I

FOlRCED REMOVAL
1 J NI VERSITY OF NATAL
The Division, Segregation and Control
of the People of South Africa.

ELAINE UNTERHALTER

I (. h l h l .I ll*;HDE LIBRARY
DIIRBAN

International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa

Canon Collins House, 64 Essex Road, London N 1 8LR
1987
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a INTERNATIONAL DEFENCE AND AID FUND
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights are reserved.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism
or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the
copyright owner. Contents
Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers. b
Introduction 1
I .i~cratureon forced removals 1
All photographs are from the photo library of IDAF Research Information and
Publications Department. I'lle scale of forced removals 3

Chapter 1 History 4 .
I;oundations, 1 9 0 M 8 4 1

:; [
liarly National Party policy, 1948-60 10
The International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa is a humanitarian
organisation which has worked consistently for peaceful and constructive thntustan policy, 1959-73
solutions to the problems created by racial oppression in Southern Africa. I(antustan 'Independence' and the restructuring of apartheid, 1973-86
( :onclusion 26
It sprang from Christian and humanist opposition to the evils and injustices
of apartheid in South Africa. It is dedicated to the achievement of free,
democratic, non-racial societies throughout Southern Africa. Chapter 2 Forced removals through the pass system 27
1 listory of the pass system 28
The objects of the Fund are:-
'l'he first phase of National Party rule 29
(i) to aid, defend and rehabilitate the victims of unjust legislation and
I'ass laws and the bantustan strategy 31
oppressive and arbitrary procedures,
(ii) to support their families and dependents, The Riekert strategy 34
Objectives of the influx-control system 43
(iii) to keep the conscience of the world alive to the issues at stake.
How the pass system works 47
In accordance with these three objects, the Fund distributes its humanitarian Some effects of influx controls 55
aid to the victims of racial injustice without any discrimination on grounds of 1)cfiance and resistance 56
race, colour, religious or political affiliation. The only criterion is that of Conclusion 59
genuine need.
The Fund runs a comprehensive information service on affairs in Southern Urban policy and forced removals
Africa. This includes visual documentation. It produces a regular news bulletin Chapter 3
'FOCUS' on Political Repression in Southern Africa, and publishes pamphlets Group Area removals
and books on all aspects of life in Southern Africa. <:oloured Labour Preference policy
The establishment of African townships
The Fund prides itself on the strict accuracy of all its information. The establishment of bantustan towns

I
Squatters
Conclusion

i
First published in 1987 by IDAF Publications Ltd,
Chapter 4 Rural removals
Canon Collins House, 64 Essex Road, London N1 8LR. r The end of labour tenancy and eviction of farm workers
,- Betterment schemes and bantustan land policy
ISBN No. 0 904759 79 2 (Paperback), 0 904759 81 4 (Hardback) Black-spot removals and bantustan consolidation
Methods of black-spot removal
Phototypeset in lOpt Plantin and (:anditions after removal
printed in England by A.G. Bishop & Sons Ltd, Orpington, Kent. Resistance by black-spot communities
 1

Chapter 5 Popular resistance and new state strategies 122 Maps

Reformulation of urban policy 124 1. I'laces affected by forced removal mentioned in the text: Transvaal and
Housing policy 124 Northern Cape vi
New strategies on squatters 127 2. l'laces affected by forced removal mentioned in the text: Eastern Cape,
Decentralisation policy 128 Orange Free State and Natal vii
...
Khayelitsha: a focus for new strategies 135 3. Provinces, major towns and bantustans vlll
.. .
Group Areas Act 137 4. Administration Boards and bantustans v111
Rural policy 138 5. The growth of bantustan towns: Bophuthatswana, 1970-80 45
Conclusion 139 6. Segregated residential areas: Group Areas and African townships on the
West Rand 61
7. Coloured Labour Preference Area: The Eiselen Line 69
Tables 142 8. Squatter townships around Durban, 1985 86
1. Estimated number of people forced to move by type of removal, 196G82 9. Kwandebele: the making of a bantustan 106
2. African population by sex in major towns, 193G51 10. llecentralisation strategy 131
3. Economic sectors as a percentage of national income, 1911-2 1 I 1. Khayelitsha and the Cape Town townships 135
1. Workers employed in manufacturing, 1910-28
5. Aid Centres' administration of the pass laws, 1971-81 Illustrations facing page 88
6. Urban African population, 195k80
7. Recruitment of workers by bantustan in two Natal Administration Board
areas, 1979-81
8. Arrests, prosecutions and convictions under the pass laws, 1955-84
9. Numbers of Africans endorsed out of the major urban areas through the
operation of influx control, 195G80
10. Families moved through Group Areas Act removals, 1950-84
11. Funds spent on building houses in bantustans, 1967-83 (in R1,000)
12. Estimated number of commuters by bantustan of origin, 1977-82
13. Employment in agriculture, 195G85 Abbreviations
14. Farmers' total expenditure on machinery and implements, 1965-80, AFRA Association for Rural Advancement
at constant 1970 value of the rand (in R1,000) ANC African National Congress
15. Capital invested per person in South African agriculture, 1948-77
at constant 1970 prices (in rand) CAYCO Cape Youth Congress
COSATU Congress of South African Trade Unions
CUSA Council of Unions of South Africa
ECAB Eastern Cape Administration Board
APPENDIX 1 Glossary of terms associated with forced removals 148 GG Government Garage - see Appendix 1
GST General sales tax
ISCOR (South African) Iron and Steel Corporation
APPENDIX 2 Chronological summary of legislation related to NCAR National Committee against Removals
forced removals 151 PFP Progressive Federal Party
PWV Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging
SABRA South African Bureau of Racial Affairs
Bibliography 156 SABT South African Bantu Trust-see Appendix 1
Newspapers, periodicals and serials 162
Books and articles 163 SACTU South African Congress of Trade Unions
SADT South African Development Trust-see Appendix I
SANT South African Native Trust-see Appendix 1
Notes and References 168 SPP Surplus People Project
TBVC Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, Ciskei
TRAC Transvaal Rural Action Committee
Index 172 UDF United Democratic Front
vii

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CAPE PROVINCE
M a p 3: Provinces, Major Towns and Bantustans.
M a p 4: Administration Boards and Bantustans.
I
I
I
Introduction
1 11lrr.gralto the political repression and economic exploitation of apartheid are
~nechanismsfor population control. The process of control, division and
wgrcgation of the people of South Africa has come to be termed 'forced
removal', because it has been achieved only by force and has involved the
physical uprooting of millions of the black people of South Africa over the
last forty years. The enforced divisions and controls have sometimes created
class divisions, and sometimes ignored them. Forced removals have
sometimes assisted capitalist development in South Africa and sometimes
hindered it. This book is an attempt to show the historical dynamic of t h e
process of forced removal and population control and the sometimes
contradictory forces that have promoted and retarded the policy.
I Forced removals have brought immense hardship to the mass of South
African people. The removals, which have probably affected at Least 4 million
people since 1948, have left few black South Africans untouched by t h e
harassment, domestic upheaval, confusion and poverty which are t h e
consequences of the policy. Forced removals have taken a number of forms in
1
the different periods of apartheid. The regime has constantly attempted t o
distort and disguise the nature of what it is doing, claiming it is abolishing
I
pass laws when it imposes new identity documents on all Africans as in 1952
and 1986, or that it is ending forced removals, when new, more arbitrary
I forms of removal are at hand as in 1985. But the propaganda of the regime is
I contradicted by the experience of the people of South Africa. It is the harsh
I
conditions they know as a consequence of removal, attempted division, a n d
control, that have fuelled resistance and strengthened the organisation of
opposition over the decades.
LITERATURE O N FORCED REMOVALS
Forced removals were first exposed in a number of studies in the early 1970s.
They detailed the hardships suffered by the people who were moved and t h e
dramatic reversal in their fortunes when they were uprooted from settled
communities and dumped by government trucks on barren land with only
tents for shelter.' These exposees made the names of resettlement areas, like
Limehill, Dimbaza and Sada, symbols of gross deprivation, the death of
children, and the abandonment of people to a bleak fate of poverty a n d
unemployment.
A second group of writings on forced removals, appearing mainly in t h e
1980s, sought to point out the relation between forced removals and t h e
general trend of apartheid policy and to categorise the various types of forccd
removaL2 This line of analysis focused on a typology of the forms of Sorccd
removal which was to be vividly illustrated in a five-volume report o l I IIC.
2 Forced Kemovul
Surplus People Project (SPP). The report illustrated and updated the analysis
with a wealth of detail, province by province The information there was
condensed into one book which also looked at explanations for forced
removal and its history since the beginning of colonial conquest in the
mid-seventeenth ~ e n t u r y .Both
~ groups of studies succeeded in focusing
public attention on the 'discarded' people and provided a mass of information
on little-known communities and on the gross injustices they suffered. But
neither approach could fully explain why forced removals had been carried
out in general. The first approach did not go beyond the reasons for a
particular community's removal, and although the second approach pre-
sented forced removals as integral to apartheid policy, apartheid itself was
assumed to be a self-explanatory, consistent and unchanging set of policies.
In the most recent and the most systematic inquiry into the relation
between removals and apartheid the authors reject simple analyses and
conclude:
Relocation/forced removal is . . . too broad an issue to be
explained by single causal theories: it reaches into virtually all
areas of life in apartheid South Africa . . . The massive scale of the
removals and the suffering that has been imposed on millions of
people have not been incidental or accidental to the system of
white domination that operates in South Africa. They have been
essential to it-essential to the system of control over the black
population that has been entrenched under apartheid.5
This book is a development of some of the ideas of this line of writing. It
attempts to analyse forced removals in the context of apartheid, but does not
take apartheid itself to be a simple unchanging practice. There are distinct
phases within the history of apartheid. Major political and economic changes
have occurred and there have been shifts in the balance of forces supporting
the maintenance of the system. Under the guise of a single policy, different
policies have been developed to meet changing demands. Apparent
continuities often mask the fact that the same policy is being implemented for
different ends. For example, the pass laws have led to thousands of forced
removals over a long period. However, the context in which the pass laws
have been applied has been dramatically different and although the form of
the legislation appears the same, its substance and intention has altered
considerably (see Chapter 2). Throughout the book the various forms of
forced removal are considered within the context of the changing political
and economic nature of apartheid.
In order to provide a background to this analysis, Chapter 1 gives an
overview of South Africa before 1948 and the various phases of apartheid
since, attempting to summarise the key economic and political developments
of each period. Subsequent chapters situate the various forms of forced
removal within the phases of apartheid and attempt to assess why removals
which developed in one period of apartheid were maintained in another.
Chapter 2 looks at the changing nature of the pass system and the forced
~ c ~ ~ l o veffected
als through attempts to regulate the supply of labour to
d~llbrentsectors of the economy. Chapter 3 examines the forced removals
III;II have resulted from the different approaches to urban policy under
;~l>artheid, and Chapter 4 discusses forced removals in the countryside within
111ccontext of the land question in South Africa. Chapter 5 outlines the
~lclx~res and new strategies that have emerged in the present period. New
;ipproaches by the regime to population control in urban and rural contexts
;Ire analysed, and counterposed against the militant and organised resistance
ol the period.
1, 'THE SCALE OF FORCED REMOVALS
'l'licre has been much debate about the number of people forcibly moved.6
'l'l~cmost recent and most exhaustive analysis by the SPP estimated that 3.5
million people had been moved between 1960 and 1983 (see Table I ) , and that
~learly 2 million were still under threat of removal. But these were
~~nderestimates. They did not include the large numbers of people forced to
Illovc from one area to another through the operation of the pass laws, some
dimension of which can be gleaned from Tables 5 and 8. The SPP total did
no1 include, and there is virtually no way of knowing this, the number of
people living in informal settlements around the large towns of the country,
t lorced to move not once, but many times, as their homes are destroyed by
olfcials and police. Lastly the SPP figures did not encompass all people
~iiovedwithin bantustans through the operation of schemes to restructure
land use, to divide the African majority of South Africa and to build up the
hantustans as separate regional political structures. It must also be stressed
rhat many removals pre-date 1960 and in all the categories of removal for
which the SPP compiled statistics there were huge numbers of people moved
hcfore the date their quantification begins. An attempt in 1986 (by a group of
researchers at Stellenbosch University) to quantify forced removals con-
cluded that 4 million people had been removed between 1951 and 1986.' This
figure was arrived at on the basis of categories similar to those of the SPP
study. Four million is clearly the minimum number of forced removals since
1948, and the true figure may be almost double this. In qualitative terms the
social upheaval of so many millions of people moved in so short a time is
i~nalogousto that of the industrial revolution in Europe in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, or the mass migrations of people displaced
; ~ n dmade refugees by World War 11, and subsequent conflicts in Europe,
Asia and the Middle East. It is unclear if the totals include children.
The international community has rightly been outraged by instances of
forced removal at Limehill, Dimbaza, Crossroads, and Mogopa, seeing them
as examples of the brutal callousness of the apartheid regime. This book
shows how these well-known cases are not isolated examples, but part of a
continuing process of dispossession of black South Africans. Forced removals
have changed the geography of the country, both physical and political- it is
clear too that the experience of removal has politicised a whole generation ol
South Africans.
7- -
4 Forced Removul
CHAPTER 1
History
The apartheid system represents a particular form of state action to secure
and maintain white domination and to further particular economic interests.
But the relation between white supremacy and economic forces has not
always been a simple one. The policies pursued to maintain apartheid have
changed over the decades as the balance of forces sustaining political power
has shifted. Given the shifting nature of the relations involved, and changing
policies, it is important to discuss apartheid in distinct historical phases. The
picture is sometimes confusing because some of the instruments of white
domination, including forced removals, occur in different historical periods,
with different functions.
The term 'forced removals' is also an elastic one. In its most general sense
it can cover the whole process of dispossession which lies at the heart of the
history of South Africa. Indentured labourers, slaves and migrant workers
were forced, through the poverty which resulted from their loss of access to
land, to leave their homes and work under the harsh conditions dictated by
the development of capitalism in South Africa. Although this forced removal
is the backdrop to much of the discussion that follows, the book concentrates
more narrowly on certain forms of removal: these are the removals carried
out to maintain some of the essential structures of apartheid: migrant labour;
division and segregation of the population; and political subordination of the
black majority. Given the shifting nature of apartheid, the forced removals
that underpin the system also have phases.
FOUNDATIONS, 1900-48
In 1910 the period of British colonial administration of South Africa came to
an end and a Union was created out of the four areas that had been under
British rule: the Cape, Natal, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The
period of British imperial expansion in South Africa in the nineteenth
century had completed a process begun in the seventeenth century when the
first European settlers came to the country. Initially piecemeal, but as part of
a co-ordinated policy by the end of the nineteenth century, the African
people had been dispossessed of their land. Many thousands were crammed
together in 'reserves' set aside for them, areas which comprised what
remained of the former centres of the kingdoms of the leaders who had
opposed European conquest.
The late nineteenth century witnessed the establishment of large-scale
mining in South Africa, at the diamond diggings of Kimberley and the gold
reef of the Witwatersrand. This industry relied chiefly on black migrant
labour and workers were partly forced into mining through a number of
History 5
administrative measures implemented in the 'reserves' by colonial author-
ities. In the same period the slow transformation of settler farming from small
to large-scale commercial enterprise began. As an alternative to African
workers who could generally not be induced to work on the plantations,
sugar plantation owners in Natal brought indentured workers from India, the
majority of whom settled permanently in South Africa, while the fruitgrow-
ers of the Cape used the labour of the landless descendants of slaves.
Under the Union government, the territorial segregation which had arisen
out of the pattern of colonial conquest was sharpened and entrenched by the
1913 Land Act. This law delimited the area of the African 'reserves' termed
the 'scheduled land', and amounting to approximately 9 million hectares or 7
per cent of the total land surface-and stipulated that no African could in
iuture purchase or occupy land outside them. At the same time whites were
barred from buying land in the scheduled areas. African sharecroppers had
undertaken much of the agricultural production outside the 'reserves' in
partnership with white landowners. They were evicted en masse as a result of
this legislation. Share cropping usually involved a farming arrangement
between white landowners (who would provide land and seed, for example)
and African tenants (who did the farming). The returns were shared. Despite
rhe evictions and the major dislocation this brought for peasant families,
share cropping did not disappear overnight and many former sharecroppers
remained on white-owned farms as labour tenants having lost their right to a
share of the crop and any security of tenure.'
The significance of' the 1913 Land Act was twofold. The eviction of
sharecroppers provided farmers with labour and, by halting the process of
whites acquiring reserve land the act maintained the 'reserves' and the
liinction they then played in subsidising migrant labour for mining capital.*
In 1910 political power was centralised in a Union government, elected by
a small minority of those who lived in South Africa. Three franchise systems
operated in the country at the time. Firstly in the provinces of Natal,
'l'ransvaal and the Orange Free State only white men were entitled to vote for
~neinbersof parliament. In the Cape province all men who met a property
qualification had the vote. The third system operated in the 'reserves'. It
;illowed certain African men to participate in the traditional councils which
Ily then had lost a large measure of their political power and ruled subject to
[he jurisdiction of local magistrates. In an attempt to secure the perpetuation
o i white power in parliament, during the period 1930-36 Africans were
dcprived of their franchise rights in the Cape while white women, throughout
r he Union, gained the vote. A Native Representative Council was established
In 1936 but it had no legislative power. Thus for white South Africans the
forms of a Westminster-style parliament and political structures similar to
[hose in Britain were maintained, while for all black people, other than the
unall number of men classified as Coloured who retained the vote in the
( :ape, there was no democracy. By this date the traditional African structures
01 authority had been truncated and transformed. They were filled with
llcople who, whether they were hereditary rulers or appointed, wcrc :III
6 Forced licrnovul
salaried officials answerable to central government departments, liable to
demotion and banishment if they opposed government policy.
While the central government of the Union distanced itself from the needs
and aspirations of the black majority, municipal government was more open
to pressure. In part this was because industrialisation in South Africa had
resulted in significant black urban populations developing in industrial
centres, creating political and economic problems for local government.
As Table 2 shows, the African urban population was not made up entirely
of male migrant labourers. Towns and areas like Johannesburg, Kimberley,
Cape Town, Pietermaritzburg, Durban and the East and West Rand, with
industries reliant on migrant labour, show an imbalance in the proportion of
men to women in this period. This was directly attributable to labour policies
that concentrated on recruiting men, leaving women to maintain some form
of subsistence agriculture in the 'reserves'. The other major towns of South
Africa, however, had populations with a roughly equal balance of African
men and women, and this profile was maintained throughout the period.
As the conditions for subsistence production in the 'reserves' deteriorated-
through overcrowding, inadequate investment and capital resources, lack of
access to markets and the heavy tax burdens placed on rural households-
more and more Africans, both men and women, moved to the cities, where
the growth of secondary industry and the service sector provided full-time
waged employment. In the 'reserves' Africans were allocated land by chiefs
and the Native Affairs Department had jurisdiction over the areas. In the
towns, however, considerable political authority as well as an obligation to
provide for the infrastructural needs of Africans, fell to the municipal
authorities. Not all municipalities provided land or housing for Africans, and
for much of this period all black people lived together with poorer whites in
the centres of the cities. However, legislation did provide for the proclama-
tion of areas for African-only townships and in many of these, freehold land
was sold to African householders. For example, Africans had freehold rights
in the townships of Alexandra and Sophiatown in Johannesburg, in Evaton
near Vereeniging, in Fingo Village near Grahamstown, and in Edendale near
Pietermaritzburg, amongst others.
White South Africans had mixed views about the growth of an urban black
population depending on their interests. Some factory owners and shopkeep-
ers welcomed the labour they provided and the market for commodities.
White artisans, however, feared competition for their jobs. Mine-owners and
other employers who relied on migrant labour viewed a permanent black
urban population with trepidation- they believed it would undermine the
migrant labour system and force up wages. Strong views on the need to limit
the African urban population were expressed, and the Stallard Commission
which investigated the matter in 1922 concluded:
The native should only be allowed to enter the urban areas, which
are essentially the white man's creation, when he is willing to
enter and to minister to the needs of the white man and should
depart therefrom when he ceases so to m i n i ~ t e r . ~
History 7
'l'hc Stallard 'doctrine' was endorsed by legislation in 1923. The Native
tllrban Areas) Act of that year stipulated that all African men living in a
~jroclaimed(urban) area, were to report their arrival in the area, register their
\crvice contracts, and record any loss of job. Any African who could not find
work in an urban area could be compelled to leave by police and native
~~ommissioners. This Act was the first attempt to apply throughout the
~.ountrythe form of population control that came to be known as 'influx
control', by regulating the urban rather than the rural African population.
f Iowever, the legislation was opposed by influential sectors of white opinion.
'l'hc Act vested the local authorities with power to impose urban segregation
: ~ n dinflux control. It therefore was not immediately enforceable by central
~ovcrnment.Although Johannesburg and Bloemfontein accepted the terms
01' the Act before the end of 1924, other municipalities were slower to
ompl ply: Port Elizabeth, for example, did not implement the legislation until
1937. In 1935 an investigating committee for the Native Affairs Department
cluestioned a cross-section of municipalities and found the majority strongly
opposed to the Stallard doctrine and the measures they had to carry out to
111;1keit practicab1e.J
'l'he main opponents to the Stallard doctrine were spokesmen for
~l~anufacturing industry. Unlike miners, the workers they employed in
\ccondary industry were not recruited by labour agents in the 'reserves' and
tlld not work fixed time contracts. Industrialists needed to draw on a pool of
I;~llourersalready resident in the towns. They also needed an African
~w)pulationsurplus to their immediate labour requirements living in the
[owns, who could fill the posts of any dismissed workers, and through
c-ornpetition for jobs assist in keeping down wages5 The perspective of
1111ningcapital and other employers of migrant labour derived from an
opposite need. Their labour policies required a reserve army of labour in the
I lira1 areas, where labour agents recruited contract workers. The existence of
;I rural reserve of labour enabled them to keep wages down in their particular
cx.onomic sector. The Stallard doctrine, and subsequent legislation of similar
I l~ilracterin this period, represented action by the state to secure a labour
1)c)licy favourable to the mining and agricultural sectors of capital, in
I~I-clcrcnce to the industrial sector.
I lowever the attempt to implement influx control along the lines suggested
I w ~ h cStallard Commission failed. The numbers of Africans in towns
~~)I.reased throughout the first half of the century (see Table 2). The Stallard
~ ~ ~ o l x l swere
a l s loosely enforced by municipalities and massively defied by the
;\l~-ic,anpeople. The defiance succeeded for economic reasons.
Iiconomic development in South Africa was confined, in the nineteenth
c c.lirury, to mining and agriculture. However after World War I manufactur-
1111: industry developed as a significant sector of the economy (see Table 3 ) .
1'111.growth of secondary industry took place in two phases. The first resulted
I I O I I I the disruption of international trade by World War I. As European
I or~ntriesoriented their economies to war production a world-wide shortage
01 manufactured goods ensued, particularly household and indusrri;~l
8 Forced Removal
commodities. In South Africa this shortage stimulated local production,
protected from post-war European competition by the Customs Tariff and
Excise Duty Amendment Act of 1925 which enforced a range of protective
tariffs against imported manufactures. An additional protection was provided
by the establishment of ISCOR, the state-owned iron and steel corporation.
This greatly facilitated local industrial manufacture by supplying some of its
essential material^.^
The second phase of industrial growth came in the 1930s. South Africa
went off the gold standard in 1931: the result was a rise in the price of gold
and attendant increases in state revenue. The additional revenue was used on
irrigation and subsidies to agriculture on the one hand, and on a massive
expansion of the economic infrastructure on, the other. Major new work in
the provision of electricity, port and railway facilities and industrial finance
was undertaken. There followed a large inflow of foreign investment, in
particular for enterprises in manufacturing production. There was a huge
growth in the number of workers employed in manufacturing (see Table 4).
Black workers formed a majority of employees in manufacturing, although
poor whites, forced off their land in the rural areas, were a significant
component of the industrial working class. The development of manufactur-
ing industry in the inter-war years is thus an important backdrop to the
growth of a permanently settled urban African population, and an
explanation for the patchy application of the Stallard doctrine. Industrial
entrepreneurs needed labour in this period, and were prepared to defy the
Urban Areas Act to secure it. But the process of large-scale African
urbanisation was by no means welcome to all whites. Farmers and
mine-owners believed their supplies of labour were under threat and many
white workers believed that African factory workers, who were paid lower
wages, were jeopardising white jobs. T p allay some of these fears legislation
was enacted in the 1930s which led to forced removals in the countryside on
the same scale as those that resulted from the 1913 Land Act.
The 1936 Native Trust and Land Act stipulated that additional land- the
released areas (6.2 million hectares)-was to be added to the 'reserves' as
defined in 1913 and that this total, approximately 13 per cent of the area of
the country, was all the land available in South Afiica for permanent African
occupation. Th e released areas were to be apportioned between the provinces
on a quota basis, and land purchased by the state for inclusion in the released
areas was to be administered by the South African Native Trust (later the
South African Bantu Trust). Like the 1913 Act this piece of legislation
sought to provide labour for white farmers. It contained clauses prohibiting
African peasants from living on land in while areas unless they were
registered squatters or labour tenants. It also gavc lirrn owners control over
the registration of squatters and tenanls and gavc rhcm rhe means, through
the Bantu Commissioners, of evicting Alrica~isfrom (heir One result
of this legislation was to prevent ASricans Gom easily leaving whitc-owned
farms to work in the cities. In simultaneous Icgislarion mining capital, too,
gained increased access to Africa11 labour. Amendinents to the Immigration
;\(.Ihrbade contract workers from outside South Africa leaving employmenl
OII the mines for other employment, and a ban on labour recruitment north of
.'2 degrees latitude was lifted.
'l'he legislation of this period was contradictory in its effects. At one level it
.~l)l>cared to be an attempt by the state to provide labour for white farmers
: r ~ r t lmine-owners, while prejudicing the access of urban-based industrialists
1 0 labour s ~ p p l i e s At. ~ another level it also contributed to the creation of a
11;11ional economy: it involved the collaboration of rival sectors which saw
111circollective interests satisfied through mechanisms that inhibited the
1:lowth of an African peasantry and forced Africans into migrant l a b ~ u rIt. ~is
I lc;tr that the 1936 Land Act, by limiting African access to land did
( or~~ribute, in the long term, to African entry into wage labour, but it was not
: I I I immediate consequence of the act.
'l'hc 1937 Native Laws Amendment Act placed severe limits on the
~liovementof African urban workers. The Act stipulated that workseekers
I orlld only remain in an urban area for 14 days looking for work. Thereafter
lllcy were to leave. The wife of a worker had to have a permit before she
could settle in town. There was to be a biennial census, and if its returns
\I~owedan excess of labour in the areas permission for any African to enter
I llc urban areas could be rescinded. People already in the area but surplus to
I llc labour requirement could be removed. The minister was given the power
I O ililervene if a local authority did not carry out its duties in observing influx
t o ~ ~ t r o lThe
. act also prohibited Africans from acquiring land from
IIOII-Africansin the urban areas, and effectively prevented any further
;\lrican acquisition of freehold rights.1°
'l'his regulatory influx control legislation could have done little to provide
111clabour which urban-based industrial capital needed. During a period
\vllcii the state was actively encouraging mechanisation of a kind which
I ccluired more low-paid semi-skilled African labour the legislation appeared
1 0 Iilnit its supply.ll On the other hand it may well be that in the context of
. I I I expanding manufacturing sector the 1937 Act served to direct labour to
\ ~ l ~ c rite was required. Its exclusionary and restrictive aspects can be
~lvcr-stressed,and they did not apply on the ground. Certainly, the biennial
c cnsus of labour and removals of surplus workers never took place. However
I l l C Van Eck Commission of 1941 pointed to the low proportion of black
workers in secondary industry. The black-white ratio in industry was 2:1,
t ompared with 4: 1 in farming and 8: 1 in mining. According to Van Eck this
I .r~io was the primary reason for the uneconomic position of the manufactur-
111): sector, which was overburdened with highly paid white workers.12
( :Icarly to a certain extent the interests of industrial capital were subordinated
i o (lie interests of mining and farming capital partly as a result of legislation
: I I I Jthe operation of influx control contributed to the relatively small number
I )I Africans employed in industry.
1)uring World War 11, as during World War I, the lack of manufactured
l:oods from Europe, stimulated an expansion of local manufacturi~l~
~ll~lustry. The value of manufacturing output increased by 116 per cent ill I l ~ c
 r
10 Forced K emoval
war years and the industrial labour force expanded by 53 per cent.13 The
Stallard doctrine, on which influx control had been based, began to be
questioned in ruling circles. The Fagan Commission, which undertook an
investigation into what policy the state should adopt toward urban Africans,
concluded in 1946:
In estimating labour requirements one has to remember that
where there is great industrial activity, it is also necessary that
there should be a substantial reserve of labour-people who are
ready to step in when others fall or when there is increased
activity in some industry; and there are so many industries that
are constantly contracting and expanding for seasonal reasons.14
The Fagan Commission therefore rejected the Stallard doctrine with its stress
on influx control and the removal of Africans from the urban areas. It argued
for consolidating the position of urban Africans in the interests of securing an
adequate labour force for expanding manufacturing industry. It was this
conclusion that was to be subsequently challenged by the National Party.
In the period before the mid-1940s; then, there were two main forms of
forced removal. Firstly there was the removal of sharecroppers and squatters
from white-owned land through the 1913 and 1936 Land Acts respectively.
Secondly there was the introduction of influx control and the attempt to
prevent the growth of large urban African communities and limit the
numbers of Africans legally allowed to work in towns. Both measures served
to support the interests of agriculture and mining capital, but because of
external factors such as patterns of international trade and state investment,
they did not seriously limit the expansion of secondary industry. However,
the accelerated development of manufacturing industry during the 1940s
posed questions about the validity of the forced removals policy of the period.
These questions in themselves partly elicited new policies which for decades
embodied doctrines quite at odds with the views of those, like Fagan, who
had sought to reformulate policy to enhance industrial capital's expansion.
EARLY NATIONAL PARTY POLICY, 1948-60
The National Party came to power in the election of 1948, after a period of
crisis in all sectors of the South African economy which had had a detrimental
effect on the white working class. T h e 1940s had seen the beginnings of black
mass mobilisation against discrimination and segregation. By 1945 a
significant proportion of Africans working in mining, commerce and industry
were unionised and their unions used strikes as weapons in the fight for
minimum wages and for an end to migrant labour. T h e largest strike
occurred in 1946 when 700,000 mineworkers went on strike over wages.
Shortages of housing and transport for Africans contributed to mass defiance
of restrictive regulations in the form of squatter movements and bus
boycotts. The African National Congress and the Indian Congresses of the
Transvaal and Natal were building mass-based organisations with precise
History I1
. I bI I 1 . 1 I l ( l s l lor political participation in a common legislature.
, \ , ' . II 1 1 l ~ i sbackdrop of heightened opposition can be set the problems of
~ ~I 1
1 11, 1 1 1 ( ( . I ( V I I economic sectors. Mining was losing labour to manufacturing
I I , I I I .I I v
I Workers could no longer rely on declining rural incomes in the
1 t I \I.\' ro supplement their wage and the mine owners were unwilling to
I s I \ I I \ I I I X wages. White farmers found that the sections of the 1936 Land Act
, I , . I , . I I (1 .0 I LOrce ~ squatters into wage labour on white-owned farms were not
111):( . ~ ~ l o r c eTd h. e state did not wish for repeats of the uprisings in the
I ;<)I I II(.III 'l'ransvaal in 1941 when this had been attempted: there had been
1 1 1 . 1 :. ~lcli;lnce,a march of 10,000 people on the courts, and protracted
I , I ~ I . I I I O I I li)r four years.ls With no binding labour contracts farm workers
\I I I I . I(.;~ving the land for better-paid jobs in industry. The Smuts government
!I . I . . 1111wil1ing to apply the influx control machinery to prevent this, believing
I 1 1 . 1 1 .~g~.iculture should be restructured with fewer, more efficient farms, and
I 1 1 . 1 1 I;~I>our should be diverted to industry. Manufacturing industry benefited
I I , 1 1 1 I Ilc plentiful supplies of labour it attracted from mining and agriculture.
I
\\ 1 1 11 \rate support industrial development took place on the basis of a policy
111 ,5~~l>stituting low-paid African labourers minding machines in place of
~ll~~~~c.c.hanised production. The National Party drew the support it required
1 0 will the election of 1948 mainly from white farmers and the white working
e I.[\\. They had deserted, respectively, the United Party and the Labour
I'.II IV-their traditional political parties which had failed to secure the
t o~~(litions for the advancement of their supporters.16
I'hc new government had two major aims. Firstly, it intended to suppress
I IN.mobilisation of black opposition that was placing white political power at
I I+. Secondly, they proposed to meet the demands of white farmers and
wllitc workers for an effective administration of influx control that would
event Africans leaving the countryside to settle permanently in the city and
111ldcrminethe jobs of white workers: In 1948 the National Party adopted a
\lr.atcgy reversing the trends marking the last years of the previous
government. According to the new policy migrant labour was to be used for
\ccondary industry as well as mining. Industry's needs for a labour force were
lo be met without establishing a permanent African urban community. The
presence of Africans in urban areas was to be regarded as temporary: their
\ratus that of foreigners who could have neither a political role nor equal
\()cia1 and other rights with whites.17
The second limb of the National Party's policy in this period was the
repression of opposition by armed force and legislation aimed at strangling
I he emergence of a unified opposition based on the principles of national
liberation and trade union organisation. The attempt to undermine black
opposition was partly assisted by the destruction of old-established black
urban communities, on which some of the networks of resistance were based
(see below).
Three forms of removal were envisaged by the legislative programme of the
1950s. First there were removals and attempted removals from the urban
areas, through influx control, of a reserve army of labour that comprised malt
12 Forced K emoval
unemployed workers and some women. Influx control was intended both to
prevent farm labour leaving the rural areas and to provide white farmers with
a pool of workers who had been removed from the cities. The second form of
removal resulted from the destruction of the mixed inner city communities
and the establishment of segregated townships, partly as a measure to inhibit
the growth of a national liberation movement that crossed the lines drawn by
apartheid. The third form of removal forced peasants out of subsistence
production as squatters on white-owned farms into agricultural wage labour,
the only form of livelihood open to them once they had been forced off the
land. Each type of removal satisfied the demands of a section of National
Party supporters at the time and together the removals contributed to the
fulfilment of the early projects of apartheid.
The whole system of influx control was rationalised in 1952 by the
nation-wide introduction of 'reference books', which replaced the array of
passes that Africans had previously been required to carry. Africans who
were not in possession of a reference book could not be legally employed.
Pension payments, housing and schooling, as well as the ability to move
around the streets of a town, all became dependent on having a reference
book with the correct stamp in it. Under the new measures passes were issued
to African women for the first time- however the resistance was so fierce that
it was only at the end of the decade, after savage repression, that passes for
women could be said to be operative. The influx control measures of the
pre-1948 period were strengthened to limit the number of Africans in cities.
An amendment in 1952 to the 1945 Urban Areas Act introduced the 'Section
10' clause. This specified that only certain Africans had the right to remain in
urban areas: people classified as Section 10(l)(a), that is those who were born
there and had lived there continuously; those classified as Section 10(l)(b)
who had worked continuously for one employer for ten years or had lived
lawfully and continuously in the area for fifteen years; dependants of people
in both these categories, classified as Section 10(l)(c); and other workers who
had permission, usually through short term labour contracts, to be in the area
for their jobs-they were classified as Section 10(l)(d). All other Africans
could not stay legally in the urban areas for more than 72 hours.
The second form of removal in this period intensified the process of
segregating the urban population. It was carried out mainly through the
application of the Group Areas Act of 1950. This was not the first piece of
legislation that had attempted residential segregation, but it was the most
systematically applied. Africans in urban areas had been segregated from the
rest of the population under the terms of the Urban Areas Act of 1923, and
Indian occupation of land had been limited by legislation in the 1940s. These
measures were extended by the the Group Areas Act. It gave the government
control over all property transactions between the groups into which it
divided the population and control over the occupation of land, thus ensuring
its complete power to decree where the different groups could live. ls A group
area was proclaimed for the ownership and occupation of a particular
'population group'. After the proclamation had been made, property owners
, ,I I . I I I I ( - I c.111 group would continue to own property for the rest of their lives,
1 I I , ) I I 11 l riot occupy
it. On their death their heirs had one year to dispose of
I18, I.fir11l r c ~a buyer
of the appropriate group for the Group Area.
' , I 1 1 , . Ijower in this area was extended in 1955 with the Bantu (Urban
\ I . I . . ;I~ncndmentAct which enabled the government to abolish African
1
r 1 1 , , l ( l rights to their property. The legislation enabling this form of
1 a a
1 1111 1\,:11 10 take place was designed both to concentrate the areas where black
.! 111 I 1 . 1 \ lived, and to insulate these areas geographically and politically from
:I 1 1 I I ( . ' South Africa. Urban segregation, however, was not achieved simply.
I I I L ~ I . I I ~~r.opcrty
I owners used the courts in long drawn out battles to delay
I 1 1 , 1 1 I c.~~lc)val under the Group Areas Act. Some African freeholders also took
11 1:.1l.l{.lion.The Johannesburg City Council refused to cooperate in moving
. \ 1 I ,111sIrom freehold land in Sophiatown, Martindale, Newclare and
I(
I'.~~:(.\,ic.w to the new township of Soweto. The central government responded
I ) \ ~-ll;~cting new legislation, the Bantu Resettlement Act of 1954, to force
11 I, . I I ; I ~ thorities
I to carry out these removals.
l I I C third form of removal in the 1950s was the expulsion of peasant
I ~ o ~ ~ \ ( . l ~from o l d s white-owned farm land. In 1954 an amendment to the
: \ I : I I I V L'l'rust
' and Land Act obiiged white farmers to register all households
I t . 1 1 1 lng land from them. Under the amendment all those who had rented land
. I ~ I ( . I - 1936 were deemed illegal occupants under threat of eviction. The
I I Illoval of all safeguards to the position of these households meant that they
( ~ l ~ l he t l forced into arrangements of labour tenancy or wage labour with
~ ; I II I I C Controls ~.~. over labour tenancy were also tightened. In 1956 legislation
I,~ovidcdfor the registration of all labour tenant contracts and prohibited
1 . 1 1 Incrs from taking on any more rent-paying tenants. From 1954 Chapter IV
01 111c 1936 Land Act was implemented. It specified that no African could
, A . I I I ~ on white-owned farm land unless he or she was a farm worker, a
I (.gistcred labour tenant or a dependant of workers in these two categories.
1 Il~lawfulresidence entailed removal and imprisonment and farmers who did
1101 rcmove the surplus population on their farms were guilty of an offence.
'l'he 'betterment' policies of this period can also be seen in the context of
I l ~ coverall government concern to make more labour available to farmers.
I'llc schemes involved the demarcation of areas in the 'reserves' of
~csidential,agricultural and grazing land for each community. People were
111ovedfrom their homesteads into the residential areas, many losing their
1-1ghtto land in the process. Although the original idea behind betterment
~~chemes was the creation of a class of competitive commercial farmers, in its
~~nplementation there was never enough land available to fulfil this aim and
the policy came increasingly to be used as a form of political control.19
I'casants in the bantustans who lost land through betterment schemes formed
a pool of labour from which white farmers in adjacent areas could recruit
workers.
The 1950s saw a drive towards mechanisation in agriculture. It was not
initially accompanied by a decrease in the demand for labour, but rather thc
reverse. Much mechanisation amounted to capital substitution rathcr th;tn
14 Forced Rt~rnovul
labour saving.1° Farmers continued to complain of labour shortages. Given
the extremely low wages they paid they had to rely on influx control to
prevent potential labourers going to the urban areas, and on the dispossession
of squatters and greater exploitation of labour tenants for cheap labour
power.
In mining, new gold fields were established in the Orange Free State and
the far West Rand. The new mines were more mechanised than the older
workings and the mining companies' needs for semi-skilled African workers
were enormous. The length of labour contracts was extended and in-service
training was provided for unskilled workers. The Chamber of Mines
continued to depend on a migrant labour force, and the peasants displaced
through betterment schemes in the bantustans provided them with new
sources of workers. Their success in securing adequate supplies of labour saw
an expansion of gold mining production: between 195 1 and 1961 gold output
increased by 99 per cent from 358,202 kg to 713,562 kg.ll
Industrial developmcnt in this period was more complex. While manufac-
turing contributed 20 per cent to gross domestic product most manufacturing
was in the hands of small concerns employing a handful of workers in labour
intensive processes. Import controls protected them from foreign competi-
tion and ensured that they supplied the major part of the domestic market
with food, textiles and paper. At the beginning of the decade there was no
domestic mechanised capital goods sector. Mining companies opened the way
for investment in this area to provide for their own needs.12
At one level the removals policy of the 1950s benefited mining and
agriculture at the expense of industry. However, the controls imposed by the
pass laws were an attempt to ensure that a large proportion of industrial
workers remained as migrants on fixed term contracts. At the same time
white workers in skilled artisan positions were protected from the competi-
tion of skilled black workers. Influx control enabled small entrepreneurs to
pay low wages to Africans without jeopardising their access to labour,
although the more mechanised industrial sector encountered problems as
semi-skilled African workers with permanent urban residence rights were in
short supply. The structures of apartheid buttressed by the removals policy
of this period were entrenched as the National Party consolidated its
parliamentary strength in the election of 1953. It was clear that the white
working class and many white farmers continued to view it as the party that
best served their interests.
The second period of removals policy saw state intervention to provide the
conditions of cheap labour for mining, agriculture and industry. The
principal spheres of action were influx control and land dispossession albeit
with some opposition from local government and the judiciary. Through
residential segregation attempts had been made to control the urban working
class politically and to make this working class available for industrial
employment. T h e range of informal sector activities that had kept some black
people out of the labour market was considerably undermined as old
communities were destroyed. However, the attempt to carry out the various
lorms of the removals policy generated countrywide resistance. The
llnposition of passes on women, the destruction of urban residential areas,
,ind the forced betterment schemes all fuelled mass defiance that was given
coherence through the demands of the organisations of the Congress
Alliance: the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress,
I he South African Coloured People's Congress, the South African Congress
01 Democrats, and the South African Congress of Trade Unions. Because of
1)opularopposition much of the removals policy could not be implemented.
Despite the boom in mining and agriculture, industrial production showed
. I relative decline from its position in the 1940s. The next phase of apartheid
was marked by an attempt to repress decisively all opposition to white
\upremacy and to ensure continued profitable expansion in every economic
\cctor.
BANTUSTAN POLICY, 1959-73
l'his phase of apartheid begins with the introduction of a range of repressive
Ic~islationwhich went far beyond that of the 1950s. The new laws were used
I I I ;I sustained attempt to crush the political opposition that had grown up in
tllc previous decade. The shootings at Sharpeville in March 1960 and the
\r~hsequentState of Emergency heralded a new form of the coercive state.
'I'housands of people were detained without trial, the main mass political
01-ganisations opposed to apartheid were banned, meetings were outlawed
; I I I ~individuals were silenced through banning orders.-At the same time the
*
Ix~ntustanprogramme was enforced, providing an additional mechanism for
control and an ideological justification for apartheid, euphemistically termed
'separate development'.
This period saw two major forms of removal. On the one hand the
t.\tablishment of bantustans entailed a further division of South Africa and a
tlivision of the population into separate groups. Africans owning land that fell
o r ~ ~ s i dthe
e bantustans came under threat of removal. However, the large
\tale removals of this period were mainly the result of economic boom. The
1060s witnessed a huge expansion in manufacturing and agriculture, largely
tllc result of mechanisation and rises in productivity. Both sectors were
I rtnded significantly by foreign investors, who took advantage of the political
,\~;tbilityimposed by repression. Mechanisation aroused fears among whites
; ~ h o uthet size of the labour force in these two sectors of the economy, as the
I~oom produced what was deemed a surplus population, particularly in
.~gr.iculture.From the mid-1960s legislation was implemented to control this
~)opulation,frequently through removals. The bantustans, initially estab-
lished as a form of political control, became crucial as areas where removed
1,cople were sent. A key aspect of National Party strategy became the attempt
to reverse the flow of Africans to the urban areas, and to establish the
Ivrntustans as the major African population centres.
The bantustan programme was initiated in 1959 with the Promotion 01.
I h t u Self-Government Act. rt ttdrew oii the earlier colonial systcm 01'
16 Forced Kemovul
I
government through chiefs which had been resurrected in the 1951 Bantu
Authorities Act. This act had placed local government in the 'reserves' in the
hands of chiefs, village headmen and councillors, all of whom were salaried
officials, accountable to the Bantu Affairs Department. These local officials
were in charge of the maintenance of roads, schools, law and order, pension
and welfare applications and land allocation. The Promotion of Bantu
Self-Government Act of 1959 incorporated these features of 'reserve'
administration and devolved greater executive powers to eight regional
bantustan administrations (the number was later to be increased to ten).
Simultaneously the parliamentary representation of Africans through white
representatives, introduced in 1936, was abolished. The rationale for the final
act of political segregation was expressed by the Minister of Bantu
Administration and Development at the time, who stated that if the principle
of African parliamentary representation was retained:
. . . then the Bantu would have to accept this parliament as his
parliament, and he would then become involved in a struggle in
which he would demand representation in this house on at least
the same basis as the white man. That is the trouble which awaits
South Africa ...z3
The struggle for African parliamentary representation and full political
participation had in fact been taking place throughout the 1950s. The
government's response in the 1959 legislation was to reject the demands for
full political rights, abolish the small representation that still existed, and
institute the bantustans, where it was intended that all African political
aspirations would be channelled and contained. Throughout the decade the
various bantustan administrations were given greater executive powers and
ushered through the stages of being bantu authorities, territorial authorities
and legislative assemblies. However, ultimate direction and control, as well
as finance, continued to be provided by Pretoria. For example a Venda
Territorial Authority was created in the Transvaal in 1962. In 1969 this body
was given executive powers with control over various aspects of internal
administration of the geographical area designated Venda, and in 1973 Venda
was decreed self governing with a legislative assembly of 18 elected members
and 42 appointed chiefs. In 1979 Venda was declared 'independent' and
joined the Transkei, Ciskei and Bophuthatswana as bantustans which had
accepted this status. All the bantustans, whether 'independent' or not, are
now designated 'national states'.
T h e demarcation of the larid for each bantustan was begun in 1959 and
plans were mooted for consolidation 0 1 their widely scattered areas. Many of
the areas of freehold land held by Africans throughout (he Republic since
1913 came under threat when they lay in arcas design;~tcdas part of 'white'
South Africa. They were termed 'black spots'. A long-term plan for the
eradication of black spots in pursuit of bantustan consolidation was drawn
up. In some areas of Natal, particularly in the Dundee-Ilannhauser area, and
also in the Eastern Cape, peopIe began to be forcibly moved from black spots,
1 History 17
I I . . I I . I I I ~to land owned by the South African Native Trust (SANT, later the
'
, t 11 1 1 l r African Development Trust (SADT)), designated for inclusion in a
I~.~llI~~xtan.
I llcxc removals were first brought to world attention in Cosmas
I ) ( . \ ~ ~ l o n daccount
's The Discarded People.24 Reasonably affluent peasant
1 . 1 1 lllcrs, who were moved, suddenly experienced a terrible transformation
IIII () iandless, stockless communities on the margins of society. Their
~ ~ l l . ~ r idid o n not improve with time, as Desmond discovered when he
I ( I 11l.11ed a decade later to one of the resettlement camDs he had written about
. I I I .1lnehi11.25As plans for bantustan consolidation were further elaborated
I 11c.1 c were continued removals from black spots and areas considered 'badly
, . I I 11.11cd' for African occupation. But these removals were piecemeal, as final
I ~ . l ~ ~ ~ rland ~ s t asettlements
n awaited bantustan 'independence'. The black-
. . ~ I ( I I ~.cmovals were facilitated by the Bantu Laws Amendment Act of 1973, a
I I I ~ . (L. o i enabling legislation which allowed removals from black spots to take
111.1( L. without the period of consultation stipulated in earlier legislation. The
I I ~ . L law ~ also provided mechanisms for removal in the face of local
t llq~)sition.26
1 ' 1 1 ~bantustan policy was being imposed at a time when the state faced the
I I I ( 15r iar-reaching challenge yet to its apartheid policies. Mass political
~llolulisation of the black population made much legislation unworkable,
1 b . 1 1 ~icularlyinflux control. Many urban areas and some rural districts in
1'1~11doland. Zululand and the Bafurutse area of the Transvaal were virtuallv
I I I governa able. In urban areas there were widespread protests at the extension
( 1 1 Ixlsses to women and the issuing of reference books. In rural areas similar
111 orests were coupled with uprisings against imposed bantustan authorities,
rll(. removal of black spots, and restrictions on cattle ownership. The
I1.111rustan policy was part of an attempt to suppress this opposition, linked to
I I I C repressive legislation of the period. T h e bantustan strategy enabled the
* \ I : I I C to increase long-term political control in the 'reserves' through the
~lcwlyestablished organs of bantustan rule. When appointed, the bantustan
Ic.;l~icrswere given promises of self-rule and ultimate independence, in
.~tlditionto preferential access for their supporters to highly paid bureaucratic
jtllls. There were manifold opportunities to acquire personal wealth through
I IIL.economic opportunities offered in Pretoria's plans for the development of
I llc bantustans. South Africa's rulers believed that once bantustan leaders
I I ; ~been c o - o ~ t e dthev would be able to act as a more effective brake on
African political aspirations than any show of white armed force.
If the bantustan strategy was initially political in its formulation, its
\ubsequent evolution was primarily affected by economic develop~nentsin
lie 1960s. Hard on the heels of the repression of the black political
~~lovernents in 1959-64 there followed an industrial boom. Between 1957 and
1962 gross domestic product at current prices increased by 5.2 per cent,
while between 1963 and 1968 G D P increase nearly doubled, at 9.3 per cent.2;
'l'he boom was primarily evident in the manufacturing and construction
:,ectors. Over the period 1960-70 the manufacturing sector increased lrs
18 Forced Removal
workforce by 63 per cent, drawing some of its new workers away from
employment on the mines and the farms. However, the boom was primarily
capital-intensive and increases in productivity were largely the result of
considerable investment by the manufacturing sector in capital equipment.28
Between 1965 and 1975 the ratio of capital stock per worker increased by 5
per cent per annum, representing one of the highest rates in the capitalist
world.29 While the expansion in the manufacturing sector led to an increase
in black employment the government wished to direct and control labour
supplies. It was concerned that the growing black working class should not
form a permanent urban population, which might challenge white political
supremacy and could pose a threat to the state in a period of economic
recession and high unemployment.
Dr Verwoerd, the prime minister, stated in 1965:
With mechanisation and automation it was expected that by 1978
a decreasing number of Bantu would be required in the industries
situated in and around white urban areas. If the number of Bantu
in White areas continued to increase in the meantime it is not in
conflict with the National Party's ultimate goal of turning the flow
back to the Bantu homelands.30
Such confident statements, however, obscured an inability to achieve their
aims. National Party attempts to work against the urbanisation of the black
population were greatly frustrated by the economic growth of the 1 9 6 0 ~ . ~ l
The new approach to influx control centred on the bantustans. The
strategy was both to remove unemployed people from the urban areas and to
prevent a mass uncontrolled migration of workers from the bantustans to the
boom areas.
At the urban end new regulations extended control over the movement of
African women, whose presence was deemed to perpetuate the African
population that was to be limited. In the words of F S Steyn, MP for
Kempton Park: 'We do not want the Bantu women here simply as an adjunct
to the procreative capacity of the Bantu population.'32 Act 42 of 1964
repealed the section of the 1945 Urban Areas Act which had given wives and
children automatic rights to live with men who qualified as urban residents
under Section 10-in order to remain they now had to prove that their
original entry into the urban areas had been lawful. The same legislation
stipulated that a woman, even though a Section 10 qualifier, could be
endorsed out of the urban areas if she was unemployed. In future all women
were to be refused entry into the urban areas unless they qualified for Section
10 rights independently of their husbands.33
Other aspects of urban control were tightened. The Bantu Laws
Amendment Act of 1964 widened the definition of people who were 'idle and
undesirable' and thus liable to be 'endorsed' out of the urban area. Under
Section 29 of the 1945 Urban Areas Act people believed to be idle and
undesirable could be arrested without warrant. They were required to give a
'satisfactory account' of themselves, and if they failed to do so a Bantu Affairs
History 19
Commissioner could impose various forms of detention including two years
labour in a farm colony. People convicted of being 'idle and undesirable'
forfeited Section 10 rights and any claim they might have had to
accommodation in the townships. In the words of Mr Justice Didcott in
1979:
Once you are officially 'idle', all sorts of things can be done to
you. Your removal to a host of places, and your detention in a
variety of institutions can be ordered. You can be banned forever
from returning to the area where you were found, or from going
anywhere else for that matter, although you may have lived there
all your life. Whatever right to remain outside a special 'Bantu'
area you gained by birth, lawful residence or erstwhile employ-
ment is automatically lost.34
In 1971 the Bantu Affairs Administration Act removed responsibility for the
operation of influx control and other municipal functions from the white local
authorities. Twenty two Administration Boards (consolidated into 14 boards
in 1971 and renamed Development Boards in 1984) were created to oversee
influx control and all local administration in African townships outside the
bantustans. The Administration Boards were directly responsible to the
Department of Bantu Affairs, and the space for individual municipalities to
act with some leniency towards African urban dwellers was removed. The
Administration Boards, which operated in conjunction with bantustan
representatives, had the power to fence African residential areas, set rent and
service charges, erect housing and hostels, determine who might live in an
area, and resettle inhabitants elsewhere.35The 1971 legislation, according to
a subsequent government commission, was 'designed to bring about a more
effective and uniform administration over larger areas and to achieve a
greater mobility in Black labour'.36 The Administration Boards were
designed to increase the mobility of 'necessary' labour within their area and
of what was deemed 'unnecessary' labour out of their area.
The bantustans became crucial as the catchment areas for people 'endorsed
out' of the cities. The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act (later the National
States Citizenship Act) of 1970 decreed that each African was the citizen of a
Oantustan, whether or not he or she lived in that bantustan. Once a bantustan
I~ccame'independent' those whom the government deemed to be its 'citizens'
lost all right to South African citizenship. This provided the legal framework
lor a much harsher practice of influx control. In terms of the Admission of
I'crsons to the Republic Regulation Act of 1972 all non-South African
L ~rizens,such as people deemed 'citizens' of 'independent' bantustans, if
round to be illegally resident in a city would be subject of summary
'Llcportation' or imprisonment for six months without option of a
'fhe rural end of influx control hinged on the bantustans. The political
>11'1tcgyfor the bantustans had included an economic component, as the
~lolicymakers in the early 1960s believed the bantustans could only be
~loliticallyviable if they included areas of economic development in or near
20 Forced Removal
I I)y
which people might find work. In 1960 a Border Area Development
Programme was inaugurated, designed to encourage industrialists to
establish plants adjacent to bantustans. New industrial estates at Rosslyn and
Hammanskraal in the Transvaal were developed, but throughout the decade
there was very little growth in the border areas. Few industrialists availed
themselves of the concessions for establishing plants in these areas. They
considered the advantages of low wage rates and tax deductions could not
compensate for the lack of infrastructure and the distances from major
markets. Despite the projections of government planners the development of
border industries did not prevent the migration of workers to the cities.
The failure of the economic 'development' in the bantustans to reverse
labour migration led the regime to adopt a coercive strategy in the bantustans
in which influx control played a central part. In 1968 a proclamation entitled
Bantu Labour Regulations (Bantu Areas) transferred the locus of operation of
the pass laws to Tribal Labour Bureaux established in the bantustans. All
African males over 15 who were resident in the bantustans had to register
with such a bureau before they could be recruited for work in the cities. At
registration workers were classified for a particular category of work. No man
could leave his area to look for work without the permission of the labour
bureau. T o do so remained an offence until the repeal of this legislation in
1986. Labour recruited through these labour bureaux was mainly fixed term
contract labour. Men taking this route to wage employment were to find it
impossible to acquire Section 10 rights, or to change their jobs. Indeed the
Bantu Labour Regulations (Bantu Areas) Act expressly forbade this,
stipulating that it was illegal to leave a bantustan for work without a
registered contract, and that no contract could run for more than a year. No
women were permitted to register with a Tribal Labour Bureau.38
Up until 1986 it was illegal, without the rarely given permission of the
Director of Black Labour, for women from bantustans to enter into a
contract of employment to work in a 'prescribed area'. A woman from the
bantustans (who was deemed a perpetual minor in terms of the law) could
work with the consent of her 'guardian', but not in the higher wage sectors of
the industrial areas. She was confined to low wage work in bantustan-based
industries, resettlement areas or farms.3y
The repressive labour legislation of the 1960s failed to put a further limit
on the urban African population or to prevent large numbers of bantustan
residents moving to the cities. The controls were constantly undermined by
the poverty of the bantustans and the boom conditions in the cities. In
addition better health facilities and nutrition in urban areas led to
considerable growth in the urban population as infant and maternal mortality
declined, and life expectancy for all age groups increased. Thousands of
people risked arrest to seek work in the cities, and such was the demand for
labour in this period of expansion that employers tended to overlook
passbook irregularities or would personally intervene with officials to secure
the requisite endorsements.
Increased mechanisation in manufacture was followed later in the decade
History
increased mechanisation in agriculture. Harvesting, in particular, saw the
2I
~~rlroduction of new machines which drastically reduced farmers' needs for a
1.1r.g~pool of labour. The size of individual farms increased through
.l~nalgamation of smaller farms. Large farms could meet the cost of
~lrcchanisation and reduce their dependence on large numbers of farm
ivorkers. The farmers who in the 1940s and 1950s had been desperate for
,.(.ciningly unlimited supplies of unskilled labour now changed their
(lc~nands.They no longer required a large residential black labour force.
I'llcy considered that labour tenancy tied them to a backward economic
,\\,srcrn,and meant that they subsidised African peasant production. The
I 1 1 dominant view was that labour tenancy could not continue if agriculture
\ v : ~ h to be 'modernised'. The Minister of Agriculture summed up these views
1 1 1 I974 saying that success in rationalising farm labour through increased
~l~ccllanisation and higher productivity
will be determined by how much hired farm labour can be
decreased. Following this should be an unloading off the white
platteland, not only of Bantu farm labourers, but also of the much
larger and continually increasing number of Bantu who live on
white farms without contributing anything to agricultural
productivity .40
I,.~l.mers, a key element in the National Party constituency, had no difficulty
111 wcuring the legislation they needed to bring about an end to labour
1 1 1l:lncy. The Bantu Laws Amendment Act of 1964 enabled the minister to
1~111hibit labour tenancy within any area. Throughout the decade proclama-
I I O I I \ outlawed labour tenancy in each region. Farmers and Department of
I ! . I I I I U Administration officials evicted large numbers of families, many of
11110111were removed to rural slums, called 'closer settlements', on SADT
I . I I I ( I within the bantustans. In 1970 a blanket ban was placed on any further
1.1 I ) ( )llr tenant contracts being established anywhere in the country, although
1 1 1 ,>olneregions labour tenancy did continue illegally. In this period white
1 1 1 Illcrs also called for the abolition of black spots, some of which comprised
i t (.llcnt agricultural land. With increasing mechanisation, white farmers no
1
1llr:cr needed the areas to function as pools of additional farm labour and
I1
1 1 1 , \ wanted the land to be available to them on the open market.41
I I I C conditions of the evicted tenants were appalling. They were housed in
1ll.ll~c.ahi~t buildings in barren parts of the bantustans, with no access to
I I I I(., a lack of clean water, and scant chance of finding work. But from the
I I I I 01' view of the bantustan authorities the evicted tenants in resettlement
'1 1 1
II III)\ provided an expanded constituency from whom rent, tax and other
,1111 . could be raised.
I II(. bantustans were a key element in the removals of this period. They
r ~ l l(1c.d not only the space where people removed through black spot
~ ~ \
I I .I l\acssion, farm evictions and influx control were located, but also the
I ~ . ~ ~ I I to I I Ccontrol
~ these 'surplus people'. A general circular by the
,, I t-1:ll.yof the Bantu Affairs Department specified in 1967 that bantustans
22 Forced Removul
I I I C . ; I ~ion system. Throughout the country for more than a year there were
were to provide four types of settlement for people who had been forcibly
removed:
(1) Self-contained towns to rehouse inhabitants of 'deproclaimed' muni-
cipal townships, and to provide accommodation for workers in border
industries.
(2) Towns deeper in bantustans established mainly for the families of
migrant workers.
(3) Residential areas with rudimentary layout where people must build
their own houses, for evicted tenants on farms and black spots.
(4) Areas of 'controlled squatting' with no facilities provided on Trust
Land for evicted tenants and black spot residents.42
The bantustans were clearly envisaged as the place where people no longer
needed by employers in agriculture or industry would be settled to form a
labour pool of men and women with no option but to work on the most
exploited terms when required. M C Botha, Minister of Bantu Affairs, said in
1969 that the resettlement areas were not meant to be areas of employment,
but areas from which migrant workers could be drawn.43
The boom of the 1960s had a number of structural economic weaknesses.
Industry and agriculture had relied heavily on increased mechanisation to
increase producti;ity and profits. This required capital goods which were
largely imported, amounting to 45 per cent of all imports in 1973.44 The
increase in demand for imports was not matched by an increase in exports
and a substantial balance-of-payments deficit built up. It amounted to R48
million in 1964 and R1,003 million in 1971.j5 The state, alarmed at the
deficit, began to put a brake on industrial expansion. This policy, combined
with the world recession which began in 1974, kept the South African
economy in a depressed condition throughout the 1970s, despite the rises in
the price of gold. These were anyway largely neutralised by the steep rises in
the price of oil, which hit South Africa particularly because of its lack of a
domestic oil supply and the embargo imposed by some of the maior oil
suppliers.
The economic depression coincided with, and contributed to, renewed
black militancy. In the early 1970s economic crisis and political challenge
forced the apartheid regime and its supporters to a re-evaluate the strategy of
the 1960s. I 1I
BANTUSTAN 'INDEPENDENCE' AND THE RESTRUCTURING 1~~~~
OF APARTHEID, 1973-86
In 1973 textile and metal workers in Durban came out on strike for higher
wages, precipitating a wave of industrial action throughout the country. They 11111
were reacting to steep increases in the price of food, clothing and transport
which far outstripped wage rises.46 This new expression of black workers'
militancy was followed in 1976 by a country-wide uprising against apartheid, I 11
, , I 1 1 1 ~ . hituation by means of a secretly funded propaganda campaign. The
sparked off by the events of June 1976 when armed police attacked
schoolchildren in Soweto who were demonstrating against the apartheid
Histoty 23
<
, I,.llronstrations, attacks on government buildings, strikes, school boycotts,
.III(I sustained protest.47 The uprising was the most serious threat the
,sl,vcr-nment had faced since the early 1960s. It exposed some of the economic
\\(,;~kncsses of apartheid and forced a political realignment in an attempt to
~ ~ - . ~ ~ - ~apartheid l c t u r e and salvage the basis of white supremacy and of the
, I 111omicsystem.
i
I'llc economic crisis of the early 1970s had three major aspects: a growing
I I.II:IIIC~-of-payments deficit with a shortfall in investment capital; shortage of
. I I l lcci workers to further the rate of mechanisation; and growing unemploy-
III(.III. Hecause the manufacturing sector had concentrated chiefly on
, t~~l\lrlner goods, to the virtual exclusion of capital goods, it was heavily
8 11-1 5~.11dent on foreign-exchange earnings from the export of primary products
I I I I rllc import of equipment and technology needed for continued
I I I , . ~ 11;lnisation and expansion. However, the market for South African
1 1 . 1 I ( 11ltura1 products was an extremely competitive one. Furthermore, the
I I I I , 111:11ions in the price of gold that followed the breakdown in 1971 of the
I!I , . I I O I I Woods system of a fixed international price for gold meant that
1 1 I . I K I I exchange could no longer be guaranteed to the South African
11
, 11 I ( ,my. Manufacturing suffered a number of crises with severe shortfalls of
I
I I I \ I . \ I I mcnt capital. The volume of manufacturing output fell by 6 per cent
1 I 1 1 1 1 1 I974 to 1975, and again during 1976-77. Private-sector investment in
I 1 1 ~ l ~ ~ ~ l i ~ c began t u r i n gto drop in 1974 and total investment declined by 13 per
, 1 1 1 I~crween1975 and 1977. Foreign investment shrank in the wake of the
1
a I, I I I \ oCJune 1976. In the first three months of 1977 there was an outflow of
1: i 1 ' ) million in short-term capital and a fall of R106 million in the official
I . I I I , I ; ~ n dforeign-exchange reserves in spite of extensive government
I I
11 All these trends were exacerbated by a fall in the price of gold in
1'' resulting in a loss of 25 per cent of foreign exchange reserves.j9
'')
I I I C , investment and foreign exchange crises both exposed and increased
I 1\11 ~cndencieswithin the economy which the boom of the 1960s had
I I I ~..I\cci.Firstly, as mechanisation proceeded there was a shortage of
s I I I 1 \killed workers and of skilled supervisory and technical workers. Given
1, ,I I c.scrvation, a small white population and limited immigration, these
s l (.rs could not be found. Secondly, there was growing long-term
a ~ ~
I I ~ldoyrnent
11 particularly amongst unskilled workers. It was estimated that
1 1 1 1 ~lil'loymentin 1977 was 2.3 million, and it was estimated that the rate of
1111,1oyment would not decline unless the economy grew at a rate of 6.7 %
I,' I c m r per annum, which it has since failed to do.50
'~llll~.~ages of investment capital and skilled workers, and the problem of
~l~l'loyrnent at a time of increasing popular unrest, led to the beginning of
1 111~1s to restructure apartheid to help shore up white supremacy. The
1 1 11
I V I I I;ilso I L . attempted to paper over the cracks in apartheid and convince
1 1 1 I ~ . I ial I ~ political and financial opinion overseas of its continued command
I 11 I . . I I ~ - ~of this campaign and in particular its undeclared use of government
24 Forced Removal
funds led to a power struggle within the ruling party. P W Botha, Minister of
Defence in Vorster's cabinet, became prime minister in 1978. With much
publicity about forthcoming 'reforms' it was claimed that a new era had been
inaugurated. The strategy of the new rulers, set within a 'National Security
Strategy' was formulated by a number of government commissions. Two
became particularly well known. The Wiehahn Commission investigated
labour law and recommended the recognition and registration of African
trade unions, and the Riekert Commission dealt with labour recruitment,
influx control and the means by which industry could improve its access to
semi-skilled workers.
The Riekert report was premised on a particular view of the labour market:
It is a prerequisite for sound economic growth in South Africa for
employers to be able to satisfy their full labour requirements and
for adequate job opportunities to be created for the country's
fast-growing labour force. But the employment of labour must
take place within the statutory framework created and the
necessary machinery must be used to ensure that the supply and
demand for Black labour are brought into e q ~ i l i b r i u m . ~ ~
The report suggested that people with Section 10 rights, many of them
skilled and semi-skilled, should have increased residential security, the right
to buv the leaseholds on their houses in townshivs, increased mobilitv within
A ,
and between urban areas and an expansion of job opportunities. Some limited
forms of these benefits, particularly in housing, had already been accorded to
Section 10 aualifiers in the earlv 1 9 7 0 ~All
. ~other
~ workers. who were in the
main unskilled, would be forced into contract employment. They would thus
be permanent migrants with no chance to acquire rights to remain outside the
bantustans or the benefits that flowed from those rights. In addition Riekert
u IIIO,;~rionof labour will come to an end.
proposed removing the responsibility for implementing influx control from
the police on the streets, and instead vesting it in employers and those who
controlled housing. Heavy fines should be imposed on employers who
employed workerswho had not been granted the right to work in terms of the
pass laws.
Another aspect of this phase of apartheid was the granting of 'independ-
ence' to the bantustans, beginning with the Transkei in 1976. While the
bantustans continued to serve the polirical purpose of controlling the rural
population and containing the unemployed and the relative surplus
population, they acquired new roles with 'independence' and 'self-rule'.
Thev featured centrallv in attemnts to decentralisethe economy and establish
regional growth and new urban areas. Politically their 'independence' became
the facade behind which the central governmcnt divested itself of responsibil-
ity for the political aspirations of millions of its citizens, now deemed
'citizens' of 'independent' states. The government used this fiction to try to
justify the denial of political rights, freedom of movement, and underde-
velopment. The bantustans, whether 'self-governing' or 'independent'
remained financially, administratively and militarily dependent on Pretoria.
History 25
I lowever, their new status opened up a new field of political struggle on
\cvcral fronts, including that of forced removals.
'l'he apartheid policies of this period resulted in four main forms of
I c.moval. Firstly, arising from the Riekert Commission report, a number of
I~.;~rures of influx control were altered and then the whole system itself
t(.li)rrnulated in 1986. Initially, after the Riekert report, people with Section
I0 rights acquired the right to buy their houses on leasehold and to move
I lc.rween towns in an Administration Board Area, without losing their Section
lo rights. However, it also became more difficult to acquire Section 10 rights.
h\igrant workers were tied to short-term contracts, preventing them
. I ( quiring the status of a Section 10 resident even though they might have
\\.ol.kedin an urban area for a considerable period. In addition, recruitment
I I I rhc bantustans virtually ceased and people in the bantustans were
t olrrpclled to work in bantustan industries or border industries for
L t~llhiderablyless pay than in the main urban centres.
Ilr 1986 major parts of the influx control legislation were repealed,
1 1 1 1 Iuding the laws which had defined the Section 10 categories and the Black
I ..ll,~)tlr Regulations which had hindered people from leaving the bantustans
I I I I I ( . ~ S [hey were on contracts. The regime asserted that the pass system was
I I ~ \ Velcad and that it favoured a policy of 'orderly urbanisation'. In fact all
' 9 c I1 Africans now have to carry a similar identity document and landlords
~ ~ ~ ~
. 1 1 1 t l employers must provide details of their tenants and employees. Access to
Iltl~l\lngand trespass laws rather than the widsly defied pass laws are to be
1 1 . . 1 . t 1 10 control workers' presence in urban areas outside the bantustans.
' ! I I I lcmcnts which the regime declares illegal are liable to be bulldozed and
I 1 1 , 1,c.ople moved. While the wrong stamp in a pass will no longer bring
1 1 I < . \ ( , there is no sign that the forced removals related to the control and
I Ilc. second form of removal in this era was in the Riekert mould and was
' 1 1 .~i:llcdto reduce the number of Section 10 qualifiers. The government
I 1111 ,.11c.da policy of moving urban Africans who lived within 70 kilometres of
I Il.~l~cnstan into that bantustan and of redrawing the borders of some
I I I 1 I lr\r;rns to include metropolitan townships. For example, the Durban
I 1 I\\ I l\lrip of KwaMashu was made part of Kwazulu in April 1977. Whenever
I I I 11.111 relocations took place the people lost their Section 10 rights. This
I I I I I ~11 disputed policy was rescinded by the regime in 1985, although
I ~ I < I laimed'
( townships did not regain their status, and urban township
1 , I I ~ ~ . I Iwho IS moved into 'independent' bantustans lost their citizenship.
I 1 1 , 1 1 . were ,moves in 1986 to restore citizenship to certain people deemed
1 1 I:,-11, of' the 'independent' bantustans, but the numbers who will benefit
( ( , , I I I I Iris are extremely limited.
1 11,. gcncral drift of policy until the early 1980s was to freeze the building
, I 1 . I I I I I ~ liousing
V in urban areas outside bantustans and to make residence in
I .I . I I ( Y I S conditional on the availability of accommodation. Parallel with
1 1 1 1 I . I I I . I policy o i establishing towns in the bantustans and encouraging
1 1 , . I I I I . ow11ership in these. The absence of housing in the older townships
26 Forced Kemovul
forced many people to move to the bantustan towns, placing them within the
framework of bantustan administration. The state has attempted to demolish
illegal squatter housing on the Rand and in the Cape as another way of
forcing people into the bantustans. One major modification to earlier policy
however has been the decision to establish a consolidated African township in
Cape Town, Khayelitsha, where the people who acquired Section 10 rights
while living in informal settlements like Crossroads will be moved. The
devastation caused in Crossroads in 1986 by vigilantes backed by troops and
police forced many who had previously refused to go to Khayelitsha to accept
it as their only option.
The third form of removal is a continuation of the earlier policy of
relocating people in bantustans. The clearance of black spots and the
relocation of landlords and tenants from African freehold land to the
bantustans has continued, as has the eviction of surplus farm workers. A
decision to establish Kwandebele, an additional bantustan, has meant the
forced removal of people from one area to another, because they have been
reclassified in order to create a population for the new bantustan. The
publication of the land consolidation plans for the Transvaal bantustans in
1985 pointed to further forced removals of rural people. Bantustan leaders
themselves have carried out forced removals in their territory and expelled
people from one bantustan to another on the basis of apartheid classifications.
Removals through betterment schemes have continued and the well-
advanced 'development' plans of some bantustans anticipate an acceleration
of this land policy. Some squatter areas within bantustans have been
demolished and the people forced to move.
The so-called reforming era of apartheid has not lessened the impetus of
forced removal, population control, impoverishment and repression. What is
different about this period is that the regime is now searching for allies in
bantustans and their organised armed groups, private entrepreneurs and local
councils who will carry out its policy. In this way, so the theorists argue, the
state will become neutral, and popular struggles for political power will be
deflected.
CONCLUSION
This introductory survey has sketched the various forms of forced removal
carried out in the different phases of apartheid, and shown how they have
sometimes continued beyond the phase in which they were originally
conceived. The following chapters deal with the forms of removal in greater
detail. The present profound economic and political crisis facing the rulers of
South Africa has forced a re-evaluation even of the policy changes of the
mid-1970s. Forced removal has become the focus of much popular resistance
and of repeated condemnation of the regime. It is one of the policies over
which much conflict has developed amongst South Africa's rulers as they
search for new ways to maintain white rule in the face of continuing defiance
and resistance.
Forced Removals through the Pass System 27
CHAPTER 2
Forced removals through the pass
system
I'.I.,\I;rws as a form of population control have been a feature of South African
,I I, I C I y for nearly two hundred years. They have been used to control the
~ll~~vcment, settlement and employment of the entire African population. It
11.1.. Ijccn estimated that since the beginning of the twentieth century
I ,' , . ' ~ 0 , 0 0Africans 0 have been arrested or prosecuted under the pass laws.'
I 111~ler National Party rule many pass law controls from former periods
, \ ( . I (. consolidated, nationally enforced and used to promote a particular form
, # I ,-(onomic development based on the coercive direction of labour. The
11 I ion of the pass laws brings about a slow piecemeal removal of people
I I , 1 1 1 I he urban areas when their labour is no longer required. It also prevents
\ I I 1, ; I I ~people coming to towns to look for work. Pass-law removals do not
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 : 111e sudden horror of communities being destroyed, which is part of
I $ 1 I , I. \pot removals or the evictions of farm labourers. They are, however, a
1 , ,-l)lngform of removal that has affected virtually every African. They
I , I 1 1 1 1 : ~jrosecutions,police raids, control on housing and fears of losing a job
1 1 1 ~ 1 [;Icing removal or eviction from an area, away from friends, family and
I I ~ B ~ N , networks. I . ~ The pass system has divided families and forced workers
I , . I ( ,-cpl intolerable working conditions because of the insecurity of their
t
1 . 1 1 11.. 'l'he legislation of 1986, which abolished pass laws for many Africans,
I I I I I, I.,(.cI
I strict controls on access to housing in a new version of influx control
1 1 1 ~ 1 llllposed new, harsh restrictions on the movement and employment of
I 110 , llizcns of the 'independent' bantustans.
I ~ ~ l apartheid, c r pass laws became central to the development of the
8 . 4 D ~ system ~ ~ ~and~ crucial
~ ~ itocthe maintenance of white political power. In
I t . I I Iv 1950s;at the beginning of the period of National Party government,
11 I 111, 1);lsslaw controls from former periods were consolidated and enforced
1 1 1 1 l D ~ ~ l : the I ~ ~country.
) ~ ~ l In subsequent decades pass laws were used to
I I 1 1 1 . I I C cconomic development. Indeed, so close has the identification of
11 I I I ~ . I and ~ the pass system become that, in 1985, when President P W
I I , ~ 1I 1 . 1 $ 1 1 1 ~ 1those around him spoke of abolishing the influx-control system,
111. \ I I.~llned,simultaneously, that they were reforming apartheid. In 1986
1 1 , 1 1 I.Iw:, repealing sections of the pass laws went before parliament the
I 1 , I ~ I ( . I I I asserted that apartheid was dead. But while pass laws have been
, 1 1 1 I .11 10 (he maintenance of apartheid, they are only one part of its
1 , 1'1 . .~vc
1 slructure. In recent years it has been possible to change certain
I ' 1 1 1 1 . . 01 I he pass system without abandoning apartheid.
I 1 1 I I ~ l ~ o u gthe h implementation of influx control involved police, the
, I I I I . . .111tl a massive administrative machine it did not succeed. Despite all
28 Forced Remo7)al Forced Removals through the Pass System 29

the forces against them hundreds of thousands of people defied the law and
lived and worked illegally in the urban areas, because the alternative was
starvation. In 1984 it was estimated that 42 per cent of the population of the
Western Cape were 'illegal' residents living there in contravention of the pass
laws and that throughout the country 2.5 million people had come to live on
the fringes of urban areas in squatter settlements that flouted the entire
system of control^.^ It is this massive popular defiance, underpinned by the
present needs of industry for a large local labour pool, that has led to
re-evaluation of the pass system from within the ruling circle.
This chapter looks at the history of the pass system and considers the
objectives behind the control and direction of labour. There is a detailed
analysis of how the system worked prior to the 1986 amendments and an
outline of some of its drastic effects. The most recent legislation and changes
in aspects of influx control are assessed. The final section of the chapter looks
at forms of resistance to the pass system and at their influence on policy.
HISTORY OF THE PASS SYSTEM
The report of the Riekert Commission in 1979 provided a bald definition of
the intentions behind the pass laws:
Constant changes had to be made to regulate the orderly
movement, settlement, housing and employment of Black labour.
This process has by no means come to an end.'
I ~~licials in 'reserve' areas were instructed not to grant passes to Africans who
\\.lnted to go to cities to seek work. Women, who were not obliged to carry
~):~sscs, were from 1930 made subject to legal provisions which empowered
I I I I I nicipal officials to remove them from towns. Municipalities could
oclaim specific areas for African occupation, force people to live there and
I lr:idly control and police their conditions of stay. In 1932 the Native Service
1 o ~ ~ r r a cActt introduced special provisions regulating the movement of
\[I-tcansfrom farms, and Act 18 of 1936 gave labour-control boards the
~ ~ ~ to ~ determine
w e r the maximum number of African workers permitted to
I I \ ( . on any particular piece of land. As late as 1937 Prime Minister Smuts was
\ I-l~cmently advocating vigorous action to prevent Africans coming to town.
I I(. [old a conference of municipal representatives in Pretoria:
'l'he proper way to deal with this influx is to cut if off at its source
and to say that our towns are full, the requirements met, we
cannot accommodate more natives, and we are not going to accept
any more except in limited number^.^
I 111. I)oom in manufacturing industry, and the attendant demand for African
I 1 1 I , 1 1 1 1 during World War 11, changed political attitudes to urban Africans. In
I ' J I ' pass laws were relaxed. The Smit Committee, established in 1942 to
. t ~ g a t the
I e health and economic conditions of urban Africans, denounced
11,~ 111igrant-labour system and pass laws. However, official thinking
I I I I I I I Ccommitted
~ to the maintenance of segregation and to influx control
I

I I I I \ ~ ~ means
UI of allocating labour. This was also the view of the Fagan
Historically the role of the pass laws has changed. In the nineteenth century I ~1l11111ssion of 1946-48 while rejecting the Stallard doctrine of a temporary
they had the function of controlling slaves and preventing 'free' labourers ( 1 . 1 1 1 Alrican presence, it called for centralised administration of the
1 1 1

changing jobs and deserting masters. In the twentieth century the approach I I I ~ ~ ~ I I>ureau
I I system and a streamlining of pass documentation:
to the contrcl of workers' movement by different governments has see-sawed
between an 'exclusionary' approach, designed to limit strictly the number of \\;'llcre Native communities become settled in the vicinity of
urban Africans, and an 'inclusionary' strategy, premised on an acceptance of \vlltte ones, or Natives enter the service of Europeans (both in the
I I I I ; I ~ areas and in the towns) a certain amount of regulation is
a permanent urban African population.Vt has been suggested that this
divergence in policy arises from the fact that the pass laws are based on two Ilc.ccssary for the maintenance of the principle of residential
contradictory premises: ,t.li:~ration.7*
(1) 'The need to obtain political security by controlling the number of I 11, I 111o11ale of the pass laws had shifted from excluding African labour to
Africans in 'white' areas and rigidly policing them 1, , 8 1 1 1 I ~ : I itI I on
~ terms set by white political authorities.
(2) The need to ensure a plentiful supply of cheap labour to the
white-owned economy.
I I I1 I:IItST PHASE OF NATIONAL PARTY RULE
As has been shown in Chapter 1, whether it was decided to stress inclusionary
or exclusionary features of the pass system at any particular period depended I 1,. ' J . I ~ I O I I ~ ~ Party, which came to power in 1948, rejected the Fagan
on the nature of the economy and of the political party or group in power. I ., 1, I< 11 re-enforced the influx-control laws that had lapsed, and
In the 1920s and 1930s problems of white unemployment, accentuated by 1 , I 1 1 1 , , I , i l l the interest of its white farming supporters, to prevent farm

the depression, led to the exclusionary Stallard doctrine being incorporated . ( I , I . I<.;~ving white- owned farms for the cities. There was a rigid
into the Urban Areas Act of 1923. This legislation introduced nationwide a t t I 1 1 1 ~ . 1 1 1 01- the division of the country into 'reserves' (later bantustans),

system of controlling African urban residence. Simultaneously a policy of , ,. . 1 1 ~ ; ~I I -1 C ~ S (that

8 ' is, all cities, industrial and commercial areas), and
giving preference in employment to Coloured, rather than African, workers .. 8 t I .I ., I II,L.cI areas (that is, farms and mines). People could remain in
was mooted by the National Party, then in O p p o ~ i t i o n .In
~ this period t 1 1 ,I . I I . ~ . only
I ; ~ s if they qualified under Section 10 of the Urban Areas

30 Forced Removal
Act, and could be in non-prescribed areas only if they had a job.*
With the introduction in 1954 of the Coloured Labour Preference Policy in
the Western Cape, controls were more strictly implemented in that region
than anywhere else in the country. Between 1954 and 1956, 4,928 African
women were endorsed out of the Peninsula area, while the pass laws had
barely begun to be applied to women anywhere else in the country. The
Coloured Labour Preference Policy envisaged removal from the area of all
Africans not born in South Africa, a freeze on the number of African families
with residence rights, and restriction on the number of migrant workers
recruited. The overall aim was a general replacement of African workers by
Coloured worker^.^ But although the residence rights of urban Africans came
under threat in his period, there was never any attempt at wholesale removal
of the urban African communities. Moreover the recruitment of migrant
labour was not abandoned, but rationalised, and it became easier for African
contract workers to return ycar after year to the same job through renewal of
fixed time contracts. l o
Some of the effects of the new pass laws were observed by Nelson Mandela
in an article written in 1955. He pointed to the way 'people are destroyed':
Rachel Musi is fifty-three years of age. She and her husband had
lived in Krugersdorp for thirty-two ycars. Throughou~ this
period, he had worked for the Krugersdorp municipality for £7
10s a month. They had seven children ranging from nineteen to
two years of age. One was doing the final year of the Junior
Certificate at the Krugersdorp Bantu High School and threc wcrc
in primary schools, also in Krugersdorp. She had several
convictions for brewing kaffir beer. Because of these convictions
she was arrested as an undesirable person in terms of the
provisions of the Native Urban Areas Act and brought before the
Additional Native Commissioner of Krugersdorp. After the arrest
but before the trial her husband collapsed suddenly and died.
Thereafter the Commissioner judged her an undesirable person
and ordered her deportation to Lichtenburg. Bereaved and
broken-hearted, and with the responsibility of maintaining seven
children weighing heavily on her shoulders, an aged woman was
exiled from her home and forcibly separated from her children to
fend for herself among strangers in a strange environrnent.ll
Mandela called for united and organised resistance against such brutalities.
Frances Baard, a trade union activist in the 1950s, recallcd how pass laws
were used to hamper her activities. She had gone to East London to organise
a union branch among food canning workers:
When I got to East London, I thought well, the best thing to do,
since there is this permit thing, I must go to the commissioner's
office and get a permit. So I was given a permit so I could stay for
the weekend, or for a few days maybe, without I must worry
1
Forced Kemozlals through the Pass System 31
.~l\outthe police. Early the next morning I was still sleeping at the
Il~rcl.I hear-shoo! loud!-'The police! the police! the police!'
I'l~cywere checking the hotel. I thought, well there's no worry
I 111stime; I've got a permit now. They were going from room to
I oorn checking the permits of the other people and leaving them.
:\I1 that time they wanted me! When they came to me at last I
look out my permit, and I thought no, it's all right, I've got a
[,crrnit. They look at my permit. Then they look at me. Then the
011csays, 'Kom aan [come on]. We want you.' 'Ag what for now?
I'vc got a permit mos.' Well, I was taken to the charge office and I
\v;ls charged there, I don't know what for because they didn't
,;llch me at the factory or anything, they just caught me at the
110tclwhere I was sleeping. I didn't even address any meetings
vcr. The magistrate gave me one hour to leave East London.I2
I1, I I I l~cscactivists clearly saw how the pass laws were being used to expel
) I
I, t l ~..c.r~lcd
r: urban families, to maintain a cheap labour force made up chiefly
# I I 1 1 I , : I . : I ~ ~ workers and to exercise control over the increasingly militant and
I 1 1 I, ;lily active urban African ~opulation. In attempting to limit the size of
I I 1 1 . I~ol,ulation, the government hoped to limit the extent of mobilisation by
I I I, .\1 I-ican National Congress.
l b . \ \ s LAWS AND THE BANTUSTAN STRATEGY
1 1 1 , I I C phase
. ~ ~ of apartheid, the 1960s and early 1970s, was marked by a
I .( , 1 1 1 111 all sectors of the economy. However the boom was strictly managed
1 1, , ~ ~ ( l i to l ~apartheid
p principles, and in part facilitated by the extreme
I .<, 1 1 1 1 ( ; 1 1 repression of the time. Influx control continued to help provide a
1 I I I 1. I . I I I I labour force and to maintain a high level of insecurity in the lives of
II I t.111 ,\lricans. But it also came to be perceived like the Stallard doctrine of
I I ) , Ii)?Ox as a mechanisg that could actually prevent any workers, whether
11111:1.1111 or not, coming to the cities.
I II(. lact that the boom was based on-capital intensive investment, which
rn . , , I l,rclductivity, meant that the proportion of workers employed in
1 1 , ~ 111.,1r.y would fall. T o facilitate this process the state considered it necessary
I , , I I \ . ~ I I ; I labour ~C allocation and prevent the establishment of communities
I ( 1 1 111xh unemployment in the prescribed areas. A large unemployed urban
\ I I I, ; I I I population was considered ~otentiallypolitically disruptive and a
1 1 ) 1 $ . \ t lo the maintenance of white supremacy.
I 1 1 I llc mid-1960s the Bantu Laws Amendment Act instituted the centrally
1 1 1 c I(.cI labour-bureau system, and made it virtually impossible for a worker
I , , 1 1 1 1 ~ 1 work in a prescribed or non- res scribed area without registering at a
1 11 1 1 bureau, Employers could not recruit labour without registering
ll 8 1
I, I I I ~ I Cwith S the labour bureau and could not lawfully employ someone
1 1 1 1 1 , 1 1 1 registering the employment. Workers could not register with a
I 5 $ I,\lrcau unless their pass documents were in order. New restrictions
t ~ ~ ~
I I I)l;~ccd on women exercising their rights under Section 10 of the Urban
a
r
32 Forced Removal
Areas Act to live with their husbands or fathers who had urban residence
rights. From 1964 wives and unmarried daughters could only live in towns if
they 'ordinarily resided' with qualified men. Thus no woman could get a
Section 10 stamp in her pass unless she produced her husband's lodger's
permit bearing her name, and no housing official would issue such a permit
until he had seen a Section 10 stamp in the woman's pass.13 The intention of
these regulations was to limit the number of women in urban areas. The same
intention underlay Circular 25 of the Bantu Affairs Department of 1967,
which made it official policy that all 'non-productive' Africans- the aged, the
ill, widows and the like-were to be removed from towns in the prescribed
areas to towns in the bantustans.I4
The effects of these policies were felt most bitterly in the bantustans.
Living conditions there, which had been deteriorating over decades, became
utterly desolate as women, unable to make a living from the land, found
themselves prohibited from taking up migrant labour contracts or joining
their menfolk. The elderly were abandoned to an old age of destitution. A
study carried out by the University of Cape Town in March 1974 among 757
households in 10 areas in the Transkei found that 67 per cent of the
households in their sample were headed by women. There was a correlation
between very poor households and households headed by women and the
elderly. Six per cent of the sample, comprising widows, women abandoned
by their husbands, and the elderly who had no relatives and who had not
been able to negotiate a pension, were utterly destitute. One widow, who had
last seen her son ten years before, told the interviewers, 'I cannot mention my
diet. I think I eat only once in three or four days.'15
Evictions of women from townships when their husbands died became
commonplace and homelessness jeopardised people's right to remain in
urban areas. Advice workers in the Black Sash Johannesburg office reported
in 1971:
Women are very rarely allowed to take over a house from a male
tenant who has died or deserted them and women on their own
are not accepted on the waiting list for houses. It does not make
any difference if they can pay the rent or how many children they
have. Several women have come in to the office saying they have
nowhere to live with their children because their husbands have
gone to the Superintendent's office to say that thev wish to
divorce this woman and marry another. They have been ordered
to vacate their houses. Men have come in who have been ordered
to vacate their houses because their wives have died or deserted
them. The parents of disabled children have great difficulty in
finding accommodation even if they have been accepted on to the
waiting list for a house, because while they must find lodgers'
accommodation and people are unwilling to have mentally
disturbed, crippled or chronically ill children in the house. This
also applies to families with more than two children and to the
very old.
Forced Removals through the l'ass System 33
Many families have come for advice because they have not been
accepted on the waiting list because the male head of the family is
registered in terms of Section 10(l)(d)of the Act, and so does not
qualify for housing. Added to this there are the people who go to
apply for a house and are then endorsed out when their position is
investigated. This happens to many wives who are deemed to be
in the area illegally. Many men find themselves in difficulties
because the application is refused on the ground that they do not
qualify for family housing. They are convinced that they do
qualify under Section 10(l)(a) or (b), but they are shown in the
records as being 10(l)(d). It can be a very long and involved
process proving that they are indeed qualified under (a) or (b) and
lrequently they fail because they are unable to produce the
necessary proofs. l6
4 ,111. 70-year old woman who visited the Advice Office in 1968 epitomised the
11.11 (l\l~ipswhich the law brought:
She was born in Umtata, but came to the Reef more years ago
lhan she can remember. Here she has lived and worked. Now she
is old and widowed. Since 1963 she has been living with her
divorced daughter, who is a registered tenant of a house in
Soweto. She has been living there legally. Her name is on the
htrusing permit. She confidently and reasonably expected to see
out her days there, cared for by her daughter and her
grandchildren, enjoying the peace of her old age. But this was not
lo be. One day, like a bolt out of the blue, she was informed by
I he Superintendent of the a r e h h e r e she lives that she is not
lrcrmitted to remain in Johannesburg and must leave the area
within 72 hours. She was told to return to Evaton where she had
~rrcviously been living with another daughter, yet it is highly
rlnlikely that Evaton will readmit her, because she has been
t~lrsentfrom there for so long that she has lost her domiciliary
I lghts there. It is far more probable that this poor, lonely old
\\.omanwill be resettled in her homeland, which she left years ago
. I I I ~where she will now be unknown and bereft.17
I I I~creffort to limit the size of the urban African population was made in
I II
1 1 ~ ' 1'107 Physical Planning and Utilisation of Resources Act which gave the
', 1 ) I I I .I (.I. of Planning power to restrict the use of African labour by employers
I I 11 I I ry, trade, commerce, and on farms. The aim of the legislation was to
c 8
1 8 1 , I . I , > ( . the proportion of whites to blacks in industry from about a third,
1
1t1, 1 1 1 1 was in 1967, to over a half. It was planned that there would be a 5 per
1 1 1 ~c.(luctionin the African labour force each year. The government
Aid Centres in 1966 to streamline the huge bureaucratic
I l l l l ~ , ~ l ~ c . c i
I I ,I ' I I .I I II \ administering the pass laws. These centres processed a range of
I 8 I . I \ \ . ol'iences which had previously been dealt with in Bantu Commis-
34 Forced Removal
sioners' Courts. With the institution of Aid Centres the figures for pass-law
prosecutions declined from 1969 (see Table 8). This did not mean that fewer
people were controlled by pass laws, but rather that more cases were dealt
with in Aid Centres than in the courts (see Table 5).
THE RIEKERT STRATEGY
After 1973 the stresses in the South African economy become apparent. The
high rate of mechanisation in mining, agriculture and industry increased the
rate of unemployment. With no welfare system, and few people able to claim
unemployment benefit, families had to resort to desperate strategies to
survive. Government policies to rectify the balance-of-payments deficit had
deflationary consequences within South Africa and there were periods of
decline in manufacturing output. Rising prices for locally manufactured
products occurred just when wages were being depressed. Some of the
economic stresses associated with the end of the long boom contributed to the
strikes of 1973 and the uprising of 1976-7. The re-emergence of mass popular
resistance signalled by these events, coupled with the decline in foreign
investment, led to a reappraisal of policy by the government. The Riekert
Commission, one instrument of this reappraisal, was briefed to inquire into
the laws affecting the 'utilisation of manpower', in other words the pass
system.
The commission reported in 1979. It recommended that in formulating
policy it should be recognised that South Africa had a settled African urban
population, which could not be relocated in its entirety in the bantustans.
The system of influx control should be rationalised. Control should be tied
not only to the availability of work, but also to housing: that is, people
without approved housing could be refused entry into a prescribed area.
While entry into prescribed areas was thus to be made more difficult, those
who already had Section 10 rights should have the right to have their families
join them, if approved housing was available, and should be able to transfer
their Section 10 rights of permanent urban residence from one prescribed
area to another. According to the report the goal of the commission was that
of:
... identifying the various market failures and points of friction
arising from the existing statutory framework and of eliminating
them within the framework of certain political parameters, which
were taken as given.I8
In Riekert's recommendations there is much stress on 'streamlining',
'modernisation', 'elimination of friction' and the avoidance of all provision
that may be regarded as 'discriminatory on the grounds of population group'.
The strategy can thus be seen to be an attempt to adapt the apparatus of
influx control inherited from a previous era to a time of demand for skilled
African workers and high unemployment for unskilled workers.
While the pass laws have often served to disorganise African workers,
Forced Removals through the Passsystem 35
11;tvingbeen used as an instrument to undermine the establishment of an
or.ganized urban African working class, the Riekert proposals went further.
I'hcy envisaged a strongly maintained division between a relatively better-
1):lid African urban population with property rights, reasonably high living
,landards and job mobility, and an impoverished bantustan population
,r~rviving through low-paid contract labour, living on the margins of
~rrhsistenceas a reserve army of labour with no free access to work.19
The Riekert report caused much debate and dissension in ruling circles.
I xgislation was drafted to incorporate its proposals. It was presented to
I,;~rliament in 1980 within a cluster of legislation that came to be known as the
I<oornhof bills. The three bills dealt with urban African local government,
111cprovision of housing and services, and influx control. The first two bills
(vcre initially considered relatively uncontroversial and became law: they
were the Black Local Authorities Act of 1982 and the Black Communities
I )cvelopment Act of 1984. However, legislation on influx control was more
I,~.oblematic. Koornhof s 1980 bill was named the Laws on Co-operation and
I )cvelopment Bill. It exempted certain African people from general
I,~ohibitionson urban residence, but gave no positive rights of urban
I c,,idence as Section 10 had done. It shifted the administration of influx
I 1111rro1 away from supervising the presence of Africans in town, and instead
, . I I cssed the need for administrative control of residence and housing. The
1,111 allowed greater mobility for Africans exempted from urban residence
~ l ~ ~ h i b i t i obut n s linked employment contracts with accommodation.
['he bill elicited widespread opposition'from black community groups,
I I . ~ l unions,c academics, liberal pressure groups, some opposition Members
I'arliament, and representatives of industrial capital. The attitude of the
1.111cl- was determined by the effects of the temporary boom resulting from
I ~ I high L . price of gold and the balance of payments surplus. Employers in
111tlustrywere primarily frustrated at the shortage of labour and at that time
t ~ I I I I unconcerned
C with the prospect of urban ~ n e m p l o y m e n t Confronted
.~~
it I I 11 this level of criticism the government referred the bill to a parliamentary
1.1c.c~ committee which was instructed to redraft the legislation in accordance
it 1111 the content and spirit of the Riekert report. The select committee,
~ ~ l t t the l ~ rchairmanship of E M Groskopf, never made its report public, but
< l , - ~ ; ~ofi lits s recommendations were leaked to journalists. These included a
, e ~ .of full property ownership to urban Africans, the right to urban
~ ~ ~ ~
I ( - ,l(lcnce for Africans who had both employment and accommodation, and
I 1 1 , . ;tholition of the 72-hour limit on the continued presence in towns of
\ I I lians without correct pass endorsements. It recommended a shift in the
1 1 1, 11sof the administration of the pass laws from the streets to the place of
, \ ,I I< and residence; employers or householders were to be strictly penalised
1 \ 1 1 j:iving work or employment illegally.21
I I I C Groskopf Committee's recommendations were not adopted when the
1 1 , \I l~lfluxcontrol legislation was drafted in 1982. The Orderly Movement
1 1 1 1 1 Settlement of Black Persons Bill was formulated against a backdrop of
I I I , I t.;lscci unpopularity for the government's policies amongst its own
36 Forced Removal
supporters, as illustrated by the declining vote for the National Party in the
1981 election. Economic recession provoked fears of growing
u n e r n p l ~ y m e n t .The
~ ~ new bill distinguished between 'authorised' and
'unauthorised' people in urban areas. '14uthorised' people might remain in
urban areas if they qualified under a number of categories, one of which was
that of permanent urban residence in terms of section 10. 'Authorisation' did
not provide a right but merely conferred an administrative designation, which
could be denied to anyone who was not deemed a citizen of South Africa,
including people who had been assigned to bantustans which had become
'independent'. 'Unauthorised' people could remain in urban areas for only 17
hours. No 'unauthorised' person could seek or take employment in an urban
area and fines of R5,000 for employers of illegal workers and of RSOO for
people who gave accommodation to 'unauthorised' people were laid down.
The Orderly Movement and Settlement of Black Persons Bill, like its
predecessor in 1980, elicited widespread criticism. Its major critics were
trade unions and community organisations. Big business also opposed the
bill. They considered it too weak an instrument to control unemployment
and provide them at the same time with enough labour when expansion was
needed. On the other hand, the rural-based supporters of the National Party
were angered at the bill's reversal of key elements of influx control. Bowing to
pressure the government once again withdrew the bill in May 1984 and
promised a weaker form of legislation, an Urbanisation Bill, to be introduced
in the first session of the new segregated parliament.
While political and economic forces made it difficult in the period after
1979 for the government to implement legislation on the lines of the Riekert
proposals, some of them were incorporated into existing legislation or
administratively implemented as regulations. The attempt to graft Riekert's
strategy on to the existing influx control system has had two phases. Controls
were relaxed during the economic boom and upsurge of confidence in P W
Botha's strategy. A restrictive period followed as the recession developed and
Botha's political support diminished. A subsidiary aspect was an overall
attempt to rationalise the pass system. The liberal phase began in November
1979 when a moratorium was placed on prosecutions of illegal urban
residents. They were urged to register with the labour bureau without fear of
penalty for illegal entry. The economic boom of this time brought an
enormous demand for African labour. A key Riekert proposal was
formulated in regulations gazetted in June 1980. People with Section 10
rights became able to move from one prescribed area under the control of a
particular Administration Board to another, provided accommodation was
available. This was an attempt to provide greater flexibility of movement to
skilled workers at a time when demand for manufactured products was high.
In this relatively liberal economic and political climate two key judgements
by the Appeal Court extended rights of urban residence that had previously
been denied by officials enforcing influx control. The judgement in the
Komani case of 1979 concerned Section 10(l)(c) rights, that is, the rights of
families of workers who had rights of permanent residence. The judgement
Forced Removals through the Pass Svstem 37
I - . I \ ,acworker who qualified under Section 10(l)(a) or (b) the right to have his
1.111lily
join him in town whether or not the family wcre grantcd permission to
( 1 1 ) so by Administration Board officials and irrespective of their possession of
Ilor~singpermits. In the Rikhoto judgement of 1983 the judges ruled that
G 111rrractworkers who had worked for one employer for more than ten years
1 I I I olie year contracts, with a short return to the bantustans at the end of each
, l ~ ~ ~ r r ashould c t , have the benefit of Section 10(l)(b) rights of urban residence
I I I ; I I is, the rights of those with ten years' continuous employment by one
I llll,loyer). The court declared that it was an administrative fiction to
111.111irain that there had been no continuous spell of employment with a single
1 1111,loyer.It was estimated that 143,000 out of 800,000 migrant workers
i t ~ I I I benefit
I J immediately .23
ll~iplementationof the more liberal aspects of the Riekert proposals came
I ( ! . I lralt as the price of gold fell, a balance-of-payments deficit developed and
1 1 l . 1 1 kcrs for manufactured goods contracted. Strong dissatisfaction with the
~.~l\~c~~-nrnrnt's strategy began to be expressed by some within the National
I ' . I I I V and by the parties further to the right-the Conservative Party and the
I lt.1-srigte' (Reformed) National Party. The National Party faced a serious
1 11 oral challenge from these more right-wing parties in the 1981 election
' ~l~ll,;~ign and in the 1983 referendum on the new constitution. Against a
l l . l ( IL~:round of mounting political and economic crisis the more repressive
I I X . L I S of the Riekert proposals were enforced. In 1983 the Laws on
1 1 1 ~~licr.ation and Development Act abolished the rights conceded by the
1. ~ l ~ l l ; l judgement. ~ i i The new law made it impossible for contract workers
\\ 1 1 1 , .icquired Section 10(l)(b) to have their families live with them unless
I I I I - \ , were the legal, registered owners or tenants of approved accommoda-
I 1011 ,Most contract workers could not meet these conditions, as they lived in
1 1 1 1 .lt.ls and were not entitled to occupy family accommodation except as
1, *,I , : ~ . I s. For some time, despite the ruling in the Rikhoto case, officials of the
( ( 1 ~ll)~.ration and Development Department had refused to implement the
~ ~ ~ ' l ~ : tand . ~ l continued
~cnt to deny rights to people who qualified. Despite the
1 8 1 ~ ~ . 1intention ~ 1 of the Rikhoto judgement during 1982 workers in Durban
,, 1 I 1 I Section 10(l)(d) urban residence rights (usually the case for contract
,\ 1 1 1 I- t.l.si, but no legal accommodation, were being forbidden workseekers'
1 I IIIII\:'~
8t A study in 1983-5 in the Western Cape of more than 10,000
1 1 ~ 1 ~ 1 ions 1~ made by migrant workers for permanent urban rights under the
I: 1 1 I I , 1 1 , ) ruling showed that 69 per cent had been rejected and only 21 per
, I I I . ~ ~ , ~ j r o vwhile c d , the remainder had been pending for many months.25
I I I , . I C were widespread pass raids in 1982-3, particularly on squatter
, 1 1 1 1 I I I L . I I I S and mass arrests for pass law offences (see Table 8). Women
1 . 1 1 I I , III;II-IV became targets of pass raids, as official thinking still held that
111, , I \llc\cnce in an urban area facilitated the establishment of a long-term
1 I I 1 1 I I ~ ~ ~ ) u l a t i In o n the
. period 1980-83 many more women than men were
11 1 ' 11-11 I I I the areas of the Cape where there were large squatter
' ,I I 1 1 I 1 \ 1 1 ics. For example 9,7 15 women were arrested for pass offences in
I I I ) \ V I I in 1982, compared with 6,297 men.26 The cumulative effect ol
38 Forced Removal
the legislation from the 1960s had been to reduce the proportion of African
women living in towns. In the 1980s 43 per cent of African women lived
outside bantustan areas, while in the 1950s 54 per cent had done so.27
Sara Sibisi recounted the story of her life in 1984. She told of the
increasingly harsh application of the pass laws. She was born on a
white-owned farm in the Northern Transvaal:
As soon as I could I decided to go and work and help my family
with food and other necessities. So in 1963 I went to Jo'burg and
found a job. I was very lucky at that time. It was before the passes
were so heavy. . . I had piece jobs for some time. Then I had my
firstborn. I went home at that time. Since then I have never found
a job, not a proper job. When I ask at the commissioner's they say
only farm work. City jobs are only available from a commission-
er's office. The work on the farms it is heavy, and the money is
little. It can kill people. I tried to go back to Soweto without a
contract and work. But it is harder than ever before. Many
madams are scared now. They say they'll get caught if they have a
'girl' without a pass. I tried at the pass office. But they just say I
must go home. There is no work for the 'girls' from the
homelands. I was arrested too. That was bad. So I came home.
Maybe I will work on the farms. But only for a while. It's bad.28
Legislation which stressed the repressive side of the Riekert recommenda-
tions continued to be enacted. In April 1984, the Aliens and Immigration
Laws Amendment Act was passed. It further controlled movement from
bantustans and increased the penalties to R5,000 and two years' imprison-
ment for employing, accommodating or trading with 'aliens', the definition of
which included people from 'independent' bantustans. All aliens required
permits to enter or work in South Africa and an alien without the necessary
permit could be deported by passport officials, police and agents of the
Development Boards, without reference to the courts.29 In 1985 a
memorandum by a firm of Nelspruit attorneys drew attention to South
African citizens held as suspected illegal immigrants for months without
access to a lawyer. Many had been assaulted to extract statement^.^^
The linking of bantustan 'independence' and certain of the Riekert
proposals was expressed clearly by the Minister of Plural Relations in 1976:
The identification of the black man with his own nation will put
the so-called privileges of Section 10 in the shade. Section 10 . . .
will possibly not need to be repealed because the nations concept
will overshadow it . . . No black person will eventually qualify in
terms of Section 10 because they will all be aliens and, as such,
will only be able to occupy the houses bequeathed to them by
their fathers (under 99 year leasehold) by special permission of
the M i n i ~ t e r . ~ '
From 1978 the bantustan 'independence' programme had provided a means
Forced Removals through the Pass System 39
I,, limit access to Section 10. In that year an amendment to Section 12 of the
I Ijan Areas Act stipulated that any child born after the independence of the
'I
I j.111rustan to which his or her parents were deemed to belong, could not enter
11 1 I crnain in an urban area without permission from the Secretary for Plural
I<t,l;lrions.32No such child could qualify for Section 10(l)(a) rights unless his
# ) I Ilcr parents qualified. The impact of this ruling is evident in the case of a
\ I I I I man ~ ~ who was born in Cape Town where his mother was working
~llt.,callyas a domestic servant, although his father had residence rights. He
\ \ . I \ sent to school in the Transkei. In 1984 his widowed mother had her work
1 1 1 ( :ape Town legalised. Her son wanted to claim his right to live and work in
,11?cTown, but he was 'endorsed out' to the Transkei. His mother was told
1 1 ~ l l eboy did not go she would lose her permit.33
1:urther repressive aspects of the piecemeal adoption of the Riekert
. I I ;Iregy became apparent in the early 1980s. Many people who had jobs were
1 \ 1~.1ed from the urban areas when they tried to register their employment,
I~~.(.;~use they did not have Section 10 rights.34 In 1981 the Admission of
1'1 I wns to the Republic Regulation Act of 1972, which had been drawn up to
I ~.~:l~l immigration
ate into South Africa, was used to summarily remove 3,666
Il~.ol~le from Cape Town to the Transkei bantustan on the grounds that they
\I I 1.c. illegal i m r n i g r a n t ~ . ~ ~
A2ore rights for Section 10 qualifiers meant fewer employment prospects
1 0 1 hose who did not qualify. In Johannesburg many employers began to
~ l l ' r t \ t that workers had Section 10 rights before they employed them. Section
1 1 ) pcople in most areas of the country could now take work without going
1111oupha labour bureau, making them more attractive to employers by
~~.,l~lc.ing the bureaucratic administration related to their employment. In
I . ~ i ~ i ctherefore,
11 e, employment in the cities became more difficult for people
I I l~outSection This part of the Riekert strategy tended to close the
1 1 1 Iun labour market in a way that influx control had never before achieved.
I I ~ ~ ~ c c vine rboth , the more liberal and more repressive phases, many of the
I: 1c.kert proposals on the streamlining of influx control were adopted through
~ ~ l ~ ~ ~ ~ n i s reorganisation.
trative Within the urban areas 'employment and
i,~~~cIance' centres were established to function as labour exchanges for
~ ~ ~ l ) \ c e kwith e r s urban residence rights. Here people with Section 10 rights
8 ~ ~ be ~ 1 recruited
~ 1 to work in other towns. A two tier system began to
e Illt.l-ge, with urban labour bureaux continuing to administer influx control
1 1 1 ~ 11 0 act as a labour exchange for contract workers. In the rural areas the
V . I C , I ~ of recruitment and registration at labour bureaux began to be
~l~t(.t.scded by assembly centres run directly by the Administration Boards.
I I I , - W registered both workseekers and employment contracts, selected men
1 ~ ~ jobs, 1 and provided 'passports' and any necessary influx control
c ~l,lo~.sements. In some areas assembly points moved about as mobile units,
,1111~others continued to be located far away from where unemployed
,\ Itcrs live.37
I I~csenew methods of rural influx control amounted to a system of labour
8 I I I I ~with
, workers from one area being recruited chiefly for particular
40 Forced Removal
farms or mines. Rigid allocation took place as all economic sectors cut back
their labour demands and unemployment reached record levels.38
Increasingly, jobs in urban areas were being reserved for urban people, and
urban recruitment from bantustans was being reduced. Employers co-
operated because it had become much easier to employ someone with Section
10 qualifications.3' Observers have described how huge crowds gathered at
assembly points when labour recruiters were due to arrive and how farmers,
looking for labour, were surrounded by men holding up their passes and
asking for work as soon as they stepped out of their vehicles.40
In 1985 there appeared to be a return in form to some of the more liberal
aspects of Riekert. In February three amendments to the Black (Urban
Areas) Consolidation Act of 1945 were announced. Firstly Africans with
permanent urban residence rights outside the bantustans under Section 10
could retain these rights if they moved to another urban area. This formalised
in law regulations of 1980 which had already given these rights. Secondly,
workers might qualify for Section 10(l)(b) rights by working either for 10
years with one employer or for 15 years with several employers in different
areas. This was designed partly to meet the needs of the construction
industry, which suffered acute labour shortages because the nature of the
work prevented employees working in one job in one place for 15 years. The
amendment would also help to meet a general demand for a more mobile
skilled labour force. The third amendment stipulated that Africans who had
Section 10 rights would retain them if for instance they went to live in the
bantustans because of lack of accommodation in the prescribed areas.41
Section 3 of the Physical Planning Act of 1967 was repealed in June 1985.
This law had required industrialists to seek permits to employ additional
African workers, but had in fact been barely observed for some years. Most
industrialists had been granted special concessions, and the law had largely
been ignored. The new legislation did little more than formalise existing
practice.
Both these pieces of legislation were the outcome of intense lobbying by
the corporate sector, and signalled the extent to which the ideas of financiers
like H F Oppenheimer of the Anglo-American Corporation had come to
coincide with the views of go~ernment.~2 In 1986 the regime went still
further in the direction demanded by the corporate sector and began to
reformulate the entire influx control system. A White Paper released in that
year accepted recommendations made by the President's Council that the
present influx control measures must be abolished and replaced by an
urbanisation strategy'.43 This strategy is linked explicitly in the White Paper
to 'the maintenance and advancement of the free enterprise system' and to an
'alliance between the state and private enterprise with regard to the provision
of community welfare services.'" The strategy involves new approaches to
the housing of urban dwellers, with tight official control of housing, but with
more and cheaper housing units. Housing is seen as the key to promoting
'orderly urbanisation' and 'new arrivals in urban areas must possess approved
a c c ~ m m o d a t i o n ' .Access
~~ to housing is seen as a better form of population
Forced Removals through the Pass System 41
control than the widely defied pass laws.
The legislation of June 1986 which contained the promised Urbanisation
hill, embodied the spirit of the White Paper. The Abolition of Influx Control
Act repealed the whole of the 1945 Urban Areas Act and the whole of the
I'roclamation on Black Labour Regulations of 1968. Under the new
Icgislation it is no longer necessary for Africans to qualify under Section 10 to
remain in urban areas. Theoretically, anyone may leave a bantustan or a rural
area to look for work in urban and metropolitan centres, although other
Icgislation seriously limits this option. The bantustans themselves have not
vct repealed their legislation which compels all their 'citizens' to register with
labour bureaux and forbids people to leave a bantustan except under a
rontract attested at a labour bureau. People from the 'independent'
I~antustans(Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei (TBVC)) must be
recruited through a labour bureau within the bantustan, and attest a contract
[here. They must have a permit endorsed in their 'passport' by an
'immigration officer' giving them permission to enter and remain in the rest '
OK South Africa only for a specified period with a specified employer in a
,,pecified place. They are not permitted to change employers without prior
.il,proval of the Department of Home affair^.^^
The Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act and the Slums Act were amended
I O make control of access to housing the a form of population control and
instrument of forced removal in the urban areas. According to the new
provisions any person deemed to be living illegally in township accommoda-
(Ion, whether squatting or renting a room, faces summary eviction, the
(lcmolition of buildings, arrest and a fine of R1,000 and six months' gaol. A
I:~ndlordproviding land or housing for what is considered illegal occupation
Iilces a R2,000 fine or a year's imprisonment. Charges of trespass, which is a
( riminal and not a civil offence in South African law, and which carries heavy
ocnalties (R2,000 fine and two years' imprisonment) are also to be used
g gain st squatters and 'illegal' tenants. Moreover, the Housing Regulations for
on-bantustan townships have not been repealed. These require that every
I'crson living in a township must be listed on a lodger's permit. Superinten-
tlcnts have wide discretion as to whether they grant lodgers' permits. They
, ;ln refuse permits on the grounds that a house is overcrowded. Providing
I~ousingfor a tenant without a permit carries a heavy penalty for the landlord.
I'hc locus of operation of controls on the urban population has thus shifted
~ i o mthe workplace to the township, and the policing of the controls has
111oved out of the hands of employers into those of landlords. The passbooks
I II;I[ all Africans had to carry on pain of arrest have been replaced by a new
~ll(.ntitydocument which is to be the same for all South Africans. The new
tl~)cument is to contain details of name and address and fingerprints. A new
~q)ulationregister has been established which will register details of
I , ,,tdence. All landlords are obliged to inform the population registrar of their
I ( il:lnrs. Despite the changes in the law, officials in the Department of Home
\Il;iirs in Johannesburg were refusing in 1986 to issue identity documents
~ l ~ ~ l ac sperson
s could produce a house permit.47
42 Forced Removal
The new identity documents are to be issued to all people designated as
South African citizens. This means that millions who are living or have lived
in the bantustans deemed 'independent' have no right to the identity
documents and will pobably only be able to find work in metropolitan and
urban areas in terms of exploitative contracts. Despite promises made by P W
Botha that citizenship would be restored to citizens of the TBVC bantustans
the Restoration of South African Citizenship Act passed in July 1986 restored
South African citizenship only to those deemed citizens of the TBVC
bantustans who had always lived outside the bantustans, those who had lived
outside the bantustans after their so-called independence for five years before
the 1986 legislation, and those who might work outside the bantustans on
legal contracts for five years after the legislation. The severe limitations even
on these limited concessions became apparent by the end of 1986. TBVC
people who had acquired Section 10(l)(b) rights found they were being
refused identity documents and the restoration of South African citizenship if
their families remained in the bantustans. Because of the enormous housing
shortage many long-term workers outside the bantustans could not have their
families join them. They are therefore disqualified from holding the new
identity document because they cannot answer a question which requires
them to state the date their family left the b a n t u ~ t a n . ~ ~
It has been estimated that only 1.75 million of the 9 million 'citizens' of the
TBVC bantustans will qualify for a return of their South African
citizenship." People coming from the TBVC bantustans to work must
comply with the provisions of the Aliens Act on residence and work permits.
Employers in urban centres will find it easier to employ people who have
access to identity books, and for whom there are no bureaucratic difficulties
in obtaining work permits. Employers of TBVC people have to fill in a
monthly return of all 'aliens' in their employ, giving a host of details on each
person. Those who take on TBVC workers without authorisation will be
liable to prosecution under the Aliens Act which carries a fine of R5,000 and
two years' gaol, while 'alien' workers can be fined R600 with six months'
gaol. TBVC workers' work permits can be withdrawn at any time. Black Sash
advice offices in the Cape reported in 1986 that women workers from the
Transkei, who had had six month permits to work in Cape Town, suddenly
found that their permits were withdrawn and they were instructed to return
to agricultural work in the b a n t u ~ t a n TBVC
. ~ ~ inhabitants are therefore to
become foreign workers in the country of their birth with all the insecurity,
threat of removal as aliens, discrimination and exploitative work conditions
that status implies. Within months of the new pass laws being adopted
Sheena Duncan of the Black Sash concluded that the new system was a
harsher version of the old. In January 1987 she wrote:
In September 1985 when the State President announced that the
pass laws were to be repealed I burst into tears in front of the
television cameras. We believed it was true. We thought that
maybe our advice offices would not be needed any more, or at
Forced Removals ~hroughhe Puss Syslern 43
least that they would not be needed to deal with the same kind of
problems. We were not cynical. We did rejoice and welcome the
announcement.
Now we sit with the same long queues, the same heartbreaking
stories of divided families, homeless people, people who need
their pass to be fixed up because they cannot find work without it.
It is all new law, a completely different system, but the problems
and anxieties, the divisions and despair are the same.51
I'he new legislation fulfils the needs specified by a number of projects that
l~avebeen developed in the present phase of apartheid. It opens up the urban
I,lbour market to employers, who had for years complained bitterly of the
\killed and semi-skilled labour shortage created by dependence on a largely
~nigrant,unskilled workforce. The freeing of the labour market will enable
employers to drive down wages for skilled and semi-skilled workers because
of the large pool of labour available in the urban areas. They will still have
recourse to migrant labourers in the bantustans, especially the TBVC. But
I he opening of the labour market does not entail any freedom of movement:
workers are controlled by the availability of accommodation and the
manipulation of their citizenship status.
The history of influx control legislation has shown how the laws limiting
African access to the urban area have varied in intention, although often
,~ppearingthe same. They have been used to protect whites' access to jobs, to
maintain a migrant labour system, to undermine urban African political
activism, both to prevent and to create the establishment of an unemployed
,lrmy of labour in the cities outside the bantustans, and to meet the needs of
manufacturing industry for more flexible access to labour. Although newly
perceived needs lead to new formulations of the law, older objectives remain.
While influx-control legislation is a key to apartheid population control it also
reveals how varied the strands of oppression that make up apartheid have
heen.
OBJECTIVES OF THE INFLUX-CONTROL SYSTEM
Since 1948 the pass laws have had three main objectives.
Firstly, as shown above, they have been used to limit the growth of the
urban African population and to perpetuate the widespread use of migrant
labour in mining, manufacturing and farming. Migrant labour entails a
I)crpetuation of low wages. Migrant labourers on one-year contracts were at
one time attractive to employers as they were considered more malleable and
~ractableas workers. Their lack of job security made them less prone to
h k e s and political activism. The insecure nature of the migrants' contracts
~ontinuedto affect their working conditions even when employers devised
\vstems to re-employ migrant workers each year to prevent a high labour
I urnover.
Secondly, pass laws have been used to control the allocation of labour to
tllfferent sectors of the economy. State regulation of recruitment through the
44 Forced Removal Forced Removals through the I'ass System 45

labour bureaux therefore replaced competition between firms for labour.

Competition played a minor part in determining wages of Africans, which
have been mostly set through government wage boards. African wages have
risen at a much slower rate than is usually the case with a growing industrial
economy. 52
Thirdly pass laws have been used to control the physical location of
unemployed Africans. Generally they have been removed from the urban
industrial areas to rural areas and bantustans, where they form a reservoir of
cheap labour and where the political threat they pose may be more easily
controlled.
The pass laws have failed to achieve any of these three objectives. All the
machinery of police, courts and bureaucrats have not prevented a mass
defiance of the controls. People may go to prison, may be removed to
bantustans, but they return illegally to the cities and attempt to evade arrest.
In 1981 in reply to a parliamentary question the Minister of Co-operation and
Development estimated that there were 85,500 Africans living and working
illegally in Cape Town alone.53 Many researchers consider this estimate
conservative. For many people there is no alternative to working illegally in
an urban area. Families on farms or in the bantustans cannot survive without
some wage remittance from the towns. Influx control has within it a
contradictory dynamic. The laws have served to widen the differentials
between urban and rural areas. The more poverty and unemployment are
exported to the bantustans the greater the economic necessity for people to
seek work in urban areas. In the words of one researcher, 'The more efficient
the influx controls, the more necessary for people to violate them.'54
As a result of the 1986 legislation population control through influx control
has acquired a new importance for the regime. These laws are intended to
allow the state to appear neutral on the issue of housing, while landlords are
forced to control access to housing and enforce prohibitions on urban
residence. The regime believes this posture will enable it to depoliticise
struggles around issues like housing and access to work and to relegate such
conflicts to the workings of the 'market economy'. In the past every conflict
over housing and jobs raised the issue of political power, because the state so
clearly controlled access to both. By apparently removing state control the
regime hopes to deflect the conflicts and prevent the question of political
power being sharply and continually posed. Its strategy also remains to divide
the black population. The pressures placed on African landlords to inform on
their tenants are to be sweetened by financial inducements to encourage
entrepreneurs in the townships. The preferential access to citizenship will
deepen already existing divisions between urban and rural people, bantustan
and non-bantustan residents. These new objectives do not supersede, but
complement, the earlier intentions of influx-control legislation. However the
prospects of the new legislation succeeding in its purpose are put into
question by the heightened resistance of the mid-1980s and the way in which
the issue of political power has been so sharply defined.
As Table 6 shows, the non-bantustan urban African population has
46 Forced H ernoaul
increased since 1950 in absolute terms far beyond the natural birth rate, even
though influx control and other forms of urban removal have reduced the rate
of growth of this population particularly in the 1970s. In the period 1946-51
the rate of increase of urban Africans was 6.6 per cent, while in the decade
1951-6 it was 4.5 per cent and in 1960-70 3.6 per cent; in the decade 1970-80
it was 2.2 per cent.55Although influx control has reduced the rate of growth
of this section of the African population, it has not prevented widespread
urbanisation. In some respects the figures for 1970-80 are misleading. During
this decade many millions of people came to work in the cities but, unable to
find accommodation in the prescribed areas, they settled in huge squatter
settlements in adjacent bantustans, and commuted to work in the industrial
centres. Their presence is not reflected in the official figures cited above. The
spectacular growth of bantustan towns in the last 20 years (see Tuble 6)
contrasted with a relative decline in the growth of the non-bantustan urban
population. Housing restrictions and influx control have forced a large
population into bantustan towns who would otherwise have settled outside
the bantustans.
Although migrant labour kept African wages down it also presented
employers with problems of high labour turnover. These became particularly
acute as mechanisation increased and the demand for semi-skilled workers
grew. The welcome given to the Rikhoto judgement by industrialists
reflected their need for a stable skilled workforce. Similarly the Riekert
proposals to increase the mobility of urban workers between industrial
centres gave factory owners access to a wider pool of skilled labour. But while
a great deal of unemployment has been located in the bantustans, the pass
laws were by no means successful in eliminating urban unemployment. In
1977 an estimate put South African unemployment at 2,313,000, that is, 22.4
per cent of the workforce. In that survey of the unemployed, carried out in
the largest cities-researchers found between one quarter and two-thirds of
young people living there were unemployed, confirming other research which
estimated urban unemployment rates at the time as 19 per cent in Cape
Town, 24 per cent in Pretoria and 29 per cent on the Witwatersrand.56
Nearly a decade later analysts considered that unemployment stood at
between 4 and 6 million, about 48 per cent of the potentially economically
active population. In Soweto in 1985 unemployment ranged between 60 per
cent in the poorest areas and 44 per cent in the better-off zones. In Port
Elizabeth it stood at 56 per cent. In most African townships 50 per cent of
school-leavers were unable to find African wages have been
depressed, but only partly as a result of influx control. Low wages are also the
product of employers evading government measures like influx control. They
admit that illegal workers 'work like hell. They're not under contract and
they know you can fire them at the drop of a hat.'5x
The insecurity which influx control wa.s meant to induce failed to stem the
militancy of workers or the emergence of African trade-union organization,
first in the 1950s and again in the 1970s and 1980s. In both periods trade
unions fought for and won some wage increases for African workers which
Forced Hernovuls through the Pass System 47
underpinned their popularity as workers' organisations. For example, in the
1980s in the textile industry, the metal industry, motorcar manufacture and
the food-processing industry in certain regions rises in wages can clearly be
attributed to trade union action.59 A survey of wage negotiations in the
manufacturing sector in 1986 by a management consultancy firm concluded
I that trade unions had bolstered their members' pay by an average of 15 per
cent in that year." However, these increases must be set in the context of
i around 16 per cent inflation and the low base from which African wages had
to increase.
The new divisive legislation should be seen in the light of the unity created
between urban and rural residents, both in and out of bantustans,
particularly by the United Democratic Front. The strong demand, even from
among African businessmen, for the unbanning of the African National
Congress and for political participation for all illustrates the limits of the
co-option strategy. Trade unions are working to minimise the victimisation of
workers in the bantustans. For example, in response to a Department of
Home Affairs letter in 1986 to all employers asking for particulars of 'alien'
(i.e. TBVC employees), one union federation, the Council of Unions of South
Africa (CUSA) said, 'This is one area where employers can respond by not
sending back the forms'. A spokesman for the Congress of South African
Trade Unions (COSATU), representing 500,000 workers said:
I
We will watch the whole thing closely. We know that some
employers have sided with apartheid when it suited their
interests. This is why we hold bosses responsible for the mess the
country finds itself in.6'
The statement hints at union action to prevent workers being evicted to the
TBVC bantustans. Attempts to sow disunity are clearly being resisted.
However the failures of influx control should not obscure the horrors of its
successes. Although it has not met and is unlikely to meet the objectives for
which it was formulated, it has still blighted millions of lives, led to the
impoverishment and exploitation of the African population and made the
threat of removal as commonplace as the smoke in township air.
I HOW THE PASS SYSTEM WORKS
Before 1986 every African over 16 had to carry a reference book which
contained an identity card, information on employment, population group,
lamily details, and Section 10 qualifications. Failure or refusal to produce a
reference book when demanded by police or Administration Board officials
would result in a fine not exceeding R50 or imprisonment for up to three
~nonths.T h e pass laws meant that every African was under constant police
mutiny. Nelson Mandela wrote in 1964:
I
Pass laws, which to the Africans are among the most hated bits of
legislation in South Africa, render any African liable to police
surveillance at any time. I doubt whether there is a single African
48 Forced Removal
male in South Africa who has not at some stage had a brush with
the police over his pass.62
Since July 1986 all South Africans have had to carry an identity document
which states their name and address and contains their fingerprints. T o
acquire this identity document those classified as White, Coloured or Indian
need only produce their birth certificates, but Africans must produce,
according to one official in the office issuing the books, 'birth certificate,
marriage certificate, house permit and identity number so that the clerks can
check if you qualify'.63
Before the 1968 legislation influx control, and the operation of the pass
laws, hinged on rights of residence. It can be seen that people in urban areas
outside the bantustans who had no rights in terms of birth or length of
residence would, if they lost jobs or housing or had no passes, fall foul of the
provisions of Section 10 and would be categorised as unemployed illegals. If
arrested either they would be detained in police cells, from which they were
referred to an Aid Centre or sent to the Commissioners' Court to face
prosecution or they could be sent to Aid Centres for direct reference to the
Labour Bureaux. Some of the people sent to an Aid Centre might have been
referred to the Local Labour Bureau and placed in urban employment.
Others might have been referred to the district labour bureaux for
agricultural employment. Others might be sent to the Commissioners' Court
and prosecuted. If found guilty by the court one of a number of things would
happen. They might be referred back to the Aid Centre and Local Labour
Bureau, or sent to prison for up to three months, or fined up to R100, or be
removed to their place of birth in the rural areas, or be relocated in a
resettlement site in the bantustans. From 1954 it was the practice that some
African men arrested for technical offences were taken by police to district
bureaux and 'offered' work in rural areas as farm labourers. If they refused
this work they became liable for prosecution and imprisonment. Convicted
prisoners, many serving sentences for pass offences, were hired out as
labourers to farmowners for derisory pay in the 1950s. Similar schemes
relating to prisoners on parole continued in subsequent decades.64
The risks of remaining illegally in town were high, but many people were
prepared to take the risk because the urban areas are the only place they
could make a living. They were prepared to calculate imprisonment and a
fine as part of the cost of not starving. Having served a prison sentence the
majority of people remained in the cities, even though they would have lost
their Section 10 rights as a result of the pass offence. Mildred Mjekula, who
since 1969 when she was 18 had worked in Johannesburg without the correct
stamps and sometimes without a pass, told an interviewer in 1983:
I have had trouble with the police before. I have been arrested
three times. The first and third times I went to court and the
magistrate fined me R5. The second time I was discharged-I
don't know why.
I am afraid to walk in the streets. When the police come, they
Forced Removals through the PassSystem 49
ask you for your pass and look for the stamp. Maybe you have a
stamp for one year only and it is finished when the police look.
They just put you in the van and take you to the police station.
. . . I was very scared when I first went there. And later. Most
of my friends have also been in prison.65
But despite such experiences she has continued to work as a domestic
servant: in the Transkei, from where she came 'you can look for work for one
year and you won't find it'.
In the 'white' rural areas workers had two options: either to find work as
farm labourers, or to register at a district labour bureau, wait until a
requisition was received for labour, and then go to the towns as contract
workers. When workers registered at a labour bureau they were placed in one
of 17 categories of labour, for example farm worker, unskilled labourer,
semi-skilled operative and so on. Once assigned to a category like farm
worker it was almost impossible for a worker to change categories. Only
when a vacancy in a particular category was registered with the district labour
bureau would a contract worker in that category be allowed to take the job.
Contract workers had permits to work in an urban area valid for work with
1
one employer for one year only. These permits could only be renewed in a
bantustan or rural magistracy. In this way workers were forced to leave the
urban area every year to renew their permits and to maintain the fiction that
they were not permanent residents in the towns. Women could not register
I
I for employment on contract at all.
! African women became migrant workers in three major waves. The first
wave began during the expansion of the industry in the 1940s and early 1950s
before women had to carry passes. This wave continued even after women
were coerced into the pass system and only came to an end with the
1 I
imposition of the Black Labour Regulations of 1968, which prohibited the
recruitment of bantustan women as migrant workers. The second wave of
{' women's migration was as illegal migrants. Many women, despite the
prohibitions on their recruitment, risked fines and imprisonment rather than
starvation and low wages and went to the main urban centres where many
settled in squatter communities or to bantustan towns like Winterveld and
Mdantsane where they could commute to work. The third wave of women's
migration came with selective lifting of the Black Labour Regulations in
response to shortages of labour in certain areas. For example, when new
housing areas were proclaimed for Whites north of Johannesburg, women
were recruited from the bantustans to meet the sudden expansion in demand
for domestic servants.66
Generally Africans who grew up on white-owned farms were categorised as
farm labourers and could not register for jobs in an urban area. During the
1979 moratorium on illegal employment, when people without permits were
~nvitedto register their employment without jeopardy or prosecution, staff at
Rlack Sash advice offices found that people born on farms were not allowed to
&Ittestnew contracts with urban employers because they were classified as
50 Forced Removal
'farm labour'.67 From 1981 it became apparent that labour zoning was being
applied quite strictly. Even people who found jobs and had accx~m~nodation
were not automatically registered at a Local Labour Burcau unless rhcy had
Section 10 rights. It is unclear whether labour zoning will still bc pr;lcriscd in
the wake of the Abolition of Influx Control Act. but thc narurc of the
decentralisation schemes makes this seem likely (see Chapter 5).
In the bantustans a worker might register with a bantustan labour bureau
or assembly point, hoping to be recruited on contract, rather than face
long-term unemployment as employment opportunities in the bantustans
themselves were sparse. But, despite an attested contract, a municipal or
district labour officer might refuse to sanction the employment of the worker
recruited in the bantustan. The grounds for refusal might have been the lack
of suitable accommodation, or the presence of unemployed Africans already
in the area. The residents of manv bantustan towns are commuters rather
than long-distance contract workers. They live in the bantustans, but
commute, often as much as 100 kilometres away daily to their jobs. Some
bantustan residents commute even longer distances as weekly commuters.
The number of commuters grew from 420,000 in 1970 to 719,000 in 1980 on
conservative estimates.68 By 1982 official statistics put the total at 773,000
(see Table 12).
For all people from rural areas, bantustan and non-bantustan alike, the
alternative to registration and recruitment through the labour bureau was to
travel to the industrial areas without an endorsement in a reference book.
They then looked for work on their own initiative, but risked arrest, removal
back to the rural areas and repetition of the whole process. It is this route that
the Riekert Commission sought to outlaw by making it impossible to travel,
take lodgings or work without an endorsement in a reference book.
The new influx control or controlled urbanisation system works in a
different way. Workers in search of higher wages will leave white-owned
farms or the bantustans for the urban areas of employment. If they come
from the TBVC bantustans they will often be leaving as illegal 'aliens' in
terms of South African law. Workers must attempt to find housing-either by
renting a room or building a shack in a squatter camp. If this housing is
declared illegal they move to another squatter camp or lodging house and so
on, often via prison and the courts. In time the frustration of constant
removal and lack of settled housing may force the worker into a bantustan
town in which he or she falls subject to the political power of the bantustan
authorities and must commute to the urban centres. For TBVC citizens,
conviction as alien workers also takes them through the courts and prisons
and entails eviction back to the bantustans.
Arrests under the pass laws were made by members of the South African
Police and officials of the Administration Boards. Under the new legislation
evictions and removals from housing deemed illegal are to carried out by
commissioners with jurisdiction over African areas and by officers of the local
authorities. Under the Aliens Act 'aliens' are arrested, charged and removed
by the police. The tendency has been for officers of the local authorities to
Forced Removals through the Pass System 51 I ' I'
play a greater role in enforcing pass laws, almost superseding the South
African Police in this respect. In 1982 out of the 206,022 pass arrests
throughout the country over half, a total of 112,646, were made by officers of
the Administration Boards rather than by police.
The form of local government in African areas has undergone a number of
changes. Some of the powers of Administration Boards were ceded to local
councils in 1983 when a form of African municipal government was
established. The Administration Boards themselves, renamed Development
Boards in 1982, are due to be dissolved into Regional Service Councils which
will centralise regional administration for all the people in a particular area.
Officials of the boards and councils have extensive powers of search and
inspection, which they can use if they believe a breach of influx control laws
has been committed.69 The many attacks on councillors and officers of
boards in 1984-86 brought to light the contempt in which their communities
held them. Court cases arising from these events highlighted many instances
of fraud and bribes involving councillors and board employees in the granting
of land and employment permits.70
The Bantu Commissioners' Courts where, until September 1984, offences
( under the influx control laws were tried, handled one third of all people sent
to trial in South Africa each year. They were described by a professor of law
as conveyor belts, which travestied notions of legal justice. 71 In the
Johannesburg courts an average of one case was heard every two minutes.
f Where there was no legal representation cases lasted on average one case per
minute. The commissioners who heard the cases were appointed by the
Minister of Co-operation and Development. They were assisted by prosecu-
tors, appointed by the Attorney-General, who had little legal training and
were generally promoted from clerks or interpreters. Lawyers commented on
the prosecutors' lack of experience of the laws of evidence and criminal
procedure, which resulted in numerous procedural irregularities, underlining
the fact that justice was manifestly not being seen to be done.72
People charged under the pass laws rarely had legal representation. In
1983, for example, 1 per cent of the 284,000 people who had appeared in
Commissioners' Courts in the major urban area were legally r e p r e ~ e n t e dA.~~
study in 1983 of the Johannesburg Commissioners' Court revealed that the
presence of a lawyer dramatically altered a commissioner's attitude to a case
; ~ n dexposed the weakness in many cases brought against people charged as
(dfenders. The majority of commissioners had no command of African
languages. They were entirely dependent on interpreters for information and
had 'no way of knowing the accuracy of the interpretation nor of whether the
~.l~arges have been fairly put to an accused'.74 In prosecutions under Section
14 of the Urban Areas Act, which provided for the removal of illegal residents
0 1 an urban prescribed area, the accused were presumed to be guilty and
lllllawfully in the urban area until they could prove the contrary:
Y This relieves the state of the common law burden of proving the
case against the accused beyond a reasonable
52 Forced Removal
The study concluded that 'all too often justice is sacrificed in the interests of
haste'76 The Hoexter Commission on Legal Reform, reporting in 1983,
found that Commissioners' Courts trying pass offences were an anomaly. The
commission found:
That inhabitants of the same country should purely on the
grounds of race be criminally prosecuted in separate courts for
any offence whatever, is . . . by any civilised standard unneces-
sary, humiliating and repugnant.'77
On the recommendations of the commission the Commisioners' Courts were
removed from the jurisdiction of the Department of Co-operation and
Development and placed under the Department of Justice from September
1984. From that date on pass law offences were tried in magistrates' courts,
and the procedures began to change. In the Johannesburg courts an average
of 30 cases a day were being heard, in contrast to 200 a day previously. Many
cases were dismissed by the magistrate because a basic tenet of the particular
law had not been applied, or if people were not brought before the court
within 48 hours of arrest. Around 60 per cent of people arrested daily in
Johannesburg were being released before their cases came to court, because
there were no sworn statements made by the arresting In Cape
Town bail conditions were being imposed, many cases were being thrown out
because witnesses were not available, and the average sentence had fallen
from R70 or 70 days to R50 or 25 days.79
Even in the new system legal representation was inadequate. There were
no proper consulting facilities for lawyers, who found that their clients were
not informed of their rights to bail, to defend themselves, or to call
witnesses.s0 In spite of certain reforms in court procedure, thousands of
South Africans are still being arrested daily merely for trying to live and
work. The legislation using housing as an instrument of influx control will
lead to m a n y thousands of prosecutions for trespass and illegal squatting
coming before magistrates' and Commissioners' Courts.PThe Aid Centres,
like the courts exhibited many features of harsh bureaucratic control. They
date from 1964, and were conceived as an attempt to take the burden of
prosecutions off the Commissioners' Courts, or in Riekert's words,
to limit criminal proceedings against, and the detention of,
persons contravening the control measures to the offender who is
guilty of repeated offences and to afford the circumstantial or
'technical' offender the opportunity to get his affairs in order.*'
Before the 1986 legislation there were 17 Aid Centres throughout the
country. Table 5 analyses how Aid Centres processed cases referred to them.
It is evident that they never fulfilled either of their intended roles. They did
not significantly assist people either to avoid prosecution or to find jobs. Only
in the last two years for which data is available, 1979 and 1981, did the
number of prosecutions fall below the number not prosecuted, and even in
these years the gap between the two figures is small. The number of people
Forced Removals through the Pass System 53
assigned jobs by the Aid Centres remained a small proportion of the total
number of referrals. According to Riekert between 1975 and 1977 Aid
Centres throughout the country removed 50,000 Africans each year to the
bantustan^.^^ Table 5 gives slightly lower figures than Riekert for 1976, but
higher figures for 1975. The table also shows that removals to the bantustans
through Aid Centres continued to 1979. Given the increase in unemployment
after this date it is likely that removals of this type continued at an even
higher rate until the 1986 legislation abolished Aid Centres.
People who were arrested were taken to the Commissioners' Courts in
police or Administration Board vans and then bundled into Aid Centre cells.
There they were interviewed by officials of the Department of Co-operation
and Development, working through interpreters, who inquired in detail into
the arrested person's history and took his or her fingerprints. The Aid
Centre's primary task was to check on all the information provided. Thus all
Africans arrested under the pass laws were first interviewed at an Aid Centre,
although people who referred themsleves to Aid Centres were not prose-
cuted. If the person was to be prosecuted the Aid Centre made a written
recommendation to the magistrate. A study made in 1982 of the Langa Aid
Centre in Cape Town, concluded that Aid Centres primarily aided the
i
magistrate in undertaking his work of investigation, but that aid to the
accused was minimal.83The study pointed out that, despite the official claims
to the contrary, people were not encouraged to come to Aid Centres of their
own accord. The Abolition of Influx Control Act of 1986 abolished Aid
Centres.
Conviction under the influx-control laws entail heavv fines or months in
prison for low-paid workers. In a study of the Langa Commissioners' Court,
it was estimated that 45 per cent of all people convicted of pass offences paid
! their fines, while the rest served prison sentence^.^^ In 1979 R351,028 was
collectcd in the Cape Peninsula in fines for influx-control offences: R245,648
was paid by individual offenders, while R105,380 was paid by employers who
had employed workers illegally.85 It is likely that similar large amounts in
fines will be collected through prosecutions for housing offences and the
persecution of 'alien' labourers under the 1986 legislation.
In the present period of economic recession strict controls on labour zoning
II
are being applied. Some rural areas, remote from labour bureaux and towns,
have been declared unofficially 'closed' to all recruiters, bar farmers who,
with this huge pool of labour to draw on, can pay derisory wages and impose
-
extremelv harsh work conditions without fear of losing workers.x6 In urban
areas certain job categories in the service sector and the construction industry
were closed to contract workers. Section 10 qualifiers were being forced to
I
take work they would previously have avoided because of low pay. This was
termed the local labour preference There is evidence of this trend
extending into manufacturing. For example in 1982 residents of the
neri-urban areas of Inanda and Ndwedwe, on the outskirts of Durban. found
;hey could no longer take work in the ~ t r b a nurban area unless thdy were
requisitioned through their local Labour Bureau at V e r ~ l a m . ~Workg in
54 Forced Removal
i
Durban appeared to be closed to all except those registered as living within it.
Similarly, commuter workers from Bophuthatswana, working in Rosslyn
adjacent to the bantustan, found in 1985 when they had to have their annual
contracts renewed that they were dismissed and frequently replaced by
workers from the non-bantustan townships in the area like Mamelodi and
~ t t e r i d ~ e v i l l These
e . ~ ~ practices meant that bantustan residents found it
increasingly difficult to find work in manufacturing, and were being forced
into contract work on farms and mines, or long-distance commuting. The
abolition of Section 10 in 1986 may have removed the legal underpinning to
these but the trend towards recruiting local rather than bantustan
labou; continues.
There has also been a trend to zoning labour in accordance with apartheid's
divisions of the population. Table 7 shows, on the basis of figures from two
~dministrationBoards in Natal, that over a three-year period there has been
a marked tendency to reduce the employment of people from all bantustans
other than Kwazulu. These figures are borne out by evidence from elsewhere
in the country. In 1978 men removed to Ilinge in the Transkei found it
impossible to get permits to work on a road-construction project at Cathcart
in the Eastern Cape because they were from the Transkei bantustan. The
Chief Director of the Eastern Cape Administration Board said that it was
government po!yl that priority should be given to workseekers in the
immediate area. Only when suitable labour is not available in the immediate
district are people from other districts considered,' he said.90
This trend towards labour zoning has the effect of underpinning
government plans for a federal South Africa based on a regulated
demographic distribution of workers in decentralised industrial areas.91
However, labour zoning was first practised in the early 1 9 7 0 ~before ~ these
plans were formulated, when certain Administration Boards encouraged
employers to recruit workers from adjacent bantustans. But Riekert found
that this was not happening on any large scale, and in his report advised
against legislation on labour zoning. H e considered that each Administration
Board could implement appropriate policies.92 The trend for certain boards
to zone labour rigidly accelerated with the recession: they aimed to keep
down unemployment in their areas by refusing employment to people from
further afield. The effect of labour zoning is similar to that of influx control as
used in the 1950s and 1960s to secure adequate supplies of labour to specific
sectors of the economy. Moreover labour zoning appears to be used in
conjunction with control on housing to limit the access of bantustan residents
to non-bantustan towns. The Black Sash advice offices reported the case of a
woman from Gazankulu, who when she heard of the abolition of the pass laws
came to Johannesburg. Her husband had lived for many years in a hostel as a
migrant worker. She applied to the Soweto Mayor for a house site but was
told that sites were not for people from outside so wet^.^^ As housing is now
the prerequisite for employment labour zoning continues despite the changes
in the law.
The immediate effect of these policies has been and will continue to be that
Forced Removals through the Pass System 55
workers will tend to be recruited on lines dictated by the bantustan policy.
(krtain workers in certain bantustans will be denied access to better-paid
i-~ty-basedjobs. They are kept administratively in the bantustans as a huge
I;~bour reservoir. Their wages can therefore be sharply depressed, an
~,~nployer can impose long hours of work, and the harshest of work conditions
;Ire perpetuated. Workers permitted to leave bantustans to settle in urban and
~netropolitanareas will be little better off, competing for scarce jobs and
inadequate housing.
SOME EFFECTS OF INFLUX CONTROLS.
'fable 8 shows the number of arrests, prosecutions and convictions under the
pass laws over nearly thirty years. It can be seen that the number of
prosecutions rose dramatically in the early 1960s as the regime tried
vigorously to prevent the bantustan population settling in non-bantustan
Lowns. Although the number of prosecutions declined from 1972, the
number of cases dealt with by Aid Centres increased from that date although
it fell after 1976 (see Table 5).
Table 9 shows the numbers of Africans endorsed out of urban areas as a
result of conviction under the pass laws. While it has been argued that many
such people remain in the prescribed area because they would rather risk a
Surther arrest and continue to have access to work, the declining non-
bantustan urban population growth rate since 1970 (see Table 6) also shows
that an equally large number of people do return to the bantustans, and hope
LO gain work through the labour bureau system. Some of the life histories
quoted below show the oscillation of families between the bantustans and the
prescribed areas, as they try to evade the web of official restrictions, arrest
and imprisonment.
Probably every African in South Africa has a tale to tell of the restrictions
and hardships influx control brought into their lives. Perhaps the most heart
rending cases are those of young people, separated indefinitely from their
parents and relatives because of these laws. The Black Sash offices in Cape
Town publicised the case of one such young child. He was born in Cape
'rown. His parents died when he was very young. Brought up by relatives he
had no birth certificate and no death certificates for his parents. H e was
endorsed out of the area away from the only family he knew because he could
not produce this documentation, and his application for a late registration of
his birth was refused because he had no permit to be in the area. This is one
of many thousands of such stories.
In 1982 Marcus Motaung, sentenced to death for his part in ANC armed
actions against police stations and railway lines, told the court in his plea in
mitigation of some of the circumstances in his life that had led him to join
Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC:
I would start off by mentioning the raids, being raided for
permits. We stay in small houses. We are crowded in these
houses. If one has a visitor in these houses the police come and
56 Forced Remoual
arrest him solely because he has no permit to be in that house.
One would ask himself the question why would this person be
arrested, because he is South African? Why should he be arrested
for not having a permit in so wet^?^^
The effects of the pass laws were summed up by a Cape Town worker:
When you are out of a job, you realise that the boss and the
government have the power to condemn you to death. If they
send you back home (and back home now there's a drought) and
you realise you can't get any new job, it's a death sentence. The
countryside is pushing you into the cities to survive, and the cities
are pushing you into the countryside to d i ~ . ~ ~
DEFIANCE AND RESISTANCE
The pass laws have awakened two forms of resistance in the people they are
designed to repress. Firstly there has been mass defiance, which merely
ignores the law. Hundreds of thousands have come to non-bantustan towns
in search of work even though they are termed illegals, and are liable to
arrest. This defiance is mainly the act of individuals, individually compelled
through poverty to risk imprisonment. The spirit of such people, up against
enormous odds, was captured in a scene in the Langa pass courts. A man told
the court he had a valid contract and was not guilty of a pass offence. He was
referred to an Aid Centre, which established he had no contract. When he
reappeared in court he was asked why he had lied. 'What can a man do?' he
replied. 'He must surely take a chance.'96
Families and people from the same area in the country often provide a
network of support for illegals, helping people to find jobs and accommoda-
tion, providing fines after a pass raid, and caring for children if their parents
have to serve prison sentences. It is these relations of mutual support in the
face of shared hardship and a common enemy that the Riekert strategy, the
1984 legislation on aliens and the 1986 legislation on housing were designed
to fragment.
The second form of resistance to pass laws has formed part of the mass
campaigns of the political movements that have organised and led the
opposition to apartheid. In the 1950s when pass laws were extended to
African women the ANC organised a nationwide campaign against passes.
There were demonstrations in hundreds of towns and a mass rally in Pretoria
in 1956 when 20,000 women gathered from all over the country to bring
petitions stating their opposition to passes. In Zeerust the protest against the
extension of passes to women intersected with a campaign against black-spot
removal and thc establishment of Bantu Authorities. Militant defiance of the
authorities was met with repression and mass arrests. It was only by tying
pensions and work opportunities to the possession of passes that the
authorities could force passes on to African women. But opposition to passes,
coupled with pass-burning campaigns, was intense throughout the late 1950s.
Forced Removals t/~rouyhhe l'uss Sys~em 57
A pass-burning demonstration in Sharpcville in 1960 called by the Pan
Africanist Congress was met by policc firing on the crowd, killing 69 people.
A week later a State of Emergency was declared and the mass-based
anti-a~artheidorganisations outlawed.
FO; nearly two dccadcs there was no organised resistance to the pass laws.
But rejection of the Riekert strategy andtits legislative expression in the
Koornhof bills was a powerful factor in the emergence of a new level of
organisation of popular resistance. The UDF was formed to unite all forms of
popular organisation-civic associations, youth organisations, women's
groups, religious bodies, sports clubs, and self-help circles-against legisla-
tion designed to undermine the unity forged in suffering.
In the words of the UDF Declaration:
We say no to the Koornhof Bills, which will deprive more and
more African people of their birthright. We say yes to the birth of
the UDF on this historic day. We know that the government is
determined to break the unity of our people, that our people will
face greater hardships, that our people living in racially segre-
gated and relocated areas will be cut off from the wealth they
produce in the cities, that rents and other basic charges will
increase and that our living standards will fall, that working
people will be divided race from race, urban from rural,
employed from unemployed, men from women . . . Mindful of
the fact that the new constitutional proposals and Koornhof
measures will further entrench apartheid and white domination,
we commit ourselves to uniting all our people, wherever they may
be, in the cities and countryside, the factories and mines, schools,
colleges, and universities, houses and sports fields, churches,
mosques and temples, to fight fur our freedom. We therefore
resolve to stand shoulder to shoulder in our common
struggle . . .97
This form of organised popular resistance to the Koornhof bills, and
subsequent legislation in the Riekert mould, continued after the establish-
ment of the U D F in 1983. In May 1985 when the Laws on Co-operation and
1)evelopment Amendment Bill was published, extending Section 10 rights,
I)r Ntatho Motlana of the Soweto Civic Association responded:
It is too late in the day for the Government to tamper with the
influx control laws. This is the kind of action that will satisfy
nobody. We urge the government to move bodly forward to
abolish forthwith the pass laws and the Group Areas Act so as to
give blacks the kind of freedom of movement that is given to
other citizens whose colour is not black.
. \ Johannesburg U D F spokesman pointed out:
The Bill is nothing new. It is an old divide and rule tactic of the
58 Forced Remuvul
Government. We insist that black people are one and that there is
no urban or rural black person and that no one should be limited
in his or her movements in the c o ~ n t r y . ' ~
The organised resistance of the U D F and their campaigns, demonstrations,
and ability to mobilise large sections of the population, and inspire others,
has been an important limiting factor on the implementation of the Riekert
strategy. Influx control has also become a major issue taken up by trade
unions and workers in an organised fashion. In 1984, according to a labour
lawyer:
A substantial proportion of strikes is related to job security issues
such as dismissals and retrenchments because of consequences
that flow from influx control.yy
Recently trade unions have been forthright in their condemnation of pass
arrests. Mass pass raids in the Transvaal in August 1984 led to protests from
several unions. In March 1986 after a meeting between the executive of the
newly formed Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and the
ANC and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) in Lusaka,
a communique was issued which affirmed:
It has become imperative that the workers of our country,
together with all the democratic forces, work together to destroy
the pass laws-the badge of slavery-and the whole system of
influx control and prevent the Botha regime from re-introducing
the hated system in any guise w h a t s o e ~ e r . ' ~ ~
In response to the change in the pass laws in 1986 COSATU reported that its
branches were
outraged . . . because it divided the rural comrades from those in
the urban areas. It has turned people into aliens thus making it
even more difficult for them to have access to jobs and
facilities. l o '
COSATU reaffirmed its commitment to resolutions passed at its launch in
1985 where workers had committed themselves to:
Fight for the right of workers to seek work wherever they wish
and to reside with their families wherever they wish and that
proper housing be provided as a right for all workers and their
families near their place of work; [and to]
Call for a national strike should the apartheid regime carry out
its threats to repatriate any migrant workers.lOl
CUSA also reiterated its commitment to eradicate all aspects of control on
workers' mobility. lo3
The ANC, operating underground, has constantly stressed the need for
opposition to the pass laws. In response to the new identity document
Forced Removals through the PassSystem 59
announcement in 1986 the ANC declared through Radio Freedom:
We must prevent the regime from dragging us into their control
network by refusing to carry the documents which help them in
their work. This is part of our growing struggle to exercise
popular control over our own land . . . when we burn the dompas,
we have to move to break down the fences of locations, ghettos
and bantustan borders.lo4
This signals a movement beyond the politics of protest at influx control. In
seeking to establish centres of people's power where pass laws and controls on
movement are ignored, the ANC is envisaging a fusion of the long-standing
defiance of influx control with organised resistance.
CONCLUSION
Government planners and strategists see the future of influx control in the
depoliticisation of the conflicts the pass laws create. They envisage a shift
from control by [he police to greater use of administrative controls on
housing, recruitment and employment. None of the contemporary strategists
of apartheid envisage abandoning population control. They are concerned to
rationalise it and use it to serve a co-ordinated set of policy objectives,
relating to decentralisation of industry and ease of movement for skilled
workers. Influx control, however varied, will continue to be used to keep
down African wages, provide adequate labour for all sectors of the economy,
move the unemployed from towns and cities and maximise the use of skilled
African workers. In no way are the removals associated with influx control
likely to cease as a result of any strategy designed to change the instrument of
control from a document to a house. Moreover this new strategy has
reawakened organised resistance on a scale not seen since the 1950s. This
resistance will not be halted by a change in the form of influx control.
60 Forced Kemovul
CHAPTER 3
Urban policy and forced removals
Two of the most important trends in South Africa since 1950 have been the
forced removal of the black urban population into segregated conglomerate
townships adjacent to 'white' cities and the further removal of thousands of
African urban residents from the towns of 'white' South Africa to bantustan
towns. Up to the mid-1960s virtually every major South African town saw the
uprooting of the people from mixed areas and their segregation into
Coloured, Indian and African townships. In the period 1960-70 197 'white'
towns experienced a decrease in their African population despite the overall
increase of the urban African population.' By 1980 the total urban African
population of South Africa was at least 7 million, of whom between 5 and 6
million lived in areas outside the bantustans and 2 million lived in bantustan
t0wns.l
Control of the population by means of urban removals has appeared in a
number of guises. Behind these removals lies a strategy for securing access to
black urban labour, while minimising the political challenge to white
supremacy such labour might pose. Enforcing residential segregation was an
important part of this strategy at an early stage. In later periods different
means have been used: chiefly removing existing African townships into
bantustans and developing bantustan towns whose residents commute to
work outside the bantustans. This policy served both the initial political
rationale for the establishment of bantustans (that is, providing bantustan
leaders with a constituency and a population of the kind from whom civil
servants could be recruited), and the later role as reserves of labour and
catchment areas for the unemployed.
The three decades since the National Party came to power can be
categorised as follows:
1950-60 was a period of substantial African migration to urban areas;
1960-70 was a period of massive state efforts to reverse this process by means
of the pass laws, housing policy and forced removals of African townships
into the bantustans;
1970-80 was a period of a slower movement to the bantustans, the elimination
of locations in small towns, and an attempt to replace settled urban workers
with migrant^.^
The crisis, evident since the late 1970s, has prompted many debates about
urban policy in ruling circles. The debates have focused on four aspects of
urbanisation: housing policy, control of squatters, the question of urban
Africans in the Western Cape, and decentralisation strategy. An intensive
struggle over policy has emerged, whose outcome is still to be decided (for a
full discussion see Chapter 5).
Urban Policy and Forced Removals 61
I
'fhis chapter focuses on various forms of urban removal in the different
I,criods, some of which are still being carried out today. It deals with urban
I cinovals that have resulted from early apartheid policies- Group Areas
I-cmovals,removals to consolidate African townships and removals as a result
OIthe Coloured Labour Preference Policy -as well as the process initiated in
; I subsequent phase of apartheid of relocating townships in bantustans. It also
\rlrveys the beginnings of the growth of large squatter communities around
I he major metropolitan areas and highlights the constant removals suffered
1
I,y squatters, particularly in the Western Cape.
GROUP AREA REMOVALS
I'he Asiatic Land Tenure Laws Amendment Committee, established by the
lirst National Party government in one of its first actions, recommended in
1950 that a total separation of the various 'population groups' should be
carried out and that people should be removed to areas assigned to thei;
xroup. These recommendations were enacted in the Group Areas Act of
1950, which stipulated that certain areas would be proclaimed as Group
Areas in which only members of a particular group might live, own property,
and conduct business. This Act was facilitated by, and was indeed the
corollary to, two earlier laws which had institutionalised the division and
I
I
Il
I
;il
JOHANNESBURG
CITY CENTRE
I
M a p 6 : Segregated Residential Areas: Group Areas and African Townships
on the W e s t Rand.
62 Forced Removal
classification of the population into separate groups on the basis of a
combination of language, descent, skin colour and so on. These were the
Population Registration Act of 1950, which provided for the issuing of
identity cards indicating the group to which a person had been assigned, and
the Prohibition on Mixed Marriages Act of 1949, which made intermarriage
between groups illegal. The Group Areas Act meant that Indian and
Coloured residents who had been long settled in city centres close to and
intermingled with whites, began to be removed to outlying townships. The
Group Areas Act was not used to enforce the segregation of the urban African
population as this was already provided for in the 1945 Urban Areas Act, but
African families living in an area proclaimed as a Coloured, White or Indian
Group Area had to move. The act gave the government control over all
property transactions between the different groups and over occupation of
land. Thereafter it could decide where the different groups could live. Local
authorities were obliged to plan Group Areas and to suggest their location to a
Group Areas Board.
Planning Group Areas, buying out property owners who found themselves
living in the wrong Group Area, compensating traders and establishing new
segregated Indian and Coloured townships, has been a long drawn-out
process. The establishment of Group Areas was considerably assisted in 1966
by additional legislation which froze all Indian and Coloured rights of land
ownership and occupation in areas that had not yet been proclaimed as Group
Areas. Nevertheless the total residential segregation of the population
envisaged in the 1950 legislation is not yet complete. The Group Areas policy
has however been consistently sustained, and only now is some of the
legislation being revised.
A number of adjustments in Group Area legislation were conceded after
1973. New legislation was gazetted in 1977 in response to recommendations
of the Theron Committee which examined the conditions of the Coloured
population and its position within the apartheid system. The regulations
stipulated firstly that industrial areas outside the Group Areas would not be
reserved for white-owned factories exclusively. Indian and Coloured entrep-
reneurs would be free, with the State President's permission, to establish
factories in those industrial estates if they wished. Secondly, some Coloured
and Indian retailers were permitted to open shops in areas outside the
allocated group area.4 In 1984 the Group Areas Amendment Act repealed
certain sections of the original legislation and made it possible for the State
President to deproclaim group areas and open them for trading, commerce,
professional practice and education by all groups. But residence was still to
be limited to the population group for whom a Group Area was originally
declared.
The present trend in Group Areas proclamations is to declare regional
Group Areas close to growth points outlined in the decentralisation strategy
(see Chapter 5). Growth points with preferential access to development funds
for industrial investment promise lucrative employment for skilled Coloured
Urbun Policy und Forced Kemoz~uls 63
~uildIndian workers. These adjustments and amendments, while in no way
undercutting the fundamental principle of segregation., concede certain
privileges to members of the Coloured and Indian middle class and skilled
xtisans. These sections of the population have been key targets in the
rcgime's attempts to co-opt sectors of the black population. The inauguration
o f the new segregated tricameral parliament in January 1985, with separate
White, Indian and Coloured chambers and cabinets has been the most
striking political demonstration of this.
Group Areas legislation has had several objectives. It has been a means to
cnforce a system of residential segregation in urban areas which supports the
population classification system refined by the apartheid p ~ l i c y It
. ~became a
way of splitting up and keeping the black urban population in separate areas
which facilitated control and hampered organisation.' At one stage the Group
Areas legislation had a specific part in government policy concerning the
Indian population. The National Party election manifesto in 1948 called for
the 'repatriation' of South Africans of Indian descent:
The party holds the view that the Indians are an alien, foreign
element which can never be assimilated. They can never become
natives of this country and must be treated as an immigrant
community .8
The intermediate step before the realisation of this goal was the removal of
Indians to separate group areas with prohibitions placed on their ability to
live, trade or own property in 'white areas'. This immediate separation
became an election promise which was carried out in the legislation of 1950.
The new law also served to meet the demands of commercially precarious ~
Afrikaner traders for legislation limiting their competition from more solidly
established Indian retailers.' As the decade progressed Indian repatriation
proved impossible and the manifold delays in implementing the 1950
legislation became apparent. However, the widespread popular militancy of Ji
the 1950s gave the Group Areas Act a new political rationale. In the I
repressive period of the 1960s it was used to break up the mixed communities i
of the inner cities in an attempt to undermine the unity between Indian, i
Coloured and African, which had been given concrete expression with the
formation of the Congress Alliance and at the Congress of the People in 1955.
What could no1 be achieved in terms of maintaining white political i
supremacy through the banning of political organisations, the use of trials
and long prison sentences, might be facilitated if the communities which i
sustained the opposition were dispersed. I
I
In the most recent period Indian and Coloured communities removed in
~
terms of the Group Areas Act have generally experienced better conditions in
the new townships, compared to those in African areas. In Indian and
Coloured townships better housing, better roads, a wider range of facilities
and greater proximity to industrial areas have all served the government's i
attempt to widen the gulf between the various groups. However the rejection
of this co-option process was underlined by the boycott of elections to the
I
i
64 Forced Removal Urban Policy and Forced Removals 65

new segregated parliament in 1984. Only 18 per cent of Coloured voters statistics that illustrate the full extent. In 1961 it was estimated that in
registered actually voted in 1984, while according to the government figures Durban alone 80,000 Africans had been affected by Group Area removals.15
'l'hese probably represent a fraction of Africans moved under this act
only 20 per cent of registered Indian voters voted. Many did not even register
to vote, and it is believed that the actual number of Indian voters was closer ~hroughout the country since 1950.
Litigation has been one of the main instruments used by Indian and
to 12 per cent of the voting age p~pulation.~()
(loloured communities in resisting Group Areas removal. Long-drawn-out
Implementation of the Group Areas legislation involved gross disposses-
cases have been fought contesting eviction notices, property valuations and
sion. Although Group Areas Boards were meant to value the property lost
[lie quality of accommodation provided in new townships. On the whole it is
and award compensation, the awards rarely compensated at the market value
mainly the wealthy members of the communities who have been able to
and could not make up for the loss of long-term investments. Once a Group
;ifford the legal cost involved in contesting removal notices, but their actions
Area was proclaimed, a property owner of the wrong group for the area could
continue to hold property in the area for the rest of his or her life without have often held up the removal of a whole community for many years.
I'ageview in Johannesburg, for example, was declared a White Group Area in
occupying it. After their death their heirs had one year to sell the holdings:
1956. Protracted legal battles were fought and nearly 30 years later in 1982 67
whatever the market conditions, they were obliged to sell.
Indian families remained and had sought an interdict restraining the
Government spokesmen talked of the forced removal of Coloured and
Department of Community Development from carrying out further
Indian communities as 'slum clearance', pointing to the new housing that was
cvictions.16 An action was brought by a Pageview family in 1984 challenging
provided. Improvement in conditions, however, was not the predominant
[heir eviction on the grounds that it ran counter to the intention of the new
impression formed by other observers who noted, for example, the bleak
constitution. The family maintained that matters pertaining to the Indian
housing estates on exposed parts of the Cape coast to which Coloured
community could now only be dealt with by Indian 'own affairs' authorities,
communities of the Peninsula were moved and the lack of transport and high
and they could not be evicted by white 'own affairs' officials. This was
rents experienced as major probleins in Phoenix, an Indian township in
dismissed by the courts in 1986. However, in a separate action by t l ~ e
Durban to which people were removed under the Group Areas Act." In
community through the Save Pageview Association, the Department of
Johannesburg, Western Native Township was designated a Coloured Group
Community Development had been forced to withdraw eviction orders
Area after Africans had been removed in the 1950s. So many people were
against 60 families because of mistakes in the notices.''
crowded into the township, as the Transvaal Coloured population grew, that,
Yet however long-drawn-out the legal battles on points of detail and
far from the removals securing 'slum clearance', they in fact resulted in the
interpretation, the law provides no ultimate protection for people fighting
area becoming a slum.12
Group Area removals. Once all the inconsistencies in removal notices have
People were removed from well-established integrated environments to
been ironed out communities are obliged to leave their homes for assigned
tightly controlled and barren landscapes. Removals usually meant large
numbers of people crowded into areas with little or no facilities. For example, Group Areas. Often the removals evoke vehement anger: some of the people
removed from Pageview in 1982 ignored the Group Areas Act and returned to
in Elsies River people who moved from their homes into flats faced bleak
their former homes. This happened persistently in District Six, the centre of
conditions. One woman complained to the newspaper in 1977:
the Coloured community of Cape Town, between 1966 and 1976 when the
I am sick and tired of living in Clarke's Estate [flats]. I was better last Coloured and Indian families were removed and the area was totally given
off in my shack in Elsies River, but here I have to pay a high rent over to white occupation. But until the houses of District Six were actually
for mouldy walls and a blocked toilet.13 bulldozed or bought up by white property developers many evicted families
clung tenaciously to the shreds of their past amongst the ruins of their
There were no play facilities for children. Extended families had been broken
community.
up by forced removals. This left children with neither facilities nor family
In recent years, because of the housing shortage in Coloured and Indian
care, as the majority of parents were at work.14 Removal could mean loss of
townships large numbers of Indian and Coloured people, mainly employed in
access to jobs. Thousands of families, for example, who had for decades central Johannesburg, have moved into housing in 'White' areas in defiance
worked fishing boats in the bay suburbs of the Cape Peninsula were moved to
of the Group Areas Act. Actstop, a pressure group which supported the move
Coloured townships many miles from a harbour.
and which has campaigned for the repeal of the Group Areas legislation,
The number of families forced to move through the operation of this cstimated in 1983 that they numbered close on 12,000, many in the Hillbrow
legislation is shown in Table 10. Very few Whites have been affected and Joubert Park areas of the city, mainly in flats.lxIn 1986 it was estimated
compared with the large numbers of Coloured and Indian families. A large that 66 per cent of the population of Mayfair, an inner-city area of
number of Africans have also been dispossessed, although there are no Johannesburg once occupied by white workers, were black.19 Despite
66 Forced Removal
extreme hostility and abuse from many of their neighbours and frequent
harassment by the police the new tenants have remained. Their chances of
continued occupation were considerably enhanced by a judgement in a test
case brought by Actstop in 1982. The Pretoria Supreme Court ruled in the
Govender case that eviction should not follow convictions for Group Areas
contraventions unless alternative accommodation was available. So although
it is illegal (in terms of the Group Areas Act) for Indian and Coloured people
to live in Central Johannesburg, the law is unenforceable because there is no
alternative accommodation and they cannot be evicted. However, even
though defiance of the law has won an important area of concession, the
judgement itself does not offer total protection: landlords can now be
prosecuted and fined, discouraging them from defying the law by renting
flats to Coloured and Indian families.20
Despite the intention of the Group Areas legislation to create barriers
between communities and to co-opt sectors of the Indian and Coloured
communities through preferential treatment in comparison to Africans, this
policy has largely failed. The joint action between the political organisations
of the Coloured and Indian communities in forming the Congress Alliance in
the mid-1950s was an explicit rejection of the divisions implicit in Group
Areas legislation. S Chetty, a Natal Indian Congress activist in the 1950s who
worked as a volunteer collecting demands for the Freedom Charter, recalls
that though in many Indian households there was suspicion of co-operation
with the ANC, in equally many there was a wish to talk about political
grievances and the material lack of housing. Despite residential segregation
African people were particularly open and welcoming:
When we Indians go into an African area there was no question,
you know, that the guy's going to assault you. The moment you
give them the sign, you're a comrade. You say 'Afrika!' and they
return it 'Mayibuye!'. Straight away you're a comrade. Open,
come into the house and
Although the repression of the 1960s had driven organised opposition
underground and apparently destroyed the unity built up during the 1950s,
the emergence of the black consciousness movement in schools and
universities drew together Coloured, Indian and African students in
opposition to apartheid in the early 1970s. The formation of the United
Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983 gave open expression to the widespread
rejection of apartheid in all its manifestations, even amongst those who had
been given superior resources.
Concrete expression of the spirit of the UDF and some indication of the
nature of the popular feeling that had led to its formation was seen in Indian
attitudes to the proposed forced removal of Africans from the black spot of St
Wendolin's, near Durban. Although the area was zoned for Indian
occupation after the planned removal of the African community, the Indian
community refused to take the land from the people of St Wendolin's. They
Urban Policy and Forced Removals 67
..lid they would not move into the area if Africans were forced out. This
I)c.came an important factor in the struggle of the St Wendolin's community
I O retain their land, and a key element leading to a reversal of the removal
~l~.cision:the government decided in 1984 to allow the black spot to remain.22
Although it has taken many years to rebuild this solidarity among
o~nmunities,it is testimony to the contradictions of apartheid that the very
%,cnseof popular unity which the Group Areas legislation was created to
~lcstroyshould itself be re-created in opposition to that legislation and the
\vliole panoply of apartheid laws.
(;OLOURED LABOUR PREFERENCE POLICY
111 September 1984 President Botha announced to the Cape National Party
congress that the Coloured Labour Preference Policy, for 20 years a central
clement in apartheid strategy in the Western Cape, was to be abandoned. The
Inove was welcomed by businessmen, who, for an equally long period, had
~lcnounced the The removals associated with Coloured Labour
I'rcference are now a matter of history, a history of hardship and suffering
[hat the new policy adjustments do not attempt to redress.
Coloured Labour Preference in the Western Cape had been discussed by
the National Party for decades before it took office in 1948, but a coherent
\tatement on how it was to be implemented only came in 1954. In that year,
I3 F Verwoerd, then Minister of Native Affairs, told the Federated Chamber
o l Industries that 'Native families would be discouraged from settling in the
Cape where migrant labour would be considered most suitable'. He later
announced in Parliament that 'the Western Cape is to be the preserve of
(;oloureds and all further family housing for Africans is to cease'.24
In 1955 the details of the policy were announced by the Secretary of Native
ASfairs, Eiselen, at a conference of the South African Bureau of Racial Affairs
(SABRA):
Briefly and concisely put, our Native Policy regarding the
Western Province aims at ultimately eliminating natives from this
region.
He explained that Coloured Labour Preference would entail that all
non-South African Africans leave the Western Province and no more be
allowed in; that influx control would be very strictly applied and all Africans
coming to work in the area would be screened; that African people who
already had permission to work in the Western Cape would have to have
suitable accommodation; and that if there was a need for additional African
workers they should be recruited as migrant workers on short contracts.25
The government aimed to decrease the number of Africans working in the
Western Cape by 5 per cent per annum through strict influx control and a
freeze on accommodation, and to give Coloured people preferential access to
jobs and housing. Coloured Labour Preference was formulated at a time
when the Separate Representation of Voters Act removed Coloured voters
68 Forced Removal Urban I'olicy and Forced Removuls 69

from the common electoral roll with whites and destroyed the last vestiges ol 111, .tlca covered by Coloured Labour Preference was considerably
parliamentary representation which the Coloured population had retain4 I I (I11 1 ~ in~ 1the mid-1960s. Originally the so-called Eiselen line had
since 1910. Evidently Eiselen and Verwoerd, through promises of protectio~~ , I , Ill.ll, ~ r c dthe Coloured Labour Preference Area as that to the west of the
I I . . t 11 Kimberley, Colesburg and Humansdorp. With the new regulations
from African competition for jobs and preferential access to housing, hopctl 1. .\\

I I , , I l,,(.lcn line was moved eastward to run between Aliwal North and the
to deflect opposition from the issue of removal of political rights.
In the late 1950s the Coloured Labour Preference Policy was implementctl I I 1 1 I(1vc.r. In the entire area no new African family housing was to be
mainly through strict application of influx control in the Western Cape. Ry , , I , ! \ ltlcd. From 1966 the African labour component in all industry and

1957 chief magistrates in the Peninsula could report a decline in the Africa11 . , I I I I I I I ( . I . C C in this area was frozen and each enterprise was to be forced to
population over two years.26 But no regulations existed as yet to compel thc. I I I I , (. ASrican labour by 5 per cent in future years. Ministerial approval was
e

employment of Coloured rather than African workers. The spur to a morc I I I I I I ( . ~ i Sor the employment of African contract workers, and no contract
f q

effective application of the policy was provided by the upsurge of popul;~~. ,III,Ic.xceed 12 months. The Physical Planning and Utilization of Resources
protest in the late 1950s, culminating in a huge protest rally and stay-at-homc \ , I 01 1967 stipulated that industrial expansion in certain parts of the
in Cape Town in 1960 after the killings at the Sharpeville anti-pass protests. \\ .I(.I-nCape could only take place using Coloured and White labour unless
Donges, Minister of Finance, declared in Parliament in 1960: I l l ~ ~ ~ ~permission ~ ~ ~ c r i had
a l been granted for the employment of Africans.
I I I C Coloured Labour Preference policy resulted in three types of forced
The disturbances have taught us another lesson to which the I I I I I ) V ; I ~ . Firstly the pass laws were used to evict many Africans from the
Government has also directed attention previously. This lesson is \\ , ,)[crnCape. The policy failed entirely to reduce the African population. In
that in those areas where the Coloured community form a natural ( .II,I. 'l'own for example the legal African population was 65,025 in 1960 and
source of labour, it is wrong to import Bantu in large numbers 100.000 in 1970. But the nature of the population changed. The pass laws
and eventually create two unprosperous communities- the Gov- , \ , - I <used . to try to remove women, many of them wives of workers, and
ernment will therefore apply more strictly its policy that Coloured
labour should be put to the best possible use.27
A standing Cabinet committee and a permanent interdepartmental commit-
tee were established. Their brief was to implement all aspects of the Coloured
Labour Preference Policy. The Bantu Labour Act of 1964 contained
measures to enforce the policy. All employers in the Western Cape were
compelled to employ Coloured labour unless they obtained authorisation
\
through the Department of Labour and the local magistrates' office to do \
otherwise. The cumbersome method for recruiting African workers was \
\
\
spelled out in the 1965 Bantu Labour Regulations: \
Colcsburg: w Altwal Nurrh
If no unemployed Coloureds are registered and the office
concerned is satisfied that the employer's wages etc. are attractive
enough to draw Coloureds, but that no Coloureds can be
recruited, the employer is issued a certificate indicating that
suitable Coloured labour is not available for the specific vacancies.
On the submission of this certificate to the Bantu Labour Officer
EAST
concerned supplementary Bantu labour from the Xhosa-speaking
homelands is allowed on a single contract basis through the labour
bureaux system provided that Bantu labour is not available locally
and that there is suitable h o ~ s i n g . ~ g
i t is evident that features of influx control, adopted in the rest of the country
in the 1980s as part of the Riekert proposals were introduced earlier to the
Western Cape as part of the Coloured Labour Preference Policy: for example,
I
regional labour zoning and making access to jobs dependent on the
availability of housing. Map 7 : Coloured Labor Preference Area: The Eiselen Line.
70 Forced Removul
sub-tenants of people with Section 10 rights. It was hoped that the only
Africans remaining would be the migrant male w0rkers.2~
Secondly the lack of provision of family housing led to the establishment of
squatter camps, which have been repeatedly destroyed by the authorities.
One study estimated that the percentage of Africans in family accommoda-
tion in Cape Town decreased from 70 per cent in 1960 to 50 per cent in
1970.30 The lack of municipal family housing forced people to establish
squatter communities like Crossroads and Nyanga. Some employers pro-
vided temporary accommodation for their workers, but there was a general
shift away from this and from hostel accommodation to the shacks of the
squatter settlements. By the late 1970s the Cape Flats were densely populated
with squatter communities. Several had been bulldozed, the homes
destroyed, and many residents, mainly women, forced to go to the bantustans
because they did not have the necessary endorsements in their pass to remain
(for u fuller discussion see below).
The third type of removal associated with the Coloured Labour Preference
policy has been the destruction of African townships in the small towns
which fell within the area west of the Aliwal North-Fish River line. The
townships were deproclaimed as areas for African settlement. The residents
lost their Section 10 rights and were forced to move into the new towns being
established in the bantustans. The notorious settlements of Sada and
Dimbaza in the Ciskei were two such towns. Here the gross deprivation of
forced removal was first noticed by the press when epidemics broke out, lines
of children's graves appeared, and people were forced to live in flimsy tents
and prefabricated housing with no work a~ailable.~'
The Coloured Labour Preference Policy caused vast upheavals in the lives
of many thousands of Africans who suffered removal and a consequent
decline in living standards. But the policy did not work. Although Coloured
workers were increasingly employed in skilled and semi-skilled jobs the
wages of the Coloured community as a whole fell dramatically relative to
whites. In 1945 Coloured earnings were 41 per cent of white earnings, but in
the late 1970s they were 24 per cent.32 The higher wages which Coloured
workers could demand and the ease with which they could move between
jobs made them an unpopular labour force with employers. The majority of
Cape industrial and commercial employers preferred illegal African workers
to Coloured workers. When they did employ Coloured workers they paid low
wages, which many were forced to accept because of a high rate of
unemployment. By 1984 there was proportionately more Coloured unem-
ployment in the Western Cape than elsewhere in the country.33
Despite the high-level policy commitment to Coloured Labour Preference
the programme was unworkable. It made labour costs high and labour
recruitment cumbersome for Cape employers at the very time when
manufacturing industry in the area was expanding and demand for service
industries was growing. As early as 1954 when the policy was first discussed
the Cape Chamber of Industries had protested, declaring that 'certain
industries in the Western Cape had need of settled urbanised native labour'.
Urban Policy and Forced Removuls 71
1 1 1{.111red assurances from the government that stricter application of
1 1I I1 1 1 1 1 ) rro1 would still ens~lre
( a reasonable pool of locally available labour,
1 1 1 $ 1 I 1 1 . 1 1 once a worker returned to the bantustans at the end of a contract his
I ' , I I 1 1 1 I (.nlployer would be able to re-employ him.34 But as the policy was
I I ~ I ~ I I( I, rhcse conditions were not met, and Cape industrialists complained
111 11 I l l f i l l wages paid to Coloured workers would hamper industrial
% 1 ) I l l -1011.
I I I I Irc mid- 1960s the government recognised that it was impossible to have
I ,I 1 1 ~~ldustrial
,q growth and a 5 per cent reduction of African labour in every
111 l l r I'hcy therefore conceded that while there should be a 5 per cent
I 1 I I , I Ion for the area overall, the reduction in individual firms need not be so
1
1.1 .II Rut employers continued to resent the policy, criticising it in public
I I I ~ cvdding
I it in private. The Cape Chamber of Industries commented in its
, \ l~lcnceto the Wiehahn Commission in 1977:
This submission should not be construed as requesting that the
inflow of Bantu should in any way be increased; it merely seeks
for a review of policy in relation to those who are permanently in
the Western Cape and are entitled to remain here. Their
education and general process of urbanisation has reached a level
which is already causing them to be intensely frustrated by the
limitations imposed on their employment. Dissatisfaction on that
account is already reaching disturbing proportions and is bound
to erupt if this relatively small segment of our Western Cape
population is not provided with more satisfactory job
~pportunities.~'
In subsequent years the Chamber of Industries pointed out that the Coloured
Labour Preference Policy had retarded the economic performance of the
Western Cape by reducing the productivity of African workers, inefficiently
using skills, and limiting access to training.36
The decision to abandon Coloured Labour Preference in 1984 was partly a
concession to Western Cape industrialists. This was consistent with the
attempt to gain political support from the private sector, a central element in
the regime's current strategy (see Chapter 1). It was also an inducement to
them to bring the resources of the private sector to the development of
African housing in the Western Cape, an area that has become the focus of an
intense debate about urban policy3' The abandonment of Coloured Labour
Preference may also be interpreted as a concession to the Coloured Labour
Party, the largest Coloured party participating in the segregated parliament.
The Labour Party had opposed the policy because it priced Coloured workers
out of jobs, inducing employers to undercut them by employing illegal
African workers. The official announcement of the end of the policy came in
May 1985 when, after lengthy negotiations with the Department of
Constitutional Development and Planning, the director of the Cape
Employment Bureau announced that applications by employers for addi-
tional African workers would be granted without exception and no lengthy
 72 Forced Removal
process of ministerial endorsement would be neces~ary.'~
While the opposition of the Cape employers was clearly a critical factor in
inducing the government to abandon the Coloured Labour Preference Policy,
the popular resistance to it was a precondition for this decision. Had
hundreds of thousands of people not defied influx control and been prepared
to work illegally for low wages in Cape Town rather than starve in the
bantustans, there would have been no expansion of Cape industries, and no
vociferous industrialists to demand greater growth.
The courage of the people who daily defied Coloured Labour Preference
and the pass laws, and made their homes out of plastic sheeting on the Cape
Flats when the state decreed they would build no houses for them, is
illustrated by the story of a group of women arrested at Nyanga squatter
camp for being in Cape Town illegally. The women were transported by bus
to Komgha, a small town on the edge of the Transkei bantustan, but refused
to leave the bus. One of them later told a newspaper reporter that the police
brought dogs on to the bus and forced us to the station. Once off
the bus we did not get on the train, but started walking towards
Stutterheim.
By foot and by train the women made their way back to Cape Town. Living
once again as illegals, they said:
We want our rights here in Cape Town. There is nothing for us in
the Transkei. We belong here with our husbands . . . We want
our rights here in Cape Town. We are not happy here but we are
not frightened. They can arrest us but we are going to stay.39
The demise of Coloured Labour Preference is also an index of its failure to
win Coloured support for the regime. In its original form it had failed to
undermine the alliance of the 1950s which demanded the rights enshrined in
the Freedom Charter. In the 1980s the formation of the U D F and the high
level of resistance in Coloured areas of the Western Cape during the States of
Emergency in 1985 and 1986 show that even the new constitutional
proposals, Coloured preference in a new guise, have been no more successful.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AFRICAN TOWNSHIPS
In the first decade of National Party rule the government set about destroying
the areas of freehold urban land owned by Africans. New townships were
established some distance from the city centres. The next phase saw a
streamlining of the administration of African townships with the Bantu
Affairs Department taking over control from municipalities which had
sometimes run townships on more liberal lines than the central government
wished. In the present phase the trend has been increasingly to devolve
authority to locally elected councils. Those who suffered the removals of the
1960s are at present being courted with promises of full powers of local
government and property rights. The new local councils of the 1980s were
Urban Poltcy and Forced Removals 73
11.11 I 01 an attempt to divide township residents from migrants and to coax
I I I ~111, by conceding some form of local authority powers, into supporting
111.11 theid in its present guise. But in the uprisings which began in the Vaal
I I ~ , ~ n g lin
e late 1984 the local councils elected by a minority of the
I ~ ~ l u ~ l a t icame
o n , under concerted attack, leading many councillors to resign.
I Ilc wbsequent moves to by-pass the official local authorities, by building up
. I I cetcommittees' as alternative forms of local administration, show how far
I Ill\ policy has failed.
Africans had been forced to live in segregated urban townships even before
111cNationalist Party came to power in 1948. The Native (Urban Areas) Act
01 1923 had initiated urban segregation, preventing Africans from acquiring
I . I I ~in urban areas deemed for whites only. Local authorities were obliged to
~uovidehousing for Africans in separate areas and to supervise African
wttlement in these areas. However, not all urban Africans lived in these
~liunicipaltownships. There were some areas like Alexandra and Sophiatown
111 Johannesburg, Edendale in Pietermaritzburg and Fingo Village in
(irahamstown where Africans had freehold land titles. The Native Laws
Amendment Act of 1937 had halted the expansion of these areas by
prohibiting the sale to Africans by non-Africans of any freehold land around
urban areas. The essential outlines of segregated townships for Africans thus
predated the 1948 election. However, the post-1948 administration was
committed to completing this segregation and eliminating all anomalies. This
policy entailed the first phase of forced removal of urban Africans.
Most removals were from the areas of African freehold land in the centre of
cities w h o e there had been considerable population increase. Sophiatown's
population, for example, grew from 9,500 in 1933 to 61,700 in 1951." After
1948 the government was determined to resite African townships on the outer
edges of cities. The new housing was to be financed by a levy on local
employers. The implementation of these removals was by no means
straightforward. The Johannesburg City Council opposed them and the
government was forced to pass specific legislation in 1954 to compel the
council to destroy the freehold townships of Sophiatown, Martindale,
Newclare and Pageview. Popular local campaigns publicised the removals
and politicised sectors of the community. But the removals went ahead. In
many cities people were evicted and their houses were pulled down. The
removals from Sophiatown were described in this way by an eyewitness:
On the broad belt of grass between the European suburb of
Westdene and Sophiatown a whole fleet of army lorries was drawn
up: a grim sight against the grey, watery sky. Lining the whole
street were thousands of police, both white and black: the former
armed with rifles and revolvers, the latter with the usual assegai.
A few sten guns were in position at various points. . . In the yard
military lorries were drawn up. Already they were piled high with
the pathetic possessions which had come from the row of rooms in
the background. A rusty kitchen stove, a few blackened pots and
74 Forced Removal
pans, bundles of heaven-knows-what, and people soaked, all
soaked to the skin by the drenching rain.41
In Johannesburg new housing was provided for the evicted people in Soweto,
a huge new township to the south west of the city. In the area that had been
Sophiatown houses for whites were built and the area was renamed Triomf
(Triumph). In Pretoria 60,000 people were removed from the townships of
Lady Selborne, Eastwood and highland^.^^ In Durban removals on a similar
scale took place in 1958. Cato Manor was proclaimed a white area and 82,000
Africans were removed to the municipal townships of Umlazi and Kwa-
Mashu. In the Cape the Simonstown township of Luyola was disestablished
in the mid-1960s and 2,000 residents removed to Guguletu.
The rationale for the destruction of the urban African freehold areas lay in
the stricter enforcement of influx control in the 1950s. It was plainly
impossible to confer the status of 'temporary sojourner' on people who owned
land and houses. According to official thinking the urban African population
had to be made as temporary as possible to deter long-term African
settlement in towns. Hence people were forced to rent scarce housing, rather
than buy it, and land ownership rights were abolished. The municipalities,
and afterwards the Administration Boards, had control of all housing in the
new townships.! The new townships allowed for better police and military
control as they had straight roads with easy access to each dwelling.43 The
strategic advantage this gave police and army was seen in the uprisings of
1976 and 1984-6 when armoured vehicles could move through the streets of
townships like Soweto, Sharpeville and Sebokeng gunning down people who
found scant protection in the buildings or streets of the township. The
distance between African townships and white suburbs enables opposition to
be contained without undue disturbance to the white electorate. In 1976-7
and 1984-6 buildings were burning and children were being killed in the
streets of the townships while daily life proceeded as normal a few miles away
in the centres of the cities.(
The new townships also served to divide Africans. Housing was zoned in
accordance with the divisions of the bantustan policy. Particular areas were
assigned to people who were Zulu-speaking, Xhosa-speaking, Sotho-
speaking and so on. Schooling and other amenities were provided on the
same segregated basis. From the mid-1950s, once the African urban
population had been relocated in the new townships in rented accommoda-
tion, and freehold property rights had been abolished, the way was open for
housing to be used as an instrument of influx control. Lack of housing
became the reason given for removing people from the urban areas. As early
as 1958 the government decided to withhold funds from local authorities for
building new African housing. The grounds given were that it was not the
state's task to provide subsidies for African housing in white areas. As a result
the new townships were built by levies on local employers, but this severely
limited the finance available to buy land and build houses.$4
From the beginning, then, the new townships were characterised by
Urban Policy and Forced Removals 75
housing shortages. Shortages became acute from the mid-1960s, when, as
part of the stringent attempt to curtail African urban population growth, a
limit was placed on the extension of African townships outside the
bantustans. From 1967 family housing provision was frozen. Widows,
divorced women, and unmarried mothers were struck off the housing waiting
lists.45 It was commonplace during Soweto funerals for the Administration
Board to move in to repossess a house from a newly widowed woman while
the mourners were still gathered around the ~ o f f i n . ~ T r o1968
m access to
township housing was strictly regulated. People could only occupy township
houses if they had a permit, and permits for family housing were only granted
to men with Section 10(l)(a) or (b) rights who had both work and
dependants. All other people settled in the townships had to find
accommodation in the single-sex hostels, or as lodgers. Until 1979 if a man
had a spell of 30 days' unemployment his permit for family housing could be
cancelled. Only a limited number of houses could be built by Africans who
employed private labour on local authorities' sites, and homes could not be
inherited on the death of a father.47 A man who qualified under Section
10(l)(a) or (b) could not bring his wife into an urban township unless he had
what the pass officials deemed to be suitable accommodation.
These housing regulations, together with the Black Labour Regulations of
the same period, were used in an attempt both to curtail the settlement of
workers in the cities, and to turn the African workforce into a largely migrant
workforce based in the bantustans. ;But despite the harsh housing regulations
people still came illegally to the cities, risking arrest and eviction, because it
was the only chance of a reasonable job and wages above the poverty level.
The 1968 regulations forced a greater proportion of Africans to live in the
bantustans, but they also caused gross overcrowding in the African
townships, and a housing shortage of critical proportions developed.
After the uprisings in the townships of 1976-7 government commissions
were appointed to investigate living conditions of Africans. The Riekert
Commission estimated in 1977 that there was a shortage of 141,000 family
houses outside the bantustans and 126,000 hostel beds for Africans. Inside
the bantustans it was estimated that the housing shortage was 170,000.48One
year later the Urban Foundation estimated that in South Africa as a whole
400,000 houses needed to be built for rural and urban Africans to reduce the
backlog, let alone provide lor future population The Viljoen
Committee of 1981 calculated that the shortage of African housing in urban
areas outside the bantustans was 168,000 while in Soweto alone a backlog of
35,000 houses needed to be built. The committee estimated that houses in
Soweto should be provided at a rate of 4,000 per a n n ~ m . ~InO 1986 a study by
the officially sponsored Building Research Institute concluded that the
housing shortage outside the bantustans amounted to 634,000 houses even
before the pressing needs of the bantustan population were taken into
account. (The total shortage included: African 538,000; Coloured 52,000;
and Indian 44,000.)5'
76 Forced Kemoval
The very existence of the current huge housing shortage shows that even in
the post-Riekert era it has not been government policy to provide the much
needed accommodation. In the past seven years only 7,700 houses in African
urban areas outside the bantustans have been built, and in 1982 government
funds for African housing were reduced.52 In Cape Town the first houses for
a decade were provided in 1981 when 1,359 family houses were converted
from single quarter^.^' The building of Khayelitsha (see below) represents an
acknowledgement by the regime that it is impossible to remove the African
population from the Western Cape. Instead of meeting the problem of the
housing shortage in African townships by building more houses, the
government has adopted a range of other strategies that accorded with the
thinking on apartheid at any particular moment. In the mid-1960s when
family housing in townships was frozen, local authorities were instructed to
build houses in nearby bantustans and have workers commute into urban
areas. Table 11 shows the increasing proportion of funds spent over the
decade 1967-77 on building houses in bantustans. The severe housing
shortage means that people must choose to live in conditions of gross
overcrowding, or move into a house in the bantustans. Someone who moves
to a bantustan will have a house, but will also have to commute up to a
hundred and fifty kilometres or more each day to work. Children born in the
bantustans will lose any residence rights their parents acquired. However
unpalatable this option, many people have been forced to accept a
self-imposed removal: they wake, for example, as commuters from ~ w a ~ w a
to Bloemfontein do, at 3 a.m. and return from work at 9 p.m., paying a
substantial portion of their wages in fares. They are forced to accept the
unacceptable because, through government policy, they have been denied the
basic human need of shelter. As Ignatius Makodi of the Huhudi Civic
Association said of people who moved from Huhudi to Pudimong in
Bophuthatswana 55 kilometres from their work at Vryburg: 'They were glad,
because there was housing at P ~ d i m o n g . ' ~ ~
The overcrowding and insecurity of the new townships bred a fierce spirit
of resistance in the children who grew up in them. ~ l t h o u ~the
h townships
might have been designed to break down local unity, the conditions there
bred a fellowship amongst the people. Local associations began to develop in
the mid-1970s. They constantly raised the issues of the appalling conditions
within townships, and became powerful mobilising organisations able to raise
broader political demands on behalf of the community. For example, in
Cradock, in the Eastern Cape, the Cradock Residents Association (Cradora),
was organised from 1983 on the basis of street committees and mass
participation. After the assassination of Cradora leaders in July 1985 the
community successfully conducted a consumer boycott of white-owned
businesses and was able to force the local Chamber of Commerce to raise at
Cabinet level issues about detentions, poor lighting facilities, and school
boycotts in Cradock. Although the disorganisation of African urban
communities that followed their removal in the mid-1950s was effective for a
decade or so, the intense hardship in the new townships and the
Urban Policy and Forced Removals 77
re-emergence of organised protest led to these very townships producing the
most sustained opposition the regime had yet encountered.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF BANTUSTAN TOWNS
The development and gradual implementation of the bantustan policy from
the mid-1960s was an attempt to exercise political control over subsistence
farmers, and economic control over the supply of cheap labour. Integral to
this attempt was the policy of 'solving the problem' of the permanent African
population in the towns. The influx control regulations of the 1950s failed to
reduce the population in the face of pressures caused by the collapse of the
subsistence agriculture in the bantustan areas and the expansion of
manufacturing industry.
The r e g h i developed its attempted solution in two phases. Firstly there
was the establishment of towns in the bantustans, adjacent to border
industries. It was believed that for the residents of these new towns the
possibility of work in border industries would act against the push to migrate
to 'white' urban areas. However, the development of border industries was
initiated on a very small scale, and later in the decade a second more drastic
policy was devised. This was an attempt not only to halt African migration to
urban areas, but to reverse that which had already taken place. The
bantustan towns of the earlier phase became central to a policy of large-scale
forcible relocation of urban people, through the deproclamation of existing
non-bantustan townships.
This policy had distinct advantages for the regime over the cumbersome
influx control reeulations.
" There was no loss of labour to industrv as workers
were merely changed from short distance to long-distance commuters.
Because people removed to bantustan towns lost those rights, there was no
chance of their accumulating rights under Section 10, and thus posing a
threat of permanent urbanisation. The intractable problems of urban
administration could be relegated to the bantustan administrations, which
became responsible for containing unrest and dissent. The policy of urban
relocation appeared as the solution to a number of problems of housing, local
administration and the threat of large-scale unemployment facing the
administration. In particular it provided a chance to transform long
established urban workers, essential to industry, into rightless migrants. In
the words of demographers sympathetic to current government strategy: 'For
the first time attempts were made to take the urban problems from the central
area to the v e r i ~ h e r v ' . ~ '
L X 2
In the early stages of bantustan development the stress was primarily on
developing towns in the bantustans to attract workers who would otherwise
have migrated to 'White' cities. In 1961-6 the first five-year plan for the
bantustans envisaged that R75.9 million, 66 per cent of the total development
budget for all bantustans, would be spent on creating towns. The first towns
were adjacent to border industries like Garankuwa in the Transvaal and
Zwelitsha in the Eastern Cape, and it was envisaged that they would house
78 Forced Removul
border-industry workers, as well as squatters evicted from urban areas and
rural black spots. In 1960 the urban population of all the bantustans was a
mere 33,486, but a decade later this had increased to 594,420.56In 1960 there
were only three towns in the bantustans excluding the towns of the Transkei;
by 1970 there were 66 and by 1980 there were 88.57By the end of 1985 38,500
houses had been built in 37 new bantustan towns (see Table 11). Between
1961 and 1978 more than R520 million was spent on establishing bantustan
towns.5x
The new towns failed to sidetrack African migration to the major urban
areas. In the period 1960-70 the African urban population outside the
bantustans increased from by between 22 and 30 per cent, according to
various estimates.5"See also Table 6). Drastic measures were required from
the administration to fulfil its aims of 'reversing the tide'. In part these
measures were enacted in the Bantu Labour Regulations Act of 1968, but the
other side of influx control was the actual physical removal of people to
bantustan towns. In the middle of the decade official thinking began to
consider the possibility that bantustan towns could act not only as catchment
areas for the rural surplus population that might have migrated to the cities,
but also as a residential area for people working in 'White' towns adjacent to
bantustans.'jO A strategy of turning settled workers into commuters, of
disestablishing existing townships and forcing people to move into bantus-
tans was formulated. This went hand-in-hand with a use of the housing
shortage in the metropolitan areas to force people into bantustan towns where
the housing was being built.
The Department of Bantu Administration and Development's Circular 27
of 1967, which halted the expansion of existing African townships, initiated
the policy. The circular instructed local authorities that before any new
housing developinents in townships were undertaken local authorities must
obtain permission from the department. This would only be granted if new
developments, like family housing, were imperative, and it was not possible
to provide accommodation in an adjacent bantustan. In addition Africans in
townships henceforth could only rent their houses; anyone wishing to build a
house could do so only in the bantustan 'of their own national unit where they
could also acquire freehold'. Local authorities were encouraged to build
houses in adjacent bantustan township^.^' New townships began to develop.
Mdantsane in the Ciskei was for commuters into the East London area and
Mabopane was for workers in Pretoria. Some local authorities began building
hostels and houses for workers in bantustans considerable distances away.
For example by 1976 the East and West Rand Administration Boards had
built 80,000 houses in the bantustans of the Northern Transvaal, 380
kilometres from the Witwatersrand, and the Administration Boards for the
Orange Free State had built 10,000 houses in the Qwaqwa bantustan, 240
kilometres from B l o e m f ~ n t e i n . ~ ~
In towns next to bantustans entire townships were deproclaimed and the
whole African population forced to move into the bantustan: workers became
commuters and their Section 10 rights disappeared. For example, in 1963 the
Urban Policy and Forced Removals 79
decision was taken to move people from the East London township of
Duncan Village to Mdantsane in the Ciskei; by 1977 82,000 people had been
moved. In the Cape, Oudtshoorn's township was deproclaimed in 1968 and
the one in Noupoort in 1971. In Natal, by 1981 thirteen townships had been
moved into the Kwazulu bantustan: parts of the Durban townships and the
townships of the northern Natal towns of Utrecht, Ladysmith, Dannhauser,
Estcourt and Newcastle, and that of the coastal town, Margate. In the
Transvaal among the townships moved have been those from Nylstroom,
Naboomspruit, Ellisras, Vaalwater and Louis Trichardt (relocated in
Venda); those from Pietersburg and Potgietersrus (relocated in Lebowa); and
from Rustenburg (relocated in Bophuthatswana). Many more townships are
under threat. It was calculated in 1983 that throughout the Republic 730,000
people had been forced to move through the policy of deproclaiming
townships, and that a further 184,000 people were under threat of removal.63
In some cases of deproclamation people have not been physically removed.
The boundaries of bantustans have been redrawn so that they include
existing African townships. In Durban the township of KwaMashu was
decreed part of the Kwazulu bantustan in 1977. Without actually moving the
people of these townships lost their Section 10 rights. Thus none of the
benefits of the amendments to the Urban Areas Act applied to them. They
could not move from one urban area to another, or work without
registration.'j4
T o encourage movement out of existing townships the administration
initially gave assurances that people with Section 10 rights could live in
bantustan towns without sacrificing their South African citizenship or rights
to live outside the b a n t ~ s t a n s But
. ~ ~ children born in a bantustan town lost
residence rights their parents may have preserved. Indeed, after the
'independence' of a bantustan residence rights may not confer any status. For
example many people who moved from the locations of Pretoria to
Garankuwa, 30 kilometres away in Bophuthatswana, preserved their Section
10 rights and were given houses on the basis of this. However after the
'independence' of Bophuthatswana in 1977 the bantustan authorities decreed
that only those declared 'citizens' of the bantustan had rights to land and
housing. Many who did not fulfil this condition had settled in Garankuwa
and Winterveld, and they were forced to move. They were finally relocated in
a new town 50 kilometres away from Pretoria at Soshanguve, which was
placed under the direct jurisdiction of the Department of Co-operation and
De~elopment.~~
The 1986 legislation on influx control, which replaced Section 10 as control
on entry to the urban labour market with access to accommodation and a
narrow definition of citizenship, will limit the type of work available to
people who have accepted housing in the so-called 'independent' bantustans
(see Chapter 2). They are likely to be deemed aliens and severely restricted in
terms of the jobs and working conditions they can secure. They are subject to
harassment and eviction, similar to that carried out under the pass laws. In
February 1987 it was reported that 500 workers had been sent back to the
80 Forced Kemoval
Transkei bantustan after raids on workplaces by officials looking for 'alien'
workers in the Cape. 67
The result of the policy of urban deproclamation was that by 1970, 197
'white' towns reported a decrease in African population, and 15 of the largest
urban African communities were in the bantustans. By 1976, 86 bantustan
towns had been proclaimed. In the period 1966-71, R12 1.5 million was spent
on urban development in the bantustans (74.7 per cent of the total bantustan
development budget). The plan was to build 93,380 houses in 61 new
towns.6x The population growth in the new towns was phenomenal. For
example in Umlazi, where some of Durban's township residents were moved,
the population increased from 12 1,600 in 1970 to 172,550 in 1979, a growth
of 42 per cent. In Garankuwa, where people from Pretoria's locations were
moved, the population grew by 96 per cent during 1970-79, from 42,554 to
83,196. In Mabopane over the same period there was a 488 per cent
population increase from 15,000 in 1970 to 88,190 in 1976.69In 1981 it was
estimated that the population of these bantustan towns, including squatters
who had no formal accommodation, was in excess of 2 million.70 A recent
study of Botshabelo, a town established in the area designated for the
Qwaqwa bantustan in the last decade, estimates that the population grew
from 64,000 in 1979 to 200,000 in 1983 to 420,000 in 1986.71 It must be
remembered that these huge concentrations of people have been fostered in
areas where there is little or no infrastructural development, where water and
sewerage are minimal, shops scarce, entertainment and public facilities
non-existent.
The removal of people to bantustan towns has led to a huge increase in the
numbers of people who commute very long distances to work daily. In 1970
an estimated 290,000 Africans commuted from bantustans and this had
increased to 638,000 by 1979.72Table 12 shows the number of commuters
from each bantustan. It can be seen that the largest number of commuters
come from the bantustans adjacent to major industrial areas, like
Bophuthatswana and Kwazulu. However even bantustans far from any major
industrial centre, like Lebowa and Kangwane, have many thousands of
commuters.
The state has given huge subsidies to the bus companies which transport
commuters to and from the bantustans. The local Administration Boards also
contributed a portion of the revenues they raised from selling liquor to
township residents. In 1973 buses run by the Corporation for Economic
Development (an arm of the Bantu Affairs Department) were costing R34
million. By 1976 this had risen to Rl10 million and by 1982 to R230 million.
In 1971 official planners believed it was feasible to transport people daily
between points 113 kilometres apart, and weekly between points 650
kilometres apart.73 While this may indeed be feasible, the human cost is
enormous. Workers rise before dawn and return towards midnight. They
sleep on the buses. They hardly see their families and even with state
subsidies they pay a significant proportion of their wages in fares. In 1982 it
was estimated that an average commuter spent R3 per week to get LO work
Urban Policy and Forced Removals 81
from a bantustan, and some workers spent as much as R5 per week, because
of the longer distances they travelled.74 The average African wage in 1982
was calculated by the Afrikaanse Handels-Instituut, a semi-official research
body, as R241 per month.75This meant that on average commuters from the
bantustans were spending between 5 per cent and 8 per cent of their weekly
wages on fares.
The alternative to these punishing journeys is to look for work in the
bantustans. The intense competition for jobs means that employers can pay
lower wages than those paid elsewhere in South Africa. It is these wage rates
that the South African authorities hope will tempt foreign investors to set up
plants in the bantustans, thus further entrenching and justifying the urban
removals. For example, in the Ciskei bantustan in the years 1981-2 industrial
investment nearly doubled from R32 million to R63 million, although the
total number of jobs available was only 7,700. Dimbaza, where one of the
first films of the horrors of the relocation camps was made in 1972, was ten
years later an industrial town with 37 factories, many with foreign owners.
The attraction for many investors is not only the interest-free loans and cash
rebates provided by Pretoria, but also the fact that the labour legislation
protecting workers does not apply in the bantustans, there is no minimum
wage, and trade unions face considerable barriers in attempting to establish
collective bargaining machinery. The wages at Dimbaza, for example, are
about half of those paid in East London, not many miles away, but outside
the bantustan. People are prepared to work for such low pay because there is
no alternative employment. The population of the Ciskei was 666,000 in
1982, and the 7,700 industrial jobs available meant there would be no labour
shortage, even when wages and work conditions were most e ~ p l o i t a t i v e . ~ ~
Living conditions in bantustan towns are bleak. For example the people of
the Kenton-on-Sea location in the Eastern Province were given eleven days
notice of their removal to Glenmore in the Ciskei. They had lived in
Kenton-on-Sea for 25 years. 77 By contrast with the community they had
built up there, Glenmore has been described as 'row upon row of identical
wooden houses stretching into the distance'. Gungutu Zakhe outlined the
despair of life in the settlement which was portrayed in 1979 as a new model
township:
We are being dumped here very much against our will-only to
die. People are starving. Only last week a young Gqalotha Seto
died in his initiation school. It was found he had not eaten for
days. We had to bury him . . . You only find five people at a
service because they are hungry and do not have enough energy to
go to church.78
The stories of great hardship in Glenmore are repeated for many of the newly
established bantustan towns to which people have been removed. Bot-
shabelo, due to be incorporated into the Qwaqwa bantustan and 55
kilometres east of Bloemfontein, was established when people were evicted
from squatter settlements in the area designated part of the Bophuthatswana
82 Forced Removal
bantustan. It is intensely overcrowded because of its huge growth in
population. Lack of land for housing was so critical in 1985 that 30,000
people moved to the outskirks of the town and claimed their own stands.
Sewage disposal is by bucket; water is piped to a handful of communal taps.
There are no health facilities other than mobile clinics manned by army
doctors. One man, driven out of Bophuthatswana into Botshabelo, told
reporters: 'We were being hounded and our cattle were impounded by Bop
cops. But conditions aren't better here. We are ~tarving.'~'
As people became aware of some of the political consequences of removal
to bantustan towns, resistance developed. The most successful campaign of
this type was carried out by the people of the Ekangala township on the East
Rand, set up next to an industrial 'deconcentration' point at Ekindustria. It
was scheduled for incorporation into the Kwandebele bantustan in spite of
earlier promises to the contrary. When Kwandebele was scheduled for
'independence' in 1986, the prospect of incorporation was even more
vehemently opposed. The Ekangala Action Committee organised protest
meetings, and a memorandum signed by over one thousand households was
sent to the government stating that as urban people they rejected the
bantustan system and feared they would be persecuted for this. Despite
state-vigilante action and terrorisation of members of the Action Committee,
their opposition continued. It contributed to the decision in 1986 by the
Kwandebele authorities to shelve their plans to accept independence.80
Another long-sustained campaign by a community against incorporation
into a bantustan was waged by the people of Lamontville, near Durban,
when it was re-zoned as part of the Kwazulu bantustan. For months there
were attacks by the community on police stations and police vehicles.
Children boycotted schools; meetings and demonstrations were held in which
people vehemently expressed their opposition to incorporation into Kwazulu.
The police responded with great brutality, killing demonstrators and
detaining activists, but opposition to incorporation has not been broken. To
date Lamontville remains outside the bantustan structure. In other areas
protest on a smaller scale people has won significant gains. In 1964 the people
of Fingo Village, the Grahamstown location, rejected plans to move them to
Committees Drift in the Ciskei. In 1970 when Fingo Village was declared a
Coloured area a resollltion of all freeholders was submitted to M C Botha,
Minister of Bantu Administration and Development, rejecting this. A
referendum voted by 647 to 65 against the move. Further deputations to
various government officials finally resulted in a partial reprieve. Freeholders
could remain near Grahamstown in the township of Makana Kop, although
tenants had to move.81
In many areas resistance has been strengthened by the stand of other black
communities. The refusal of the Indian community to move into St
Wrndolin's, where they would have gained housing once the township was
dcproclaimed, has already been described. Coloured residents of East
laondon, who were due to settle in Duncan Village after the African
~'opulation had been moved into the Ciskei town of Mdantsane, stated:
Urban Policy and Forced Removals 83
We are entirely against the removal. The blacks are our brothers.
We have lived with them. We played with them. We grew up
with them and now the Government wants to separate us. We
won't move into their houses if they are moved.82
In Huhudi the community's civic association also worked against divisions
amongst residents in order to ensure maximum unity in the face of the
threatened move to Bophuthatswana. The Huhudi Civic Association worried
that residents without Section 10 rights would be labelled 'illegal', and be
evicted and forced to move to ~ u d i m o nin~ the bantustan: it therefore
worked to get all residents registered as part of a community-wide struggle
against deproclamation and rem0val.~3The organisation of the 14,000
residents and their persistent resistance led to a significant victory in October
1984, when the original removal orders were c a n ~ e l l e d . ~ ~
Communities have learned to be constantly vigilant about Administration
Board changes, aware that slight shifts in policy might signal the beginning of
a move towards deproclamation and removal to a bantustan. In 1985 in
Sibongile township, outside Dundee in northern Natal, on the borders of the
~ w a z u l ubantustan, residents launched a campaign against the increase in
rents. They pointed out that rent increases would bring evictions which
would force people into the townships of Kwazulu. The protest was
successful and both the rent increases and the removal were delayed.85
In sum, then, the policy of urbanisation in the bantustans had two aspects.
The first was to establish towns close to the development centres of 'White'
South Africa, where industrial workers would be available for wage
employment, but still contained within bantustans, and therefore because of
high unemployment willing to accept low wages. The second aspect was to
establish a trading, administrative, and professional class, essential if
bantustans were to attempt to live up to the fiction of 'self-g0vernment'.~6In
both aspects the regime has had some successes, but they must be seen in
conjunction with its failures: continued large-scale evasion of influx control
and the very small number of people willing to co-operate in maintaining the
facade of bantustan 'independence'.
State demographers doubted in 1981 whether the process of decreasing the
African urban population was proving worth the cost to the government.
They pointed out that in an age of high fuel costs the mass transport
programmes involved might not appear attractive. In subsequent years such
doubts seem to have affected policy. The new leasehold rights and house
buying policy has meant that house-building in older townships is now
unfrozen, and to some extent there is less incentive to move to bantustan
t0wns.~7In addition the threat of removal has proved a potent focus for
community organisation and resistance within townships like Oukasie near
Brits, Huhudi in the Northern Cape and Sibongile in Northern Natal, to
name only a few. These are probably some of the factors behind the Cabinet's
decision in May 1985 to abandon some of the programme of forced removal
to bantustan towns. The Department of Co-operation and Development
84 Forced Removul
issued a list of 52 townships which were no longer threatened with removal.
These included Atteridgeville and Mamelodi in Pretoria and the Bloemfon-
tein townships.88.
However, the reprieves for these townships in no way indicate that
removals from urban townships are at an end, or that the strategy of
developing large urban areas in the bantustans for commuter labour has been
abandoned. From 1980 the residents of the Old Location at Brits were forced
by a variety of direct and indirect pressures to move to a new township in a
resettlement area bordering Bophuthatswana, Lethlabile. The pressures
intensified from 1985. No new houses were built in the Brits location; if a
landlord moved to Lethlabile, in return for a lump sum in compensation, all
his tenants' homes were demolished and the site frozen for new development;
from 1980 to 1986 people from the Brits location could not bury their dead in
the local cemetery, but had to go to Lethlabile. People active in the Brits
Action Committee which is organising the popular resistance to the removal
had their homes attacked, and many members of the Action Committee were
detained when the State of Emergency was declared in June 1986.89 In
October 1986 the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning
deproclaimed the Old Location, transforming the 10,000 remaining residents
into illegal squatters. Despite petitions and delegations from community
groups, trade union and employer representatives, the Minister refused to
reverse his decision. At the end of 1986 officials and police visited the
township checking documents; the people believed this to be a prelude to
forced removal.
Although the destruction of old-established African townships was a
feature of the 1950s, it reappeared in the mid-1980s. In Langa township, near
Uitenhage, houses bordering the suburb of the town designated for whites
were bulldozed in 1986, some at dead of night with troops working with
council officials by floodlight. The people were forced at gunpoint to take
their possessions to tents erected for them in the township of K ~ a N o b u h l e . ~ O
In the African township near the Eastern Cape town of Despatch residents
were given 24 hours' notice in September 1986 to move to KwaNobhule.
Eight hours later trucks arrived accompanied by armed municipal police and
the people were forced to pack up their possessions. The removal took place
at a time when the leaders of the civic association were in detention. In July
1986 the George Municipality notified the 3,000 residents of the old
settlement at Lawaaikamp that they had to move to a new township at
Sandkraal by 3 1 December. The new area is a 'site and service' scheme where
residents must build their own houses. A squatter settlement next to
Lawaaikamp was bulldozed in April and police raided the township
repeatedly during 1986, harassing and intimidating the residents. All these
new urban removals appear linked to local white fears of black militancy and
the regime's strategy to throw a military cordon sanitaire around the
townships.
The rationale for these new forced removals interlocks with the changes in
influx control and the industrial decentralisation programme. It envisages
Urban Policy and Forced Removals 85
major population growth in the bantustan towns, because they are the areas
where housing will be made available to Africans. Towns like Ekangala and
Botshabelo, not yet incorporated into any bantustan, may be granted
autonomous status as city states. For the regime, the pressures forcing people
into townships excised from 'White' South Africa are an attempt both to curb
the political militancy of the townships, to create large labour pools for
decentralised industrial concerns and to curb the growth of black trade
unions.91
Although the limited reprieve concerning township deproclamations
represented a victory in the battle against urban deproclamations and
removals of this type for some, the many people affected by these removals
still face a long struggle. Those who have been forced into the bantustans
have to face the often brutal actions of the local administrations: these include
continuing attempts to marginalise them in relation to the major areas of
economic growth, to undermine their political organisations and to deprive
them of rights of residence and free movement outside the bantustans and
access to full South African citizenship. They have to confront daily the
appalling living conditions, the long journeys to work and the lower wages
paid in local jobs. Although the regime partially halted one form of forced
removal because the cost to it was too high, the legislation that allowed for
these removals was not repealed and no compensation was contemplated to
redress the consequences of the removals that have been inflicted on
hundreds of thousands. Moreover, the strategy of urban forced removal
continues to be used to attempt to enforce military control over uprisings or
threatened resistance in urban areas, as seems the case in Brits, and to
maintain its regional development programme, on which rests its hope of
economic revival and re-established political authority.
SQUATTERS
One result of government urban policy has been that housing shortages have
become endemic in cities. In the face of the complete lack of municipal or
Administration Board housing thousands of urban people built their own
homes on waste land or on land rented from local landowners. The squatter
movements of the 1940s succeeded in persuading local authorities to provide
squatters with housing and as the township consolidation of the 1950s and
early 1960s took place squatters were allocated homes in the new
conglomerate townships. But the restrictions on township house-building
programmes, initiated in the late 1960s, coupled with the enormous pressures
on people from the rural areas seeking work in the cities, led to a resurgence
of squatting in the 1970s. By the end of the decade virtually every South
African city had its satellite squatter settlement, and here some of the most
vicious removals have taken place. The regime has sought time and again to
evict the communities, destroy the housing they had constructed themselves,
and hound people back to bantustans.
The squatter settlements of the Western Cape have become internationally
86 Forced Removal Urban Policy and Forced Removals 87

Ik~~own. Here the housing shortage was acute because the enforcement of the
(:oloured Labour Preference Policy had meant that no new municipal
Ilousing for Africans was built at all between 1966 and 1981. From 1972 to
1980, despite the lack of formal accommodation, the African population of
the region increased by 62.9 per cent from 108,827 to 183,360; the African
l>opulation in 1984 was estimated as 229,000.92
Before the attacks on squatters of mid-1986 there were four main squatter
settlements around Cape Town. Crossroads, with an estimated population of
40,000, grew up in 1975 as an emergency site for people evicted by inspectors
l'rom makeshift accommodation in several sites around the peninsula.
Originally established with the consent of the local authorities, it began to
attract residents from the townships who were tired of overcrowded lodgings
and many women who came to try to work in the cities but could not find
hostel accommodation. When the squatter settlements at Modderdam,
Unibel, and Werkgenot were destroyed in police raids, the people living
there moved to Crossroads. The other settlements of the Peninsula were
KTC with approximately 1,000 residents, where followers of one of the
Crossroads community leaders moved after disputes about rights to remain in
the area; Nyanga Bush, with 2,000 people living on sand dunes after they
were evicted from the township of Langa; and Nyanga Extension with about
300 families who were forced to move by evictions from a township at Hout
B~v.'~
Although international attention has focused on the squatter communities
of Cape Town, those around Durban are far more extensive. A study in 1983
estimated that the numbers of squatters in the region grew at a rate of 10 per
cent per annum from 1966 to 1979. In 1984 the head of the Natal-Kwazulu
planning council estimated there were 1 million people living in informal
settlements around Durban, and that their numbers would grow to 3 million
by the year 2000.Y4A year later estimates of this population ranged around
the level of 1.25 million in 35 informal settlement^.^^ The majority of these
squatter settlements are in the areas around Durban that are officially
designated part of the Kwazulu bantustan. The workers, without Section 10
rights, form a huge pool of labour for local employers who can exploit the
workers' legal status by paying low wages without jeopardising their readv
access to labour.
In the Natal towns of Pietermaritzburg, Newcastle, Richards Bay and Port
Shepstone, and along the coast, squatters have also established a precarious
existence.
1
In the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging area there are two types of
squatter settlements. Some, like Winterveld, lie within a bantustan from
which people commute to work. Others are adjacent to existing townships,
such as are found near Alexandra Township, Katlehong, Evaton, Soweto and
Grasmere, where the majority of people have Section 10 rights. At Katlehong
squatters have been living in the backyards of legal tenants under constant
threat of removal, and in Munsieville 2,000 to 3,000 squatters are in a similar
situation. In 1980 the population of Winterveld was estimated to be
88 Forced Removal

300,000-400,000, but later studies have suggested figures of 1 million and

that the population may well exceed this.96
In the Orange Free State town of Thaba Nchu a squatter community of
several thousand, with numbers swelled by evicted farm workers, put up
housing in the area called Kromdraai. After negotiations between central
government and bantustan leaders of Qwaqwa and Bophuthatswana the
entire commumnity was relocated at Onverwacht in the Qwaqwa bantustan.
Around Bloemfontein on white-owned smallholdings, squatter communities
have also mushroomed.
The regime's response to the development of the squatter communities has
been c ~ & ~ l e In
x . non-bantustan areas there seem to have been three phases:
first, turning a blind eye, then eradication, and finally removal to new
townships. But the end of one phase in one area does not automatically mean
that a general end of that phase has come in the whole country. It appears
that, as in much urban policy and in currently planned urban removals, there
is still considerable debate and no uniform position on squatters has been
evolved. In the Western Cape, for ten years from the mid 1960s the squatter
settlements were left relatively unmolested, save for occasional pass raids, or
evictions by landowners. But in 1976, mass evictions took place at Unibel and
Modderdam as part of the regime's response to the uprising of that year in
which the Cape Town townships participated. The Minister of Community l h e centre of Cape Town, after the dernolztton of Lhstrlct SII Photo: Caroltn Sch~rren
Development announced that local authorities had been given powers to clear
the squatter areas. These powers derived from orders for removal by the
Minister which, once published in the Government Gazette, meant that people
could be moved to any place and that no court could prevent the removal.97
From that date the Cape local authorities began a campaign against squatters,
bulldozing houses, moving families and scouring the peninsula by helicopter
to spot camps.98 In 1980 local authorities were given the right to destroy
squatter settlements outside their own municipal borders, although only
authorities in the C a ~ eand Transvaal had used these bv 1986.99
~ -
2

Terrible attacks took place against the people of the large squatter
communities first at Modderdam and Unibel and then at Crossroads, Nyanga
and KTC. In 1978 the Cape National Party congress debated the squatter
settlements and the government announced tha; Crossroads could not be
tolerated, and that it would move to eradicate the settlement.100From that
date the level of attack, eviction, and demolition of homes rose markedly.
Special riot squads were sent into the area as popular resistance grew. In July
1981 an attempt was made to demolish Nyanga. Nine hundred and two cases
were brought against people arrested during the evictions; 2,452 children
were taken to gaol with their parents; 3,600 squatters were evicted from the
Western Cape, although 41 per cent had been in Cape Town more than ten
years and 95 per cent of the men and 84 per cent of the women were in waged
employment. lo'
The following year over 1,000 were arrested at Nyanga. Those who had
been born in the Transkei were held incommunicado at Pollsmoor Prison and L)emonstration against the establishrnenr of segregated towndrlps, V e r ~ e n e i n1959.
~ The leading banner reads ' W e
want to 1iwe together with people of all races'.
then deported as 'aliens' to the Transkei bantustan under the Admission of
 ---
ANC Meerrng !?I Soph~atou,n,1956, rn protest at the destrlr~rrotrof the townslrrp and Jorcea renzovar ro Jozclero
Photo' Ell Wetnberg 1 5 1 , ~r o d , Johannesburg Photo ELI Weinberg

Qlrelrrngro ~ I I ,rent
' under the S U ~ C T L ' I S ~~Of ~t m n s h i ppolri~'at district offices, S O Q P ~'984.
O Queurng outside a labour burearr for pass endorsements and work. Photo: Eli IVelnberg
I-'horo: Natrg. l ) ~ ~ e l I - M ~ ~ K e n n c ~
Wuttz~lgfo buy wufer ar Bor~l~uhrlo,
1982. Plrofo: Nuncj~1)urrell-Jlsk'ennu
 Urban Polzcy und Forced Kemovuls 89

I,, 1 ,I8 I* I 111 I:(.IIIII)IIL. Act. Koad blocks were set up along the Transkei
I ... 1 1 1 1 ~ 11 1 1 , . 10 III(.VC.III ~)eo~>Ic
returning.lo2 These attacks were so ruthless
I 1, I 1 11111 \)I.IIc.\ ~.ol1gressmanwho witnessed some of the Nyanga

I 11 I! II .I\.(.IIC.CI ;I[>OLII the world and I have never been so shaken

1 5 , ( , , I < lo!

I I .I '1 11.11 \ 1')s ( I Ilc N'csrern Cape Administration Board repeatedly tried to
.I. I I I Ill ,.,I I I C . ~ ~arl cKTC.
~ ~ t Although shacks were flattened and hundreds
t q , I, a I vt , ~ I I I ( . 1~.111rlicd
ro the site and rebuilt their homes. The authorities
., D, I I I ;~llow1,500 families who qualified under the pass laws to
1, t c 1
, . 1 1 1 l 1 I I I\ I ( .. 1 ° 1 I ~ L in
1 I ~ 1984 as the population of KTC swelled, with
I .. ' 1 ' I 11'' \ 1111:1 0 I Ilc sire from Crossroads, further demolitions took place. In
a

I I,, 1 1 1 . I .I \ IIIOIIIIIS 0 1 1984 more squatter houses were demolished in the

'\ I , I I (~ , 1 1 1 , . I ~ I ; I I I in the wholc of 1983. Houses were demolished at an
, .1 I , 1 1 1 ( 1 1 . I X . X pcr day,and the total number of demolitions by July

, , ,, l 1 , , 1 :,, ,' 111 the space of four weeks, 28 May to 2 July, 1,024 homes
, c 1 , 1 1 1 , b l ~ , . l ~ ;]I ~ . ~Nyanga,
l Crossroads and KTC.lo6 AS the camps were
I # I 1 1 1 , . . I , I;, llic clderly, and small children were left exposed to the
t x

. 1 1 1 1 , I 1 1 1 1 1 1 I I C I S lost their children in the confusion; possessions were

I , 1 I 1 I I 121I hc height of the raids the people of KTC would rise before
I 11 1 . 1 1 r ~ I O L V I ~[heir own shelters, bury their possessions, and go off to
1 I , . 1 1 , 1 1 1 . 1 1 111gthat it was the best strategy in the face of repeated raids.
I : I1 , 1 1 , I \ ~ I c IaLmember I, of the Nyanga Bush Committee told a Cape Times
, . l b e s l 1 , 1 . I ~ I I I I I I honlc of the effects of the constant raids:
I 111. l~.,,l>lc
don't want trouble. They just want to talk. When
19, I I I I I ( . ;ll>l>calto the board inspectors to stop raiding, they say the
I , ~ , \ . ( . 111licnr
I has sent them. Children are sleeping in the open.
\ \ ' I I ( . I I ljcople return from work, they find their houses are gone.
I \ \ ( I c-l~~lclrcn aged two and four were lost for two weeks after a
I I I t.111 r-;lid whilc their mother was at work.Io7

I 1 1 , another committee member, said starkly: 'The raids are

( ,LVI~I~;I,

I I I I Noljocly can live like this'.Io8

1111
1 1 1 111,. ' I ' ~ - ; ~ ~ ~ the s v a initial
al 'blind eye' period ended in 1982. The East
1 ' 1 1 I,! ,.\tl~~~~lriatration Board evicted the squatters of Katlehong to the
1, a I ~ ~ 01 tear-gas,
~ ~ baton ~ .charges~ and~ arrests.
~ ~ At~ Grasmere,
~ ~ near c ~ ~ ~
l ~ t l ~ . ~ ~ ~ ~LOO ~ ( squatters
. , . I ~ ~ ~were
s g , arrested in January 1984 in an early
1 1 1 . ' 1 11111,: I ;IICI, ~;ikento a specially convened court and sentenced to one
1 ~ 1 1 1 1 ~ 1 1 I ( 1 1 1 : 1 ~ \ ' imprisonment or RlOO for squatting illegally, although many

.. I . I \ \ , 1 1 1 111): [lousing allocated to them in Sebokeng township and many

.I I I . \ L 1 . 1 (. Icg;~llyin the area, having been recruited as farm labourers. lov
1,

, 8 1 ~ ~ . ~ ~111 ~ ~bantustans
. ~ . . fare no better. Usually the raids and attacks are
1 1 . 1 1 1 1 . I 1 ~ , 1 1 l , l ( . ~lccmcdto be in the wrong population group for the area. For
' W e will nor go to Iihayelitsha'. Poster used in rhe Cape Torc'n campaign against forced removal ro Khayelirsha, . 11111 . I I I I I ~ . I < I . ; I S ~ U S settlement in Bophuthatswana, the police raided
111
1 985-6.
90 Forced Kemoz~ul
every two days, hounding those not deemed to belong to the bantustan,
particularly people from the Transkei and the Ciskei. In the police attacks
windows and doors were broken with steel bars, and those who could not
bribe the police were arrested with their children and taken off to prison.
They were only released after paying admission of guilt fines of R30. A man
whose wife was raped during one such raid told a journalist:
We cannot afford the bribe. So most of us, including women, flee
to the veld and sleep there. We go to our respective places of
employment the next day without having washed. It's terrible. I
feel like dying rather than living like this.Il0
Because of' the precarious nature of life in thc squatter camps unscrupulous
entrepreneurs can mercilessly exploit the people's needs. Landowners charge
extortionate rents. Even municipalities make high charges for minimal
services. For example Crossrcads residents in 1984 were paying R7 per
month in service fees for garbage and sewage collection and water provision
although only 20 water taps served the population of close on 540,000."' In
some settlements water is sold. For example cafe owners and entrepreneurs
in the squatter settlements of GaRankuwa and Winterveld north of Pretoria
have sold water to people at R2 a drum, roughly 200 litres.112 The diseases of
poverty such as cholera, typhoid, fatal gastro-enteritis and pneumonia
resulting from polluted water supplies and lack of protection from the cold
are common in squatter settlements, while almost unknown amongst white
South Africans and residents of established townships.113
Conditions at Winterveld in Bophuthatswana were described in a report by
the Diocese of Pretoria:
Most dwellings are of corrugated iron, mud bricks or packing
cases obtained from the factories . . . Houses vary in size from one
to six rooms. Because of uncertainty of tenure these shacks are
built in such a way that they can easily be dismantled and moved
elsewhere. No running water, electricity or sewage system is
provided. . . In some cases boreholes are contaminated from
toilets. The incidence of deficiency diseases-kwashiorkor, sca-
bies-and malnutrition is high. Infant mortality is around 10 per
cent in the first year; something evident in the lines of small
graves in the cemetery. Other common afflictions are TB,
gastro-enteritis and alcoholism. "4
Resistance to removal in the squatter settlements takes a number of different
forms. Firstly there is the open anger of the residents as their homes are
destroyed. Angry women have shouted at the board employees, heavily
protected by police, who tear down their houses. During the raids on KTC in
July 1984 women danced and sang hymns in protest for hours on end as the
officials backed by armed police tore down their ~helters."5 Police and
Development Board vehicles have frequently been stoned as they raid the
camps. Given the high level of harassment squatters are subjected to it is not
Urban Policy and Forced Removals 91
..III Im\lnl: that it has been from Crossroads that some of the grenade attacks
,111tl gtl~llircat police came during the State of Emergency of 1985-6.
' I ' l ~ csecond form of squatters' protest is simply to refuse to move: to suffer
I 11,. clc\lruction of their homes time and time again, and then to rebuild and
, ~ F I I I I I I living
~ I ~ in the area. This attitude was summed up by a resident of
I i ' I ' ( : 111 August 1984 after suffering many demolitions throughout the cold
\ V I I I I C I months:
I'cople are fed up. They all said they were going nowhere. They
said they had already crossed the winter and the demolitions
would not worry them. . . instead of getting tired the raids are
giving the people more power to stay every day. People say they
will die here instead of moving.U6
I o underpin their status as a settled community many of the Cape
.(.I I lcmcnts had community organisations, schools built by local people and a
.II I )11g neighbourhood spirit.
I{III the limits on both these forms of resistance were shown in late May
I ' , X O whcn in three days of intense fighting the satellite settlements around
4 I-ohsroads-Portland Cement and Nyanga Bush-were destroyed by vigi-
I . I I I I C S acting with police and military back-up. The divisions within the
, I , ~ ~ ~ r n u nwere i t y ruthlessly exploited by the authorities. On the one hand,
,I I ; I I I I I y within Old Crossroads among long-established Section 10 qualifiers,
111c.l-cwere supporters of Johnson Ngxobongwana who from 1979, as
, I~;~~l-rnan of the Crossroads Committee, had raised considerable levies and
I l . ~liom ~ ~ sthe community, while organising the communities into wards,
, - . 1 c - I 1 with its own official. On the other hand, strongly based in the
c ~ohsroads satellite communities were supporters of the Cape Youth
( .ollgr.ess (CAYCO) and the various women's organisations which had taken
he issue of illegal residents in the squatter settlements and resisted
. I ~ ~ c . ~tol ~divide p t ~ Section 10 qualifiers from illegals. Although the two
, : I I I [ Ihad ~ S had periods of intense and violent confrontation they had also
, I F ol?crated, particularly in a campaign against rent increases in late 1985.Il7
I lowever, the unity was fragile and in an attempt to eliminate the
, ~ t , ~ ~ ~ o corganisationsra~ic in Crossroads, Ngxobongwana, in co-operation
, V I I 11 thc police and army, armed his henchmen and set them to attack the
~rc,llirecamps. Forty eight people were killed, despite resistance organised
I ,\, I I I C youth and the women's organisations, and 30,000 made homeless. The
1 , 1 1 1 111-outruins of homes were bulldozed and regulations issued under the
, , I . I I C01- Emergency powers prevented residents returning to their homes to
,(-I l.111ntheir possessions. People who for years had resisted removal to
I.:I~.~vclitsha were forced to seek food and shelter at emergency camps there.
I I I l1c.1.5 who sheltered in church halls and a Red Cross depot were raided by
, l ~ ~ l who ~ c c arrested illegals to send them to bantustans. Only an emergency
i I I I, . I - ~ I L . I prevented a similar destruction of the KTC community. According
1 , ) , 1 1 1 ; I I I I i-removals campaigner, the destruction of sections of Crossroads was
 Rural Removals 93
92 Forced Removul

the cheapest removal for the government both in political and

economic costs. Politically the government has kept its hands
clean. And thc disaster has been seen as an act of so-called
black-on-black violence. In economic terms . . . the people of
Cape Town and all others who have donated money and given
support, have footed the bill for the devastation.I1x
The regime's present outlook on the squatters is confused, as is discussed in
Chapter 5. On the one hand there is the desire to eradicate all the
communities and move people either to bantustans or into official townships
like Khayelitsha. On the other hand they see the potential of the low cost,
self-built housing of the squatter communities being a possible solution to the
housing shortages, hence the armed support for Ngxobongwana and the Old
Crossroads community. However, as the debates on policy continue many
squatters suffer intense harassment. According to Timo Bezuidenhout, the
Cape Town local official of the Department of Co-operation and Develop-
ment, 'The government will not allow its will to be defied by a group of
people. . .'I1' For defying the will of the regime the squatters of Crossroads
were brutally attacked and their community virtually destroyed. However
Timo Bezuidenhout himself resigned in 1986, unable to continue with the
ruthless destruction of homes. But in many areas the squatters' will to remain
has worn down the policy of brutal force. Now the regime is desperately
seeking to accommodate those squatters whom they perceive as tractable and
conservative.
CHAPTER 4
Rural removals
I IN.IC.
have been three main forms of forced removals from the land: the
1 \ 1, I ~ O I I of labour tenants and farm workers; the dispossession of peasants
I ~ I I O I I ~ I 'hetterment' I and other land allocation schemes in the bantustans;
. I I I ~ I lllc seizure of freehold land in 'black spots'. The first two categories
1 1 11 - t l ; ~ ~ the c first period of National Party rule during the 1950s although,
(1 1 1 11 S O I T ~ Cnotable exceptions in the case of betterment, their most evident
1,10\c.c.111ion came at the end of the second period (the 1960s) and the
I ~ : I I I I of
3( I ~the
I I ~third period (the 1970s). Black-spot removals have been
1 . . , I ( 1;lrcd with the course of the bantustan programme in the second and
1 I l l 1,I I~II~SCS.
\V'l~ilca comprehensive history of twentieth century South African farming
I 1 I I I ~ I I I I Sto be written it is clear from the initial studies that have been done
111.11 Iorccd removals in the countryside are largely the result of the
G 1 0 \ c.lol~ncntof capitalist commercial agriculture. Increasing mechanisation
I I I I \vl~ilc-ownedfarms from the mid-1950s and the reduction in the number
3 1.11 111s has in the long term meant a smaller demand for African farm labour
II I I IIL.I-cmovalof farm workers through mass eviction. This trend has by no
11

1 1 1 0 . I I I \ Iwcn uniform, which accounts in part for the regional differences in

CONCLUSION I 1 1 1 1):lc.cand scale of forced removals from farms. The attempt to develop

The four forms of removal that have resulted from the regime's urban policy % ' 5 ~ oriented ~ 1 ~ farming sectors through betterment schemes in the baritu-
represent attempts to enforce segregation and division in all phases of policy, I. I I I I ~ I S had similar results. Long-established peasant subsistence communi-
I,?

to turn the workforce into a migrant one by expelling people long settled in 111 . II;IVC bcen uprooted and forced to move to make way for highly
townships to bantustans in the phases from 1960, and to prevent the growth I 1 1 l,.~,l~\cd commercial farmers with ready access to credit, marketing boards
of squatter communities in existing townships in the present phase. In all 111' 1 ~ ~ ~ c c h a n i cinputs al through development plans. Although forced
these areas of policy there is now doubt amongst influential sectors of the 1 I I 1 1 I \ ~ ; I I \ olworkers from white-owned farms and peasants from communally

regime, a doubt nurtured by long decades of popular resistance in many 1 1 ' 1 ~ 11,l;lc.k lirms have their origins in similar economic developments - the
forms. Il,.lon ol'commercial farming throughout the South African countryside-
1 1

( 11s \ I I ; I 1.c different political dimensions and will be discussed separately.

1 1 1 1 . I c~novalof 'surplus people' from the land has been a brutal chapter in
1 1 1, 1 , \,c.lol~ncntof capitalist agriculture throughout the world. Resistance
& I , I . I I ', I I I O S I difficult for people who are already bound by a form of master
. ( . I \ . ; I I I I c.ontract, as were Africans on white-owned farms in South Africa,
I I II I I 14 \ ( I S tained when the people removed have legally recognised rights
1111 1.11111they are losing. Thus in South Africa fierce resistance to
I,, I 1 1 1 c . 1 1 1 \chcmes from peasants in the bantustans has severely limited the
1 1 1

' I , I . I ! 1 0 1 1 01 111cschemes and their efficacy. A resistance of equal intensity,

,I 11

1 1 1 ~ I ~I I~ 11 I(Iil'Scrent
I ~ : ~ form, has been mounted by the remaining African
, , . I I . (11
11 I I cChold farms who find themselves in areas designated 'black
1 ~ - ~ . I I~ I ~',( 1 ~ llccluled for removal into bantustans. This is the third group of
94 Forced Removal

rural people who have suffered removal or are under threat of removal. Their
success in using the courts and in attracting international attention has
already proved a stumbling block to the strategy of forced removals of this
type.
According to the present apartheid apologists forced removals of rural
communities are a thing of the past and nowadays communities only move
voluntarily. But the whole world saw the massive police presence at Mogopa
that was needed 10 'voluntarily' remove people from that 'black spot' and
attention then focused on Driefontein and Kwangema, where the coercive
tactics of 'voluntary removals' were exposed. The importan\victories won by
these three Transvaal communities when they challenged their removal in the
courts set a precedent for other black spots under threat and must surely have
contributed to the shift in government policy on black-spot removals in 1985.
~ I I I I I II tic existence of many small farms, unable to support their owners, who
, o l r l t l not compete with large landowners when buying land and lacked the
III):II working capital required to provide for the necessary machines and
1 1 1 c.c.el~ng stock. The commission also pointed to the lack of a credit system
I I B I ~ l l cagricultural industry. In addition the growth of manufacturing
I I I C I I I \ I ~ since
~ 1945 had created a demand for white labour in the cities.
,\, { ~ ~ t l i n tog the commission it was necessary to halt this trend of
I l , . l ) ~ ~ l > i ~ because
l a ~ i o n 'a numerically strong, yet economically sound rural
I ll)~~l;~rion
t, is a prerequisite to the maintenance of White civilisation in South
<\II I ( il'.
. \ I I I (schemes
I ~ ~ for encouraging white settlement in the countryside were
I IIII..(. lor social and educational programmes, electrification, control of land
I I, 11 ; ~ n delimination of uneconomic farming. But the commission stressed
(.\

(This change of policy, however, must be seen in the context of the debates,
and new alignments and legislative initiatives discussed in Chapter 5.)
T H E E N D O F LABOUR TENANCY AND EVICTION
O F FARM WORKERS
Throughout the nineteenth century labour tenants were allowed to farm
some small amounts of white-owned land and graze stock in return for three
1 1 1 1 11t.cd for a policy
1 0 organise farm labour in such a way that only the absolutely
c~scntialnumber of units are employed, and particularly to limit
Iilrgc non-white families on farms to the absolute minimum."
\ [ II I ~ I I I K ~ thc logical connection between a large black rural population and
I I I I , 11rh;rn migration is tenuous, their relation was described in emotive
I I I 1 I , , 11general scare about the 'beswarting v a n die platteland' (blackening of

to six months virtually unpaid labour, for a white farmer. The terms of the I 11, ,111111rryside) was whipped up, and this century-old demographic feature
agreement between farmer and tenant were specified in a contract which %.I, , I I I I I 11 Al'rica became equated with a threat to civilization and the survival
usually bound not only the tenant, but also his family, to work on the farm. a ' 1 I 111- \\ hitcs. The 1956 legislation was partly a response to these economic,
For more than a century labour tenancy was the major form of labour relation I ~ I I . I I and ideological conditions.
s8 11

on the farms of Natal and the Transvaal. These were both areas where white
settlers acquired large tracts of land without long drawn-out wars, in contrast
to the Cape and the Free State. There were large African populations settled
on the land taken by the whites and the early settlers had neither the arms nor
the legal coercive powers to expel them. Indeed they needed their labour and
1 1 1 1 . I(.gislation, however, did not lead to an immediate eviction of labour
I, 1 1 1111,. 'l'his was partly due to the expansion of South African agricultural
I 1 1 1 1 I 1011 after World War 11. The strong demand and high prices
I I I I I I 1 . 1 I c ~ production l and a drive towards mechanisation, but mechanisation
f # I . I I I I I ( ~ which did not bring a decrease in the demand for farm labour.

they were able to secure this through tenancy agreements.] The 1913 Land ( 8 q 1 1 , I . ~ l l v I, [ took the form of capital substitution, such as the use of a tractor

Act outlawed African tenant farmers who rented land from white freeholders, I I ~ I ~ ,. I Bl I ;In . ox-drawn
~ ~ plough, which did not entail a significant reduction in
but labour tenancy was not affected by this legislation. I 1 1.11 , I , I I I lorcc (see Table 15). The expansion of agricultural activity meant
In 1956 labour tenancy, long criticised as backward, feudal and responsible I 1 , 1 1 I 11(.1c was, in fact, an increased demand for casual labour, especially
for industry's labour shortages, came under threat with an amendment to the , I , # I 1 1 1 , I 11.11 vest time. There was a conflict of opinion among farmers about

1936 Trust and Land Act. The new legislation required the registration of all 1 I I ' J ' ) o Ic~islation.Many relied on labour tenants for adequate supplies of
labour- tenant contracts and the establishment of Labour Tenant Control I 11 8 , . I I I C I ;IS no alternative method of obtaining labour existed, they were
a l ~ ~ ~

Boards in each district to administer this and to take responsibility for I ' I 1 1 I, : . I I ~ I I I . Cthe
I I ~ legi~lation.~
The presence of a majority of local farmers
pegging the number of labour tenants allowed per farm in each district. In ,, I I 1, I ..llu~r~r Tenant Control Boards ensured that restrictions on labour
addition farmers were to be prohibited from taking on any additional 1 . I 111, \
I , I l t I ]lot outstrip the needs of white landowners.
rent-paying tenant^.^ While manufacturing industry and mining, both of 1 I I I 1 I , 1 l ~ ~;~gricultural ~ ~ ) s growth reached a plateau. The tendency towards
which suffered a labour shortage in the 1950s, were influential in securing the r I I 1 1 1 ~, I I . I I I I W ~ production methods began to predominate. Many farmers
I I

1956 legislation, a significant political impact was made by the findings of the , 8 1 1 . 1 1 I 1 1 , 1.1111>loy semi-skilled wage labourers, and considered the large
Du Toit Commission. The commission, established in 1956, investigated the q t ) I I I I
1 I . ( 1 1 I.ll>our tenants and casual farm workers redundant. This trend

decline in the white rural population, and found that it comprised only 4 per 1 I. 1 1 1 1 I I I I I in
I I C . the 1970s and 1980s (see Tables 13-15). However, there
cent of the population on the land. It concluded that the decline resulted , 1 . I 1 1 1 , . I I I I I C . li~rmers,particularly in Northern Natal and the Northern
96 Forced Removal
Transvaal, who were reluctant to expel labour tenants because they feared
evictions would threaten their casual-labour supplies. The Natal Agricultural
Union considered that the ideal of a full-time wage labour force was
commendable, but that this should be achieved through 'evolutionary rather
than revolutionary mean^'.^ Evictions began, but at different rates around
the country. In each area labour tenancy was abolished by proclamation. By
1970 labour tenancy had been abolished everywhere except Natal. After 1970
no new labour tenants were registered in Natal and a concerted effort began
to remove the existing 24,000 tenants in that province. The first removals
were made by state agencies,ybecause once families were no longer covered by
labour tenant contracts they were illegal occupants of white-owned land. GG
(Government Garage) transport moved the mass of people to dumping
grounds on South African Bantu Trust land. Later removals were under-
taken by farmers, who evicted tenants without ensuring where they might
find alternative land. Labour tenancy was formally abolished, for the whole
country, in 1979.
While labour tenancy was the labour relation most common on farms in
Natal and the Transvaal, farmers in the Cape employed full-time waged
workers. However, the same forces that encouraged landowners to comply
with the abolition of labour tenancy and the eviction of tenants led to the
removal of farm workers and their families in the Cape. From the late 1960s
thousands of farm workers were evicted. In 1976 a major drive against
unregistered farm workers in the East Cape was mounted. The Eastern Cape
Administration Board (ECAB) sent out labour inspectors to enforce
long-neglected regulations. The registration fee charged for each African
resident on a white-owned farm was a major incentive to farmers to evict
workers whose labour was only required at certain time of the year. The
expelled farm workers of the Eastern Cape swelled the population of the
resettlement camps of the bantustans.
It has been calculated that evictions of labour tenants and workers from
white-owned farms meant that, between 1960 and 1983, 1,129,000 people
had been forced to move.7 As the settled African population in the rural areas
of 'White' South Africa has been virtually stagnant for two decades, this
means that a number of people equivalent to all natural increase in that
period must have left, either through forced removals or evictions, or in
search of better-paid work.8
The evictions have come in waves. At the end of the 1950s there was a big
drive in Natal against surplus labour tenants and an estimated 40,000 people
were evicted between 1957 and 1959. In the next decade the major thrust of
policy was felt throughout South Africa. An estimated 656,000 labour tenants
were removed between 1960 and 1970, although the Department of Bantu
Administration acknowledged only 175,074 people removed in this period.
Of the total number moved during that period, an estimated 400,000 people
were removed in Natal alone. In the 1970s far fewer evictions took place,
estimated at around 400,000. Once again the greatest number of removals
were in Natal. The Kwazulu bantustan's Department of the Interior reported
Rural Removals 97
I ll;lr in one year, 1978, 10,306 Africans had been evicted from white-owned
I ;II-ms
in Natal.9 The period of evictions is by no means over. An estimated 1
i~~illion farm workers are still threatened with removal in the next decade.I0
'l'he evicted people were moved to 'closer settlements' on South African
I i ; ~ n ~Trust
u (now South African Development Trust) land in the bantustans.
'l'hcy could keep no livestock and were restricted to one-quarter acre plots.
Sometimes the regime provided rudimentary dwellings, which the people
wcrc obliged to buy." The conditions in the closer settlements were and are
.~ppalling.In 1976 an official handbook gave the bland reassurance:
The resettlement of families is undertaken by the Department of
Bantu Administration and Development. An estimated objective
is to ensure the least possible discomfort and disruption to the
families and to meet their individual requirements as far as
possible. Facilities should at least be on a par with those existing
before the move . . .
Resettlement only takes place when a particular area has been
carefully planned and the necessary conveniences like schools,
clinics and infrastructure have been provided for by the
Department of Bantu Administration and Development, or its
agents.12
'l'his picture should be compared with the first-hand observations of Cosmas
I)esmond, who visited many of the closer settlements in Natal in the late
1960s. At Mpungamhlope, a closer settlement near Babanango, Desmond
saw:
The whole place had a general air of shabbiness with a number of
overgrown, empty plots. Many very poor, dilapidated houses,
some half-built houses and no proper roads. Ragged, hungry-
looking children surrounded the few taps that were installed in
the 'streets' in 1965. There was no sign of any form of sanitation .
. . There was little sign of any development. There was a primary
school with 620 pupils, including some from the farm. There
were two shops, but the food was very expensive because of
transport; a bag of Mealie Meal cost R4.75 (the usual cost is R4 to
R4.25). A doctor visited once a week but there was no permanent
clinic. The scrub bush, of which there was plenty, did not make
good firewood so they had to buy wood from people on the
farms. l 3
The bleak picture was repeated in all the areas Desmond visited throughout
the country. At Mnxesha, in the Eastern Cape, he commented:
There were the familiar, tiny one or two-room houses. Many with
a number of ragged hungry-looking children or a bent old woman
sitting outside. It was not quite true that I could no longer be
shocked or disturbed. I was, in particular, by the sight of one tiny
98 Forced Removal
baby, a virtual skeleton. Unable to move or even to cry and
covered with flies. I have been through the children's ward in
African hospitals throughout the country and over the past ten
years have seen thousands of starving, dying children. But I
doubt whether I have ever seen anything worse than this. I cut
short my tour to take the child to hospital.I4
Desmond's observations were repeated by many others. Mare reported from
Weenen district that 17 families moved off farms, remained after a year in
tents or wattle and daub huts with no facilities.15
Nondweni in Nqutu district is a notorious closer settlement. It was started
around 1970 to house labour tenants evicted from Vryheid and Louwsburg.
Initially it was intended to have 4000 sites and house 30,000 people. But in
July 1979 the number of sites planned was reduced to 1,000, because it was
discovered there was insufficient water. Conditions for the 4,000 inhabitants
were atrocious. The nearest water source was a polluted donga (ditch) and the
pump for water was frequently broken. Thousands of tin shacks on bleak
veld comprised the closer settlement. Overcrowding was rife, often with 10
people per room. The nature of the ground meant that the pit toilets often
flooded and typhoid together with malnutrition was common. Fuel was
scarce and it had taken many months for the Nqutu magistrate to give
permission for firewood to be cut. Pensions and disability grants took more
than a year before being transferred to Nondweni. The poverty of the people
was desperate. The nearest stores were 10 kilometres away although
unlicensed stores charging high prices did operate in the settlement.16
The bantustan of Kwandebele, created in the mid-1970s out of land in the
Central Transvaal, has a majority of its population living in forms of closer
settlement as a result of forced removal. Water is scarce. The boreholes
drilled under government contract have dried up and now people have to buy
expensive water brought in by truck. Families spend many months under
canvas waiting to be allocated a small plot where they can put up a house.
The land is parched and arid and it is virtually impossible to grow vegetables
or sustain any livestock. Commuters from Kwandebele, who work in the
Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging area, must often leave home at 2 a.m. to
get to work at 6 a.m."
It seems that conditions in closer settlements do not improve over time.
Desmond visited Limehill in Natal in the late 1970s having first seen it as a
new resettlement camp in 1967. He wrote:
Facilities at 1,imehill remain rudimentary. There is a Bantu
Affairs Department office, a water supply (with one tap for every
35 families), corrugated iron privies served by a bucket system,
two overcrowded primary schools (shared with other settle-
ments), a clinic (without a telephone) two general dealers and one
cafeistore where prices are higher than in town. . . About 20 of
the children born at Limehill have not survived to the dace of the
survey. In addition, it appears that the birth rate has dropped and
I Rural Removals 99
the rate of population growth is about half the average rate among
Africans. . . Unemployment rates are high even by contemporary
South African standards. In particular, very few adult women are
in wage employment. . . There is a general feeling of hopelessness
amongst the residents of Limehill.18
! In Sada, in the Eastern Cape, first established in 1964, the same general
conclusion can be drawn. This is evident from a report made in 1983
I
I Sada, in 1982, is badly underhoused, lacks proper facilities,
cannot support itself locally, and shares a dwindling migrant
labour market with all the other thousands in Hewu [district of
Ciskei]. The place has never developed in morale either. It was
always too degraded to get run down. All you can say is that the
misery of 1964 has multiplied without reducing the sense of
isolation. l9
! A detailed household survey was carried out at Sada in the early 1980s. Forty
\even per cent of the people were evicted farm workers. Although conditions
;I\ farm workers had been severely exploitative and wages were minimal,
I ~ l ~ c had
r e been certain benefits. The diet on farms was more varied, for
csample. One worker said:
I
Starvation in this place is abundant because you stick to one type
of food, but on the farm you could enjoy milk every day.20
On farms people could often build reasonable houses for themselves with
lit) rcnt to pay and had access to clean water, while at Sada the houses were
\~nalland clean water scarce. On the farm people could keep stock, while this
\ource of income and food was banned at Sada. The majority of men could
only support families in Sada if they became migrant workers, going as far
1 .~licldas Johannesburg and Cape Town. Fifty-seven per cent of the women in
I Iic survey sample worked in and around Sada in handicraft manufacture and
I
,~griculture,both with very bad pay. People spoke of their hardship:
Starvation is our problem due to scarcity of work. We have to buy
things on credit or borrow them in order to survive.21
I ( was estimated that half the households were on or just below the breadline,
with no spare money for clothes and only able to afford the most basic foods.
Such poverty is physically and psychologically debilitating. As one man put
11:
II
We are trying by all ways and means to make ends meet only for
! survival. We live in bad conditions and see ourselves destroyed
bit by bit.22
I I I addition to the problems of remaining alive there are additional problems
01. expensive transport, dusty roads and inadequate medical fa~ilities.~-i
100 Forced Removal Rural K emovals 101

After the 1971 television film Last Grave at Dimbaza exposed some of the
horrors of closer settlements, Dimbaza became the focus for concerted
development efforts by the Ciskei bantustan administration to change
conditions in response to international pressure. It upgraded the resettlement
area by building factories, providing amenities like shops and churches and
improving services. But despite this an investigation of the area in the early
1980s pointed to a 35 per cent unemployment rate; one-third of the
households surveyed reported a child death since their arrival in Dimbaza;
and there were serious protein deficiencies in their diet. The residents of
Dimbaza complained of shortage of money and inadequate accommodation,
unemployment, lack of hospitals and the high cost of e d ~ c a t i o n . ~ T l o s e r
settlements under apartheid are, even at their best, places of extreme
deprivation, hardship and exploitation.
Because farm tenants and workers have been evicted in small groups over a
long period of time, it has been difficult to build up any co-ordinated
resistance. The strongest protest the labourers have made is their refusal to
go to the closer settlements. Evicted tenants moved from farm to farm in the
Transvaal and Natal in the 1970s, offering their labour and trying to stave off
here, and he was ill. My sons found jobs but they got so little
Ilioncy. And that is another thing. You people told us that it will
Ijc- easier for the children here in Elukhanyweni. You said that the
vollng people wouldn't suffer here because there are many
opportunities and jobs for them. Well, they suffer, they suffer.
'l'hcrc are no jobs, the children die.2y
ItIl'l''l'1:RMENT SCHEMES A N D BANTUSTAN LAND POLICY
I I I ( . \~.c.ondform of forced removal in the countryside is the uprooting of
/j~..~,r.llll I~~useholds from land they occupy in the bantustans. The first phase
{ I I I I I I S policy was initiated in 1939 as a scheme for improved land use or
111.1 1(.1.11icnt' in the 'reserves', as they were then termed. Betterment schemes
$ I1111 I I I I I ~lo the present day, but their emphasis has changed as has the scale
%!I 1-~11lovals. As the reserves have been transformed into bantustans, the
I . I I 1 1 t11.11~ behind betterment evictions has changed: initially conceived in
I c - I I I I \ 01 dumping grounds for surplus people, the betterment evictions are
IIO\\. li~lkcd to the regime's commitment to foster the development of a

i
I , I I \ . . I I C. landowning class in the bantustans.
the day when there would be no more farmers willing to take them. Often I I I ~ . lil-sr betterment schemes, initiated in 1939, divided land in a particular
people who were moved to a bantustan by government officials returned to
1 , . I I I I V illlo three strictly defined areas: one for livestock, one for agriculture,
tt

their former land.25 Many people designated for removal to closer I I I (Or residence. The original planners considered such rural policy
settlements went instead to a squatter settlement like Winterveld, where less
~ \ ( I I I I C I i~~c,l.case productivity in the subsistence sector. Within the Native
close control on employment meant better work o p p ~ r t u n i t i e s .At
~ ~the
\ I I . I I I \ I kpartment at the time there was a belief that improved agricultural
moment of eviction many tenants are too shocked by its suddenness to mount I 11 t I I ion by the subsistence sector would halt migration to the ~ i t i e s . ~In O
any organised campaign. However, disobedience of orders and passive 1'1 1 ,l I IIC.Secretary of Native Affairs proclaimed 'a new era for reclamation'
resistance are common strategies used by farm workers. At Weenen in 1970
I. 81 I I . , . c . I vc land and plans were made for an ambitious policy that involved
large numbers of labourers refused to obey eviction notices and they were , I I , . L.I \demarcation of the land along the lines of betterment planning. A
only forced out by hut burnings, bulldozers, arrests and prosecutions.
I .I I . I I I I ; I I ion in 1934 had made betterment planning automatic and
Another tactic of the Weenen workers was to load the GG trucks with stones,
disguised as bundles of possessions. They were transported to Madadeni,
off-loaded the phoney 'luggage', and then made their way back to the
I I
8 ~ ~ ~ 1 ~on
1 1 1 ~ 1
~ ~all1 trust
~ o l -farms.
y However by 1952 only 9.4 per cent of reserve
11,1<1 h~.cnreallocated in terms of betterment schemes.31
I 1 1 , Il~;~k)dobsta~lejto the full implementation of the schemes and the mass
Weenen farms.27 In the Transvaal and elsewhere in Natal similar passive
1 .II it n( . t i .;i of,Ja_ni~n. the reserves was the resistance of the people. Whatever
.\

resistance occurred.2x
I 11, I ~ ~ . ~ ~ c . \ , intentions olcnC of some of the early planners, betterment quickly
Although from the outside the closer settlements appear places of abject
1 ,, , . I I I N . .~\\ociated with high-handed actions by local commissioners. In 1949
despair, ruled by the compulsion for survival, they were born in conditions of .. I , I a I U I \ \ . < , I - Swere given to Native Commissioners to implement betterment
fierce resentment and the passage of years, in multiplying the hardships, 11, I ~ I I . , , .111cifine or imprison people who opposed them. Attempts to move
intensifies the anger. At Elukhanyweni resettlement camp in the Eastern I ,$ ' 1 1 1 , I I oln the land they had worked for centuries elicited some of the
Cape a woman told white interviewers: I I . I , , . I I I I I - ; I ~ resistance of the 1950s. For example, in Sekhukhuneland in
I don't know what you people think of us. You lie to us, you cheat I , I 1 1 ( 111(.l Moroamoche and some of his councillors refused to accept the

us, you make promises which you never fulfil, you take away our 1 : ~ ~ I I I: \I l ~ ~ l ~ o r i tAct i e s and the attendant betterment schemes. They were
land, you murder our husbands and children, yes murder. I say
murder because that is what you do and you treat us the same way
you treat your animals. You put eleven people in two rooms, you
1.

t
( 1 ,I
I!. .I
-
1 1 1 ~

put grown-up men with their grown-up sisters and then what do
11
I I I . I I .111ci[he people refused to pay taxes or obey the successors
I llr.,l. I )emonstrations of resistance were brutally suppressed by a
I I C I I I ( . C unit, but defiance persisted. In Natal in 1957 women protested,
.I I . I I 1 t v l 1 . 1 1 1 Iv, and refused to obey legislation on dipping tanks and cattle

you expect? I can understand why my husband couldn't work 1 I I I I 11, 111 1 0lczognise Bantu A ~ t h o r i t i e s In . ~ Pondoland
~ a rebellion against
102 Forced Removal
Bantu Authorities and betterment measures led to one of the most sustained
rebellions in rural South Africa, organised over a wide area for nearly two
years.33
As noted in Chapter 1, one response to the popular rebellions in the
countryside, many of which were directed against betterment, was the
inauguration of the bantustan programme and the attempt to impose new
structures of political authority in 1959-60. In the mid-1960s the bantustans
acquired a new economic importance for the regime and they came to be
conceived as areas for the location of reserve supplies of labour, the
unemployed and women workers not required in periods of contraction of
industrial growth, and in addition, dumping grounds for the old and the sick.
In the context of this new role for the bantustans, betterment schemes lost
almost entirely any aspect of improvement or rationalisation of land use and
became instead principally instruments of coercion. A study of two
betterment areas, Bothashoek and Sephaku, in this period concluded:
[The] betterment has not fulfilled its stated purposes of rehabili-
tating the bantustan areas or rationalising agriculture to become
viable economical units. Betterment became a way of planning
these two areas so as to accommodate and control as many as
possible of the people uprooted and settled in the bantustans.
Betterment also provides accommodation for families of evicted
labour tenants while men work wage contracts on farms.34
A study of betterment schemes in the Nqutu district in the Kwazulu
bantustan observed:
. . . many families cannot afford to relocate their homes and spend
anxious months awaiting eviction and often the plans are changed
without notification. Often while the families are being relocated,
grazing and agricultural areas have not been finalised, and the
people may spend the growing seasons waiting for decisions from
chiefs, Agricultural Advisers and Kwazulu Government Officials.
Families are not compensated for their moves under the
betterment s ~ h e m e s . 3 ~
In the current phase of apartheid there have been shifts in bantustan land
policy as the role of the bantustans themselves has been reformulated. The
bantustans are no longer conceived of merely as labour reservoirs, protected
from economic development. They are seen as areas where economic
development should be encouraged both to support the political power of the
present ruling groups and as a means of decreasing the mass urbanisation of
the African population. Part of the 'development strategy' for the bantustans
has involved decentralisation and the attempt to relocate industry in the
bantustans (see Chapter 5).
I . \ I I I ) I aspect
Rural Removals
~ I C ~of the 'development' policy has been the attempt to utilise
103
131 I , I I I I C I I I schemes to foster the development of a class of commercial
I
I.IIIII,.I\ with substantial landholdings in the bantustans. Subsistence
I . I I 1 1 l c . 1 \, dispossessed through these plans, are relocated in closer settlements
I I I I I I I X ;I pool from which contract labour and labour for decentralised
11
I I I I ~ I I . . I I v is drawn. In the Transkei bantustan, for example, people were
I , # I I , I 1 0 move from communally held land to make way for a tea plantation
I
I I I I', ~lltloland,an irrigation project and intensive agriculture development in
I ) . I I I I . I I ; I ;111d an asparagus farm owned by the bantustan leader Matan~ima.3~
1 1 1 J 2 1 \ ~ ~in ~ gthe
; ~ Kwazulu bantustan commercial farmers have been given
Y I O I I C X [arcs of land on Tugela Estates displacing many peasant producers in
I 1 1 1 . . I I \ , ~ . I . c , Ldistrict. . o w ~ ~ All
~ these schemes have been established by the
I ' I I , 11 I;I-l'undeddevelopment corporations. The new emphasis on land use is
I
q 11 1 .1\11 crops for an export market and the destruction of subsistence
I J . ~I , I I ~ I I IThis ~ C . development strategy has been incorporated into the
\ I Ioiu~~cnt plans of a number of bantustans. For example the development
# I (
1 1 1 . 1 I I 1 ( ) I Kwazulu published in 1978 and redrafted into a White Paper in 1979
11 I\CCI 3 reform of the entire land-tenure system in the bantustan. The
J 'I I 11
I w;~sto increase agricultural production through 'managed farming
1
G I 1 1 I I 1t.s combining individual operation with high level technical and
I l ~ ~ t c ~ . ~input', l ~ ~ o co-operative
nal planting, harvesting and marketing involv-
1 1 1 1 . /:I01113sof peasants with individual land tenure, assistance to individual
I .I...IIII
34 larmers involved in production for the market, and company-
, $ I I I I 11 led and operated agricultural schemes. An agricultural development
) I
I ) 1 1 1 1 I \ ( O help acquire land 'for more able farmers'. According to the White
I ' I I V . I I ; I I I ~ tenure reform was to be undertaken to enable land to be used as
., , I I I I I v to raise development loans. The present estimated 2 million people
1 1 \ 1 1 1 , : ,111 [he land should be reduced to 750,000 who could farm the land
, I I I I ~t.l-c.ially
) I .3' Development plans in the Ciskei bantustan embody similar
I I I ~ I I I I I O I I 10 S move people from the rural areas to the urban centres and
I I I I I 1 1 I I ; I I ~ subsistence a g r i c ~ l t u r e . ~ ~
( , I \ ( . I I [he long history of resistance associated with attempts to move
I I 11 11,- I [.om the land in the name of betterment planning it is not surprising
I 1 1 . 1 1 . I I present these schemes are still a long way from implementation. In
I \ , I I I ~ : . I , Kwazulu, where evictions for development corporation farming
1 1 I \ I . l.1kcn place, intense land struggles have followed and the district has
I I 1 1 I 1vc.11 by bitter battles for nearly a decade. It is unlikely that schemes
bt
I I, I I I;IVC any different result in any other district. Bantustan leaders are
$1 I 11
1 1 1 a I \ I ( I rrcad carefully in putting into effect so explosive a policy which
I I I I I , :~cop;lrdise
I )(
I ~l~or~san
~II
t l ~ , . ~ ~ ~entirely
their own political standing. None the less the plans cannot
~ s s c dand as long as they stand the threat of eviction hangs
ofd ssubsistence farmers in the bantustans.
I
1 III A ( :K SPOT REMOVALS AND BANTUSTAN CONSOLIDATION
I I 11, 1 1 . 1 1 1 1 11!,1;111 policy envisaged the establishment of 'self-governing states' in
104 Forced Removal
the areas which the 1913 Land Act had designated for African occupation.
~ Rural Removals
The areas were widely scattered and some of the criticisms of the bantustan
policy focused on the fragmented character of the land that would make up
each bantustan, the problems of administration and the difficulty of gaining
credence for an 'independent' state comprising so many little pieces of land.
T o overcome some of these problems various proclamations were made
providing for consolidation of bantustan land. An overall consolidation plan
was laid out in 1973, only to be superseded by a new plan in 1975. The Van
der Walt Commission, charged with reporting on the proposals for the
country as a whole, was then appointed and is still to report. However in
advance of the full report plans were finalised in September 1985 for the
boundaries of the Transvaal bantustans of Gazankulu, Lebowa and
Kwandebele as well as plans for the consolidation of Kwazul~l.The revised
proposals for Kwazulu entailed an increase of the number of areas of the
bantustan from 10, as advocated in 1975, to 15, the clearing of all black spots
and the removal of most Africans living on white-owned farms.39 The
Transvaal plans involved the reallocation of districts, like Moutse, deemed
part of one bantustan in 1975 and now reallocated to another.40
The 1973 consolidation plans would have reduced the number of bantustan
blocks of land to 82, but would also have involved moving 575,000 pe0ple.~1
The 1975 schemes involved moving 1 million people.42 The 1985 plans for
the Transvaal and Kwazulu entail moving 42,000 people in Natal, according
to the regime's Commission on Co-operation and Development, and
rescinding removal notices in the Transvaal." However the Association for
Rural Advancement (AFRA) considered that the Natal plans would lead to
the removal of 242,000 people, as only eight out of a total of 189 black spots
were exempted from the proposals. 44 The Transvaal Rural Action Committee
(TRAC) pointed out that the Transvaal consolidation schemes affected
approximately 143,000 people, who, although they would not be moved,
would be assigned to different bantustans often in violation of their wishes45
In 1986 new legislation was enacted to enforce incorporation of communi-
ties into bantustans: the Borders of Particular States Extension Amendment
Act. This provided for the incorporation of certain additional areas of land
into the bantustans deemed 'independent'-Transkei, Bophuthatswana,
Venda and Ciskei (TBVC). Some of the people in these areas are already
deemed 'citizens' of the bantustans. The new legislation means they will lose
their rights to have South African citizenship restored to them in terms of the
Restoration of South African Citizenship Act 1986. As alien workers they will
face harassment and insecurity at work. Others who retain the right to South
African citizenship will find that, if they attempt to take out South African
identification documents, they run the risk of expulsion from the bantustan
in which they are now considered to live.46 T h e legislation means that no
physical removal has taken place but communities have been incorporated
into bantustans, without consultation, and have been subjected to laws that
considerably worsen their conditions.
The majority of removals due to bantustan consolidation have been from
I ; I I I ~known as 'black spots', or 'badly situated' areas. Black spots are farms in
105
.IIV;IS designated 'White', held in freehold by Africans. Before the 1913 Land
/\(.I Ilalted all African land acquisition there had been a concerted move by
~~lclividuals and groups of Africans to buy back from White settlers the land
1 1 1 ~Africans had lost through conquest. Land acquired in this way was
j:c.~lcrallyof high quality in the centre of white farming communities. The
I)l;~ckspots have long been the focus of white farmers' antagonism and a
I ~ l l l ~for y the dispossession of African freehold farms has existed for many
~lcc;ldes.After their election victory in 1948 the Nationalist Party intended to
4 . 1 ;~tlicatc all black spots as soon as possible, but their schemes were hampered
I I I I I I C 1950s by a shortage of land for relocation. Only in the 1960s, with the
~~lcc.l~;lnisation of agriculture, was there a slight lessening of white farmers'
~ ) ~ ) ~ ) o sto i ~selling
i o n some poor-quality land to the SANT (the South African
N ; I I I VTrust, ~ later renamed the South African Bantu Trust (SABT), now the
\ O I I ~ h ASrican Development Trust (SADT)) on which black-spot inhabitants
, I , 1 1 1 ~ 1 be accommodated.
Arcas termed 'badly situated' have been viewed in the same light. These
. I I ( . ; I S are not freehold farms, as are black spots, but fragments of reserve
I . I I I (often ~ , under communal tenure and with bantustan appointed chiefs, in
midst of extensive white-owned land. In this section black spots and
' l l.ltlly situated areas' are discussed together because conditions and the form
0 1 1c.mova1are similar, although usually only the term black spot is used.
111 IIK 1960s the government started moving African farming communities
..,.I I lc~lon black spots into bantustans and white farmers acquired their land
. I I kl~ock-downprices.
I{;~ntustanconsolidation entails various forms of removal. The case of the
( ~dtci bantustan illustrates this. In 1972 Pretoria proposed to rationalise the
1'1 ;II-C;IS dcemed to comprise the Ciskei. The bantustan was to consist of five
.II,..I\. 'l'his consolidation process entailed the removal of 14 black spots,
Iloac pcople were moved to resettlement camps in the Keiskammahoek
o l I icr . Further consolidation proposals undertaken in 1977 meant the
I ( - I I I I ) V ; I ~of all black spots in the area. Two districts, formerly designated as
I L I I I 01 thc Ciskei, Glen Grey and Herschel, were ceded to the Transkei
1 1 . 1 1 1 1 I I S ~ ; I I Iand the Ciskei was compensated with new land in the south of the
I , . J : I O I I . When the Transkei was made 'independent' in 1976, 40,000 people
I 1 1 4 IV(.(I Il.om Herschel and Glen Grey to the Thornhill and Zweledinga areas
1 )I I (Iiskci, hoping for less repressive conditions. At the resettlement camp
I 11 I ' I , I S ~ ; I I I I a transit camp was established for evicted farm workers who were
$ \ l , ( . l l ~ t lIrom white-owned farms which had been purchased by the SABT in
I ' ~ i l101-) ~ h establishment c of the bantustan town of M d a n t ~ a n e . ~In' 1987 it
s , 1 1 1 Ire. \cell that bantustan consolidation entails the removal of people from
111.1, 1; \IIOIS,the removal of tenants from white-owned farms bought for
I I I ~ . I O I I jnto bantustans, and the removal of people from one area to another
1.. tO(. 1101-dersof bantustans are drawn and redrawn.
I I I 1 % ) 1') ( ireyling Wentzel, Deputy Minister of Co-operation and Develop-
1 1 1 ~1 1 1 , \;IICI that, although the Van der Walt Commission had not yet
106 Forced Remoz~al Rural Removals 107
reported, the government would nevertheless go ahead with the removal of
that it is a 'nation state' it has had considerable areas and a growing
black spots outlined in the 1975 consolidation proposals.48 In the Transvaal
~>opulation assigned to it. By 1986 it consisted of 300,000 hectares of land and
and the Eastern Cape the majority of people living in black spots have already
I I ; I ~ a population of 465,000.50 People from Bophuthatswana assigned to
been removed. A few opposed the removals on legal grounds and two
lcwandebele were forced to move as they no longer fitted the official criteria
communities in the Transvaal won reprieves (see below). However, in Natal,
lor residence in Bophuthatswana. The Moutse district was excised from
it was estimated in 1983 that over half the freehold areas had not been
I .cbowa and despite organised resistance and a long court battle its residents
eradicated.49 Kwazulu presents an enormous problem for schemes of
\vcrc assigned to Kwandebele. In the Free State the residents of Thornhill
bantustan consolidation as it comprises so many fragments. The large
\ v ~ r cmoved from land under the administration of the Bophuthatswana
number of black spots and the need to find compensatory land complicate the
I,;~rllustanat Thaba Nchu to Botshabelo, due to be consolidated into
problem. The most recent schemes have been strongly criticised both by
()\vaqwa. In the squatter area of Winterveld, once the area had been
Kwazulu bantustan officials and the communities scheduled for removal.
,l(.\ignated part of Bophuthatswana thousands of those deemed to belong to
The forcible removal of people from one bantustan to another has occurred
O I ~ I C I -bantustans were terrorised and forced to move.
throughout the country. When Kwandebele was created as the tenth
I<ilntustan administrations view with some ambivalence the eradication of
bantustan in 1977 it had scant land (only 55,000 hectares), and a tiny
1 1 1 . 1 ~ k spots which has forced large farming communities into their territories.
population of 25,000. In order to give some substance to the regime's claim I 11c.v have also had mixed feelings about the plans for consolidation.
I lo\vcvcr most of their statements about forced removal are rhetorical
,:,.,>I III-cswhich mask the financial and political benefits they reap from the
I . I , I \ V I ~ in the population they administer. The public stance of most

11.11111rsran leaders is one of staunch opposition to all removals. Thus in 1973

1 1 . I conlbrence held at Umtata amongst bantustan leaders a resolution was

BOPHUTHATSWNA
I ~ I O ~ I I ( . C to
I resist the continuation of mass removals." This resolution has
1 1 - ~-c,pcated
1 ~ ~
~ in many public statements since. The Transkei bantustan has
I . I l l . , c . t l lo accept any people forcibly removed en r n a ~ s e This
. ~ ~ is one factor
,! 1 1 1 , 1 1 1,;unpered the destruction of the squatter camps of the Cape Peninsula
I I I C \ 1 t ~ lto the devising of the Khayelitsha strategy (see Chapter 5). In the

( I .I. ( - I tj;rntustan in 1978 'Chief Minister' Sebe pledged his support for the

1 ps 01 the black spots around Mooiplaas in the Eastern Cape, who were
3,111,.

! I 1 b l v t . t l in a struggle against eviction and forced removal. He told reporters:

ltl11 whatever that Government does will not include the removal
our people from their land. Their removal will never be
. 1 1 l ( , ~led during our lifetime . . . That area is dear to us. It is our
I I I C which we will never ever give up, no matter what the
% 11 1\c.cltlcnces.~3
I

1 1 1 I . I I I I I I ; I I vein a Bophuthatswana official protested in 1978:

I 11,. sorr:h African government is going ahead with the removal of
t !III I ~ c ~ ~in~ lspite
> l c of our protest that they should not be removed
11111 1 1 ,111,cnitiesare provided for them 54
ludlng 1975 consollddrlon
Kwandebele 1984
proposals for Incorvoratlon
I . ,I 11 I I ! I I I I~c.lczi,the Kwazulu bantustan leader, has made emotive attacks
169.000 hd already f r a n s f e r ~ d I . . I . , , I r t-~rlot,;~ls.
In 1973 he commented on the bantustan consolidation
,
( f

Moutse and Nebo I , . , l llltlll

farms ILebowa)
'\\ I I . I \ ~ - ~ i c bdore
l that we are not prepared to co-operate with
1 1 ~ . l IIII)\.;I~ olpcople. We don't want to be party to the misery of
Map 9: Kwandebele: The making of a Bantustan. . a111 I,, 11111c. "
108 Forced Removal Rural Removals 109

, II Io\c ilnd the people of Moutse continued to express their opposition to

t

In 1978 officials of the Kwazulu authority started a campaign fund for people 1111 11 lll~.lr~sion in that bantustan the chief minister of Kwandebele, Simon
evicted from Natal farms, and in 1981 a speaker in the Kwazulu Legislative . . I . . I I I ; I , organised an armed group to round up old and young men in
( 1

Assembly compared Pretoria's methods of removing people to 'the cattle 1\~,111..(. ; I I I subject
~ them to brutal beatings and vile abuse in an attempt to
trucks of Nazi Germany'.s6 However, behind this public posture bantustan I * I .II. I I I C c,ommunity's resistance. When a State of Emergency was declared
I

authorities have co-operated with the policy. Sometimes their participation in 111 )1111(. I086 hundreds of people, many of them young students, were
removals is grudging, the result of the lack of other alternatives. For .IcI . I I I I ( X ~ by police and military in Moutse and stringent regulations
example, although the Kwazulu authorities accept no responsibility for the , I CIII<.CI movements and the right to hold meetings in the area.63
I I I I

closer settlement at Nondweni, which is on SADT land, they must make , I 11,. 01' rhe ambiguity of the bantustan leaders' position was summed up
' b q

some attempt to provide medical and other welfare services. In a similar way I,,. I I . I I I I I I X Sebe speaking in the Ciskei Legislative Assembly in 1979. He
they participated in negotiations with the central government over the 1 1 1 1

removal of black spots in the Ladysmith area, until it was revealed that
Pretoria considered the negotiations to be about the administration of
relocation and not about whether the removals would take place at a11.57
Yet the Kwazulu government also clearly benefits from the forced removal
of people into the bantustan. The large number forced into the bantustan
have increased the bureaucracy's fiscal base. The local dues which officially
authorised chiefs and headmen are allowed to collect cement their alliance to
the ruling group around Buthelezi. The increasing population of the
Kwazulu bantustan bolsters Buthelezi's claim to represent a large 11 1
constituency.
In other bantustans, too, leaders have on occasion actively encouraged
removals. The Gazankulu administration welcomed removals arising from
bantustan con~olidation.~'Bophuthatswana too has collaborated in the
\V(. tlo not support resettlement but if resettlement is to take place
111,-11the Republican Government is responsible to see that its
1 ~ 1 , 1 1 t .is v carried out, but once those people are settled in the
( 15,lici,they are not stones, they are people and for humanitarian
I I . . I \ I , I I S we have to give assistance to them, not that as some say,
\ I I . cllcourage r e ~ e t t l e m e n t . ~ ~
I 18, I, I\ . ~ / ( ~official
lu responsible for education, also the Secretary-General of
I I 11.1 , 1 ) I - Oscar Dhlomo had a strikingly similar formulation:
\\'I CIO not formally participate in receiving or accepting
I I ,.(.II lc~nentpeople in territories under our jurisdiction. The
I )I I l ; t ~ion removals in Natal involve persons displaced or
8,

division of people in the territory and sanctioned removal on these grounds. I I I I O V ~

I lrom
~ so-called 'black spots' and a variety of other areas,
\ I I I ~ I ; I I C rhen more oftei~than not settlers on land purchased by
In 1977 the Chief Minister, Mangope, signed an agreement with the Ministry
of Bantu Administration that those who did not take out Bophuthatswana ',.\I ) I ' within the proposed boundaries of Kwazulu but which has
VC.I been handed over to Kwazulu for administration.
'citizenship' could be expelled from the squatter camp at Winterveld and any 11111

landowner who refused 'citizenship' would be e ~ p r o p r i a t e d In

. ~ ~1986 the
Borders of Particular States Extension Amendment Act designated the farm
Bloedfontein as one of the areas to be included in Bophuthatswana. Because
the majority of the population of Bloedfontein are not Tswana speaking they
I- . I / I I ~ I I government is neither consulted nor informed about
I I , I I I t.11iovals. . . Where areas in which people are resettled have
1 1 1 . l t l v hcen handed over to Kwazulu, central government has
I , I \ ' , I \ which override ours and we have no option but to
14

will not be allowed to take up Bophuthatswana citizenship, but will be moved , ~ 3 ~ ~ ~the ~ ~ . ~ ~ .; .~. on
~ resettlement ~ ihumanitarian
c c grounds. We
' t l ~ ~ I ,I II O ~ turn people away who would otherwise be homeless or
from their farm to land still to be added to K ~ a n d e b e l e . ~ ~
The malign reasoning behind this policy in Bophuthatswana was articu- I ., I I I(.tI under even less favourable circumstances on SADT
I llltl
lated during the second reading of the Bophuthatswana Citizenship bill in
1978 by a spokesman for the administration. He said: I I ,.l),tfiliantthe bantustan leaders may claim the short-term effects of
, , I I

, , 1 1 ) [hem, the policy does provide them with a constituency, a

11 .II,.
Citizenship rights will not be granted automatically after five t t t

I 11 1, 1 I I 0111 whom revenue can be raised, and who might constitute

years. Bophuthatswana will not be a dumping ground for the I (

I 1 I I . I l ~ ~ ~ ) o I - The ~ c r sresistance
. of bantustan leaders to removals has
scum and outcasts of other countries.62 1 . 11

+ m 8 I I . I I I I I C . level of rhetoric, because the division of the country which

1 I I

A Bophuthatswana, in pursuit of this policy, provided the vehicles and the 1, o , I I( 11.. I c.111 cscnt is fundamentally in their interest and constitutes their
I

officials to remove the huge Sotho speaking population from the squatter I I . . ~ \ I I I<.overthey themselves have not been averse to carrying out

settlement at Kromdraai near Thaba Nchu in the Free State. ,. I ' 10 I'\wana-speaking people were hounded out of Winterveld by
111

Other bantustan leaders have terrorised people opposing incorporation 1; I , , I , I \ , 1 1 1 . 1 ~~olice.

I I I I I When the farm of Doornkop in Natal was
into their bantustan. As the date set for the 'independence' of Kwandebclc . I ,, I I (~ 1 1 1 1 1 0 Kwazulu in 1986 it was sold to a black farmer. With the
$1
110 Forced Removal
approval of the Kwazulu authorities he served eviction notices on the 100
families living on the farm.66 In August 1986, 40 families who had lived in
the village of Rala in the Ciskei were evicted by the authorities and dumped at
the roadside beyond the Ciskei boundary. The authorities said the forced
removal was carried out because children of the villagers had burnt a hut and
killed some livestock of a local landowner. One of the villagers said a more
likely reason was that the villagers did not support the ruling Ciskei National
Independence Party .67
Since 1960 some 614,000 people have been moved through the expropria-
tion of black spots and the implementation of plans for bantustan
consolidation. Over 1 million were still threatened with removal in 1984.
These figures do not include people reassigned to different bantustans after
their areas have been reallocated in terms of new consolidation schemes.
The pace of black-spot removals has varied. In the decade from 1960 to
1970 the estimates of the number of people removed from black spots range
between 68,000 and 97,000. In the early 1970s in just three years, from 1970
to 1973,88,000 people were forced to move and in the next three years 73,000
people were
The majority of black spots in the Cape and Orange Free State have been
expropriated. Many removals have taken place in the Transvaal, although a
few communities fought protracted legal battles against removal that
significantly delayed the process. Although in some areas in Natal black-spot
removals have been thoroughly implemented, particularly in the areas of
mining and industrial developments, most black-spot removals are still to
take place.69 The government's Bureau for Economic and Statistical
Research commented in the mid-1970s that even after final consolidation
recommendations had been drawn up for Natal, there would still be 43,000
hectares of land to be purchased in order to eradicate the remaining black
spots.70 In 1984 more people were due for removal from black spots than
have yet been moved. The success of black spot communities like
KwaNgema and Mogopa in conveying their plight to international audiences
when threatened with removal and their ability to use the courts to delay
removal notices, may well be a form of protection for the 1 million people still
living under threat of dispossession. However, costly legal battles and the
vagaries of press attention are no substitute for secure rights in the land.
METHODS OF BLACK SPOT REMOVAL
In 1969, M C Botha, Minister of Bantu Administration, claimed that
removals from black spots did not entail force:
We get their co-operation in all cases voluntarily. As a matter of
fact sometimes it is necessary to do quite a lot of persuasion, but
we do get them anyway.71
The forms of 'persuasion' range from the curt official instruction to move,
through intimidation, selective use of violence, fostering of widespread
Rural Removals 111
1115c.curity,the division of communities and an outright show of force. The
Millister of Co-operation and Development claimed, in a 1983 parliamentary
tl(.lx~teon forced removals, that in black-spot removals:
Everything possible is also being done to ensure that it [removal]
is carried out with consideration and compassion and that all
people of South Africa will eventually benefit from it.72
I lrcse words do not bear serious scrutiny. The huge police operation used to
l(.lnove people from the black spot of Mogopa in 1984 indicates the
I~ollownessof the claim. George Rampou described the removal to journalists
I r om the Washington Post:
They did not discuss with us. They just come. They come in the
middle of the night all armed with revolvers. They come and
surround your house as though you killed somebody. Then they
corce you to leave your house without you knowing why, now you
must go. They decide how much to pay you without talking to
you about it.
But you must accept because they already break your house.
Then they tell you you must go to Pachsdraai although you tell
them you would rather go to Bethanie. They tell you if you want
to go to Bethanie you must fetch your own transport. They must
be great cowards to come and surround people when they are fast
asleep. . .73
1 1 1 , story has been repeated thousands of times throughout South Africa. It
r t hoes this account of the removal in 1982 of the Fingo people from the
I \~t\ikamaarea:
We were moved by guns at 3 a.m. No knock at the door. They
just came in and pushed the door open. They don't care. The
children started to cry. There were GG lorries. They bulldozed
the houses. They took the man of the house first to the land
rovers. Then they surrounded the houses with guns and soldiers.
Cattle and fowls-some were lost and some died. Some managed
to take them to K e i ~ k a m m a h o e k . ~ ~
( .olnmunities are undermined by uncertainty about when the move will take
~ j l . ~and . c what it will entail. At Steinkoolspruit people were not told what
111zil-properties were worth in advance, and were informed they would
I t~ civc their compensation only when their household effects had already
I , ~ x . I I loaded on the trucks for removal.75 Land is commonly grossly
1111(l~r.valued.76 No consideration is given to the violation of people's history
. I I I ~ I culture. As Sam Mathopi of Mathopestad says:
What really concerns me mostly is the graves. You know I honour
those graves more than I honour myself and my father, because
 1 12 Forced Removal
those people bought us a very fruitful farm. On that farm we have
never suffered.77
When communities oppose removal they may find the popular leadership
overruled, as happened at KwaNgema; or killed, as happened when Saul
Mkize was shot by a policeman at Driefontein, while addressing a meeting
about the proposed removal. Water supplies have been poisoned and schools
closed, as other tactics of ' p e r ~ u a s i o n ' . ~ ~
A newly emerging tactic by the regime in the face of black-spot
communities' resistance to removal is not to carry out a physical removal but
without consultation or negotiation to declare the area part of a bantustan as
happened in the case of the black-spot farms of Braklaagte and Boschfontein
in the Transvaal, which have been declared part of B o p h ~ t h a t s w a n a . ~ ~
Although only legal documents have changed their status, the force behind
the law is clear. This tactic appears to be a punitive executive response to the
legal victory against such measures won by the people of Mgwali in the
Eastern Cape. Mgwali, a black spot, was decreed to be under Ciskei
bantustan administration following an agreement between the Ciskei
authorities and the central government in 1981. The Mgwali Residents
Association organised resistance to the agreement and challenged its legal
status in 1985. They won an out-of-court settlement declaring the 1981
agreement null and void and ordering that the administration of Mgwali and
similar black spots in the area known as the Border Corridor should return to
the central government. However, the experience of a period of Ciskei
administration of the Border Corridor black spots created and exacerbated
many divisions within the communities. Those who supported the Ciskei
ruling group were divided from those who opposed it. The resulting conflicts
led to some people leaving voluntarily and some being forced into the
Ci~kei.~OFrom 1981 onwards, members of the Residents Association were
detained without trial on several occasions, by both bantustan authorities and
central government.
A review of removals published in 1984 stressed that the residents of black
spots are never moved of their own volition, and that varying degrees of legal
manipulation and force are used. It concluded:
So here we are, back in the era of forced removals. But we must
realize that we never left it. Force underlies every step of the
process of persuasion. To talk about 'Voluntary Removal' is a
contradiction in terms. D r Koornhof s own words indicate the
contradiction . . . There are laws remaining on our Statute Books
which make talk of reform and voluntary removals utterly
ridiculous. g 1
CONDITIONS AFTER REMOVAL
The forced removal of the black-spot communities are not merely gross acts
of dispossession, they are also determined attempts to divide people. On
Rural Removals 1 13
1t1.1,li spots there are two groups: landowners and tenants. In some cases
I 111.1 c. ;~r-c large landowners with many poorly off tenants and in other black
. I , , , I \ I he distinctions are blurred. For example at Driefontein the plot owners
4 , I I I 11cwhole own very small plots of less than 10 morgen (about 5 acres) and
I 11,. lc~iantspay a very low rent of R24 per a n n ~ mIn . ~KwaNgema
~ the area
I . owned by members of the Ngema family, the descendant of Stuurman
N,:c.lna, who had originally acquired the farm. However the tenants are
~,.j:;~l.dcd as an integral part of the community. They participate with the
I 111.111hcrs of the family council, or Umdeni, in overseeing the actions of the
111.111 appointed to administer the farmeg3
Wlien black spot communities are moved to bantustans loyalties and
II)II~-established relations between people are not respected. Landlords with
111o1.c than 20 morgen and stock are allowed to keep their stock and have
1,t.lliiission to buy land in the relocation area. Alternatively, they may take
8 . I ~ in I compensation. Small landowners, in contrast, are allocated half-acre
I I I I I I \ and forbidden to keep more than one cow and a few chickens. Tenants
.III . signed to quarter-acre plots in closer settlements and forbidden to keep
I I \ , ( . \ I ock or engage in agricultural production. The only compensation they
. I I ~ . i~llowedis for the value of improvements made. Since 1968 state policy
l1.15envisaged that former tenant farmers on black spots should be channelled
I l~lorrghlabour bureaux to places where white farmers are short of labour.84
I(l:l~.k-spotremovals are both an exercise in the division of the land and
~ c . ~ pon l c apartheid lines and an attempt to make labour available to white
1.11 ~iicrson easy terms.
'l'he hardships of moving into the bantustans have been acute for
1l1.1ck-spotcommunities. All suffer from the shortage of land. Even
~l~c.viously wealthy landowners find they cannot buy adequate new land with
I IN.compensation money they receive.85. Communities with some autonomy
I I I I lie administration of their daily lives find themselves subject to arbitrary
,1111liority.For example, the Fingo community who were moved from
I \ ~ ~ s i k a mtoa the Ciskei bantustan found that if they spoke out about their
R 11;11iged conditions they were liable to arrest and beating by local headmen
I I I I I ~ L Proclamation
-~ 252, which also provided for ninety days' detention for
. I I I vonc considered a threat to the peace.86 The Mogopa community, moved
I O Ikthanie in Bophuthatswana, were split into three by the Paramount
c . l ~ ~ cwho l , forbade them to hold meetings except in his presence. People
\vc.~.cconstantly harassed by police and taken for q ~ e s t i o n i n g . ~ ~
'I'llc housing provided by the regime is frequently inadequate. In 1977-
1c.r)orters from the World newspaper visited the private farm of Chief
j\\;~~itshiwa near Mafeking where people had been moved from a black spot at
,Ui~chabestadseven years before. They had been left with tents, which had
1vo1.11 out, and iron shacks, which had rusted. People had put u p huts which
<ll\~~~tegrated when it rained.88 The impoverished community could provide
I I O ;~lrernative housing. For the elderly, housing is a particular problem as
I .c.vv 'l'hagane told reporters after he had been moved from a black spot into
 114 Forced Removal
I was born in 1894. Where do you think I am going to get strength
from to build another house like the one I built at R i e t k ~ i l . ~ ~
The Mogopa community were moved to Pachsdraai in 1984. Their treatment
was much the same as the Machabestad community 14 years before. They
were allocated tents and tiny huts which could not hold all their possessions.
The metal huts became blazing hot in the sun. There was no shade and the
barely cleared area was covered with thorn bushes, which stuck in the
children's feet.90Other people from Mogopa, who settled at Bethanie, had no
local water supply, and had to walk a great distance for water.91 One year
later they were still living in shacks made from the corrugated iron roofs of
their old homes at Mogopa. The old people had not had their pensions
transferred to Bophuthatswana and work seekers could not get jobs because
their passes registered them in another area.92. Glenmore, a relocation site in
the Eastern Cape, established in 1979 with temporary housing, bucket toilets
and one water tap per house, was a horrifying place to move to. Rations were
only provided for people moved into the area for the first few days. When
these ran out the people faced starvation. Eleven people, nine of them
children, died in the first weeks after the removal from gastro-enteritis,
kidney inflammation, kwashiorkor and bronchial pneumonia, all of them
diseases of poverty and poor h o ~ s i n g . ~ 3
Black spots should not be romanticised as oases of prosperity and
co-operation before forced removal: poverty, hardship and exploitation of
tenants were also features of the areas.94 But the uprooting of communities,
the destruction of farms, and the compulsion placed on the people to live in
crowded hovels on arid land with uncertain employment remain acts of great
cruelty and the naked exercise of might.
RESISTANCE BY BLACK-SPOT COMMUNITIES
The forced removal of black-spot communities became a focus of interna-
tional attention during the 1980s. In 1984, after the people of Mogopa were
removed to Bethanie and Pachsdraai in a blaze of publicity there was a
world-wide outcry and the United States State Department delivered a high
level protest to the South African Ambassador in Washington. Before P W
Botha visited Britain in June 1984 a demonstration was held outside
Downing Street about the proposed removal of the KwaNgema community
and a letter from the community, pointing out that their land rights had been
sanctioned by King Edward VII in 1904, was handed to the Prime Minister,
who raised the matter spechcally with Botha. These international dimen-
sions of resistance to forced removals indicated the growth of organisation in
opposition to removals amongst black-spot communities. For many years
members of communities faced with removal have made strong statements of
protest. For example Mr Makodi, leader of the Machabestad community
which was moved to Rooigrond in Bophuthatswana, told a meeting called by
the community:
Rural Removals 1 15
We have been thrown away. We feel very much grieved. When I
talk of our land I mean the land of our forefathers, the land where
our forefathers' graves are. I would like to pose the question: who
are the foreigners? I can say that my people were there to accept
the foreigners when they came. It is so painful that those people
are the ones who are now telling us to go. We grieve for our
corefathers' graves which have been ploughed over.95
III .Isimilar spirit in 1978 the Batlokwa community, threatened with removal
10 I<ochum in the Lebowa bantustan, jeered and barracked officials of the
I )rpartment of Plural Relations who informed them that the decision to move
11.1cl heen made by parliament and was irrevocable.% Parliament has been one
l o c t ~ hof protest. Isaac Ternbani, a delegate from the Fingo community, went
I,) Ix~rliamentin 1982 to hear the debate on the sale of the Fingo land to white
1.11lllcrs, and said:
I came to see Minister Dr Koornhofs face so that our children
should one day kiiow that we were not afraid to go to the highest
authority to put our case.97
1 . l statements
~ of protest at meetings and to the press are courageous, strong
I lc.l~~onstrations
of the depth of popular feeling, but they are poignant because
1l ~ counterpose
v these feelings against a powerful and unresponsive state. As
1) Twala, chairman of the Daggaskraal Landowners' Executive said, in
10x3:
Mr Van Niekerk was told, as his predecessors have been told, that
the people of Daggaskraal have no wish to be moved. To be frank
the people of Daggaskraal shall not move. The government can
move us by bringing the bulldozers and having us all bulldozed.
We are not a militant lot.
My statement must not be misconstrued that perhaps our
objection may have a militant support. But for our sole rights we
are willing to stand at our rightful ground. Let God, or perhaps
whoever has power, decide over us.ys
I l r key to moving beyond verbal protest to concrete resistance lay in the
t,,-ganisation of communities and their ability to make links with other
~)~.ganisations, the media and international public opinion.99At Driefontein,
hlogopa and KwaNgema this was done with concrete results. The
I:ovcrnment's attempt to project a human face to apartheid was shown to be
I.\l~cand in the cases of KwaNgema and Driefontein it ensured that the
1c.111ovalsdid not take place. In Mgwali and the other black spots
.lillninistered by the Ciskei bantustan authorities since 1981, the formation of
~ c . \ ~ d e nassociations
t~' was an important factor in focusing resistance and
,.(.curing the end of Ciskei administration through court action.
lu all three communities a representative group was elected by both
I.\lrdlords and tenants. This group was strongly opposed by these whom the
 116 Forced Removal
government recognised as community leaders. At KwaNgema the democratic
group was forced to use the courts to establish its legitimacy, once it was clear
that officials of the Department of Co-operation and Development were
refusing to consult or inform its representatives.loOAt Mogopa, although the
community had proof that the headman Jacob More, who favoured their
removal, was corrupt and although they wished to depose him, their decision
was not accepted by the local commissioner.
At Mogopa and Driefontein bitter divisions emerged between people who
were prepared to move and those who were not. Jacob More held secret
meetings at Mogopa with officials from Pretoria and Bophuthatswana. He
agreed to move with 10 families to good accommodation in Pachsdraai. This
paved the way for the terrorisation of the community in an attempt to force
them to follow the headman: bulldozers smashed down the local schools and
churches, the bus service was stopped and the water pumps were taken out.
But the people who stayed behind refused to be intimidated. They bought a
new pump, began to rebuild the school, organised older children to teach the
younger ones, and initiated legal action to have the bulldozer removed from
the village.lol In the face of these threats the mass of the community stood
together, and they turned their back on the headman More who had been
prepared to abandon their interests for his own. The threat of removal
heightened the extent of local organisation. When the order to move from
Mogopa was received the community decided not to co-operate but to wait
and rather be moved by force. Their commitment led to political groups,
church representatives, students and members of the Black Sash going to
Mogopa to stand in solidarity while people waited for the police and trucks to
arrive. This attracted considerable press attention. As no police or officials
came for the first few weeks, rebuilding of the school continued. Women
fixed the roads and the local committee went to the commissioner,
demanding that he pay the pensions owed and stamp workers' passes, which
he had been refusing to do. He was forced to accede. Although the removal
finally took place in February 1984, the stand of the organised community
focused so much national and international attention on forced removals that
the regime was pressed to rethink its whole strategy on the eradication of
black spots.
The action of the Driefontein community against forced removal began
with letters to the Prime Minister by its representative, Saul Mkhize, writing
on the instruction of the community:
I write to you for only one reason- your help on the behalf of the
people of Daggaskraal, Driefontein and Ngema. Your help is
needed because we are being forced to move from our properties
by the Department of Co-operation and Development. Dr
Koornhof has been known to say 'there will be no forced removal
of black people from black areas', and yet here we are, without
any real discussion, being told by his department that we will
move, like it or not.
Rural Removals 117
This is not humanitarian, or in God's name, proper. I ask you
lo arrange, with due notice to myself and my Council of Directors
of Driefontein, duly elected by landowners of Driefontein on
I)ecember 26, 1982 at a meeting specially convened to elect
representatives to negotiate about the removal, for a meeting with
1)r Koornhof to discuss this whole matter.
The Committees of Daggaskraal and Ngema, which are in
\imilar predicament, would like to join us at such a meeting. May
I cay that we do not wish to discuss our removal, which seems to
he a fait accompli by the Department of Co-operation and
I )evelopment, but:
( 1 ) Why we should consider leaving our homeland at all?
12) Why we should give up our legally owned property?
i3) What reasons has the department for even thinking that we are
prepared to allow them to intimidate us into such a move?
(4) In view of lack of co-operation from the department, why
jhould they expect our co-operation?
These are only a few of the items we must discuss but, to do so,
we need a fully representative team from the Department of
Co-operation and Development, including Dr Koornhof, in order
to sort out the entire matter of what we consider a completely
iinnecessary upheaval of these well-settled, well-adjusted and
happy communities.
Your Honour, we have suffered for many years due to the
uncertainty of our position. We have heard rumours, we have
been told to obey, but we have never been properly informed or
had proper discussions regarding the 'whys' and 'wherefores' of
our situation. In God's merciful name, is this merciful? Are these
the actions of a man of God as I know you are.
At present our people are hungry and short of water. Our
boreholes are dry and we wish to arrange to have new boreholes,
hut how can we do this in the present circumstances? We are, as
all South Africans are, proud people and all we ask is to remain
so. We do not wish to be rebellious in any way, but only to
continue to live our lives out in our own environment.
All we ask is that we have a reasonable and full discussion with
a duly appointed body, by someone such as yourself. We know
we must listen, but we must also have every opportunity to talk
and to explain our position.
Your Honour, I beseech you to help us in this matter and to act
on our behalf. We need your help and we ask for it now.lo2
I , I ILY-S and meetings of protest have been a feature of the resistance in all
I 1 1 I (.c 'Transvaal communities. It was at one such meeting that Saul Mkhize
1, .I,, shot dead by a policeman at Driefontein, in 1983. At the time of his death

1 18 Forced Removal
Mkhize was addressing a meeting of the Driefontein community in the
grounds of a local school. Two policemen arrived and tried to stop the
meeting, threw tear-gas at the crowd and then shot Mkhize. Mkhize's funeral
was attended by 3,000 mourners and many representatives of organisations.
The funeral became a demonstration against the forced removals at
Driefontein in particular and throughout the country in general.J03
A further tactic has been the use of the courts to delay the removals and
alert a wider public to the situation. Although the court action to hait the
removals at Mogopa failed, it brought the removals to national and then
international attention. The removal in fact took place while the community's
challenge to the legality of their removal was still pending before the
Appellate Division. In November 1983 their application for an interdict to
stop their removal was refused by the Transvaal Supreme Court. The
community applied for leave to appeal. This was refused. They then
petitioned the Appellate Division and while the petition was before the court
their removal took place in February 1984.
In May 1985 the regime introduced a bill containing a retroactive clause
which sought to amend the law so that the approval of Parliament was not
necessary before a removal order could be served on a community which
refused to move. The Mogopa community was arguing in the Appellate
Division that, contrary to the law as it stood, Parliament had not approved
their removal.104 The bill provoked a storm of protest both within South
Africa and abroad. A professor of law at the University of the Witwatersrand,
John Dugard, telegraphed the British Minister of State at the Foreign Office
asking him to raise the matter in his meeting with the Minister of
Co-operation and D e v e l ~ p m e n t . 'The
~ ~ regime was forced to withdraw the
legislation and the Appellate Division ruled in favour of the Mogopa
community. The community then continued their litigation. Their leader
John More said when he heard of the court's decision: 'This is the beginning
of our struggle to get back our land."06 The struggle involved more
litigation. The people wrote to the Minister of Co-operation and Develop-
ment stating that they wished to return to their original farms, that they
wanted reinstatement and damages for forced removal, and for the
expropriation of their land.
The court action by the Ngema community also resulted in a significant
victory. In March 1985 the Pretoria Supreme Court dismissed the Ngema
community's application to stop Cuthbert Ngema, who favoured removal,
acting as chief. However, it also granted an interdict preventing the state
filling the Heyshope dam, which would flood parts of KwaNgema, pending
the outcome of an action to determine the lawfulness of the construction of
the dam on the community's land. The legal action gave the people of
KwaNgema a breathing space in a critical moment of negotiations. The
political atmosphere in which removals took place was changing. It was no
longer possible for isolated communities to be treated as helpless victims and
their land taken without the whole world paying attention. The regime had
been forced to reconsider the removal at Kwangema. In August 1985 the
I
I Rural Removals 119
I ),.lur~y
Minister of Development and Land Affairs met representatives of
I11,. KwaNgema and Driefontein communities. He agreed that the communi-
I I, .. would not be removed and that they would be compensated for land they
I , ~ , . I when the new dam was built.'07
1 . l tenacity
~ and courage of the three Transvaal communities in taking a
against their forced removal has inspired others. When the new
I . I I I ~ ~
$ ,111so1idationplans for the Transvaal bantustans and Kwazulu were
1 1 ~~lounced in September 1985, communities affected immediately began to
41~l:;~~lise their opposition and held meetings of protest. People living at
l!lt~c.dConteinand Geweerfontein who would be forced under the plans to
c (I(.their land to the Bophuthatswana bantustan held a meeting in October
i
.I I I , I declared unanimously they were not prepared to move. In Kwazulu 500
ople threatened with removal from Reserve Four attended a meeting and
0 11tlorsedthe words of the local Chief Matiyane: 'They must shoot us and kill
1 1 . . rather than make us leave.''Os In Moutse, scheduled for incorporation into
I\ \v;~ndebele,people attacked and killed the policemen who tried to break up
111,1lcstmeetings. Despite the presence of armed police vehicles, tear-gas
. I I I .leks, bans on meetings, detentions and intimidation by armed semi-official
, : I ~ I I the I ~ S community continued to oppose their incorporation into
I., wandebele and the 'independence' plans for that bantustan. So high was
I I I ~ . lcvel of resistance that it helped cement the alliance against Kwandebele
I I I , lcpendence' and helped force the reversal of this decision. The experience
111 I 11;ssuccessful opposition has fostered a fierce and organised opposition to
. I I I Iuntustan structures in the area. lo9
'I'he people of black spots who are threatened with removal are working to
l\,c.l-cometheir isolation. Church organisations and anti-apartheid groups
t
111sideSouth Africa too have helped to build up support against removal. At a
111c.cring organised by the Witwatersrand Council of Churches in June 1984
~ I I ,than I I ~ 300 people pledged to resist removals and support those who did
I I O I wish to be forcibly relocated. The rally demanded that the government
.111cc1
t all further removals and appoint an independent commission to plan
101 a rapid rate of urbanisation, a termination of influx control and
cluisition of land outside the bantustans for black people who are homeless
.I(
. I I I < \ landless. This meeting was addressed by the Rev Frank Chikane of the
I I I )I: and Moses Ngema, chairman of the Kwangema community committee.
I I was a significant illustration of the links being established between rural
. I I I < \ urban struggles.
111 1985 leaders of 95 communities threatened with removal issued a joint
% o ~ l ~ m c non
t the President's assertion that forced removals would cease:
The former minister promised there would be no more forced
removals and yet the people of Mogopa were loaded up by police
and moved by force one year ago. It is not enough that the
government says it will reconsider some of the areas. Ourselves,
;IS well as other communities threatened, have the right to stay
where we are. We will fight for our future, whatever reprieves and
120 Forced Removal Rural Removals 12 1

threats the government issues. We believe that it is our struggle development to ensure that the rural areas are organised and
which has shown the government that to continue with removals further activised, as in Kwandebele and Lebowa, to enable them
will cause bloodshed. The government fears the bad publicity to clear the countryside of all apartheid institutions of power,
which this brings to South Africa, but this is caused entirely by including the bantustans, to join the armed struggle and to
their own acts.l10 repossess the land as part of our nationwide advance towards
victory. 114
The communities' representatives demanded a list of the areas from whic
Dr Viljoen proposed to suspend removals, and extensive relief measures I
help re-establish all the communities that had been moved. This form of joi~
action illustrates the links communities are building and the commo
strategies they are devising. In 1984 a National Committee against Remova
(NCAR) was formed. It incorporated four of the organisations that ha
worked to help publicise the stand of people against removals: Transva;
Rural Action Committee, Association for Rural Advancement, Grahamstow
Rural Committee and the Surplus People Project. Under the auspices of th
NCAR leaders from communities threatened with removal have met togethc
and planned common and co-ordinated strategies, transforming the loci
threats into national and international issues. As a result of all of the:
developments the regime's ability to implement its plans for the countrysid
has been challenged.
The ANC has explicitly condemned forced removals of black-spc
communities and supported opposition to bantustan incorporation.ll1 I
January 1980 an armed unit of Umkhonto we Sizwe attacked the polic
station at Soekmekaar in the Northern Transvaal at the height of th
community's struggle against forced removal. According to Petrus Mashig
who was convicted in 1980 for his part in the action, the attack was carrie
out because of the assistance the police had given the authorities in carryin
out the forced removals of the people from the area. 112 The assassination i
July 1986 of Piet Ntuli, the KwaNdebele bantustan administration
'Minister of Internal Affairs' and leader of the semi-official armed forc
Mbokodo, in Kwandebele, was an event which triggered the rejection (
bantustan 'independence' and gave some reprieve in status to the peopl
forcibly removed into the area. Chris Hani, a senior ANC army commandel
confirmed in December 1986 that the assassination was the work (
Umkhonto we Sizwe, which had acted 'to eliminate a notorious collaboratc
and to assist the popular mobilisation against Kwandebele independence'.''
The ANC's view on the bantustans and the condition of removed people wz
outlined in a statement on 8 January 1987 by the National Executik
Committee:
At the founding conference of our movement 75 years ago, [the
rural masses] were represented by those traditional rulers who
enjoyed their confidence because they had not yet been cor-
rupted, as some are, by the monthly salaries that the apartheid
regime now hands out to administrators of the bantustan system.
Today, these masses are representing themselves in the common
struggle through their own activity. We must reinforce this
 122 Forced Kemozlal
CHAPTER 5
Popular resistance and new state
strategies
The 1980s, marked by a growing mobilisation of resistance, have been a time
of crisis and realignment for the regime. A range of new strategies have been
discussed, and policy formulations once abandoned have been resurrected.
This chapter highlights major strands in the new formulations of policy on
forced removals and assesses the extent to which popular opposition may
undermine these initiatives.
In February 1985 the Minister of Co-operation, Development and
Education, Dr G Viljoen announced a suspension of the removals programme
pending a review of up to 30 black spots and 30 townships due for
incorporation into bantustans. He attached two conditions to this statement:
where leaders agreed to move communities would be relocated; and squatters
would not be tolerated.' The statement should be seen partly as a response to
the criticisms of the removals policy that had been appearing in the Afrikaans
press, in addition to those coming from religious figures and the business
community. Cabinet Ministers themselves also appeared concerned about the
policy. On his retirement as Minister of Co-operation and Development in
1984 Dr Koornhof gave an interview to the Johannesburg Sunday Times,
saying that the greatest trauma of his political career was the implementation
of forced removals and the destruction of squatter shacks. H e had personally
stopped 20 major removals, he said, and he hoped that his successor could
reduce them to a minimum.2
Clearly there is a smack of the public relations exercise about both
Koornhofs statement and Viljoen's announcement. As the leaders of many
communities under threat of removal pointed out in February 1985, the
review of removals policy did not deal with the cases of 245,000 people due
for removal, nor did it cover removals other than those affecting black spots
and townships due for incorporation into bantustan^.^ TRAC also criticised
the policy changes:
The government's current policy on removals is at best confused
and inconsistent, and at worst, devious. Even in black spots and
urban relocation incoherence and contradictory government
action has caused severe strain and uncertainty for affected
communities, while giving the government a breathing space in
the face of criticism."
Indeed throughout 1985 and 1986 removals continued to take place and new
removals were planned despite the miniscerial assurances. In 1986 an
Popular Kesistunce and the Ncu Stare Strutegies 123
1.11txi1 10,000 people were forcibly moved through the destruction of the
I 111
I I cuds and Langa communities. Fifteen thousand people in Oukasie and
..I
11 11 11 1 111 1,awaaikamp were threatened with removal.'
I la~rvcvcr,the duplicitous nature of government statements should not
, .It I 11 the extent to which pressures have mounted on the regime to rethink
(,
I I It , I L . C ~ removals policy. In the fields of influx control and urban and rural
(
I 1 1 I I I I 11ga number of initiatives have been set in motion that alter the course
, I I 11,. Iorced removals policy of the last few decades. In the post-1976 period
I 1 1 , .ll);ll.lheidphilosophy of earlier periods was discussed and analysed by a
I 1 1I I I 11 or prominent white academics and high-level civil servants. They
I # I I 1111I;ltcd a critical view of why the system was not working, what had led to
111, III;I\\ country-wide protests, and what the future stress points were likely
I 'I'his group became known as the 'technocrats', partly because of their
I , I 1,:111;1lic approach to apartheid, which stressed that if some aspect of the
1,' s I ~ \ g was not working that part should be abandoned, and partly because of
I 1 1 , 1 1 t ommitment to streamline, rationalise and modernise the political and
( 1 1 , I - , ocmnic systems, making South Africa a more efficient capitalist
, 1 1 1 1 1 I v . Their outlook has led them to advocate a change in certain features
- I .10;11-111eid as part of a strategy for preserving the conditions of white
, ~ I I I <;11 domination and for safeguarding those economic interests which
1 ,. 1 1 1 I I I C , ~ from apartheid. It must be stressed however that any liberalisation
1 , \ 1 1 l l i 1 1 the context of maintaining both capitalism and white political
I3,~1~~~~;lllce.
I \ \ I , new considerations appear to have been important in shaping the
I , , I ~ . c l I-cmovals policy changes. Firstly, in a time of recession, there are
. . I lolls about the fiscal cost of the removals and queries about whether the
1 1 1 1
! c IIIO,,;IIS help or hinder the economic growth of the country. As a Cape Times
. I I I O I I : I I put it:
l~llluxcontrol and removals are economic nonsense. There is a
link between urbanisation and economic growth, as business
Ic;lders such as Mr Gavin Relly of Anglo-American have noted.
I'hroughout the world the fast-growing economies are those
\vhich have a rural population which can be rapidly absorbed into
~ ~ l ~ l u swithout
try restrictions on movement and e m p l ~ y m e n t . ~
.' ~ ~ ~ ~there
( l l has
y been the tendency amongst analysts associated with the
8 IVIIII(. 10 see a highly dangerous source of opposition to the regime in the
1 , 111 01. the state's responsibility for the administration of the black
~ , ~ ~ l ~ l l l The ; ~ ~ istrategy
on. advocated by a number of advisers has been to
I, I l , , l ~ ticise' the administration of the black population- to minimise the
I ' \ I-olcas landlord, controller of the labour market, and administrator of
I.,' . I I ;~llairs-and to allow these matters to be regulated by 'market forces'
I 1, I
1 I(.c-~cd
I black representative^.^ Much of the attempt to reorient removals
1 , . ~ I vI ( ~. ; I I ~ be read in the light of concerns to promote economic growth and
1' I 1,111licise' conflict, in the hope that this will help maintain the basis of the
1 , I~IIII(.'S power.
 124 Forced Kemovul
REFORMULATION OF URBAN POLICY
Thc regime's planners have been preoccupied with urban policy since 1976-7
when the predominantly urban uprising of that period highlighted many of
the problems of existing strategies of urban population control. Attention has
focused on projections of the rapid growth of the urban African population
outside the bantustans. The growth has not been prevented either by the
establishment of bantustan towns, or by the lack of township housing, and
even less by the Coloured Labour Preference Policy. Demographers, using
estimates from the 1980 census, concluded that before the end of the century
there wo'uld be 20 million urban Africans concentrated in the metropolitan
areas of Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging, Durban, Port Elizabeth-
Uitenhage, and the Western Cape.x In another projection it was estimated in
1979 that South Africa's population would have doubled by the turn of the
century. Out of a total of 50 million people, 74 pcr cent would be African,
and 80 per cent of the total population would be urbanised.' Official
statisticians project a total population of 45 million in the year 2000 with 77
per cent African and between 75-79 per cent of the population urbanised.1°
The 'technocrats' ' advice to the regime, in the face of these statistics, has
been to swim with the tide of increasing urbanisation. They have advocated a
number of new strategies which differ from the policies on removals of
previous eras. Firstly they outlined, and the regime largely accepted, a new
housing policy for people with Section 10 rights, grounding their presence in
urban townships in property rights and making the threat of phvsical removal
for these people less potent. The 1986 laws which abolished Section 10 rights
embody the same approach. African entrepreneurs and better-paid workers
are to have access to privately owned housing, while other Africans, who
cannot afford this type of housing, are to be marginalised and possibly
removed into bantustans to limit and control the political opposition they
might advocate. Secondly, the 'technocrats' suggested a new policy on
squatters, some of which was soon tried at a local level. Thirdly, and this is
perhaps the major element in their strategy, they advocated a decentralisation
policy which is perceived as the solution to a whole range of problems facing
the regime.
HOUSING POLICY
Following on the Riekert report the 'technocrats' and those influenced by
their approach, accepted that a certain core of urban Africans with
permanent residence rights could not be moved from the townships of
'White' cities. From that premise it was suggested that such people, far from
posing a problem for the maintenance of apartheid, might in fact provide a
solution to apartheid's problems. It was agreed that families, long-settled in
towns, with more education, with the potential to earn high wages and to
purchase consumer goods on an increasing scale, could provide the pool of
skilled and supervisory labour needed for economic growth and a new market
for locally produced manufactured goods. This section of the working class,
i
~hcoryran, relatively better paid with a Ilifillc~\ I . I I I ~ I . I I I I
1111- 111 I I 1 ~1 1 1 . ,.IIISI
11, ,
Is, 1llclined to support the regime which had nl;~dc1 1 1 , - 1 1 1 II I I ~ I I I I I ~
a
I
I
11, B >\lI>l~.
111 1978 an- act of Parliament made possible the ~ I I I II.I,.I
( ~~1 I - \ T 1 1 . I 1 1 1 1
I ol)crty on the terms of 99-year leasehold rights and 1.t.1111I O ~ I I I ~1 1 11-111(. 1
Ib~~~ltling as an option for township residents. A huge salc 01 Icn . c l . I I I I ~ U I I11s
I c ~ l ~ l \ ibegan,
~ ~ g building societies were set to make enorlrlollh 1 \ 1 0 1 1 1 . . 111
c r l , 11 [gages on the new leases, and the construction indusrry : I I I I I ( I \ ~ . I I ~ . C I
, ,,ll.inded demand for home building. Initially the Western (:apt, W I I I I rl~c
( loured Labour Preference policy still in force, was exempted Srom ~ l l c~lcw
~ l ~ ~ . ~ ~ c ~on i s aleasehold.
tion But in 1984 99-year leasehold rights were gra~lrcd
I , , hlrican township residents in the Western Cape.
I'lle new mode of thinking about township housing clearly influenced the
I ~ ~ ~ l ~ c . In i a rthe
y . Yapi judgement of 1982 township residence rights were
I I I I lllcr extended beyond those established by the 1979 Komani judgemcnt
.,., (,'hapter 2). In the later case the judge ruled that people with Section 10
I ~~:llrs would be deemed lawfully in an urban area, even though they were not
I.~\vl~~lly occupying housing.ll Thus important aspects of the housing
1 1 . ,[1-ictionsconstructed between 1960 and 1973 wereabandoned. Section 10
I l):l~[s could not be withdrawn if housing was not available, and one of the
% 1.111ral elements in the forcing of urban residents into the bantustans, lack of
.I, css to urban housing, lost its force.
I
I lowever, the ground gained by urban Africans in this judgement was lost
11 Ir~.nthe influx control legislation was amended in 1986. Section 10 and
I I I lun-residence rights no longer secured access to urban hou.;ing, but urban
I~otlsingnow secured access to urban-residence rights. Analysis of official
..l.~~cments on urban housing policy have led to a conclusion that the regime
h~i~cncis to use housing as a means of imposing stratification on the urban
\I~ic;mpopulation. The official view is that the housing in the older African
~o\vnships,many of them adjacent to white residential areas should be sold to
1101nc-ownersand people holding long leases. In these areas will live the
.\lr-icanmiddle class and better-paid members of the working class who are
. ~ l ) lto
c afford high rents and mortgage repayments. The intention is that they
.I~ouldact as a buffer between the supposedly more politically volatile poorer
..c.~tions of the working class and the ullemployed who, with no housing,
\vould be forced into squatter camps or bantustan towns. Rent boycotts,
\ \ l ~ c r ctownship residents are refusing to pay the higher rents or accept
c.\,~ctions,are a crucial line of popular defence against this strategy.12 The
..~lc of township housing was welcomed by the corporate sector. Jan Steyn,
< Iriel. executive of the Urban Foundation, said in 1984 at the time of the
c.h~cnsionof leasehold to Western Cape Africans:
I The advantage of private sector participation is obvious. It
relieves the state of a massive burden in a time of extreme
financial stringency. It will also stabilize the situation of blacks in
this part of the world. In the same way the government's mass
126 Forced Removal
housing sale and its new housing policy could well create new
stability and a sense of belonging for black people elsewhere in
the country."
Steyn's statements echo the policy formulations of the 'technocrats' of some
years earlier. According to Professor Simon Brand, chair of the Economic
Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and later the President:
If someone wants to buy a house and this transaction falls within
the private sector, it is a transaction between a seller and a buyer.
But as soon as a government takes responsibility for supplying
houses it becomes a political matter and then people who are not
in the political process, who haven't got representation in
Parliament for example, say it is because they don't have
representation in Parliament that they have to stand at the back of
the queue for houses. That is why they definitely want
one-man-one-vote for this country. But if you can take these
things out of the political sphere as much as possible then
Parliament and the government plays a much less important role
and it becomes a less important matter for people to necessarily
have a certain form of representation in the central Parliament.'''
The private sector has been quick to take advantage of the new market in
African housing and the state has assisted this development by providing
infrastructural investment in electricity and sewerage. In the Witwatersrand
private and state investment in township housing increased by 40 per cent
between 1981 and 1985, representing a total 1985 investment of R172.2
million.15 But the policy masks increased burdens for the mass of the people.
Buying a house is beyond the means of all but a fraction of African township
residents. In 1985 the monthly instalment on a loan to buy a simple house
was R267, while the building societies would not lend money to anyone
earning less than R1,068 per month. This meant that 99.4 per cent of all
wage-earners could not qualify for the loans, even had they been able to
afford the monthly loan repayments.16 Yet despite the high costs of buying a
house people began to be compelled to buy their houses. In 1983 35,000
houses were offered for sale to tenants. Those who did not buy by July 1984
would face increased rent." Simultaneously the new township authorities,
created under the Koornhof legislation of 1982, were given powers to set
rents and service charges as funding for services from central government was
withdrawn.
Without any financial reserves the new local authorities passed all their
overheads on to the residents. For example in the townships of the Vaal
Triangle in 1984 rents were raised first by R3 a month; then R25 was levied
on all tenants to create a fund against bad debts; and a new ground tax was
introduced, as well as permit charges for subletting. These heavy increases in
the cost of living came just as economic recession was making thousands of
industrial workers redundant, and as the central government itself began to
Popular Resistance and the Nezu Slale Slrareg~es 127
I I \, 1 0 raise revenue by indirect taxation. (In particular the general sales tax
( , \ ' 1 ' ) rose in 1984 from 6 per cent to 10 per cent of the value of goods bought
1 1 111 in 1985 to 12 per cent of the value of goods bought.) In the townships of
I 11,. Vaal Triangle between 1980 and 1984 African wages increased by 17 per
t I while. rent increased by 56 per cent.IR
III
lic.sistance to the new housing policy has been sustained and effective. The
a l11c1 tactic has been the rent boycott. Rent boycotts begun in September
~ ~ j ins lthe townships of the Vaal Triangle had spread by mid-1986 to 48
r ~ \ \ l ~ s h iin p sdifferent areas of the country. Rent boycotts became the main
I , , I 1 1 1 oC popular resistance during the second half of 1986. The authorities'
I I I ( . I I I ~to~ win the co-operation of employers and induce them to deduct rent
1 1 1 , 1 1 1 wages did not meet with much success, as employers were wary that
, 1 1 1 11 action would lead to strikes. A number of community councils were
I O I c d to resign because of the boycotts and popular opposition to their role
I
I I I ,!l;lndingin for Pretoria. By October 1986 local councils' rent arrears were
q ..I 1111;1ted at R250 million and there was scant possibility of their recouping
1 1 1 t - Illoney. Meanwhile the conduct of the boycott had contributed to the
,:lt,w~hof street committees and township civic associations. These
, , I ,:;l~~isations began to take on some of the functions of the disrupted local
I I I I l~c~rities - for example, organising refuse collection and establishing
I t blilc's parks on waste ground. When evictions of people not paying rent
)I
, I (. ~hreatenedactivists set up barricades to prevent police access or broke
I I I I O Ilouses to readmit evicted tenants.19 Despite the widespread terrorisation
%11 I I I C townships by the presence of troops, the boycott remains a potent
\ I , .1,io11 in the hands of urban tenants and an effective instrument to help
1 8 1 t - v c ~the ~ t implementation of the new and divisive housing policy.
N I : W STRATEGIES ON SQUATTERS
I I I ,\(lgust 1984 Hermann Giliomee, an influential academic close to leading
III.III~.\ in the administration, wrote an article in the Cape Times reviewing the
a 1 1 1 . 1 1 Icr situation in the Western Cape. H e quoted extensively from research
a , I I I{I a i l ' s favelas and asserted:
Iktensive research established that squatters are system-suppor-
I ivc,
non-revolutionary and unwilling to take political risks- they
arc people who have the aspirations of the bourgeoisie and the
perseverance of pioneers.*O
1\11. .!I-ticlewas published at a time when the regime's policy on squatters
q I.IIICC~ most contradictory. On the one hand demolition raids had been
I ' . I I I I I Cat ~ Crossroads and KTC only a month before. On the other hand, in
I * I ~ I I \ o l the so-called Koornhof Deal permission was given for 1,000
I I 1 1 1 111rcsto be constructed at the Nyanga Bush site. The Director of the
\\ ~.,.lcl-n Cape Administration Board told the Nyanga Bush and the Cathedral
, . I t t 1 1 1 i of squatters that to alleviate overcrowding within their communities
I I I , \. tvould be allowed to erect more shelters on sites allocated by the Western
 I
128 Forced Removal
Cape Development Board, but only if they did not allow any newcomers
access to the sites.
By 1986 the policy on squatters had been clarified. Some squatters in
informal housing developments were to be tolerated, particularly if these
developments were located in sites specifically designated for this, as at
Khayelitsha and Botshabelo, or if the people in these areas had developed a
relation of accord with the government, as had Johnson Ngxobongwana at
Crossroads. Such squatters, presumably, are seen as potential supporters of
the apartheid system, as Giliomee had predicted and as events demonstrated
at Crossroads in August 1986. However, all other squatters are to live under
constant harassment, threat of eviction and prosecution for trespass and
illegal immigration. The attempt to marginaliw and disperse these people is
an attempt to break their political militancy and to turn discontent into
competition between residents, rather than opposition to apartheid policies.
The attacks on the Crossroads residents, evictions of squatters around
Soweto, and fierce fighting between squatter groups being differentially
exploited by landlords which developed at Christmas 1985 near Durban are
all examples of this strategy. However, the ruthless attacks and the attempts
to control settlement havc not extinguished resistance. In Botshabelo, in
defiance of official rulings, people have claimed land and demanded the right
to settle there. Township residents havc rcfused to turn their backs on
squatters without rights. For example, in Soweto in August 1984 the
Meadowlands and Diepkloof People's Party sent a deputation to the mayor
and held a meeting with the town clerk to protest at the council's decision to
evict 1,000 illegal residents squatting around the Meadowlands hostel.21
Households within the Cape Town townships took in the refugees from
Cros~roads.~z Further, it seems unlikely that the resistance of Crossroads
residents, who undertook several armed attacks on police and military forces
during 1985-6 has been totally extinguished despite the brutalities they have
suffered.
DECENTRALISATION POLICY
Decentralisation, although a key notion for the 'technocrats', and a policy
which has received much government support of late, is not a new notion in
discussions about facilitating the implementation of apartheid. Perhaps its
long history accounts for the small degree of political opposition the policy
encountered in the late 1970s. But although the current decentralisation
strategies have much in common with earlier plans of this nature, they also
contain essential differences- the stamp of the 'technocrats' ' desire to
manage a political economy that threatens to fall apart. Decentralisation is no
longer seen as a way to put apartheid into practice, but rather as a way to
ensure that that practice does not destroy itself.
In the 1940s, in the light of discussions about whether it was necessary to
control African urbanisation, decentralisation schemes were first mooted by
the Board of Trade and Industry, which recommended that in order to lessen
Popular Resistance and the N e w State Strategies 129
I I ~ , . threat of a concentrated African workforce, there should be:
... a policy of regional planning and development in order to
bring about a greater measure of decentralisation of industry, the
transfer and development of some of the industries making cheap
standard wares for native consumption in reserves, as well as for a
policy of separation and racial parting in factories and even for a
large measure of territorial segregation.23
I 1 1 ~ even
s before the National Party's accession to power, influential civil
..(.I vants considered industrial decentralisation as a component of territorial
..,.~rcgation.However, any large-scale policy of industrial decentralisation
W ; I Simpossible in the immediate post-war years. Economic conditions were
I I O ( yet considered sufficiently prosperous to generate the revenue to support
,,ttih a scheme.14In addition the recommendations for the establishment of
~~~tlustries within the 'reserves' were rejected by the government on the
):l-ounds that they would pose a threat to white labour. However, the
.tr~ractionsof decentralisation were obvious, as H F Verwocrd told the
I:cderated Chamber of Industries:
A long-term policy must exist for the development of completely
suitable industrial areas, situated in such a way that native
labourers in the towns can live in their own areasz5
I'he development of the bantustan programme, initiated as a means of
~joliticalcontrol in the 1960s, was closely linked to decentralisation policy. In
1960 the prime minister released a statement on the 'Establishment of
Industries in Border Areas', and a Permanent Commission for the Location
01' Industry and Development of Border Areas was established. Border Areas
were defined according to the Permanent Commission as:
... those locations or regions near the Bantu areas, in which
industrial development takes place through European initiative
and control, but which are so situated that the Bantu workers can
maintain their residences and family lives in the Bantu areas and
move readily to their places of employment.26
It can be seen that this first stage of decentralisation policy envisaged the
bantustans remaining as labour reservoirs with industry sited outside the
bantustans under the direction of white entrepreneurs.
The border-industry plans were dogged by problems of inadequate funds
and lack of infrastructure in the designated areas. Despite new incentive
schemes for businesses offered in 1964 and 1968, the only successful
border-industry area was Rosslyn in the Northern Transvaal, close to the
already established markets of Pretoria.
In the mid 1960s as discussed above (see Chaprer I ) there was a major
reassessment of the purposes of the bantustan programme. Policy was
reoriented towards maintaining the bantustans not only as areas of more
effective political control of the African people, but also as labour reserves
 Popular Resistance and the New State Strategies 131
130 Forced Removal

where the unemployed workers could be minimally maintained, and available

to undercut wages and replace people already in work. The Physical Planning
and Utilisation of Resources Act of 1967 provided for the zoning of all
industrial development. It enabled the Minister of Planning to refuse
increasing African migration to urban areas on the grounds that a fixed ratio
of black to white workers had to be maintained. New plants could not be
opened without discussion and permission from the Planning Department.27
Decentralisation and the border-industry programme came to have two
objectives. It remained a means to encourage African workers to remain in
the 'reserves', but it also became an instrument to curb metropolitan
industrial development and ensure that industrialisation would take place
where labour surpluses existed and where government zoning decreed.28
Behind the decentralisation schemes lay the belief that relocation of industry
would act as a form of influx control, retarding African migration to the
urban areas. According to the 1971 White Paper on Decentralisation of
Industry:
Without purposeful decentralisation policy the major expansion
of economical activities and . . . the creation of employment
opportunities will take place in the existing development centres.
For economic, social and political reasons however, it is necessary
that economic development should also take place within or near
the areas with large non-white population concentrations, parti-
cularly Bantu.29
The White Paper on Decentralisation of 1971 outlined the mechanics of the
new approach in detail. There were to be restrictions on the establishment of
non-essential industries in the PWV area and the ratio of white to African
workers in the area was to be maintained at 1:2 (i.e at least one-third of
employees had to be white) Industries which relocated in the bantustans were
given generous tax concessions, long-term interest-free loans and rebates on
rail transport.
But despite these attractive offers, the promised rewards were not enough
to induce entrepeneurs to relocate in the bantustans or the border areas. The
Industrial Development Corporation aimed to create 23,500 new jobs a year
in border- industry areas in the early 1970s, but it succeeded in creating only
8,000 jobs per year.31 A 1974 study of the decentralisation of firms from
Johannesburg found that 68 per cent of relocations were merely moves to
other districts of the Witwatersrand and that most of the rest were transfers
to other metropolitan areas.32Substantial relocation was minimal. The costs
of decentralisation for firms in the late 1960s were high and these offset
government inducements. The low direct cost to the taxpayer concealed
higher costs in the loss of productive efficiency, and the overall effect was
considered a limitation on
In the post-1976 climate of reassessment the decentralisation policies
received particular attention. Strict cost-benefit calculations were introduced.
The new and current decentralisation plan was first aired at a meeting
 132 Forced Removal
between the prime minister and leading businessmen at the Good Hope Hotel
in 1981. It envisaged the division of South Africa, including all bantustans
whether 'independent' or not, into eight development regions demarcated
according to development needs, development potential, functional rela-
tionships and physical characteristics. Within each of the eight regions eleven
deconcentration points were envisaged, i.e. development areas close to
existing large metropolitan areas. I n addition 49 industrial development
points were planned: 21 outside the bantustans, and 28 in bantustans. They
were intended as alternative growth points to the metropolitan areas. A Rl00
million per year incentive package was designed to attract labour-intensive
industrial developments to the development points. The scheme offered
improved rebates and subsidies on rail and road transport, harbour services,
electricity, housing and training. The major change from the 1973 subsidies
was the shift away from tax concessions to direct payments to firms according
to the number of workers they employed. Thus, for example in the East
London-Ciskei development area a monthly payment of R110 per worker was
to be paid to each industry for seven years. Firms qualified for a 60 per cent
rail rebate, a 50 per cent discount on harbour charges and 60 per cent subsidy
on i n t e r e ~ t . ' ~The main instrument for financing the new plan was a
development bank which was to make R650 million per year available for
development projects from the mid-1980s, increasing to R1,000 million per
year by the end of the decade. The bank is financed by debentures issued on
South African and overseas capital markets. The new decentralisation
strategy differs from the formula of a decade before in that the regional
development areas are demarcated more in terms of economic function than
purely political purpose. But the overall aim of the policy is a revised method
of achieving the demographic distribution needed for the success of the
territorial and constitutional entrenchment of segregation.
In the words of the influential economic adviser to the Cabinet, Dr Jan
Lombard:
If this [federal] balance is not maintained by market forces in the
economy, it will have to become the objective of an effective
special programme of concerted intervention. . . Unless the
government of Mr Botha does undertake such. a major decentra-
lisation programme the entire tradition of political pluralism in
South Africa must be mortally endangered within a short time,
and with the disappearance of the present geographic distribution
of ethnic pluralism, will also disappear the chances of a peaceful
transition to normal participation by blacks in the political
processes of the Southern African region within a confederal or a
federal constitutional d i s p e n ~ a t i o n . ~ ~
This constitutional language and the phrases of economic planning cannot
obscure the fact that what is envisaged are schemes to maintain white political
domination and economic control.
The constitutional goals of the strategy observers believe are connected
Popular Kcsistance and the N c w State Strutegzer 1 3
$ 11 1 1 1 rtlcas about the transformation of South Africa into a confederation, in
,\ i11c 11 the bantustan governments and 'white' South Africa would co-operate
I I I I ~ I I I ~ ~ ~ consultative constitutional structures. Subsequent events seem to
i s , . I I ( ~ u tthis analysis. The Buthelezi Commission advocated a joint
~ , l ~ ~ \ ~ ~ l i s tfor r a tNatal
i o n and Kwazulu, and a federal solution to conflicts in
, . O I I I ~ I Africa has been supported by leading technocrats, the Progressive
I ,l~.r-al
I Party (PFP) and Inkatha. In April 1986 a Natal-Kwazulu indaba was
11, 1 ~ 1to discuss the implemention of some of the joint regional structures
I I I , I 11111cnded by the commission and the National Party sent observers to
1 1 1 , . cliscussion. A similar strategy for the Cape, the so-called 'Cape option'
I,. I . . I~cingdiscussed in January 1986 by some of the 'technocrats' associated
\ \ 1 1 11 rhc regime. While regional co-operation across bantustan borders poses
I 111111lber of constitutional problems, the regime's own political strategy
, I . I I I S geared to incorporate it. Current planning envisages regional economic
, I L . It.rlrralisation, interlocking with regional service councils that will replace
I ~~v~ricial
11 administration and allow all groups representation on a single
11, I I I ~although
, direct elections will be a b ~ l i s h e d . ~ "
I:zonomic and political goals underpin the decentralisation strategy, but
I 1 1 , - clis~inctive mark of the 'technocrats' is their attempt to salvage apartheid,
1 1 , ,I 1)" more political control, but by a modification of that political control
[I~e.;iciy in existence. The attempt is being made to 'depoliticise' conflict, to
I . I I , L . the government out of the front line and substitute 'market forces'. Thus
1'1 (~lcssor Brand, who played an important role in devising the decentralisa-
I I O I I plan, has argued:
Economic decentralisation will play a pivotal role in influx
control. Control of movement will come to rest less on coercion
and more on economic incentive^.^'
I:t.~wcenApril 1982 and March 1983 777 applications by investors, including
\rom overseas companies, wishing to establish themselves in the
,I~.vcloprnentregions were approved by the government. The aggregate
~~rvcstrnent was R2,459 million and a potential 65,342 jobs were to be
c rc;ltod. However, the overall economic and political contribution of this
~lc~vclopment, measured in its own terms has been questioned by a group of
~~.\carchers in business studies from the University of the Witwatersrand. On
\ \ I < basis of a survey of 290 companies in the bantustans they concluded that
,)i per cent of the businesses were subsidiaries and would have been
I \lablished anyway. They relocated to the bantustans because of government
~ ~ ~ c c n t i vbut
e s , they did not represent totally new investments. In addition
~ l l cpresent policy has not succeeded in generating local enterprises among
.\lr.ican entrepreneurs nor in generating development in the regions. They
I~c,licvedthat, as short-term financial incentives are the main reason for
Il~~sinesses relocating in or near bantustans, decentralisation policy is likely to
,lr-;linresources and threaten economic growth.'* This interpretation is to be
t.xl,ccted from researchers who do not share the government strategists'
Ilc~liticaland ideological goals. However, the point remains that the policy
 Popular Resistance and the New State Strategiczs I 35

I'c economically questionable and as such not equal to the

; I ~ ~ K . ; I I \1 0 I, 1 IAYELITSHA: A FOCUS FOR NEW STRATEGIES
g~.;~~icliosc
claims made for it. Nevertheless, the weaknesses in policy do not
, I c two strategies of change in urban policy and forced removals outlined
mean that it will not be implemented, or attempted.
In some areas decentralisation plans are far advanced. For example :l)ovc can be seen intertwined as events have unfolded around the plans for a
I I , . W African township in Cape Town at Khayelitsha. In an important
Ekangala, a township established 20 kilometres north of Bronkhorstpruit to
the east of the Witwatersrand, represents a microcosm of the decentralisation ,\~.llungein Parliament in March 1983 a major reversal of policy on the
policy in practice. Bronkhorstpruit is one of the new deconcentration points I ~ I I : I Iof~ C
the~ Cape
S Peninsula was announced by Dr Koornhof. In answer
and Ekangala, adjacent both to the Kwandebele bantustan and the I , , ;I question about housing in the Cape Peninsula, he told parliament:
Ekindustria industrial site, points to the way the regime sees decentralisation It is necessary for the orderly development of the Cape Peninsula
working. Ekangala was established in 1983. Housing was made available only that provision be made for the consolidated housing needs of the
to people from the East Rand who had Section 10 rights but no housing. By Black people in the Metropolitan Area of the Cape. For this
March 1984 1,000 families had moved there despite the fact that they faced a purpose the development of the Drift SandsiSwartklip area to the
200 kilometres return journey to work. By Marih 1985 the population was east of Mitchell's Plain should be undertaken without delay and
5,500 with accommodation being provided for an intended 750,000.39 funds will be made available to ensure that the development of the
It was common knowledge that the regime intended to incorporate + residential area can be started as soon as possible on an
Ekangala into Kwandebele. The East Rand Development Board assured imaginative scale . . . with the development of the new Black
those not deemed to belong to Kwandebele that they would not lose their residential area not only will the provision of housing be
Section 10 rights if they movrd, although this implied that those who were concentrated on but the emphasis will also be placed on
assigned to the bantustan would lose their residence rights and the right to community development to stimulate the orderly and voluntary
claim from the unemployment insurance fund.40 The changes in the form of settlement of the Black community of the Cape Peninsula in that
influx control of 1986 mean that after 'independcncc' many residents and area.44
their children will lose their citizenship rights and thus lose access to
better-paid and more secure work. As the date for incorporation grew nearer I-his represents an important shift in government thinking. Instead of
opposition mounted among the residents of Ekangala. Despite harassment by
supporters of 'independence' the community began to organise opposition.
In 1985 they threatened to stop paying rent and return to the shacks of the
Vaal Triangle if the incorporation went ahead. A young man was shot dead
when police used rubber bullets against 3,000 residents protesting at
incorporation. The demonstrators attacked the Administration Board offices
and stoned ~ehicles.~'.
The Ekangala Action Committee drew up a memorandum to submit to the
government laying out the reasons for the community's opposition to
incorporation into a bantustan - 1,000 householders signed the document.
Despite terrorisation of Action Committee members by the police, who often
organised local armed groups, the resistance to incorporation remained
strong. Complementing the Action Committee's political resistance was
another form of opposition: rather than suffer incorporation into Kwan-
debele people moved back to the backyard shacks and crowded rooms of the
East Rand townships." By mid-1986 the community had taken a decision to
return en masse to the East Rand.43This resistance, combined with that of the
Moutse and other communities already designated part of the bantustan,
contributed to the decision by the Kwandebele legislature in August 1986 to
shelve 'independence' plans. The move placed doubts over the ultimate fate
of the residents of Ekangala. It also indicated how popular militancy and
organisation could frustrate the regime's attempt to tie decentralisation policy
to its bantustan strategy. M a p 11 : Khayelitsha and the Cape T o w n Townships.
 136 Forced Removal
attempting to clear all the Cape squatter settlements and remove all Africans,
bar contract workers, from the Western Cape to the distant bantustans ol.
Transkei and Ciskei, Koornhof conceded that what the Cape needed was its
own bantustan. Here in one giant township all Africans from the
old-established townships and the squatter settlement were to be rehoused. A
site for the new deve~opment,to be called Khayelitsha, had already been
found on the Cape Flats, 40 kilometres from Cape Town, and the planners
that by the turn of the century 300,000 Africans would be housed
there. The first phase of the Khayelitsha project comprising 5,000 houses,
schools, street lighting and pavements was estimated to cost R63 millions and
was completed by March 1985.45
The first families were moved into Khayelitiha squatter sites in october
1984.46A major modification of the plan was then announced by the new
Minister of Co-operation and Development, Gerrit Viljoen, in early october
1984 when he told a press conference that all squatters in the Cape Peninsula
(whether they were legally settled under Section 10, or illegals) were to be
rehoused in Khayelitsha in 1985.47 Khayelitsha is to have its own adjacent
industrial and retail site, and will provide houses on leasehold for the
better-off and 'site and service' schemes for squatters (that is land on which
people may build their own housing and which is serviced with some water,
sewerage and refuse-collection facilities). It is an example of the new housing
policy, the attempt to co-opt squatters, and the decentralisation policy all in
One. It is also an e ~ a m p l eof how these policies work and the resistance that is
growing towards them.
From the first announcement of the establishment of Khayelitsha the
residents of the Xpatter communities refused to move. Throughout 1984
people signed petitions and held meetings protesting at the proposed move.
In August 1984, 12,000 residents of Crossroads signed a petition saying they
would not move. In October the UDF established an anti removals
committee which included representatives of the western capecivic
Association and the United Women's Organisation. They held meetings in
Crossroads to Protest at the move to Khayelitsha. People pointed out the
distance they would have to travel from Khayelitsha to work in Cape Town,
the lack of consultation on the move, the way Khayelitsha housing was being
offered to those with Permanent residence rights and not others, and the way
township living conditions would expose them to harassment under influx
Control regulations. According to the Crossroads community leader Johnson
Ngxobongwana:
The government ~houldfirst give people full rights here [in
Crossroads] and not say they must move before they get rights.
The people can then decide themselves whether they want to go
to Khayelitsha or not.48
It is salutary to reflect on this statement by Ngxobongwana with hindsight.
1986 he himself directed the vigilantes who, with police cover, violently
attacked many of the rightless people of Crossroads, forcing them to take
Popular Kesis[arrce and rhe N e w Srare Srraregies 137
, ~ , , . in
l , Khayelitsha
~~ because they were completely destitute. But the earlier
, of Ngxobongwana were echoed by Simon Menzina of the NYanga Bush
( ,,lnmittee,representing some of the people who were most vulnerable lo
\ 1,:lIante and police attack:
we don't know where to stay in this country. The government
moves black people every minute. NOWthey want to move us to
Khayelitsha and then they will want US to move again. . . we are
not animals, we are people. If they want to move us they must
come and discuss it with us. For many years we have had no
rights, no work and no houses.4y
( ),,r of the meetings at the end of 1984 only one group of squatters decided
, l l C y would go to Khaye]itsha and that was on condition that all squatters in
,I,. Peninsula were given permanent rights to live and work in the Western
The other three major squatter communities all rejected the
l<hayelitsha solution o~tright.5° Despite the wishes of the residents,
I,ruparationsto move people went ahead. In February 1985 Development
Iioard guards were brought in from the Transvaal to begin forcibly moving
,,Cop]e and Viljoen announced that in future uncontrolled squatting in
:rossroads would not be tolerated.51 The community was convulsed with
,-ageand in a series of demonstrations 18 were killed and 230 injured. In April
;, deal was offered to illegal squatters that they would be spared deportation to
,he bantustans if they moved into site-and-service schemes at KhaYelitsha.
~h~ brutal attack on thousands of Crossroads residents in June 1986 left
Inany destitute and forced many more to go to Khayelitsha as there was
nowhere else for them to live. Khayelitsha seems an example of how the new
strategies will be put into practice. Here the regime's h o ~ s i n gpolicy and
I
tolerance of squatters in site and service schemes are evident, The
way in which the opposition to the removal to Khayelitsha was subverted,
using both internal political struggles within the Crossroads communities and
military and police action, is a grim reminder of the brutality that may be
used to implement such a strategy.
GROUP AREAS ACT
~h~ new urban strategies that are being devised entail a measure of forced
and co-option in order to try to preserve the political life of the
current regime. A different question confronts the policy-makers in
connection with the they consider they have already co-opted
through the segregated parliament: the Coloured and Indian communities. If
they hold equal political power with the whites, as the regime claims, why
they be forced to live in segregated group areas? Why should they be
forcibly moved from their homes? This question has been asked by lawyers
arguing cases challenging forced removal under the Group Areas Act. It has
been raised in parliamentary debates by the Coloured and Indian political
parties which participate in the segregated parhment. It is a question
 138 Forced Kemovul
which the regime has no coherent answer, and it may well be that segregation
under the Group Areas Act will cease to be enforced.
Already large numbers of Indian, Coloured and African white-collar
workers rent flats in Hillbrow and Mayfair in central Johannesburg in
defiance of the Group Areas legislation. A Supreme Court judgement of 1984
gave them security from eviction when the court ruled that a landlord could
not evict a tenant or because of contravention of the Group Areas legislation.
The pressure group Actstop brought this test case to court and has continued
to campaign for the repeal of the legislation. The defiance of the law, coupled
with the regime's desire to court the Coloured and Indian population, has led
to very few prosecutions under the Group Areas Act taking place in recent
years. The Strydom Commission investigating the legislation, which reported
in 1984, recommended that business districts should be desegregated. This
became law in 1985. By September 1986 21 so-called 'central business
districts', in which segregation no longer applied, had been established in 16
towns and cities and 60 other applications were being considercd.52 Officials
and ministers still stressed that this desegregation was limited to commercial,
professional, religious and educational undertakings and no residential
desegregation was contemplated. However the central business districts and
the unofficial desegregation of inner city suburbs might well be the thin end
of the wedge that undermines strict residential segregation, although clearly,
given the present distribution of wealth in South Africa, it would only be the
richest fraction of the black community who could afford to live in the
suburbs decreed white.
RURAL POLICY
While concessions on certain types of forced removal are being contemplated
for residents of urban areas, most often hand in hand with coercion, no
concessions and no end to removal have been discussed or debated in
connection with the poorest people: farm workers and landless peasants in
the bantustans. The regime has given no signs of any intention of halting or
preventing the evictions of farm workers or people living on communally
owned land in the bantustans. They may hide behind the defence that these
removals are the result of 'market forces' and are necessary for more
advanced economic development to overtake backward peasant production.
Even if this is believed the regime has no plans to allocate alternative land to
evicted workers or peasants. The dispossessed must further swell the reserve
army of labour, helping to force down wages, and destroy workers'
organisations.
The only changes being contemplated in rural policy relate to black-spot
removals. Section 9 of the Laws on Development Aid Amendment Bill
presented to Parliament in March 1986, attempts to circumvent the
opposition of black-spot communities to forced removal and the victory won
by the Mogopa community in the courts. The bill states that by agreement
with a bantustan Pretoria may authorise a bantustan to administer a black
Popular Resistunce and the New Start! Strutegies 139
..1)01.53 In other words a community would become part of a bantustan
~ c ~ ~ h ophysically
ut moving, although all the disadvantages of bantustan
I t d e n c e such as possible loss of citizenship, loss of benefits and difficulty in
l : ; ~ i ~ ~access
ing to urban labour markets would apply. The Borders of
I';~rticular States Extension Amendment Act (discussed in Chapter 4)
~~~corporates the principle of this legislation and applies it specifically to black
)l)ots, which are to be made part of already 'independent' bantustans,
railing the severe disabilities of a change of status for the inhabitants, a
forced removal by means of statute.
On 31 December 1986 the control and administration of 4.5 million
I~~.c.tares of land were transferred to the six non-'independent' bantustans.
I'llc transfer (affected an area of South Africa equal to one-half of what was
..<.I aside as 'reserves' under the 1913 Land Act), was the result of a series of
I~~-oclamations by the State President. The proclamations were published in
111c Government Gazette, without discussion in parliament and almost
~~nnoticed by the press. The move had been preceded by the devolution to
I 11cbantustan authorities of more powers of repression and of control over the
.~llocationand utilization of land. All the consequences and implications of
~ l l cchanges are still to emerge, but they have clearly heightened the
security of millions of people who occupy the affected land. Much of it was
I'rust Land on which many people had been forcibly settled after previous
t,victions or forced removal. Bantustan leaders now have powers of removal
without the legal check which had been exploited by the Mogopa community
1 0 delay their forced removal. The changes have also meant the lifting of
~c.srrictionswhich previously prevented much of the land being sold on the
111arketto private concerns.54
Ncw strategies on forced removal and population control emerged in the
tlccade after the uprising of 1976. These were devised around the notions of
i~clvisersto the government who believed that the basic apartheid structures
0 1 white rule and economic exploitation could be maintained without
c.ocrcion. The key would be the division of the black community on lines of
tlifferential access to political and economic power together with economic
KI-owthuntrammelled by the brakes on its development inherited from
lormer administrations. T h e ideological presentation of this strategy stressed
'free play to market forces', 'depoliticising conflicts', 'orderly urbanisation'
i~nd'desegregating certain facilities'.
When P W Botha declared in 1986 that 'apartheid was dead' he was
i~ligninghimself clearly with that section of his party and the electorate which
~liaintained that the changes in form of some of the apartheid structures
tailed an end of the system which had earned international condemnation.
Ilut parallel with the ideological formulations about 'reform' ran increasing
; ~ n descalating repression. The changes were not accompanied by economic
KI-owthand rising wages, as had been envisaged, but by deepening recession.
140 Forced Kt*tnovul State Strafe~res 141
Popular Kc.s~stuncc' urrd the NCZU
i
Illcl.ewas little beyond hopelessness there is now a growing anger that
The recession made it difficult for the government to find the economic 1, ,, i.cd removals as intrinsic to apartheid and calls not only for an end to the
means to pay off the allies it had hoped to create. It also pushed many more I l l , v c r t yand the humiliation, but also for full political rights to effect that
people into active participation in anti-apartheid organisations, which grew I-11~1.
and developed enormously in the decade. These organisations increasingly
called for the unbanning of the ANC and identified themselves with the
demands of the Freedom Charter. Popular mobilisation led to non-
compliance with many apartheid bodies like Community Councils and
bantustan offices. In these circumstances a state of deepening political and
economic crisis developed for the government, a crisis which increasingly
they felt only able to control by severe repression.
In the field of forced removals, where in January 1985 the Minister of
Co-operation and Development promised all removals would be suspended,
there were midnight actions by the military in places like Uitenhage forcing
squatters off their land; there were the brutal killings and arson attacks under
police and military supervision at Crossroads that forced large sections of the
community to go to Khayelitsha; there was the callous eviction for trespass of
families living at Brown's Farm near Cape Town; there was the detention and
torture of activists who opposed removals like Piet Kose, chairman of the
Ekangala Action Committee, and leading members of the Brits Action
Committee. There was no apartheid without coercion, despite what
government planners would have had the world believe.
The crisis for apartheid was deepened by the growing strength, organisa-
tion and co-ordination of resistance. Increasingly communities facing forced
removal formed associations to fight the removal and affiliated their groups to
national anti-apartheid groups. Further, the opposition to forced removals
became increasingly linked to demands for full political rights for the
majority of the population and for national liberation. Throughout 1986, 'We
will only pay rent when Mandela tells us' became the catchphrase of rent
boycotters in Soweto opposing the new housing p ~ l i c y . ~ V o uwomen r
refugees forced to flee from Crossroads undertook a seven-day fast for justice
in August 1986 in a church in an affluent white suburban area of Cape Town.
After the fast they told the press that on behalf of their communities they
wished for a lifting of the State of Emergency, the withdrawal of troops from
schools and townships, the release of detainees and gaoled political leaders,
the unbanning of popular organisations and the ability to return to the land
on which their houses had stood.55The Natal Conference against Relocations
held in August 1985 and attended by representatives of more than 20
communities, mostly living in black spots, 'badly situated' areas, and South
African Development Trust land, adopted resolutions rejecting all removals
and calling for them to halt. The conference resolutions also affirmed 'there is
one South Africa' and demanded 'that the wealth of this country is shared
equally and that there be no taxation without repre~entation'.~
Through huge police and military effort the new strategies for removal and
population control have been enforced, but the organisation of those affected
and their determination to resist has increased and deepened. Where once
 Tables 143

'TABLE 3 Economic sectors as a percentage of national income, 1911-21

-

Munujuc-turtng Mining Agriculrurc,

191 1-12 7.0 28.0 16.0
Tables 1918 9.6 20.3 21.6
1920-2 1 12.3 15.7 18.2
.Souni.: Inner 1984, pp. I l b 2 3
TABLE 1 Estimated number of people forced to move by type of removal,
1960-82'
T y ~ oef removal N u m b u moved TABLE 4 Workers employed in manufacturing, 1910-28
--

Removals under Group Areas Act 834,400 1910 1917 1920 1924 1928
Township relocations in bantustans 730,000
Eviction of squatters in informal urban settlements 112,000 Workers 55,000 121,000 180,000 115,000 141,000
Eviction of farm workers and labour tenants 1,129,000
Sourcr- I r i n c ~I984 pace riunlher m ~ s \ i n g .
Black-spot and other evictions for bantustan consolidation 687,500
Removals within and between bantustans 30,000
'Total 3,522,900
TAB1.E 5 Aid Centres' administration of the pass laws, 1971-81
1 Rcmovals under rhr pass law,, u,hich are difficulr ru quantily, arc nor included. I'hc figures for hlack~sporand
other evicrions fur cun,ulldauun ~ n c l u d reviill,ms lor ~nlrasrructuraland \rmrcjili pruircls. 7b~ul I'eople I'cuple nor People I'eople smr ro
Source: Surplus Peuplr Prulecr 1983. VoI I. p 6 referrals prosecured prosec urrzd asstgned lohs hunru~tlrtis

TABLE 2 African population by sex in major towns, 1936-51

Cape Kimber- East Port Durban Pieter-
Town ley London Elizabeth maritzburg
-

1936
Males 10,701 7,738 12,740 15,636 57,296 12,155
Females 4,302 7,418 12,711 13,999 15,961 4,442
1946
Males 26,927 15,313 17,754 26,433 92,112 16.1 19 lY71LX2.
.Sourcr:.Sun~~?~1]K11~.~Ki./li1io,i~,
Females 1 1,555 11,702 17,471 24,843 32,368 6,329
1951
Males 36,983 15,393 21,866 37.116 117,175 17,566
Females 18,369 13,866 21,950 34,666 50,560 7,807 TABLE 6 Urban African population, 1950-80
Pretoria Johannes- East Rand West Rand Bloem- Urbun Urhun non- Turul urhantsed Toral
burg fontein burrri~stun hunrusrun populurton Afrtcun
populartorr
1936
Males 31,178 182,914 223,811 83,631 15,733
Females 16,825 62,405 3 1,597 12,395 17,624
1946
Males 69,875 274,022 264,566 106,260 22,417
Females 43,703 147,516 58,63 1 2 1,256 23,593
1951
Males 77,485 311,328 284,236 116,261 30,751
Females 57,571 202,398 92,312 28,614 31,155
Source: Sirnkins 1983, p . 9
144 Tables
TABLE 7 Recruitment of workers by bantustan in two Natal Administration TABLE 8 Arrests, prosecutions and convictions under the pass laws, 1955-84'
Board areas, 1979-81 ppp

- - Year Arrests l'ros~cutlon -

Convicliorls
L)rake?rsberg Port Nalal 337,604
Admintstrution Board AdmtntstrucUln Board 1955 324,9002
- - --- 1956 379,900 356,8 11
1957 - - 365,911
1979 1980 1981 1979 1980 1981 - - 396,836
-- - - 1958
Bophuthatswana 24 388 50 1 84 59 I2 1959 - - 413,639
Ciskei 379 1,752 1,526 573 460 16 1960 - 370,300 340,958
Gazankulu - - - 642 625 4I 1961 - 370,700' 375,417
Kangwane 703 366 302 1,020 1,144 96 1962 - - 384,497
395,660 -
Kwandebele 419 114 165 68 47 16 1963 -
Kwazulu 172,154 225,372 255,120 282,220 303,297 348,285 1964 - - -
Lebowa - 712 766 18 - 62 1,0002 -
- - 1965 -
Qwaqwa 1,168 283 503 2,518 2,904 113 1966 - 61 1,012
Transkei 14,310 20,026 25,807 47.980 34,358 21,731 - 670,296 -
1967
Venda 34 18 79 24 2n- 2 1968 633,140
- -
- v

1969 - 643.897 -
Total 189,191 248,319 284,003 335,841 343,680 370,336 -
1970 - 63 1,300
-. 616,595 -
1971
1972 - 530,444 -
1973 - 509.31 1
1974 274,641 349,345 -
-
1975 268,985 381,858
-
1976 250,030 287,374
-
1977 224,308 279,957
1978 272,887 306,850
/

-
1979 119,869 239,400
1980 108,499 171,435
-
1981 160,000 215,535 75,176
1982 206,022 - 98,708
1983 262,904 - 142.067
1984 183,000
1 I'rtrsccorlon\dtiring ~ h pcrlode 1967-74 covcr oil'enccs agarnrl ~ u r i rcyularion\,
c ~ lurrign ASricanr lllegall? in
~ h urhan
c arcas, Lallulc to product d o ~ . u m m t sand orhcr oifcnccs s p c ~ i t ~ cind rhc llrhan Arras Act. Oiicnccs
alirr lqhR against thc Black L.ahour Kegularions Act arc ~nc'ludcd.
L l i s [ ~ n ~ a rof
c \ annual averapcs oiprosecurlons (derived hy Savapc 19x4. ' l a h k 2 '
Svune Arrcr~,:Hot~rro f ~ l , ~ ~ ~ ~ m h l ~ ~ e b a ~ e1975-80.
s ( H ~ ~ Cilv;lge
~ i u r ~1981,Sumq
Il. u(RaceKrialtr1nr. 1981;
FOIu.\, No. 58, p. 12. L'r~~sccu~ions. .\irurh~l/ni~~t~~'oit,e,l,,nuiz/Rep~~r~, 1V67-74; Sa\agi. 1984; Savage 1986,
p 190. Convlcrioos: S u n , n , o/RarcKeloizo,ri. 1955-84; I.(xu.. N u . 52, p 7
146 Tables Tables 147
TABLE 9 Numbers of Africans endorsed out of the major urban areas through
the operation of influx control, 1956-80 TABLE 12 Estimated number of commuters by bantustan of origin, 1977-82
1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982
195663 464,726 1972 30.000'
2--
1964 98,241 Bophuthatswana
1973 92,886 Ciskei
1965 86,186 1974 18,467
1966 70.0001 Gazankulu
1975 61,242 Kangwane
1967 60,0001 1976 38,544
1968 61,658 Kwandebele
1977 32,525 Kwazulu
1969 40,095 1978 36,325
1970 33,851 Lebowa
1979 30,0001 Qwaqwa
1971 30,000' 1980 30,0001 Transkei
1 Estimates. Where ncl figurcs were available the cstimatc has Venda
heen mdde hdscd on the wquencc o i l ~ g u r c rplvcn
.Source: Survq, a! Race IKrieoorcr, 14btL80
Total
Source: Sourh Alrica 1983a, ~ r404
.

TABLE 10 Families moved through Group Areas Act removals, 1950-84 TABLE 13 Employment in agriculture, 1950-85
Coloured Indiun White Afncan' 1951 1960 1970 1980 1985
---
Cape 65,657 3,05 1 Black 1,363,218 1,568,999 2,384,539 1,204,017 1,090,934
840 White 145,424 118,487 97,913 102,425 88,656
Natal 3,845 25,288 817 ----- -
Orange Free State 2,335 no residents
~~ - - Source: South Alrica 1986a, p. 7.5.
Transvaal 11,854 11,728 76 1
Total
- - -
83,691 40,067 2,418
I Figurer unknown.
Sfnrrci:Surilry of Race Ridarzo,rr, 1985. p. 348.

- .- - - 14 Farmers' total expenditure on machinery and implements, 1965-80 at

TXRI-E - -

constant 1970 value of the rand (in R1,000)

1965 1970 1975 1980

35,932 59,400 191,406 565,501

Source: Calculated lrom Sourh A l r u 1986a, p. 9.25, dnd Nattrass 1981, p. 253.
TABLE 11 Funds spent on building houses in bantustans, 1967-83 (in R1,OOO)l
--
1967-68 5,656 1975-76 67,215
1968-69 9,515 197677 -
1969-70 18,299 1977-78 -
197C-71 24,030 1978-79 46,330
1971-72 35,662 197%80 48,742
1972-73 25,790 198C-81 59,645 TABLE 15 Capital invested per person in South African agriculture, 1946-77, at
1973-74 30,504 198 1-82 71,941
1974-75 45,985 1982-83 81,014 -
constant 1970 prices (in rand)
1977
1946 1951 1960 1971
C bdnrubtdn\ o l I rdnskel, Rophuthdtrwana and L m d a . and h p r e s alter 19Kl
1 F1gun5 alter 1978 L X L ~ U ~the
c x c l u d ~the ( 515 470 656 660 747

Source: Nartrara 1981, p. 102.

 148 Appendix
APPENDIX 1
Glossary of terms associated with - -
forced removals
Administration Boards Appointed executive authorities, directly responsi-
ble to the Minister of Bantu Affairs (later Minister of Plural Relations, then
Minister of Co-operation and Development), which administered and
controlled the movement, employment and housing of Africans outside the
bantustans. Established in 1971. In 1979 the number of boards was
reduced from 22 to 14. Renamed Development Boards in 1982. Some
powers of urban administration delegated to community councils in
1982-4. Administration Boards replaced in 1986 by the Regional Service
Councils.
Aid Centres Created in 1971 to help streamline the operation of the pass
laws. Abolished 1986 when influx control legislation reformulated.
Bantu Affairs Department Principal section of the civil service dealing
with the administrative control of Africans outside the bantustans. Headed
by a Minister from the Cabinet elected only by Whites. In 1978 renamed
the Department of Plural Relations. In 1980 renamed the Department of
Co-operation and Development. Reorganised in 1986: functions divided
between the Department of Constitutional Development, the Department
of Education and Development Aid and the Provincial Executives.
Bantu Commissioners' Courts Courts presided over by local officials in
charge of the administration of Africans. They handled only offences
under the jurisdiction of the Bantu Affairs Department for which only
Africans were prosecuted. Chiefly used for prosecutions under the pass
laws. In 1984 placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice.
Bantustans Ten areas designated by the regime as the 'national states' to
on< of which all Africans were deemed to belong, irrespective of where
they live. Each bantustan is made up of widely scattered pieces of land and
is nominally self-governing, although overall military and foreign policy is
decided by Pretoria. The ten bantustans are Bophuthatswana, Ciskei,
Venda, Gazankulu, Kangwane, Kwandebele, Kwazulu, Lebowa, Qwa-
qwa, Transkei and I'enda. Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei
have been designated 'independent' and most of their inhabitants stripped
of their South African citizenship.
Betterment Schemes for restructuring the tenure of agricultural land in the
bantustans, first introduced in the 1930s, which entail the division of an
area into residential, agricultural and grazing sections.
Black spots Freehold land owned by Africans, lying outside the scheduled
areas and the released land, and not subject to bantustan administration.
Appendix l 149
Closer settlements Areas within bantustans, or on trust land, set aside for
the rudimentary housing of people removed from black spots and
white-owned farms.
Coloured Labour Preference Policy Initiated in 1955 to give preferential
access to work and housing in the Cape to people classified as Coloured and
used to expel large numbers of African workers from houses and to restrict
their access to most jobs, except under migrant labour contracts.
Abolished 1984.
Community Councils Elected councils established in 1977 as part of the
system of administration of non-bantustan Africans. In 1982 legislation
extended their functions from being chiefly consultative, to municipal
administration, which includes setting and collecting rents, levying service
charges, allocating housing and business sites.
Commuters African workers who live in a bantustan and work outside the
bantustan, often considerable distances away. They may travel daily or
weekly to work.
Development Boards See Administration Boards.
Endorse out T o place a stamp in a passbook to indicate that the holder has
been illegally in a prescribed area (see Prescribed areas), or to cancel stamps
which allow the holder to remain in a prescribed area. A term used
generally to refer to eviction from urban areas under the pass laws.
GG 'Government Garage.' The letters on the number plates of official
vehicles. Used to refer to the regime's trucks which transport people forced
to move.
Group areas Segregated zones in towns and cities set aside for residence,
commercial and professional activity, industry and education for members
of White, Coloured and Indian groups.
Influx control System to control and direct labour, particuiarly used to
prevent Africans living in the bantustans from living and working in the
non-bantustan urban areas except under highly restrictive conditions.
Labour bureaux Offices at which African work-seekers must register and
be assigned a job category before they can officially be recruited for work in
towns, white-owned farm areas, or outside bantustans.
Labour tenant Tenant farmer compelled to work a fixed period of the year
unpaid for the farm-owner, in return for the right to live on the
farm-owner's land.
Non-prescribed areas See Prescribed areas.
Passes Documents issued to Africans recording details of identity, which
are stamped with permits to live in certain areas and work for a named
employer. Includes documents officially named 'Reference Books'.
Prescribed areas The whole of the country outside the bantustans was
divided for the purposes of influx control into prescribed areas (which
included all cities and commercial areas) and non-prescribed areas (which
consisted largely of farmland and mines). Controls over the presence and
employment of Africans differed in the two kinds of areas.
Reference Books See Passes
150 Appendix l
Released land Land set aside in terms of the Native Trust and Land Act of
1936 to be added to the areas designated African reserves in the 1913 Land
Act (the scheduled land). Released land in 1936 amounted to 6.2 million
hectares which was to be acquired for African occupation by the SANT (see
below). By 1974 20 per cent of land designated released land had been
acquired for African occupation. The scheduled and released land together
amounted to just under 13 per cent of the total land area of South ~ f r i c a .
SABT See SANT
SADT South African Development Trust. See SANT
SANT South African Native Trust. Established as the South African
Native Trust in 1936 to acquire and administer land released for African
occupation in terms of the 1936 Native Trust and Land Act. Later
renamed the South African Bantu Trust and renamed again the South
African Development Trust.
Scheduled land Land set aside in terms of the Native Land Act of 1913 as
the only land available for African occupation and ownership. Comprised
8.98 million hectares.
Section 10 Section of Urban Areas Act which designated categories of
Africans allowed to remain more than 72 hours in non-bantustan towns.
(See Native (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act, 1945 in Appendix 2.)
Squatters People living illegally on land without the permission of the
landowner and the relevant state authorities.
Trust land Land acquired by the SADT for African ownership and
occupation.
Appendix 2 15 1
APPENDIX 2
Chronological summary of legislation
related to forced removals
Legislation referring to Africans was initially prefixed with the term 'Native'.
In 1951 the term was replaced by 'Bantu', which was itself replaced by
'Black' in 1978. In this appendix the names of laws are given as they were
when first enacted. In the text the laws are referred to by the names they had
during the period described. The current names of laws employ the term
'Black' where once 'Native' or 'Bantu' was used.
Native Land Act, 1913 Prevented Africans owning or acquiring land
outside the scheduled areas and halted white acquisition of land held by
African farmers.
Native (Urban Areas) Act, 1923 Prevented Africans settling in urban areas
except in segregated locations or townships.
Native Administration Act, 1927 (later Black Affairs Administration
Act) Laid down the structures for administration of Africans including
Commissioners' Courts where pass-law offences were heard. Section 5
allowed the State President to define the boundaries of land allocated to
any particular group of people and to order the removal of people from one
area to another without prior notice. Police were empowered to ensure
compliance. Africans living on scheduled or trust land could only be
moved if the Minister obtained parliamentary approval for the removal.
Native Service Contract Act, 1932 Forced farm workers into labour
contract agreements. An African family could be evicted from a
white-owned farm if a member of the family did not provide the required
labour services.
Slums Clearance Act, 1934 Laid down minimum standards of housing and
gave powers to officials and police to expropriate property and evict tenants
from areas deemed to be slums.
Native Trust and Land Act, 1936 (later renamed Development Trust and
Land Act) Specified further areas allowed for African occupation in
addition to those demarcated in the 1913 Land Act. The additional
'released' land was to be acquired by the South African Development
Trust. Chapter IV regulated the presence of Africans in white farm areas.
Only registered farm owners, farm workers, registered squatters or tenants
and their dependants were allowed in the areas. A farmer who allows on his
land Africans, other than those listed, is guilty of an offence. Africans
illegally resident in a white farming area can be prosecuted and evicted and
their houses demolished. Evicted Africans are to be settled in scheduled or
152 Appendix 2
released areas under the direction of the Bantu Affairs Department (later
the Department of Co-operation and Development).
Native Laws Amendment Act, 1937 Prohibited Africans acquiring land in
urban areas from non-Africans and limited churches, schools and other
institutions attended by Africans to African townships.
Native (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act, 1945 (later Black (Urban Areas)
Consolidation Act) Consolidated the laws controlling Africans' presence
in urban areas, strictly specifying the conditions under which Africans
might live and work in urban areas; defined and limited the sections of
urban areas in which Africans could live; and provided for the Minister to
remove or abolish African townships. Section lO(1) defined which African
people could remain in urban areas for more than 72 hours:
(a) people born there and who had lived there continuously since birth;
(b) people who had worked lawfully and continuously for one employer for
10 years or for several employers for 15 years;
(c) the wives or children under 18 of people in categories (a) and (b);
(d) people granted permits by labour bureaux to work for a fixed time
contract.
Section 29 empowered the local authority to remove from the urban areas
Africans deemed 'redundant' or 'idle and undesirable'.
Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949 Prohibited marriages between
people classified as White and people classified as members of other
population groups.
Population Registration Act, 1950 Imposed a rigid system classifying
people according to a combination of skin colour, descent and language.
Compelled each individual to be classified according to these categories in a
population register. Every person had to carry an identity card indicating
his or her classification.
Group Areas Act, 1950 Proclaimed separate Group Areas for people
classified as White, Coloured or Indian. Property ownership, residence,
industry, commerce and education in each Group Area to be limited only
to the members of the specified group.
Bantu Authorities Act, 1951 Placed the administration of certain aspects of
the lives of rural Africans in the hands of Bantu Tribal, Regional and
Territorial authorities to whom certain advisory, executive and administra-
tive powers were to be gradually devolved.
Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act, 1951 Made it an offence for a person
to enter or settle on land without the permission of the owner or the lawful
occupier. Penalties for conviction under this law were £25 or three months
in prison or both. These penalties were increased when the act was
amended in 1976 to R500 or 12 months in prison or both. The amended act
gave the landowners or the Department of Community Development and
the Bantu Administration Boards power to demolish buildings erected. It
became a punishable offence to obstruct these demolitions.
Bantu (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act,
1952 Forced all Africans, men and women, to carry reference books
Appendix 2 15 3
which contained their identity card and population classification, stamps
registering their residence and employment in a particular area, and
certificates of taxes paid.
Immigration Regulation Amendment Act, 1953 Forbade people classified
as Indian who married non-South African women overseas to bring their
wives and children to settle in South Africa.
Bantu Resettlement Act. 1954 Provided for the removal of Africans from
Johannesburg. Enacted primarily to effect the destruction of Sophiatown.
Bantu (Urban Areas) Amendment Act, 1955 Abolished African freehold
rights in the prescribed areas and gave the Bantu Affairs minister power to
abolish a township.
Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act, 1959 Abolished the limited
parliamentary representation of Africans and defined eight bantustans.
Increased the powers of Tribal, Regional and Territorial Authorities and
brought urban Africans under their aegis.
Aliens Control Act, 1963 Made it an offence for an African to enter South
Africa without a travel document issued by his or her home country and
recognised by the South African government. Failure to comply was an
offence punishable by six months' imprisonment and deportation.
Bantu Labour Act, 1964 Consolidated the regulations controlling African
workers. Made it a criminal offence for an African employed on any mines
or works to infringe his or her contract of service and refuse to obey an
emp!oyer7s command. This section was repealed in 1974. The law was
amended in 1970 to allow the Minister to prohibit the employment of
Africans in certain areas and in certain job categories.
Bantu Laws Amendment Act, 1964 Transferred powers over influx control
(particularly regarding visits to town and women wanting to join husbands)
from municipal officers to labour bureaux, and limited the right of women
to settle in towns. They might only do so if they 'ordinarily resided' with
husbands and if they had initially lawfully entered the area. It widened the
definition 'idle and undesirable' Africans to include those who qualified
under Section 10, and established Aid Centres for the processing of pass
- -
offenders.
Physical Planning and Utilisation of Resources Act, 1967 Imposed
controls on the establishment and extension of factories. In terms of a
proclamation under this Act issued in 1968 no factory employing Africans
could be established in the main metropolitan centres without the
permission of the Minister of Planning.
Bantu Labour Regulations (Bantu Areas) Act, 1968 Established labour
bureaux in bantustans and urban townships where African workers were to
be placed in specific job categories. Compelled all Africans living in a
- with a Tribal Labour Bureau and made it an offence
bantustan to register ~ -
to seek work without going through the labour bureau. Empowered the
Director of Bantu Labour to zone areas in which specified Africans might
work.
Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act, 1970 Decreed every African a citizen
154 Appendix 2 Appendix 2 155

Borders of Particular States Extension Amendment Act, 1986 Incor-

of one of the bantustans, whether or not he or she lived in a bantustan. porated certain black spots into the territory of 'independent' bantustans.
Bantu Affairs Administration Act, 1971 Removed responsibility for Restoration of South African Citizenship Act, 1986 Restored South
municipal government in African townships and influx control from white African citizenship to limited numbers of citizens of 'independent'
local authorities. Established the Administration Boards, directly under bantustans, previously deemed aliens.
the Bantu Affairs Department to carry out these functions.
Admission of Persons to the Republic Regulation Act, 1972 Incorporated
the Immigration Regulation Amendment Act of 1953. In 1978 the Minister
of the Interior allowed those wives married before 1977 to join their
husbands with their children.
Bantu Laws Amendment Act, 1973 Expanded the powers of bantustan
legislative assemblies. Set up the procedure for the consolidation of
bantustan land. Allowed that if the Minister of Bantu Affairs ordered the
removal of an African community and the community refused to move the
removal order would have to be confirmed by both houses of the
whites-only parliament.
Bophuthatswana Citizenship Act, 1978 Repealed the Bantu Homeland
Citizenship Act of 1970 in Bophuthatswana and required all people who
had acquired Bophuthatswana citizenship to reapply. Laid down condi- I
tions for the granting of Bophuthatswana citizenship.
Laws on Co-operation and Development Act, 1979 Increased the fine for
an employer found guilty of employing an African who did not have the
necessary permit from R50 to R500.
Proclamation 2089, 1979 Abolished labour tenancy, as defined in the 1936
Native Trust and Land Act, throughout South Africa.
Black Local Authorities Act, 1982 Established elected local authorities for
non-bantustan urban Africans.
Orderly Movement and Settlement of Black Persons Bill, 1982 Never
made law in its original form. Envisaged making African urban residence
rights conditional on the availability of housing in a particular area and
restricting access to Section 10 rights.
Aliens and Immigration Laws Amendment Act, 1984 Tightened restric-
tions on the employment of permitless 'aliens'. (Since the 'independence'
of four bantustans the term now applied to their citizens.) Required
employers to furnish a return of alien workers. Prohibited the provision of
accommodation to aliens.
Black Communities Development Act, 1984 Reconstituted Administra-
tion Boards as Development Boards to act in conjunction with elected local
authorities. Development Boards were empowered to register 99-year
leasehold rights for township residents.
Abolition of Influx Control Act, 1986 Repealed the Bantu (Urban Areas)
Consolidation Act of 1945 and the Bantu Labour Regulations of 1968.
Established common identity documents for all South Africans. Gave
freedom of movement to all South African citizens, but excluded the
citizens of 'independent' bantustans. Made permission to remain in urban
areas conditional on occupation of approved housing.
 156 Bibliogruphy
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168 Notes and R eferences Notes and References I 69

iS I ..~ccy 1984 73 Capr Trmes, 6.1 1.1984

{') Iil,~ck Sash 1982, p. 16 74 Monama 1983, p. 17
I l l I..ccey 1984, p. 9 75 Monama 1983, p. 5
I I 1.0,uc, No. 58, p. 12 76 hlonama 1983, p. 17
I ' Oppcnhelmer 1985, p. 294 77 Hoexter 1983, p. 409
l \Yhlte Paper 1986, p. 2 78 Sunday Express, 14.10.84
1.1 Whltc Paper 1986,.p. 3 79 (:ape Times, 7.9.84
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I1 I )\Incan 1987, p. 5
81
82
Rlekert Reoort 1979. n. 54
Rlekert Reporr 1979, p.55
IS I h n c a n 1987, p. 13 83 Bishop 1982. p. 9
Introduction 1'1 \[or, 25.7.86 84 Blshon 1982. D. 11
5 l'larzkv & Walker 1985, pp. 66-7 .(I I)t~rlcan 1987, p. 4 85 Black' Sash i9k2a. p . 9
I Dcsmund 1971; Nash 1980 86 Lacey 1984, p. 9
2 Baldwln 1975; Marc 1980; Walt 1982; Surplus 6 Baldwin 1975; Surplus People l'rolect 1983, - I I)rlncan 1987, p. 6
I'conlc I'rolec~ 1983. I'lat~kv & Walker 1985 Vol. I, pp. 3-8 t ' \~chcrt & Guelke 1973, p. 18 87 Laccy 1984, p. I2
' i t~nldin 1984, p. 53 88 Black Sash 1982a, p. I2
,I \,l\,age 1984, p. 49 89 Saraklnsky and Keenan 1986, p. 25
4 I'l;~uky & Walker 1985 90 L)atly Illspulrh, 4.8.78
>'. \1111t & Booysen 1981, p. 48; Surplus People
I ' n ~ ) e c 1983,
~ Val. 2, p. 8 91 Lacey 1984, pp. 12-13
CHAPTER 1: History \ ~ m k i n s and Desmond 1987, pp. 114.16 92 Smit & Booysen 1981, p. 77
t i \;lraklnsky and Keenan 1986, pp. 20b21, 25 93 Duncan 1986. p. 33
28 Innes 1984, n. 191 ,S ()uoted in (;oldin 1984. p. 25 94 Quoted in Anti Apartheld Movement press
1 Plaatje 1916; Kecg.1~ 1986 ,'I I\t~dlcnder,Hendrie B. Young 1984 release, 6 June 1983
2 Wilson 1971, pp. 130-31; Wolpe 1972, pp. 29 Williams 19f7, p. 8
30 Quoted In Lcgilssick 1974, p 28 I ~ I I \!or, 1.10.86 95 Quoted In Savage 1984. p. 50
436-7 96 B~shop 1982, p. I0
31 Smit & Hnny>en 1981, p. 48 I0 .1 ' M;~~ldela
\ororrun, 8.8.86
1978, p. 181
7 Quoted in Davenport 1969, p 95
32 Quoted In Simon> 1968, p. 282 97 Unlted l>emocratic Fronr 1983
Davenport 1969, pp. 98-101 08 So~neran, 21.5.85
5 Mare 1980, pp. 4-5 73 Simons 1968, pp. 281-2. Surplus People I'roject 1, i \rindu~'Srur, 6.7.86
1983. Vol. 2. p. 105: Baldwln 1975, p. 226 0 1 1 oak 1982, pp. 31-5 99 So~nelan,20.7.84
6 lnnes 1984, pp. 118-23 100 ANC, SACTU and (:OSATU 1986
7 Surplus People Project 1983 Yo1. I . pp. 87-90 34 Quoted in Monama 1980 , p.146 0 , I'csold i d . ) 1985, p. 79
35 Riekert Report 1979. p. 58; Brooks & Rrickhlll 181, \ ' . ~ w ~ ~1984,
c h p. 6 101 Congress of Sourh African Trade Uniona 1986,
8 lnnes 1984, p. 129
9 1.acey 1981 pp. 181-206 1980, pp. 170-77 I, Il1.1,k Sash lg8l p. 19
36 Riekcrt Report 1979, p. 64 1.i \ I I ~ I I & Booysen 1981, p. 95 102 Congress of South Afr~canT w d e Unlons 1986,
10 Patun 1957 n.5; Union Statutes 01 South Alrlca.
No. 46 of i937 37 Surplus People I'roject 1983, Vol. 3, p. 13 ( . ' I \1011~rna1983, p. 46 p. 20
38 Surplus People Project 1983, Vol. 2, p. 105 II I l'lm~s,21.9.84; So~oerarl,5.9.85, 3.10.85; 103 Council of the Unlons of South Afrlca 1986, p
I I O'Meara 1983, p. 227 21
12 Legassick 1974, p. l 1 39 Chaskalson & Duncan 1984, p. 9 \OIIIII h i r ~ c a?'he Impr~soncdSociety 1986, p. 3
13 Savage 1984, pp. 26 7 40 Quoted in Mare 1980, p. 110 I I )\lfi;~rd1983, p. I X 104 Summary q / World Broad~usrs, 1 1 .8.86P
14 Pagan Commission 1948. p. I8 41 Surplus People Project 1983, Vol. 2, p. 96 t o l l : ~ m a 1983, p. 17
15 Yaw~tch 1982, pp. 14-16 42 Surplus People Proiect 1983, Vol. 1, p. 13 CHAPTER 3: Urban removals
16 O'Meara 1983. Ch. 15 43 Mare 1980, p. 3
17 1.egasslck 1974, p. 16 U Cachalla 1983, p. 15 I 1 I U ~ ~ I IMall,
( I U / 17.2.78 32 (illdin 1984, pp. 4 3 ~ 4
I8 iC1:lasdorp & Plllay 1977, p. 95 45 Innes 1984. p. 190 ' '111111 KI Booysen 1981, p. 1 33 Cape I'lmes, 13.8.84
19 Yawl~ch 1982. pp. 94-5 46 Luckhardt & Wall 1980, p. 448-9 ! ',11111\111\ 1983, Ch. 2 34 Goldin 1984, p. 17
20 Surnlus l'conle I'ro~ect 1983. Vol. 2. pp. 17-20 47 Brooks & Brickhlll 1980; H ~ r s o n 1979 I 1:1<Ccr11979, p. 37 35 Quoted In Goldin 1984, p. ??
21 111n;a 1984,' pp. 150-54 48 Brooks & Brickhill 1980, pp. 300~301 \I,,,,PY 01 Kuce Relul~ons 1984, p. 474 36 l:rrra~li~al Marl, 28.9.84
22 Innes 1984, Ch. 7 49 Saul & Gelb 1981, p. 23 r. ' . ~ , , ~ d I'eople u\ Project 1983, Vol. 4, p. 4 37 See Ch. 5
23 Ouoted In Molreno 1977, p . 19 50 Slmklns & Desmond 1978: Davles 1979; Cacha- lltll,.\ 1075, p. 7 38 nully Illspalch, 23.5.85
24 Ccsmond 1971 Ila 1983. p. 1 I ) / i ~ l c t l~n O'Meara 1983, p. 170 39 Grucsruors, 1981, June
25 Dcsmond 1978 51 Rlekert Report 1979. pp. 155-6 '1 I ) ,\lc:lr;l 1983, pp. 170-71, 218 40 Smir & Rooysen 1981, p. 21
26 Surplus I'eople Projec~1983. Vol. 5. p. 39 52 Baldwln 1975;11' 111 1 , W ~ \ , I ~ I ; 1984 I 41 Huddlesron 1956, pp. 134-5
27 Innes 1984, p. 188 I I III,,,., 1975, pp. 19-32; Surplus People Prolecr 42 S m ~ r& Booysen 1981, p. 25
I"h { , Yo1 4, pp. 217-33 43 Mare 1980, p. 28
CHAPTER 2: Pass laws I
1 '
' I ! r ~ ~ ~ , l l1976, cv
I ' I I I I L O C k 1980. p. 10
p. 79 44
45
Chaskalson & Duncan 1984, p. 12
Flnaririal Marl, 17.2.78
I Savage 1984, p. 1I Hlndson & Lacev 1983, pp. 104-5 1 1 I ' I I I I I I , I h 1980. pp. 5 8 ~ 8 0 46 S I ~ I S1978
I
2 Sunday Timcy [Jhb], 9.12.54 IL).iF B r ~ ~ f i ~I'up~r.
rfi No. 13, 1984, p. 2 I . # I ,I ~ I ~I1cople ~ \ Prolecr 1983, Vol. 4, p. 217 47 Chaskal\on & Duncan 1984, pp. 12-13
3 Riekerr Report 1979, p. 41 Hlndsun & Lace? 1983, p. 108 1'. . M ) . r (11 Ku'r. Relarrons 1984, p. 454 48 Smlt & Booy\en 1981, p. 91
4 Savage 1984, pp. 24-31 I;,lius. NO. 5 1, p. 10 1 .,,,. , i ,,I Kurc Relairons 1985, p. 357 49 Mare 1980, p. 38
5 Goldin 1984, p. 7 Black Sash 1982. p. I2 1 !,I, l l I 83 50 Savage 1984, p. 37-8
('ape Hrruld. 8.6.85 ~ r r , t r , , r r \ < I / World Broadcasls, 15.9.86 51 Slur, 12.8.86
6 Quoted 111 Lrgdsslck 1974. p. 7
7 Quoted in Legas\~ck 1974. p. 15 Savage 1984, p. 48
Yawitch 1984, p. I1
1
. i ,I/ N u ~ cKclallons 1984, p. 481 52 Savage 1984, p. 37-8
8 Chaskalson & Duncan 1984. p. 4 1 1 ,I, 1 1 1 j ~ l t t n c r & Cronln 1986, pp. 47-8 53 Black Sa\h IYX2a. p. 8
9 Goldin 1984, p. 10-11 Quoted in Barrett, Dawber t>r al. 1985, pp. 9-10 ,,IS i,,, / l z ~ , , [Jhh], \ 15.4.84 54 Sush 1983, V111. 26. No 2 , p. 15
10 Legasslck 1974, p. 24 Foctcs, No. 59. p. 7 1 , s t , t n $ , ! , I / \I,r11. 28.9.84 55 Smit & B~v)v\cn 1981, p. 28
11 Mandela 1978, p. 58 Sourh Alrliur~Jounral o ] Humurl Klghrs. Vol. I, I 1 l h t , , ~,I ~ ( 1 1 ( , , ~ I ~ I I I 1984, p. 10 56 S m ~ t& Boovscn 1981, p. 26
I2 Baard 1986. D. 30 l't. 1, 1985, p. 89 l.,,l,lttt I < I X I , I>. 10 57 Srnlt. 011vlcr & Boouscn 1982, p. 95
13 ~ a w l t c h1 9 8 4 pp. 6-7 Quoted in Mare 19SO. p. 17 , '. 1 1 1 1 , , , I ' J S I ~I> l l 58 Male 1980. p. 26
14 Mare 1980, p.25; Smit & Bouvsen 1981, p 27 Duncan 1980. p. I2 c 8 . . ( , , ~ (,01~11111984, p. 11 59 Slrnkln\ 1983. pp. 5 4 ~ 5
15 Centre for Intergroup Studies 1974, p. 6 Cape I'imcs, 25.9.84 ' , , .I. 1 1 1 (,o1~1111 10x4, 11. 13 60 Slnlt K. Hwyscn 1981, p. 26
16 Slnclalr 1971, pp. 30-31 Black Sash 1981 1 1 , .. I .A I \ I I , C l l l l l 1080, p. 68 61 Smlt K. Ho<~y\cn1981, p. 28, Surplus People
17 Harris 1%8, p. 20 Savage 1984, p. I4 ', I I , , I , I , , ~ , I I#I:,' P ~ I ) J ~ 1983,
L . I Vol. 2, p. 97; Mare 1980, p. 25
18 Riekert Renort 1979, P. 246 nu^!\' .Vcnrs, 3.8.84 I , , 1 1 , ~ , , I ~ , , ~I ' I~, , ~~c LI I ~1983, Vo1. 2, p p 1 9 7 62 Smlt & Booysen 1981, p. 28
I9 Savage 19G, p. 30 Hlndson & Lacry 1983, p. I I I /e 6 7 Marc 1980, p. 26; Surplus People Project 1983,
170 Notes and References Noles und References 17 1

VoI 4. nn. 56-61: Vol. 2. n. 65: Vol. 1, .no.

' . 6-7 92 Flnancral Mall, 3.8.84 ;I ( ) u , ~ ~ eInd Surplus People Project 1983, Vol. I, 93 I'lat~ky & Walker 1985, pp 348-9
64 ~ i a s k's'Gh~l982;p. 11' ' 93 Argus, 17.7.84 I' I 94 Surplua I'eoplc I'rolect 1983, VoI. 2, p. 12
65 Smit & Booysen 1981, p. 90 94 Flnanctal Mall, 7.12.84 ,' ' Ilorc<e o/ Assemhlv Llehares, 11.2.81, (:ol. 844 95 Sher & Wdlt 1982, p. 22
66 Smit & Booysen 1981, p. 76 95 Daily News, 10.9.85 ;4 IL;t,hlnglon Posf, 4.11.84 96 .Slur, 16.1 1.78
96 Smit & Booysen 1981, p.92; Srar, 24.8.84 ,.I c)uored In Melunsky 1982, p. 15 97 .Sunda~E.pn.ss, 13.6.82
67 Summoq of World Broadcasrs, 11.2.87
68 Smlt & Booysen 1981, pp. 20, 48 97 Black Sash, Annual Kepurl 1981, p. 10 '' l ~ r ~ r u n c ~Mall.
al 27.1.78 98 Sash, 1983. VoI. 26, No. 2
98 Surplus People Project 1983, Vo1.3, p. 60 . ' I > Mclrln\ky 1982, p. 16 99 Walker 1982, p. 20
69 Smith & Boovsen 1981. n. 87
99 Smit & Booysen 1981, p. 92 .'.' \tr!h, 1983; Vol. 26, No. 2 100 KwaNgema 1984, pp. 18-83
70 S m ~ t& ~ o o y i e n1981, p: 41
100 Financtal Mail, 3.8.84 . ' \ KwdNgema 1985, Mare 1983, Wentzel 1983, 101 Transvaal Rural Act~on Cornrnlttee 1985, p.
71 Clry Press, 31.8.86; Cobbett 1985
101 Black Sash 1982a. no. 7-8: Goldine 1984. n. 15 I r:~n\vaal Rural Action Comm~ttee1985 29-30
72 Mare 1980, p. 26
73 Ftnanclal Matl, 27.1.78; Srur, 10.11.82 102 Black Sash 1982;: b.6 '1 'I r.lllsvaal Rural Acrion Committee 1986b, p. 2
Sll (;rahawrrrown Rural Cummllree Newslerrrr, 1986,
I02 .4.Vf' WeekLy Nrzus Briefing, 7.17.83
74 Slur, 10.11.82 103 Anrt-Aparrhetd News, November 198 1 103 Focus, No. 47, 1983, p. 2
75 Survey of Kace Rcla~rons 1983. p. I25 104 Focus. No. 51. n. 10 1711 18-21 104 Transvaal Rural Action Commlttee 1985, p. 20
76 f;lnanclal Ttmes, 12.11.82 105 Cape '~tmes, 12.7.84 \ I ( I:l;~\\cns 1984. p. 8 105 'l'ransvaal Rural Actlon (;ommittee 1985, p. 33
77 Daily Dtspaich, 3.4.79 106 Ctr~zen,5.7.84 \ ' bt:~rc 1980, p. 26 106 Transvaal Rural Action Cornmitree 1985, p. 21
78 Citv Press. 20.5.84 107 Cape Tlmes, 12.7.84 h Krv.iNgema 1984, pp. 23-5 107 Srar, 28.8.85
108 Cape Ttmes, 12.7.84 h l hl.lre 1980, p. 10 108 Dally Nems, 7.10.84
79 CI& Press, 31.8.86
109 Sher 1984, p. 16 5 ' . I l:~vsom 1983, p. 44 109 Obery 1986, pp. 10-1 1
80 Obery 1986, pp.8-10
81 Dally Dzsparch, 16.6.78: 24.11.78 110 Soweran. 14.8.84 vi, Mclunsky 1982, p. 16 110 Soweran, 5.2.85
lll Srar, 20.8.84 4 ; It';t\hrnplon t'osl. 4.5.84 11 1 ANC 1986, p. 11
82 Surplus People Project 1983, Vol. 2, p. 137
83 Transvaal Rural Action Committee 1985, p. 67 112 Rand /)ally Mall, 8.8.77; Commlss~onfor Jus- i s IY~rld,"19.4.77 112 Focus, No. 33, p. 12
tice and Peace 1983, p. 4 \'I I:<III~Llatly htuil, 19.10.77 113 Sechaha, December 1986 p. 11
84
85
Focus, No. 58, p. I2
Transvaal Rural Action Committee 1985, p. 66 113
114
DeBeer 1984, pp. 47-64
Commission tbr lusr~ceand Peace 1983, nn. 4-5
')I) l:,t~rd Ilatlv Mull. 24.2.84
' 1 I .\'o?u<~ran, 28.3.8.1
114 AN(:
~ - .
1987., n. 7
86 Mare 1980, p. 25 '1 ' I'l-,~~~svaal Rural Action Commlrtcc 1985, p. 31
87 Smit & Booysen 1981, p. 68 115 Srar, 30.7.84
88 Transvaal Rural Act~onCommittee 1985, pp. 116 Kand Dallv Marl, 1.8.84
65-6 117 Cole 1986. nn.36-43
89 Tranavaal Rural Act~onCommittee 1986a 118 Weekly n-luri.' 5.6.86 CHAPTER 5: Debates and strategy
90 CIQ l'ress, 27.7.86 1 19 Cape 7'1mt~. 30.8.84
91 Bell 1986, pp.290-92 I I,,,o~s,No. 58, p. 12; Transvaal Rural Action 29 Quoted In Kleu 1974, p. 132
( ottlmlttee 1985, p. 57 30 Kleu 1974, pp. 133-5
' \ll~rday Tlmes [Jhh], 12.8.84 31 Kleu 1974. n. 14
CHAPTER 4: Rural removals i I.ottt~,No. 58, p. I2 32 Gasson 1979: p. 126
I I ~.ln\vaalRural Action Comm~ttee1985, p. 57 33 Bell 1970
I Trapldo 1980, pp. 350-68; Marks 1971, pp 36 Surplus I'cople Project 1983, VoI. 2, p. 116; 11).1 1 Briefing Paper, No. 22, 1987, p. 4 34 Zille 1983. nn. 148-9
- >>" ,,,
132-4
c. 9
>ournail 3,
I Y ~ L-pp.
, LLO~~U 8, i ,rpc I'lmes, 25.7.84 35 Quoted ~ n ' z i l e1983, pp. 173-4
Surplus People Project 1983, Vo1.4, p. 45 Kand Dally Mull, 10.4.79 /111c 1983, pp. 158-82 36 Cobbett et al 1985, pp. 96-100
Surnlus Peonle Proiecr 1983. Vol. \ I I I I I & Boovsen 1981. n. 68 37 Quoted 111 Zillc 1983. p. 175
Du T o ~ tComrnlsslon 1959, p. 3
Du Toil Cornm~ssion 1959, p. 51 ~ r a ; . 23.9.85
7

,I , ..~\sc,n19i9; pp. 117-18 38 Flnanclul Mail. 28.9.84

Surplus People Project 1983, Vol. 2, pp. 17-18 Star, 25.9.85 111 h ~ 1982. ~ h pp. 1, 13 39 Ftnancial Mail, 15.3.85
Surplus People Project 1983, Vol. 4, p. 45 BalJw~n 1975, p. 216 I I I ~ I .h, LS A ~1982. n. 10 40 Transvaal Rural Action (:omrn~ttee 1985. p. 67
Surplus People Project 1983, Val. I, p. 6 Mare 1980, p. 41 I , Ilft~,l\on 1986, pp: 9-11 41 Focus. No. 58, p. I2
Surplus PeopLe Project 1983, VoI. 2, p. 9 Slur, 23.9.85; Slar, 25.9.85 I ' I ,I/#,. 'I'I~IYs, 31.8.84 42 Obery 1986, pp. 9-10
Buslnesl Day, 25.9.85 I 1 I I ~ I ~ I IInC Zille~ 1983, pp. 169-70 43 Yawltch 1986, p. 25
Mare 1980, pp. 9-13
Transvaal Rural Action Cornrnlttee 1985, p. 68 Transvaal Rural Act~onCommlttee I I I, 11,llcr & Parnell 1986, p. 201 44 House o/ .qssemhly I)ehare.i, 30.3.83, Cols. 891-2
Mare 1980, p. 13 Transvaal Rural Act~onCommittec 11, I l t ~ ~ d l c1986,
r p. 9 45 I'lnanclul Marl, 26.10.84
Quoted in Mare 1980, p. 41 Surplus People l'rolecr 1983, Vol. 2, p. 69 1 1 o o t \ 3 XI>. 51 p. I0 46 Cape Ilmes, 5.10.84
Desmond 1971, pp. 50-51 Mare 1980, p. 41 I 11, l\on 1986, p. 17 47 Cape l'tmes, 3.10.84
Desmond 1971, p. 81 Surplus People Project 1983, Val. 4, p. 3 1 ' 9 \,tii Ipurrhetd .Vews, November 1986 48 Kand Dally Mall, 4.10.84
Mare 1980, p. 10 Transvaal Rural Actlon (:ommittee 1986c, p. 3 11 I ,I/'# I'tmei, 4.8.84 49 Kand Dally Mall, 4.10.84
Mare 1980, p. 14 Baldwln 1975, p. 227 I /:,,,rJ /)ally Mall, 28.8.84 50 (,'apz T~mes, 15.1.84
Kwandebele 1986, p. 3 Surplus People Project 1983, Vol. 2, p. 112 \ ~ , I I 1986, p. 11 51 Transvaal Rural Action (:ommittce 1985, p. 73
Dally Despalch, 1.6.78 ' 1 )hct,~cO111 Ixgassick 1974, p. 16 52 Frnmctal Mall. 26.10.86
Desmond 1978, pp: 25-6
Surplus People Project 1983, Vol. 2, p. 207 Ftnanclal Mail, 27.1.78 I I t , I 1 l<J70 53 Siar. 7.3.86
Surplus People Project 1983, Vol. 2, p. 212 Natal Mrrcuq, 30.4.73 I ) I U > I ~ -III~ 1.egasslck 1974, p. 17 54 FoC.is, No. 70, p. I2
Surplus People Project 1983, Vol. 2, p. 225 Posi, 4.8.78; Surplus People Project 1983, VoI. 'I. l : . ~ ~ ~ ~ r - t ~1974,l > . ~p.
c h 201~2 55 .-lnrt-Aparrhe~d News, October 1986
4, P. 7 I: I I I I ~ . I I ~ ~ 1974,
. I C ~ p. 206 56 Cupr I'lmes, 18.8.86
Surplus People Project 1983, vol. 2, p. 229 57 AFRA Reporr Sheer, No. 27, 1986
Surplus People Project 1985, Vol. 4, pp. 11-12 I. I, ( I I'J74, p. 128
Surplus People Project 1983, Vol. 2, pp. 206-46
Surplus People Project 1983, Vol. 2, pp. 197- Glaser 1986, p. 14
?ns Surplus People Project
~ --
1983, Vol. 5. p. 34
25 Mare 1980. D. I5 60 -
~
Cape Ttwres, 8.12.77 ,_ ,
172 Index Index 173
~lcccnlralisationpolicy/strategy 62, 103, 124, 12%34 Aid Centres 3 3 4 , 48, 52-3, 148
1:cderation policies 133 arrests/contraventionslprosecutions27,28, 34. 37-
I kpartment of Banru Affairs 19, 148 8 , 51-3, 55, 58
(:lrcular 25 32 Assembly Centres 39
1 :irculrr 27 78 Bantu Commissioners' Courts 51-2, 148
I)cs~nond,Cosmas 17, 97, 98 banrustan policy and 18, 19-20
I ) I I 'foit Comniission (1956) 9 6 5 defiancelresistance 17, 28, 44, 5 6 9
denounced by Smit Committee 29

Index economy 9, I0
Iialance of payments deficit 22, 23, 37
I~oom15, 17-18, 22. 31, 35, 36
and economic system 27
effect of 27, 3 G 1 , 38, 42-3, 47-9, 55-6
'employment and guidance centres' 35
Fagan Commission 10, 29
The index is in two parts. The first is a subject index and the secwd lists Lvrr of living increasrs 22, 1 2 6 7
Groskopf Committee recommendations 35
Iorcign investment 8, 15, 23, 34, 133
places mentioned in the book which have been affected by forced remc-?ls (;I)I' 1 7 history 27, 2 a 3 1 , 47-8
xold prices 8, 22, 23, 35, 37 housing policy and 25, 27, 34, 37, 40-1, 50, 52,
policies. xold standard 8 74, 125
O I I prices 22 Labour Bureaux 20, 149
[>:IS\ laws and 27
labour bureau system 29,31-2, 39.4 1,44,48,49,
SUBJECT INDEX ~rrnovalspolicy and 123 50
\lurrip 22-3, 34, 36, 37, 1 3 9 4 0 and labour supply 9, 11, 12, 11, 19-2 1.29, 30, 31,
Arrr of parliamenl, hill. and proclamurions art. ull housing as an ~ncentiveto move to 26, 76, 78 ~:~ril'fs 8, 1 1 43
indexed under legtslur~on population size 60, 80 '~cchnocrats' policy formulations 128, 133 legislation 8-9, 19-20,25,29,36,38,4@1,43,44,
removals to 60, 70, 72, 7kL9. 83-4 \<.<.illso agriculture; industry; mining industry
79, 125
Administration Boards (lulcr Development Boards) betterment schcmes 14, 26, 93, 101-3, 148 objectives 14, 18, 28, 31, 35, 4 S 7 , 59
19, 39, 5 G 1 , 54, 148 removals 26, 93 passes (reference books) 12, 15, 17, 29, 47, 149
African National Congress (ANC! 1 6 11, 15, 58-9, Black consciousness movement 66 I..Ic.II~ (:ommission (1948) 10, 29 see also identity documents
I2G1 black spots lh-17, 93, 105, 113, 148 1.11111 I:lb~)ur5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 29, 48, 49-50, removals 11-12, 25, 27, 53, 59, 69-70
Umkhonto we Sizwe I20 removals 1 6 1 7 , 21, 26, 6 6 7 , 9 S 4 , ~ , 1 0 4 ,105-6, ',.I, 95 'repealed' 25, 27, 41-2
agriculture 5, 11 11G14 ] <.vlt~ionslremovals5, 8, 12, 13, 21, 26, 93, 95-7, resistance 44, 5h-9
'development strategy' and 103 resistance 98, 1 1 6 12 1 100, 104. 105, 110, 138, 140 Riekert Commissionlstrategy 24, 25, 28, 3 4 4 0
expansion 15, 95-6 suspension of 122. 138-9 ~~~cclianisation and 15, 21, 34, 93, 95 Stallard 'doctrine' 6 7
foreign investment 15 Bophuthatswana bantustan 16,80,88, 104, 107, 108, I c cl<.r;~tionpolicies 133 urbanisation strategy 25, 41-3, 44, 50, 60, 12&7,
l a b o u ~tenants 5, 8. 13, 2 1, 93, 9 6 6 , 149 112, 119 1h.1 L <<I removals (defined) 4 137-8
share-croppers 5, 10 Border Area development programme 20 workings of 47-54
squatters 8, 10, 11, I2 border arras 20, 77, 129 t;.c~~hulubantustan 108 see also Coloured Labour Preference Policy; dcccn~
white settlement schemes 95 boycotts 76 I ,r~t.~Ccy~l' (:ommittee recommendations 35 trallsation strategy
see also farm labour bus 10 1~ I I N I I I IArcas Act ser under legislation Iscor (Iron & Steel Corporat~on)8
Aid Centres 33, 48, 52-3, 148 consumer 76 1 . I ~ ' I I I,Arcas
I policy 149
Asiatic Land Tenure Laws Amendment Committce elections to tri-camera1 parliament 6 3 4 I . I I I I I I0C1 66
61 rent 125, 127, 140 ~ ' I . I I I I I2ndI I I ~implementation 62, 64 Kangwane
Khayelitsha bantustan 80 107, 128, 135-7
26, 76, 91,
rr~i~v;~l\
# ( 12, 61-7 Koornhof Bills 35, 57
Baard, Frances 3 G 1 rr+lalice to 13, 65-7 Rwandebele bantustan 26, 82, 98, 1 0 6 7 , 108-9.
Bantu Affairs, Department of 19, 148 Chtkane, Rev Frank 119 ~ u l l , . a ~ ~ ~ \ strategy
a ~ i o n and 137-8 119, 120, 134
Circular 25 32 children: Kwazulu bantustan 25, 79, 80, 82, 102, 103, 104,
Circular 27 78 cffect of removals 64, 89. 114 106, 108, 109-10, 119
Bantu Commissioners Courts 51-2, 148 section 10 rights 39, 55. 76, 79 I I , ,I<.!( :ommission on Legal Reform 52
Hoexter Commission recommendations 52 Ciskei bantustan 16, 81, 103, 104, 105, 107, 109, I ~ , , ~ ~ . I I I 11o1icy
I. 25-6, 32-3, 40, 44, 54, 1 2 6 7
Bantustan system 15-17, 19-20, 22, 24, 32, 60, 77, 110, 112 .n~bcl .c,Lc\s to work 34, 68 labour:
102, 1 0 3 4 , 129 citizensh~p 19, 26, 42. 104, 108, 134 l l l i l I I I I I U X ~ u n t r o 25.27,
l 34, 37,4&1, 50, 52, 71, allocation strategy 18, 31, 40, 43-4, 60
bantustans 148 closer settlements 21, 97-101, 103, 149 127
1 , . I L I C . I I hcgregation
II~II 12, 60, 62 Coloured Labour Preference Policy 30, 67-70
administration I6 Coloured Labour Preference Policy 30, 67-~72,87, collrract 9, 20, 24, 25, 30, 35, 43, 49, 50, 53, 68,
betterment schemes 14, 26, 93, 101-3, 148 149 lt(811.11:c 7 6 6 , 85, 87 103
citizenship 19, 26. 42. 104, 108, 134 removals 69-70 ., , i l s , ~ ~ o w n s h ~ p s Section 10 rights 37
closer settlements 21, 97-101, 103, 149 Coloured population: 'rrnploymen~ and guidancc' centres 39
communitiesltownships incorporated into 25, 60, attempts to co-opt into Apartheid regime 62, 64. 8 1. ~ < l o~ ~ t ~I ~ i iI e25,
~ n t~s41, 47-8 farm 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 29,48,49-50, 54, 95
79, 81-2, 104, 111, 134, 13%9 72 l < ~ , ,l , I~ lu~l>~~li~~ion: evictions/remo\~als5, 8, 12, 13, 21, 26.93, 95-7,
'development strategy' 102-3 C E P also Coloured Labour Preference Policy I B ~ ~ I , ~ . o ~ o pinto
t Apartheid regime 63 100, 104, 105, 110, 138, I40
'independence' 24, 119, 120, 131 Group Area removals 62, 6 3 4 , 65 l . ~ , t s ~ ~ , \IC.I removals 62, 64, 65 mechan~sat~on and 15, 2 1 . 34. 93. 95
industrial investment 81 resistance to 65-7 8 5 I . I . I I I C10C 13, 65-7 indentured 4, 5
S E E also border industries urbanisation strategy and 137-8 I ~ ~ > . I I I I \ ; I I I O\trategy
I~ and 137-8 industrial 6 7 , 8, 9-10, 11, 14, 111, 3 3 , 46, 53
decentralisation policy and 103, 128-34 legislation affecting 62 1. 1 . 1 I . ~ I I ~ ~ .I~I l l e c ~ i n62 g jobs, dependenr on h o ~ ~ s i n34, g 15, 37, 43, 68
as alabour pool 20,21,22, 24, 35,43, 55, 60, 103, Community Councils 72-3, 127, 149 I , III I . I I I < , I I ~ x ) l ~ c63
y local labour prclcrencc policy 51
129 commuters 50, 54, 76, 78, 8&1, 98, 149 ,, I,,.~,, migrant 6 5 . 6, 9, 1 1 . 14, 22, 24. 25, 30, 43, 49
land consolidation 1 6 1 7 , 26, 1 0 6 7 , 119, 139 Congress Alliance 15, 63, 66 ~ r ~ . I lL U ,It-I Area development programme 20 supply and dcnidud 7, 1 1 . 14, 21. 23, 29. 36, 40,
Congress of the People (1955) 63
leaders: and removals 107-~9, 139
liv~ngconditions 33, 84, 97-100, 1 1 3 4
movement to and from 20, 55, 60, 78
Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSA'I'I I I
47, 58
r f f

II
1 1 ~*IG)IIIIXI
1
I.ahour I'reference Policy 7 G 1
.III<IIICC.III~C IS, 23, 34
1 , . 1 ~ 1 1 . 1 I 1 ~ ; 1 1 1 1 1 1 sIr;ltegy
rn 1 and 129
- 43, 46, 7 0 I
I I I I ~ I X cc1111roI:111d 11, 12, 14, 19-21> 30, 31,
43
squatter settlements 46, 89, 100 contract labour 9, 20, 24, 25, 30, 35, 43,19, 50, 5 i . I I ~ I I I V < - I I I I I C I I I IS. 23
l . 8 1 ~ I C ~ I S ~ : I I ~ O I I : I I ~9, 43
towns: commuters 50, 54, 76, 78, 8&1, 98, 149 68, 103 1 I , , ~ \ I I ) ' h . $1 10, 11, 15, 17-18 Kickcrt proposals and 24. 39
conditions 70, 80, 81-2 Section 10 rights 37 I I 1 ' S ' I I , 4 8 3 3 46, 7 /.oning 39, 50, 54, 68, 130
establ~shmentof 22, 60, 77-83 Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA) 47. 5 X , U , I I ~ , \ c C ~ ~ L I II.~,, ~ ~ I I1 . 1 ~ 527, 59. I49 ~ 6 ols~r
, w:lges
growth of 46, 80 Crossmads 26, 87,88,90,91-2, 123, 128. 1 3 6 7 . 1.10 \ , I I ~ ~ ~ O D C , I I , I I I ~ > I%o.~rd
~I I9 1.ahorlr I{t~rcaux20, 149
174 Index Index 175
labour bureau system 29, 31-2,39,41,44,48,49, 50 Physical Planningand Util~satlonof Resources Act 'reserves' ( l a m bantustans) 4, 5, 29 'technocrats' policy formulations 123, 124, 126, 128,
labour tenants 5, 8, 13, 21, 93, 94-6, 149 (1967) 33, 40, 69, 130, 153 'betterment' schemes 14, 26, 101 II I
-22

land:
apportionment 5, 6, 8
'development strategy' 103
dispossession 4, 13, 14, 17, 64, 93
see also black soots
freehold rights 6,'9, 13, 16, 26, 73
Lebowa bantustan 79, 80, 104, 107, 115
legislation:
Abolition of Influx Control Act (1986) 41, 53, 154
Act I8 119361 29
Act 42 (1964) i 8
Admission of Persons to the Republic Regulation
Act (1972) 19, 39, 8&9, 154
Aliens Control Act (1963) 153
Aliens and Immigration Laws Amendment Act
(1984) 38, 42, 50, 56, 154
Bantu (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of
Documents) Act (1952) 152
Bantu Affairs Administration Act (1971) 19, 154
Bantu Authorities Act (1951) 16, 152
Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act (1970) (laler
National States Citizenship Act) 19, 1 5 S 4
Bantu Labour Act (1964) 68, 153
Bantu Labour Reeulations (Bantu Areas) Act
(1965) 20, fi, 68; (1968) 78, 153
Bantu Laws Amendment Act (1964) 18, 21, 31,
153: 11973) 17. 154
Bantu ~es>ttlementAct (1954) 13, 153
Bantu (Urban Areas) Amendment Act (1955) 13,
153
Black C.-.o m m u n ~ t ~ eDevelopment
s Act (19841 35,
134
Black Local Authorities Act (1982) 35, 154
Black (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act (1945):
Amendments (1985) 40
Bophuthatswana Citizenship Act (1978) 108, 154
Borders of Particular States Extension Amend-
ment Act (1986) 104, 108, 139, 154
Customs Tariff and Excise Duty Amendment Act
(1925) 8
Group Areas Act i1950) 12, 61-2, 63, 152
Amendment (1984) 62
Population Registration Act (1950) 62, 152 rranchise system 5 Tembani, Isaac 115
Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act (1951) 152 land allocation 5, 6, 8 Theron Committee recommendations 62
Amendment 41, 152 migration to urban areas 6 townships 6 , 12, 19, 72-6
Proclamation 2089 (1979) 154 Residents Associations: disestablishment of 70, 77, 79, 84
Proclamation on Black Labour Renulations (1968) Brits Action Committee 84, 140 evictions from 32-3, 41, 87
41 Cradock Residents Association (Cradora) 76 housing: building controls 78, 85
Prohihition on Mixed Marriages Act (1949) 62, Daggaskraal Landowners Executive 115 control of access to 41. 75. 78
152 Ekangala Action Committee 82, 134, 140 rent increases 1 2 6
Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act (1959) Huhudi Clvic Association 83 sale of 125-6
15-16, 153 Mgwali Residents Association 112 shortaee 75. 85
Restoration of South African Citizenship Act Nyanga Bush Committee 89, 137 tenure-6, 32
(1986) 42, 104, I55 resistance: incorporated into bantustans 25,60,79, 81-2. 134
Separate Representation of Voters Act 67-8 boycotts 10, 6 3 4 , 76, 125, 127, 140 local councils 72-3
Slums Clearance Act (1934) 151 to decentralisation strategy 134 new: conditions 63, 64
Amendment 41 in general 1 6 1 1 , 15, 17, 34, 1 4 6 1 removals totfrom 12, 60, 70, 7&9, 84
Urban Areas Act (1923) 28; (19.15) 1&19, 41, 51, to influx controllpass laws 44, 5 6 9 suspension of 8 3 4 , 122
62 to removals 13,65-7, 72,82-3,961,9311, 1 0 6 1 , resistance in 7 6 7
~ m e n d m e n t(1952) 12; (1978) 39 101-2, 103, 106, 107, 112, 1 1 4 2 1 , 128, street committees 73, 76, 127
Urbanisation Bill 36 1 3 6 7 , 140 see also Residents Associations
local authorities set7 Community Councils Soweto uprising ( 1 9 7 6 7 ) 22-3, 74 trade unions 10, 47, 58
strikeslstay-at-homes 10, 22. 34. 58. 68 Transkei bantustan 16, 24, 103, 104, 105. 107
Makodi, M r 1 1 4 1 5 in townships 76 Transvaal Indian Congress 10
Makodi, Ignatius 76 ways of neutralising: attacks on squatters 128 Tribal Labour Bureaux see Labour Bureaux
manufacturing industry see industry bantustan system 17, 24, 60, 85, 102 Trust Land 150
mining industry 4, 14 housing policy 44, 124
labour 4 5 , 7, &9, 10, 14 labour strategy 18, 31, 60
strikes 10 residential segregation 14, 44, 60,62, 74, 125 unemploymentluncmployed people 23, 34, 39, 46,
migrant labour 4 5 , 6, 7, 9, 11, 14, 22, 24, 25, 30, Bafurutse 17 70
-.
43. 49
S m t committee and 29
Pondoland 17, 101-2, 103
Sekhukhuneland 101
endorsed out 18
removal of 44, 60
Section 10 25 st7e also squatters; U n i ~ e dDemocratic Front United Democratic Front (UDF) 57-8, 66, 119, 136
see also contract labour; influx control Riekert Commission (1979) 24, 25, 28, 34. 52, 75 urban Africans (outsidc bantustans) 7
Mkhize, Saul 112, 1 1 6 1 8 recummendations 24, 3 4 5 , 3&40, 46, 50, 54 'aliens' 38, 50, 52, 80
More, John 118 Riekert strategy 25-6, 3 4 4 3 passim, 56 'authorised'i'unauthorised' 36
Moroamoche, Ch~ef 101 rejected 57, 58 de-politicisation strategy 123
Motaung, Marcus 55-6 removals 25 endorsed out 18, 33, 39, 42, 55, 149
Fagan Commission recommendations re 10, 29
SANT see South African Native Trust Groskopf Commi~tcerecommendations and 35
Natal Conference against Relocations 140 Scheduled land 5, 150 housing policy 25-6, 32-3, 40, 44, 1 2 4 7
Natal Indian Congress 10 see also black spots 'illegals' 28, 44. 48-~9, 50, 56, 72, 75
National Committee Against Removals (NCAR) 120
National Party 1 6 1 1 , 14, 15, 18, 2 3 4 , 29, 37
Section 10 see under urban Africans
share-cropper 5, 10
.
land and property tenure 6, 9, 12-13, 35, 73, 74,
1 LJ
qr

in general 62
objectives 63, 66
Immigration Act: Amendments 8-9
Immigration Regulation Amendment Act (1953)
152
&..-
Laws on Co-operation and Development Act
(1979) 154; (1983) 37
~ m e n t m e n t(1985) 57'
Laws on Co-oneration and Develonment Bill
(1980) 3;
Laws on Development Aid Amendment Bill
11986) 138
Native '~dministration Act (later Black Affairs
Administration Act) 151
Native Land Act (19131 5, 8, 10, 94, 151
Native Laws Amendment Act (1937) 9, 73, 152
Native Service Contract Act (1932) 29, 151
Native Trust and Land Act (1936) (later Develop-
ment Trust and Land Act) 8, 10, 11, 13,
151
Amendment (1954) 13
Amendment (1956) 94
Native (Urban Areas) Act (1923) 7 , 12, 73, 151
Native (Urban Areas) Consol~dat~on Act (1945)
(later Black (Urban Areas) Consolidation
Act) 152
Orderly Movement and Settlement of Black Per-
sons Bill (1982) 35-6, 154
National Security Strategy 24 Sharpeville massacre (1960) 15
Native Affairs Department 6 Smit committee (1942) 29
Native Representative Council 5 South African Coloured People's Congress 15
Ngema family 113, 118 South African Congress of Democrats 15
Ngema, Moses 119 South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU)
Ngxobongwana, Johnson 91, 128, 136 --,
I F FP
2"
non-prescribed areas see Prescribed Areas South African Indian Congress 15
South African Native Trust (SANT) (later South
parliamentary representation: African Bantu Trust (SABT); South African
African 16 Development Trust (SADT) 8, 17, 105, 150
Coloured 67-8 Soweto 74
franchise system 5-6 Soweto uprising ( 1 9 7 6 7 ) 22-3, 74
segregated tri-camera1 parliament 63, 64 squatter settlements 25, 28, 46, 70, 72, 85, 87-92,
pass lawslsystem see influx controllpass laws .""
~ n n
passes (reference books) 12, 15, 17, 29, 47, 149 arrestsievictlonsiremovals 26, 41, 70, 88, 89-90,
see also iderrtity documents 137, 140
population reglster 41 condltlons 89, 90
Prescribed Areas 29-30, 149 demulition 26, 70, 84, 8&9, 91-2, 123, 127
pass raids 37
policy revision 127-8, 135-7
Qwaqwa bantustan 76, 78, 80, 81, 88, 107 squatters 150
de-politicisation strategy 128
reference books see passes see also under agriculture
Regional Service Councils 51
Stallard Commission (1922) 6
Released land 150, 151 Stallard 'doctrine' 7, 8, 10, 28
see also black spots State of Emergency (1960) 15, 57
repression 11, 15. 17, 5 6 7 , 66, 74, 89-90, 101, 109, street committees 73, 76, 127
1 1 6 1 1 , 117-18, 134, 137, 140 strikesistay-at-homes 10, 22, 34, 58, 68
numbers: increase in 6, 8, 20, 44, 46, 60, 87, 124
decline of 55, 80
se'e also influx control; pass laws; Urban Areas
Act
policy revision 124-6
proportion 01 mcn to women 6
removals 12, 25, 27, 39, 6 6 1 , 70, 73, 77, 8 6 5
see also tindm (;ruup Areas policy
Rickcrt (:ommislon recommenda~iot~\ a n d 34-5,
367
see*also Group Arcas poli~y;bquattcr sc~rlcrnenrs;
townships
Urban Areas Act see utldrr lcg~sl:rrion
urbanisa~iorr \Iralcgy 25, 4(L-3, 44, 50, 60, 1 2 6 7 ,
137-8
Van dcr Wall (;ornmiss~otr 111.4
Van 1:ck (:ornmission ( 1941 ) 9
Vcrrda halr~ustarr 16, 104
vigilantes, state 82. 91. 137
wages 7, 10, 14, 43, 46, 70, XG1, 126
see also slrikcs
Wichahn (;ommissiotr 24
176 Index
women: Pageview ti 13, 65, 73
In bantustans, living conditions 32 Pietersburg T 79
Influx controllpass laws and 9, 12, 14, 20 Potgietersrus 7' 79
arrests 37 Mahopane T 78, 80 Pudimong CIS 76, 83
campaign against 17, 56 Mdchahestad B 114
effect of 30, 38 Madadeni T 100 Roolgrond C 114
removals 69-70, 72 hidirklng 1' 113 Rosslyn D 20. 54, I29
migrant workers 20, 49 Makana Kop 7' 82 Rustenhurg 1' 79
resistance 90, 91, 101, 140 Mamelodi 7' 54, 84
Secrion 10 rights 18, 31-2 Margare 7' 79 Sada C: 1, 70, 99
in urban areas 6, 18, 20, 29, 31-2, 37 Martindale 7' 13. 73 Sandkraal 7' 84
endorsed out 18, 30, 32, 33, 42 Mathopestad B I 11 Sehokeng T 74, 89
property tenure 32. 75 MayCair (; 65, 138 Sephaku 6'0 102
Mdantsane 7' 49, 78, 79 Sharpev~lle1' 15, 57, 68, 74
Meadowlands T 128 Sibonglle T 83
Mewall B 112. 115 Sophiarown 1' 6, 13, 73
INDEX OF PLACES AFFECTED BY FORCED REMOVAL ~ g x e s h aC 9 7 Soshanguve 7' 79
Modderdam S 87, 88 St Wendolins B 66, 82
Places in the index are categorised according to the following key: MogopaB 3 , 9 4 , 110, 111, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119,
1 XR
Steinkoolspruit B 11 1
. A - Stutterheim 1' 72
Mooiplaas B 107
Moutse BD 104, 107, 109. 119. 134 Thaba Nchu S 88, 107, 108
B Black Spot (includes Badly Situated Area) Mpungamhlope (: 97 Thornhill (; 105, 107
BD Bantustan District Munsieville T 87 Tsitaikama R 111, 113
C Closer Settlement Nahoomspruir 7. 79
Ndwedwe T 53
D Deconcentration Point Nelspruit T 38
G Group Area Newclare T 13, 73
Nondweni C 98. 108 Vaalwatcr 7' 79
S Squatter Township Noupoort 7' 79 Verulam 1' 53
T Official Township Nyanga S 70, 72, 87, 88-9, 91, 127, 137 Vrvhurg 7' 76
Nvlatroom 7' 79
W 'White' farming area Weer~cn W' 9X, 100
Onverwacht TIS 88 Werkgcnot S 87
Oudrshoorn T 79 Winterveld S 40, 79, 87, 90, 100, 107, I O X . 1011
Alexandra T 6. 73. 87 Fineo Villaee 7' 6. 73. 82. 11 1. 113. 115 Oukasie 7' 83. 123
Zeeru5r 1' 56
Zwelitsha 7' 77