Rethinking Urban South Africa¶
Susan Parnell; Alan Mabin (1995). Rethinking Urban South Africa. 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 | synthesis review |
| Period studied | 1880s–1950s (with reflections to 1994) |
| Regions | Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban and Natal, Transvaal, Orange Free State |
| Themes | origins segregation, demography urbanisation, bantustans removals influx, business and state, politics ideology elections, comparative theory |
| Citation key | parnell1995 |
Argument¶
Parnell and Mabin argue that South African urban studies has treated 'race' as an a priori category. The result is racially compartmentalised empirical work, and theory borrowed from poorly suited sources: the race/class (cheap labour) debate, gender perspectives, white-supremacy instrumentalism and state theory. They propose starting from the evolution of the urban itself, namely urban growth, local government and urban management, with race understood as made through that process. As illustration they sketch the rise of local government and township planning from the 1900s to 1913, then the influence of international modernist planning in the 1920s-1950s. They argue that modernist planning ideas fitted closely with apartheid's spatial means.
Evidence and method¶
Historiographical review of the secondary literature on urban segregation. For the planning sections: archival material (Central Archives, Transvaal, Natal and Cape Archives Depots, Union government commission reports and Gazettes, Hansard), municipal records, reports of the Social and Economic Planning Council and Natural Resources Development Council, planning journals, and interviews with planners (e.g. Kantorowich, Fair, Pistorius, Mallows).
Place in the debates¶
- Liberal vs revisionist (cheap labour) accounts of segregation, applied to urban segregation (see Urban segregation, Group Areas and the apartheid city). Argues the debate has distorted urban research by equating urban residential segregation with the cheap-labour imperatives of territorial segregation (Maylam, Hindson). It stresses that urban slum clearance, public health and modernist planning also drove the removal of Africans.
- Instrumentalist white-supremacy view vs the role of the local state (see Urban segregation, Group Areas and the apartheid city). Rejects the view that segregation simply flowed from racist national ideology. It stresses municipal councils as active gatekeepers who lobbied for extended controls, and the divergent interests of central, provincial and local government.
- Capital and the origins of segregation (see Urban segregation, Group Areas and the apartheid city). Following Dubow and Rich, holds that the capitalist class's power in introducing territorial segregation has been over-simplified and exaggerated. It notes that business's role in intra-urban segregation is poorly documented.
- Social history 'from below' vs history 'from above' (see Historiographical approaches). Argues that the social history school, by emphasising community resistance, has under-examined how segregated structures and racial categories were built. It calls for more attention to the perspectives of those in power.
Findings¶
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Urban history's reliance on race as an unexamined organising category has limited understanding of cities. (p. 2)
Implicit acceptance of 'race' as the primary category of inquiry has limited and impoverished understandings of towns and cities.
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The liberal-revisionist debate over reserves and cheap labour has distorted urban research. (p. 7)
The debate between liberals and revisionists over the role of the Reserves and the supply of cheap labour has dominated South African historiography.
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Urban segregation is wrongly reduced to territorial segregation and labour supply. (p. 7)
The material base of urban residential segregation is thus falsely equated with the imperatives of territorial segregation
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Removals of Africans from inner cities were driven also by public-health and anti-slum measures, not just native policy. (p. 8)
The enforcement of anti-slum provisions and public health legislation was at least as powerful in propelling the relocation of Africans.
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Local authorities are wrongly portrayed as passive agents of central government. (p. 10)
In the absence of any textured understanding of whose interests the municipal councils represented, the local authority is commonly portrayed as the toothless watchdog of the central government.
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Recent work shows capitalist class power behind territorial segregation has been overstated. (p. 11)
As a result it is now clear that the power of the capitalist class in introducing and upholding territorial segregation has been over-simplified and over-exaggerated.
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Early township-approval regimes advanced racial segregation through land prices, even without being designed to do so. (p. 13)
Since most who could afford sites in approved townships were white and most (though of course not all) poorer urban residents were not, racial segregation undoubtedly advanced, albeit coincidentally, through these means.
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Attempts at national urban planning control failed after Union; township powers reverted to the provinces. (p. 15)
By April 1913 the Department had given up its hopes of controlling urban development.
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Modernist planning and demands for comprehensive segregation coincided and reinforced each other. (p. 18)
The critical coincidence is that town planning in South Africa emerged at a time when the modern movement in architecture and planning was at its height
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The Natural Resources Development Council, created under Smuts, became a key agency in apartheid-era town reconstruction. (p. 20)
the NRDC played central roles in the apartheid reconstruction of towns and cities
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Vanderbijl Park, the ISCOR steelworks town, was planned with separated neighbourhood units that included African townships. (p. 20)
Among the separated neighbourhood units of Vanderbijl Park were Bophelong and Boipatong, the African townships.
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Apartheid urban policy largely adopted means already advocated by planning professionals. (p. 22)
Yet apartheid did not require a complete redefinition of urban problems, for its means came close to many which had long been urged by planning professionals.
Evidence ledger¶
Sources used¶
| Source | Kind | Period | How used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Statute Law of the Orange River Colony (OFS 1894 'recognition of townships' law) | legislation gazette | 1894 (published 1907) | Shows the OFS created the first apparatus in southern Africa to control urban form through a townships board. |
| Transvaal Ordinance Establishing Municipalities, No. 58 of 1903 | legislation gazette | 1903 | Documents municipal powers over unfit buildings and township layout plans that proved hard to enforce. |
| Final Report of the Johannesburg Roads Commission 1904-05 | commission or official report | 1904-05 | Evidence that the Witwatersrand was seen as 'one great township' requiring regional servicing, leading to the Rand Water Board. |
| Report of the Pretoria Suburban Municipal Commission (Rose-Innes, Chair), 1905 | commission or official report | 1905 | Shows concern with coordinated sanitation and native control and the recommendation to extend Pretoria's boundaries. |
| Report of the Cape Peninsula Commission (G21-1902) | commission or official report | 1903 | Shows the recommendation to amalgamate eight municipalities into greater Cape Town. |
| Central Archives Depot, Pretoria, Department of Lands (LDE) 555, 7294 'Townships Board - Appointment of Members' and Annual Reports of the Department of Lands 1912, 1913 | state archives | 1910-1914 | Documents transfer of the townships boards to the Department of Lands and its bureaucratic ambitions over urban land. |
| First Report of the Financial Relations Commission (G. H. Murray), UG 11-1912, incl. Laurence memorandum | commission or official report | 1911-1912 | Used for Justice Laurence's minority argument for provincial administration of townships and town planning. |
| Union Senate Hansard 1912 and Union Gazette Extraordinary notices, Financial Relations Act No. 10/1913, Proclamation 255/1913; LDE 152, 309 'Planning of Towns' | parliamentary debates | 1911-1913 | Traces the failed national townships bill and the transfer of township powers to the provinces in 1913. |
| Transvaal Archives Depot files TPS TA 9907, TPB 1203 TA10022, TPB 1217 TA 10234 (Stallard Local Government Commission) | state archives | 1918-1920 | Supports the claim that the Stallard Commission was a local government inquiry with housing powers among its instructions. |
| Social and Economic Planning Council Report No. 5: Regional and Town Planning, UG 34-1944 | commission or official report | 1944 | Shows official endorsement of planned neighbourhoods separated by green belts, linking modernist planning to segregation. |
| SEPC series (SEC) 47, 12/5 Vol. 2 and Report of the Reconstruction Committee of the Department of Agriculture and Forestry (1944-5) | state archives | 1944-1946 | Supports Smuts's hesitation to convene a planning conference and the wartime reconstruction thinking in departments. |
| Natural Resources Development Council series (RNH) 279, PA3/3/5, First Annual Report of the NRDC to 31.12.1948 | state archives | 1947-1948 | Establishes the NRDC's powers over controlled areas as the first regional planning body. |
| Natal Archives Depot, Durban Town Clerk series (3/DBN) including 4/1/3/243 and 1/2/7/1/1, and Minutes of the City Council of Durban 1943 | state archives | 1943-1948 | Shows wartime halt to planning and Durban's post-war racial zoning proposals and use of the Umlazi reserve. |
| Ninth Interim Report of the Post-War Works and Reconstruction Committee regarding Provincial and Town Planning (Natal, 1945) | commission or official report | 1943-1945 | Used to show racial zoning emerging as central to Natal post-war reconstruction and the idea of a planning commission. |
| Report on the Possible Urbanisation of the Umlazi Mission Reserve, Durban (Provincial Town and Regional Planner, Natal, May 1949) | commission or official report | 1948-1949 | Shows Greater London-style decentralised planning proposals applied to an African town at Umlazi. |
| Cape Town Foreshore and District Six planning sources (Cape Archives 3/STB 4/1/70.6.23, Cape Town Foreshore Plan final report 1947, S. S. Morris papers) | state archives | 1939-1951 | Supports the account of modernist reconstruction planning and District Six demolition in Cape Town. |
| Interviews with planners (Mallows, Pistorius, Jane Drew, T. J. D. Fair, R. Kantorowich, Thorrington Smith) | interviews oral history | 1990-1994 | Establishes the careers, training and influence of modernist planners and Smuts's hesitation over a planning department. |
| UCT Library Thornton-White papers and other archival collections; Association for Planning and Regional Reconstruction publications | state archives | 1930s-1940s | Supports the transmission of CIAM modernist ideas to South African architects and planners. |
| Natal Daily News and other periodicals (South African Architectural Record, Building, The Star) | newspapers periodicals | 1908-1947 | Used for contemporary evidence on planning debates, housing, modernist ideas and the town planning congress. |
| Evidence to the Eiselen Commission 1949 (A. H. Murray papers, UCT BC 282) | state archives | 1949 | Illustrates modernist 'control, efficiency, coordination' thinking beyond physical planning. |
| Parnell's doctoral thesis and related archival research on Johannesburg slums | secondary literature compilation | 1910-1937 | Cited for the archival record of municipal lobbying for segregationist controls and for slum clearances affecting non-Africans. |
Inference¶
Quantification: None.
Historiographical critique of the literature combined with an illustrative, archive-based narrative of local government and modernist planning. The author draws mainly on commission reports, legislation and interviews, and argues from selected cases and chronology, with no systematic comparison or quantitative test.
Key claims¶
| Claim | Basis | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| South African urban studies treat race as an a priori category, producing racially compartmentalised empirical studies that impoverish understanding of segregation. (p. 40) | Survey of the secondary literature cited in footnotes, not primary data. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| Early twentieth-century Transvaal, OFS and Cape governments created township boards and municipal structures to manage urban growth, and racial segregation advanced partly coincidentally through land-price effects of approved townships. (p. 50) | 1894 OFS law, 1903 municipal ordinance, 1904-05 commission reports and Townships Board creation. | Partial data |
| The Union government's attempt in 1910-13 to nationalise township establishment failed and powers were transferred to the provinces. (p. 52) | Department of Lands archival file, Financial Relations Commission report, Senate Hansard, the Gazette and the Financial Relations Act. | Partial data |
| Local authorities were active instigators of segregation rather than toothless agents of central government, as shown by municipal lobbying for extended controls. (p. 47) | Parnell's thesis archival record and the Krugersdorp case (Dugmore paper). | Illustrative or anecdotal |
| Segregation in cities was driven as much by anti-slum and public health legislation as by native policy, and affected coloureds, Indians and poor whites as well as Africans. (p. 45) | Parnell's unpublished PhD thesis, cited as the sole support. | Asserted |
| Modernist planning ideas (CIAM, Abercrombie, British post-war planning) fed into SEPC and NRDC planning and fitted with apartheid's racial zoning. (p. 55) | SEPC Report No. 5, NRDC records, interviews with planners, Natal committee reports, Umlazi plan. | Partial data |
| The NRDC became a key national planning agency playing central roles in the apartheid reconstruction of towns before later agencies were established. (p. 57) | NRDC first annual report, Natural Resources Development Act and Fair's retrospective account. | Partial data |
| Cape Town's and Durban's post-war reconstruction (District Six demolition, racial zoning, Umlazi) show modernist planning shaping apartheid cities. (p. 58) | Cape and Natal archival files, committee reports and interviews. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
The author's caveats¶
The authors state that almost no primary research has been published on the early-century urban planning issues and that knowledge of local and provincial government after Union is minimal. They describe their account as brief, suggestive and outline-level, and note the evidence relates primarily to urban planning.
Gaps in the evidence¶
The argument that modernist planning and local-state initiative shaped segregation rests on selected archival cases and planners' interviews, with no systematic evidence on how widely such ideas were adopted or on actual implementation. Municipal council minutes, town clerk files, township and Group Areas records, and population and housing data would test causation and the weight of local versus central initiative. Most of this material existed then and is held in provincial and municipal archives. Cross-city comparison would be needed to support generalisation beyond the cited cases.
Replicability: Data described but not public.