asiatic Land Tenure Act; Natal Draft Occupational Control Ordinance 1944; other statutes (1920 Housing Act, 1923 Natives (Urban Areas) Act, 1934 Slums Act, 1932 Transvaal Asiatic Land Tenure Act) | legislation gazette | 1920-1950 | Compares provisions of earlier legislation and drafts to the Group Areas Act to trace continuity and novelty. |
| Verslag van die Kleurvraagstuk-kommissie van die Herenigde Nasionale Party (Sauer Report, 1947) and appendix on Cape 'kleurlinge' | other | 1947 | Used to show the HNP manifesto lacked any specified means for compulsory segregation. |
| Newspapers: Rand Daily Mail (1944, 1952), Cape Times (1937), Natal Mercury (1948), Transvaler (1952, 1960), The Star | newspapers periodicals | 1937-1960 | Used for Broederbond constitution references, planners' remarks, Moolman's hearing statement and ministerial delays. |
| Interviews by the author with T.J.D. Fair (December 1990) and R.J. Davies (9 January 1990) | interviews oral history | 1990 | Supports claims about the Smuts government's hesitation on a national planning department, the NRDC's racial zoning, Durban fears and the 1949 riots' pressure. |
| Statement of Chairman G. de V. Hugo at interview with Pretoria City Council representatives, 29 May 1952 (SA, BEP 131, G7/137) | state archives | 1952 | Evidence that the Board treated Indians as entitled to property rights under the Act. |
| 1946 population census (as referenced) | population census | 1946 | Invoked as heightening white administrators' apprehension that cities had majority black populations. |
Inference¶
Quantification: None.
Archival process-tracing and narrative case reconstruction: documents from municipal, provincial and central state bodies are used to trace the genealogy of compulsory segregation across 1920s-1950s, the role of planning bodies and Van der Merwe, and the implementation by the Land Tenure Advisory Board; supported by selected interviews and secondary studies of local cases.
Key claims¶
| Claim | Basis | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| Group areas did not follow from a pre-conceived National Party master plan; they emerged from earlier segregatory measures, pressures and planning bureaucracies. (p. 429) | Sauer Report and Cronje texts contain no means for compulsory segregation; traced antecedents in 1920s-40s legislation, Cape ordinance and SEPC reports. | Partial data |
| The Cape and Afrikaner nationalist circles supplied a strong impetus for compulsory Coloured-white segregation before 1948, which Donges later exploited. (p. 411) | CPMA minutes and votes, Cape Provincial Council proceedings, draft ordinance, Broederbond literature. | Partial data |
| Wartime and reconstruction planning (Thornton Committee, Social and Economic Planning Council) embedded racial zoning in planning thought, with officials privately seeking a national segregation policy. (p. 416) | UG.8-1940, UG.34-1944 and SEPC archival correspondence, plus local plans (Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg). | Partial data |
| The 1946 Asiatic Land Tenure Act and its Land Tenure Advisory Board were the direct institutional precursors of the Group Areas Act, alongside the Natural Resources Development Council which practised racial zoning. (p. 417) | Joint Committee report, Natal draft ordinance, 1946 Act, NRDC annual report and Fair interview. | Partial data |
| D.S. van der Merwe, as chair of the joint committees and drafter of the report and the Bill, was the key architect of the comprehensive, retroactive Group Areas scheme. (p. 420) | Joint committee report and draft, ALTC 5 DSvdM file, ARG 10 representations, author's photocopy. | Partial data |
| The Land Tenure Advisory Board used informal power and housing finance leverage to draw municipal planners into group areas planning, which planners largely accepted as ordinary planning. (p. 426) | LTAB circulars, GGR correspondence, National Housing Office circulars, East London and Springs files, Floyd's report. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| The Board had no explicit model of radial group areas; zoning developed town by town in secrecy. (p. 425) | Absence of such evidence in LTAB records, as reported by the author. | Asserted |
The author's caveats¶
The author notes that sources are not yet readily accessible, including records concealed by fifty-year closed periods in the South African Central Archives; that the draft joint report can no longer be found in the Pretoria archives (only his photocopy survives); and that opposition, commercial opportunism and drafting influences await further research.
Gaps in the evidence¶
The argument relies on selective archival quotations without systematic coverage of Land Tenure Advisory Board decisions, cabinet or ministerial papers, or National Party caucus records, so the weight of Van der Merwe and planners relative to political actors is hard to test. A systematic sample of municipal files and LTAB hearings across towns, or Group Areas Board and cabinet archives (closed then, partly open now), would better test claims about planner complicity and the absence of a master model. No quantitative evidence on proclamations, removals or housing finance is used to assess the extent of implementation.
Replicability: Data described but not public.