Apartheid subjects and post-colonialism: native administrators in Port Elizabeth, 1945-1970

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Robinson, Jennifer (1994). Apartheid subjects and post-colonialism: native administrators in Port Elizabeth, 1945-1970. History Workshop conference, 'Democracy: Popular Precedents, Practice, Culture', University of the Witwatersrand, 13-15 July 1994. University of the Witwatersrand History Workshop.

Type	conference paper
Scope	Wider apartheid literature
Method	archival narrative
Period studied	1945–1972
Regions	Port Elizabeth, New Brighton township, Eastern Cape
Themes	bantustans removals influx, demography urbanisation, politics ideology elections, resistance social movements, business and state, comparative theory, methods data sources
Citation key	robinson1994

Argument

Robinson uses the municipal native administrators of New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, to argue that histories of apartheid should drop the zero-sum domination/resistance model and its coherent, unambiguous subjects. Drawing on post-colonial theory (hybridity, the 'trickster') and on Atkinson's negotiated 'moral communities', she argues that the administrators were ambivalent, mixing paternalistic sympathy with active enforcement of influx control and political surveillance. She traces how the department grew and bureaucratised in the 1950s-60s, losing its personal style, and was absorbed into the central state in 1971-72. She also reflects critically on her own earlier writing, which had forced these ambiguities into an oppositional narrative of control. She suggests that apartheid housing and administration had a 'normality' resembling welfare-state modernisation elsewhere, and that post-apartheid analysis must tolerate ambivalence and complicity.

Evidence and method

Oral interviews with former New Brighton administrators (Peter, Poppleton, Reynolds, Mundell, Koch, 1988-89) and an unpublished McNamee memoir. Port Elizabeth Intermediate Archives files. Mayor's Minutes and Manager of Native Affairs annual reports. Local newspapers (New Age, Advance, Evening Post, Eastern Province Herald). Notes of a 1986 anti-removals meeting. Drawn mainly from the author's 1990 Cambridge PhD thesis.

Place in the debates

• Apartheid state as 'perfect system of control' vs a cobbled-together, contradictory state (see Origins, coherence and ideology of apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism). Endorses the newer consensus (Posel, Dubow, Bonner et al.) that apartheid was improvised, ineffective in parts and linked to modernising state projects, but argues these accounts still keep dualistic subjects.
• Domination/resistance (zero-sum power) vs negotiated urban governance (see Urban segregation, Group Areas and the apartheid city). Sides with Atkinson's 'moral communities' and post-colonial hybridity against her own earlier control-and-resistance framing. Concedes that administrators nonetheless enforced pass laws and surveillance.
• Apartheid as pure racial repression vs continuity with welfare-state/modernising interventions (housing, Bantu Education) (see Origins, coherence and ideology of apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism). Argues, following Hyslop, that housing and township administration had an element of 'normality', without detaching them from the project of domination.

Findings

• Administrative staff for New Brighton grew from 45 in 1927 to 66 in 1948. (p. 10)

  The staff whose task it was to control this population increased from a total of 45 people in 1927 - some administrative, some labourers and others medical personnel - until by 1948 the total number in the department was 66.

• A late-1950s expansion produced a five-fold larger bureaucracy of 307. (p. 10)

  An administrative expansion at the end of the 1950s resulted in a staff complement of 307 people.

• The 1960s were the closest the state came to solving African urban housing, which complicates a purely repressive reading. (p. 10)

  the decade of the 1960s was arguably the closest South Africa ever came to solving a century-long African urban housing crisis

• Administrative style shifted from personal paternalism to bureaucratic efficiency. (p. 11)

  more likely to have an academic qualification, less likely to speak an African language and more inclined to pursue bureaucratic efficiency than to forge strong personal relationships

• Pass laws arrived late in Port Elizabeth (1953) because of local circumstances and met sustained protest. (p. 15)

  from which Africans in Port Elizabeth were exempted until 1953, for a variety of locally specific reasons

• After 1962-63 repression, pass laws became routine instruments of control until abolition in 1986. (p. 17)

  the pass laws were imposed and continued to serve as weapons for routine, political and population control until their abolition in 1986.

• The council's insistence on a self-financing location frustrated even sympathetic administrators. (p. 20)

  the Council refused to take serious measures to remedy these complaints, hampered as ever by its demand that the Location be self-financing

• Administrative efficiency gains were used for political surveillance in cooperation with the Security Police. (p. 20)

  It has enabled this Department to co-operate with the Security Police concerning internal security measures

• Manager Koch's 1968 beer-hall monopoly aimed to cover the deficit on the Native Revenue Account, showing the fiscal logic of township administration. (p. 21)

  He introduced a council monopoly of beer brewing in 1968 - long delayed because of opposition from the township residents - in an effort to redress the growing deficit on the Native Revenue Account

• Newer historiography treats apartheid as improvised and modernising rather than a master plan. (p. 7)

  That Apartheid was rather more cobbled together, frequently ineffective and contradictory, and also more closely linked to the kinds of modernising projects which states everywhere have undertaken has emerged as a consensus

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source	Kind	Period	How used
Port Elizabeth Mayor's Minutes (MM), Reports of the Superintendent of Natives / Manager of Native Affairs, 1927, 1948, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1963	commission or official report	1927-1963	Supplies staff numbers of the native administration department over time, the 1962 interview count, and the Manager's assessments of political activity.
Interviews with former Port Elizabeth native administrators (Ivan Peter 14 April 1988; John Poppleton 23 May 1988; L.C. Reynolds 26 June 1988; Mr Mundell 6 May 1988)	interviews oral history	1988	Establishes administrators' backgrounds, self-understandings, and the paternalistic style of the Boast-era administration.
Interview with Louis Koch, 30 August 1989	interviews oral history	1989	Records Koch's own claim that his administration achieved co-operation with elected councillors.
Unpublished manuscript (memoirs), A. P. McNamee, c. 1988	other	c. 1988	Source for McNamee Jnr's romanticised memories of growing up in Red Location.
Port Elizabeth Intermediate Archives (PEIA) municipal files (A31 Vol 4; 25/100NB No 10; BS1(v); AB F1(ii); AB A1(i); AB A31 Vol 7; C69 Influx Control and Foreign Natives)	state archives	1955-1972	Documents correspondence on staff careers, clearing of Korsten, attacks on the Labour Bureau and admin offices, women's memoranda, the Section 29 unit and influx control refusals.
Memorandum of ANC Women's League to the Manager of Native Administration, 16 July 1956 (PEIA AB A1(i))	state archives	1956	Illustrates women's demands and the administrators' patient but ineffective listening.
Labour Bureau Annual Report for 1959	commission or official report	1959	Shows the influx control section was seen as the public face of the administration.
New Age newspaper (5 July 1962; 11 Oct 1962; 8 Nov 1962; 1 Oct 1959; 20 Aug 1959; 13 Oct 1960; 19 April 1962; 23 Aug 1962)	newspapers periodicals	1959-1962	Reports African experiences of pass raids, deportations, women's protests and repression of activists.
Advance newspaper, 22 January 1953	newspapers periodicals	1953	Evidence of a 20,000-strong meeting opposing council introduction of influx control.
Evening Post, 6 August 1956; Eastern Province Herald, 1 May 1969	newspapers periodicals	1956, 1969	Reports the Superintendents' public denunciation of council neglect and Boast's retirement remarks on frustration over finance.
Notes of meeting taken by Port Elizabeth Anti-Removals Committee, 19 November 1986	union or movement records	1986	Source for residents' appeal to Mundell's paternalistic reputation against 1980s removals.
Robinson 1990b, The Power of Apartheid: Port Elizabeth 1923-1972 (PhD thesis)	secondary literature compilation	1923-1972	The author's earlier archival study, on which the case study draws and from which she quotes a paragraph for reinterpretation.

Inference

Quantification: Illustrative figures.

Single-locality qualitative case study reading archival correspondence, official reports, newspapers and a small set of interviews, used mainly to illustrate a post-colonial theoretical argument that administrators were ambivalent subjects rather than purely agents of domination.

Key claims

Claim	Basis	Strength
The Port Elizabeth native administration grew about five-fold, from 45 staff in 1927 to 307 by the end of the 1950s, reflecting both population growth and wider tasks. (p. 10)	Mayor's Minutes, Reports of the Superintendent/Manager of Native Affairs for 1927, 1948 and 1959.	Partial data
Administrators under Boast adopted a personal, paternalistic style of listening to township residents, which later gave way to a bureaucratic style under expansion. (p. 11)	Interviews with former staff (Peter, Poppleton), Boast's 1962 report on 2463 interviews, and the Manager's reports.	Illustrative or anecdotal
Administrators' sympathies were conditional and did not extend to political activity; they used regulations and surveillance, including cooperation with the Security Police, against activists. (p. 19)	PEIA correspondence, the Manager's 1968 report on the Section 29 Unit, and Manager's 1963 report.	Partial data
Administrators were ambivalent figures whose backgrounds in colonial-style rural and mine settings combined with real sympathy for residents, undermining a simple domination-resistance narrative. (p. 14)	Interviews with Peter, Reynolds, Poppleton and Mundell, and McNamee Jnr's memoir; the author's own reading of them.	Illustrative or anecdotal
Africans in Port Elizabeth resisted pass laws, which were introduced there only in 1953; resistance was crushed by bannings and imprisonments in 1962-63, after which the Manager reported a decline in political activity. (p. 17)	New Age and Advance reports, PEIA files on attacks on the Labour Bureau, and the 1963 Manager's report.	Partial data
Under Manager Koch (from 1968) the administration became a distant, corporatist bureaucracy, which failed to win popular endorsement given later radical community organisation. (p. 20)	Interview with Koch, Koch's claims, and secondary works on PEBCO and the 1986 stay-aways.	Illustrative or anecdotal
The 1960s housing programme was arguably the closest South Africa came to solving the African urban housing crisis, so apartheid interventions had an element of modern 'normality'. (p. 10)	Asserted on the basis of the author's earlier research and an analogy to Hyslop's work on Bantu Education, with no data presented.	Asserted

The author's caveats

The author concedes that her earlier interviews were limited: the residents' perspective rested on a few activists strongly oriented to portraying the state as oppressive, and that she shaped the evidence into a pre-formed domination-resistance narrative.

Gaps in the evidence

The argument rests on a handful of interviews with former administrators and municipal reports, with few residents' voices beyond activists and no systematic sampling. Evidence such as complete personnel records, housing and rent statistics, and a broader set of township residents' oral testimony would better test claims about ambivalence and the 1960s housing record. Council and Native Affairs Department records exist in the Port Elizabeth archives, and oral history interviews with residents could still be collected.

Replicability: Data described but not public.