Ekurhuleni: The Making of an Urban Region 1868145433, 9781868145430

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Ekurhuleni makes a major contribution towards our understanding of the uniqueness of this important urban region in South Africa. Philip Bonner was, until 2012, Professor of History at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where he held the National Research Foundation (NRF) Chair in Local Histories and Present Realities.

EKURHULENI THE MAKING OF AN URBAN REGION

with Sello Mathabatha

Philip Bonner & Noor Nieftagodien

Noor Nieftagodien is the Chair of the History Workshop and lectures in the History Department at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

THE MAKING OF AN URBAN REGION

Drawing on a significant body of academic work and new research, the book traces and examines some of the salient historical strands that constitute Ekurhuleni and suggests that, in spite of important differences between towns and the racial fragmentation generated by apartheid, the region displays significant common features. Its centrality first as a major mining area and then as the country’s engineering heartland arguably gave it a distinctive economic character. However, it is also marked by opposing forces such as the persistence of spatial segregation along class and racial lines on the one hand, and the efforts to establish a single administration and coherent regional economic strategy on the other.

EKURHULENI

Ekurhuleni: The Making of an Urban Region is the first book to provide an historical account of the development of this metropolitan region in Gauteng since its origins at the end of the nineteenth century. From the time of the discovery of gold and coal until the turn of the twenty-first century, the region previously known as the East Rand comprised a number of distinctive towns, each with their own histories. In the year 2000, these towns were amalgamated into a single metropolitan area but, unlike its counterparts across the country, the region does not cohere around a single identity.

ISBN ISBN 978-1-86814-737-3 978-1-86814-737-3

Philip Bonner & Noor Nieftagodien with Sello Mathabatha

9 781868 147373

EKURHULENI THE MAKING OF AN URBAN REGION Philip Bonner & Noor Nieftagodien with Sello Mathabatha

Wits University Press 1 Jan Smuts Avenue Johannesburg South Africa www.witspress.co.za Copyright text © Philip Bonner and Noor Nieftagodien 2012 Photographs © Individual copyright holders 2012 First published 2012 ISBN 978-1-86814-543-0 (soft cover) ISBN 978-1-86814-737-3 (hard cover) ISBN 978-1-86814-599-7 (ePDF) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978. Wits University Press and the authors have made every reasonable effort to contact and acknowledge copyright owners. Please notify the publishers should copyright not have been properly identified and acknowledged. Corrections will be incorporated in subsequent editions of the book. Edited by Patricia Botes Project managed by Julie Miller Cover design by Quba Design and Motion Layout and design by Quba Design and Motion Printed by Paarl Media, Paarl

EKURHULENI THE MAKING OF AN URBAN REGION Philip Bonner & Noor Nieftagodien with Sello Mathabatha

Photograph acknowledgements

iv

page number xvi 4 8 11 12 14 17 19 23 28 31 34 37 38 40 42 45 48 50 52 55 59 63 66 68 70 72 76

Source Museum Africa Boksburg photos Ekurhuleni collection Museum Africa Museum Africa Benoni museum Benoni museum Benoni museum Benoni Son of my Sorrow Museum Africa Benoni Son of my Sorrow Historical and Literary Papers Historical and Literary Papers Drum Social Histories/BAHA Drum Social Histories/BAHA Historical and Literary Papers Historical and Literary Papers BAHA Museum Africa Germiston collection Scan (Quba) Ronald Ngilima Ronald Ngilima Benoni Son of my Sorrow Benoni Son of my Sorrow Benoni Son of my Sorrow Benoni museum Boksburg collection

83 84 92 94 97 98 100 102 106 111 114

Drum Social Histories/BAHA Historical and Literary Papers Museum Africa Boksburg collection Museum Africa Museum Africa University of the Free State Gille de Vlieg Historical and Literary Papers Historical and Literary Papers Germiston collection

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

page number 116, 118 120 122 125 126, 127 128 130 134 136 140 142 145 146 148 151 152 156 158 160 162 165 166 170 172 177 178 182 185 187 192 200/201 203 206 208 212 214 215 217 222

Source Industrial Alberton Museum Africa Museum Africa Drum Social Histories/BAHA Historical and Literary Papers BAHA Benoni Son of my Sorrow Drum Social Histories/BAHA Drum Social Histories/BAHA Historical and Literary Papers Drum Social Histories/BAHA Benoni Son of my Sorrow AVUSA Gille de Vlieg Museum Africa AVUSA Gille de Vlieg Historical and Literary Papers Gille de Vlieg Gille de Vlieg Gille de Vlieg Gille de Vlieg Gille de Vlieg Historical and Literary Papers Historical and Literary Papers Gille de Vlieg AVUSA AVUSA AVUSA William Matlala Ekurhuleni AVUSA COPAC Ekurhuleni Marie Huchzermeyer Marie Huchzermeyer Marie Huchzermeyer Marie Huchzermeyer AVUSA

TABLE OF CONTENTS Photograph acknowledgements............................................................................................................................................................ IV ACRONYMS...................................................................................................................................................................................................... VI FOREWORD..................................................................................................................................................................................................... VIII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..................................................................................................................................................................................... IX PREFACE.......................................................................................................................................................................................................... XII

Chapter ONE: Tracing the contours of Ekurhuleni........................................................................................................................... xvi Chapter TWO: White workers and their struggles 1907-1924........................................................................................................ 14 Chapter three: CONSTRUCTING BLACK EKURHULENI, 1890-1927........................................................................................................... 28 Chapter FOUR: Ekurhuleni’s insubordinate women 1918-1945....................................................................................................... 40 Chapter five: Social worlds and social strains in industrialising Ekurhuleni...................................................................... 50 Chapter Six: Squatter camps and immigrant culture..................................................................................................................... 66 Chapter SEven: Turning point 1940s..................................................................................................................................................... 76 Chapter eight: The first steps in social engineering – reconfiguring space............................................................................ 92 Chapter nine: Black politics in Ekurhuleni in the mid-1950s......................................................................................................... 102 Chapter ten: Making of a modern economy....................................................................................................................................... 114 Chapter eleven: Apartheid’s heyday in Ekurhuleni......................................................................................................................... 122 Chapter twelve: The student movement of 1976.............................................................................................................................. 136 Chapter thirteen: Ekurhuleni and the struggle against apartheid.......................................................................................... 148 Chapter fourteen: A time of insurrection........................................................................................................................................ 160 Chapter fifteen: Politics of the stalemate........................................................................................................................................ 170 Chapter sixteen: The politics of transition...................................................................................................................................... 182 Chapter seventeen: City of fragments............................................................................................................................................... 196 Chapter eighteen: Informal and contentious city......................................................................................................................... 212

ENDNOTES....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 226 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................................................................................................. 246 INDEX............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 252

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region v

ACRONYMS

vi

AMWU

African Mine Workers’ Union

ERUCA

East Rand Urban Councils’ Association

ANC

African National Congress

FAK

Federasie van Afrikaner Kultuurvereenigings

APF

Anti-Privatisation Forum

FAWU

Food and Allied Workers Union

AZAPO

Azanian People’s Organisation

FOSATU

Federation of South African Trade Unions

BC

Black Consciousness

FSAW

Federation of South African Women

BCM

Black Consciousness Movement

GAA

Group Areas Act

BLA

Black Local Authority

GAB

Group Areas Board

BPC

Black People’s Convention

GDP

Gross Domestic Product

CBD

Central Business District

GEAR

Growth, Employment and Redistribution

CDE

Centre for Development and Enterprise

GWU

Garment Workers’ Union

CNETU

Council of Non-European Trades Unions

HNP

Herstigte Nasionale Party

COP

Congress of the People (formed in 1953)

IFP

Inkatha Freedom Party

COPE

Congress of the People (formed in 2008)

JTC

Joint Technical Committee

COSAS

Congress of South African Students

KCR

Kathorus Concerned Residents

COSATU

Congress of South African Trade Unions

LED

Local Economic Development

CPSA

Communist Party of South Africa

MAWU

Metal and Allied Workers’ Union

CWIU

Chemical Workers Industrial Union

MDG

Millennium Development Goals

DA

Democratic Alliance

MIG

Municipal Infrastructure Grant

DCA

Duduza Civic Association

MK

Umkhonto we Sizwe

DET

Department of Education and Training

NACTU

National Council of Trade Unions

DMA

Disaster Management Act

NAD

Native Affairs Department

ERAB

East Rand Administration Board

NEAC

Non-European Affairs Committee

ERAPO

East Rand People’s Organisation

NECC

National Education Crisis Committee

ERPM

East Rand Proprietary Mines

NP

National Party

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

NUMSA

National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa

TCA

Tembisa Civic Association

NZASM

Nederlandsche Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorweg-Maatschapij

TCPO

Transvaal Coloured People’s Organisation

TIC

Transvaal Indian Congress

OB

Ossewa Brandwag

TILP

Transvaal Independent Labour Party

PAC

Pan Africanist Congress

TMA

Transvaal Miners’ Association

PFP

Progressive Federal Party

TNC

Transvaal Native Congress

PWV

Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging

TPA

Thokoza Progressive Association

RDP

Reconstruction and Development Programme

TRA

Tembisa Residents’ Association

SACCAWU

South Black Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union

TRASCO

Transvaal Student Congress

TRC

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

SACN

South African Cities Network

TSRC

Tembisa Students’ Representative Council

SACTU

South African Congress of Trade Unions

TTC

Thokoza Town Council

SACWU

South African Clothing Workers’ Union

UCB

Urban Bantu Council

SAIF

South African Industrial Federation

UDF

United Democratic Front

SALP

South African Labour Party

UDM

United Democratic Movement

SANCO

South African National Civic Organisation

UP

United Party

SANNC

South African Native National Congress

UWUSA

United Workers’ Union of South Africa

SASO

South African Students’ Organisation

VCA

Vosloorus Civic Association

SCM

Student Christian Movement

VPP

Vosloorus Progressive Party

SDU

Self-Defence Unit

WEAU

SMME

Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise

Women’s Enfranchisement Association of the Union

SPC

Subsidiary Planning Committee

WLJ

Women’s League of Justice

SRC

Students’ Representative Council

ZAR

Zuid-Afrikaanse Republiek

TATA

Transvaal African Teachers’ Association

ZCC

Zionist Christian Church

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region vii

FOREWORD

T

he region known as Ekurhuleni today, together with the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, may be but just over a decade old, but the history that lies behind the towns that make it up and the region dates back more than a century. Ekurhuleni – The Making of an Urban Region was commissioned by the Metro a few years ago and put together, with dedication and passion, by Phil Bonner and Noor Nieftagodien of the History Workshop of the University of Witwatersrand. Writing a book that has historical significance and is accurate requires the following attributes: time, dedication and a love for history. This history book takes you back to the late 1700s and shows just how the area of Ekurhuleni, or the East Rand as it developed into, came about. It is an overview on the area, and the influx of people due to the mining that took place. In addition it talks about the political and class struggle, insubordinate women during the period of 1918–1945, the industrialisation of Ekurhuleni – which the region still prides itself in. It touches the history of informal settlements and the immigrant culture, politics, apartheid and the civil war in the region – and eventually the transformation within the country and, of course, our area of Ekurhuleni.

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

This historical oversight on our area will take you on a journey in time through the mid-1990s, just prior to when the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality was formed together with the region of Ekurhuleni. History is something that is in the making all the time. Ekurhuleni has a history unique to its area and its people. This area has had some turbulent times, and violence has played a role in the eventual establishment of an area that has been baptised with a name that means ‘place of peace’ – Ekurhuleni. Today Ekurhuleni may be a young area and metropolitan municipality, but we have come a long way and with our feet firmly on the ground we have a long way to go. I trust and believe that Ekurhuleni – The Making of an Urban Region will be put to good use by students of history as well as to those who are a part of our area, those in transit, visitors and those who will always be a part of it. Enjoy this great read.

Councillor Mondli Gungubele Executive Mayor Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality

Acknowledgements

T

he proposal to write a book on the history of Ekurhuleni originated during conversations in 2005 between Duma Nkosi and Karuna Mohan, the Executive Mayor and Director of Local Economic Development of Ekurhuleni respectively, and members of the History Workshop. It was evident to all of us that, despite research previously undertaken by the History Workshop and others, there was a dearth of historical research on the region. This sense of neglect was compounded by the post-1994 proliferation of oral and liberation histories, as well as the burgeoning heritage sector, which seemed to have by-passed the former East Rand. We agreed to make efforts to publish histories on the constitutive towns and townships of the new Metropolitan City. And so began a seven year journey. The first phase of research and writing was completed at the end of 2008 at which point, however, it seemed the draft manuscript would disappear into a bureaucratic black hole. Fortunately, many people in the Ekurhuleni Metro were committed to seeing the project reach its conclusion and over a period of nearly three years supported initiatives to this end. Duma Nkosi’s successors as mayors, Ntombi Mekgwe and Mondli Gungubele, gave their backing to our endeavours. The office of the City Manager also facilitated meetings at crucial times to clear logjams and to inject new energy into the process. Charles Mabaso, Ernest Sigasa, Elizabeth Gumbi and Malibongwe Kanjana made themselves available at different times to ensure progress was made. Viva Mokoena played a crucial role in co-ordinating all of these efforts and championed the proposed publication at the highest levels of the city. The Heritage Division of the Metro’s Department of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture was formally responsible for liaising with our research team. This was fortuitous, as the officials from that department

recognised the value of undertaking proper research not only to produce historical publications but also to contribute to the various heritage activities which they co-ordinate. Vincent Maumela and Reggie Mabogoane were enthusiastic partners whose determination over several years to see the ‘final product’ never wavered. Their support has been invaluable. Over the years several other people contributed in numerous ways to the collective effort. Among these were Hannelie Swart and Gwen Shole-Menyatso, who were generous with their time. Lizz Mey has acted as the primary contact between the History Workshop and the municipality for several years and has shepherded the project through many difficult moments, whilst having to negotiate two intricate bureaucracies. Her patience and dedication have been absolutely crucial in ensuring the publication of the book. As explained in the ‘Introduction’, much of the research on which this book is based was undertaken by former and current members of the History Workshop. Nonetheless, it was evident from the start that there were major lacunae in the extant literature, which this particular project could only make a modest contribution to addressing. One serious gap that we had been aware of for some time pertained to the history of those young activists who, from the mid-1980s, joined underground structures and participated in various forms of military activities. Their relationship to the democratic dispensation had been a source of contention, so they were suspicious of researchers associated with the Metro. They had expressed for some time a deep frustration with their exclusion from official liberation histories. Sello Mathabatha, who was then employed as an oral historian at the History Workshop, spent several months interacting with groups of activists from Duduza, KwaThema and Tsakane. They eventually agreed to be interviewed, which process generated

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region ix

rich and novel insights into events such as the ‘Zero Hour’ incident. We are grateful that they trusted us with some of their memories. Sello Mathabatha’s skills as an oral historian again proved indispensable and produced an invaluable oral archive. At the start of the project a team of students was mobilised to undertake archival research in various local libraries and municipal offices in Ekurhuleni, as well as Historical and Literary Papers and the National Archives, in search of official records, newspaper reports and whatever records of community organisations they could find. Faeeza Ballim and Dasantha Pillay ably led this group. The librarians, curators and administrators of museums throughout Ekurhuleni and at the University of the Witwatersrand gave access to archives, photographic collections and reports, without which it would not have been possible to write a history of the region. Tshepo Moloi’s MA dissertation on Tembisa assisted significantly in overcoming the absence of historical material on that township and influenced our thinking on youth politics in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s. Other colleagues at the university, especially Marie Huchzermeyer, Alan Mabin and David Everatt fielded question about contemporary Ekurhuleni and pointed us to the appropriate literature. Our administrators in the History Workshop and the NRF Chair on Local Histories and Present Realities – Zahn Gowar, Gugulethu Nyathikazi, Pulane Ditlhake and Sifiso Ndlovu – provided their usual exemplary support on a wide range of matters, which allowed us to focus on the research. It was decided early on that the publication should be well-illustrated, which seemed like an eminently good idea that could easily be realised. However, we did not adequately anticipate the extreme unevenness in the existing photographic archives. Next to

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

nothing exists on everyday life in the old location and townships. Considering the salience of mining and industry, the relative absence of photos on work is staggering. Fortunately, Sally Gaule brought her expertise to bear on the project, conducted the initial photographic research and offered invaluable advice throughout. We also benefited from discussions with Sophie Feyder and the research undertaken by Lucas Spiropoulous and Sifiso Ndlovu. Curators at the Benoni Museum and librarians from Springs, Benoni, Boksburg and Germiston were very helpful. The people who possibly suffered the most from our frantic scramble to find the ‘right’ images were Zofia Sulej and Gabriele Mohale from Historical and Literary Papers who responded to our endless requests with their usual professionalism. We were very fortunate to be introduced to the Ngilima family and Gille de Vlieg who have fantastic photographic archives on life in Benoni Old Location and aspects township struggle in the 1980s respectively. The staff of Wits University Press was enormously helpful throughout the protracted process of converting the initial manuscript into a book. Julie Miller guided the publication through the various phases and was assisted with editing by Patricia Botes and book design by Debbie Smit. We are grateful to the two reviewers whose comments helped shape the final arguments of the book. During the last phase of this project, two stalwarts of the region, Cassel Khanyile and Bertha Gwxoa sadly passed away. They were staunch supporters of historical research and constantly encouraged our endeavours. We encountered many others like them across the region, people who are passionate about understanding the past and committed to efforts to introduce young people to their history.

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region xi

Preface

E

kurhuleni, one of the country’s primary metropolitan areas, is merely a decade old. Whereas the promulgation of its more prominent urban neighbours – Johannesburg and Tshwane – as metropolitan areas involved the incorporation of smaller peripheral areas into major pre-existing cities, Ekurhuleni was created from the amalgamation of several relatively equal towns in what was historically known as the East Rand. Each of its constituent towns, including the suburbs, industrial areas, and especially the black residential areas attached to them, have rich histories going back to at least the start of the 20th century. This book is the first to attempt to weave together the separate threads of the pasts of each of these areas into a common historical narrative of the entire region. Previously published books were usually commissioned by local municipalities to celebrate one or other milestone in the history of the white town. Written during the apartheid years, they focused almost exclusively on the achievements of the white population and were in fact premised on the basic notion that towns were places of white history and development. Their pages were filled with accounts of the experiences of white (usually male) pioneers in mining, industry and local politics. Black residents of these towns were excluded from these official histories, and when they did make fleeting appearances it was generally either as labourers and troublemakers or to demonstrate the goodwill and paternalism of the white authorities towards ‘its blacks’. Women and youth were similarly marginalised: white women were represented as wives or social entertainers, and white youth either as jovial or boisterously anti-social. Social strife, industrial action and political contestations

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were also downplayed (Benoni, Son of my Sorrow, is the one exception) in order to construct narratives of peaceful progress and enlightened development. Several of these hagiographic accounts were produced prior to the 1970s. Those written after 1976 ignored or were oblivious to a large body of scholarly research undertaken from the 1970s, which produced fundamentally different histories and interpretations from the officially sanctioned books. Inspired by the turn to social history, academics and students based at universities wrote new histories that emphasised the role of ordinary people – women, men, workers, squatters, tenants and youth – in the making of their own history. Above all else, they consciously aimed to fill the major gap in the existing literature, namely, to recover the histories of ordinary people, especially the black oppressed. The collection of oral testimonies has played a critical role in this process of rewriting histories ‘from below’. Ekurhuleni has been a major site of this research, especially by scholars associated with the activities of the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand. In addition to our own work, the research undertaken by, among others, Sapire, Sitas, Cohen, Webster, Callinicos, Lambert, Gilfoyle, Mooney, Moloi, Seekings, Brink, Menachemson, Ruiters, and Ndima, has generated a rich and diverse set of historical analyses. These writers chiefly drew attention to the complex processes of urbanisation (and particularly the role played by African and Afrikaner women), the making of working class cultures, popular insurgent movements, ethnicbased violence, and the re-emergence of independent trade unions and civic movements from the 1970s, and posited innovative analyses of the contestations in the making of apartheid and the political violence of

the early 1990s. Despite the existence of this treasure trove of social history, very little is more widely known about Ekurhuleni’s significant contributions to the country’s history. This is partly due to the fact that a significant proportion of this body of work consists of unpublished theses and conference papers. One of the main objectives of this book is to bring into the public domain relevant aspects of this literature. It remains the case, however, that most of the aforementioned literature took individual towns or locations/townships as their principal point of reference. Consequently, we know a considerable amount about squatters in Benoni, stayaways in Brakpan Location, forced removals in Payneville and Benoni Old Location, trade unions in Germiston and hostel violence in Kathorus. This book builds on and highlights the peculiarities of these local histories but it also draws attention to the numerous common processes that spread across the region. Competition between towns, especially in the economic field, tended to exacerbate differences between them. In reality though, they were all competing in the same frame, often to be the same thing, while the socioeconomic borders between them were quite porous and distinctive town-specific identities rarely crystallised among any section of the population. Ekurhuleni is unique because it is the single largest urban region in South Africa, comprising nine of the country’s leading urban towns, two of its largest African township conglomerations and has for extended periods been the country’s leading industrial region. These salient features emanate from the region’s pivotal role in the development of the country’s modern economy. Perhaps more than any other city or region, Ekurhuleni has reflected the rhythms of development of the mining and industrial sectors of the national economy. During the first half of the 20th century it was among the leading gold mining regions in the world and in the decades following the Second World War became the undisputed ‘workshop’ of the rapidly industrialising local economy. An important and far-reaching consequence of this combination of characteristics was that from the early 20th century the various towns of the region attracted work-seekers from across the region and

globe. Much like Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni very quickly developed a cosmopolitan character. The roll call of early mine owners and political leaders reveals a strong British presence, and later, as immigration from eastern and southern Europe increased, Jewish, Greek and Portuguese families also made their mark in various facets of life in the region. By far the most significant group of immigrants into the region was black workers from various parts of southern Africa, first to work on the coal and gold mines, and then in even larger numbers in the rapidly expanding secondary industry. From the outset a large proportion of the region’s population, black and white, was working class. In the first half of the 20th century this was mainly mine-based and thereafter the region was dominated by an industrial working class, making the locations of Ekurhuleni important sites in the creation of working class cultures and politics. This was reflected to some extent in the history of workers’ organisations and episodes of workers’ militancy such as the 1922 White Miners’ Strike, the wave of strikes in the early 1940s, the emergence of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) in the 1950s, the rise of independent unions in the 1970s and early 1980s, and the influential role played by black workers in the region in the establishment of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in 1985. A relatively unknown subtheme of this phenomenon is that the Communist Party of South Africa was, until its banning in 1950, among the most influential organisations in the region among black workers as well as a stratum of white and black intellectuals. The African National Congress (ANC) also cemented its position in many of the old locations and in the 1950s these areas were in the forefront of the mass defiance campaign, contributing to the emergence of a collective political identity among the region’s black population. Within the white population party political allegiances reflected both the composition of the white electorate and the shifts in national politics. Until the advent of apartheid the mostly Englishspeaking population tended to vote for the United Party (UP), which held sway in most municipalities and dominated parliamentary elections. From the

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region xiii

1950s, however, voting patterns turned decisively in favour of the ruling National Party (NP), so that by the mid-1960s Ekurhuleni had become an apartheid stronghold. Rivalry between towns features prominently in newspaper reports and in the proceedings of the different local councils, but it was largely confined to competition to attract industrial investment, rather than reflecting substantive differences between the towns. The pre-apartheid dominance of the UP and subsequent predominance of the NP created a degree of political quiescence and homogeneity among the white population and municipalities. In the 1940s the state perceived the region as an important source of contestation to white privilege and power, as black locations became sites of popular insurgent struggles, including by women and squatters. As a result, from the early 1950s the apartheid government made a concerted effort to bring the entire black population spread across several areas under control through the implementation of a single, centrally co-ordinated plan. This region experienced with great intensity apartheid’s urban racial restructuring, with its high concentration of so-called black spots and squatter settlements. It is here where the state experimented with its core policies of establishing regional and ‘properly planned’ townships and group areas. As a region, Ekurhuleni was subjected to more forced removals than any other urban area, as hundreds of thousands of Africans, coloureds and Indians were moved around like pieces in a gigantic jigsaw puzzle to create a neat, racially segregated region that would still satisfy the labour needs of each town. It was also here where the apartheid government first implemented its scheme of creating ethnic enclaves in African townships, triggering tension and violence as early as the 1950s in Daveyton. Ironically, the creation of massive African township conglomerations (Kathorus and Kwatsaduza) and regional group areas for coloureds (Reiger Park) and Indians (Actonville) encouraged the emergence of regional identities. It may be argued therefore that local identities (of belonging to particular towns or townships) co-existed with emergent regional identities. From the 1960s the expansion of white suburbia effectively blurred the

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formal municipal boundaries between towns. Often towns were separated by single roads. The emergence of regional shopping centres established new nodes of regional economic activity and in the process began to replace the more localised Central Business Districts as the main commercial centres in the region. In the black townships and group areas the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1970s and 1980s created new regional formations and political identities. Independent unions organised across industries and industrial zones, connecting workers in Wadeville with their counterparts in Springs. Student (Congress of South African Students [COSAS]) and youth organisations consciously established regional leadership structures. A similar project was undertaken by the East Rand People’s Organisations, one of the first radical civics to be created in the region. The formation of the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) and the United Democratic Front (UDF) further augmented broad political identities. However, as the violence of the early 1990s revealed, and in which townships in Ekurhuleni were deeply embroiled, parochial and conservative identities persisted. This book does not aim to provide a comprehensive history of all the towns and townships that make up Ekurhuleni, but offers an overview of some of the salient local and regional processes that have contributed to the development of this significant urban region. It draws mainly on existing social histories. Hence one underdeveloped theme, ironically, given the emphasis in pre-1970s texts, is ordinary white culture and social life in the post-apartheid years. Beyond being a synthesis of existing work, however, this study makes a number of original contributions. For example, our researchers were able for the first time to conduct detailed life history interviews with activists who were involved in underground military activities in the mid- and late 1980s in and around Duduza, Tsakane and KwaThema. The time period covered in this book is from the pre-20th century, although it concentrates primarily on the 20th century, to the beginning of the new millennium when the new Metropolitan area was created.

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region xv

Chapter 1

Tracing the contours of Ekurhuleni

E

kurhuleni was shaped in the first instance by its geology and its environment, and only much later by the populations that came to live there. Indeed so historically mute are its early scatterings of inhabitants, the only sign of whom is the occasional archaeological site, that we are forced back to the landscape and climate to provide any sense of the place – which is what we shall do here. Ekurhuleni lies in the Highveld interior of South Africa nearly 2 000 metres above sea level. Like the Johannesburg region (Central Rand) and the West Rand, Ekurhuleni (East Rand) is home to the Main Reef series of the gold conglomerate ore, which was the central reason for its existence and the source of its prosperity throughout the first half of the 20th century and in some cases beyond. Unlike the Central and the West Rand, however, it is shaped and enfolded by strikingly different landscapes. Whereas major ridges run north of the mining belt on the West and Central Rand, the East is open and relatively flat, much of it poorly drained, and in places filled with pans. This landscape marks it out as a distinct region from the West and Central Rand, and has been one of the most important factors favouring its development as a massive, diversified industrial area, the workshop of South Africa and the Rand in particular.1

Germiston, 1900

Tracing the contours of Ekurhuleni 1

Early settlement The elevation of the entire Witwatersrand zone has created a marginal environment and left its inhabitants, from time immemorial, peculiarly vulnerable to climatic variations. In wetter and warmer periods human populations expanded into and occupied its lands. Fifty thousand years ago, for example, Stone Age hunter-gatherers, ancestors of the San, ranged through this area leaving stone tools and hand axes behind as evidence of their stay. Amateur archaeologists in the mid-20th century found examples of both in the Cranbourne Station and Rynfield areas of Benoni.2 Sites from a similar period have also been uncovered in Primrose, Germiston; at Witpoort and Withoek in Brakpan; as well as at an unnamed site in Springs.3 The later Stone Age period, starting around 30 000 years ago, is marked by a major break in the middle of its archaeological record in Ekurhuleni, in the Gauteng region more generally, as well as further afield. Between 18 000 BP (Before the Present) and 1200 BP no sign of human occupation can be detected. Archaeologists believe this break or hiatus to be due to a major climate change which brought with it lower rainfall and colder temperatures.4 Even after the hiatus only a scatter of Stone Age occupation can be discerned in the entire Gauteng area, no example of which has yet been found in Ekurhuleni. Scant pickings indeed. In the 4th and 5th centuries AD, early Iron Age communities settled in the bushveld areas of the interior of South Africa, extending as far as the Magaliesberg valley, where the Broederstroom site was detected and excavated in 1971. These early settlers cultivated cereal crops (sorghum and millet), forged iron implements and weapons, and herded cattle and smaller stock.5 The requirements of a mixed agricultural way of life limited the range of their spread. Grown together, their cereals required 500 mm of rainfall a year, concentrated into 50 days for millet and 75 days for sorghum. Night-time temperatures, in addition, had to remain over 15 °C. After only 100 years in the Magaliesberg valley these early farmers withdrew to warmer climes, a departure which was followed by a 500-year blank in Gauteng and the southern part of North West Province.6 The reason for this occupation

2

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

record may again lie in climate flux. The Little Ice Age, which opened around 1300 and continued to 1700 AD and brought especially cold and windy conditions to the Highveld, thereafter served as a major brake on and disincentive to occupation of the entire area, Ekurhuleni included. It was nevertheless broken from time to time by warmer interludes, and it was during one of these that a distinct and separate group of later Iron Age (as opposed to early Iron Age) people (the Bafokeng) entered the Highveld via the Free State between AD 1 400 and 1 600.7 Much of this area was relatively treeless (in contrast to today) which led these Sotho Tswana people to start building in stone. Known as Moloko to archaeologists (after its pottery) their settlements were laid out according to a distinct and characteristic plan. A significant concentration of such settlements can be found on the Vredefort Dome, and in the Klipriviersberg, Suikerbosrand Rand and Johannesburg areas. The settlement pattern consisted of homesteads situated a few hundred metres apart, each containing 30 to 50 people. Chiefs’ settlements were larger consisting of 300 residents or more.8 This period of occupation ended when the climate again deteriorated. The deepest drought in centuries gripped the whole of the interior of South Africa just after 1 700 AD.9 How far this extended into the Ekurhuleni area is unclear, as no serious Iron Age archaeology has been undertaken there. At around 1750, however, a new phase of climatic change commenced promoting a fresh wave of colonisation in the Gauteng area – this time comprising other Sotho Tswana groups. Their settlement pattern differs significantly from those that preceded them. Multiple arcs in the outer wall mark the back courtyards of individual households which themselves surround the cattle enclosure/kraal at the core. Among these, population densities were higher suggesting greater political centralisation. A number of these concentrated in defensive positions on hill tops or koppies such as at Meyersdal just outside the Alberton edge of Ekurhuleni.10 As much of the Ekurhuleni area was blessed with permanent springs, this would have added to its attractions for potential settlers. The site of the early 20th century town of Germiston was a farm known

as Elandsfontein, named after one such spring which provided water for large herds of eland.11 Aerial photographs taken in 1933 show now unpopulated African villages dotted across the Benoni suburbs of Farramere and Northmead as well as further afield which would certainly have been occupied in the wetter, warmer period of 1750–1800.12 This remained nevertheless a marginal area which was likely to have been abandoned once colder and drier weather took hold, as happened at the beginning of the 1800s. It thus did not require any depredation from the armies of Mzilikazi’s Ndebele who intruded into the interior from KwaZulu-Natal in the early 1820s to depopulate this area (although they probably contributed to this outcome).13 The Ekurhuleni, Gauteng and particularly the Magaliesberg areas were thus home, with occasional intermissions, to a black population (Bantu-speaking and San) for several tens of thousands of years before white settlers arrived in this area. Even though we know they were present, however, their voices remain mute. Certainly next to no oral traditions survive. We possess simply (and importantly) an archaeological record, which tells us that they were there, but comparatively little information about their social relations and how they behaved.

Voortrekker occupation Boer voortrekkers first moved into parts of this still marginal and fairly depopulated area in the course of the 1840s but remain almost equally anonymous. Such historical record as we have is equally sketchy, comprising the bald record of land grants made to individuals by the South African Republic and then housed as a record in their archives. Admittedly, names appear for the first time, but very little else. Those carrying them remain faceless and shadowy leaving the area historically as threadbare as in earlier centuries and decades. One such farm, Elandsfontein, upon which Germiston later grew up, was purchased by Johan Meyer from its previous occupant for the price of an ox-wagon in 1849.14 In 1860 J.P. Botha bought the farm Weltevreden (delimited two years before) where Brakpan subsequently arose.15 In 1869 Carl Ziervogel purchased 3 000 morgen of rocky veld,

called Leeupoort, for £75, which subsequently gave birth to Boksburg.16 In 1862 four Boer farming families likewise became the first trekker outriders to settle in the Benoni area. The first farm to be officially registered by the then government of the Transvaal was granted to D.J.J. Strydom. He named it Rietfontein, half of which is now within Benoni’s municipal boundaries. Other farms in the area were also named after springs – Kleinfontein (little spring), Vlakfontein (shallow spring), Modderfontein (muddy spring) and so on. A large farmhouse built near Kleinfontein by Johan Hendrik Botha in the late 1870s was still standing on the outskirts of the suburb of Farramere a century later. Remains of several others also survive.17 The historical record becomes slightly denser when a newly installed government of the South African Republic made a concerted attempt in the early 1880s to put its administration on a firmer and more professional footing. The origins of the name of Benoni (and its history as a town) go back to this point. In 1881 the Kruger government, which was desperately short of funds, began the resurvey of the irregularly shaped triangles of unclaimed land which lay between the boundaries of farms (uitvalgrond or ‘falling out ground’), named them and then put them up for rental or sale. Johan Rissik, the Surveyor General, who was charged with this task, named Benoni after the Book of Genesis, chapter 35, where Jacob’s wife Rachel died after giving birth to a son whom she named Benoni, meaning ‘Son of My Sorrow’. Rissik allegedly found the name appealing because of the difficult conditions he was encountering doing this part of the survey.18 As we now know, the name stuck. Boksburg was named in a similar fashion, following the discovery of gold. At that time the wider area consisted of three farms: Leeupoort, Driefontein and Klipfontein. As in the case of Benoni, it was resurveyed, resulting in the release of a block of land which could accommodate 1 000 stands. Here a new township was established and named after the South African Republic’s State Secretary of the time, Dr W.E. Bok.19 Springs was born in much the same way. Rough surveys had loosely delineated the farms Geduld, De Rietfontein and Brakpan in the 1860s. An early owner

Tracing the contours of Ekurhuleni 3

when coal was found on Die rietfontein in 1888.20 Brakpan’s early development followed a similar trajectory.21 Brakpan sprang up on the farm Weltevreden whose boundaries were delimited in 1864. It was sold twice after its initial owner, J.P. Botha, purchased it in 1886, ending up 20 years later in the hands of State President Paul kruger’s son-inlaw, F.C. Eloff. Both kruger and Eloff anticipated gold being found in the area, kruger himself having bought the neighbouring farm geduld.22 The practice of using insider connections clearly extends back far from present times. It was not gold, however, but coal that brought the modern towns of Brakpan and Springs into existence.

discoVEring gold

W.E. Bok, after whom Boksburg was named

of geduld, Albert Brodrick, sold it to Paul kruger in 1886. William Steyn acquired ownership of De rietfontein in the 1860s, selling it on to two mineral prospectors, Johan Ludwig gauf and W.B.M. vogts in 1888, allegedly in return for a horse’s saddle and bridle. By this time most of the farms in the Ekurhuleni area had been resurveyed, with Pretoria resident James Brookes having redrawn the boundaries of the farms geduld, De rietfontein and Brakpan in 1883. What Brookes’ survey revealed was an unbroken block of uitvalgrond 685 hectares in extent, an even larger area than had been the case with Benoni. Brookes named this chunk of uitvalgrond Die Spring’s because of the large number of natural springs in the area. Following the resurvey of the land, a farmer, W.J. Snyman, rented the farms Cloverfield and Die Springs from the then republican government, the leases of which ended

4

EkurhulEni: ThE making of an urban rEgion

only with the discovery of almost unimaginably rich seams of conglomerate gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 did the history of Ekurhuleni acquire a more human face. It is possible that far distant Nigel led the way, with gold being discovered there on Petrus Maree’s farm in 1886 or 1887.23 however the discovery of gold at Benoni marks a more substantial beginning when in August of that year, Landdrost Maré visited a recently opened shaft on Benoni farm and informed the government of the discovery of gold there, prospecting having already been in progress since early that year. As he reported to his superiors in Pretoria ‘Het rif ligt open in die Schacht en is acht voet breed.’ (The reef has exposed in the shaft and is eight foot wide.) It still remains on the south end of Princes Avenue. The prospector who exposed it was Cotten Acutt. Also present was J.k. hirst who represented Ethelbert Welford Noyce who had leased the farm from the government in 1885. The Benoni, kleinfontein and vlakfontein farms were proclaimed as gold prospecting areas between May and August 1888.24 Finally to conclude this first phase of mining development, W.P. Taylor was sent by the rand Mines group some time later to seek to purchase the farm Modderfontein, near Benoni, which he successfully did, and which would ultimately give birth to five fabulously rich mines.25 At this point the history of Ekurhuleni is getting perceptibly denser, and before long it would be

recorded first in newspaper articles and later in a series of celebratory, often centennial, municipal publications. This history is, however, almost exclusively a white history and generally a white immigrant history at that. It is also cast in a very particular mould, which has been explored with considerable insight and subtlety, in the Eastern Lowveld of South Africa.26 The mould is of brave, rough-and-ready, independent, solitary, resourceful pioneers rising above the odds and overcoming all adversity in their way. While pictured in a generally romantic fashion, these pioneers come with an equally familiar set of flaws – forgivable flaws but flaws nonetheless. They are carefree – on occasion close to wastrels. They are generous, often to a fault. They are great believers in (and beneficiaries of) chance, but are not above bending chance in somewhat underhand ways, or duping their colleagues. They are heavy drinkers. They can be violent when protecting what they believe to be their rights. Much of this pioneering history has two other attributes as well. It is remorselessly anecdotal, made up of cautionary tales, amusing as well as sometimes uplifting episodes, but never delving into the contexts and personalities involved. Equally problematically African voices and faces never appear, allowing us only to access them much later. These are our sadly limited raw materials for writing this early phase of the history of Ekurhuleni. Three of these early pioneer narratives, two coming from Nigel, give some feel for this genre of works. According to one, the owner of Vlakfontein entered into an ‘agzt’ (agreement) in 1882 in a project to look for gold. Five years later a troop of gold-seekers on their way from Natal to the Rand camped on Vlakfontein and became aware that the prospector had located gold. They thereupon went to the owner of the farm and offered £1 000 to buy it. The absentee owner, Petrus Johannes Marais (Oom Lang Piet), happened to be reading the novel by Sir Walter Scott entitled The Fortunes of Nigel, a story about a young man who was the victim of a dishonest intrigue. Suspicious, he checked out his farm, only to find that a gold reef had been discovered on it. With this, the name Nigel was born and Marais sold his property in July 1888 to the

Nigel Gold Mining Company. In an alternative account, P.J. Marais purchased the Vlakfontein property between 1881 and 1884. Two years later a pioneer Scottish prospector, Nigel MacLeish, found a gold-bearing outcrop on the farm which he named Nigel’s Reef. On 15 April 1887, Marais sold half of the farm to businessmen from Pretoria who styled themselves as the ‘The Nigel Syndicate’.27 The Nigel Gold Mining Company was thereupon registered on 31 March 1888 and purchased the second half from Marais on 4 June 1888. Some connection to the novel Glenvelich Street is clear, inasmuch as all churches are named after churches in Scott’s The Fortunes of Nigel. Germiston’s origins were equally bound up with the discovery of gold. In 1886 two Harrismith merchants, John Jack and Augustus Simmer, bought a half share in the farm Elandsfontein following the initial discovery of gold in Langlaagte a few months before. Theirs was intended as a commercial/trading enterprise. The bleak spot which they chose was situated on a natural crossroads and was therefore the ideal site on which to erect a store. Within weeks, however, Paul Kruger declared the entire Witwatersrand a public diggings. Jack and Simmer immediately floated the first gold mine in the area (registered in August 1887), and then named the neighbouring township Jermiston, in honour of a farm seven miles outside of Glasgow in Scotland which had been John Jack’s boyhood home.28 Elsewhere in Ekurhuleni prospectors were engaged in a different quest – the search for coal – which had emerged as an increasingly vital prerequisite for successful mining. Towards the end of 1887 a German prospector, Johan Gauf, located a seam of coal near Boksburg which initially supplied some of the needs of the area’s proliferating gold mines. In 1888 Gauf extended his search eastwards and found better quality coal about 30 metres below the surface of Eloff’s farm Weltevreden in today’s Brakpan area. The Transvaal Coal Trust Company was formed to buy the farm. They put down a shaft at what is now the Brakpan Country Club, out of which grew the Brakpan Colliery which gave its name to Brakpan town. The connection to water in the naming of Brakpan and Springs is self-evident. A year later more

Tracing the contours of Ekurhuleni 5

coal was found in the vicinity of Springs. By the end of the century four mines were operating in Brakpan and five in Springs.29 Finally Kempton Park emerged out of another ancillary activity of gold mining. This town owes its origins to the dynamite factory built at Modderfontein in 1894 to supply explosives to the mines. The factory was half owned by a German company and its local director, Carl Friedrich Wolff, who soon bought up large tracts of land in the area upon which he later applied to establish a town. The township was approved in 1903 and named Kempton Park after the town of Kempten in Germany, which was Wolff’s birthplace.30 The story of the discovery of Benoni’s Modderfontein gold comes with a similar message and model. In 1890 W.P. Taylor, whose activities slot in first after the first wave of pioneers, was instructed by the Rand Mines Group to purchase the farm Modderfontein near Benoni from its then owner Wilhem Prinsloo. The episode that follows comes directly from Taylor’s autobiography, African Treasure. According to Taylor, and to local legend, Prinsloo was adamantly opposed to parting with his farm for anything less than £100 000. Taylor hung around for weeks and eventually a clever trick or subterfuge secured him his prize. As he puts it in African Treasure: One bitterly cold evening the Hottentot servant brought in, in the bottom of a zinc bucket, the scanty milk he had drawn from half a dozen shivering cows [which gave Taylor an opening]. ‘My poor friend,’ said Taylor, ‘I have a cow in Johannesburg that will fill that bucket twice a day; that is what I call milk.’ ‘Yes,’ Taylor went on, ‘the cow will fill that bucket twice a day, and when I have bought this farm I will give it to my friend, your wife. If the cow does not fill the bucket twice a day, as I promise, there shall be no deal.’ There was a long silence and I knew the farm was as good as mine.

6

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

Next morning he appeared a tired man. ‘Englishman,’ he said, ‘you give me no peace. This woman has destroyed my rest with your dammed cow and its two buckets of milk. Let us bring the deal to a head. What is your offer?’ £30 000 in cash, forty thousand in shares and a cow that will fill your bucket with milk twice a day.’ He went back to his wife, and she, coveting the cow, counselled acceptance.31

Mining gold The Ekurhuleni region (previously East Rand) is conventionally divided into an east central zone comprising Germiston, Boksburg, Alberton and the far eastern region comprising Brakpan, Springs and Nigel, with Benoni sometimes falling into the one and sometimes the other. Gold mining first developed at each end of the Far East Rand. This was due to the geological vagaries of the Main Reef series of ores. Benoni lies on the north-western edge of a huge gold-bearing reef known as the Far East Rand Basin. The reef more generally stretches in a straight line from Johannesburg until it reaches Boksburg. From there it curves south, and puzzled gold prospectors initially lost it as they interpreted it as a complete break in the gold-bearing formation. This they dubbed the Boksburg gap. The Far East Rand Basin which began at Benoni emerged as isolated outcrops at that point (i.e. the end of the gap). It then dipped down to about 2 300 metres in the vicinity of Springs, before turning upwards to surface once again in Nigel, 24 kilometres from Benoni – hence the initial gold discoveries at both ends (at Nigel and Benoni).32 Four mines began operating in the Benoni area from 1887: the Benoni Gold Mining Company and the Chimes Company located on Benoni farm, and the Van Ryn and New Kleinfontein Company on Vlakfontein and Kleinfontein farms, respectively. By the end of 1890, all four companies had failed and had later to be financially reconstructed. This was partly because of the exhaustion of surface workings, which was compounded by the absence of a rail link;

the diseases that afflicted animal-borne transport; and irregular supplies of labour. Further contributing factors however were, plain and simple, incompetence and self-indulgence. In 1890, for example, the Mining Journal attributed the failure of the Van Ryn Mine to ‘incompetent management, defective organisation and extravagant expenditure’, faults which apparently accompanied many pioneering South African ventures. The first Benoni gold mine, which opened in September 1887, went bankrupt in 1888. Many other small mines in Ekurhuleni suffered the same fate, and for some of the same reasons.33 Additional problems facing all mines in the area as well as the communities they spawned were the absence of fuel on the treeless Highveld and a shortage of water.34 The shortage of fuel was partly resolved by the discovery of coal, first on the farm Vogelsfontein near Boksburg, then in the vicinity of Brakpan and Springs.35 The issue of water was a good deal more intractable. Drought struck the Witwatersrand gold fields ferociously and from the very beginning. At the end of the first winter in the life of the gold fields in 1886 it was reported that water was very scarce. In October 1887 Johannesburg’s Landdrost Von Brandis telegrammed State Secretary Bok in Pretoria in desperation: ‘What about a waterworks for Johannesburg? The wells are dry’. In 1889, 1890 and 1895 exceptionally severe droughts again struck the Witwatersrand, placing both mines and local communities in Ekurhuleni in a position of acute stress.36 The drought of 1890 coincided with the exhaustion of the surface workings of gold-bearing outcrops. This forced the gold mining companies to search for gold-bearing reef ever deeper underground. A massive problem they encountered when pushing more than 40 metres below the surface was that the characteristics of the gold ore they were mining changed. The iron pyrites they then found in the ore made the gold much more difficult to extract, so that only a quarter of the available gold could be recovered. As a result a major economic depression settled on the Rand. Many mines closed. The Stock Exchange collapsed. Almost a third of the Rand’s white population packed their bags and left.37 The industry was only rescued from its plight in 1892, when it began to employ the

potassium cyanide-based extraction process discovered by MacArthur and Forrest in distant Scotland three years before. One immediate requirement of the MacArthur-Forrest process was water – 2  009 litres to mill one ton of ore.38 In Benoni, and other parts of Ekurhuleni, huge dams were built to supply this need – these formed the lakes which now dot the area and are such a conspicuous feature of its landscape. At the end of 1895, for example, the Kleinfontein Estates and Township Company bought Kleinfontein farm, mainly because of the stream that ran through it, upon which it constructed two huge new dams – the first called Homestead Dam and the second New Kleinfontein Dam (beside which the city of Benoni is now situated).39 Deep-level mining, however, also required access to massive resources of technology, expertise, labour and capital. To mobilise these, the mining houses embarked on a process of take-over, amalgamation and concentration out of which the group system was born.40 It was these groups that gave birth to the new generation of mines that sprang up in the mid-1890s. In Benoni New Kleinfontein, New Modderfontein and Van Ryn Estates were launched, the former owned by Sir George Farrar. In Germiston and Boksburg, Angelo, New Comet, Driefontein, Cinderella, New B, East Rand Proprietary Mines (ERPM) and Driefontein, also sprang into life, many controlled by George Farrar’s group.41 The industry had taken off. By 1898 the Witwatersrand’s mines produced 27% of the world’s gold. By 1913 this had leapt to 40%.42 Between Benoni and Nigel, however, there remained a large tract of empty land – the inscrutable ‘Boksburg Gap’. Not a single gold mine was established in these parts. It would require further technological breakthroughs before these could be exploited, or indeed even located. As late as 1919 the East Rand Express could proclaim, ‘Even on the East Rand the feeling is still prevalent that civilisation ceases after Boksburg is left.’43 However, what the East Rand Express did not realise was that a turning point had already been reached. Only in 1909/1910 had the idea first been seriously considered of the gold reef extending into the centre of Ekurhuleni. The reef was finally located in 1911. Technological advances

Tracing the contours of Ekurhuleni 7

Early gold mining in Boksburg

facilitated the rapid development of gold mining in the region in the next decade-and-a-half. Critical here was the introduction of the Francois Cementation Process, which allowed shafts to be sealed off from waterbearing fissures in 1916. This left the way open for the East Rand Basin to be fully explored and exploited. A clutch of what would prove to be highly profitable gold mines then came into existence: Springs, New State Areas, Modder East and Van Dyk. Collectively they pushed Ekurhuleni to the forefront and to a pre-eminent position in the industry, which was uncontested by the mid-1920s when many Central Rand/Johannesburg mines closed down operations.

8

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

In 1922 Ekurhuleni took over the role of the leading gold-producing region on the Witwatersrand, and hence in the world, a position which it would retain until the early 1950s.44

Living in Ekurhuleni Following close on the heels of mining development came the founding of Ekurhuleni’s earliest towns. The first two were Boksburg and Germiston. Boksburg claims the position of the second township after Johannesburg to be proclaimed on the Rand – in this case in 1887, at which point it became the government’s administrative centre for the Ekurhuleni gold

fields.45 The diary of an early visitor who had a brief sojourn in Boksburg in September 1887 leaves us the following account: The place is still in its infancy yet, tents and mud houses being the predominant features. The walls of the government offices are beam high but they are by no means strong. The walls of half of the gaol have also been run up some eight or nine feet [three metres] being built of stone, with small air holes some distance from the floor. We pity the poor unfortunates who may have to be locked up in that dismal hole. A considerable amount of mining work is being carried on near Boksburg.46 When Montagu White, the first Mining Commissioner, arrived in Boksburg in 1888 he registered what he called ‘the two defects in South African scenery … the absence of water and the scarcity of trees’. He accordingly resolved to build a big dam, as would later be done in Germiston and Benoni. Black, long-term prisoners were imported from Johannesburg to carry out the work, while 40 000 trees were planted above the railway line. In 1891, after two years of drought, the dam finally filled up.47 The first steps in the transformation of the physical landscape of the town had been taken. Germiston followed a similar track. Two hundred stands were laid out on the farm Elandsfontein in May 1887, which presumably marked the proclamation of the township. At this point, according to a letter from John Jack to a correspondent in Johannesburg, a stream of water ran down one side of the township beside which a mill (to crush mealies), and a hotel, a store, a blacksmith’s shop, a wagon maker, an agent, a private boarding house and one or two dwelling houses had been built.48 Later tin shacks, tents and waggons lined the streets. A major fillip was given to the town when the railway line from Vereeniging (and hence Cape Town) reached Germiston in 1892. Shortly after, a line linking Germiston ww to Pretoria was built.49 It was then that Germiston assumed its position as the railway and transport hub of the Rand, which in turn sparked off a wave of development in the town. Benoni’s development was somewhat more

belated. A prospector’s account dating back to 1887 speaks of the fellow prospector whom he was coming to assist and who lived in a grass hut near Benoni Hotel which was ‘the only building in the district, with the exception of the far-away homesteads of the Boers’. The hotel itself was anything but salubrious offering ‘room for two beds with a table in between’. The first store was opened in 1888, a wood and iron building without ceiling or floor. The best known venue in town was Chimes Hotel (later the Transvaal Hotel) whose proprietor was locally renowned for his St Helenan coloured wife, ‘Mother Eata’. Throughout this period Benoni remained isolated from other Witwatersrand towns. Roads to other centres were simply tracks in the veld, where highway robbers often lurked. Even when the first railway was built between Johannesburg and Springs in 1891, the nearest station was Brakpan, eight kilometres away. At this point and for some while after, the many single white men working on the mines were housed in rows of rooms known as single quarters, provided with communal facilities. They took their meals at private boarding houses – boarding houses in the true sense. Married miners lived in blocks of wood-and-iron houses each with two bedrooms, one sitting room and a small kitchen. Given the absence of sanitary facilities, bad health and disease were constant companions. As newspaper editor William Hill later wrote in his diary: Over all that time … hung an ever present threat. In winter it was pneumonia caused by the dust; in summer typhoid caused by the filthy conditions under which the inhabitants had to live. No schools existed before the conclusion of the South African War (1899–1902), previously referred to as the Anglo-Boer War.50 Benoni was only properly laid out after that conflict had ended, in an era which has aptly been called reconstruction, because of the need to repair damage caused by the war. In the interim the vast bulk of the black and white population had fled Ekurhuleni and the Rand, and the mines had come to a halt. Much plant and machinery was destroyed along with wood-and-iron buildings and accommodation. In the case of Benoni, plans which had been approved for

Tracing the contours of Ekurhuleni 9

the building of a new township by the Kleinfontein Estates Company, a leading shareholder of which was George Farrar, stalled until after the war. This extended pause was to change the course of Benoni’s history decisively. After the war, Sir George Farrar returned to set his mining ventures into motion once again. Heavy rains had fallen in the last summer of the war, creating an artificial lake at Kleinfontein Dam and transforming a barren valley and naked earthwork into a grassy natural beauty spot. Farrar set about persuading the Kleinfontein Estates and Township Company to relocate the township to the north-facing slopes of the valley. They agreed and appointed him to design the new town, the centre of which was modelled on Farrar’s native Bedford in England. Many of the streets were given names associating them with Bedford. Later in 1903 the new township was pegged out, 200 stands being bought in the first auction in March 1904.51 Part of the new influx of residents was drawn from British soldiers who took their discharges in Benoni and other Ekurhuleni towns at the end of the South African War (1902). These imparted to the white community the ‘Britishness’ it would retain until well into the century.52 In common with Germiston and Boksburg, Benoni was also granted municipal status, and municipal self-government (for whites) in 1903, which unequivocally opened a new era in the history of Ekurhuleni.53 Springs grew up on the back of coal rather than gold which had been discovered in 1887. In 1888 the Nederlandsche Zuid-Afrikaansche SpoorwegMaatschapij (NZASM) was authorised by the South African government to mine coal at Springs, and a railway line was built to connect Springs to Johannesburg in 1898. After the war Springs/ Brakpan was the most productive coal mining region in the country, although it was shortly to lose out comprehensively to Middelburg/Witbank when the Apex-Witbank railway line was opened in 1910, and the Ekurhuleni coal mines immediately found that they could not compete. As late as 1901 no Springs town existed. Corrugated iron cottages clustered round the collieries, with a few general stores and small hotels dotted around them, and Springs only attained full municipal status in 1912. Brakpan languished

10

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

in a more or less identical position. The population of Springs comprised coal-mining immigrants from Scotland and Wales in the eastern part of the area, and from Holland and Germany in the west. Almost no Afrikaners were to be found among them. Managed by a Health Committee from 1902, a Town Council was only constituted and a township proclaimed in 1904, boasting no residential area in the decade 1900–1909.54 Brakpan’s first residential township was only established in 1911. Brakpan would only separate from Benoni and acquire independent status in 1919, at more or less the same time as Alberton. Nigel’s early start, following the discovery of gold at Sub Nigel – allegedly the richest gold mine in existence – was not sustained. In 1902 a Health Committee was established, but prior to 1923 the town consisted of little more than a mining camp under the supervision of the Commissioner of Mines. Only in1930 was it granted a town council.55 In the 1904 census the white population of Boksburg totalled 1  217 (750 males, 467 females), that of Benoni and Brakpan (then grouped in one single municipality) 1 000, and that of Germiston and Springs.56 All retained an air of impermanence, reflected in the cheap and movable wood-and-iron houses that were built, which only began to be replaced by brick built structures during World War I. All were conscious of depending on dwindling assets, either gold or coal, especially the colliery towns of Brakpan and Springs, most of whose coal mines had ceased producing by 1910, and which in the view of at least one writer, were built as potential ‘ghost towns’ from the start.57 Social life in these settlements initially revolved around their economic mainstay – the mines. The early sports clubs which provided facilities for cricket, football, swimming, athletics and tennis were all centred on the mines. A recreation hall was built in Benoni in 1905 offering a town-based social facility, but it was not until economic recovery unambiguously set in in 1909, after a series of economic slumps, that the first sports club was established in Benoni town for townspeople proper. Social life generally centred on New Kleinfontein mine as late as 1912. The chief sources of recreation among the white townspeople of

Shimwell Brothers, Germiston CBD, 1899

Ekurhuleni at this time were the silent cinema, starting in Benoni in 1903 and becoming a regular feature by 1911, picnicking, and, for men, massive bouts of drinking, and billiard-and-card playing in the town’s many saloons, the latter leaving Ekurhuleni’s streets and workplaces empty and sombre places on Monday mornings. Various forms of vaudeville and travelling shows accompanied or complemented silent films. In February 1909, for example, the Hoodenni Variety Company carried acts from ‘James Hoodenni the handcuff king, Pharos the Ancient magician, and Miss Lily Bateman, Chic Comedienne’, besides Professor Harvey ‘Europe’s Great Hypnotic Entertainer and Magnetic Healer’.58

Basic services in the towns were rudimentary, verging on primitive. By 1913–1914 most were securing steady and cheap supplies of water from the recently formed Rand Water Board, but none boasted water-borne sewage and they were reliant instead on the ‘bucket’ system, in which pails full of faeces were removed three times a week and replaced with clean, empty buckets. Only in 1935 was Benoni provided with a water-borne sewage system and flush toilets, while a similar service came on stream in Germiston two years later in 1937, and in Boksburg and Springs at more or less the same time.59 Reasonably cheap bulk electricity likewise came on line from Victoria Falls Power Station in World War I, but it was not

Tracing the contours of Ekurhuleni 11

Springs, 1909

until the early 1930s, when Benoni and other towns inaugurated new electricity schemes, that it became a realistic option to purchase a variety of electrical appliances. At that point electrical refrigerators and stoves began to appear for the first time in Ekurhuleni stores. As Benoni City Times editorialised in April 1933, ‘Everybody is talking electricity’.60 Motor cars also made their first significant appearance on Ekurhuleni streets after the end of the recession of 1908. The first two motor licences were issued by Benoni municipality in March 1910. By 1911 the scale of motoring had grown to such an extent that the town imposed a speed limit of 12 miles (19 km) an hour which was raised to 15 miles (24 km) per hour in 1915. Macadamised roads were first laid down only in

12

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

1924. Ekurhuleni’s white population responded with vigour to the new facilities they enjoyed. Cars allowed people to live further from work and the first of a new series of middle-class suburbs were built. By 1934, in addition, Benoni boasted the highest recorded motor car accident rate in the world. In 1924, 527 cars were registered in Benoni (climbing to 3 495 in 1934). In 1925 Ford Motor Company proclaimed in bold letters in newspaper advertisements to an agog public, ‘And now colours!’ New purchases were no longer restricted to the single colour – black.61 Ekurhuleni was settling down. As the new suburbs were laid out, the new houses were built more solidly and permanently of stone and brick. The year 1917 was the first time, for example, that Benoni’s Town

Council received no planning applications to build structures of wood and iron.62 Ekurhuleni’s towns and their populations were also becoming increasingly anchored by new industrial development and were not entirely dependent for their life blood on the wasting assets of the mines. In 1917 Germiston became the first municipality in South Africa to lay out its own industrial townships. In 1921 the Rand Gold Refinery set up home there and was soon producing three-quarters of the refined gold in the world. Before long, clothing and other factories mushroomed in the town’s industrial quarter.63 In Benoni, iron and steel and other industries also took root in World War I, after the Benoni Council had adopted the policy of actively courting industrial development in 1917.64 This, however, would never really take off there and in the other Far East Rand towns until the outbreak of World War II. Lifestyle changes of all sorts also occurred in the 1910s and 1920s. In the course of World War I a fresh surge of Afrikaner immigration swept into Ekurhuleni (see next section). Many of these were poor whites. This was accompanied by a major shift in the patterns of whites’ worship and church-going. Up until that point churches had been upper and middle class in

character. Now Pentecostal churches made their first appearances and then made major inroads into the old churches’ congregations, appealing especially to poor whites. By 1929, 25 such churches existed in Benoni alone. In the mid-1920s gramophones became popular while vaudeville disappeared as the ‘talkies’ replaced silent films. In a partly unobserved and certainly unobtrusive manner, entertainment became more private, moving out of the public domain and into the home. For reasons which remain unclear dress patterns also became more liberal and liberated. Skirts became shorter, and men’s shorts became fashionable for the first time in the late 1920s, copied, it was said, from the Rhodesians. Lastly Benoni acquired (why Benoni one must ask?) the first of two screen goddesses to grace the Hollywood stage, in this case Molly Lamont, who hit the big time in the early 1930s (after winning a competition run by Outspan oranges).65 The better-known and more recent celebrity of this kind that hailed from Benoni, is of course, Charlize Theron, subsequently upstaged by another interloper from Benoni, Charlene Wittstock, who married Prince Albert of Monaco in 2011.

Tracing the contours of Ekurhuleni 13

Chapter 2

White workers and their struggles 1907-1924

Cornish miners

14

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

I

n the 1910s and 1920s Ekurhuleni, and more specifically the Far East Rand, was the fulcrum of white working-class politics in South Africa. It was home to more white mine workers than any other part of the Rand; it was the first site of a remarkable synthesis of white immigrant and white Afrikaner workingclass cultures which blossomed briefly in the 1922 white workers’ rebellion on the Rand; it provided the impetus for the first two major white workers’ strikes in 1907 and 1913; it was the major centre of the 1922 Rand rebellion; it was the principal and most durable stronghold of the South African Labour Party and to the now largely forgotten but then immensely important political tradition that it represented; and within that it was the principal focus of the two major competing, ideological and political orientations among white workers in South Africa. In short, it condensed the politics of white labour.

White workers and their struggles 1907-1924 15

The emergence of a South African white working class Until the late 1910s and well beyond in most cases, the white population of Ekurhuleni’s towns were overwhelmingly foreign and predominantly Englishspeaking. This was mainly because the initial skilled labour complement of the gold mines on the Rand was drawn from English-speaking miners from Cornwall, Wales, Northern England, Australia and the United States of America.1 Internationally these miners formed a mobile floating global population and have been appropriately described by Jan Hyslop as ‘the imperial working class’.2 Thus by 1907 a full 83% of the men working on the mines were foreign born.3 For Afrikaners, towns were foreign places, the abode of the uitlander whose moral contamination was to be avoided at all costs.4 English speakers dominated all aspects of life in the Ekurhuleni towns. They ran the businesses (until complemented by a large Jewish infusion); they staffed the professions and municipal service; and they owned the small workshops that helped serve the mines.5 Not only was the occupational structure of Ekurhuleni dominated by the British, but so was its cultural and social life. Up to World War II, Benoni’s social world, for example, revolved around its Caledonian Society, Cornish Association, Irish Association and Royal Society of St George, together with the mainly mine-based sporting clubs.6 Afrikaners gradually infiltrated the semi-skilled ranks of the mines after the turn of the 20th century, but their entry, as Elaine Katz has put it was ‘silent’ and ‘unobtrusive’.7 Afrikaner learner miners were at pains to conceal their origins, not to flaunt them, not even daring, for example, to address a mining official in Afrikaans, for fear of losing their job.8 While English-speaking mine managers openly disparaged the capacities of what they termed ‘backvelder’ or ‘bywoner’ Afrikaner miners, they entered the industry in steadily increasing numbers in the late 1900s and 1910s.9 Two events are usually associated with the process: the 1907 general strike on the Rand, and the outbreak of World War I. By the early 20th century most of Germiston’s highly productive mines, as well as others in Ekurhuleni, were controlled by George Farrar. In 1907, when the first general strike

16

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

on the gold mines broke out, triggered by the decision by Knight’s Deep mine management to compel their white miners to supervise three rather than two black drillers, Tommy Heldzinger, George Farrar’s undercover agent, describes in his diary how he was sent to Pretoria by his management to recruit impoverished whites to act as mine guards or strikebreakers. For him this was the start of the poor Afrikaners’ move to the mines.10 A second surge is associated with World War I. Then, across the Rand, an exodus of 20% of skilled British artisan miners, who joined up to serve the British army on the Western Front, were replaced by Afrikaner ‘farmer-miners’ who were fleeing catastrophic agricultural distress in the Orange Free State and the Cape.11 In Benoni alone, 2 300 men out of a total mine white labour force of 3 500 joined up. By 1917, 70–80% of underground miners were Afrikaners.12 These two pivotal events, however, concealed deeper processes at work. One was the ravages of the miners’ lung disease known as silicosis or phthisis. This incapacitated and then quickly killed thousands of white miners on the mines after a few years underground. One chilling statistic reveals the misery this entailed: in 1910 the average age of death of white miners was 33 years and the most common age was 29.13 Hence, when the famous Scots trade union leader James Bain visited the Witwatersrand in 1913, he found that out of 18 men serving on the 1907 miners’ strike committee, ten were dead of silicosis,14 three were suffering from it and only one remained in good health. Such mortality opened up the ranks of the white working class to Afrikaners in a way no strike could ever have done. A second force promoting the movement of Afrikaner workers onto the mines was simple destitution. Afrikaners, as noted earlier, regarded the towns as an alien imposition: they clung on to their niches in the countryside for as long as they could. The scorched earth policy pursued by the British army in the guerrilla stages of the South African War of 1899–1902 obliterated many rural livelihoods and proved to be the first step in the rural Afrikaners’ undoing, driving scores of impoverished farmers to the towns.15 The gradual extinction of the white

1907 Miners’ Strike at New Kleinfontein

bywoner farmer (tenant farmer, share cropper) was the second. This proceeded apace as land values rose, as land was sub-divided among heirs, and as fencing in of large tracts of the eastern and northern Cape and the western Orange Free State began around 1910 and accelerated in the early mid-1920s, forcing many footloose trekboer herders to the brink of collapse.16 Droughts which struck South Africa and especially the Orange Free State/Cape interior in the late 1910s and 1920s often provided the final blow. As the Drought Commission reported in 1922: Since the white man has been in South Africa enormous tracts of country have been entirely or partially denuded of their original vegetation, with the result that rivers, vleis and water holes … have dried up.

That drying up ‘was still continuing’. The report then continued in doom-laden terms: The simple unadorned truth is sufficiently terrifying without the assistance of rhetoric. The logical outcome of it all is ‘The Great South African Desert’, uninhabitable by man.17

Poor whites (armE blankeS) These forces led to the emergence of a new category in South African society – poor whites. The Carnegie Commission into Poor Whites published in 1929 painted a stark picture of how desperate their conditions were. One such graphic case history was that of Mrs Van Wyk: Born in the Little Karoo her family hired pasture

White workers and their struggles 1907-1924 17

but were too poor to hire labour to work it. She and her three sisters therefore worked alongside five brothers to help earn the family living. After marriage, Mrs Van Wyk led the migratory life of a poor bywoner. Over several years they prospered and their stock grew to number a respectable 500.18 Then the 1916 drought struck. Only 20 animals survived. She and her family took refuge in Knysna where they cleared forests. Her husband then died and the family thereafter survived on Poor Relief.19 First-generation, social engineer, white supremacists recognised that other short-term, stop-gap solutions also had to be employed in the meantime, such as poor white road relief work, agricultural settlement, forestry projects, railway employment, but as Berger observes, policy makers saw education as the long-term solution which would bridge the gap between rural poverty and the labour aristocracy.20 Many such individuals flooded into Ekurhuleni. There the first Afrikaner immigrants/migrants to arrive hailed from the Transvaal (Gauteng). Their movement occurred mainly between 1903 and 1914. Thereafter a second and much larger wave engulfed Ekurhuleni – made up of bywoners arriving from the interior regions of the southern Orange Free State and the northern Cape. Comprising families who had been poor for many years, they flooded in from the late 1910s through the 1920s. A Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) minister’s survey in Benoni conducted in the 1920s recorded 56% of Afrikaners coming from the Cape, 17% from the Orange Free State and 27% from the Transvaal (Gauteng) and Natal (KwaZuluNatal). Many paid their last coins for a rail ticket to Ekurhuleni, arriving destitute and without any safety net of friends. Since Germiston was the railway hub of the Witwatersrand it was there that they first alighted. Frequently the local Dutch Reformed Church minister and church was their sole refuge – and only available port of call. Such families were accustomed to an extremely simple way of life – a single-roomed dwelling, no furniture save a riempie bed, earth-dung smoothed floor on which the children slept, one meal a day.21 This they reproduced where they could do it,

18

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

on the East Rand. Often a long-term life goal was to occupy and invest in small holdings (or part thereof) which surrounded the main towns of Ekurhuleni, once legislated in existence in 1919. One such example was the Putfontein Small Holdings, eight kilometres east of Benoni. This was dotted with ‘hundreds of huts’, a full third of them deemed by social workers ‘unsuitable for civilised life’. One family here was described as being made up of a mother, father, eight children all living in a single-roomed shack, with an earth floor and consuming one mealie pap meal a day.22 Others were Norton and other small holdings outside Germiston where large numbers of Afrikaner women garment workers lived.23 Otherwise such arme blankes concentrated in slum areas in each of the towns of Ekurhuleni – in Georgetown in inner-city Germiston and in the east side of Benoni, where again social workers reported ‘34 people living in a pair of semi-detached houses void of furniture or comfort of any sort’. Some years later up to four Afrikaner women garment workers were recorded as sharing a single room and a single bed there, and as enjoying a daily diet of ‘dry bread and coffee’. 24 These families comprised the bulk of the substantial number of poor white unemployed in Ekurhuleni. Those who had jobs were overwhelmingly miners until the Civilised Labour Policy of the Pact government in the 1920s, which opened up railway and other government jobs, began to develop and secondary industry employed large numbers of Afrikaner women. 25

The white minerS strikes of 1913 and 1914 Mines dominated the economic, social and political life of Ekurhuleni until well into the 1930s. The white population was divided along rigid class lines largely dictated by the mines. The upper stratum consisted of educated men, the administrators, the mines’ professional men – doctors, engineers, surveyors, accountants. Between them and the miners and commercial people there existed a rigid social division. Each enjoyed entirely different and segregated social facilities, geographical spaces and schools. Mine officials maintained a demeanour of cold superiority when dealing with workmen, often more pronounced in the

1913 Miners’ Strike case of Afrikaners and Jews. If any working miner on a mine asserted himself too much socially he was liable to suffer for his precocity by being dismissed. Captain Hoffman, Manager of Chimes Mine was merely at one end of this behavioural spectrum when he insisted that his entire staff salute him when they first met in the morning.26 In this authoritarian milieu jobs and futures were extremely insecure. As the Small Holdings Commission reported to Parliament in 1913 about 13.3% of the entire white mine force had changed jobs each month two years earlier in 1911. Most of this ‘shifting’ occurred among underground men. Mine managers attributed this to the bywoner/backvelder mental universe of Afrikaner miners. However, all

the evidence points to the managers themselves being heavily implicated in this situation. As the Small Holdings Commission again reported: A change of Manager on the mines of the Witwatersrand is, more often than not, accompanied by an entire change of staff; a change of even Engineers, Mine Captains and others at lower positions, means a change in the staff of those immediately under their control. The Commission also reproduced an illuminating extract from a Report of the Inspector of White Labour Johannesburg for the year ending 1911 in which he quoted the words of a mine employee:

White workers and their struggles 1907-1924 19

‘I have been lucky’, he told the Inspector, ‘I have been here about ten years and am about the oldest hand on the property. The changes during my time here have been constant. I have never felt at ease although I know I can do my work. When you see so many men as good or better than yourself get shifted on the change of a boss how can you feel secure.’27 Such wholesale changes of personnel had moreover become increasingly common in the years after Union. Of the 50 mine managers working in August 1913, O. Quigley tells us, one had been appointed in 1901, one in 1903, one in 1907, five in 1909, fifteen in 1910, seven in 1911, eighteen in 1912 and ten in 1913 (O’Quigley, Section 5, p.18).28 As a result, numerous witnesses informed the Commission, ‘It is a well-known and accepted fact that the industrial community is a roving one.’29 As trade union and 1913 strike leader James Bain later informed the Commission, the average white miner was likely to work for only eight months a year, while many worked on the mines simply with a view to maintaining a toehold on the land.30 It was precisely this kind of situation which triggered the second miners’/general strike to grip the Rand in May 1913, which shook the post-Union South African state to its foundation. The trigger for the strike at face value was ‘trifling’ (quoted from the South African Typographical Journal, June 1913 p. 9),31 but in fact went to the core of miners’ grievances and conditions on the mines. It began on New Doornfontein Mine in Benoni after a new mine manager, Edward Bulman, was appointed. Upon his arrival 60 underground employees of the mine left of their own accord and Bulman discharged 15 others. Bulman immediately set about re-organising the work of underground mechanics. Apart from dismissing two, he also increased the hours of work of the rest. The five remaining mechanics refused to comply and so the strike began. This change in the conditions of work of a minuscule number of five mechanics ultimately brought 19 000 white miners on all mines on the Rand out on strike. Clearly Bulman’s new policy had struck several raw nerves.

20

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

One of the most exposed of these was autocratic and arbitrary management. The New Kleinfontein mine had earned a reputation for being ‘a hotbed of labour’ and more miners signed up there to the Miners’ Union than at any other single mine. The mine management therefore appointed Bulman, who had an anti-labour reputation ‘to cleanse the stable’.32 Bulman also arrived with his own mine captain and other men; hence the immediate departure of 50 former employees. What his arrival clearly underscored was the insecurity of employment of practically all white miners on the mines, managements’ deep aversion to unions, and their determination both not to offer them any recognition, and to re-impose management autocracy.33 These were problems shared by all miners on the Rand, and with the added instigation of militant, socialist white union leaders like James Bain, and management intransigence, the strike soon spread to other neighbouring mines until a general strike was called on 4 July 1913.34 Both the mine managements and the State were more unready to meet a challenge of this kind than at any time before or after in the history of the gold mining industry on the Rand. For some weeks the government dithered. They considered, but were ultimately unwilling to press the mines to the negotiating table, yet in a less than even-handed manner, provided police protection for strikebreakers employed by the mines. It was these actions that encouraged the strike to spread. Once the strike became general, the government found it did not possess the resources necessary to restore law and order. The number of police was inadequate, and the defence force, only just created in 1912, was in the process of re-organisation. After a mass meeting in Benoni on 29 June, which degenerated into violence, the government secured permission to use 3 000 Imperial troops still remaining in South Africa, and they were rushed to the Rand. Even these were not enough. On 2 July, 20 gold mines were on strike, and a general strike was called two days later by the Transvaal Miners’ Association (TMA), when 19 000 white miners downed tools. On 4 July miners streamed from all over the Reef to attend a mass meeting in Johannesburg’s Market Square. Indecisive to the last, Smuts finally banned

the meeting. Violence then erupted, though no one was subsequently able to identify what exactly had set it off. Twenty-one civilians were killed and 166 police injured over the following two days. Rioters thronged the streets of central Johannesburg on the evening of the 4th. The offices of the pro-magnate The Star newspaper and Park Station were burnt down. Rioting and looting became widespread. After consultation with the Chamber of Mines, General Smuts and Prime Minister Botha met with the strike committee at the Carlton Hotel in an effort to broker a truce. For the government and the mines this was a moment of profound humiliation. Persistent rumours thereafter claimed that the two generals had been forced to negotiate with the Federation’s leaders at revolverpoint. Smuts denied the allegation, but subsequently acknowledged that it had been ‘one of the hardest things’ in his life to place his signature on a document together with that of Federation leader James Bain.35 He also subsequently remarked of Benoni, ‘Some of the most difficult passages of my life have been due to the turbulent people of this little place’.36 The terms of the truce that was reached were full reinstatement, compensation for the victims of rioting and strikebreakers, no victimisation and the submission to the government of a list of grievances by the trade unions.37 In 1914 the Government more or less contrived a second general strike, which started on the railways and from which organised white labour emerged weakened and with a severely bloodied nose. Again Benoni – dubbed the ‘Poor White Mecca’ by the East Rand Express – lay at its centre.38 Hundreds were arrested there under the new Sedition Law, as was the entire Federation of Trades executive in Johannesburg. On this occasion 10 000 government troops literally occupied the Rand in a huge display of force and the strike crumbled humiliatingly in days.39

White worker politics, 1910–1924 Meanwhile, during the second decade of the 20th century an entirely new political tradition was also beginning to stir, that of white labourism, committed to a racialised version of the nationalisation of

the means of production, distribution and exchange – in other words a form of socialism. The first sign of this development can be glimpsed in Pretoria where, in April 1906, the Transvaal Independent Labour Party (TILP) modelled on the British Labour Party, was formed. Somewhat bizarrely, given its socialist credentials, the dominant trade union bloc in the TILP was fiercely committed to a racially supremacist, white protectionist, segregationist viewpoint, which saw migrant African workers as a threat to white labour privileges and security.40 This position never went uncontested within the South African Labour Party (SALP). At its very first annual conference of the TILP, for example, held in Germiston in October 1907 an acrimonious debate took place over the admission of all races into the party which left the conference split down the middle.41 It did nevertheless ultimately dominate. Two years later, with a view to gaining some political purchase in the newly forming Union of South Africa, a nationwide South African Labour Party was formed, which the bulk of white labourites and unionists joined. This combined in the same curious blend as before: white labour protectionism and segregation along with a commitment to socialism.42 The new South African Labour Party contested national parliamentary, Provincial Assembly, and local municipal elections. Although it won a respectable number of parliamentary seats in the 1914 election its main successes were garnered at provincial and local level. Following the suppression of the railway workers’/general strike of 1914 by the Smuts government, and the arrest and deportation of a long list of strike leaders, a major political backlash occurred, and the SALP won 23 seats in the Transvaal Provincial election, one more than all the other parties combined. The mining towns of East and West Rand (as well as central Johannesburg) were the SALP’s principal bases of support.43 During this period the SALP also gained a significant Afrikaner following largely because of the suppression of the 1914 strike. Ekurhuleni in particular lay at the centre of this surge, where an astonishing five women SALP candidates were also elected in municipal elections, two for Germiston, one for Benoni and one for Springs.44

White workers and their struggles 1907-1924 21

These successes, if anything, amplified the political contradictions within the party. On the one hand it remained committed to socialism, and began the implementation, again mainly in Ekurhuleni, of a long-lost programme of municipal socialism (which meant the municipal ownership and provision of strategic services, e.g. electricity and gas generation, along with a more expensive white labour policy in these plants). On the other, its not unfounded fears of black labour substitution on the mines drew it ever more insistently into a white labour protectionist and segregationist position. Ironically, the white female franchise helped sharpen this division. In 1911 the SALP-connected Women’s Reform League was formed with the objective of campaigning for the female municipal franchise which was achieved in 1912. The granting of the franchise to women at a municipal level in 1913 almost certainly helped advance the SALP’s political fortunes, especially on the Rand. White women were overwhelmingly supportive of the prohibition of liquor production and sales, both to abusive white and black males and for a brief moment in World War I, along with white clergymen, put together a highly effective prohibitionist lobby. This had the further effect of precluding the municipal production of sorghum beer for sale to African customers, which denied municipalities a major source of income that could have been used to build African housing and so ‘demigrantise’ part of the African urban population.45 At the same time a series of ‘Black Peril’ scares swept the Witwatersrand over this period, triggered by the rape of white women by African male domestics, which heightened especially white women’s racial paranoia, and reinforced the rampant racialism in SALP politics.46 Once again this trend did not occur uncontested. In 1914, at the peak of the SALP’s success, a small but significant left-wing opposition was developing within the Party. It was centred on Johannesburg and especially Ekurhuleni, where a group of SALP members in the Boksburg/ Benoni area began publishing a new more radical (and anti-SALP racism) newspaper, The Eastern Record.47 This minority tendency would ultimately crystallise and find an ideological home in the South African Communist Party (formed in 1921).

22

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

One final, highly racialist political current which further added to the volatile mix of white Ekurhuleni politics in the first decade-and-a-half of the 20th century, was the phenomenon of the ‘white leagues’. These emerged in various centres on the Rand, but most strongly by far in the Ekurhuleni area. As noted earlier rigid class divisions structured political and social life in white Ekurhuleni. The upper stratum consisted of the mines’ managers and professionals. The middle stratum consisted of commercial people, while at the bottom stood the miners. The population of Benoni, to take one example, consisted of about 9 000 whites mainly from mining and small business families.48 The middle stratum of traders evinced possibly the most pernicious racism of any section of the Rand’s white population and they were the principal drivers and supporters of the white leagues. Their chief targets were Indian trading rivals but they also mobilised around a range of other supposed black perils.49 Culturally and socially they had most in common with white miners, with whom their fortunes were intimately tied. They thus gravitated politically towards the SALP, significantly reinforcing its segregationist wing. These White Leagues flowered relatively briefly in Ekurhuleni and the Rand, enjoying their heyday between 1906 and 1914.50 In 1923 the SALP entered into an electoral pact with the National Party led by J.M.B. Hertzog, and capitalised on the prevailing alienation among workers and Afrikaners, which the Smuts government had generated by the brutal suppression of the 1922 Rand Revolt (discussed below). Together they won a majority of parliamentary seats in the 1924 general election, including all five Ekurhuleni parliamentary seats, and went on to form the so-called Pact government. This once again had a contradictory effect. It unquestionably reinforced the racial wing or racial current within the SALP. At the same time, for the same reason, the SALP began to lose its rationale for existence and steadily began to dissipate its strength. In 1929 it split and entered a precipitous decline losing all seats in the region except Benoni. To look forward to Chapter 5, Benoni remained the last bastion of the SALP, but in an ideologically reconfigured form. As the old labour segregationist leaders of the SALP such

as Cresswell and Madeley fell away in the 1930s, a new generation of racially egalitarian SALP activists led by Leo Lovell, who held the Benoni parliamentary seat through most of the 1950s, emerged.51

The Rand Revolt of 1922 Once World War I broke out the entire situation on the volatile Ekurhuleni mines was transformed. ‘Before the war’, Evelyn Waller, President of the Chamber of Mines, remarked in 1917, ‘both employer and employed were preparing themselves in every possible way for a struggle of very great magnitude.’52 The outbreak of war in August 1914 meant collision would be postponed until 1922. Both sides now committed themselves to preserving industrial peace, a goal which was eased by a significant rise in the gold price (and hence profit) immediately after the war. This allowed a status quo agreement to be reached which prohibited any new semi-skilled jobs being

opened to blacks; for shaft stewards to win a raft of rights and encroach on managerial prerogatives on a host of mines; and for wages to climb steadily in parallel with inflation. By 1920 white wage costs stood a massive 60% higher than in 1914. To compound the problem faced by the mine managers the price that gold fetched on the international markets slid steadily down in the course of 1921.53 After protracted negotiations and some union concessions the Chamber decided at the end of 1921 that the time had come ‘to face them’. On 8 December it threw down the gauntlet demanding a reduction of wages for the highest paid white workers, the abolition of the status quo agreement, the withdrawal of recognition of shaft stewards, and the retrenchment of 2 000 semi-skilled white workers whose jobs would be allocated to lower-paid African labour. Throughout the ensuing discussions the Chamber insisted that it had no intention of displacing skilled

Benoni was one of the main centres of the 1922 strike

White workers and their struggles 1907-1924 23

labour – the target was thus semi-skilled Afrikaners. On 10 January 1922 white workers on the gold mines, the power stations and the engineering shops came out on strike.54 The strike, which was summoned on 10 January, lasted for a remarkable eight weeks. During that period it underwent several changes of personality which confound both of its main schools of interpretation. To begin with 22 000 white miners along with workers from two ancillary industries went on strike. Strike committees were set up across the Rand, representatives of which sat on an augmented South African Industrial Federation (SAIF) executive strike committee. While the Chamber of Mines remained obdurate and at times provocative, the Government adopted a posture of relative neutrality and made several efforts to broker an agreement between the parties to the dispute. At the very opening of the strike it nevertheless despatched a large force of South African Mounted Rifles from other centres in the Transvaal to the Rand. Fears about the potential role of such a force, and the need to create bodies which would prevent scabbing or strikebreaking led to the formation of a unique institution of the strike – the commando – about two weeks into the strike. These represented a formidable defensive and coercive force, without whose existence the slide into outright rebellion would have been totally unthinkable. Strike commandos sprang up all across the Reef – Johannesburg alone probably had ten commandos, their membership ranging from 100 in Fordsburg to a massive 1 000 in Langlaagte. Ekurhuleni, in Krikler’s words, was ‘thick with commandos’, Germiston being the hub of at least six. The Boksburg district likewise mounted another half dozen. Far out on the East the fearsome Brakpan commando could muster 900–1 500 men more.55 The commando, as Krikler demonstrates in one of the most interesting chapters of his book, was sired as much by ex-South African soldiers’ experiences on the front in World War I, as by republican yearnings. These ex-combatants, a significant number of whom were poor-white Afrikaners, infused the strike with ‘the idioms and modes of organisation of the strikers of an army’ thereby ‘creating something different from

24

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

a traditional strike organisation’. These idioms and forms Krikler designates as ‘cultural contributions’ and took the form of roll calls on parade grounds, marching in formation and drilling, military rank and insignia, communication based on an organised system of despatch riders, discipline through court martials, and the issuing of rations.56 Within these formations Afrikaner miners comprised the principal component. A large percentage of those tried in military tribunals after the rebellion, for instance, gave their place of origin as the Orange Free State. Krikler also maintains that while the strikers’ programme was disfigured by its racial agenda, it did not for the most part seek out racial targets. While tens of thousands of black miners continued to toil underground in the course of the strike, they were rarely viewed as enemies of the striking miners. For the first six weeks of the strike, which was surprisingly disciplined and peaceful, it was white miner scabs and white management who were targeted, not blacks. Only on 7–8 March were black communities targeted, in what Krikler calls a ‘pogrom’ in which grisly episodes 44 people were killed. As Krikler once again points out, few of these were African miners and the reasons for the attack lay in factors outside of the strike.57 These will be examined later on in the next chapter. The denouement of the strike followed shortly after the racial killings. A month earlier Smuts had openly sided with the mine owners and urged the miners to return to work. Later in February the government stepped up the pressure and police violently dispersed a commando in Boksburg in which three strikers were killed and others injured.58 With this a crossroads was reached. The SAIF now requested a round-table conference with the Chamber of Mines, which the Chamber contemptuously rejected. As some strikers trickled back to work, a meeting of the joint executives of the striking unions deliberated what to do (even considering the possibility of calling off the strike). A mass meeting of workers outside the Trades Hall, however, forced them to take the decision to call a general strike, which was very patchily heeded. Both sides then drew up battle lines. On the morning of 10 March, commandos attacked police across the

length and breadth of the Witwatersrand. The strike had entered the final phase: an attempted revolution had begun.59 Active engagement in the insurrection was curiously uneven in different parts of Ekurhuleni. When fighting broke out, an organised network to orchestrate military action did not exist for the strikers and the rebellion immediately descended into a series of local rebellions. According to Krikler: … the fuse of rebellion moved along the railway line from Johannesburg spluttering around Germiston, briefly flaring in Boksburg, detonating spectacularly in Benoni and Brakpan and fizzling out in Springs.60 The nerve centre of the rebellion from which the activities of the Council of Action emanated was Fordsburg in Johannesburg. It was from there, for example, that the initial call from the revolutionary leaders to attack the police was made on the morning of Wednesday 9 March. Smuts’ old adversary, Benoni, did not trail far behind. Passions had been building among the strikers since mid-February when the government and the Chamber had offered deep provocation through a systematic attempt to organise strikebreakers. In the last week of February meetings took place in Boksburg, Benoni and Fordsburg to consider revolution. The killing of strikers at Boksburg on 28 February tilted the balance among the organisers of the strike away from Constitutionalism and towards Direct Action. A policeman reporting on developments in Benoni talked of ‘a change’ of atmosphere on 7 March when fights broke out in Benoni Workers’ Hall, and the Constitutionalist chairman of the strike committee was rudely kicked out.61 Edwin Gibbs, chair of the strike committee in Brakpan, decided to quit the Brakpan command early in March because of the growing influence of Direct Actionists who wanted violent action.62 Clear evidence of a change of gear came on the evening of 10 March when nine boxes of rifles and ammunition were opened in Workers’ Hall in Benoni and distributed to the local commando, with the men of the Putfontein commando being prominent.

On 10 March the Benoni commando seized control of the town pinning down the police and soldiers in the police camp on the west side of town.63 Brakpan’s commando was the next most successful, when it launched a ferocious attack aimed at crushing the authority of management at Brakpan Mines. Once the mine headquarters had been captured on the morning of 11 March, however, this soon degenerated into mindless brutality, as the surrendered defenders were beaten to a pulp by bicycle chains, rifle butts and iron bars, and then, unconscious and defenceless, shot where they lay. This was a moment of pure barbarity, which spoke volumes of the intense hatred which had been generated for management among a minority of the men.64 Elsewhere in Ekurhuleni the Germiston commandos were almost immediately scattered by aerial bombardment on 10 March, while in Boksburg its numerous mobilised commandos ambushed a police contingent but then faded away. Their lack of revolutionary commitment and divisions among strikers (possibly along English/Afrikaans lines) meant that only 75 of a potential 500 commando members assembled at Workers’ Hall on the morning of 10 March. Thereafter resistance melted away, and the revolt, as one historian has written, ‘was over almost before it began’.65 Likewise in Springs no concerted onslaught occurred and the same lack of commitment or bravado was displayed as in Boksburg.66 It was thus in Benoni that the most sustained and successful uprising occurred. Not only were the police pinned down and isolated in their camp on the west of town, but a large troop of Transvaal Scottish who boarded trains in Johannesburg to relieve the embattled police and mine management of Benoni were ambushed by striking workers at Dunswart junction. Eleven of them were killed and 30 wounded, compelling the remainder of the troop to retreat through Benoni’s African location.67 It was evidently this incident and the days that followed which led African residents of the location to rename it ‘Twatwa’ after the sound of guns which rang out through that day. In Benoni the rebellion ultimately collapsed after the arrival of burgher commandos led by General Japie van Deventer from Standerton and the south-west, and

White workers and their struggles 1907-1924 25

the bombing and strafing of the strikers and their headquarters from aeroplanes, which prompted an internal collapse of discipline as one part of the rebels degenerated into looting and burning.68 In a state of extreme inebriation these were in no state to continue the fight. The use of aircraft, in particular, not only intimidated the strikers, but also profoundly embittered the residents of the town. ‘The bombs that fell on Benoni … caused panic … it was a pitiful procession’ as the local newspaper reported.69 The unhappy event made Benoni one of the first towns in history to be subjected to aerial bombardment. Robert Barnet, who was living at the Hotel Cecil in the middle of the town, leaves an eye-witness record of what transpired. The diary begins on Wednesday 8 when the general strike was called: Wednesday, 8 March 1922. An uneventful day as far as Benoni is concerned. No papers. No news. Rumours from Johannesburg of further shooting … No one knows the truth. The strikers talk of dark happenings tonight and tomorrow. A Scotch Evangelist is here and is conducting meetings outside the Cecil and in the Hall. He is roaring, as I write this, that he is saved. Thursday, 9 March 1922. This morning no news, only rumours – Mine Manager shot in town, Commando coming from Free State, etc. Defence Force called. No trains to Benoni. Big parade, 500 strikers in military formation, preceded by pipe band. Probable attack on Post Office. Special force of Police with fixed bayonets guarding. Rautenbach, leader of Mounted Commando, tried for something yesterday and acquitted. Enormous crowds inside and outside Court ready to rescue him if convicted. The Scotch Evangelist is appealing to Scotchmen to come and get salvation ‘without money and without price’. That ought to appeal to

26

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

Scotchmen, he says, ‘something for nothing’. Friday, 7 a.m. A battle is raging in Benoni. Shooting started at daybreak and police are all around the Hotel – under the verandas and in doorways. Three bodies are lying in Market Avenue in front of my gate (policemen), one quite dead, the other two twitching. The young swanky officer who patrolled the streets yesterday was bowled over by a bullet just now. 8.30 a.m. Still shooting. James, the butcher, said to be shot dead. Ambulances and doctors arrive. Republican flag on Trades Hall. 9.30 a.m. Aeroplanes have arrived. Armed with machine guns. Fired on Trades Hall. Returned to Johannesburg, one apparently winged. Friday, 5 p.m. Firing re-started 3 p.m. Been going on intermittently ever since. Police awaiting reinforcements. Hotel established as headquarters. Aeroplanes returned and bombed the Trades Hall. No lights to be allowed to-night. Outside rooms to be vacated. Saturday, 7 a.m. Firing re-started at daybreak. Transvaal Scottish arrived last night. Aeroplanes again. Bombing Trades Hall. Said to be women and children there. 1 p.m. Sniping. Trades Hall said to be evacuated. Rennie’s house said to be burnt, also Murphy’s. 3 p.m. Barricades across street above Bunyan Street. News has arrived of the Transvaal Scottish arrival last night. Disembarked near Dunswart and advanced in skirmishing order. They were met by a body of strikers and sustained 60 casualties. Mostly inexperienced young lads from offices. Two officers killed. Sunday, 7 a.m. ‘... to keep it holy’. Firing

re-started at daybreak. Body of strikers entrenched in plantation behind dam. Finally attacking Police Station. General van Deventer advancing from Pretoria. (Was there ever such a strike!) 11 a.m. Quiet just now. Just been trying to cheer up the women. How they cling to their husbands and are afraid to let them out of their sights. 1 p.m. Continuous firing. Sound of heavy guns near Boksburg. Deventer said to be engaging strikers in their rear. 6 p.m. Getting dark. Possible attempts to fire the Hotel tonight. Arrangements made for the transfer of women and children if necessary. Banks, Chemist and Bottle Store blazing. Sunday, 6 p.m. Daring sortie by strikers. Kuper’s office and Benoni Arcade burnt to the ground. Heavy bombardment all afternoon. Monday, 13th 9 a.m. Aeroplane overhead. Desultory sniping. 10.30 a.m. Rumours that Johannesburg is also in revolt. What’s that? Horses. Van Deventer has arrived in front of the Hotel with a huge commando. The siege is raised! 10 p.m. Trades Hall ablaze!’70 Accurate figures of casualties of the strike do not exist, but it is likely that between 150 and 250 were killed, and 500–600 wounded. Five thousand were

arrested, about 1 000 of whom appeared in court.71 In the subsequent Martial Law Court sittings 72 strikers were convicted (35 English, 37 Afrikaners). Eighteen were sentenced to death; four were hanged. In the aftermath of the strike 3 000 white mine workers were left unemployed. The spectre of poor whiteism again became acute, and gangs of unemployed white miners were conscripted into relief gangs to help build the Hartbeespoort Dam and the greater part of the railway system around Benoni.72 Following the suppression of the strike the militant white labour tradition became diluted and co-opted by the 1924 Pact Government’s policies of civilised labour and of industrial conciliation, only surviving among Afrikaner women worker trade unions (discussed in Chapter 4). The politics of white labour and white Ekurhuleni would be forever transformed. Henceforth a much more sedate and conservative political tradition held sway, until the rise of a militant Afrikaner nationalism during and after World War II, which is the subject of Chapter 8. Ekurhuleni was a principal, if not the principal home of white labourism and white worker militancy in South Africa. It stood at the centre of the 1913, 1914 and 1922 strikes, the first and last of which represented massive threats to capitalist political hegemony. It was also a prime focal point of white labourers’ policies of job reservation and segregationism both powerfully articulated by the South African Labour Party, who commanded massive support in this area. Finally, it was perhaps the principal site of fusion and interaction between the Afrikaner- and English-speaking sections of the white working class, a place where a broader working class unity seemed a real possibility until 1922, after which it was lost.

White workers and their struggles 1907-1924 27

Chapter 3

CONSTRUCTING BLACK EKURHULENI, 1890-1927

Benoni Pass Office

28

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

T

he rise of the gold mining sector greatly increased the number of Africans residing in Ekurhuleni. Most worked on the mines themselves. Initially their numbers were fairly modest. Only 15 000 Africans were employed on the entire Witwatersrand gold fields in 1890 of which perhaps 5 000 worked in Ekurhuleni. As the deep level mines came into operation, however, these numbers climbed to 69 127 in 1897, and 189 000 in 1912.1 Most were oscillating migrants who had to be accommodated partly in shanty settlements on mine land, but mainly in compounds. To take one example, in 1895 New Kleinfontein mine expanded its compound so as to accommodate a labour force of 1 200 miners.2 Black miners in this period enjoyed considerably more freedom of movement when compared to post-1910 conditions. Rates of desertion stood typically at 7.2%, while New Kleinfontein Company reports in 1897 noted that at any one time 20% of its unskilled labour force was incapacitated by drink.3 After the South African War (1899–1902) the gold mines of the Rand suffered persistent and paralysing shortages of unskilled African labour, largely because of their efforts to reduce the wages they paid to such workers. Wage cuts had been attempted, and failed in 1890, 1896, 1897 and 1900. Finally in 1902 a 50% wage cut was enforced (30 shillings for 30 shifts). This prompted a collective though unorganised withdrawal of African labour from the mines. A low point was reached in July 1906 when only 90 500 African workers were employed on the mines.4 Mine owners had insisted as early as 1903 that 197 650 able-bodied African miners were required (a considerable exaggeration) but, however inflated their supposed needs, it was clear that a critical labour shortage was gripping the mines. The mine owners responded in three ways. They increased minimum wages to 50 shillings for 30 shifts; they tried to make living arrangements for their labour marginally more attractive; and they gained permission to import tens of thousands of cheap, indentured Chinese labourers. At their peak the number of Chinese workers rose to 54 000; they were paid at far lower rates and were on longer contracts than African migrant workers (Table 1).5

Constructing black Ekurhuleni, 1890-1927 29

Table 1: Average monthly wage for African and Chinese workers6 Year

Chinese

African

September 1904 1905–6 1906–7 1907–8

39s. 9d. 41s. 6d. 44s. 3d.

57s. 0d. 51s.11d. 52s. 3d. 49s. 1d.

Evidence of their stay can still be seen in the occasional compound dating from that period that still survives today – most noticeably in the form of five-foot bunks, which were far too small to accommodate the average African miner’s frame. These indentured Chinese labourers were repatriated en masse in 1908, and the part that they played in the history of the Witwatersrand and Ekurhuleni has been almost entirely effaced. Yet they fundamentally affected the trajectory of economic development on the Rand, helping the gold mining industry to force down the level of African wages to the level which they had previously sought – and at which they stayed, quite astonishingly, until 1969.7 Besides undercutting African wages through importing indentured Chinese, individual mine managers also tried to attract African labour by closing an eye to the sale and consumption of alcoholic liquor (as continued at New Primrose in Germiston at least until 1913),8 and by permitting African miners to co-habit with women in clusters of shacks on mine property, which lay largely outside managerial (or any other kind of) control. As J.M. Pritchard of the Native Affairs Department explained: The principal reason advanced in favour of mine locations is that certain natives, who have worked for long periods on the mines and whose services are particularly valuable, have become married or ‘attached’ to women and if they were not permitted to live with these females in some such place as these locations they would leave the mine. Many such natives, having worked for years on the mines have practically made their homes here and have become skilled labourers. Such ‘mine locations’ sprang up all along Ekurhuleni, both before and after the South African War of

30

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

1899–1902.9 The largest were sited immediately adjacent to the main Ekurhuleni towns, and soon came to accommodate large numbers of Africans and coloureds who worked in various capacities in the urban area which they served, and Indian traders who gravitated towards these clumps of population to sell goods. Two key features of these early locations were thus that they formed the nuclei of the permanently settled black urban population of Ekurhuleni, and that they were racially mixed and heterogeneous.10 The mine locations at both Germiston and Boksburg came into existence before the South African War. In Germiston, Consolidated Goldfields secured permission from the Zuid-Afrikaanse Republiek (ZAR) Mining Commissioner to establish a residential area for Asians and Africans on part of the farm Driefontein on the south side of Georgetown which fell inside the municipal area.11 In Boksburg the ZAR government set aside six claims on the farm Vogelfontein belonging to the Hercules Gold Mining Company for the residence of Indians although they made no formal provision for Africans. Nevertheless, blacks and some whites quickly took up residence on this ground upon which 132 self-built structures arose housing 606 people in 1906.12 In Benoni both Africans and Indians were granted rights to live on a patch of ground owned by the New Kleinfontein Gold Mining Company, known as Kleinfontein or Chimes location, where they erected corrugated iron or unburnt brick-and-thatch houses.13 In Springs African and Indians squatted on ground belonging to the government which leased to New State Areas mines.14 In Brakpan, which only acquired municipal status in 1920, languishing until then under the control of Benoni, African residential arrangements were even more haphazard and ad hoc. Informal mine locations sprang up at Rietfontein Colliery on private stands sub-leased to Jewish traders and on Brakpan Mines. In addition family squatting was widespread on mining land between Brakpan Mine and State Mines (e.g. Withoek and Witpoort Estates).15 Germiston and Boksburg acquired self-governing, municipal status in 1903, Benoni in 1907 and Springs in 1912.16 Each took steps to assume control of these haphazard mushroom settlements, most of which

Chinese labourers were already too small to house the populations they contained, by first taking over these locations in the short term and in the long term by finding new land. Germiston Council found itself immediately frustrated when the mining houses expressed themselves unwilling to sell the ground on which the location stood in Georgetown South and had to content themselves with simply leasing the land on an annual basis. Under this arrangement only four stands for trading were allowed by the mine owners.17 Boksburg Council was more fortunate. After a fruitless search for new land on which to site a black location which persisted through 1904, it learnt that Hercules Gold Mining Company was willing to permit the establishment of such a settlement 1 kilometre south of the existing black village on Klippoortjie 149. Eventually surface rights over 100 acres were obtained by the Council in this area and the move was accomplished

in 1910; 668 men, 549 women and 558 children were moved.18 This community was subsequently renamed Stirtonville after its first Superintendent, Stirton, who held that position between 1910 and the early 1930s.19 One development which concentrated the minds of several municipalities on the task of securing appropriate land was the passing of the Gold Law in 1908. This prohibited the presence of informal locations on mine land (as well as trading without a licence, which soon caused other problems to be discussed shortly). In Benoni’s case, the Council had searched for an alternative site for the location from the time it assumed office in 1907. Here the New Kleinfontein Gold Mining Company was willing to hand over the land on which the location stood, but the Council rejected the site as being already too small. In 1909, however, the Council’s hand was forced

Constructing black Ekurhuleni, 1890-1927 31

when the Mining Commissioner gave the location’s residents notice to move by the end of the year, in terms of the Gold Law promulgated the year before. After securing a stay of execution the Council then searched somewhat more diligently for an appropriate plot of land. It found it south-west of Benoni on the farm Rietfontein on which it purchased 66 morgen of land – enough for 4 000 people. After legal complications it removed the inhabitants of Chimes location to this site in February 1912.20 In Springs the local authority was faced with fewer problems. The existing location lay on government land, and its population was small. Accordingly, in 1908 it took over formal control of the settlement and tried to shift all blacks living elsewhere in Springs into this area. The latter proved difficult since far more people lived in Springs than in the location itself. From 1916 they embarked on a search for other land but made little progress in the face of non-co-operation from Geduld Proprietary and other nearby mines. Eventually, in 1919 the Springs Mining Commissioner found a satisfactory area of land on Geduld – 77 morgen which could accommodate 1 871 plots. Unlike any of the other Ekurhuleni municipalities, Springs secured a government loan of £25 000 with which it built houses for those removed, a settlement which would eventually be known as Payneville. Unlike anywhere but Alberton location, its plots were a spacious 17 × 17 yards instead of the standard 17 × 8.5.21 Finally Alberton location was laid out after the town gained municipal status in 1907. Here again, plots were fairly large. Cass Khayile remembers fig and pear trees growing in his father’s garden. Rosalind Sibeko’s father kept cattle and sheep, while Mrs Nkosi recalls large gardens and big rooms, so much so that when the family was removed ‘our furniture couldn’t fit it’.22 It would remain relatively small for many years. Germiston’s hand was eventually forced by the Indian traders of Georgetown. In October 1910 a merchant named Kala Singh who had been charged by the Council for doing business illegally in a residential area, won his case on the grounds that the location area had never been formally proclaimed a location (as it was leased to and not owned by the

32

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

Council). The Council then concluded that it needed to consider clearing the area and obtaining separate residential or trading areas for Africans and Indians. Its trouble deepened when first, the Gold Mining Company, on whose land Georgetown stood, gave six months’ notice for the Council to complete the removal of its residents (to be accomplished by mid-1913) and second, when negotiations then broke down (over price) over the purchase of new land. They were only offered a way out when the Transvaal Provincial Administration agreed to obtain surface rights from Knights Central Gold Mining Company for land on which an African residential area could be laid out. The Council, however, still had the problem of what to do with its Indian traders. The Department of Native Affairs, the Department of the Interior and other government offices all objected to Indians and Africans occupying the same ground, and the Council proved unable to find alternative separate land. Eventually, in the absence of any alternative and with a crisis looming rapidly, a compromise was reached whereby Indians could live on the same site provided that a 67-metre buffer separated the two residential areas. By 1922 this, perhaps predictably, had disappeared. The new site was 30 morgen in extent and 4 kilometres from the centre of town. In June 1913 the African population of this new residential area stood at 2 193, and the Indian population at 675.23 Benoni’s negotiations over its new location faced the same complication of where to house its Indian population. Not only did Indian traders refuse to move, but the Gold Law prohibited trading on mining ground. The Council negotiated this issue in two ways. It removed the African customers of these Indian traders to the new location, and then offered the traders residence and trading rights, this in open defiance of the law (which, however, was amended in 1913). The new location was then laid out in three parts, one for Africans, one for coloureds and one for Indians.24 The same solution was arrived at, after the 1913 change in the law, in Springs, in whose new location plots 1–384 were reserved for coloureds, plots 385–1 569 for Africans, and the rest for Indians. No compensation was paid to any section of the

community, despite extensive protests on their part.25 Types of housing and living arrangements in the new locations would define both the capacity of location superintendents and their administrations to control them, and the general contours of black political assertion, resistance and struggle over the following three decades. Local councils like those which ran Germiston or Benoni were pennypinching in the extreme, and built negligible numbers of municipal houses for blacks (Springs being one marked exception). The typical pattern of municipal policy across the Ekurhuleni towns was to trim costs by providing serviced plots or stands, upon which stand holders could erect wood-and-iron structures, sometimes aided by loans or low-cost building materials furnished by municipal authorities. As a result, by the early 1930s the ratio of owner to municipally built houses in Ekurhuleni stood at anything from 2 and 12 to 1 (621:326 Springs location; 963:226 Germiston location; 1  026:273 Benoni location).26 This mostly self-built built environment opened up a number of spaces and opportunities which allowed its residents to escape some of the structures of urban control and which served to soften the harsh regimen of black urban life. Firstly, stand holders who had built their houses and paid their stand rent were more difficult for either the council or the government to coerce and control, and this had significant consequences with respect to the independence of black urban women. Widows, for example, along with other women who had been abandoned or divorced, were allowed to hold on to (and perhaps even acquire) stands, which flew in the face of official policy on this matter. By 1930, for example, women occupied 250 out of 818 stands in Benoni location, and a similar situation was developing on a slightly lesser scale elsewhere on the Reef.27 In 1932 Brakpan location was allegedly ‘teeming with people – principally from Basutoland, who … have thrown up shacks all over the place and defied the authorities’.28 Finally by 1935, in Springs, the ‘black female population was alleged to have substantially overtaken that of males’.29 Other major consequences of this pattern of semi-autonomous female urbanisation was that it created a situation where massive sub-letting and equally massive illicit

brewing of liquor could (and did) occur. Both were to prove nightmares for the white municipal administrations of Ekurhuleni. Thus despite all official intentions to the opposite, the Ekurhuleni locations became ethnically mixed and also housed growing populations of African women – who not only raised children a much more unconditionally settled black urban population – but who were also found to be increasingly impossible to control. This hybridity, self-assertion, self-confidence and self-construction stamped itself indelibly on the cultures of these freewheeling locations. The cornerstones of this culture were women’s liquor brewing and selling, entertainment, music, sharing and lastly often unstable family relationships. The name given to this new urban culture was ‘marabi’.30 This way of life is generally assumed to have originated and assumed shape in Johannesburg’s inner-city slums, yet there is evidence to suggest it was equally a child and a symbol of Ekurhuleni. As one of the first issues of the African newspaper Bantu World noted in April 1932, the origins of ‘a new style of dancing known as “marabi” could be “traced back to Benoni in the late 1920s”’. Then a man composed a dancing ditty ‘your ears are like the ears of a baboon’ in Zulu/Xhosa. A few people danced a new step to a strange tune. It became popular with the youth of the lower class. ‘Today’ the paper continued, ‘it is danced all over the Reef. The pianist plays it in harmony with the banjoists or violinist.’ The new music, the newspaper remarked, had turned ‘many parts of the Reef into a perfect pandemonium.’31 This we shall see in later chapters was certainly one way to describe Ekurhuleni’s urban society at the time.

Political and class struggle At more or less the same time that black populations in Ekurhuleni were being herded into the new locations, the political temperatures among the black communities of the area were on the rise. In 1910 the Act of Union had been passed, unifying the four formerly separate provinces of South Africa, which disenfranchised all Africans at central, provincial and local government level (outside the Cape). In response, the South African Native National Congress (SANNC)

Constructing black Ekurhuleni, 1890-1927 33

Early mine compound

34

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

was launched in 1912, whose first (and only) major national campaign for the next 50 years was mounted against the Land Act of that year which denied Africans the right to own land in 92% of the Union.32 Thereafter, mainly due to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, which the SANNC loyally vowed to support, it sank back into a posture of political passivity. The campaign against the Land Act had been focused mainly in the countryside and reserves, and tapped into impressive chiefly support.33 Meanwhile, however, in the towns, serious unrest was stirring which, for the course of the war (1914–1918), largely passed the SANNC by. Its site was the Witwatersrand, and especially the black workers on its mines. The first indications of the increasingly hostile mood of black miners came as white workers went on strike in June 1913. The following month on 8 and 9 July, 1 300 African workers followed suit. Part of the explanation for this action lies in the demonstration effect of the white strike. As one report noted: ‘Some had actually followed the lead [of the white strikers] … urging natives to strike and picketing and threatening those that did not comply.’34 But the new mood also grew out of a deeper complex of problems – a 50% cut in wages since 1906, and the strangulating hold of a new web of regulations set in place by the Native Labour Regulations Act of 1911 which closed off most avenues of escape from or evasion of oppressive mine conditions (as, for example, deserting). As a direct consequence of the strike an unprecedented Native Grievances Enquiry was appointed which recommended a wide range of reforms (rations, medical facilities, working conditions, accommodation) but which did not address the fundamental issue of wages.35 From 1915 unrest over wages once more began to stir and mounted steadily until the outbreak of the massive black mine workers’ strike of February 1920. In most of this the Ekurhuleni miners took the lead. On 26 December 1915, for example, a black workers’ strike broke out at Van Ryn Deep Mines, to be followed in early February 1916 by strikes at Government Areas South and New Modderfontein Mines. ‘The trouble,’ as a panicked Sub-Inspector of Police in Benoni wrote, ‘has been spreading from one compound to another;

Constructing black Ekurhuleni, 1890-1927 35

the natives are meeting, resort to picketing and are in fact organising as the [white] miners did in 1913 and 1914.’ In the latter years of the war the price of goods leapt upwards. Inflation accelerated especially rapidly in 1917, and Ekurhuleni was again the site of a major demonstration. This took the form of an exceptionally disciplined and well-organised stores boycott which exploded within 48 hours across the length and breadth of Ekurhuleni. Starting at Van Ryn Deep on 10 February 1918, it spread to Kleinfontein, Modderfontein, Modder, Geduld, Springs, Government Areas, Brakpan and then after a brief pause to Cason compound on the near East Rand. ‘Their organisation is perfect,’ a report in the Rand Daily Mail read, ‘What happens at one point, is known throughout the circuit very soon afterwards.’36 Police action and the promise of a Commission of Enquiry brought the movement to a halt. Three months later the harsh treatment of striking bucket boys (i.e. night soil removers) in Johannesburg brought the Transvaal Native Congress (TNC) (the more radical Transvaal provincial wing of the SANNC) into the fray. Angry meetings were held all over the Rand, in which Ekurhuleni workers featured prominently, and preparations were undertaken to organise a strike.37 Again Ekurhuleni workers were at the fore with one TNC militant being directed to canvass the idea in Springs, and another between Cleveland and Block B. The influenza epidemic of 1918 briefly drew the sting out of the agitation – out of 157  614 black miners working on the mines in the fateful month of October 1918, 52 489 were hospitalised and approximately 1 600 died – but a fundamental shift in both behaviour and mood was plain for all to see. What was particularly noticeable and significant at this point was the extent to which town locations and mine compounds were connecting and interacting especially via the agency of the TNC.38 Storm clouds were mounting; thunderbolts were waiting to strike. A core problem identified by both workers and the leaders of the TNC was the pass system which shackled workers to their jobs. As Benjamin Phooko, a clerk representing 5  000 City Deep workers explained: ‘Allowing prices to rise alarms us because

36

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

we have entered contracts that cannot be broken, so as to demand a higher price for our labour.’ Another was its wage depressing function. As R.M. Tladi, a leading TNC radical from Benoni declared: When a Native, after being forced to come out of his kraal, got to the Mines or the towns, the Pass Law forced him to get work as soon as possible. That is when the 6-day pass was instituted. When it expires the Native is afraid he may be arrested. He has not sufficient time to find more remunerative employment, and is perhaps forced to accept £1 or 30/- a month. The first white man who hires him gives him as little wages as possible because the unfortunate Native is forced by the Pass Law to take anything that is offered to him. His Pass is marked £1 or 30/- and thus his first employer is his valuator. He cannot get more’.39 Yet another was the character column on passes. As H.S. Mgqano, another among Benoni’s nucleus of radicals told the Superintendent of Native Affairs Benoni: A native works under a white man for 5 years or more. He by mere misfortune breaks a glass or any article in the house. His master gets annoyed and forgets this man worked for such a long time under him. He discharges him and on his character he writes ‘bad boy’. This character disables the man to obtain work anywhere and in some cases even if engaged by another white man, when registering him at the Pass Office seeing his character on the Pass the Pass Officer turns to the employer and states ‘I advise you not to take this boy’, then the man is stranded.40 Finally the opportunity passes provided for harassment by police gave rise to another burning grievance. As R.M. Tladi again declared in a speech at a TNC meeting in May 1919: The pass persecutes and disappoints you … In the first place when you meet a Policeman you’ll have to take off your hat and then produce your

Meeting of ANC leaders in the 1920s

pass otherwise you will be knocked about and after all you will be arrested and charged for resisting or failing to satisfy the Police and you will be convicted accordingly.41 At the end of March black public patience broke. The TNC called for a collective refusal to carry passes. This was the first major anti-pass campaign to have been summoned in South Africa and counts as an epochal event. On 1 April thousands attended meetings in Johannesburg and hundreds handed in their passes. Pickets in white suburbs collected 2 000 more. At a meeting held late that day it was decided that delegates from Pretoria, Potchefstroom, Boksburg and Benoni were to secure the surrender of passes the following day and a cessation of work in those areas. On 2 April in the storm centre of Benoni, large crowds gathered at the police charge office; as a result 69 women and 49 men were arrested, to which the crowd responded by stoning the police. The next

day 100 Africans returned carrying a sack of surrendered passes, upon which 67 arrests were made. On 4 April all available white constables were summoned to round up 20 male Africans who were travelling the district ‘spreading disaffection among the mine natives’. Similar episodes were reported first in Springs and then finally in Boksburg.42 Here a more ambiguous political climate prevailed. As early as February 1919 an agitation against passes had developed in this area, but had been largely stifled by the moderation of its TNC branch chairman Wessels Morake (who would stand at the head of a long line of Boksburg black elite conservatism). In April an ERPM clerk, J.G. Matshiqi, took the lead in the movement, however, and Morake’s restraint was swept aside after Matshiqi had summoned reinforcement from Johannesburg, Germiston and Benoni. Police repression, a split in the leadership of the TNC and a range of minor concessions, again led black political leaders on the Rand to step back from

Constructing black Ekurhuleni, 1890-1927 37

African men were regularly subjected to pass raids

the brink. However, neither they nor anyone else could gainsay or disguise one unrelenting reality and pressure – the ever-spiralling increase in prices with which wages dismally failed to keep up. The tide of resistance was about to break its banks. During December 1919 and January 1920 workers from Rose Deep and Knights Central in Germiston, from New Modder, Van Ryn East, Geduld, Welgedacht and Modder Deep in Benoni and from Simmer and Jack in Boksburg all at one point or another refused to work and registered protest over wages.43 Then on 16 February 1920 two Zulu miners, named Mobu and Vilakazi, were arrested after attending a TNC meeting in Vrededorp (in Johannesburg). They had been moving from room to room on the Cason section of ERPM, and urging fellow workers to strike for higher

38

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

pay. The following day the vast majority of workers in Cason Compound went on strike – 2 500 out of 2 900 men demanding their release and an increase in wages. With that the 1920 black mine workers’ strike formally began. From there the virus quickly spread to other parts of Ekurhuleni, thence to Johannesburg and finally to the West Rand. This was to be the most significant black worker and certainly black mine worker action for the next 60 years. When the strike finally ended on 28 February 1920, 71 000 African workers had been on strike with over 30 000 out on six consecutive days. Ekurhuleni was its detonator and fuse.44 Rapid deflation set in in 1921 and caused the agitation to subside. Widespread apathy now reigned among Africans on the Rand, reinforced by several

other brutal acts of State repression elsewhere in South Africa. Particular acts of aggression include the assault on the Israelites in the Eastern Cape in 1921 and the bombing of the Bondelswarts rebels in South West Africa, and of the rebels of the Rand Strike in 1922. Political agitation staged a minor revival with the arrival of Clement Kadalie’s Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICWU) late in 1925, but after one tour of Ekurhuleni, at which Kadalie spoke to many audiences in Germiston, Benoni, Boksburg and Springs, he and his lieutenants concentrated all ICU resources and meetings in Johannesburg. Ekurhuleni branches consequently stagnated, and despite giving a platform and political exposure to a number of rising political personalities such as Walter Ngqoyi in Benoni, Dinah Maile in Springs, Abel Phoofolo in Germiston and others in Boksburg, it slid into total obscurity in the area after 1927.45 From then onwards Ekurhuleni’s politics wound down completely to the level of the local and the parochial. The consequent lack of national profile that these achieved has meant a number of major grass roots movements and initiatives which mobilised themselves in this period have been missed or ignored, leaving the late 1920s to the late 1930s being written

off as ‘years of anguished impotence’.46 The reality, as will be shown, was precisely the opposite and a series of fundamental challenges to municipal control were then spearheaded by Ekurhuleni black urban women. This is one of the subjects of the next chapter. Black Ekurhuleni began to set down roots in the ‘mine locations’ which emerged on the Reef before and after the South African War of 1899–1902. Once Ekurhuleni’s towns acquired municipal status they took steps to control these mushrooming settlements and ultimately to establish formal locations. Two distinct features of these locations which defied the authorities’ original intention were their mixed African, Indian and coloured population, and the large numbers of African women they soon came to house. These helped fashion a new urban culture which went by the name of ‘marabi’. Between 1913 and 1920 intense popular and worker struggles swept through both mining and urban locations, among the most notable of which were the 1919 anti-pass campaign and the 1920 Black Workers’ Strike. Thereafter a number of factors led to the demobilisation of these movements, and politics in the various locations declined to the level of the purely parochial.

Constructing black Ekurhuleni, 1890-1927 39

Chapter 4

Ekurhuleni’s insubordinate women 1918-1945

40

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

I

n the inter-war years, sections of both black and white women found themselves in a similar predicament in South Africa generally and in Ekurhuleni in particular, even though each group’s life chances and circumstances diverged radically in certain respects, and white women shared uncomplainingly in the structure of exploitation that white society as a whole imposed on its black subjects. The interwar period was the time when women – both black and white – emerged as an increasingly conspicuous component of South African society and, in a hitherto unprecedented way, made their voices and their presences felt. Nowhere was this truer than in Ekurhuleni, which emerged as one of the prime sites, if not the prime site of women’s struggle for equal rights and better lives in South Africa. Here the collectively subordinate position of both white and black women to men was challenged earlier and more vigorously than in any other part of the land.

Women’s resistance in Germiston

Ekurhuleni’s insubordinate women 1918-1945 41

Many white women entered work during the war

White women’s politics White women entered the political limelight first as noted in Chapter 2. By the common decision of white men (with only the Prime Minister of Natal dissenting) in the negotiations leading up to the Act of Union in 1910, white women were denied the vote in national, provincial and local elections. The common view among white men at this time was that a woman’s place was in the home and that they should not leave this private space to enter the public arena.1 The first place and the first sphere of activity in which they accomplished this shift was in the field of philanthropy and social work, with Afrikaner women becoming particularly active in the face of the social ravages and the part collapse of the Afrikaner family which followed the South African War of 1899–1902.2 Social dislocation (often manifesting itself in the excessive consumption of alcohol which was a characteristic feature of the Rand at this time) prompted white women (in this case mainly English speaking and middle class) to join a recently established organisation, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. This

42

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

was soon to have a massive effect on the Rand, as they waged extremely effective temperance campaigns at the beginning of World War I and again in the 1920s. The gradual breach of the public sphere by white women was in a large part the product of social and economic change. As industrialisation and urbanisation accelerated more and more white (and, as we shall see, black) women were becoming urban. At the same time, World War I marked a major shift in white occupation or job structure. From this point on women entered in increasing numbers into industrial employment and into some professions. This was especially pronounced on the Rand. Women began to organise themselves in new collective forms. From the end of World War I women’s organisations (which were led by mainly urban English middleclass women) campaigned for the opening up of the hitherto ‘masculine’ fields of science, law and medicine to university-educated women. This they gradually achieved, but the journey was hard and long. To take one example, in 1923, after a lengthy campaign in which the Women’s Enfranchisement

Association of the Union (WEAU) took an active part, statutory bars on women entering the legal profession were removed by Parliamentary Act.3 Simultaneously on the Rand, as will be discussed below, Afrikaner women began entering the garment, clothing, sweet, tobacco and service industries in growing numbers and joined trade unions active in these fields. Finally, as noted earlier, a Women’s Reform League founded in 1911 campaigned for the female municipal franchise which they secured in 1913. This threefold thrust of women into the public sphere steadily weakened male resistance to the full enfranchisement of women. It was among the Afrikaner National Party that the critical change of attitude took place. In their case, the mass movement of Afrikaner women into the cities and industrial employment prompted a re-evaluation of their previously implacably hostile opposition to the women’s vote.4 Since Ekurhuleni was in the forefront of this process (as is discussed below), it is to Ekurhuleni working Afrikaner women that much of the credit for this shift of attitude is due. In addition the National Party, under the leadership of J.B. Hertzog, began to recognise the value of white women’s votes in diluting the Cape African franchise, and allowing them to ram through their programme of wholesale segregation. Accordingly Hertzog finally introduced a bill enfranchising the white women of the Union in 1929.5

Insurgent Afrikaner women The large-scale entry of Afrikaner women into Ekurhuleni was driven by a combination of rural distress and urban opportunity. In the Ekurhuleni drought of 1916, for example, which seared much of the country, tens of thousands of ‘bywoners’ and their families were uprooted from the land, over 4 000 of whom sought employment on the Rand. Again in the great droughts of the early 1930s an even larger flood of poor whites poured into the same area, a large number of whom were young Afrikaner women.6 Industrial expansion and the growth of employment opportunities more generally on the Rand offered some hope of relief. Davies records the numbers of white workers employed nationally, but mostly on the Rand, in secondary industry as rising from 66 000 in

1911 to 88 844 in 1915 and 124 702 in 1919–1921.7 The latter was the fruit of war-time isolation. From 1925 the expansion of industry continued at an even faster rate, in response to protective tariffs which were imposed by the Pact Government to aid selected secondary industries. Again the bulk of this growth was centred on the Rand. White women were the principal beneficiaries of this surge of import substituting light industrial growth especially in the food, drink, tobacco, clothing and textiles, books and printing, and leather ware sectors. The ‘civilised labour’ policies adopted by the Pact Government in 1924 required that tariff protection under the Tariff Act of 1925 should only be extended to industries employing whites. What it did not specify, however, was what gender they should be, and since the Wage Board (set up again in 1925) from the start accepted a male/female differential ‘without question’ in the wages it set, deeming that white women needed only to support themselves (and not a family like white men) and so could be paid at a rate which was governed by considerations similar to black (migrant) men. Many factories ‘hitherto employing non-Europeans were now endeavouring to staff their factories with Europeans (women) only’ reported the Chief Inspector of Factories in 1926. The number of women employed in industrial jobs accordingly trebled between 1927 and 1936, while those employed as shop assistants doubled.8 By 1924, 48% of the industrial workforce was made up of women, rising to a remarkable 73% in 1935.9 During the depression years the bias towards white women was particularly pronounced as they were in the only category of industrial employees whose number increased. Only subsequently, in the industrial boom of the late 1930s, did men of all races fare better.10 This to a large extent accounts for the preponderance of white (mainly Afrikaner) women on the Rand. Much of this increase in women’s factory employment occurred in Ekurhuleni, above all in Germiston. In 1917 Germiston Council had the foresight to lay out two industrial townships, taking credit for being the first local authority in South Africa to take such a step. It quickly proved to be a prescient move. In 1921 five out of 12 gold mines in the Germiston area

Ekurhuleni’s insubordinate women 1918-1945 43

closed and ceased production, to be followed by two more in 1922. Now the secondary industries which had been attracted by the town stepped in to take up the slack. By 1918 the Victoria Falls and Transvaal Power Station had been erected in one of Germiston’s industrial townships as had a number of engineering works. In 1921 the Rand Gold Refinery was also erected close by which was soon processing a huge three-quarters of the gold mined in the world. By the early 1920s numerous small tailoring concerns had also opened business in Germiston’s industrial parks to be followed by some of the largest clothing factories on the Reef, such as the New York and the Germiston and East Rand clothing factories. Food, printing, chemical and leather ware factories joined the throng both here and later in other Ekurhuleni towns.11 By 1934 it was being reported by the Department of Labour that: The future prosperity of Germiston depends on its industries, the principal of which is ready made clothing. Now eight factories all work to capacity employing 1 000 Europeans (mainly women) and 150 natives.12 Afrikaner women were in the vanguard of this move. Afrikaner families came to town to take advantage of their children’s (and especially their daughters’) wage-earning opportunities. Many single rural Afrikaner women took this course because poverty at home drove them there to support themselves (15% in one survey) or to support dependants in their former homes. Another survey conducted in 1932 found one-fifth of Afrikaner women acting as sole-breadwinners in families averaging four to five members while over one-third belonged to family groups with no male wage-earner recorded. The poorest, most recent arrivals found themselves trapped in the least desirable jobs such as domestic service and sweat shops. Only a fifth of their number managed to secure factory work. Most of these Afrikaner women factory workers had been born or lived ten years in the town. The majority were young and single and only worked until they were married and could be supported (or do out-work at home).13 Prior to this they were often compelled to

44

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

live in the most miserable circumstances, as the wages they received were insufficient to cover lodging, food and transportation. Such women survived by finding cheap lodgings where they might sleep three or four to a bed, or share premises with men, and lived only on dry bread and coffee. This left them vulnerable in a whole host of ways. Illness from malnutrition was not uncommon.14 To obtain supplementary income it appears that many resorted to what Freed termed ‘amateur prostitution’ – a full half of them, according to Freed, in 1938.15 From the late 1910s and especially the 1920s a moral panic began to take hold on the Rand about white Afrikaner women’s prostitution, promiscuity, racial mixing in the Rand’s multiracial slums, and factory work. Arduous factory work (along with bread-line wages) were claimed to weaken Afrikaner women’s physical and moral powers leading to sexual immorality. The prime sign or symbol of such degeneration was venereal diseases whose rates soared among poorer whites in this period.16 Exploited, denied self-respect, pejoratively labelled ‘factory meide’, and suspected of lacking moral disciplines of all kinds, these young Afrikaner women who flocked to Ekurhuleni faced an uphill struggle in the town, and were always threatened with sliding down into a material and moral abyss.17 A major source of support allowing them to haul themselves out of this hole was the Garment Workers’ Union (GWU). Known as the Witwatersrand Tailors’ Association for most of the 1920s, this underwent a change of name (to the GWU) and of organisational style once Solly Sachs was elected General Secretary in 1928. It then transformed itself into one of the most powerful and militant industrial unions on the Rand, enrolling 80–100% of white female workers in the industry for most of this time and waging a series of strikes which would ultimately lead to significant improvements in wages and living conditions and rescue these workers from the ever-present threat of destitution. In a sequence of strikes in 1928–1929 and 1931–1932, the women members of the GWU caught the popular imagination of the Rand either for the colourful and exuberant style of their strike (bright colours, gay processions of music and dancing, according to the Rand Daily Mail) or for their fearsome

Striking garment workers

Ekurhuleni’s insubordinate women 1918-1945 45

confrontational militancy (‘Wild Women’) which struck an equal measure of fear and alarm into the Rand Daily Mail’s readers. Of the two, the 1931 strike was more effective. In Germiston in 1931 exciting scenes were reported as ‘a huge demonstration of workers paraded in the streets ... carrying a big red banner before them and flaunting red dresses, red rosettes and red ties everywhere’. Both the strikes of 1931 and 1932 took place in the midst of the recession. The first was barely drawn, the second was devastatingly lost. After this the GWU lay in ruins until painstakingly put together again from the shop floor upwards by Solly and his chief lieutenants, Johanna Cornelius and Anna Scheepers. In an amazing turn-about it had largely recovered by 1934.18 The GWU was remarkable and pioneering for its militancy, for its capacity to mobilise Afrikaner women, and for the cross-racial co-operation it achieved with the black South African Clothing Workers’ Union (SACWU). This relationship was not without its contradictions since Afrikaner women members continued to practise social discrimination against blacks, and insisted that black workers be organised in a separate, parallel structure.19 The arm’s length co-operation that resulted, however, was a real step towards multi/non-racial unionism, broke down racial prejudices among a generation of Afrikaner female GWU leaders, nurtured the militant black leadership in the SACWU which would make a major mark on the political scene (see Chapter 6), and opened up a space which would be more widely exploited during World War II. One last multi-racial trade union flourish would take place in Ekurhuleni in the middle years of the war. This was among female and African male shop workers who belonged to the National Union of Distributive Workers and its parallel, the African Commercial and Distributive Workers Union, and who worked in the large chain stores like Ackermans, Woolworths and OK Bazaars that had first rose to prominence in the 1920s. In 1943 a strike, which arose from a dispute over wages, working conditions and trade union rights, broke out. It lasted 17 days and was responsible for 39 853 days lost in Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and other industrial centres. In much the

46

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

same way as was the case with the Afrikaner female and African male workers of the Garment Workers’ Union it brought out both white and black workers in a remarkable display of multi-racial unity, through which it won most of its demands.20 Germiston was thus in the vanguard of two developments which would transform the Ekurhuleni area. The first was secondary industrialisation, which before long would offer a new lifeline to all Ekurhuleni’s towns as gold mining went into decline, and it could assume its position as ‘the workshop of the Rand’. The second was the rise of industrial trade unionism in secondary industry, initially spearheaded by Solly Sachs and the Afrikaner women of the Garment Workers’ Union, but later developing into a multi-racial trade union movement, which is discussed in Chapter 7.

The loss of social control: Black women From the 1920s a substantial stream of African women were also arriving in the Ekurhuleni towns, which by the late 1930s had grown into something close to a torrent. The first major influx occurred during and immediately after World War I. A census conducted at the end of 1921, for example, disclosed the numbers and proportions of men to women shown in Table 2.21 Table 2: Census results, 1921 Germiston Boksburg Benoni Springs

Georgetown Location No. 1 Location No. 2 Municipal location Government farm

No. of houses 612 502 139 459 410

Men

Women

Children Total

750 710 170 540 662

700 675 140 546 753

2 020 675 160 1 641 1 249

3 470 2 060 470 2 727 2 664

These figures already reflected relatively equal proportions of women to men – which suggests they were living in family units, with growing numbers of children. Women were in many senses able to fly under the official radar since they were not required to carry passes, and were free either to join genuine husbands or to claim one from part of the black urban community’s floating male population on occasions when their right to remain in an urban area was

challenged. As a result a growing number of single or ‘unattached’ women, many displaced by tightening restrictions on black farm labourer families on white farms, made their way to the towns.22 The ingredients for two decades of conflict and two decades of black women’s self-assertion and independence were, in this manner, set in place. The first national effort to regain control of the country’s black urban populations, which was inspired above all by the perceived problems on the Rand, was the (Natives) Urban Areas Act of 1923. The principal thrust of the Act was to implement urban racial segregation which required the removal of Africans from inner city mixed residential areas and slums.23 In this it substantially failed across Ekurhuleni. The second purpose of the Act was to provide relatively standardised location regulations for the new locations which had been established all across the Reef, through which it intended to bring those populations under close surveillance and control. This object was frustrated above all by the agency of black urban women, despite amendments to the Act passed in 1930 and 1937 which attempted both to restrict the entry of black urban women (and secondarily men) and to secure the removal of those designated ‘idle and dissolute’.24 The extent of the failure of these measures can be gauged by the rate of increase of black women resident in Ekurhuleni’s towns in the 1920s which ranged from 58.6% in Brakpan to 158.9% in Germiston.25 New standardised Reef-wide location regulations aimed at containing this process and its effects were drafted in 1925, but then were repeatedly overturned by legal challenges which were in most cases sponsored by black urban women. One of the most tumultuous, enduring and successful areas of such contestation were the Ekurhuleni towns. Here the primary objection expressed to the new regulatory regime was towards lodgers’ registration and lodgers’ fees. These not only imposed a generalised economic burden, along with more effective control, but were also levied on the adult (i.e. post 18 or 21 years old) sons and daughters of location resident site holders. This provision was particularly and deeply offensive to Reef location women and spurred them into a variety of confrontations with the authorities over the

next few years. Initially location residents turned to the law and in a series of highly successful Supreme Court challenges had location regulations overturned (mainly on technicalities) as ultra vires.26 Depression added a further edge to the conflict, as can be seen most vividly in Germiston’s Dukathole location. As employment shrank in Germiston’s clothing factories, arrear rentals accumulated on an unprecedented scale. The financial penalty represented by the 2 shillings lodger fee, which even adult sons and daughters had to pay, seemed to grow day by day. Among the most vulnerable to these pressures were widowed site holders, and it was they, along with many of the other women in Germiston’s location, who then decided to seize the initiative themselves. According to Sofia Koerkop, a widow and domestic worker, who had lived 29 years in Germiston’s location, a Wives’ Association had long been active in the location. When the court challenges to the permit system began in 1927 these women and wives were among the most active in collecting subscriptions and in supporting the campaign. However, as Sofia Koerkop and many other women in the location increasingly saw it, the anti-lodger fees campaign had been badly mishandled. The money was wholly controlled by men and had twice disappeared. In addition, they claimed, all that the men seemed to do was to speak to the Council and get no reply. Sofia Koerkop and the other leading figures in the Wives’ Association, therefore, decided in the middle of 1930 to take matters into their own hands and to form the Women’s League of Justice (WLJ), whose primary targets would henceforth be lodger permits and increasingly common and invasive police raiding for illicit liquor (which was again produced by the location’s women). The WLJ was composed predominantly but not exclusively of women. Its active supporters/members numbered between one and two thousand, a few dozen of whom were men. For the next three years the WLJ was to be the pre-eminent, though not unchallenged, political force in the locations whose confrontations with the location administration would ultimately bring matters in the location to crisis point. In June 1933, for example, 1 026 WLJ members marched on the Town Council offices. At a climactic meeting in January 1933, which

Ekurhuleni’s insubordinate women 1918-1945 47

Woman beer brewer

48

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

would ultimately disintegrate into riot, between one and two thousand women were present.27 The struggle for Germiston location was exceptional but not atypical. It was exceptional because nowhere on the Rand did such an intense protracted and feminine political struggle unfold. At the same time it bore resemblance to many other low level political insurgencies that were in the process of emerging elsewhere in Ekurhuleni by condensing a number of their characteristic features in a particularly potent and concentrated form. The most noteworthy of these conflicts took place in Brakpan, Benoni and Springs. As in Germiston it was the issues of permits and brewing that were the main bones of contention in these neighbouring towns. Among the various repercussions of the great depression on the area was a massive increase in the illicit brewing of liquor and a perceptible rise in drunkenness, violence and social disorder. In response, most municipalities tried to tighten up their policing of liquor brewing and liquor selling.28 Among the first salvos to be fired in this offensive was the introduction of the pick-up van (or lorry). In the 1920s the lorry had opened up many parts of Africa to capitalist penetration. In the 1920s it played the same role in many of South Africa’s municipal locations by exposing them to much more invasive policing and control. The principal virtues of the pick-up van appear to have been that it increased police mobility and allowed the same number of men to make many more arrests. For this reason it was widely hated among the Witwatersrand’s African communities. It upset what had seemed to be a relatively stable and acceptable balance between the police and those placed under their control. Complaints about the pick-up van first appear early in 1933. From that point on pick-ups were used extensively against permit and liquor law offenders. So ubiquitous and invasive did the pick-up become that it was taken up as one of the central planks of the Communist Party of South Africa’s (CPSA) Reef political campaigns during the 1930s. In 1933 the CPSA organised a conference to oppose unemployment, beer raids and the pick-ups among other things, followed by a mass demonstration in December under the slogan ‘to hell with the pick-up and police brutality’.29

Besides the pick-up, the municipalities deployed a variety of other weapons against the perceived evil of illicit brewing. Practically all the Witwatersrand municipalities increased their police complement either temporarily or permanently, with the principal objective of rooting out this menace, while both the Brakpan and Springs municipalities built fences round their locations in 1934 and 1937 respectively, to deny the access of mine workers to the liquor brewers of their locations. At a conference convened in 1935 the Reef municipalities went further and urged the government to enact an integrated package of measures which would confer on them the powers necessary to establish control over their location populations. These found legislative expression in the Native’s Laws Amendment Act of 1937, which provided for the control of influx and the removal of idle and undesirable men and women, as well as virtually requiring the construction of municipal beer halls and the municipal monopolisation of beer production and beer sales.30 These measures invoked the lasting enmity of the Reef’s location populations, and most especially their women, and prompted them into two kinds of response – the semi-spontaneous riot, and more considered and structured political mobilisation. Small-scale riots in reaction to police raiding for liquor had punctuated much of the 1920s and early 1930s. In the late 1930s these became more frequent and underwent a considerable expansion of scale. In 1938 and 1939 riots in response to police liquor raids broke out in many parts of the Reef, the two most violent centres of conflict being Benoni and Springs.

In May 1939 arrests of mine workers who had illegally entered Benoni location in search of liquor sparked a clash between a crowd of 800 and the police. In Springs, four major collisions between 1937 and 1941 were precipitated by police raiding for liquor.31 More structured political mobilisation occurred mainly through local and then Reef-wide combined Vigilance Committees, but only acquired serious purchase in the mid-1940s. These are discussed in Chapter 7. Both white and black women thus played a critical role in the physical survival, social life and political mobilisation of their communities. It was their presence and their struggles which in many instances provided the ingredients and laid the platform for the more organised mass nationalist Afrikaner and African political movements of the 1940s and 1950s. This role is only partially recognised in the literature, partly through male occlusion, but also because in the penetrating words of Mrs M.E. Rothman, long-time leader of the Afrikaans Christelike Vroue Vereeniging: women work so imperceptibly … that we must sometimes search for their footprints. It is not that the footprints are not there, however women’s footprints are but faint, and they are made together with those of men, so that one does not notice them easily. I do think that in many places theirs were made before the men and the departments and government officers went to walk there.32

Ekurhuleni’s insubordinate women 1918-1945 49

Chapter 5

Social worlds and social strains in industrialising Ekurhuleni

50

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

T

he outbreak of the World War II provided the initial critical impetus to the country’s relatively undeveloped manufacturing sector, resulting in a massive expansion of secondary industry. The disruption caused to the world economy, especially to the leading industrial nations, and the concomitant increase in demand for consumer goods by the embattled Allied countries, spurred the South African government to adopt a more aggressive import substitution policy.1 As a result manufacturing output grew by an impressive 5.1% per annum between 1936/7 and 1946/7.2 The relative importance of secondary industry soared during this period, reaching a crucial milestone in 1943 when it overtook mining as the single largest contributor to the gross national product.3 By the end of the war the national economy had undergone a veritable revolution and established South Africa as the leading industrial economy on the African continent. The Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging (PWV)4 complex led the way to modernisation. Although Johannesburg remained the dominant economic centre throughout the period, Ekurhuleni benefited tremendously from its proximity to the country’s industrial hub and rapidly asserted itself as a key emerging manufacturing centre. By the end of the 1940s the Ekurhuleni region already employed approximately one-third of industrial employees on the Witwatersrand (82 954 out of 243 007), while its number of industrial employees easily outstripped the combined total of Pretoria and Vereeniging, the two other important industrial centres of the PWV region.5 These transformations engendered a whole series of social dislocations and social disorder. These are the subject of this chapter.

Lakes were popular sites of leisure for Ekurhuleni’s whites

Social worlds and social strains in industrialising Ekurhuleni 51

Industrialisation Both Germiston and Benoni took steps to try and attract industry from World War I onwards. Germiston’s efforts in this regard have already been noted in Chapter 2. In 1921 Benoni also secured land for an industrial park on an unproclaimed part of the farm Benoni. Progress was slow during the 1920s, and even more so in the depression years of the early 1930s. However, when South Africa’s abandonment of the Gold Standard at the end of 1932 delinked its currency from a fixed quantity of gold, the price of gold doubled. This not only saved a number of deep-level mines in Ekurhuleni, but also triggered a burst of gold exploration and development, particularly in the Springs–Brakpan region. The demand of the new gold mines for products and services, and the expanded private and government revenues accruing from gold, sparked a surge of secondary industrial development

from 1935 onwards which was concentrated mainly in Germiston and Benoni. Aitken Engineering, the British United Rubber Company and Delfos all set up shop in Benoni which gradually became a centre of heavy engineering. Neighbouring Germiston set its sights on attracting light industry, like the chemical factory NCP.6 Boksburg, Brakpan, Nigel and Springs lagged behind in this endeavour, the last three because they were benefiting so handsomely from the explosion of gold mining activity in their areas. The 1930s and 1940s were boom decades for gold in the region, with both Brakpan and Springs mines featuring among the most profitable in the world. In Brakpan, Van Dyk Gold Mine reopened, while State Mines achieved distinction in the late 1930s as the most profitable mine in South Africa. Brakpan’s African mine worker population grew correspondingly from 19 700 in 1928 to 25 000 in 1935. Mining

Germiston became a crucial hub of the country’s railway network 52

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

in Springs likewise exploded in this period to a point where they were producing 25% of South Africa’s gold in the late 1940s, when Daggafontein mine became the largest single gold producer in the world.7 Both the white population and the number of mining townships proclaimed grew in step with the number of operating mines, the latter reaching their peak in 1950. The same was true of its black population. In 1932, for example, the total population of Springs numbered 34 455. By 1937 it had climbed to 60 000. In 1940 it stood at 103 888 and it reached 124 100 in 1950. Whites constituted about 30% of this number, Africans almost 70% (with coloureds and Indians adding 2 000 souls).8 Only limited and sporadic efforts were made by Springs to attract secondary industry up until after World War II (the establishment of Nuffield Township in 1937 being the main example of this). Brakpan was even more reluctant to go down this path, preferring to preserve itself (until the late 1950s) as the self-proclaimed garden suburb of the Witwatersrand. Even tiny Nigel preceded Brakpan in this regard, laying out industrial townships in 1951 and 1956.9 A quickening in the tempo of economic activity occurred during and after World War II. New industries flooded into Germiston and Benoni – Head Wrightson, Amato Textile, H. Incledon and Company Cape Asbestos Insulation in Benoni. The year 1947 was Benoni’s iconic year. In Germiston industrial giants like South African General Electric, Oxygen and Thermal Welding Products, Robert Hudson and Sons all constructed plants.10 At more or less the same time the industrial area of Boksburg was expanding so rapidly that the area between Boksburg and Benoni became renowned as the most heavily industrialised area in South Africa. In 1951 the metal and engineering sectors accounted for 57.2% and 65.9% of the total number of industrial employees in Benoni and Boksburg respectively.11 Springs, for its part, laid out the new industrial township of New Era which before long had attracted powerful international companies like SAPPI (South African Pulp and Paper Industry) and TMSA (a telephone products firm) while the number of factories in total increased from 76 to 116.12

Kempton Park provides the most striking example of the transformation that took place in Ekurhuleni in those years. Up until the beginning of World War II it had scarcely grown and had languished in total and probably contented obscurity. Its tiny population was not even connected to an electricity grid until 1937. Then war broke out and it expanded explosively. First Palmietfontein Airport and then Jan Smuts Airport were constructed, with Jan Smuts being only four kilometres from its municipal border, which served as a strong attraction for a host of light industries. Reflecting this robust growth, it was granted belated Town Council status in October 1942. In the mid-1940s the Kelvin Power Station was built which further boosted the town’s capacity to attract industry, and the Isando industrial area was laid out. This, together with the industrial area of Spartan which was opened in 1952, then became the principal site for light industry on the Rand. By the late fifties the once virtually anonymous Kempton Park was celebrated for its ‘Pharmaceutical Mile’ of pharmaceutical factories. Between 1960 and 1978 its already large population expanded by a further massive 400%.13 As a result of these multiple transformations, Ekurhuleni’s rate of growth exceeded that of Johannesburg’s over the period 1921 and 1960. By the end of the 1940s Ekurhuleni employed one-third of the industrial employees of the Witwatersrand.14

White society’s social strains The size and composition of the area’s population also underwent equally radical change. First, the size of the white population quadrupled between 1920 and 1950 (see Table 3), an increasing proportion of which was employed in the secondary manufacturing sector, and increasing percentage of which was also Afrikaans speaking. Table 315 Benoni 1921

1936

1946

15 116

44 332 66 179

1951

1936

1945

1951

78 722

21 071 30 490 36 977

Social worlds and social strains in industrialising Ekurhuleni 53

Secondly, the area’s African population changed its character fundamentally, from being primarily migrant to being primarily settled – or semi-settled. In the case of Benoni, its African population shifted from being predominantly mine-based and mine-housed in the late 1930s (30 278 African mine workers, 23 200 non-mine in 1939) to the reverse (17 927 mine, 28 593 non-mine) in 1949. From the mid-1940s new arrivals to its industries streamed in at a rate of 2 000 a year.16 Both developments placed massive new strains on the available housing stock in Ekurhuleni. During the war years and immediately thereafter house building ground to a complete stop, as all available resources were channelled into the war.17 When thousands of demobilised (mainly white) soldiers returned to South Africa after the end of the war, they were faced with an acute housing shortage. This became even more irksome when a generation of them married in what has been described as a ‘virtual epidemic’. Many were forced into pre-fabricated structures (like the Air Force camp in Benoni) or back rooms. In 1948 the crisis was partly alleviated by the inauguration of publicly subsidised housing schemes such as Airfield in Benoni and Northfield Extension. Others were mopped up by a burst of flat development which left Benoni in particular with the heaviest concentration of flat dwellers outside of Johannesburg. Privately constructed suburbs, such as Rynfield, Farrarmere and Lakefield, also quickly filled up providing housing for the somewhat better off.18 The suburban revolution was getting into full gear. In the job market after World War II, a ‘floating colour bar’, staged its appearance. White men steadily moved into supervisorial or government employment, opening spaces for black men to move into semi-skilled operative jobs in the host of factories that sprang up over Ekurhuleni. White women increasingly moved into secretarial and white-collar work leaving the garment clothing and other sectors to be staffed by black men and black women. The solidarity of shared employment speedily melted away.19 Over this period the growing numbers of Afrikaners resident in Ekurhuleni, and their slow rise into supervisorial and white-collar jobs in secondary

54

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

industry, gradually began to change the character of white social, leisure, and then political life. To give one example of the demographic shift, the national census of 1953 showed 11 999 Afrikaners living in Benoni compared to 15 195 English.20 Elsewhere in Ekurhuleni, the numerical gap between the two groups shrank even faster. Such changes inevitably influenced all aspects of social life.

White leisure By the 1920s, according to Archer and Bouillon, ‘every mine would have its own pools, its own cricket, football and rugby teams’ in order to provide recreational diversion to its white workers.21 From the 1940s the recreation clubs of the big industrial firms played a similar role.22 Those who took part in such activities, however, were disproportionately English speaking and to some extent middle class, especially in the earlier decades. As J.J. Fourie points out in his study Afrikaners in die Goudstad,23 workingclass Afrikaners had little leisure time which they could devote to sport, and what little they had they used highly selectively. Afrikaners spurned cricket especially, partly because of the time it took to play it, partly because it was perceived as a quintessentially ‘Imperial’ sport. More surprisingly perhaps, they rejected rugby as well, in which attitude they were joined by most of the rest of Ekurhuleni’s white working class.24 Football (soccer), on the other hand, was the preferred sport of Afrikaner children in South African cities throughout the 1920s and 1930s, along with the English-speaking sections of the white working class.25 In Ekurhuleni, Benoni alone boasted three football teams in the Transvaal League in the 1930s and 1940s, while Boksburg, whose white population still stood at less than 25 000, contributed no fewer than nine players to first division teams in England and Scotland between 1912 and 1938.26 Other sports in which Ekurhuleni’s white working class were conspicuously engaged were dog racing (and to a lesser extent horse racing) and boxing. Dog racing exerted a particularly strong appeal on white Afrikaner workers, and was stigmatised by leading Afrikaner nationalists as a source of moral and even political subversion. As Wilhelm Nicol put it, ‘the

White leisure

moral and spiritual degradation of the Afrikaner people was to a large extent attributable to dog racing’. He then went on to draw a political lesson. It was, he insisted, simply impossible to ‘educate a volk unless one is able to control and ensure that its leisure time is soundly based.’27 Indeed so serious was the threat that it was perceived to pose to Afrikaner identity that the Afrikaans clergy in alliance with others, campaigned for and finally achieved its abolition in 1947. Boxing, presumably because of its manly nature, was in a different league. In the 20th century two names loom large in the history of boxing in Ekurhuleni: Vic Toweel and Gerrie Coetzee. Vic was the scion of the famous Toweel family who were of Lebanese

decent. ‘Pappa’ Mike Toweel was an excellent local trainer who encouraged all his five sons to enter the sport. In the late 1940s his experience was acknowledged when he was appointed as the trainer for four of South Africa’s Olympic boxers. Four of his sons became either champion boxers or renowned trainers. However, it was Vic Toweel who brought boxing fame not only to the family but also Benoni. Toweel was born in Benoni in 1928, and in the 1940s was Ekurhuleni champion in his division. His meteoric rise in the world of boxing continued when he turned professional after returning from the 1948 Olympics. In a very short space of time he fought his way to the national lightweight title, the bantamweight title, then

Social worlds and social strains in industrialising Ekurhuleni 55

also became the national featherweight champion. In only his 11th fight as a professional, Toweel won the prestigious British Empire bantamweight title. But the crowning moment of his career came in May 1950 with the world bantamweight title. He was the first South African to win a world boxing championship, and at the young age of 21 years. Toweel defended his title three times before losing to Jimmy Carruthers, and in November 1953 stepped into the ring for the last time. Two years after Benoni’s boxing celebrity retired from profession boxing, another star of the sport, Gerrie Coetzee, was born in neighbouring Boksburg. In the mid- to late-1970s Coetzee rapidly moved through the local boxing ranks as he beat all national contenders for the title of Heavyweight Champion of South Africa. Known as the ‘bionic hand’ and the ‘Boksburg Bomber’, Coetzee scored an impressive victory against former world champion Leon Spinks, a victory that almost immediately made him a contender for the world champion title that had been vacated by Muhammad Ali. However, he failed to win the crown in two attempts against John Tate and Mike Weaver. In 1983 Coetzee was given a third shot at the title against Michael Dokes. This time the boxer from Boksburg made no mistake and he knocked out the title-holder in what was widely regarded as one of the major upsets in heavyweight boxing history. Coetzee controversially lost his title against Greg Page in 1984. Jacob Dlamini recalls the impact of Coetzee’s victory in his neighbourhood of Katlehong: my family supported Coetzee and my mother would let me stay up to follow his fights on the radio each time the man went into the ring. He was one of ours and we cheered him on without reservation … What’s more, the winner was one of us, a South African and a homeboy. Rugby followed its own distinct trajectory. It remained, as Grundlingh remarks, in the sport shadows among Afrikaners until the 1920s, continuing as a largely English-speaking sport. Then, and more particularly in the following decade, ‘a middle-class Afrikaner leadership adopted a strategy of aggressive cultural

56

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

assertion’ in which sport played an important role. From a base at Stellenbosch University, and under the tutelage of Danie Craven, teachers and predikants were despatched to the platteland to diffuse the sport among young Afrikaners congregating in the towns, explicitly ‘as a means of moral and physical salvation’.28 Ekurhuleni was a prime target of such cultural/leisure time manipulation. A major new social phenomenon and problem which followed in the wake of the war was a rash of white juvenile delinquency, known as ‘ducktailism’. Ducktails got their name from the way they styled their hair (swept back, greased and moulded into a point at the back). Ducktails adopted a distinctive style of dress – stove-pipe trousers, Jarman shoes, leather jackets for boys; tight sweaters, frilly petticoats and stiletto heels for the ‘Sheilas’ or girls. Ducktails were rowdy, disruptive, ill-disciplined, sexually permissive and anti-social. They were repeatedly embroiled in fights between themselves and in assaults on innocent members of the white and black public. From 1946 onwards, for example, the Benoni City Times reported weekly brutal assaults by ducktails on African men simply walking in Benoni’s streets. A prize possession for Ekurhuleni ducktails was a motorbike. Ekurhuleni bikers converged on places like the Casbah Roadhouse in Brakpan and La Conga Roadhouse in Elandsfontein. Benoni, Brakpan and Primrose in Germiston each had their ducktail gangs, which generated a massive moral panic among the generally conservative white public. The ‘ducktail menace’ followed hard on the heels of World War II and must be attributed to the social dislocation caused by it, notably a lack of family accommodation, the absence of fathers who enlisted in the allied forces and the desertion of the white homes for the workplace by tens of thousands of white, urban women for the duration of the war.29 In numerous respects therefore the ducktails resemble the other perceived scourge of the time – that of tsotsis (juvenile delinquents/criminals) in black townships – who were the product of an identical set of social circumstances.

Black Ekurhuleni in the era of industrialisation

holders became increasingly concerned and began to take action against Palime’s group.

As Germiston’s industries grew in the late 1930s and 1940s thousands of new black work-seekers thronged in. Most found accommodation as sub-tenants on the stands rented from the municipality by existing tenants. By 1940, 85% of Dukathole’s stand owners sub-let shacks on their stands. Three years later 18 000 residents squashed into a space designed to house only 5 000 to 6 000. By this stage sub-tenants made up 60% of the population. In 1942 rents charged by site holders to sub-tenants rose to £1.10 for a two-roomed shack and between 12 shillings and 6 pence and £1.50 for a one-roomed shack. They continued to increase in subsequent years reaching £1.10 a month in 1946. This constituted a large slice of most workers’ wages which were between £7 and £11 a month in the mid-1940s. Sub-tenants became increasingly resentful of site-holder pretensions and site-holder exploitation.30 ‘There was an upper and a lower class in Dukathole,’ remembers Mr Mandlati, ‘the upper class being made up of site holders and teachers’.31 Tension between sub-tenants and stand owners heightened as both congestion and rentals increased. In 1945 an organised body of lodgers began to emerge. Its first leader was Raphael Palime, an active trade unionist in the South African Clothing Workers’ Union. After his friend Johannes Madieleng had been evicted from his shack by a site holder, the two of them made efforts to organise fellow sub-tenants with a view to building their own shacks. Initially Palime welcomed stand holders into his organisation but disagreements soon arose. Stand holders asserted that once new lodger houses were built, elderly site holders and those who depended for their living on rent would have their means of subsistence stripped away. Palime’s committee disintegrated as a result. He then started organising a group comprising lodgers alone. By this stage Palime’s personal attitude to site holders had hardened after the rent on his own shack, which he had constructed for himself, leapt over a period of six months from £1 to £1.10 and then not long after to £2. Other sub-tenants who found themselves in the same position began to take a growing interest in Palime’s campaign. The site

They were scared by people’s talk. They were throwing insults at us … people were threatened and harassed and the committee dissolved. We lost every member and some had their shacks demolished or their roofs pulled off.32 The setback engendered a further evolution in Palime’s thinking. To begin with he had recruited only fellow South Sothos. He then decided ‘to bring in people of different ethnic groups, Xhosa, Zulu and many South Sothos’. His committee began ‘organising intensely’ and in 1945 a registered Lodgers’ Association was formed which tried to secure the aid of the Government’s Rent Board to peg or reduce escalating rents. By April 1946 the Germiston Location Residents’ Committee, comprising stand holders exclusively, was petitioning the Council cautioning that ‘a revolution [was] likely to occur between residents and lodgers caused by non-resident lodgers’ and complaining that ‘most lodgers had been in arrears with their rent since October of the previous year claiming that they had the permission of the Rent Board’. The Lodgers’ Association persisted in campaigning for reduced rents and for a site on which they could build houses throughout 1946 and into 1947. Early in 1947 rumours started spreading that they were collecting £2 a head to buy sacking and set up an illegal squatter camp. It was probably this that prompted the Council to lay charges against Palime and his fellow committee members. They then utilised the services of a lawyer from the firm of Hyman Basner, the well-known legal activist ex-communist and Native Representative in Parliament to take up their case. As a result an arrangement was arrived at whereby the sub-tenants represented by Palime would get first choice of the houses being built in the newly proclaimed township of Natalspruit. Palime’s lieutenants Madieleng and Morodothi were consequently among the first batch of sub-tenants to be resettled in Natalspruit in 1950.33 In Benoni a similar pattern of events unfolded. In the 1930s, and more especially in the late 1940s, innumerable families crammed into backyards in

Social worlds and social strains in industrialising Ekurhuleni 57

white suburbs, into the small holdings surrounding Benoni, into Benoni’s squalid African location, and into the adjacent Indian and coloured townships. In each of these areas conditions were bad, but it was the Asiatic section that plumbed the depths. It was here that the authorities were soon to face their urban African ‘problem’ in its most intractable form. Founded in 1912, the Asiatic section had quickly drawn in an African population that rented shacks from Indian and Chinese site holders. In 1932 this tenant population stood at 600, but by 1936 it had leapt to 2 139. Numbers flattened out during the war, but the four years following its end saw another massive expansion. In 1945, 1 791 tenants out of a total African population of 2 355 were crammed onto 59 stands of 50 ft by 50 ft (the total number of trading and residential sites at the time was 264). One stand alone housed 111 occupants. By mid-1950, 5 003 Africans, 892 Asiatics and 211 coloureds were squashed into the squalid confines of the Asiatic section. The ramshackle shelters in which the African and poorer Indian tenants lived were cesspools of disease. The majority of rooms ‘were old and filthy with no light and ventilation provided’. Cloth partitions dividing the tiny rooms provided what privacy there was. ‘Heaps of manure, sewerage in the streets and on the stands’ made it a breeding ground for disease. Infant mortality stood at 33% during the first 12 months of life. Tuberculosis, pneumonia and intestinal diseases pervaded the section. In 1946 the medical officer of health spoke grimly, if melodramatically, of the encircling ‘battalions of death’.34 Pressures were also building in the old location itself. Here overcrowding was not as acute as in the Asiatic section but it was still very bad. The majority of the houses in the location (979 out of 1 179 in 1944) were privately built. Owners of these structures had more freedom from regulation than those living in municipal houses, and were able almost without restriction to build unlimited numbers of shacks in which they could accommodate lodgers. By the early 1940s, 1 900 lodger families had squashed into these premises. Typically three to four families lived in a single yard. Families could include eight to 12 people

58

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

packed into a single room. Because of the rich rewards to be gained from such practices, a bouyant property market developed in the yards. Perhaps unsurprisingly the prevailing spirit of communality began to break down, and a certain entrepreneurial ethic started to seep into the location. Disputes between lodgers and site holders multiplied, with 15 to 16 arriving at the location manager’s office each month. Some were relatively trivial domestic affairs over who should clean the yard, or the misbehaviour of children, but as the housing shortage became more acute, they took on a more financial edge. In November 1949 the location social worker reported that ‘shortage of accommodation has given rise to a great deal of bribery at higher rental’. By May 1945, 20 families a month were being evicted by avaricious landlords.35 One last example is provided by Payneville location in Springs. Built to house 9 000 people its resident population climbed from 5 441 in 1933 to 10 000 in 1939 and a massive 33 000 in 1951. Here, as in Dukathole and Twatwa, shanties mushroomed on stands. An average of 6.1 people lived in a room – up to ten in some houses. Eight thousand lodgers had crammed into the location by 1953, while 47% of families could not afford their rental charges without supplement from informal income. As the location strained at the seams in the late 1940s, more and more squatting on farms adjacent to town was reported to the City Council.36 Indeed, across Ekurhuleni white smallholdings like Putfontein, Brentwood Park, Rietpan and Vlakfontein around Benoni became one sprawling squatter area.37 In Brakpan alone in the far east of Ekurhuleni an African population of between 9 000 and 12 000 lived on the surrounding smallholdings in the 1930s and 1940s. By the late 1950s this figure had swelled to an astonishing 23 000.38 Much the same pattern developed as the pace of industrialisation quickened throughout the entire Kempton Park/Edenvale area where a virtual archipelago of squatter settlements had sprung up – Tikkieline, Pennyville, Mazambane, Plantation and Brickworks.39 It was to house these (as well as the exploding sub-tenant population of Alexandra) that the massive new township of Tembisa was constructed in 1957.40

Indian wedding in Benoni Old Location

It thus seems likely that a black population of close to 100 000 people lived on the urban outskirts by the later stages of World War II, which probably grew rather than diminished up to 1950.41

Black social life and recreation Location life developed its own distinct character in these years, part good and part bad. Former residents of the old location in Dukathole look back on life there with mixed feelings. Most express a certain nostalgia for its intense social life, enjoyed mainly on week-ends. Most of the location’s adult male population worked on Saturday mornings, so Sunday was the principal time for recreation. Church attendance was the main off-work activity. Fifteen officially recognised churches found premises in Dukathole and dozens of unrecognised Zionist and other sects held services in houses or out in the open veld. Early Zionists were

mainly Swazi and Zulu. According to Basner Moloi and Johannes Nkwanyana the Zionist Christian Church (ZCC) became popular after the Scaw Metal Factory began to recruit workers from Lebowa in 1959.42 Many residents of Dukathole, such as Mr D. Molefe, formed their circle of friends at the church and spent much of their leisure time in church-related activity. According to Milton Lehau singing in church choirs was particularly popular.43 In Alberton’s old location the church was an even stronger presence. Wesleyan, Roman Catholic, Anglican and Apostolic churches all drew large congregations. Former resident Cass Khanyile describes it as ‘a religious town’.44 Football was another common recreation. By 1939, 36 football teams competed in Dukathole, most being factory or neighbourhood-based sides. Hume Zebras took its name from the local factory called Hume Pipes. Founded in 1912 it was the progenitor

Social worlds and social strains in industrialising Ekurhuleni 59

of them all. BLS was sponsored by Germiston municipality. Both produced many offshoots. Joe Mashao describes Hotspurs, from which groups split off to form Wolverhampton and Rushing Brooks, as one of the strongest sides in the Germiston League in the 1940s. Many teams were neighbourhood based. Mr Madalane played successively for Early Roses and Young Tigers (which was centred on Second Street, Dukathole). Zakes Six was the first football club to be established in Alberton in 1936. After this, the major factory in the area, James Bauer, started a rival club – the Freedom Stars. Football playing and football watching provided not only social outlets but social networks. Jacob Nkosi’s ‘only friends’ were the supporters of Germiston Zebras club of which he was a member.45 Boxing was the next most popular sport in the locations. Boxers of national standing, such as King Kaizer of Stirtonville, emerged.46 A narrower and somewhat more elite segment of the location’s population actively devoted their leisure time to golf. Cass Khanyile and Simon Masiteng helped found the Alberton Fighting Juniors Golf Club. The name was appropriate because for an African to play golf in those days was a battle. Cass Khanyile recalls playing down fairways strewn with location rubbish and on greens that were composed of sand. According to him all African golf clubs on the Reef met annually for a tournament. Many players had no more than six clubs, but some boasted expensive kits. Cass Khanyile remembers being impressed by the expensive golf bags possessed by members by the West Rand Club. So were some of the white onlookers who believed that Africans could not or should not afford them and reported them to the police. Cass Khanyile describes such an incident: ‘One day they came there and arrested us … some didn’t have receipts and the [equipment] was taken, and never returned.’47 Music making and listening was another popular entertainment. Among the favourite bands of the time were the Manhattan Brothers, and the Chesa Ramblers, a jazz group in which Amos ‘Rubber’ Molefe starred on the saxophone.48 Beer brewing, whether for stokvels or for sale, was one of the most distinctive features of location life.

60

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

Umqombothi, mbamba and pineapple were the most sought-after brews. Umqombothi was brewed from sorghum grains using a traditional method. Mbamba and pineapple were more quickly fermenting urban adaptions, the basic ingredients of which were yeast, bread, sugar and pineapple. Brandy, carbide or methylated spirits were sometimes also added. One attraction of mbamba and pineapple was that they had an extra alcoholic kick. An equal, if not more important, point in their favour was that they could be brewed in as little as two hours. Umqombothi took four or more days to ferment. This made the brewing of Umqombothi a much more hazardous business since it gave off a distinctive smell which police could more easily detect. The government and the Witwatersrand municipalities enforced a total ban on the buying and consuming of liquor on its African population and the police constantly carried out raids in an effort to suppress the ‘trade’. Women monopolised the brewing of beer and it was often their major source of income. Surveys carried out in the 1930s showed that up to 75% of urban African women were involved in the brewing trade. Their clientele in Germiston, Boksburg, Benoni, Brakpan and Alberton locations were migrant workers from the neighbouring mines. Some households retained the services of male dependants known as zimbangodi (meaning ‘slaves’ or ‘trench diggers’). These men carried out the heavy work associated with the trade in return for morsels of food and beer.49 Like most other women in Germiston’s location, Dukathole, former resident Mrs Yende ‘brewed liquor to survive’. Mrs Masapula and Mr Mabona recall how ‘the liquor was hidden in the streets’. To avoid detection by police, an army of watchmen stood on each street corner. When the police came by on their bicycles the watchmen would signal by saying ‘it is red’ or by walking away quickly from their spots. The assembled drinkers would then throw back their liquor and run away. The children of liquor-brewing mothers were often assigned to this task. If brewers or drinkers were unfortunate enough to be caught by the police, they were paraded in a humiliating ritual. Mr Mashoa and Mrs Yende describe how they were ‘handcuffed and displayed and forced to walk with

the liquor to the police station. Just imagine people staring at you with handcuffs on and a bottle of beer in your hands.’50 Beer brewers and customers did not submit tamely to such treatment. Small-scale skirmishes were common. In 1942 two dozen women stoned a small group of police who were raiding for beer in Dukathole.51 The same happened repeatedly in Benoni’s Twatwa. Some parts of the locations were less involved in the beer-brewing business than others. In Stirtonville, the single quarters lay at the centre of the business.52 In Dukathole Josephine Lehase claims that: ‘In our streets, First and Second, there were no shebeens.’ Then the main beer-brewing zone was beyond Eighth Street, an area noted for its dense concentration of shacks.53 Josephine Lehase lived in an area situated on the upper and north-western side of the slope on which Dukathole was sited. This was colloquially referred to as ‘Boom Town’. In the south of Dukathole lay ‘Ghost Town’. According to P. Mokhele: Ghost Town had more shacks than Boom Town. It was a dilapidated area, unlike Boom Town … the children and the people of Ghost Town were generally living below standard. They were not people of standing. People in Boom Town were better dressed … In Ghost Town people drank more liquor than in Boom Town.

The Tsotsi phenomenon The Ghost Town–Boom Town divide also corresponded to the divide between the territories of rival gangs in Dukathole. In Mr Mokhele’s words, it was ‘a line of demarcation that was not to be crossed’.54 Boom Town belonged to the Dead Man Gulches. Ghost Town was the area the Vultures controlled. The Cape stands in the north-east were the property of the Fast 11s, and Eighth Street was where the Berliners were the dominant group. Sixth and Seventh Streets were the strongholds of the Spoilers. In other parts of Dukathole, the Young Americans, the Black Hawks and the Zulus staked out their own zones.55 Youth gangs were a product of rapid urbanisation and the utterly poor provision of schooling and

education for black urban youth. In the late 1940s only 50% of Dukathole’s school-going population could be accommodated in schools, most of whom undertook their studies for only two or three years.56 The same pattern was repeated across Ekurhuleni. In Ekurhuleni industry (and, especially in Benoni and Boksburg, heavy industry) employers were deeply prejudiced against black urban youth whom they portrayed as undisciplined, unreliable, unpunctual and prone to absenteeism. Urban youths themselves all too often refused the kinds of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs on offer, all of which were overseen by racist and abusive white supervisors. Many employers, the Native Youth Board complained, wrote off every African youth ‘as a tsotsi’. Massive youth unemployment consequently existed in many Ekurhuleni towns. In 1951, for example, Germiston, Brakpan and Springs reported 1 000 unemployed youths, while Benoni recorded a staggering 6 000. Denied schooling and employment, such youths were dumped onto the street where they were left to do much as they liked. Since low wages meant that both parents had to go out to work, leaving at dawn and returning at dusk, children were left to fend for themselves. A survey conducted by Germiston municipality in 1949 found 52% of African mothers were away from home four or more days a week. An additional 18% were absent for less than four days. Overcrowding of houses compounded these problems. Poverty forced many families to sub-let rooms to new arrivals from the countryside or the reserves. As a result, one government committee reported: The house, which as a rule serves as the centre of home life and as a strong binding force on members of the family very often fails to fulfil this function [in African locations]. Children are often encouraged to remain on the streets in order to make room for adults.57 In these circumstances the normal socialising and disciplinary agencies of black urban society were absent or reduced. Into this moral void stepped the gangs. The first gang that old residents of Dukathole still

Social worlds and social strains in industrialising Ekurhuleni 61

remember is the Fast 11s. It is remembered in much the same way as Alexandra residents remember the early Alexandra gangs: ‘Just thieves and not violent … [they] were only interested in stealing and dressing smartly. They did not steal in Dukathole. They only stole in town.58 The DMGs also did not act violently in the first years after they formed. The DMGs, like the Vultures who arose a good deal later after them, took their name from one of the movies that they watched in Dukathole’s main cinema – the Orient. In the case of the DMGs, their name was the abbreviated form of Dead Man’s Gulch, a western that obviously made a huge impact on the imagination of Dukathole’s male adolescent population. The Vultures apparently took their name from the film Where No Vultures Fly. Joe Mashao believes that the development of full-scale tsotsi-style gang warfare in Dukathole may have resulted from youths being dislocated when their parents moved from the rural areas to the towns. The youths then had to cope with the stresses and strains of living in increasingly congested urban areas. Joe Mashao adds: ‘Some families were heavy drinkers. Children of such families were often very violent. There was no order in their families. They took this disorder onto the streets and met others of their kind.’59 Gangs developed slightly later in Stirtonville. In 1951 the first public complaints surfaced about ‘the tsotsi menace’. By the mid-1950s the two major groups in Stirtonville were the Mau Mau gang and the Japanese. The Mau Mau gang took their name from the anti-colonial rebellion in Kenya which began in 1952.60 Ken Gampu’s brother was leader of the Mau Mau gang that controlled the upper section of Stirtonville bordering on the Indian area. Gangs fought against each other and preyed on the less streetwise and sophisticated. Gang members deemed themselves ‘clever’. Those outside their ranks were derided as moegoes (bumpkins or asses). ‘If you were cast in the ‘mould’ and you are walking around with a girl … they could easily take the girl because you don’t matter at all,’ explains Ken Gampu. Stirtonville gangsters were equally susceptible to movie culture and style as were those of Dukathole. Ken Gampu again recalls:

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Shebeen in Benoni in the 1950s

I remember those days. There was a lot of American influence, particularly in the way of dressing. In one movie a guy who was featured came up with this dress code of trench coats. In the movie he was eating an apple. The people who were selling apples got a roaring business as a result. Then came the shoes called Jamo shoes and then it was the era of Palm Beach suits. There was a movie called Stormy Weather which was

with an all-black American cast. In it people wore a chain hanging from their pocket. We used to call that a Stormy Weather chain.61 The old location in Alberton was the least violent of all. In the course of the 1950s gangs like the Darren Kids and the Fast Sixes formed but they mainly fought among themselves and did not terrorise the location. Only the family gang of the newly arrived Sibekos

Social worlds and social strains in industrialising Ekurhuleni 63

seriously threatened ordinary location residents, but their activities were eventually curbed. In the end the location was too small, family discipline too strong and the bulk of the population was too God-fearing to allow gangsters and delinquents much scope. As Cass Khanyile observes: ‘Gangsters didn’t worry the township because the township was too compact. The township included our parents. Friends treated each other as brothers and sisters. So, it was not as easy for a gangster to rule this township.’62 In Benoni the first significant gangs to develop were Dark Starring and Hong Kong. Dark Starring dominated the old location of Twatwa from which they took their name (there were no streets lights there). Hong Kong were based in the Indian section, Makuleng. As Frank Ntlebere remembers: ‘When people from Makuleng went to attend school in the location the Dark Starring would chase them away saying “why can’t they ask the Indians to build their own school”.’ At that point gangs were not seriously molesting the public. ‘They were not worrying people. They were just fighting among themselves. They were not killing each other yet.’63 Then came the era of Rooikamp and Mashalashala. According to Phyllis Soko: Otto and Dantsi were leaders of Mashalashala. The Mashalashala stayed on 14th and 15th Avenues … They used to fight, chase after girls. A girl from one group’s area could not have an affair with a person from the other side. The gang would beat them up. Mashalashala girl friends wore green berets, the Rooikamp girl friends maroon. They were marked on their hands.’64 Frank Ntlebere’s believes ‘It was the Mashalashala who began the killings’. Rooikamp, he recalls, were not as wild and violent as the Mashalashala. Rooikamp wore red pants and lived in brown tin houses and controlled Wattville. ‘They preferred the “Star” cinema. Pictures shown here were good ones. They did not like war pictures, they liked jazz movies. The Mashalashala liked dangerous movies (shown at the “Liberty” cinema in Makuleng).’65

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Mrs Monnauyane remembers: The DMGs had a problem because the “Orient” cinema lay in the Vultures’ area. They could only go there in large numbers [which] the Vultures saw as a declaration of war. In Benoni the Mashalashala who could beat Rooikamp … deprived them of both cinemas, until they formed an alliance with the Plantations. The Plantations is a gang from Silvertown (Tent Town). As gang boundaries became more sharply defined, even schoolchildren were forced to join in. For Molefe in Dukathole: ‘You had no choice. You were stopped as you went to the shops or on your way back from school.’66 His story captures the topsy-turvy value system of Dukathole youth at that time. At one moment on weekends he was pick-pocketing to prove himself to his peers; at another he was serving as altar boy and singing in the choir at his parents’ church. The nature of his involvement is underlined by the fact that he left the DMGs immediately after he left school. Dukathole gangs, like those in Benoni, had an elementary authority structure. The leader was the one who could fight best. As Patrick Peterson explains: ‘G-Man led the Vultures because he knew how to use his fists – and how to stab. He never used to run away. There was no democracy. He was our Shaka.’67 Dira (enemies) headed the Sotho-speaking Spoilers. Gangs divided into senior and junior sections. Fights often started when the junior members of rival gangs, who were often as young as nine or ten years of age, threw stones at each other, remembers Joe Mashao.68 Like the Rooikamp and Mashalashala gangs in Benoni the senior section had its distinctive style of dress. Molefe and Peterson describe the styles as follows: for the Vultures it was dikhomba lumberjackets and black skull caps; for the DMGs, lumberjackets, khaki trousers and die voetsak (white Zionist type shoes), and only the Americans wore suits. An important pastime of the gangs, as with other parts of Dukathole society, was the playing and watching of soccer. Over time, some soccer teams became associated with certain gangs. The BLS, for

example, ‘belonged to the Russians’, a migrant South Sotho gang that spread all over the Reef. The Spoilers played for Roses and Hotspurs. The Vultures and Black Hawks belonged to the Zebras and the Orientals and the DMGs were members of Home Boys. According to Joe Mashoa and Molefe the BLS, which the Russians supported: were a notorious team … Any team playing against them had to make sure they lost. No one was supposed to win against them. You had to lose or leave the stadium as soon as possible … because when they were defeated they would beat up everybody.69 Gang warfare reached its climax in the late 1950s, after which it subsided. Both the local and central government began to see gangs as a more serious form of social and political destabilisation than they had previously thought and embarked on a more energetic campaign to suppress them. This policy was embarked upon in earnest in 1958. Gangs also dwindled because of removals,70 when the close territorial proximity and intimacy of gang turfs vanished overnight. Eventually new gangs formed, but with a significantly different character.71 The new suburbs and townships that were built in the course of the 1950s reshaped not only the gangs (both ducktails and tsotsis) but also most other features of Ekurhuleni’s urban society. This eventually bred a complacent, ‘you never had it so

good’ attitude among Ekurhuleni’s white suburban residents (though not without a now largely forgotten mass movement of white protest in the form of the Torch Commando against the Nationalist government which largely expired after 1953). In the newly constructed townships rising rents and the intensification of pass controls helped stimulate far more powerful movements of African mass nationalism. Both are discussed in Chapter 7. African Nationalism was, however, cross cut and to some extent obstructed by an alternating pattern of response and resistance which was articulated by the huge number of newly arrived black immigrants to Ekurhuleni. This is the subject of the following chapter, Chapter 6. By the time of World War II, secondary industrialisation in Ekurhuleni was transforming the area into the workshop of South Africa. The pace of social change generated by this process implanted huge social strains in both white and black communities. These took the form of juvenile gangs among both whites and blacks and contestations bred by the massive congestion which developed in both white and black residential areas which took its own distinct toll on social stability. Both whites and blacks sought to soften the harsh regimes of early industrialising society to which they were subject for five-and-ahalf days a week by engaging either as participants or spectators in a variety of leisure-time activities. For whites that meant soccer, boxing and horse and dog racing. For blacks this meant above all soccer which repeatedly features in oral accounts.

Social worlds and social strains in industrialising Ekurhuleni 65

Chapter 6

Squatter camps and immigrant culture

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

B

etween 1944 and 1950 a series of land invasions took place in Benoni which led to the formation of the Tent Town and Apex squatter camps. These were the result of accelerated immigration from the countryside to the towns and a pronounced drift of African mine workers away from the mines. An important staging post for these immigrants were the white small holdings surrounding the towns. Once these were suppressed by the authorities many of their inhabitants swelled the numbers of residents in the Benoni squatter camps. In the camps two groups of residents were conspicuous. Firstly women, who largely ran them; and secondly a migrant/immigrant gang who called themselves ‘amaRashea’ (the Russians) which in many ways distilled – in extreme form – black immigrant culture. These engaged in a series of bloody conflicts cultured with others and also between themselves, comprehensively disrupting the stability of the camps.

Apex Squatter Camp

Squatter camps and immigrant culture 67

Harry Mabuya – leader of Benoni’s squatter movement

Squatter camps and immigrant culture As pressures built up in the Ekurhuleni locations, they searched insistently for a vent. One of the first ruptures or breakthroughs they made was in Twatwa or the Benoni Old Location. Their conduit and leader was Harry Don Mabuya. Harry Mabuya was born in Bergville in Natal in 1906 and went with his parents to Benoni in 1918. In 1937 he opened a business in Benoni where he soon made his mark. Elected to the location’s Advisory Board in 1940, he displayed a strong interest in social welfare. After founding the Benoni African Pauper Relief and Social Welfare Society and running its labour exchange, he is claimed to have convinced the newly formed Amato

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Textile Company to recruit its labour predominantly from unemployed township youths. He was especially active in championing the cause of single women. ‘Grannies and widows supported him a lot’, says ex-resident Mrs Thibela, ‘if a widow couldn’t afford rent Mabuya would assist’.1 Consequently, as new immigrants thronged into Twatwa and the housing crisis grew more acute, Mabuya became deeply involved. By mid-1945 he had focused his energies on the shortage of housing, giving it the kind of singleminded attention that the council could well have done without. Mabuya established the African Housing and Rates Board in July 1945 to campaign for lower rents in the Asiatic area and in the location. Its chief inspiration was the Benoni Rent Board, which in the early months of 1944 had drastically lowered rents in the Asiatic section. Mabuya claimed to be operating in co-operation with the Rent Board, although the Board itself denied that this was so. His main drive was to persuade lodgers in the Asiatic area to pay rents at the level fixed previously by the Rent Board. Taken by itself, this step was a very limited one. Towards the end of 1945, however, he went further and encouraged lodgers in the Asiatic area who were members of his African Housing and Rates Board to stop paying rent. The landlords responded by applying for eviction orders for the offending tenants. It seems probable that Mabuya had foreseen this action and had taken legal advice, for his next move was to promote a squatter invasion of land outside the location boundary which immediately plunged the Council into its worst imaginable legal and political tangle. In frantic efforts to stem the tide of land invasion, officials lost their way in a maze of rival legal and administrative jurisdictions. First they wanted to charge the still small squatter community with trespass, but learnt there was no legal basis to do so. Then they sought to prosecute the squatters under the municipal building by-laws but found that ‘a tent was not a structure’. Finally they attempted to invoke emergency regulations which had been used to remove a squatter camp in Alberton two years before, but failed because the Native Affairs Department (NAD) was resolutely opposed, since the only area to which they could

be removed was the already highly congested Trust farms, and the NAD refused to agree to that. To add insult to injury, the squatters had settled in a wedge of territory belonging to Brakpan, which placed the council’s legal locus standi in doubt. Mabuya and his lawyers had clearly done their research well. As the authorities dithered, the numbers of squatters grew from a trickle to a flood. By 31 December 1945, 111 families had set up tents or shacks in the new squatter area. Mabuya established a committee to administer the camp and levied a 2s 6d fee on each new arrival as a membership fee of his African Housing and Rates Board. Seeing its authority draining away, the Council abruptly changed track, setting up an area immediately adjacent to the location which would be serviced by sanitation and water, on which its own ‘tent town’ would be erected. Those not voluntarily moving from the ‘old’ camp to the new one could face legal action. Simultaneous prosecutions of Indian landlords who were evicting their tenants would be greatly increased. ‘If the perpetuation of slum conditions is the price of securing the necessary control’, the Native Affairs Manager bluntly admitted, ‘it would appear to be fully justified.’2 A further contributory factor to the explosion of squatting in Benoni, and Ekurhuleni more generally, was the African Mine Workers’ Strike (called ‘the ten shilling strike’ by those taking part) which broke out in August 1946. The prime motive for the strike was the same as that of February 1920: galloping inflation during and after the war and the failure of wages even remotely to keep up. At the annual conference of the African Mine Workers’ Union (AMWU) in April 1946 delegates adopted the demand of 10 shillings a day, for which, they declared, they ‘would struggle with all their might’.3 At a further meeting on 4 August, a proposal made from the floor resulted in a near-unanimous decision to hold a general mine workers’ strike across the Rand, beginning on 14 August 1946. The mine workers’ strike pulled out over 70 000 African workers but was confined largely to Ekurhuleni and Crown Mines. The most solid and unyielding strike action took place on Benoni’s New Kleinfontein Mine. In probably the most dramatic episode of the strike, 3  000 to 4 000 mine workers

(out of a complement of 6 000) laid siege to Benoni’s police station, where three of their fellow miners were locked up. It took 300 police reinforcements armed with bayonets and batons to scatter the strikers.4 The failure of the strike, and the brutality with which it was suppressed, left black miners profoundly embittered and aggrieved. A large number quit the mines for the locations and more frequently the squatter camps, where forged passes could be obtained. Others worked out their contracts vowing never to return to the mine before going back to their rural homes. Some headed straight for one or other of Benoni’s industrial companies after finishing their contracts on the mines, since the 1937 Urban Areas Act allowed workers who had completed contracts to seek work in urban areas without acquiring special permission. As a result, African employment on the gold mines fell from 363 020 in June 1946 to 305 000 in November. A large part of this exodus comprised Basotho miners. Between 1946 and 1948 their numbers on the Rand dropped from 55 136 to a startlingly low 26 672. Figures of those employed in industry rose by roughly the same proportion. From this point until the mid-1950s, the mining industry faced a continuing labour shortage and turned increasingly to foreign recruiting.5 South African-born miners had been slipping out of the mines into industry since the early 1940s. The strike decisively accelerated this move. Benoni’s experience exemplified the pattern. In September 1947 the town’s Native Commissioner encountered a number of discharged mine workers who were en route to Benoni’s Tent Town and a more settled urban existence. An important staging post for many new immigrants from the countryside or for those escaping the mines were the small agricultural areas (small holdings) which surrounded Benoni and most of Ekurhuleni’s towns. By the late 1940s across Ekurhuleni these were bulging with new residents.6 Most of these ex-miners applied for work in Ekurhuleni’s rapidly growing industrial sector. One such work-seeker was Shadrack Mthembu. He found accommodation on the outskirts of Angelo mines on a small holding owned by white farmers. He recalls: ‘These plots were owned by the factory bosses. That

Squatter camps and immigrant culture 69

Shack in Apex Squatter Camp

is where most of the people worked.’ Shadrack was illegal, unregistered and worked in an extremely hazardous factory called Dusting Chemicals. He was arrested three times because of his unregistered status. ‘Police would come at about 7 am when everybody is preparing to go to work or is still asleep. They would knock at every door and arrest those like me.’7 Much the same happened around Benoni as new immigrants jammed into neighbouring small holdings like Brentwood Park, Rietvlei, Putfontein and elsewhere. In 1950, when homeless workers from Benoni’s new factories (particularly Amato Textile) began to erect shacks at the Rietpan small holding owned by Mr Botha, complaints were directed towards the authorities, police moved in and ‘everyone, including small children’ was arrested for illegal squatting and carted off to Bedfordview police

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station.8 According to Herman Zwane, then resident at Rietpan, who later acquired a house in the Benoni township of Daveyton: We collected R2.50 from those remaining who were not arrested and took it to Mr Baker who was my lawyer. With this our children and our wives were released. He said ‘birds have nests so find a place for these people’. Mr Baker investigated and discovered that the area around Apex was not occupied. He called all his clients together and said ‘Next month on Friday it will be a holiday, so that will be 16 May 1950’. There was a timber yard called ‘Colonial Timber’ owned by a Jew. We met and bought our tents on that Friday as Mr Baker directed.

Mrs Rose Nthoba takes up the story at that point: ‘Mota, Nkala, Ndlovu were our leaders when we went to Apex. We arrived there around 10 p.m. We hired two lorries.’ Herman Zwane completes the tale: ‘The first number of shacks was 65. The following week I could no longer count. The third week nearly everyone had left Botha’s farm. The Brakpan police were surprised by the smoke and reported to Benoni but they could do nothing.’9 Either then or slightly before a curious set of interactions began to emerge between the small holdings and mines such as New Kleinfontein. According to Mrs Thibela, a women’s leader in Tent Town, many of those living on the plots ‘were really suffering’.10 Frank Mahungela, who set up shack in Apex, the squatter camp which sprang up near Benoni in 1950, provides an extraordinarily graphic insight into how, in one instance, this occurred. Mahungela quit mining for Apex as a result of an encounter with a large group of squatters. When this happened Mahungela was working on New Kleinfontein in Mines. Here he was sleeping one night when a squatter party came by. There were many … in hundreds, there were men and women and their children, having parcels and boxes and so on … I was actually woken up. These people wanted some water and I gave them … I asked them where they were going and they told me they came to build their houses in a nearby space. Early in the morning shacks [were] all over the place and I asked if I could put up my shack, and they said ‘with pleasure.’11 Shadrack Sinaba, New Kleinfontein African Mine Workers’ Union leader, recalls an almost identical experience.12 For those who feared or deigned not to walk, Harry Mabuya, the squatter leader, ferried residents from neighbouring small holdings in trucks under the cover of night.13 Elsewhere, however, many continued to live on the small holdings around Ekurhuleni’s towns. Shadrack Mthembu (already mentioned) was one. Shadrack’s prospects worsened after the Defiance Campaign of 1952. The year before, a mounted police patrol had been formed to ‘patrol remote mine areas, dense

plantations and far off residential areas’, whose brief was to root out illegal squatters. They were temporarily redirected to work elsewhere to contain the Defiance Campaign, but once that was over returned with a vengeance to the small holdings of Ekurhuleni. At that stage Shadrack had to head for alternative accommodation in one of Ekurhuleni’s towns.14 He was one of the victims of its raids and only thereafter was able to gain admission first to Alberton location and then to Thokoza. As a result, all efforts to stifle the illegal settlement on the part of the Benoni municipality by setting up a municipal tent town failed dismally. There was simply not enough space in the municipal tent town to absorb those crowding into Mabuya’s camp. Eighty tents and seven shacks in July 1946 grew to 820 tents and shacks housing 4  000 people by the middle of 1949. The municipal tent town, by contrast, consisted of a mere 57 tents. Council’s quest for control of urban settlement had been thoroughly subverted from below. It remained confronted with a municipal tent town of 57 tents, an illegal tent town of 6 000 people, and a lodger population in the old location and the Asiatic section which were even more packed than before. By June 1949, lodger numbers in the Asiatic area had risen to 2 336, while those in the location had also grown. By mid-1950, 5 003 people crushed into the Asiatic section alone.15

Squatter politics Squatter politics in Ekurhuleni exhibited a curious blend of contradictory political currents. The one end was self-assertively feminist; the other conspicuously male chauvinist. Women were at the centre of squatter politics. With their husbands mostly at work all day, they took the lead in organising the demonstrations for housing which the Native Commissioner so dreaded. These were often accompanied by Mabuya. Mrs Thibela recalls the Tent Town women marching down the road to the Native Commissioner’s office singing, ‘Siyawugubha, siyawugubhula umhlaba ka Maspale’ (‘We are digging, we are slicing off chunks of the Municipality’s land’), and ‘We have our tsotsi with us: he is not behind’ – a reference to Mabuya.16 Women residents were also prominent in the actual

Squatter camps and immigrant culture 71

Morris Nestadt, Mayor of Benoni administration of Tent Town. They were primary participants on the African House and Rates Board, which ran every aspect of the camp’s life, from providing food through the Mabuya Township Trading Co-operative Society Ltd to holding church services for the community in the morning and the evening, to policing the encampment during the week (the job of women) and during the weekend (the job of men). On the executive committee of the African Housing and Rates Board sat Mrs Msibi (Mabuya’s cousin), Mrs Ntlokwane, Mrs Senusi, Mr Mhlambi (the secretary) and Mr Lesenya. Mrs Ntlokwane was later to top the polls in the emergency camp’s Advisory Board elections, a most unusual event at the time. On the other hand the populations who filtered into small holdings, the sub-tenants in the old

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locations and many male residents in the mushrooming squatter camps which sprang up in the mid to late 1940s were migrant or immigrant in composition, and had been socialised in rural homes. One demographer, for instance, calculated that net immigration from the countryside accounted for 75% of the increase in African male population in the towns between 1936 and 1946, and 58% for the following five years.17 A substantial majority of the total African population in and around the town were thus immigrants or first generation residents.18 To take just one Ekurhuleni example, a survey conducted in Payneville (Springs) in 1953 revealed that 40% of its population had resided there for less than ten years.19 Such relatively new arrivals clung on to rural cultures and rural traditions, although these were gradually modified by

the experience of the towns. This was the main reason why these people proved relatively inaccessible and indifferent to the main African political parties of the time. One of the most conspicuous and indeed dreaded groups of migrants/immigrants in Ekurhuleni were the amaRashea or Russians, who were composed almost exclusively of South Sotho immigrants from Basutoland (now Lesotho). The Russians terrorised most communities in Ekurhuleni (and indeed the Rand as a whole) between the late 1940s and late 1950s. They formed their organisation (and adopted their name) in the middle months of 1947. Two main reasons prompted their formation: disputes over territory and conflicts over women. The trigger was provided by visits of large groups of Basotho miners to Benoni’s African township of Twatwa who, it was said, were intent on ‘cohabiting’ with the wives and women of other Basotho residents in the location. Under the leadership of Mabula Molapo and Mohau Massu, the Twatwa Basotho grouped themselves into a group called the Russians to drive the interlopers out. In retaliation, the visitors – and other Basotho from the mines – coalesced into a rival gang which they named the Japanese under the leadership of Lekhetla Mokhotlane. These events began a vicious cycle of violence which did not subside for another five years.20 First a major battle and then minor skirmishes between the two groups took place in August 1947 and the first half of 1948. When Tent Town was formed by Harry Mabuya, the Japanese abandoned the Benoni mines to take up residence there, mirroring a broader process taking place all over Ekurhuleni. This soon brought new disputes in its wake. In October it helped inspire an ethnic conflict between the Russians and a section of Xhosa residents in Benoni’s Tent Town, leaving two dead and 27 injured, 12 critically. Later the Russians and Japanese themselves re-aligned on the basis of long-standing geographical and royal lineage divisions in Basutoland itself, into Molapo (northern) and Matsieng (south/central Basutoland) factions (both of whom still retained the same name of Russians), who then repeatedly clashed.21 The continued depredations of the Russians

prompted a fresh round of disturbances between the Russians in Tent Town (the Molapo) and its Xhosa inhabitants. In August 1949 Harry Mabuya and his committee formed a civilian guard comprising mostly Xhosa in an effort to combat a growing Russian ascendency there. Molapo leader Pokane recalls: He (Mabuya) came along with his civil guard to my tent. He wanted my blood but he couldn’t find me. … As they were destroying my tent I was watching with my boys. I was hiding. He was commanding, while in his car and focusing his lights on my tent. After biding his time, Pokane responded in a violent assault in which Mabuya’s Xhosa were heavily defeated. From this point on they ruled the roost.22 Analogous conflicts erupted with similar outcomes in Brakpan, Germiston, Benoni location and Boksburg.23 Benoni nevertheless stood at their centre in Ekurhuleni (as did Newclare in Johannesburg). Perhaps the most celebrated conflict of all took place there in September 1950, when the Russians and Zulu migrant workers from the Benoni hostel and the Dunswart Iron and Steel Works clashed.24 Noni Monare leaves this account: The Sothos told me that they are going to fight the Zulus and the police have allowed them [the Zulus] to fight. They went to tell others on the mines and they came Friday night into the Indian section – that’s where the Sothos used to stay. The Sothos used sticks and you would think these were ordinary sticks – one stick which had a hole right in before you came to the edge. Every Mosotho has a battle axe in his pocket, a screwing one. One would think they are walking; they would just pull out an axe which was made in such a manner that nobody can see it. All of them had those battle axes, now on Saturday the battle would start after 12.00 p.m. and the Zulus came from Dunswart direction with spears – they came down singing and there were so many of them and people were mesmerised by their numbers and their songs as well – you know they made a

Squatter camps and immigrant culture 73

hell of a noise – and the Sothos were not out yet, but the leader would come out with a white shirt on, and white shoes with his blanket and stick. He went out and stopped. He was a bit far and then he stopped right in the middle and after that we heard a whistle going like wee-wee-wee. Then we saw a mob of them coming, they were coming in a group all standing behind their leader – all in black trousers and white shirts and one blanket, red and black blankets, wearing them on their shoulders and they are holding one stick each – those are Sothos. And Zulu women – but the Sotho women came with blankets on their waists. They stopped a little bit far from the men. They now started singing with the men, singing a battle song and the women started ululating. They now became wild, and then they keep silent and the one with the whistle blew it. We were watching. They now started rolling the blankets on their arms … Those fighting with the left they roll them on their right arms and vice versa. The Zulus were coming until they were about 300 metres, a whistle went from the Sothos like tswee, tswee … I saw a man running without a head, all the skull is gone – fell down. It was a terrific thing to see how the Zulus were killed by the Sotho … then one blew a whistle – everybody went back … tswee, tswee, tswee. They ran into their Indian places as if there was no fight.25 The Russians never deliberately set out to confront or conflict with any agent of state authority, but if you unknowingly crossed their path they could respond with extreme violence. This made them a highly disruptive and unpredictable force in Ekurhuleni, as was shown most dramatically in a confrontation which took place in Tent Town squatter camp in Benoni in May 1950 when a white police sergeant named Nothnagel was killed in a fight with the Russians. Nothnagel’s nemesis came when, after a battle between the Molapo and Matsieng factions in which Molapo came out on top, he mounted a counter-raid

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on the Molapo stronghold of Tent Town. In the course of this battle Nothnagel and a black sergeant named Tseeu were hacked to death. According to two Russian accounts (one Matsieng and one Molapo), though not found in any official police reports, Nothnagel’s sexual organs were cut out and carried off as one of the prizes of the battle. A police crackdown inevitably followed in which a large number of unrepentant Russians were arrested and the Molapo leader, Motsarapane Shiba, among others, was charged with murder and assault. At this point the Russians again displayed their utter disdain for the upholders of the law. It was customary at such trials for large numbers of Russians to attend, and to return in the train carrying the prisoners back from the circuit court in Springs to Boksburg’s main prison. On a similar occasion three years earlier, much savoured by Rantoa, a Russian interviewee, the Matsieng had used this opportunity to attack Molapo prisoners in Benoni’s magistrate’s court, forcing the magistrate and other officers of the court into unseemly headlong flight. This time the Molapo faction crowded into the same railway carriage as Matsarapane and his three jailers, after which they attacked them and forced them to let Matsarapane go. At Apex Station a taxi owned by one of the Russians’ favourite taxi drivers, PM, was waiting to take Matsarapane to Sankatane, the Molapo leader in Pimville, who in turn conveyed him by taxi to Basutoland. There Matsarapane was doctored for three months, but then impaired the efficacy of the treatment by sleeping with a woman. On returning to the gold fields in the Free State he was informed on by a member of the Matsieng faction, re-arrested and later hanged.26 A prime target and enemy of both groups of Russians were tsotsi (juvenile delinquents/criminals) and urban youth gangs. The Russians harboured a deep antipathy for urban youth – they viewed them as being without culture or principle, and prone to rob and assault defenceless migrant workers. Whether on the streets or the trains, the Russians delighted in taking reprisals on such youths who correspondingly loathed and feared the Russians and made sure to keep well out of their way. In a sense, for the Russians, urban youth symbolised an unappealing second (or

third or fourth) generation black urban culture.27 Partly for the same reason the Russians adopted a distant, if not hostile, attitude to the African National Congress (ANC), whose campaigns (Defiance Campaign, Bantu Education Campaign, Congress of the People Campaign, Anti-pass Campaign) the Russians viewed as counterproductive and futile. Moreover, as tsotsi youths began to play a more active role in ANC campaigns as in Germiston in December 1955, when they flocked to the ANC-aligned Civilian Guards, the Russians tended to adopt an attitude of increasingly active opposition to the ANC.28 A similar polarisation occurred in Stirtonville location. In the middle of 1951 visiting Russians (most probably from Dukathole) began to make pre-emptive attacks on tsotsi groups in the location. The most inflammatory of these was an unprovoked assault on a group of youths playing dice on a street corner, probably in the single quarters. Tsotsi gangs took whatever opportunity they could to take revenge. Matters came to a head on the weekend of 11 and 12 August 1951. On the 10th an unnamed Advisory Board and Vigilance Committee member went to Germiston to arrange transport to bring a group of Germiston Russians to Stirtonville. After the Russians

arrived on the evening of the 11th they took part in a number of skirmishes with residents of the single quarters which lasted till late the following night. In the course of these battles, which the police dismally failed to quell, one person was killed, eight more were injured, one was raped and 73 were arrested. The Russians persisted as the most elementary and uncontrolled force across Ekurhuleni until the early 1960s. Only then, along with most politically subversive social and political groups, were they brought under effective state control. Between them the Russians and the squatter movements represented the most insurgent subversive forces on the Ekurhuleni social landscape. They were perhaps the prime examples of the search for African autonomy and African leadership at the time. Yet both remained curiously immune and unresponsive to the main opposition political movements of the day, the CPSA and the ANC. Had the latter managed to capture or channel them, they might have constituted a much earlier and more formidable challenge to the State than they did. As it was, both remained stubbornly independent of both the State and mainstream African politics. This constitutes one of the major paradoxes of this turbulent decade.

Squatter camps and immigrant culture 75

Chapter 7

Turning point 1940s

Centenary celebrations of the Trek were used to mobilise Afrikaner Nationalism

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W

orld War II transformed the face of South African politics forever. First, it brought to full strength and maturity a more unified Afrikaner nationalism than had ever been seen before, which came to power in the general election of 1948, and which then dominated white and indeed South African politics for another 40 years. Secondly it gave birth to the mass African nationalism of an equally unprecedented kind, which remained locked in conflict with the Afrikaner Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party (Purified National Party), the main political representative of Afrikaner nationalism, until it was temporarily vanquished and suppressed in the early 1960s. The following two chapters review these developments in one of the political hotspots of South Africa in this period (and later), Ekurhuleni.

Turning point 1940s 77

The rise of Afrikaner nationalism A revived Afrikaner nationalism was the first to stage an appearance. A suite of Afrikaner cultural front organisations had been set in place in the 1930s, following the inauguration of the Federasie van Afrikaner Kultuurvereenigings (FAK) in 1929. Then began a cultural mobilisation of Afrikaners of a kind never seen before, as has been noted – an offensive in the field of leisure time and sport. By 1937 almost 300 cultural, church, youth and educational bodies had affiliated to it. At the centre of their activities was their language, Afrikaans, which they aimed to modernise, transforming it ‘from the language of the veld and the farm to the language of the city, factory and commerce’. The combination of the Great Depression and unprecedentedly protracted and severe droughts in the early 1930s had caused the final break-up of platteland communities and the increased urbanisation of Afrikaners, which shifted the main locus of the language struggle to the centres of industrial production. The cities of South Africa, of which those in Ekurhuleni were prime examples, were overwhelmingly English. On the factory floor, in the shops and in the banks Afrikaans was hardly used and was derided as a kitchen language. The various publications issued by FAK affiliates such as the Afrikaner Studentebond now began to urge readers and members to buy Afrikaans products and to insist on using Afrikaans in all economic activities.1 Ekurhuleni towns with higher percentage Afrikaner populations, like Brakpan and Boksburg, were in the forefront of this movement. In Brakpan it was led, as was so often the case elsewhere, by schoolteachers (Heyns, Bakkes, Van der Walt) and attorneys (Papenfus and Froneman). Afrikaners now routinely demanded service from shopkeepers in Afrikaans. The shop assistant, who at that time was invariably Englishspeaking, generally did not understand them, which led to formal complaints and a complete re-adjustment of customer service.2 A major turning point was reached in 1938 when the Eeufees (centenary) of the Great Trek was held and nine replica Voortrekker ox wagons set out from Cape Town to Pretoria, visiting as many towns as possible on their way. Again Brakpan was one such stop. According to Selby Webster, the

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whole town turned out to meet them, many dressed in traditional Voortrekker costume. In a change of personal style, matching their earlier adoption of shorts, many men grew Voortrekker beards. The mayor, Councillor Bakkes, also made an announcement upon their arrival, which was matched in small towns all over South Africa – Modder Road would be renamed Voortrekker Road. A Boer festival was then staged, at which dancing and singing in traditional style occurred. The Trek, to everyone’s surprise, turned into a mass emotional outpouring on the part of Afrikaners and massively solidified Afrikaner cultural and nationalist sentiment. Within a few years the Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) won control of the Brakpan municipal council (in 1943). The writing was on the wall.3 The period of World War II consolidated and accelerated these trends. First, many Afrikaners were vehemently opposed to South Africa’s participation in England’s war, while as the number of Englishspeaking volunteers from Ekurhuleni attested, the English section of the population was correspondingly supportive.4 A majority of Afrikaner opponents of the war, such as those in the HNP, expressed their opposition in constitutionalist mode. Others like the paramilitary Ossewa Brandwag (OB) adopted an openly fascist policy, paraded in quasi-Nazi garb and embarked on an extensive campaign of sabotage and violence. Both responses only got fully into stride in 1941–2, as a result of which bitter rivalries between them erupted in a ‘broedertwis’ in the middle years of the war, leading them partly to cancel each other out. This, among other things, allowed Smuts’ United Party (UP) to win the 1943 general election with a handsome majority securing no less than 60% of the vote in four out of six Ekurhuleni constituencies. The UP victory was nevertheless in some sense pyrrhic, and allowed the extent of the swing in popular sentiment among Afrikaners away from the broad white South Africanism espoused by Smuts towards a narrow and bigoted Afrikaner nationalism, to be concealed. In this respect 1941 was more of a turning point than 1943. By early 1941, for example, the OB had 300 000–400 000 Afrikaners in its ranks. These were the ultra-hard-core fascist right, who were responsible

for a wave of bombings in the urban areas of South Africa, including the bombing of Benoni post office in May 1942, and a similar episode in Boksburg later that year.5 Afrikaners gravitated towards a revitalised Afrikaner nationalism for other more material reasons as the war progressed. The demands of expanded production both for internal consumption and for the war effort led to the expansion of semi-skilled operative work, the imposition of the arbitrary and authoritarian control of the Controller of Manpower over the working week (e.g. overtime without pay), control over the movement of workers between jobs, job dilution, and the consequent entry on a large scale of especially white women dilutees but also African workers. Those who were most threatened by these changes were the lower strata of white male workers (semi-skilled and overwhelmingly Afrikaner). Since the mainly English-speaking craft unions and the leadership of the South African Labour Party which had allied with Smuts’ UP for the duration of the war largely colluded in such sweeping controls, in the interests of war, Afrikaner workers became more and more alienated from both groups. This was nowhere more evident than in the Mine Workers’ Union, whose leadership connived with the government and employers to hold down white miners’ pay for the duration of the war. From 1937, elections were first rigged and then postponed until the leadership were finally swept from office in a white mine workers’ strike in 1947. As a result, and in sharp contrast to World War I, the real wages of white workers actually fell during these years, especially among white miners. Black wages, by contrast, except on the mines, rose by 50%. Small wonder then that by 1948 the South African Labour Party’s base among the largely Afrikaans-speaking white workers on the Rand lay in tatters. After increasing their representation in Parliament from five in 1937 to eight in 1943, it did not even field candidates in many mining constituencies which were traditionally its heartland in the elections of 1948, and was decimated in the polls. Afrikaner workers, faced with a stark choice between the UP and the HNP, flocked to the latter. The HNP seized what turned out to be a vital eight

seats in mining areas on the Witwatersrand in the ensuing general election which they still won only by a wafer-thin five-seat majority. While the traditionally more Afrikaner West Rand voted solidly for the new government, support was patchier in Ekurhuleni.6 Here only Germiston and Kempton Park returned Nationalist Members of Parliament. Nevertheless in every Ekurhuleni constituency the drift was plain to see.7 In Brakpan, where the UP had won by a large majority in 1943, the UP candidate A.L. Trollip only won by two votes over his Afrikaner National Party rival and future Prime Minister B.J. Vorster, an outcome that was reversed in 1953 when Vorster won by 53 votes.8 Elsewhere in Ekurhuleni the 1953 elections also marked a political watershed, with the NP winning half the seats and coming in runner up in the rest. This would also be the last time the SALP was able to hold on to its Benoni seats – securing a tiny 7% of the ballots in the next. A further factor which several scholars believe affected the outcome of the 1948 election was disaffection among returning ex-servicemen. Demobilisation was slow in 1945, and soldiers also returned to a changed industrial system and to corresponding changes in the place that the white man held in it. Not only had large numbers of white women moved into the white male workers’ formerly protected employment domain, but so had many black men. Most returning veterans were in fact quickly placed in jobs in industry and commerce by the Ministry of Welfare and Demobilisation (155 330 all told), but for large numbers, the jobs they were given (and the wages they were paid) did not match up to the powerful assumptions of entitlement that had grown up among them while fighting at the Front. In addition, many returned with a powerful desire to marry and settle down, but were faced with desperate shortages of housing for whites (no new houses having been built since 1939, resulting in a national backlog of 130 000 for whites alone). Returning veterans, as a result, became deeply embittered with the ruling UP and its Prime Minister, Jan Smuts (whom they nicknamed ‘Jannie Promises’). If the Brakpan case is anything to go by, many abstained or voted Nationalist in the 1948 election.9

Turning point 1940s 79

Returning white servicemen made a deep impression on the political life of Ekurhuleni in 1951. It was then that the War Veterans’ Torch Commando entered the South African political arena in response to government attempts to gerrymander the Constitution and to remove coloureds from the common voters’ roll. The Torch Commando was a vital, but largely forgotten part of white anti-Nationalist politics in the early 1950s. At its height it attracted 250 000 white ex-servicemen supporters, probably the largest mass movement to have arisen in South Africa to that point. The Torch Commando points to one among several lost political opportunities following World War II. It reflects the ambiguities, and contradictions of white liberalism in the mid-20th century, but also the ideals by which it was infused. For the Torch Commando, and also for the Springbok Legion, the war-time left-wing soldiers’ trade union which was partly instrumental in its birth, the HNP’s attempt to remove the coloured vote flouted the ideals that underpinned South Africa’s participation in World War II (which the HNP had strongly resisted), especially democracy and fraternity. One of the striking features that characterised the pattern of white South African recruitment into the armed services in 1939–1941 was the large number of poor Afrikaners that enlisted, and one of the enduring legacies of the war was a commitment to a loosely defined democratic spirit of fraternity which developed among English- and Afrikaansspeaking soldiers. The disrespect and indeed violence that returned veterans received from (NP) thugs in the run-up to 1948 and thereafter thus generated a profound alienation from the governing party which fed into the strong support the Torch Commando briefly enjoyed. The movement sprang to life following the announcement of moves to scrap the coloured vote. Its first public appearance was at a wreath-laying ceremony held on 21 April 1951, attended by 3 000 white ex-servicemen, in which a coffin draped in the South African flag containing a copy of the South African Constitution was placed at the foot of the cenotaph, symbolically entrusting to fallen comrades the care of the country’s Constitution. Shortly thereafter massive torch-lit processions were

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held in Johannesburg and Durban attracting 25 000 and 16 000 supporters respectively. The big towns of the Union were most conspicuous in the subsequent campaign, support from Benoni being particularly strong. In the 1953 election the Torch Commando furnished 15 full-time organisers, 5 000 cars and 60 000 canvassers in opposition to HNP candidates. The HNP, which had re-jigged the constituencies in ways that gave it further electoral weight, won the election with a substantially increased majority of 32 seats. In the course of the election the Commando had to fend off numerous and ferocious attacks by HNP supporters, whose brutality and violence testify to the deep divisions within white society at the time. Indeed, so afraid were the executive members of the Torch Commando of State retribution in the form of treason and other trials that they burnt all Torch Commando records after the election of 1953, an event which consigned it decisively thereafter to the historical shadows.10

Changing rhythms of black politics African political struggles and organisation were transformed equally fundamentally by World War II. Here again 1941 proved to be a pivotal year. Up until the end of 1940 the economy either shrank or marked time due to the closure of firms particularly in the building and wholesale trades.11 Then, as noted earlier, a surge of manufacturing expansion followed to provide for local needs and the demands of the allied armed forces, a significant part of which was concentrating on Ekurhuleni.12 This growth brought in its wake shortages of labour and sucked tens of thousands of new African industrial workers into Ekurhuleni. This same influx, as was discussed earlier, resulted in massive residential congestion in the African locations, an explosion of sub-letting and shack building and an escalation of rents to be paid by hard-pressed African sub-tenants. These two developments, above all, along with local and central governments’ measures to contain them, injected a new insurgent spirit into Ekurhuleni’s African location population which, however, remained all too often parochial, sectional and introverted. A set of localised

struggles ensued across Ekurhuleni which, while showing marked similarities, also remained relatively disconnected, certainly for the decade of the 1940s. One immediate response to the new conditions was the revitalisation of vigilance associations across the Rand, and their close interaction with increasingly politicised advisory boards. Whereas in the 1930s advisory board members were generally traders, preachers and the occasional professional, what Brandel-Syrier calls location ‘notables’, they were now taken over by teachers, workers and political activists.13 One highly aggrieved and assertive component of this new cohort of elected advisory board members was the teachers. These were especially conspicuous in the Brakpan and Boksburg Advisory Boards. From the beginning of the 1940s African teachers had been in a state of near revolt against their ever-shrinking pay. Teachers’ wages were always low, and never fully recovered (until 1945) from the savage cuts they received in the early 1930s’ economic depression. In 1940–1941 war-time inflation began to bite and further eroded teachers’ pay. In response, the Transvaal African Teachers Association (TATA) embarked on a salary campaign which had no material effect on their wage packet but which profoundly politicised many, Brakpan teacher, David Bopape, included. This ultimately led to a march staged by the TATA through the streets of Johannesburg in which teachers dressed in blankets to dramatise the depths of their poverty. In November 1941 the Communist Party newspaper Inkululeko reported, ‘we find teachers resorting to all kinds of expedients to keep themselves alive’, including beer brewing, fencing stolen articles and acting as agents of insurance and burial societies. A year later, the teachers’ journal Good Shepherd expressed outrage that domestic servants could earn more than a female teacher.14 Brakpan teachers’ and Ekurhuleni teachers’ representatives on the executive of TATA, David Bopape and Nchabeleng, found one outlet for their frustrations by seeking election to the Brakpan Advisory Board from which they launched a stream of complaints to the Council about the shortage of housing, inadequate educational facilities, poor bus services, high rents and police brutality. So complete was teacher dominance of the Brakpan location’s

Advisory Board that, as an ex-Advisory Board member put it to Hilary Sapire: ‘The Board was a Board of teachers … we were all teachers.’15 In Boksburg’s Stirtonville location an equally spectacular take-over of the location’s Advisory Board was mounted by teachers Benjamin Mvabasa and Lilian Mgali in November 1943. There, at a report back by the location’s outgoing Advisory Board, they rejected the Advisory Board’s report as ‘false’, deserving only to be summarily burnt which they and other dissident Vigilance Committee members proceeded to do. Mvabasa attributed the Board’s failure to its members’ uninterrupted 29 years in office, and then campaigned to unseat them, which he successfully achieved. In 1944 Mvabasa’s leadership role was usurped by a school teacher, Nebojah Mokgako, after he had mounted a boycott of Stirtonville’s African school. For the next four years Mokgako challenged the administration over a host of different issues including permits, liquor raids, poor bus services, poor water supply, location regulations and the prohibition of women’s hawking. As befitted an impoverished teacher who depended on supplementary informal income-earning activities to make a living wage, Mokgako struck up a close relationship with the (illicit) beer-brewing women of Stirtonville’s single quarters. Some months after his election to the Advisory Board, Mokgako began to organise collections of money to pay for lawyers to defend his supporters, when they were being prosecuted for liquor or permit offences. Benoni attorney, Lewis Baker, who was also Regional Secretary of the Ekurhuleni district of the CPSA, was often retained for these cases. According to an African clerk in the location offices, Mokgako’s belligerent tactics caused the Council officials charged with running the location to back off. As he observed: ‘He frightens them with lawyers.’ Council officials now thought twice about taking any action that might lead them to be grilled in court by a sharp-witted communist attorney. The Council officials were not alone in this regard. The more conservative, older and higher status sections of the location’s population were also intimidated by Mokgako’s overbearing demeanour. At an enquiry into the causes of a riot that occurred in the single quarters in 1948, Petros

Turning point 1940s 81

Nkoane complained: A section of the Advisory Board does not do as people say to them but as they want. We residents said they must listen to us but they would not and thereafter we didn’t attend the meetings. Mokgako is the whole difficulty. In 1946 collections for money began. He prohibited us who opposed him from attending meetings. He said to them they must make beer. All the old location people would not contribute. He got most of the money from the single quarters. The problem in the location is at the single quarters. We are afraid to go there. I have lived here since 1921 and it was good until 1945. Mokgako says ‘Don’t pay rent’ and the people who are afraid say the Advisory Board will make it right … About 6 000 live in the location but only between 300 and 400 vote.16 Both of these groups of local militants in Stirtonville and Brakpan locations had close ties with the CPSA, with Bopane, Nchabaleng and Ngake in Brakpan being members, along with Mokgako, Mvbasa and Peter Motloung in Stirtonville. In 1940, at the beginning of the war, the Party’s fortunes had sunk to new depths, its membership having slumped nationwide to 280, 180 of whom were based in Johannesburg.17 Part of this dismal showing was a result of its decision to oppose participation in World War II, after the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had signed a non-aggression pact in 1939. All this changed on 22 June 1941 when the German army invaded the Soviet Union and the CPSA committed itself unequivocally to support for the war. This decision released pent-up political energies and opened up a whole range of new opportunities. The Party quickly tapped into the new spirit of popular militancy coursing through the locations of the Rand. Significantly and not coincidently, at exactly the same point, Afrikaner nationalism was again flexing its muscles. David Bopape joined the Party after attending a meeting at Gandhi Hall in Johannesburg in 1941. As he describes it, ‘the speeches were nice and they said we must fight to get our country back. “Mayibuye Africa.”’ Bopape joined the CPSA as opposed to the ANC because it

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was ‘more dynamic’. It would take another year before he became a member of the ANC and then only for the ‘technical and tactical reasons [of] putting a more dynamic philosophy into the national organisation’.18 Other routes into the revitalised Party came through the trade unions. Here Ekurhuleni was becoming increasingly strategically placed. The late 1930s and early 1940s saw the revival of the African trades union movement. Initially they were not aligned to the CPSA, but from the time of the Party’s shift of policy on the war, the Party became more and more engaged in trade union struggles. To begin with, these were initially concentrated in existing unions such as the South African Clothing Workers’ Union which enjoyed a large membership in Germiston’s clothing factories.19 Then, late in 1941, the Party orchestrated two major initiatives. The first was the formation of the African Mine Workers’ Union, at the instigation of two veteran African communists, Gaur Radebe and Edwin Mofutsanyana. The second was the inauguration of the Council of Non-European Trades Unions (CNETU) at the end of the same year, which ultimately boasted a local affiliated membership of well over 100 000.20 The unions that affiliated to CNETU made a major impact on revitalising resistance in Ekurhuleni, starting at either end in Germiston and Brakpan, and later spanning the area in between. Joshua Moagi, who was to become a leading ANC militant in Katlehong, remembers the influence the unions had on his political life. When Moagi joined New York Clothing in August 1942, he was immediately recruited into the South African Clothing Workers’ Union. At this point he was not particularly politically conscious. A few months after he started working, a wage strike broke out at the factory involving both black and white workers. The union triumphed. ‘That was when I was enlightened,’ Moagi recalls. ‘I was called on to take lectures with other unions. Mr Barnes, Mrs Scheepers and Sachs gave lectures. Mandela and others used to attend. We succeeded in getting working hours reduced from 48 to 42 hours. Sachs made a great impression on me.’ Mr Masangane, an office bearer in the Shop Workers’ Union, and Mr Makwe were among other CPSA members who made an impact on Moagi’s

Congress protest in Germiston

political thinking. According to Moagi: ‘They wanted me in to their organisation. I was then involved in the [ANC] Youth League and the Communist Party was banned, but I was prepared to align with them.’ In 1954 Moagi acted on his words by playing a leading role in the campaign to affiliate the South African Clothing Workers’ Union (SACWU) with the communist-dominated South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU).21 Raphael Palime recalls how he and J. Mkwanazi, the lodgers’ leaders, were also members of SACWU while they were working at Germiston Clothing.22

Bertha Mashaba who was later to become a leading figure in the ANC Women’s League, notes that she too was a member of SACWU.23 Other unions operating in Germiston were the Glass and Chemical Workers’ Union organised by CPSA member John Nkadimeng and the Communist Party-affiliated Iron and Steel Workers’ Union and Dry Cleaners’ Union.24 Many Germiston workers were first recruited into a trade union and then joined the CPSA and the ANC. From there, they embarked on a life of community and political activism. Brakpan witnessed similar developments over the course of the war where workers

Turning point 1940s 83

II. In mid-1943 this policy backtracked once again after allied fortunes had begun to improve in the war. Renewed pass raids were mounted by the police all over the Rand, which came to a climax in the first months of 1944. The CPSA reacted by organising an anti-pass campaign which started in October 1943. Dr Yusaf Dadoo of the Transvaal Indian Congress and the CPSA was chairman; Bopape was secretary.26 Over the following six months Bopape and his colleagues worked hard throughout the country organising … we went all over, organising the people to rally round the anti-pass conference which was to be held in May 1944 … and then at that anti-pass conference we organised also an anti-pass [rally] to be held in Market Square [Johannesburg]. It was one of the biggest because it was 30 000 people – that was one of the first times I saw the masses were organised … [it was] huge … At that Conference we also took a resolution to go and meet the government and made … a petition of a million people to go to [the government in] Cape Town and protest against the passes.27

David Bopape – CP and ANC leader in Brakpan Location

joined unions, and organised and went on strike under CNETU’s direction in both the major Victoria Falls Power Plant outside that town (1941–1944) and among municipal workers (1943 and 1944).25 David Bopape dates the transformation of the CPSA into the leading African political organisation in Ekurhuleni to the anti-pass campaign of 1943–1944. In 1942 the government had relaxed the policing of the pass laws mainly with a view to buying the support of the African urban population at a time when South Africa and its allies’ fortunes were at their lowest ebb in the battle against Germany and Japan in World War

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The million signature target was never reached but, according to Bopape, the campaign turned the Party into the leading political force in Ekurhuleni. A month later the Party launched a campaign to recruit 1 000 new members on the Rand within three months. The Party newspaper Inkululeko reported, ‘The East Rand has been the first to enter the field with an open air meeting at Boksburg at which 33 new members had joined’.28 In mid-1945 Germiston Town Council also reported ‘great communistic activities over the last two months and regular meetings in the Indian Square in Dukathole’.29 The Party campaign had the additional bonus of spurring the ANC into action, so that by August 1944 Inkululeko was reporting, ‘“Join Congress to end the pass law” is the new slogan under which the ANC under the leadership of new Transvaal President C.S. Ramanhanoe (of Dukathole) is recruiting’, adding that ‘the Executive aimed to recruit 3 000 new members in the Transvaal by the end of 1944’.,30 The months on either side of the end of World War II were peppered with popular flare-ups which

must have made the region’s white rulers feel that the ground was shifting under their feet. Many of these were triggered by local authorities’ attempts to restore control over their ballooning location populations at the end of the war. First to erupt was Brakpan’s location. There the location superintendent had presided over a relatively relaxed regime of location administration since the late 1930s. Little effort had been made to arrest and prosecute illicit beer brewers, or to enforce either the rental or the lodger permit system. As a result ‘thousands’ were allegedly living illegally in location houses, beer was brewed and sold on a mass scale, and Communist Party meetings in the location passed undetected by the location administration until 1943. Upon learning of the scale of the location superintendent’s ‘dereliction’, the Brakpan Council decided to install a new superintendent and a beefed up regulatory regime. The man chosen for the task was Dr D.F. Language, a Stellenbosch academic, early ideologue of apartheid and (to cap it all) Ossewa Brandwag ‘native’ expert. Language’s racism and the stringency of the controls he introduced over the location made him notorious all over the Rand. Once Language registered the public hostility he was eliciting, he summoned a ‘welcome’ meeting in the location. Here Bopape – to thunderous applause – denounced both Language and the Council’s administration. Bopape then became a target of Language’s bitter antagonism, and his fate was sealed by the success of the anti-pass campaign of April to July 1944 in the location. Throughout June and July meetings were held in the location with tables set up in the streets, and were addressed by both local politicians and national figures such as Gana Makabeni, Edwin Mofutsanyana and C. Ramahanoe. Language responded by having Bopape dismissed from his teaching position. The location in turn responded in July by mounting a highly effective school boycott, and then with a total stayaway on 10 August 1944. This was the first action of its kind to take place in any part on the Reef – they had thrown down the gauntlet. The Council refused to compromise or concede and Language retained his position. This confrontation nevertheless laid the foundation for more than a decade of militant mobilisation and confrontation in

Brakpan, making it one of the prime hot spots on the Reef.31 The Brakpan conflict was followed shortly afterwards by an equally epic clash in the Payneville location of neighbouring Springs. Here the focus was the illicit brewing of beer. In 1938 the Springs Council had constructed a municipal beer hall (mandated by the Native Laws Amendment Act of 1937) with the twin objectives of generating revenue for the Council and undercutting or displacing the hundreds of beer-brewing Basotho women who sold vast quantities of ‘illicit’ liquor to a visiting miner clientele. The erection of the beer hall was followed by sustained raiding for illicit liquor and its brewers, which, while initially successful, provoked mass conflicts between miners, residents, beer brewers and police in September 1940 in which six white and one African policeman were injured, two location residents were killed and another two wounded. The political mood of a once-quiescent location (as well as its advisory board) now radically changed. In what in retrospect can be seen as a politically critical development, a women’s society known as the African Protection League was formed. Headed by Dinah Mayile, who twice led demonstrations on the office of the town clerk and who was ‘either directly or indirectly concerned in nearly every appeal against my [the Non-European Affairs Manager’s] actions under the regulation’, the League became the vehicle for a new kind of organised political consciousness that began to be distilled in the Payneville community. It also became the point of entry of the CPSA, a development which proceeded greatly to widen the political horizons of Springs’ African community and to connect them to more national political networks and concerns. The connection was made, as was the case in several other of Ekurhuleni’s towns, by a Communist Party lawyer, V. Berrange, who represented the women beer brewers of the location in their various legal skirmishes with the municipality. Building on this base the Communist Party soon became the most vocal and effective political force in Springs location.32 By the mid-1940s Party candidates were sweeping the advisory board elections, basing their appeal, as

Turning point 1940s 85

elsewhere in Ekurhuleni, on subsistence issues and local problems of the locations.33 One of the main consequences of the Council’s efforts to restore public order and social control in the location was thus the forging of a more coherent and radical political consciousness among its inhabitants, which promised to change the whole character and direction of class and popular struggles. Payneville was the scene of an equally fierce confrontation in July 1945. In that month the Maize Control Board informed the Springs Council that its supply of ‘kaffir corn malt’ would be reduced by 55%. The quality of municipal beer immediately suffered and the women’s leader, Dinah Mayile, together with local Communist Party leaders, decided to seize the opportunity to demand the domestic brewing of beer. A boycott of municipal beer was immediately started, leading to arrests and a brief altercation between location women and the police on 9 July. Over the following two weeks daily meetings were held in the location, culminating on Sunday, 22 July in the renewed picketing of the municipal beer hall. Police efforts to break the picket resulted in a violently hostile reaction from the residents of the location. The police were stoned by a crowd of 3 000 men and women and were then cut off in the location after a section of the crowd broke through a fence and attacked them from behind. According to a Rand Daily Mail report on 23 July 1945, ‘women fought as fiercely as men’ and it was only after rifles were brought in from a nearby police station that the bruised and beleaguered policemen were able to shoot their way out. The casualty list resulting from the shootings makes grim reading. Six were left dead and 20 injured, while 15 men and 62 women (among whom Basotho women figured prominently) were arrested. In Springs at least the municipal monopoly of beer was taking a heavy toll. Thenceforth the Communist Party in the location, led again by Dinah Mayile, intensified its efforts to bring the Advisory Board under its control. In 1945 it succeeded in electing four members to the Board including Mayile, Absolom Khumalo and W. Legodi. As in Brakpan this laid the foundation for a massive popular mobilisation against the local and central authorities for the rest of the 1950s.34

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Not far away in Boksburg’s Stirtonville location a similar drama was playing out. There Nebjah Mokgako and his supporters gained increasing leverage over political life in the location at the expense of the location administration whose influence decreased. A key index of this slippage was the sale of beer at the municipal beer hall. Sales slumped from 14  395 gallons in September 1945 to 8 681 gallons in September 1946, to 7 406 gallons in September 1947. The deficit was offset by a giant leap in illicit brewing in the single quarters which the police were unable to contain. The condition of dual power that now existed in the location meant something had to give. This process began on Good Friday, 26 March 1948. Inspector van Rooyen set out on a liquor raid on the single quarters of Stirtonville. A huge brawl ensued. Some of the location police were, for a time, trapped by the crowd. The police van was torched. Dozens were injured and a single-quarters resident was shot dead. As the single quarters took stock of the incident the next week, they might have concluded that they had come out best, the tell-tale sign being that municipal beer hall production went through the floor as its premises stood empty. No one wished to buy. The single quarters by contrast were awash in illicit ale.35 Even small, sleepy, verkrampte Alberton was not spared the spirit of the times. Shortly after the end of World War II a new location superintendent named Van Coller was appointed. As Cass Khanyile recalls: ‘There was a bully now in the township. Everybody had to listen to him. He became the Native Affairs Department. He became everything. Like controlling people going to work outside and all that. He was in fact a monarchy. That’s what I would call him.’ One of Van Coller’s most unpopular actions was rigidly to apply the system of lodgers and visiting permits. As Cass Khanyile explains: Once you were 18 years you have got to be scratched out of the permit, and have to pay a sum of two shillings as long as you are with your parents. To enforce the new regulation Van Coller’s police used to make night raids … if they found me there, they woke up everybody … if they find that you are not on a permit, maybe you came

from next door, you happened to sleep here, you are arrested. The new permit system profoundly antagonised the residents of Alberton’s old location. Wives and mothers were particularly outraged, perceiving the new permit as an attack on family cohesion. On the afternoon of Friday, 19 November 1946 their anger boiled over. ‘It started during the day on the afternoon, by women, mothers,’ according to James Ngubeni. The location youth also played a prominent role. When the location men returned home from work they joined in. Rosaline Sibeko, Cass Khanyile and James Ngubeni remember: ‘From about half past nine it was really a strike. They threw stones at the offices, but by about 10 o’clock they dismantled them … they were bombing the office.’ According to Bethuel Khubeka, whose father was a sergeant in the Alberton location police: The mob came to kill now there at the office. They threw stones. Later they were joined by their husbands. And there was one sergeant of the SAP left in the office. That one Mr Mofokeng. They killed him. They drove a nail in his one ear to the next ear. They killed him thinking he was my father … It was at that time [that] start[s] the move of the ANC … Rosaline Sibeko names Sergeant Nhlapo as the dead policeman, claiming his body was burnt with tyres. The date assigned to this event varies from 1946 to 1953. Raids for permits continued but less frequently and less violently. The location police sometimes warned the residents that a raid was impending. Illegal lodgers then decamped and ‘slept in the hills or white grave yards’, Rosaline Sibeko again recalls. Some time after the riot, location superintendent Van Coller was replaced. According to Cass Khanyile, ‘he literally ran away’ together with eight of his police, to take up a new position in Pietersburg. A more sympathetic superintendent Reece took his place.

After this political agitation subsided. Meanwhile the young men of Alberton joined the ANC.36

Distilling a new tradition in black politics Benoni’s Twatwa location in certain respects bucked the trend, largely because of its heavy industrial character, its mainly migrant workforce, and the massive squatter movements that unfolded on its outskirts in 1946 and 1950. Here the CPSA found itself in an awkward, ambiguous, even embarrassing position. It kept aloof from the squatter movements of the Rand believing them to be directed by political opportunists, and preferred to direct its energies towards calling for more houses and for higher wages with which to pay higher rents. Eventually unavoidable political realities compelled it to change its stand and the CPSA local branch leader, who acted as lawyer to squatter leader Harry Mabuya, may well have been involved in the setting up of Tent Town. Otherwise its branch structure held ‘well patronised meetings’ in Twatwa location on bread-and-butter location issues for most of 1946. It also involved itself in the challenging (but in the end fairly fruitless) task of organising unions in the towns’ dominant heavy metal sector whose massive labour turnover made any organisation almost impossible. Then, from the end of 1946 the CPSA entered what appears to have been a period of hibernation. Two events seem to explain the temporary withdrawal from grass-roots political agitation in Benoni and elsewhere. Late in June 1946, the second national Anti-Pass Conference was held in Johannesburg. Delegates from all over the country attended and took ‘the historic decision’ to organise a national stoppage of work and the burning of passes within the next three months. A month later substantial anti-pass meetings were convened on the West and East Rand, the latter including Germiston, Brakpan and Benoni. Finally on 4 August at a meeting in Market Square, Newtown, a crowd of delegates committed themselves to these ambitious goals. During the same period, labour protest was building on the mines. As noted earlier an AMWU meeting of 4 August 1946 decided to hold a general mine workers’ strike across the Rand beginning

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on 14 August 1946. This resulted in one of the most impressive acts of workers’ resistance to have been seen in South African history, but which was speedily and violently repressed. The African Mine Workers’ Union never recovered. The crushing of the strike was in fact a symptom of the end of one phase of African politics on the Rand. Up until 1944 the affiliated membership of the Council of Non-European Trade Unions (CNETU) had risen, but in the last 12 months of this period had flattened out. By the beginning of 1944 its membership stood at possibly 97  000 in the Transvaal. From mid-1944 both the Council and many of its affiliates went into gradual and then sharp decline, plunging to a membership of 17 296 nationwide six years later. A critical failure which contributed significantly to this decline was the inability of CNETU to mount a general sympathy strike as the police began their brutal clampdown on the striking miners across the Rand. After this, CNETU’s credibility was never restored. A further setback sustained by the Party, as well as by African political organisations more generally on the Rand, was the collapse of the second phase of the Anti-Pass Campaign. Despite the resolution of the Newtown meeting of 4 August the initiative almost immediately fizzled out and in October Bopape suspended the whole campaign.37 The coincidence of these two failures has not been registered in the existing historical account, but the dual debacle left both the Party and the ANC stuck in a strategic vacuum from which they would struggle to break out. Both the anti-pass action committee and the AMWU were communist-dominated and communistinspired. Ekurhuleni communists were at the centre of both, notably David Bopape on the anti-pass committee and Benoni-based Arthur Damane who was a full-time CPSA organiser of the AMWU. A week after the strike, police raided CPSA offices and the homes of their officials and staff. A mass trial followed in which 52 members were accused of conspiring to bring about a strike. In November 1946 the police made further arrests. The Party’s efforts as a result temporarily stalled, particularly in the core area of Benoni.38 In contrast to earlier that year no mass meetings were held and the little activity with which

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it was engaged seems to have centred on the struggles of new immigrants seeking to insert themselves into the life of the urban world of Benoni. These activities took place largely at the initiative of local CPSA lawyers and had an opportunistic character that was not obviously part of any overarching political programme.39 CPSA lawyer and branch secretary Lewis Baker was undoubtedly the leading individual figure in this regard and played a key role in aiding the Apex squatter invasion of 1950 in which his legal and strategic sense proved critical. The site of the new camp exploited legal and jurisdictional contradictions with almost exquisite perfection. Since it stood on a wedge of land which fell in the neighbouring magistracy of Brakpan, the Benoni Council’s legal locus standi to take any action was placed in real doubt. As Lewis Baker explained to one squatter leader: ‘The area “did not belong to Benoni but Brakpan. Meaning Brakpan would arrest Benoni and not Mabuya.”’ The slice of land which they chose was moreover a site proclaimed for Benoni’s new industrial township. No further industrial expansion could therefore take place in Benoni until the site had been cleared – and within months the squatter population had grown to a massive 19 000. It was exclusively for this reason that the massive new housing scheme of Daveyton was constructed, five years after the commencement of the squat.40 In 1949 the NP government unveiled several proposed pieces of legislation, including the Suppression of Communism Bill, which it, and many Communist Party members, believed sounded the death knell of the Communist Party. Early in 1950 the CPSA prepared for its last flourish before voluntarily dissolving itself so as to escape the effects of the proposed law. This was the May Day stayaway of 1 May 1950. The stayaway was organised and supported in a curiously uneven fashion across Ekurhuleni. On the Sunday preceding the demonstration a public meeting was held in Germiston’s Dukathole sponsored by the Party’s Free Speech Convention which A.M. (Kathy) Kathrada and Dan Tloome addressed. About 200 Dukathole residents attended and were urged to observe the May Day boycott. They then escorted the speakers out of the location after the meeting had

ended. Upon returning from the location gate the procession began stoning an African constable. After police reinforcements arrived, the stoning subsided but resumed as the police withdrew. By this stage a phalanx of about 100 African children were in the forefront of the attack. Police then fired into the crowd wounding five children between the ages of 10 and 14 years. The collision either upstaged or pre-empted the stayaway of Monday the following week. Few absentees from work were recorded by the Council, and no meetings were held. The ANC’s national protest campaign of the subsequent month seems to have made equally little impression. A meeting following the ANC National Day of Protest of 26 June was called by the ANC in Dukathole’s Freedom Square on 1 July 1950, but like the Day of Protest itself appears to have made only a limited impression.41 Both Springs, Brakpan and Stirtonville (Boksburg) locations were involved in some capacity in the 1950 May Day demonstration. Of Springs we know little. Nearby, however, police roamed the streets of Brakpan location throughout the day thereby apparently curbing any action. At 6 pm, nevertheless, a crowd of about 600 residents amassed at the location gates. Police charged, disturbances followed, and three residents were injured by the police.42 In Boksburg the entire workforce stayed at home which led to 265 people being dismissed from work.43 Benoni’s Twatwa and the Asiatic section, however, were undoubtedly the main hub of mobilisation in the whole of Ekurhuleni, testifying to the mostly unregimented support it enjoyed in the area. There a massive meeting was broken up by bayonet-wielding police. An outraged crowd which numbered in the vicinity of 500 then threatened to encircle the offending police who in turn fired on their assailants killing and wounding several.44 Piet Pheko who was a young boy at the time, innocently playing soccer nearby, has the moment indelibly etched on his memory: We were playing football in what was called the Indian’s grounds. So there were older people just beside the grounds and during that time we saw police vehicles approaching the meeting and they had to flee, and we also had to run away and hide

in the nearby toilets and two older people hid there and the police killed in that spot and we were released because we were young and did not know a thing, so that’s the political meeting I’ve never been able to forget.45 One striking synchronicity which has not been noted in the academic (or other literature) is that this took place only days before another pivotal, though largely unnoticed, event, again orchestrated by the local CPSA: the Apex squatter invasion as well as the conflict between the Russians and the police in which Sergeant Nothnagel lost his life. After the CPSA voluntarily liquidated itself following the 1950 May Day stayaway its main African leaders redirected their political energies towards the ANC. Since its 1949 National Conference the ANC had been dominated by its Africanist Youth Leaguers who had in fact opposed ANC participation in the May Day stayaway. Perhaps the most critical development at the 1949 ANC Conference, besides the acceptance of the more militant confrontationism and mass-based Programme of Action was the election of Youth Leaguer Walter Sisulu as General Secretary. From the moment of his election Sisulu underwent a personal reincarnation. Over the following year he developed the view that he had to speak on behalf of the ANC as a whole (and not just on behalf of the Youth League) and to some extent for the whole disenfranchised black population of South Africa, including Indians. One of the first initiatives he took after his election was thus to inform the Transvaal Indian Congress leadership that the ANC was willing to co-operate on any issue. This would lead to the joint sponsoring of the Defiance Campaign by the two organisations in 1951–2, directed against six recently legislated unjust laws (pass laws; stock limitation in the African Reserves; the Bantu Authorities Act – again a ‘Reserve’ issue; the Group Areas Act; the Voters’ Representation Act; and the Suppression of Communism Act). The core idea was for disciplined volunteers to defy and court arrest for disobeying these laws.46 Ekurhuleni occupied a pivotal position at the centre of this campaign of defiance. Boksburg’s Stirtonville location was a sufficiently strong ANC

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bastion for it to be chosen for the opening act of the campaign. There on 26 June 1952 Nelson Mandela handed a letter to C. Vogel, the Assistant Magistrate for Boksburg, announcing that volunteers would ‘defy permit regulations and deliberately court imprisonment by entering Boksburg location at 2.30 pm without obtaining the necessary permits’. At 3.00 pm on 26 June, 50 volunteers from the ANC and the Transvaal Indian Congress (TIC) approached Stirtonville with a view to entering without permits. Walter Sisulu of the ANC and Nana Sita of the TIC led the volunteers to the wire gate of the location. As they approached, Marais, Boksburg’s manager of Non-European Affairs, slammed the gates shut. Once they reached the closed gates Walter Sisulu demanded: ‘I want to enter the location.’ When this was refused the 50 volunteers, who included TIC Secretary, Yusuf Cachalia, sat down in a huddled mass and began singing, ‘Jan van Riebeeck has stolen our freedom’. Captain Van der Merwe of the SAP thereupon instructed them to disperse. When they did not, they were arrested. A little later, when the location gates were once again open, several Indian volunteers slipped into the location followed by a crowd of residents, reporters and police. They were then arrested and incarcerated in Boksburg jail. So ended the first act of the Defiance Campaign.47 In Germiston the Defiance Campaign was equally well-supported and both intersected with and reinforced the major local campaign of popular resistance in that area, at that time – that directed against the removal of Dukathole location to Katlehong. Dukathole’s removal long preceded that of any other location in Ekurhuleni, and anticipated many later developments across the whole area. As noted earlier, Dukathole location was by no means united on this issue, the lodgers’ movement having actively campaigned for new accommodation in a new location. There were nevertheless other important constituencies in Dukathole who were prepared flatly to resist any effort at relocation. These were made up mainly of stand holders on the one side who made a lucrative business out of sub-letting to lodgers and the youth of the location, whose attachment to turf left them profoundly antagonistic to being shifted to some

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unknown remote spot. Some of the groundwork of opposition to removals had been laid as early as 1950. Joshua Moagi, who played a leading role in the formation of the Germiston branch of the ANC Youth League, recalls that at their very first Conference in 1950, We, the youth, decided we would act to prevent the removal by force. We – the youth – decided to call another Conference in December 1951. We invited other areas. I was elected Assistant Secretary of the whole East Rand Region … [some while later] after the police raided me and told me my permit was no longer valid … people were told not to move even though the police came. We, the youth, would protect them from being moved. This is how we came to be arrested. In March/April 1952 the anti-removal pressure group, in which younger residents played a prominent role, succeeded in reducing the number of lodger applications for new houses in Katlehong/Natalspruit to a trickle. In July the Council unveiled to the location’s Advisory Board its plan for the removal of Dukathole. Meanwhile the Defiance Campaign had opened. Now two oppositional currents converged, allowing the ANC to reach down to much more proletarian elements among the youth than the Youth League normally touched. Joe Mashao who was a youth at the time remembers: ‘The first Defiance Campaign … the ANC was very strong in Dukathole. We used to march to town volunteering to be arrested. People were usually sentenced to two months. We younger ones were let go scot free.’ Billy Matlare has partly similar, partly different recollections. For him the campaign, ‘erupted to our surprise. As kids we just jumped on the bandwagon.’ Despite the surge of opposition there were still plenty of willing applicants from among Dukathole’s longer-standing lodger population to fill the 800 houses that became available in 1952. With their departure, however, and the flat refusal of Germiston Council to allow sub-letting to ex-Dukathole site holders in Katlehong township, resistance stiffened.48 Similar, though less extensive acts of resistance

occurred in most Transvaal and certainly all Ekurhuleni towns between July and September 1952. Table 4 gives some idea of the distribution of arrests. Table 4: Defiance Campaign Register Arrests, 1952 Transvaal Johannesburg

521

Germiston Boksburg Brakpan Pretoria Springs Vereeniging Krugersdorp Benoni Roodepoort Bethal Evaton Witbank Total

245 138 127 101 74 82 95 48 85 31 20 11 1 57849

The Defiance Campaign was called off after two bursts of uncontrolled and relatively indiscriminate rioting in East London and Port Elizabeth in which several whites lost their lives, and in the face of new draconian penalties for defiance. The main targets of the campaign – the six unjust laws mentioned above – remained intact and unscathed. In another sense, however, the Campaign proved a huge success. It made a massive impact nationwide and generated widespread popular support. ANC membership climbed to an unheard of 100 000 strong by the end of the year. In the year that followed the ANC slumped into relative inactivity – yet it would be able to tap into this new bedrock of support repeatedly during

the rest of the decade. In Ekurhuleni and nationwide a turning point had been reached.50 The World War II produced huge transformations in South African politics. It created the condition which allowed Afrikaner Nationalists to secure victory in the 1948 elections, and it created a new and volatile mix on the Witwatersrand’s towns, Ekurhuleni included, which provided the stimulus for the rise of mass African nationalism. Afrikaner and more generally white discontent with the Smuts government’s performance during the war was, however, channelled in other directions than just the HNP – it also took the form of the Torch Commando, an anti-HNP movement, which was the largest mass movement to have arisen in South Africa to that point. If a central component in the leadership of Afrikaner nationalism were Afrikaner teachers, much the same was the case in African politics, African teachers being in the political vanguard in several Ekurhuleni towns. These joined and helped revitalise the CPSA, which also helped inspire, and in turn capitalised on a new generation of African trade unions. The months on either side of the end of the war were peppered with popular flare-ups in Ekurhuleni, generally triggered by the municipalities’ attempts to restore control over the locations’ ballooning populations. Many of these centred on the illicit brewing of liquor by women and these were once again tapped into by CPSA activists. The chapter concludes by examining the genesis of the May Day 1950 stayaway on the Rand, which was especially well supported in Ekurhuleni, and the 1952 Defiance Campaign, which between them opened the era of mass African nationalism in South Africa, on the Rand, and in Ekurhuleni.

Turning point 1940s 91

Chapter 8

The first steps in social engineering reconfiguring space

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I

n 1953 the National Party won its second general election, this time with a handsome, and, in contrast to 1948, secure majority.1 It set about consolidating apartheid in different ways. Over its previous term in office it had restored a measure of control over the demographically and politically exploding towns. Now it began systematically to implement a programme of racial social engineering. Several pivotal pieces of legislation had already been passed between 1950 and 1952 like the Group Areas Act (GAA) and the Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents Act of 1952. These were now implemented in an increasingly hard-nosed, arbitrary and authoritarian fashion.2 It was in this period also that practically all of the major African townships of Ekurhuleni, which became household names in the 1980s and 1990s – Katlehong, Daveyton, Thokoza, Vosloorus, KwaThema, Tsakane, Tembisa – were constructed in a rigidly racialised and ethnicised pattern. Ethnic zoning in the African townships, for example, dates from this time.3 The peri-urban sponges were cleared of squatters. The old locations were torn down. Finally, influx control was more systematically applied to the troublesome categories of both young men and black women. Women’s passes – legislated in 1952 – were first applied in 1955; a blitz on African youth unemployment reached its climax in 1958–1960.4

Tornado struck Payneville before the removals to KwaThema

The first steps in social engineering – reconfiguring space 93

Removal of Indian shop owners in Springs

Reshaping the urban landscape The creation of ‘modern’ townships emerged as a pivotal plank of apartheid policies, the primary objectives of which were to stabilise and control those Africans residing in the towns and to impose effective urban ‘racial’ segregation. In the early 1950s the government engaged in a process of formulating plans to establish new and better-controlled townships for Africans, especially on the Witwatersrand. This process culminated in the government’s adopting the Mentz Committee’s recommendation to create regional African townships. The final Mentz Report, which was published in December 1953,5 provided a blueprint for the establishment of regional townships in Ekurhuleni. Its primary recommendation was that

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all existing locations in the region (as well as on the whole Witwatersrand) should be disestablished and replaced by fewer regional townships. For the authorities the old locations epitomised uncontrolled urbanisation, which together with their residents’ propensity for militant struggles and their proximity to the ‘white’ towns, made them prime targets for removal. It is for this reason that the Mentz Committee was popularly known as the ‘black spots’ committee. The government also believed the concentration of Africans in large regional townships would facilitate the monitoring and control of the urban African population.6 In August 1955, the Native Affairs Department (NAD) announced the Mentz Committee ‘grand plan’ for Ekurhuleni. Two large regional townships were

to be established: first, the people from Payneville (Springs) and the Brakpan and Dunnottar locations would be relocated to the new township of Kwatsaduza (KwaThema, Tsakane and Duduza) and second, residents from old locations of Germiston, Alberton, Boksburg and Elsburg were to be relocated to Kathorus (Katlehong, Thokoza and Vosloorus).7 The committee also approved Benoni’s plans to establish a separate township (Daveyton) to the north-east of the town. Most local authorities accepted the underlying principles propounded by the government in relation to urban planning and the development of African locations in particular. Plans to establish new townships were already mooted from the late 1940s as municipalities sought ways to respond to the burgeoning squatter communities in and around the existing locations. The building of Germiston’s township of Natalspruit (later known as Katlehong) for example was underway by 1949, and the basic principles upon which this would proceed had already been worked out. These partly conformed to the new government’s evolving policy on group areas and township development, but were also partly at variance with it. In 1953 this created some friction between the local authority and the government over the latter’s introduction of the site-and-service scheme.8 Germiston had already begun building houses for its African population and viewed the new scheme as regressive. However, the dispute was speedily resolved and in 1954 building in Katlehong resumed. Benoni had likewise resolved its first squatter crisis in 1949 with the building of Wattville. The Springs Council presented its new African township, KwaThema, as a ‘model township’. KwaThema was established in 19529 prior to the work of the Mentz Committee, which endorsed it as an ideal regional township.10 The Springs Council’s meticulous approach in the planning and establishment of KwaThema was held up as model of how other councils should proceed to establish their new townships. The municipality conducted detailed research on African housing needs, engaged in careful planning of the new township and was among the first to employ African labour on a large scale in the construction of houses in KwaThema. It also boasted

that KwaThema was the only African township which had streetlights installed all over.11 But it was Daveyton that stood out as the prime product of apartheid urban social engineering in Ekurhuleni. ‘Native administrators’ nationally acclaimed Daveyton as a ‘model township’, a view echoed by politicians from across the spectrum of official politics, including Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd.12 The policy of ‘separate development’, which became the leitmotif of the 1960s, was already being applied to urban Africans in the new townships from the mid-1950s. The government signalled its intention to promote and politicise ethnicity with the promulgation of the Bantu Authorities Act in 1951, which aimed to elevate the political status of ‘tribal’ leaders in the reserves. This piece of legislation did not apply to the urban areas, but was a harbinger of the fate awaiting urban Africans. A novel feature of the townships established in the fifties and sixties was their partitioning into ethnically defined areas. The government pursued this policy to give effect to its ideologically driven decision to promote ethnic differences among Africans. In 1956 H.F. Verwoerd motivated his government’s decision to pursue this urban version of ‘separate development’: Another policy aspect which is important although it is frequently denied is the housing or establishment of the Native, including the urbanised Native, on an ethnic basis. Originally it was supposed to be a pipe dream, an absurdity or a source of conflict and strife. It has nevertheless been put into effect and where it has been or is being applied, only beneficial results have been experienced. It promotes better satisfaction among the Natives … Ethnic grouping has not been introduced capreciously (sic) or arbitrarily but to serve as the foundation for the advancement of essential services and control.13 The main purpose of ethnic zoning was to impose ‘tribal authorities’ on urban Africans. Sub-dividing townships along ethnic lines, according to the authorities, would reinforce contact with ‘tribal

The first steps in social engineering – reconfiguring space 95

Wattville Township authorities’ and consequently enhance their influence and authority among the urban populace. But the dangers inherent in such blatant politicisation of ethnicity were immediately exposed in Daveyton. Between December 1956 and March 1957 sporadic clashes between youth from the Xhosa and Swazi/ Ndebele areas took place, resulting in eight reported deaths and numerous injuries.14 These clashes were triggered by the attack on a party in the Xhosa area by Swazi youth. A series of retaliatory clashes inflamed the situation, resulting in the mobilisation of scores of youth (although some adults were also involved) from the two sections. The township manager claimed reports of the clashes were exaggerated and concluded a report on the disturbances by asserting that

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‘ethnic grouping was not even a contributory cause of the trouble.’15 His attempts to underplay the seriousness of the clashes were, however, contradicted by evidence in the report supplied by the authorities that nearly 200 houses were damaged (97 in the Xhosa area and 100 in the Swazi/Ndebele area). The town manager blamed tsotsis from both areas. Whatever the underlying causes might have been, it is clear that once the initial clashes occurred, residents from both areas mobilised along ethnic lines to defend their respective areas against attacks from the opposing ethnic group. The existence of ‘tribal division’ in the township would almost certainly have facilitated ethnic mobilisation.16 In the late 1950s other Ekurhuleni towns followed

Benoni’s example. As early as 1954 the Brakpan Council decided it would divide Tsakane into eight ethnic sections.17 The new sections of KwaThema and Katlehong were similarly divided despite objections from residents and, in Germiston’s case, from its Manager of Non-European Affairs.18 In Thokoza, which was laid out from 1957, ethnic divisions were imposed from the outset, leaving residents with little choice about where they would reside. In Vosloorus, which was the last new Ekurhuleni township to be constructed, the Council’s elaborate apartheid vision failed to be implemented. The Council had hoped to divide the new township into seven sections (Zulu, South Sotho, Xhosa, Swazi, Tswana, Ndebele and North Sotho) but only succeeded in creating two

sections, namely, Nguni and Sotho. The sticking point was the pressure to remove Africans quickly from Stirtonville. As a result ‘a methodical move of the families [along ethnic lines] was not possible’.19 These exercises of mass removals and resettlement also cost money, and in 1954 H.F. Verwoerd, the Minister of Native Affairs, decided to shift the burden of its repayment entirely onto the shoulders of urban African communities themselves by introducing ‘economic’ in the place of the previously subsidised ‘sub-economic’ rentals.20 This mostly overlooked development would transform the whole context of black Ekurhuleni politics for the rest of the decade. After 1953 the Government also passed a raft of new laws aiming to bring the black urban residential areas

The first steps in social engineering – reconfiguring space 97

Regional townships in the 1950s

under tighter physical and social control, namely the Native Laws Amendment Act of 1954, and notably the Bantu Education Act of 1953, both of which would contribute their share to the explosion of protest which would follow in the rest of the decade.21

Consolidating group areas While the Mentz Committee was formulating its ‘grand plan’ for the urban African population living on the Reef, the government initiated a parallel process to develop a similar plan for coloureds and Indians. The decision to disestablish all ‘black spots’ would now also encompass coloureds and Indians, who according to the Population Registration and Group Areas Acts (GAA), could no longer reside in the same residential area. In order to align the proposed plan for group areas with

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

the establishment of African townships, the government created the Subsidiary Planning Committee (SPC). In accordance with the GAA, the committee aimed to devise a system of ‘planning that would allow each group the opportunity to develop on their own and at the same time to ensure the most convenient transport to workplaces without the need for one group to move through the area of another group to reach their workplaces.’22 The sub-committee on group areas completed its work in 1955 and produced detailed plans for carving the region up into group areas. Its report on Ekurhuleni included maps with clear demarcations of group areas for the region as well as for the individual towns. The committee argued that in respect of Ekurhuleni:

the present number of non-whites, excluding natives, in the different municipalities is so small and the fact that separate schemes for such small groups in these towns would be uneconomical, the committee attempted as far as possible to combine the racial groups of two or more municipalities into a single region.23 Consensus had been established in the early 1950s between the government and local authorities on the general principles of the racial restructuring of the urban areas and particularly on the creation of group areas and regional black residential areas. But this political consensus belied important differences that existed between these tiers of the state, especially over the practical and financial implications of the government’s schemes. Thus, even municipalities such as Boksburg, which had enthusiastically endorsed the NP’s plans, were reluctant to shoulder the financial burden of removals. Another contentious issue was the divergent attitudes of some local authorities towards their black populations. Generally, local authorities across the country displayed a partiality towards coloureds and Indians, as opposed to Africans. In practice they were willing to support the forced removals of Africans, but were often ambivalent about the application of such policies to coloureds and Indians. However, another level of discrimination existed as local authorities were invariably more favourably disposed to coloureds than Indians. Thus Benoni and Springs objected to the removal of coloureds because many of them were employed in local industries and were generally regarded as reliable workers. Indians were mainly involved in commerce and were not perceived as important to industry. The United and Labour Parties, which traditionally dominated white politics in Benoni,24 were particularly vocal in their opposition to the removal of coloured people from the town. Interestingly, an alliance of Afrikaner organisations (including the local N.G. Kerk and the Benoni National Party branch) also supported the call for coloureds to be kept in the town. Local industrialists were likewise keen to retain coloureds in the area because they were

an important source of artisanal labour. The Benoni Council was especially concerned about the financial implications of the proposed forced removals. It criticised the government’s plans as being ‘uneconomical’ because it recommended a staggered removal process of Africans, first from Benoni Old Location and then, after three decades,25 from Wattville.26 The anticipated cost of the removal was massive: it was estimated the removal of Africans alone would cost approximately R1 million, an amount which the Bantu Affairs Department wanted covered from the Council’s general account.27 For example, the Benoni Council argued that the removals would become a serious financial burden on local authorities because of the compensation they would have to pay to people being relocated. The implication of this was that local white taxpayers would carry the financial burden of implementing the government’s plans, something most local authorities were reluctant to accept. The one consistent oppositional voice from the white community was that of Leo Lovell, the Labour Member of Parliament from 1949 to 1958.28 Unlike other white opponents of the government’s plans, Lovell opposed the removal of Africans from Wattville. He was also the legal representative of the Benoni Coloured Vigilance Association, which led the campaign against the removal of coloured people from Benoni. The residents of Benoni Old Location viewed Lovell as an ally and he often addressed public rallies, called to mobilise against the forced removal, in the location.29 During the Group Areas Board (GAB) hearings held in Ekurhuleni in 1957/58 important differences emerged between the local group area plans devised by municipalities and the regional plan, which the Subsidiary Planning Committee recommended and the government endorsed. At the centre of this disagreement was the Benoni, Springs and Boksburg Councils’ proposals to create group areas for coloureds and Indians in their respective towns. At the hearing held in Springs in 1957, the Council proposed that Payneville and Bakerton be set aside for coloureds and Indians respectively. In support of its recommendation, the Council argued that it had invested considerable capital over many years in these areas and therefore

The first steps in social engineering – reconfiguring space 99

H.F. Verwoerd, architect of apartheid

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

opposed their intended destruction. Furthermore, it objected to incurring any cost that would arise from the removal of these people to new sites.30 At the Benoni hearings the local authority deployed similar arguments for keeping coloureds and Indians in the town: it recommended that a coloured group area be created in Wattville and that the local Indian population be accommodated in the Benoni Old Location.31 In 1959 the Boksburg Council, which was politically closer to the government than the more liberal councils of Springs and Benoni, proposed that Zindabad, the area occupied by Indians, be declared a group area for them.32 The committee thus extended the Mentz Commission’s regional planning of African townships to coloureds and Indians in Ekurhuleni. In its report on Springs it suggested that the coloured population from Germiston, Springs, Boksburg and Brakpan be moved to one township. It was proposed that this regional township be located south of Boksburg, not too far from where Reiger Park is situated today.33 This area was regarded as suitable because of its proximity to the industrial areas which would serve as an adequate buffer between coloureds, Africans and whites.34 The committee also suggested that the 510 ‘malays’ of Ekurhuleni be located in a single area, within the proposed coloured township.35 It was calculated that the ‘malay’ population would probably grow to about 4 000 in 60 to 70 years and that enough land had to be made available for future expansion of their residential area.36 The planning of residential areas for Indians and Chinese likewise proposed the creation of townships in the Far East Rand and in the Germiston/Boksburg areas.37 The Mentz and Subsidiary Planning Committees’ plans

were central components in the government’s schemes to restructure the Witwatersrand. Their recommendations, which fused racial segregation with urban planning in an industrialising country, guided state policy for the next two decades. According to government policy, the presence of adequate buffer zones was a primary prerequisite for the establishment of a black residential area. In Boksburg the buffer zones included the huge ERPM complex as well as the Cinderella Dam. The existence of a large slime dam of between 250 and 300 acres between the proposed coloured group area and the white town of Elsburg ensured the suitability of this particular site.38 The ‘black spots’ of Benoni were similarly separated from the white town by industrial areas. In Boksburg, Africans had to be removed from Stirtonville and Galeview, and Indians from Zindabad and the Asiatic Bazaars, in order to the clear the area for occupation by coloured people from all over the region. The local African population was destined for the new ‘modern’ township, Vosloorus, and the Indian population was to be relocated to Actonville, the proposed Indian regional group area.39 But this plan was beset by a number of problems. The ‘black spots’ of Boksburg, whose suitability was largely premised on it being surrounded by buffer zones, proved too small to accommodate all the coloured people of Ekurhuleni, and was prevented from further expansion by these self-same buffer zones. The area had a limited capacity of 2  400 family units. The government expected that 1 600 families from all over the region would move into the new group area in the early 1960s and that full capacity would be reached within 15 years.

The first steps in social engineering – reconfiguring space 101

Chapter 9

Black politics in Ekurhuleni in the mid‑1950s

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

B

lack politics in Ekurhuleni were galvanised by several outrageous pieces of government legislation, and by the side efforts of official policies of social engineering which substantially increased African’s cost of living. One of the most offensive new pieces of legislation affecting Ekurhuleni’s African population was the Bantu Education Act of 1953 (implemented in 1955). This was more fiercely contested in Ekurhuleni than in any other part of the country (Port Elizabeth to some extent excluded). Further inflaming the political situation in Ekurhuleni was the imposition of ‘economic’ rentals in the newly constructed African townships which prompted legal challenges and grass roots campaigns of opposition in Ekurhuleni, and which vaulted the ANC into a position of political leadership. Ekurhuleni was also the site of short-lived anti-Indian agitation which, however, gave way to combined Indian/African political co-operation in the mid-1950s following the Congress of the People in 1955. Finally the potato boycott and the anti-pass campaigns brought tensions and conflict to a head in the late 1950s, culminating in the Sharpeville massacre and the banning of the ANC and the PAC.

Black politics in Ekurhuleni in the mid-1950s 103

Consequences of the Bantu Education Act After the calling off of the Defiance Campaign in 1952 the ANC slumped into inactivity and its membership plunged. It would next flex its political muscles in response to the passage of one of the new government’s recent pieces of legislation, the Bantu Education Act of 1953. Its most repugnant provisions were: • the transfer of control over African education from the provinces and church missions to the central government • the registration of all African schools with the government • their staffing by Government-trained teachers • the adoption of official syllabi which had a strong ethnic bias • the requirement in primary schools of learning both official languages • vernacular teaching The new law found itself under immediate attack at the ANC’s Queenstown Conference in November 1953, and a year later at its National Conference in Durban in November 1954. There ANC delegates decided on an indefinite boycott of the Bantu Education Act to be introduced in 1954. Local organisation for the boycott was delegated to the Women’s and Youth Leagues. This was one of the most celebrated and high profile campaigns of the mid-1950s (the others being the Anti-Western Areas Removal Campaign, the Congress of the People which approved the Freedom Charter, the women’s anti-pass movement and the anti-economic rentals campaign). It was in Ekurhuleni and Port Elizabeth that it assumed its most fiery and assertive character. It is for this reason that it deserves our special attention here. Despite much equivocation at national level the boycott was implemented the following year. In Ekurhuleni, Brakpan, Germiston and Benoni were the main sites of struggle.1

Table 5: Report of the Manager of Non-European Affairs, Brakpan, 10 June 1955 – Statistics regarding the recent boycott of Bantu schools on the Witwatersrand 2

Newclare

Attendance before boycott 635

Attendance on 25.04.1955 74

Total boycotters 25.04.1955 561

Total teachers dismissed 9

Martindale

Centre

1 028

884

144

1

Sophiatown 2 208

896

1 312

29

Western Native Township Benoni

2 333

1 035

1 298

21

4 789

4 055

734

10

Alexandra

7 982

6 017

1 965

19

Germiston

3 636

1 648

1 988

7

Brakpan

2 618

1 354

1 264

18

In Germiston, in a prelude to the formal opening of the campaign, women and youths stopped classes at Ngema’s School on 12 April 1955, and 20 ANC women members were arrested. The campaign got fully into its stride two weeks later on 25 April. ‘They went from school to school and chased the children out,’ recounts ex-resident Johannes Nkwanyana. ‘Many of the children who absented themselves from school did so for fear that those enforcing the boycott would beat the hell out of you,’ recalls another ex-resident, Mr Sibanyoni. At the same time, teachers who did not support the boycott faced threats and intimidation while the house of one of the headmasters was burnt. Even then only four out of 12 schools in Dukathole/Katlehong were seriously affected, some of which soon found boycotting children slowly coming back. The Minister for Native Affairs, Hendrik Verwoerd, responded by summoning more police into the affected townships and by expelling all those who failed to attend school. All of this greatly enfeebled the boycott, according to Women’s League leader Bertha Mashaba. For those who continued, a cultural club called Itireleng was formed. According to Bertha Mashaba: In three months we had 500 scholars – no desks, no blackboards, only one woman to help … We brought all the teachers that had resigned together in a seminar in our area. Other areas did the same. We collected donations. We had concerts

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

and stokvels. One time we were arrested for selling liquor. Mrs Makoe was one of the teachers. Johannes Nkwanyana also reveals a surprising gender bias in the teachers’ response: We then had cultural clubs and got some educated people to teach the children but it was illegal and police raided. There was an open space called Freedom Square. Police arrested children and lady teachers there. Only women taught. Most of the men were at work and qualified teachers were less interested. The cultural club continued its activities at least until January 1957 when Dukathole resident Mr Lehoko celebrated his son’s graduation from the club’s Standard Six.3 Much later, in August 1956, Germiston’s Manager of Non-European Affairs, F.W. Buitendag, gave his own account of the groups and influences inspiring the conflict which in various incarnations rumbled on for 18 months. Referring to the role played by Timothy Rampai’s ANC faction in the township, he claimed: … through public meetings, demonstrations and processions, and by the indiscriminate use for the purpose of intimidation, of juveniles, women and irresponsible criminal elements, they secured a strangling grip of fear on the community as a whole.4 Benoni was another storm centre of the boycott. There Noni Monare, laywer’s clerk and local ANC leader, the Youth League and the youth gangs were at the centre of its organisation, while Benoni’s women for the first time entered the mainstream of nationalist politics. Children were stopped on their way to school and sent home. ‘Young natives walked through the classrooms shouting “Africa” and persuading the children to leave their desks.’ Teachers and Advisory Board members were threatened. The boycott became total. In the course of the next week several attempts at arson occurred, but the first stage of the boycott

was ultimately broken by police action and the mass banning of 597 children from schools. Second and third attempts at boycott flared up late in May and again in July of the same year. In both cases ‘native women and children’ were central, a march of 2 000 women and children headed by ANC colours being broken up by police on the former occasion. Mrs Thibela, a squatter leader, dates her political awareness back to this campaign. ‘I questioned myself. Why this sudden introduction, what is wrong with the education the children were getting?’ At this point Mrs Thibela’s own children were at school, but this was not the only reason for her joining the campaign. ‘Our social situation had [also] really made one dissatisfied.’ Women like Mrs Thibela were the lifeblood of the campaign. The overwhelming majority of those picketing the schools were women together with ‘some men who didn’t work’. They went from school to school, often chased by mounted police. On arrival they just said ‘OUT’ and all would leave the school.5 It was in Brakpan, however, that the boycott generated its greatest momentum of all. On the morning of 12 April large numbers of African youth and parents assembled picket lines in the location to prevent school pupils from attending the location’s five schools. In two schools where pupils actually attended they were unceremoniously forced out. By 13 April, 3 000 children were out of school, the highest figure for any single location across the Rand. Despite threats from Minister of Native Affairs, H.F. Verwoerd, that children boycotting would be banned from all further schooling, the boycott held firm. In Brakpan 1 300 pupils were expelled and 13 teachers dismissed from their schools. One reason for the remarkable resistance of the boycott was the independent schools or ‘cultural clubs’ set up by the ANC for expelled children. Here 785 Brakpan children attended classes mounted by eight of the dismissed teaching staff. A year later the school still boasted 700 ‘members’ until the ANC eventually abandoned the boycott late in 1956.6 The Bantu Education Act had been designed partly to provide squads of numerate and literate young people who would fill the various labour demands of the growing sector of industrial manufacturing, and

Black politics in Ekurhuleni in the mid-1950s 105

partly to take youth off the streets and out of youth gangs with a view to instilling in them a sense of discipline which would make them less disruptive and more amenable to the world of work. Passes were imposed on African women at more or less the same time with exactly the same intention of re-establishing discipline and control over the Witwatersrand’s and other urban areas of South Africa’s tumultuous, insurgent and uncontrollable women. The legislation had been passed in 1952, but the government only took its first steps to implementing the legislation in 1955. A little prior to this the Federation of South African Women (FSAW) had been formed. From March to August 1956 thousands of African women were involved in local demonstrations in most of South Africa’s main urban centres. In the latter months, after Helen Joseph and Germiston’s Bertha Mashaba had made a tour of the country on behalf of the FSAW to drum up national opposition to women’s passes, 20 000 women travelled to the national capital, Pretoria, to protest the new measures.7 The state responded with extreme repression until the resistance had been crushed. Ekurhuleni was at the heart of this resistance. In Benoni’s Wattville women stood united and resolute in opposition to women’s passes and descended in hundreds to protest at the Native Commissioner’s offices.8 In Katlehong similar marches were mounted and spluttered on into 1956 precipitating in the process a split in the ANC’s Katlehong male leadership.9

Rising tensions from economic rentals and internal conflicts Apart from the Bantu Education and Women’s Pass Campaigns, the whole of Ekurhuleni was convulsed in a much more widespread opposition to ‘economic rentals’ which were introduced in 1954/1955. In this the government decreed that neither it nor the local authorities would in future subsidise the rentals African urban residents had to pay, whether in site-and-service camps or in the new townships. Now at a stroke of a pen, all of Ekurhuleni’s African residents were faced with sky-rocketing rentals 75% to 200% above their previous level. Since the cost of transport had also doubled or trebled as a result

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

Timothy Rampai

of the distance of the new townships from places of employment, and real wages had in any case been declining since 1948, residents began to experience an intense common economic squeeze. The upshot of this was legal challenges in the court and in a variety of bus, taxi and other boycotts. In Katlehong, Timothy Rampai took the lead. According to Joshua Moagi: ‘We decided with Mr Mandela that for us to be effective it would be better to meet with the Johannesburg groups … organised by the Asinamali Party of Xorile and Vundla. The Asinamali steered it though the court.’ Benoni’s locations and municipal squatter camps also joined the collective action. In the test case that followed in December 1954 in the Transvaal Supreme Court, the new regulations were pronounced ultra vires (beyond the legal powers of a person or corporation). Townships across the Reef

celebrated and the ANC and its local leader Rampai’s political popularity increased.10 Besides economic rentals, one key subterranean movement which helped generate support for Rampai’s militant group in Katlehong was the changing composition of its population. Between late 1955 and 1956, 4 000 new sites were made available for families at Katlehong. Most of the incoming population was composed of the younger and more politically militant lodgers of Dukathole.11 The scene was now set for a period of intense conflict both within Katlehong and between Katlehong residents and the authorities. In the course of 1955 the Witwatersrand town councils set about re-promulgating the economic rental regulations in such a way that they would be immune to challenges in the courts. They were set to come into operation at the beginning of 1956. Goaded by several legal and other defeats at the hands of Rampai and his ANC colleagues, the Council also decided to impose an identical permit system in Katlehong to that operating in Dukathole. The Council had previously shied away from doing this. The two measures (rentals and permits) were guaranteed to incite antagonism and confrontation. Rampai employed a vivid image to highlight the reaction of a population which had managed to escape the permit system in Dukathole by moving to Katlehong and were now being confronted by it there: ‘As a jockey he knew that when a saddled horse sustains a bruise caused by a saddle it will persevere, but once unsaddled it becomes very stubborn and very wild against being re-saddled with the fact that the bruise may be aggravated.’ As tensions mounted, Rampai’s ANC candidates won five of the six Advisory Board seats in the elections of September 1956. In November an organised boycott of all public transport serving Katlehong was staged. The following month Rampai announced the collection of a £1 levy on Katlehong residents. This was to pay for solicitors challenging the new economic rentals in the courts and for the formation of a civil guard from among Katlehong’s residents, ostensibly to patrol the streets and suppress crime. In practice the civic guards became a safe haven for tsotsi gangs and non-school-going youth. In December 1955 and January 1956, between 600

and 1 000 guards roamed the streets. They wore white doeks (headscarves) on their heads and threatened anyone who had voted for a non-ANC candidate in the Advisory Board elections. A report submitted to the council authorities in January 1956 claimed that ‘everybody averse to the ANC is termed a Russian and beaten’. As one demoralised head teacher complained to the Council: The ANC is making life miserable indeed. They had picketed the school, which led to the suspension of many children. Having nothing to do they had organised themselves into two lawless gangs … At the Advisory Board elections in Natalspruit they had clubbed themselves together into a strong force and captured most of the seats. This led to the boycotting of buses and innocent people being attacked in their houses. The opposition did not take this lying down. Advisory Board member Moshoeshoe summoned gangs of Russians (a Basotho migrant gang) to Katlehong and retaliated in kind, producing scenes of violence and terror in many parts of the new township. This period of violence led the Council to renew efforts to secure the deportation of Rampai and his fellow ANC board members Mofokeng, Ngwenya and Mkwanazi, which it had first tried to implement in April 1955. Represented by advocates Mandela and Tambo, Rampai and the others initially warded off the attack when the courts ruled in their favour in October 1957. During this period the political temperature in Katlehong dropped. This was because of Rampai’s vulnerable position in relation to the authorities at the time and partly because Rampai himself was beginning to fall out of favour in the local ANC. During the height of the internal conflicts in Katlehong in December 1955 and January 1956 intimidation had become widespread. Even Rampai’s ex-patron and lodger leader Raphael Palime feared for his life: They came one night looking for me and the old lady told them she doesn’t know where I live. They went away. I reported it to the police.

Black politics in Ekurhuleni in the mid-1950s 107

Fortunately his [Rampai’s] brother-in-law related this whole plot to me starting from the first meeting. He said I was supposed to die because I was a Russian. Such actions produced a backlash within the local branch of the ANC. According to Joshua Moagi, who had recently moved from Dukathole to Katlehong and who was already becoming a leading figure in the Katlehong ANC: The group he belonged to didn’t know how to associate with or live with Indians. They were anti-Indian … They were anti-coloured. We believed in democracy and that called for openness. We didn’t believe in stopping people from belonging to their movements. You have to do that psychologically. You have to educate them. His group was using force. It was violent. I think I was also to be murdered. I told him straight, you can’t match me … we even went to head office to report him as he seemed not to be understanding … In 1956 we called the youth to Katlehong … He came to the meeting but he didn’t participate, although we criticised him publicly. What he did was call his own meeting during the night in the Matladi section. That’s where Mr Mogokeng joined us. He was anti-Rampai. That’s where we began to really know this man deeply. He was a witchdoctor (and he used the Russians).12 Identical movements riddled with identical tensions swept through Benoni and Brakpan and only finally subsided in 1959. In Benoni, for much the same reason as in the case of Rampai and others in Katlehong, a deportation order was issued against Noni Monare, who after enjoying brief celebrity status in the African press as a ‘black Pimpernel’, was exiled to Taung and then fled to Lesotho.13 Moagi’s comment about Rampai’s alleged anti-Indian and anti-coloured sentiments also hint at the entry of new ethnic factors into Ekurhuleni’s politics. Ekurhuleni’s original townships, it will be recalled, were distinctive by virtue of being

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

ethnically heterogeneous, containing African, Indian and coloured sections within the same space. These sections moreover became increasingly intermingled over time as pressure on accommodation mounted in the 1930s and 1940s. In Germiston’s Dukathole, the coloureds’ Cape stands were virtually indistinguishable from the African section of the location to the south-west, while many coloureds and Africans lived together in the Indian section as coloureds. One former resident speaks of Dukathole as ‘a mingled mass of humanity, of Africans, coloureds, Indians and Chinese’.14 In the Springs township of KwaThema, Jimmy ‘5  000’ Jacobs (who got his nickname from winning R5 000 in an accumulator bet) recalls: There was no such thing as colour in Payneville. It was just when you went to school, you went to a coloured school. There was no such thing as he is a coloured or he is a African. Except for the ones who wanted to be whiter than white. As Nieftagodien notes the campaign to reclaim Payneville that was waged by ex-residents in the late 1990s was strongly infused with the idea of resurrecting the ‘racial harmony’ of the location in pre-apartheid days. As Kenny Madalane, the leader of the campaign asserts: ‘I was right in the Cape stands where the coloureds were … We had a very good relationship with coloured families. We married one another.’15 Much the same relaxed pattern characterised relationships in Benoni’s Twatwa location. George du Plessis, for example, a resident of Cape stands in Benoni, perhaps a little over-nostalgically, recalls the old location as a place where people ‘grew up together as one big family’.16 In Payneville the Indian trading section of the location lay across a street in Bakerton. Bakerton comprised mainly trading families, and religious and cultural differences sustained a certain social distance between them and the rest of the location’s inhabitants. Nevertheless as Kenny Madalane once again observes: ‘We used to go and shop there. They used to come and visit [and to hawk].’17 Much the same situation prevailed among the

Indian and African communities of Twatwa and Dukathole, although in Twatwa there was much more residential integration as Indian landlords sub-let on a massive scale to African tenants.18 This close co-existence bred contradictory reactions in each of these Ekurhuleni townships. Some coloureds and Indians blended in barely recognising differences of colour or culture. Others – especially under the pressure of residential congestion – advocated separation, above all when the prospect of new townships loomed into view. This was the case, for example, in 1950 when the 700 coloured residents of Payneville (at least some of whom must have yearned to be ‘whiter than white’), represented by the Transvaal Coloured People’s Organisation (TCPO), urged the authorities to make separate facilities for coloureds.19 Exactly the same polarisation also occurred among the coloured communities of Twatwa, where coloureds again became split into two camps.20 The Indian communities of Ekurhuleni evinced a significantly different response. When faced with Group Areas proposals for resettlement they vigorously opposed plans to separate them from their African clientele. Here it was more likely to be a section of the African community – traders or aspiring traders – who desired separation. In both Dukathole and Twatwa anti-Indian prejudice was fanned by such individuals in the early 1950s. In both instances it began with unhappiness among African taxi-drivers over what they saw to be the discriminatory allocation of taxi licences to Indian entrepreneurs.21 Grievances also built up over what some African customers considered sharp trading by Indian store owners. In 1952 in an ugly counterpoint to the anti-Indian Durban riots of 1949, Noni Monare, a local lawyer’s clerk and later ANC local executive, decided to stop the Indians buggering people around … I formed my own team and spoke to the tsotsi boys and said ‘don’t you see the Indians are finishing our people’. They said ‘Yes’. I said ‘We must … hit these Indians … and start taking their money’. We would buy raw eggs, hit the wives of the Indians and she runs away and the Indian will come in and the tsotsis go to the till and take the money.

The Indian traders responded by calling the police, and, when their assailants got off their charges, by negotiating for protection from other tsotsi groups. This, however, proved counter-productive when Monare, along with ‘Jannie Malcolm, Bootje, Jacobo’ and others he defeated the opposition. The conflict over the Indian stores provided a rude awakening for both African and Indian political leaders in Benoni. The TIC had already for some years been under the control of radicals, some Communist Party aligned. The Cachalia family in Benoni were one of these and they began an energetic campaign to bridge the gap between the two communities, in a manner similar to what had happened after the Durban riots of 1949. Mandela, Sisulu, Tambo and Dado all approached local Congress leaders to find ways of defusing the conflict. Tambo, who lived in the new Benoni township of Wattville, made particularly strenuous efforts to bring about peace.22

Healing the wounds and focusing resistance The Defiance Campaign, which opened at more or less the same time and in which the TIC and ANC closely collaborated, also helped heal the wound. A year later in 1953 the NP electoral victory also focused the African resistance forces’ minds in an altogether sharper fashion. Then, at the ANC’s Queenstown Conference, when the Bantu Education boycott was first discussed, ANC leader and intellectual, Z.K. Matthews, proposed the idea of a Freedom Charter drawn up by a Congress of the People. This marked another clear stage in the evolution of the ANC’s strategic and political thinking. First, it represented a major challenge to the constitutional status quo inasmuch as it proposed a truly national gathering which would be fully representative (unlike the racially exclusive National Convention which drew up the Constitution of the Union of South Africa in 1909) and would also draw up a genuinely democratic political charter, again in contrast to the Act of Union in 1910. Secondly, for the first time, it was a proactive initiative on the part of the ANC as opposed to a reactive response. As Z.K. Matthews explained, the Freedom Charter would be

Black politics in Ekurhuleni in the mid-1950s 109

a Declaration which will inspire all the peoples of South Africa with a fresh hope for the future, which will turn the minds of the people away from the sterile and negative struggles of the past and the present to a positive programme of freedom in our lifetime. Such a charter can galvanise the people of South Africa into action and make them go onto the offensive against the reactionary forces at work in this country, instead of being perpetually on the defensive, fighting rear-guard actions all the time.23 Thirdly, the Congress of the People (COP) marked the birth of the multi-racial Congress Alliance, which decisively breached the apartheid imposed, and partly internalised divisions of race. Reggie Vandeyar and Suliman Esakjee, both TIC activists at the time, recall ‘extensive work’ being done to prepare for the COP in Benoni, Springs, Germiston and Nigel. Local COP committees were set up late in 1954 by Freddie Morris in particular in Boksburg, Benoni and Germiston. Coloured activists like Mary Moodley, George du Plessis, Derek de Jager and others all played significant roles in this period, ably aided by P.R. Deeva and countless other local TIC leaders. The COP and the Freedom Charter which it approved in June 1955 thus threw down an ideological gauntlet to the government which it took up the next year.24 The same period also witnessed two £1-a-day campaigns which, spurred on by declining real wages, were especially well supported in Germiston and Benoni. This was largely because of their substantial number of unionised workers, especially in clothing and textile with which the explosive strike at Amato Textiles in February 1958 was intimately connected.25 Besides rentals and wages, the other fundamental grievances facing all classes of Africans in Ekurhuleni at this time were new passes and tightened influx control. Pass arrests fell especially heavily on young men in the towns, as well as on illegal migrants – so much so that few of these had not experienced arrest and imprisonment, followed by the brutal attentions of prison gangs. Because of the labour shortage on white farms, many of those imprisoned in this fashion found themselves press-ganged to

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

work on white farms. Among the most notorious of these were the potato farms situated around Bethal in today’s Mpumalanga. When an exposé in the monthly magazine Drum in 1959 uncovered the appalling abuses of prison labour that were taking place on these farms, the ANC called a nation-wide boycott of potatoes. The boycott call caught the imagination of many young people across Ekurhuleni. ‘People made jokes about it,’ ANC Women’s League veteran Bertha Mashaba recalls. ‘I remember if they found a big potato they would say it was a prisoner’s head.’ Saveia Ndebele has a similar recollection: ‘On one occasion four of my friends were arrested and sentenced to four months during the potato boycott because they had found a man selling potatoes in the street and they smashed them saying they are selling their African brothers’ blood.’ Johannes Nkwanyana recounts an almost identical experience: We [members of the ANC] picketed the market but I thought it was futile because African traders were selling them here in the location, so we organised ourselves to speak to these people. Waiting there was a trader passing with his trailer. We opened all his bags and scattered them all over the place … We started ripping the sacks and scattered them. The police came. We were arrested and given six months.26 As influx control was steadily tightened in the late 1950s grievances against passes became steadily more acute. In 1958/9 the police launched a full-scale blitz in Ekurhuleni against pass-less unemployed tsotsi youth. Piet Pheko was among the many to feel their unwelcome attentions and was forced to flee briefly to Pretoria.27 Small wonder passes became the issue of the day. In 1959 both the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) made protests against passes and pass-burning the centre-piece of their political campaigns. Profound youth antagonism to passes and other measures of official control and repression were largely responsible for the substantial support – considerably more than anywhere else in Ekurhuleni – for the KwaThema (Springs) and the Tembisa branches of the PAC (itself formed in 195928).

Freedom Charter In March 1960 all these tensions and antagonisms burst to the surface as the PAC upstaged (in the ANC’s eyes) the ANC by summoning virtually instant (and ill-prepared) anti-pass demonstrations on 21 March. The main result, as is well known, was the massacre of unarmed protestors by the police force at Sharpeville in which 69 were killed and even more injured. As unrest swept the country, both the ANC and PAC were banned and a state of emergency was imposed. Only some months later were those detained finally released from jail. Both in jail and thereafter, there was discussion about alternative strategies and tactics for opposition. Late in 1961 Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) was formed and on 16 December of that year the new strategy of armed struggle was unveiled. Within the PAC an armed wing known as Poqo (‘Pure’) was also created which committed itself to more extreme

violence and struggle. Despite sabotage attacks by MK and a variety of other armed Poqo attacks over the next two years (such as the Paarl Uprising), both armed wings were more or less effectively repressed by the end of 1963. Hundreds of ANC and PAC leaders and followers across the Rand were arrested and imprisoned, generally for long periods. Close to a decade of political quiescence followed.29 As discussed in previous chapters, many of the ingredients of mass African nationalism were the product of highly parochialised struggles in the 1930s and 1940s. Wartime industrialisation and the rise of the CPSA in Ekurhuleni further nurtured political resistance, but again often of a fragmented nature. It required apartheid and its multiple forms of repression and racial social engineering to bring these ingredients together in a volatile mix. The new

Black politics in Ekurhuleni in the mid-1950s 111

synthesis staged its political debut in the CPSA, May 1st Campaign of 1950 and the Defiance Campaign two years later. Each marked an important stage in both the fusion of several distinct political traditions (the stayaway, the boycott, the riot and so on as well

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as an emerging multiracialism in the ANC). All this would be suppressed in 1960–63 but new political forms and tradition had been born which, after another lengthy phase of gestation, would transform the political terrain in South Africa.

Black politics in Ekurhuleni in the mid-1950s 113

Chapter 10

Making of a modern economy

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

F

rom the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century Ekurhuleni’s economic development closely mirrored that of the national economy, from being a centre of gold mining activity to its emergence as the industrial heartland of the modern economy after World War II. A year after the discovery of gold at Langlaagte in Johannesburg in 1886, mining operations commenced in Nigel and Benoni. In the case of the latter the farms Vlakfontein, Kleinfontein and Modderfontein were among the most prominent digging sites.1 In Brakpan and Springs coal mining dominated early mining activities, but was superseded in the 1910s by gold mining.2 The fortunes of gold mining fluctuated from its inception, influenced both by the vagaries of the international economy and the problems associated with deep-level mining on the Witwatersrand. Gold mining in Ekurhuleni proceeded tentatively in its formative years compared to the more dynamic progress in Johannesburg. However, after overcoming this rather unspectacular genesis, Ekurhuleni became the primary centre of gold mining in the country from the mid-1920s to the early 1950s.3 Between 1924 and 1949 the region produced more than half of the country’s gold, surpassing the dominant role played by Johannesburg’s gold mines in the early decades of the century.4 At different times mines in Brakpan (the State Mines in the 1930s) and in Springs (Daggafontein in the late 1940s) were leading gold producers in the country.5 In Benoni gold mining boomed between 1912 and 1930, then declined for four years, and was later rescued by the hike in the price of gold in 1935, which rendered operations profitable for the subsequent 15 years and allowed it to stutter along thereafter until the early 1960s. Although a couple of mines (New Van Ryn and New Kleinfontein) operated profitably throughout the 1950s, gold mining had by this time entered a period of terminal decline and by the mid-1960s the industry ceased to exist in Benoni.6 The history of gold mining in other Ekurhuleni towns followed a similar pattern of highs and lows, and finally experienced long-term decline in terms of its relative contribution to the region’s economy. Notwithstanding its ultimate fate, gold mining contributed hugely to the initial transformation of Ekurhuleni from a sparsely populated and undeveloped region into one of the country’s leading economic zones. It also shaped the unique urban conurbation of the region, comprising six or seven of the country’s leading towns. But perhaps its most significant legacy was to lay the basis for the later industrial revolution of the region.

Making of a modern economy 115

Secondary industry grew rapidly after World War II Germiston experienced industrial expansion earlier than other Ekurhuleni towns mainly because of its proximity to Johannesburg. From the early 1920s, light industries (especially in the clothing sector) began to establish themselves in the town. An important consequence of this development was the establishment of one of the country’s major railway junctions in Germiston.7 As a result of these factors, the town was ideally placed to benefit from the country’s economic growth during World War II. Benoni and Boksburg experienced particularly rapid manufacturing development during the war, to such an extent that by the mid-1940s these two areas combined had the highest density of industrialisation in the country.8 Spurred on by wartime military requirements, Benoni’s existing heavy industries massively increased output. For example, Dunswart Iron and Steel produced 1½ million mortars and 60 000 bombs to augment the

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arsenal of the Allied forces. Other companies such as Head Wrightson & Co., Standard Brass, Burmco and Delfos also reaped spectacular benefits from gearing their production to the war effort.9 Benoni’s reputation as a burgeoning centre of manufacturing attracted substantial new investment. During the war a number of important new enterprises were established in the town, including United Cotton and Textile Company (Amato Textiles) and Cape Asbestos Insulations. In the immediate aftermath of the war new investment into Benoni was even more impressive as a number of heavy industrial companies such as General Electric relocated their main operations to the town. The transformation of the town’s economy was undoubtedly spectacular and in 1947 Benoni was widely recognised as a leading centre of heavy industry in the country.10 In 1951 the metal and engineering sectors accounted for 57.2% and 65.9% of the total number

of industrial employees in Benoni and Boksburg respectively,11 which vividly demonstrates the growing dominance of manufacturing in those towns and the region as a whole. Germiston12 established itself as an important manufacturing centre before the rest of the region and Springs did not lag far behind. The industrial expansion of Benoni and Springs was hugely aided by their respective Council’s aggressive campaigns to attract new investment. For example, Morris Nestadt of Benoni was a prominent figure in promoting industrialisation of his town and the Ekurhuleni region.13 However, throughout the 1980s the regional manufacturing economy regained some of its vibrancy, albeit with important shifts in the character of manufacturing firms. In 1980 there were 1 507 manufacturing establishments in the region and by 1989 this figure had increased to 2 054. Total employment increased from 225 851 to 283 547 during the same period. These improvements were especially noticeable in the industrial areas of Germiston and Alberton.14 In dramatic contrast, the following decade witnessed an almost precipitous drop in manufacturing employment with a loss of about 87 000 jobs or nearly a third of the workforce. These declines were felt most acutely among the large firms, which, in fact, shed about 100 000 jobs. Only positive growth among small and medium concerns mitigated the impact of the losses sustained by the large manufacturing firms that had shaped the region’s economic landscape since at least World War II.15 By the turn of the 21st century many policy-makers and scholars began referring to Ekurhuleni as a ‘rustbelt’, reflecting the dire economic situation in the region.

Urban settlement In general the expansion of the towns of Ekurhuleni mirrored the broader national process of urbanisation. The African population in the mid-1930s resided overwhelmingly in the rural areas: 2 million stayed in the reserves, 2.2 million on farms (mainly white-owned farms) and only 1.5 million in towns.16 Furthermore, the urban-based African population was also mainly migrant and male. A profound shift in the character of the urban population profile was to

occur from the later 1930s as the number of Africans settling permanently in the towns increased rapidly. Nationally, in the decade between 1936 and 1946 the African urban population increased by a huge 50% from 1 141 642 to 1 794 212. African women featured especially prominently in the new wave of urban migration, resulting in a near doubling in their numbers in the urban areas from about 350 000 to 650 000. Notwithstanding a plethora of measures instituted by the government to stem the tide of urbanisation, the African urban population soared even higher in the late 1940s and 1950s, reaching a total of 3.5 million in 1960.17 The almost insatiable demand for labour by the rapidly expanding secondary industry attracted hundreds of thousands of African workers. Between 1936 and 1951 the number of African male workers employed in industry increased by more than 100% from 272 641 to 590 929, a phenomenal increase by any measure.18 An important milestone was reached in 1946 when the number of African industrial employees for the first time outnumbered the number of African miners (448  687 compared to 425  884 respectively). Five years later the gap between the two had widened even further as the number of African industrial employees surged ahead to reach 590 929, whereas mining employment registered an insignificant increase of less than 13 000.19 Prior to the war, African male industrial employees outnumbered their white counterparts by 102  746. In 1946 this difference more than doubled to 237  882 and by 1951 it stood at 347  635, which amounted to more than double the number of white industrial employees.20 Of the 819 658 industrial employees listed nationally in 1952/3, nearly two-thirds (512 782) were black.21 The declining importance of mining and the growth of the industrial sector had the combined effect of substantially reducing the proportion of migrant labour within the total African urban population. Ekurhuleni’s dynamic economic development made it an important destination for work-seekers. From the time the first mines started operating and the first mining villages developed, prospective miners and labourers and entrepreneurs streamed to the region in search of work or fortune. By the turn of

Making of a modern economy 117

More African workers were employed in semi-skilled jobs

Factory in Alrode 118

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

the 20th century thousands of black and white miners had congregated in the nascent mining towns. During the first three decades of the 20th century the region’s population grew relatively consistently. Where dramatic growth spurts occurred, as was the case in Benoni and Brakpan between 1921 and 1936, they were usually associated with the changing fortunes in the gold mining industry in those towns. This applied to both the African and white populations. In Benoni and Brakpan the white population registered substantial increases of 45% and 144% respectively. The African population grew by large but slightly different proportions. In contrast the coloured and Indian populations increased only modestly, growing only by virtue of the low natural increase in their numbers. Only negligible migration of these populations took place from Natal and the Cape, where their numbers were concentrated. From the 1940s the number of African people deciding to settle permanently in the urban centres increased substantially. An important manifestation of this trend on Ekurhuleni in the late 1940s was that the number of Africans residing in locations exceeded those living in compounds. In Benoni, for example, in the late 1930s there were 32 278 African mine workers compared to 23 200 non-miners. In 1950 a reversal of these proportions had taken place as the number of African miners declined by nearly half to 17  927 and the non-mining sector increased to 28  593.22 Springs was a notable exception to this trend due to the continued importance of gold mining. Although the town’s urban-based population experienced a similar explosive growth as other Ekurhuleni centres (to 33  000 in 1952), the number of African miners remained exceptionally high at 53 321 (1 560 women) all of whom lived in compounds.23 It should also be noted that the official figures tended to underestimate the population of the locations. For example, a survey by the Benoni municipality conducted in 1948 found that the African urban population was 40% higher than the official statistics.24 Similar discrepancies occurred in the recording of Payneville’s population by various official bodies.25 Ekurhuleni’s towns thus looked very different in the 1950s compared to their appearance before the war.

However, the proliferation of the industrial sector from the mid-1940s transformed the landscape of the region: employment patterns changed significantly, commerce flourished and the earning capacity of whites increased dramatically. Commenting on the economic transformation of the Witwatersrand during this period, Beavon noted that in 1951 mining still accounted for about 34% of employment and 63% of net earning capacity. Two decades later mining’s contribution plummeted to a mere 9% of employment in the region. In the early 1970s secondary industry contributed 37% of employment and a massive 54% of earnings in the region.26 Following global trends, the growing dominance of the secondary economy triggered a surge in the development of commerce, finance and transport. The importance of the latter sectors was reflected in their combined contribution to employment on the Witwatersrand which matched that of the industrial sector. According to Beavon, ‘in the space of just 20 years, the Witwatersrand had been transformed from what was primarily a mining region into a maturing metropolitan region.’27 Ekurhuleni played a pivotal role in this transformation. As indicated earlier Ekurhuleni experienced substantial industrial development in the aftermath of the war, which process continued unabated over the next three decades. Although Boksburg was not the leading economy in the region, its rapid expansion reflected the robust character of industrial sector in the region. Between 1944 and 1978 the number of industrial firms multiplied several times from a mere eight to 374.28 Ekurhuleni was arguably the main beneficiary of the exodus of many industries from Johannesburg. Beavon has argued that a combination of grand apartheid (which sought to control the location of new industries) and the lack of affordable industrial space in the country’s largest city meant that many companies wishing to expand their operations during the boom times of the 1960s were forced to relocate to areas outside Johannesburg. Thus between 1960 and 1972 a total of 181 factories chose this route. Importantly, 83% of these firms set up their new plants in Ekurhuleni, especially in the industrial areas of Kempton Park, Germiston and Alberton.29 Kempton Park benefited from considerable new investment

Making of a modern economy 119

The retail sector grew rapidly in the 1960s

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

during this period largely due to the presence of the country’s largest airport within its borders. Previously Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand were serviced by Rand Airport which was established in the 1920s but was deemed inadequate to accommodate the larger new passenger aeroplanes. In the 1940s Palmietfontein was used as a temporary airport while the new international airport was being constructed. The new African township of Alberton, namely Thokoza, was built on the site of this airport in the 1950s. Jan Smuts International Airport was officially opened in 1952 making it one of the most important transport junctions on the African continent, which in turn, led to a proliferation of economic activity in Kempton Park, a phenomenon that continues to the present. The 1960s witnessed further transformation of the region. The continuing industrialisation of the region caused a steady increase in population: between 1960 and 1970 the region’s overall population grew by nearly 80% from 504 513 in 1960 to 909 680 in 1970. This large increase was primarily due to the continued influx into the region by workers to meet the growing demand for industrial jobs.

A comparison of these figures reveals a number of important shifts in the demographic patterns of the region. First, the African population increased, although at a slower rate than in the previous period. Secondly, the white population more than doubled during the 1960s rising from 31.5% to 36% of the overall population compared. The increase in the white population was probably accounted for by massive migration to the region, which had become an important source of employment. Expressed differently, the region’s white population amounted to less than 50% of the African population in 1960, while a decade later it had increased to nearly 60%. Although African urbanisation into the region had neither been halted nor reversed, the government’s objectives of reducing the rate of African urbanisation and simultaneously increasing white urbanisation had thus achieved a measure of success. However, from the late 1970s urbanisation of the African population began to accelerate again, spurred both by the prospect of employment opportunities in Ekurhuleni’s manufacturing economy and rapid deterioration of conditions in the rural areas, especially the Bantustans.

Making of a modern economy 121

Chapter 11

Apartheid’s heyday in Ekurhuleni

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

T

he Sharpeville massacre changed the course of South African history, although initially it was by no means clear in what direction. It took place when a crowd of 5 000, heeding a PAC call for an anti-pass protest on 21 March 1960, gathered around Sharpeville police station. As the crowd pressed forward, the police panicked and opened fire. Sixty-nine people were killed, mostly shot in the back. Once news of the massacre leaked out it was met with horror and outrage. On 24 March ANC President Albert Luthuli called for a day of mourning and a stay-at-home on Monday 28 March. In Johannesburg this was observed by 90% of the city’s workers. In Thokoza, according to eye witness Bethuel Khubeka: ‘Everyone was mobilised in the township. Really the first time in Thokoza throughout our life that we see such things. We had soldiers all over the township and people did not go to work.’1 In Katlehong the residents were generally more apathetic, with 90% of its population apparently reporting for work. On 31 March, however, violence erupted as a blockage on the rail track between Katlehong and Germiston stopped a train taking workers to work. As a result, angry passengers returning to the township staged a riot; beer halls were vandalised; the cars of white officials were stoned; and police houses came under attack.2 The Sharpeville massacre and its aftermath produced both an economic and political crisis. International investors and governments lost confidence. Millions in foreign currency flowed out of the country, gold reserves slumped and a huge balance of payment crisis set in (R12 million a year in both 1960 and 1961). The South African economy teetered on the brink of disaster. At the same time several members of the Nationalist Government got the jitters. At a cabinet meeting held in early April 1960, ministers Donges, Sauer and Schoeman proposed to Prime Minister Verwoerd that passes for Africans be abolished. Then a few days later the sense of panic worsened. Prime Minister Verwoerd was shot in the head by a would-be assassin’s bullet at the Rand Easter Show. Finally, in the middle of May both English- and Afrikaans-speaking employer associations issued a joint statement calling for a review of the pass laws, influx control, curfew regulations and the liquor laws.3

Sharpeville 1960 Apartheid’s heyday in Ekurhuleni 123

Miraculously Verwoerd staged a full recovery in the space of seven weeks, and quickly moved to re-assert his authority over cabinet and party, introducing a string of new hard-line politics to guarantee that apartheid would never be challenged again. Central to these was an attempt to deny all urban Africans permanent status within urban areas.4 Along with this went a huge doubling of pass law convictions. At the same time repression was massively stepped up. In May 1962 the General Laws Amendment Act (properly known as the Sabotage Act) was passed providing for detention without trial (90 days by 1962), and later followed by the Terrorism Act. Torture of detainees became commonplace, several of whom died from such treatment. By 1963, with the Rivonia Trial, effective resistance had been suppressed. Parallel to these initiatives on the political front, steps were taken to stabilise the economy. Import controls were tightened, exchange control was imposed, while the International Monetary Fund provided a financial bail-out in the form of a massive loan. Supported in this way, the South African economy re-entered a cycle of expansion from mid-1961, so much so that from 1964 the rate of return on South African investments was among the highest in the world.5 Ekurhuleni was also a primary beneficiary of South Africa’s economic boom during the 1960s, which was largely driven by robust expansion of the manufacturing sector. By 1967 mines in the region, which had previously contributed 30% of the national output of gold, accounted for only 11% of the total. They shed two-thirds of their African employees, who were reduced to a paltry 33 613 in 1970. In the meantime manufacturing took off.6 Since Johannesburg had exhausted most of its available proclaimed industrial land much of the new economic development centred on Ekurhuleni. Germiston was the first to benefit, which was reflected in the increase of the number of African workers employed in the town – from 44 089 in 1960 to 84  945 in 1969. When Germiston had used most of its industrial land, other Ekurhuleni towns experienced their own mini-industrial booms. For example, Alberton’s Alrode became one of the fastest-growing industrial townships in the country

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during this period.7 The 1960s and 1970s were an important period of transition for Benoni. In the 1960s a number of its mines were finally closed, forcing the municipality to get serious about attracting industrial investment. In 1962 the local newspaper, Benoni City Times, reflected on the demise of the town’s gold mining industry: Benoni was given another ominous warning that she must hurry to attract industries to replace her dying mines when it was announced this week that Modder East will close at the end of this month. The town now has only one mine in operation – Kleinfontein – and Modder East is the sixth to be closed in the area (since 1945).8 The Town Council responded swiftly and in that same year announced a R1.5 million expansion of its electricity supply capacity, aimed at bringing it in line with the power supply provided by big cities and with the intention of attracting new industries.9 Over the next couple of decades Benoni succeeded in attracting a fair share of the new industrial development in Ekurhuleni, although it generally lagged behind the main centres in the Germiston/Alrode area. Thus in 1979 the large industrial firm, Dunlop Industrial, announced its plans to invest R3 million in a conveyor belt plant in Benoni as the first stage of a multi-million rand expansion programme, which included the installation of a giant R1.5 million vulcanising press.10 Two of the most significant consequences of the industrial transformation of Ekurhuleni were a steady increase in the region’s white population and the diversification of the economy with the growth of the tertiary sector. As Table 6 indicates every town, with the notable exception of Brakpan, experienced substantial increases in their white population in the decades under discussion. Boksburg’s white population more than doubled between 1960 and 1980 with Germiston, Springs and Benoni registering significantly more modest increases. Over the same period, Kempton Park’s white population escalated by more than 600%, reflecting its robust economic growth and emergence as a significant economic node in Ekurhuleni.

White elections in Benoni, 1961

Table 6: Ekurhuleni’s white population, 1951–198011 Germiston

1951

1960

1970

1980

46 553

56 954

71 175

73 980

Boksburg

24 882

28 738

37 516

63 360

Benoni

28 308

33 386

44 582

53 340

Brakpan

30 049

29 340

30 728

31 620

Kempton Park

8 391

10 698

33 029

69 140

Springs

31 558

36 935

44 379

51 480

This confirmed the region’s position as the country’s industrial heartland, with engineering and metal companies dominating its landscape. The industrial transformation was also reflected in the increase in the proportion of African skilled workers compared to unskilled workers from 50% in 1965 to more

than 66% in 1985. The other main industries in the Germiston-Alberton area – chemicals and food – had even larger complements of semi-skilled African workers.12 From the mid-1970s though, the economy began to enter a protracted period of economic stagnation and decline. Retrenchment was common and hit the metal industry especially hard. Migrant workers comprised 80% of the African workforce employed in the metal sector in Ekurhuleni, and they suffered severely from the economic downturn.

White politics White politics in Ekurhuleni in many senses mirrored or tracked this economic change. Over the next three decades the NP consolidated its political dominance

Apartheid’s heyday in Ekurhuleni 125

Edenvale location

winning almost every seat in successive elections. In towns such as Brakpan, Nigel and Alberton the party consistently won over 70% of the votes as the white electorate put its faith in the party of apartheid and the privileges that accrued to them. The period from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s was a golden era for whites as they benefited from an unprecedented economic boom, which many attributed to the rule of the NP. Although the UP continued to contest elections, it rarely mounted a serious challenge to the ruling party. Benoni was again the exception. There the UP held onto its seat and, remarkably, in 1961, at the height of republican fervour, won 74% of the vote. The NP won the seat in 1966 but the UP recaptured it in 1970 and 1974. Only thereafter did the ruling

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party succeed in turning Benoni into a majority Nat town. For the first time in 1977 the NP won all parliamentary seats in Ekurhuleni. From the late 1960s a new political voice began to make itself heard from the extreme right-wing corner of white politics. The newly established Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) accused the NP of being too ‘verlig’ (moderate). Initially, it hardly attracted any attention outside of the ranks of far-right fringes. However, during the course of the 1970s as black resistance to apartheid revived, the economy began to show signs of strain and the NP was forced to consider limited reforms, the criticisms of the HNP began to find an echo among growing sections of the Afrikaans-speaking population, especially from

Early Tembisa, 1960s members of the working and lower middle classes. In economically depressed towns such as Brakpan, Nigel and Alberton poorer sections of the white population began to align themselves to the ultra-conservative messages of the HNP. In fact, between the mid-1970s and the late 1980s Ekurhuleni became one of the main sites of contestation between the ruling Nationalists and white conservatism. The HNP made a reasonably strong showing in the 1981 elections, winning 32%, 26% and 18% of the votes in Brakpan, Nigel and Alberton respectively. Although the NP held on to all of its seats in the region, its majorities were drastically reduced from the heights it achieved in the previous decade. White

politics had once again become deeply polarised. On the one hand, the right wing accused the government of undermining apartheid and called for a return to the heyday of white rule in the 1960s. On the other hand, liberal voices criticised the government for not introducing sufficient reforms in response to the growing demands for freedom by the black majority. The Progressive Federal Party (PFP), which had no more than a peripheral presence in white society throughout the 1970s, began to register important gains among the urban electorate in the 1980s. Better developed towns, with larger middle classes (such as Benoni, Germiston and Springs), witnessed impressive growths in support for the PFP in the early 1980s.

Apartheid’s heyday in Ekurhuleni 127

Youth festival in Daveyton, 1970s

Entrenching racial segregation By the end of 1962 the government had grown extremely impatient with the slow progress being made by Ekurhuleni’s local authorities in giving effect to its regional scheme. In order to expedite the implementation of its plan, the government adopted a more uncompromising stance in relation to the municipalities as well as other oppositional voices. The GAB and the Minister of Community Development believed the proclamation of Actonville as an Indian group area was imperative to send a clear signal to the coloured residents of that area that their opposition to the removals was futile.13 They called for an acceleration of the process of preparing for and declaring group areas in Benoni. The authorities expected coloureds from Benoni Old Location to resist their removal and recommended their forcible expulsion from the

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

area.14 The government’s change in attitude was also reflected in its advice to the Benoni Council to forcibly evict all coloured families living in the backquarters of the Asiatic Bazaar.15 The government’s renewed drive to instil urgency into the process of restructuring Ekurhuleni was, however, not immediately successful. One of the main difficulties the government confronted was that the different (local) parts of the regional puzzle were so intimately linked that any delay in one caused the postponement of the entire plan. This was evident in the early 1960s when the government attempted to hasten the removal of black residents from various ‘black spots’ to the new townships or group areas. The development of Reiger Park was a pivotal piece in the regional puzzle because the removal of coloured people from the other ‘black spots’ was a

prerequisite for the conversion of those locations into group areas. For example, the old locations of Benoni and Germiston could not be disestablished as ‘native locations’ and reproclaimed as ‘group areas’, let alone be developed as long as coloureds still lived in them. Benoni was especially affected by this: in order for its old location to be proclaimed and developed as an Indian group area, the coloureds living there had to make way for Indians from other parts of the region. None of this could materialise in the early 1960s because of the delays in removing the African population of Galeview and Stirtonville (which were to form the main parts of Reiger Park) to Vosloorus.16 First, the Boksburg Council took until 1957 to identify the land on which it intended to build the new African township. Most of Ekurhuleni’s municipalities had by then already begun developing their townships (Daveyton, KwaThema, Katlehong) or were in the process of doing so (Thokoza). However, once the land was identified a number of further delays occurred, which were not entirely the Council’s fault. The most important causes of the long delay in developing Vosloorus was the dispute with the local mining company over compensation for mineral rights and problems the Council encountered over the provision of water to the new township.17 The protracted negotiations over the former issue precluded even the laying down of basic infrastructure until the early 1960s. However, on the eve of the removals another dispute between the Council and the government flared up, this time over the transport costs involved for African workers commuting between Vosloorus and the Boksburg industrial areas, when the Council refused to subsidise these new travelling costs.18 The new townships were created far from industrial areas, thereby imposing a considerable financial burden on the workforce, which generally received low wages. The dust had hardly settled on the transport dispute when the Boksburg Council was faced by another and potentially more serious controversy. The authorities had previously recognised that the land allocated in Reiger Park for the coloured group area was inadequate to cater for future population growth. The successful development of that area in the long term depended on the availability of more land.

However, ERPM,19 which held the mining rights in the area, opposed the expansion of Reiger Park because it required the land for further mining purposes. The implication of this position was that Reiger Park could not be extended for at least a decade, making it impossible to accommodate Ekurhuleni’s entire coloured population there as envisaged in the government’s plan. Faced by these obstacles, the government was forced to reconsider how it would implement its regional group areas scheme. Instead of meeting its objective of speedily implementing the whole regional plan, the government acknowledged it would have to delay and stagger its implementation. The first step undertaken was to identify which removals could be delayed. For example, because the coloured populations of Alberton, Kempton Park and Edenvale were relatively small and lived in separate sections in the African locations of those towns, their continued presence in these locations was not perceived as a serious threat to the government’s plans. It was agreed therefore to delay their removal.20 The removal of Indian residents from Alberton and Kempton Park was delayed for similar reasons. However, in Edenvale, where Indian-owned shops occupied the same area as white residents, their removal was regarded as urgent. Likewise, in Germiston the 21 Indian families and three coloured families living among white residents were also obliged to move. By contrast, the removal of coloureds and Indians living in Germiston’s coloured location and Asiatic Bazaar respectively was no longer regarded as a priority because those areas were earmarked for future industrial development and not as a white group area. In Benoni the removal of the coloured population was made the priority in order that the Indian group area of Actonville could begin to take shape.21 Once these new plans and priorities had been agreed to, the Benoni and Boksburg Councils, together with the Departments of Community Development, Coloured Affairs and Indian Affairs, recommended that the Minister declare 1 April 1964 as the date for the commencement of the removals of coloureds from Actonville. This was seen as the first and important step in kick-starting the revised regional removal

Apartheid’s heyday in Ekurhuleni 129

Suburban house, Daveyton

scheme. P.W. Botha duly endorsed the recommendation.22 From this time opposition to the removals quickly dissipated as it was realised the government was determined to proceed with the implementation of its plans and would use every means at its disposal to ensure their realisation. The process of removals accordingly accelerated. By the latter half of 1964 the Boksburg Council had already resettled 2 500 African families in Vosloorus and expected to lift the figure to 3 000 before the end of the year. The Council had simultaneously relocated 92 Indian families in Actonville. The removal of Africans from Galeview and Stirtonville opened the way for the resettlement of Benoni’s coloured population, which by the end of 1964 had already amounted to 784 families.23 A government progress report circulated in early 1965 indicated that rapid progress was being made with the removals: only 1 150 coloureds families still had to be resettled in Boksburg compared to the 2 076 families

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at the end of the previous year. The same report showed that all the 250 stands put up for sale in Reiger Park had been bought and on 64 of those private houses had already been erected. At the same time 1 575 coloured families had occupied houses vacated by African families.24 As these figures illustrate the forced removals programme in Ekurhuleni reached its apogee in the mid-1960s. By the late 1960s most black people in the region had been forcibly relocated into their respective ‘racial’ residential areas. In particular, Actonville and Reiger Park were eventually converted and proclaimed as regional group areas as the government had intended from the early 1950s. The Springs Council’s policy towards group areas for its coloured and Indian population was characterised by dramatic shifts from the early 1950s. In 1952 the Council wanted Payneville to retain its coloured and African populations but by the time of the GAB hearings in 1957 it recommended that

the old location be converted into group areas for coloureds and Indians. By the mid-1960s the Council had executed another about-turn and wanted the whole town, excluding KwaThema, to be proclaimed a group area for whites. The vicissitudes in the local authority’s group areas policy, the delays in completing the regional plans and opposition from local mining companies all combined to detach Springs from the regional group areas scheme. On 21 February 1964 the government officially proclaimed Springs as a white ‘group area’.25 At the same time the Payneville/Bakerton complex was provisionally proclaimed a ‘controlled area’, pending the eventual removal of coloureds and Indians. In terms of the proclamation those Indian businessmen operating in the town could continue to do so for a limited period, but had to find residential sites in an Indian group area.26 At this point the Springs Council was adamant that Payneville and Bakerton should eventually be declared a white group area,27 which would leave KwaThema as the only area in the town legally occupied by black people. According to the Council the residents of KwaThema, namely African workers, would fulfil the town’s labour requirements and, therefore, no other blacks were needed.28 In an ironic twist of fate, the Springs Council’s zealous commitment to move coloureds and Indians to their respective regional group areas was thwarted by the government’s inability to implement its regional scheme. Over the next decade Springs, more than any other Ekurhuleni town, was left in limbo about its future. Meanwhile, there were signals that the government was prepared to deviate from its regional ‘grand’ plan. In 1967 the authorities suggested that it might be necessary to create a second coloured group area in the region.29 In May 1968 the GAB advertised its intention to proclaim Bakerton a coloured group area, much to the chagrin of the Springs municipality, which immediately rejected the recommendation.30 At a meeting in February 1973 between the Council and various ministries, the government’s commitment to its regional scheme was reiterated. However, government delegates acknowledged that the plan would not immediately come to fruition and agreed that Indians would have to live in Bakerton until at

least the late 1970s and coloureds in Payneville for another three years.31 By the end of 1973 the government acknowledged that its vacillation over these issues had to be brought to an end. In October 1973 it eventually agreed that Indians living in Springs and Nigel would not be forced to move to Actonville because there was simply not enough space there for them. The government was especially concerned that any further procrastination on its side would alienate the Indian population.32 Bakerton was then identified as the site for a new Indian group area. Only the future of the coloured population from Springs still hung in the balance. When coloured residents of Payneville rejected the proposed (albeit supposedly temporary) move to KwaThema, the Council agreed to invest some money in the area to effect minimal improvements.33 This was done largely in acknowledgement of the atrocious conditions that prevailed in the location. But the Council’s intervention was a case of much too little, too late. When Helen Suzman, the Opposition Member of Parliament, visited Payneville in the late 1970s she described it as ‘the worst slum in the Transvaal’.34 By this point the terrible conditions in Payneville were threatening to become a serious political embarrassment for the government, which hastened the process of relocating coloureds to the new coloured group area in the region, namely Geluksdal. In 1970 the government eventually relented and agreed to establish a coloured group area in in the near East Rand (the current western section of Ekurhuleni) to accommodate coloured people from the central Witwatersrand, which comprised the towns of Germiston, Alberton, Elsburg, Kempton Park and Edenvale.35 The new area, which was named Eden Park, was established five miles from the Alrode industrial area and adjacent to Thokoza.36 At the same time a similar process was unfolding in respect of the Indian population in the western half of Ekurhuleni. In 1969 the Inter-Departmental Committee for the Transport of Non-Whites reported that the government had agreed in principle to establish a new group area for Indians living in this part of the region. However, two years later the government reiterated its stance that Actonville would

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be the only regional group area for Indians. Referring to the representations made to it by the Council and the Indian community of Germiston for a group area, the Department of Community Development conceded only that Indians from Germiston be given first preference for relocation to Actonville.37 In the late 1970s, however, the government was forced to reverse this position and agreed to establish an Indian group area adjacent to Eden Park. The creation of Bakerton, Geluksdal, Eden Park and Palm Ridge as the new group areas for Indians and coloureds respectively brought to an end a long and tortuous journey during which the government continually reiterated its commitment to the regional grand scheme devised in the 1950s. However, it was apparent in the mid-1960s already that this grand plan would not be realised. But, it required the vastly different political situation of the 1970s to force the government into formally changing its policy.

White economic and suburban development White residential development and suburban expansion in particular registered modest growth during the first half of the 20th century, but picked up considerable pace thereafter. Johannesburg’s economic development was reflected in the expansion and transformation of its Central Business District (CBD) until at least the 1960s, when decentralisation became a salient feature of the burgeoning retail, commercial and financial sectors.38 These processes were mirrored across Ekurhuleni, especially in Benoni during the 1960s and 1970s. In the late 1960s the town’s CBD was a hive of activity in the property market. The Benoni City Times reported in 1968 that, As a result of the investment of several million of rand by national companies on vast development schemes, there is every indication that central Benoni is to have a complete face-lift in the near future. A spate of properties in the central area have changed hands within the past few weeks at what can only be described as fantastic prices. Property owners say the investment of this money not only displays confidence in the future of the

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town, but ensures the future status of Benoni as the leading commercial centre of the East Rand.39 All the major banks and building societies set up offices in the refurbished commercial hub of the city. This vote of confidence in the future of Benoni prompted a flurry of new investments. For example, in early 1972 plans were well underway to erect Benoni’s first three-level shopping arcade. And, reflecting the latest fad in urban building design, it was reported that, ‘the finishes of the building will be of the best possible marble, terrazzo and glass mosaics. Imported Italian tiles will be used for the shop fronts in a gold colour.’40 In the same year entertainment in the town was transformed with opening of the Constantia cinema, which boasted the ‘latest in sound and projector equipment (with) the floor reconstructed so that there are gentle slopes replacing steps between rows. New luxury seats replace the hard old seats and leg room in front of each other has been increased … The estimated cost of the renovation is R300 000.’41 Buoyed by the transformation underway, the Benoni Town Council in 1970 unveiled a ‘master plan’ for the development of the town up to the year 2000: ‘A beautiful city in the north … a greater Benoni far beyond our wildest dreams … a white population of between 102 00 and 133 000 … frameworks of roads … permanent parks and recreation areas.42 One of the most important developments of this period – the golden age of apartheid – was undoubtedly the rapid expansion of white suburbia. As was the case in Johannesburg and other major cities of the world, the Ekurhuleni region witnessed an unprecedented growth in middle-class home ownership, the establishment of numerous new residential areas and consequently a proliferation of road networks, as well as the eventual decentralisation of commercial and retail activities. For example, between its founding in 1888 and 1959, the town of Boksburg grew relatively slowly as was evidenced by the fact that only 19 residential townships were established during these seven decades. However, from 1960 to 1978 the town experienced a proliferation of white suburban growth with the proclamation of 56 new residential areas.43 In the early 1960s as many as 20% of Benoni’s

white population lived in rented flats, reflecting the concentration of development close to its CBD. At the time it was estimated that Benoni ha[d] the highest percentage of flat dwellers on the Rand – outside of the ‘concrete jungle’ of the Johannesburg suburbs of Hillbrow and Berea. About 20% of the families living in Benoni have reverted to the American introduced custom of renting an apartment, yet local estate agents claim that there is still an acute shortage of flats in town.44 From this point, however, new residential development tended to occur to the north of the town as large tracts of land were carved up into relatively large plots of middle class properties. Few images paint a more vivid picture of the growing aspirations and conspicuous consumption of the white middle class than the ubiquitous swimming pool. In 1968 the Benoni City Times graphically captured the impact of this phenomenon in the town’s burgeoning suburbs. ‘Today’, it reported, ‘if one flies over the town in a light aircraft the most striking thing is the profusion of little blue lakes in the gardens of hundreds of homes in virtually every suburb.’45 The article continued, Just a few years ago there were so few pools in Benoni that even in the elite suburbs anybody who knew his neighbourhood could rattle off the names of the families who were lucky enough to own one of the few … A pool is no longer considered a luxury – like the two bathroom homes and the two car garage. It is now one of the ‘basic necessities’ in a home. A buyer today will look askance at a house without a pool.46 One of the major suppliers of pools in the town expected to build five times more pools in 1968 compared to the previous year. And with the cheapest pool costing R1  500, it was clear that disposable income among the white middle class had increased significantly. Benoni became renowned for its upper class housing estate development. A new suburb established in the early 1980s reflected this trend:

Huddled between two freeways and one highway is an area covering several rugby fields called Lakefield Extension 21. It is worth about R3.2 million excluding the houses being built on it, of which some are costing owners a neat R280 000. There is nothing flashy about the area and the people living there are more concerned about easy maintenance of their homes than trying to impress. The majority of the houses are elegantly streamlined, relying on modern architecture to create diversities, such as arches and abundance of relief brick work. Some houses are hidden behind ornate walls … AT the time the stands were sold two years ago, they were fetching up to R14 750 for approximately 800 square metres, making extension 21 one of the most expensive areas on the East Rand.47 Home-ownership among whites in the region increased throughout this period and exceeded 60% in the late 1970s. In Boksburg three-quarters of whites owned their own properties in 1984.48 Another sign of the growing affluence in the white population was the increase IN vehicle ownership. In 1978 there were 45  000 licensed vehicles in the town.49 The 1960s have been described as the ‘golden era’ of apartheid, during which decade the country experienced unprecedented economic growth, with the expansion of the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy. In general, white urban residents experienced significant improvements in their standard of living. This was visible in the transformation of Ekurhuleni’s physical landscape, as mines made way for major engineering plants; CBDs received major facelifts to bring them in line with modern global cities; road networks multiplied to accommodate the proliferation of motor vehicles; and middle suburban areas sprouted all over the region. Life was good.

Life across the line Apartheid townships were designed to keep urban Africans confined to spaces defined by a general deprivation of social amenities, opportunities and the possibility of upward mobility. As has been shown, townships were built in a grid-like structure with

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The Inkspots perform in Springs

monotonously designed houses, which aimed to exercise maximum control over Africans at the lowest cost. And, as state resources were diverted to prop up Bantustan bureaucracies from the late 1960s, even less money was spent in urban areas causing already bad conditions to deteriorate further. Life in these areas was undoubtedly hard. But as Jacob Dlamini has argued when recalling his childhood in Katlehong in the 1970s, ‘black life under apartheid was not all doom and gloom’. While not disputing the prevalence of ‘poverty, crime or

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moral degradation’, Dlamini insists these factors did not determine ‘the shape of black life in its totality’. There were other more pleasant experiences. In his thought-provoking book, Native Nostalgia, he remembers that, Our family did not have electricity for the first eleven years of my life, but this did not mark my life as dim or lacking in any way. I still had a happy childhood. I do not mean to suggest that all black families were happy in the same way.50

He offers a vivid description of the spaces inside one of apartheid’s four-roomed houses, which was not always visible to those only looking at the drab exteriors: My favourite room in the house was the one farthest away from the door leading into the house. This was our dining room cum lounge. The room was painted a light cream colour, giving it an airy sunnyness. The room had a glass door partitioning it from the kitchen, and inside was a side-board made of solid imbuia wood that preserved Mother’s best china and the forks and knives that came out only on special days.51 Dlamini’s description of the street in which his family lived offers a glimpse into the everyday experiences of the people who lived there or simply passed by. Residents and strangers met here and constructed relations, often lasting a life time and sometimes ephemeral. In that sense Roman Street was much like any other street: Like most streets in Katlehong at the time, ours was not tarred. Nonetheless, the Roman Street was still a major terrain of social encounters and a place of pleasure and anxiety. The Sotho sisters who lived behind us ran a shebeen, a place of pleasure, while to the east of the Roman Catholic church, at the bottom of our block, was an open plot of land which was a place of anxiety, a notorious mugging spot, especially on Friday nights when labourers would be returning home with their pay-packets for the week, fortnight or month. Our street was a terrain of encounters between neighbours and strangers, mostly friendly but sometimes violent, even deadly.52

Dlamini nostalgically remembers, ‘... however, there was more to the sidewalk ballet than the occasional tragedy.’ In fact, the street was filled with colourful characters. There was the Xhosa migrant worker from the Eastern Cape who lived in a coal shed, nicknamed Mr Wasayilinde (Mr Wash-and-wait), who daily had to wash the only clothes he had to wear. Across the road was the Malawian migrant, Mr Chirwa, famous for his immaculate garden, his hyper-religious wife and for his ability to mangle the Zulu language. Another older woman is simply remembered as ‘Mrs Chancele’, because she organised pilgrimages to Chancele village in the Eastern Cape, the home of a prophetess. And there was Mrs Nkosi, the Swazi neighbour, renowned for her prolific swearing and who could let loose with ‘permutations of msunu (cunt), mthondo (dick), and nuka (smelly)’ in no time.53 Dlamini contends that his recollections of life in Katlehong were of warm upbringing, defined also by generational order in which children respected older people, even when they disagreed. Townships were poor, sometimes infested by rats, but not devoid of affection. He also does not deny the omnipresence of poverty and of the oppressive rules imposed by apartheid. Until the mid-1960s the government largely succeeded in stabilising the urban African population. In many townships, the African population even experienced some improvement in their living conditions and especially in employment. However, these gains were undermined by the policies of ‘high apartheid’ which promoted the development of ‘homelands’ and neglected the urban townships. As a result the few ‘rights’ enjoyed by urban Africans came under attack. Living conditions in all Ekurhuleni’s townships began to decline rapidly from the late 1960s as state resources began to be routed to the development of Bantustan administrations. The ensuing social deterioration contributed significantly to the uprising that gripped the country from the mid-1970s.

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Chapter 12

The student movement of 1976

Student uprising, 16 June 1976

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T

he student uprising of 1976 marked a major turning point in the country’s history. Although it originated and was concentrated in Soweto, the uprising very quickly spread to other townships on the Rand, and thereafter the rest of the country. A day after the eruption of student protests on the streets of Soweto similar scenes were re-enacted in Alexandra Township, where the police responded with vengeful aggression. On the same day a number of townships in Ekurhuleni also joined the student uprising, albeit initially on a smaller scale. According to Tshepo Moloi, the first reported demonstration in Ekurhuleni occurred in Tembisa on 17 June when pupils marched in a show of solidarity with their Sowetan counterparts. He argues that Tembisa, which was established in 1957 as a model township for Africans employed in Kempton Park, was not known for its political activity.1 However, opposition began to simmer among sections of the more politicised students at Tembisa High who in 1975 established the Tembisa Student Organisation, an early signal of the intention of these students to launch more organised resistance to the implementation of Afrikaans-medium instruction. Figo Madlala, who was a Form I student at Tembisa High in 1973 and one of the emerging generation of youth activists, told Moloi about the introduction of Afrikaans in his school: Yes, it was in 1973. It was called Die Landbou. The teacher who taught us Landbou was Mr Molala. First time in the class then he asked us ‘wat is grond?’ Wat is grond? What would you say? Firstly, how do you explain what is soil in Afrikaans? And communication was difficult because you have to respond in Afrikaans. Eh, someone said, ‘Die grond is die ding (The soil is this thing) [pointing to the ground]. Others said, ‘Die grond is bietjie things (Soil are these small things). But we could not explain ‘wat is grond?’ And that was the first class we had in Landbou. We had to say what the textbook was saying about ‘wat is grond? You were reading what you don’t understand.2

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Afrikaans-medium instruction was introduced in stages from 1973 and may have then appeared to be an experiment rather than a full-scale policy. Hence, initial objections to the state’s programme were muted among students from Tembisa High. But from the beginning of 1976 the government began to impose its ideologically-driven agenda with greater vigour. Another student leader of the time, Teboho Tsenase, recalled the sea-change that occurred in the early months of that fateful year: When we came here (Tembisa High) in 1975 everything was done in English but the rumour had reached us to say Afrikaans is coming. And in 1976 we actually did Geography in Afrikaans. And we were told that as we move along by the time we reach matric everything will be in Afrikaans. That really pissed everybody.3 Much of the simmering anger was captured and articulated by the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). Mongezi Maphuthi told Moloi that Black Consciousness (BC) activities began to pick up in 1975, reflecting the growing restlessness among the youth of the township: As early as 1975 we started to be involved together with Sipho Mzolo in Alexandra, and others from the BC. We attended the BC meetings, even some funerals; and the PAC events. I remember there was a commemoration for Sobukwe in Alexandra we went there. We did not have an ideology, we accepted everything that was brought by black people.4 Fellow comrade, Greg Malebo, echoes a familiar story about the role of young intellectuals, especially recently graduated teachers at secondary schools, in conscientising students. He recalls members of the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO), one of the leading BC organisations, such as Ralph Mothiba and Mr Masiza, teaching them alternative African history. Others remember more experienced activists being connected to the African National Congress. Despite these murmurings of political awakening,

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Moloi concludes that political awareness and organisation lagged behind that of Soweto and even Alexandra. Figo Madlala summarised the state of student politics in Tembisa at the time: ‘I would say in spite of the fact that there was discontent from the students but they were very compliant. Everything looked normal; it looked like there was nothing brewing.’5 But 16 June 1976 changed all that. As news spread about the massive demonstration in Orlando and the police’s brutal response, students from other townships immediately began planning solidarity action. Several secondary schools from townships across Ekurhuleni organised demonstrations for the following day. On the morning of 17 June, students from Tembisa High marched to Boitumelong Senior Secondary with the aim of mobilising maximum support for the solidarity action. One of Moloi’s key respondents, Madlala, explained how the march was organised: On the 16th we finished the day normally. It was on the 17th the headlines were in the newspapers ‘There’s a march that had taken place in Soweto’. That was when in the morning in the assembly there was a feeling that something was going to happen. And very quickly the word was going around. We were then directed to a class where we then discussed as students the situation as it was happening in Soweto. Of course there were a number of politically conscious students who were involved. You could sense from the way in which they were participating. One of these people who was in the leadership was Absolom Mazibuko. In that meeting we resolved that we are also going to march. And we said our march would go to Boitumelong Senior Secondary School because they were also affected by Afrikaans. We were supposed to discuss with them.6 Despite official records to the contrary, all the key figures involved in this march remember that the students from Tembisa High never reached their destination. ‘We were close to Boitumelong … somewhere in Mashimong section’, explains Madlala. Then, as in townships across the country, the police intervened:

We were disrupted. The police tear-gassed us and unleashed dogs on us. Students started running helter-skelter. We ran into a toilet. We got into a toilet I’m sure we were about 15, if not 20 – in one toilet. It was easy to go in but when we had to get out we couldn’t because we were pressing the door out.7 Moloi’s respondents told him that they ‘went wild’. Large groups of students attacked what they perceived to be ‘symbols of apartheid’, such as bottle stores and beer halls. His dissertation reconstructs the events that followed the march from the Cillie Commission Report, which the government established to investigate the student rebellion. According to the Commission, which gathered considerable evidence from the daily reports issued by the police, on 18 June hundreds of students from Boitumelong Secondary School and Tembisa High School joined forces and marched towards Leralla Bottlestore. By the time they reached their destination the number of marchers had swelled to approximately 2  000. Part of the crowd smashed the windows of the store and tried to set the place on fire. By midday smaller groups of students broke away from the main march and began to attack other shops. In one incident a Portuguese-owned café at the Oakmoor Railway Station was attacked and the owner’s vehicle set alight. Several shots were fired into the crowd resulting in the death of four protesters. The Commission reported that five persons were shot dead by the police. Moloi has argued that the political character of the local protest movement changed rapidly. The initial trigger of the uprising was opposition to Afrikaans, but a couple of days into the protest broader political demands were being made. Madlala recalls the shift that occurred: From the 18th the language changed from that we were going to approach Boitumelong to discuss Afrikaans as a medium of instruction and object against it. People were now talking about Bantu Education being a bad system. And as well they were talking about apartheid system. You know, to say we are oppressed as a nation.8

At the same time the new leaders of the students from both high schools began to organise themselves and with the assistance of more experienced activists from Soweto and Alexandra launched the Tembisa Students’ Representative Council (TSRC) on June 18. The objectives of the TSRC, according to Madlala, were ‘to take issues of students, their grievances to the principal. The body had to represent the aspirations of the students.’ And it was also pointed out that the TSRC ‘shouldn’t be highly political in spite of the fact that it was formed within the turmoil’.9 The state responded quickly to destroy the nascent student movement in Tembisa. On 21 June the security forces swooped on the township and arrested approximately 300 students and charged nearly 200 of them with public violence. Other parts of Ekurhuleni experienced similar local uprising. For example, on the evening of 17 June the Vosloorus community was set alight apparently by protesting youth who had been marching through the township. Putco, the bus company who parked their buses in a depot adjacent to the hall, now took the precaution of moving the buses to the depot in Boksburg. This decision set in motion a chain of events the following day that saw Vosloorus momentarily explode. The following morning Putco drivers had to collect their buses from the town and then return to the township. Thousands of commuters were stranded and had to wait for nearly two hours before the first buses arrived at 5 am. The workers were incensed and began stoning the buses. Putco decided to withdraw all the buses, effectively leaving the whole Vosloorus workforce stranded in the township. Apartheid planning had left the township without a railway connection, which made residents almost entirely dependent on Putco buses. Thirty thousand workers, including migrants residing in the large single-sex hostels, decided to stay at home rather than walk to their workplaces in Boksburg, resulting in the first stayaway in Vosloorus. The workers, who were joined by students, gathered along MC Botha Avenue, the main road connecting the township to Boksburg, to demonstrate and to show their solidarity with the students of Soweto. From there they proceeded to other parts of the township attacking any building

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Black Consciousness inspired a generation to reject white rule

associated with the East Rand Administration Board (ERAB) or the government. In the space of four hours, the beer hall, post office, hostel office and community hall were set ablaze or broken down by workers and students. The Vosloorus uprising was one of the first major demonstrations of worker and youth unity in action, and was also significant because of the involvement of hostel dwellers. In other parts of Kathorus students played the leading role in the June uprising. As the scale of the conflict in Soweto became apparent, ERAB officials, police, principals and Urban Bantu Councillors were recruited onto a surveillance network to monitor each of the townships. Principals were called at regular intervals to ascertain whether there were any disturbances. When nothing happened in Katlehong and Thokoza on 17 June, they began to hope the trouble had passed them by. On the morning of 18 June almost all the principals reported no obvious signs of

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problems, except in Katlehong where one principal noted the presence of unknown persons in the vicinity of the school. The apparent quiet was soon shattered when secondary school students all over Ekurhuleni gathered in mass meetings in their respective schools. From there they marched and demonstrated through the townships. Suddenly the authorities were confronted not just by isolated incidents in a single township, but by almost simultaneous protests across the region. ERAB immediately withdrew its personnel and effectively handed over the running of the townships to the police. Eighteen June was a Friday and the authorities may have hoped the weekend break would calm matters down. They were mistaken. Protests continued over the weekend, especially on the Sunday. The police diary of events from 20 to 25 June charts these events, often in a vivid way. Police reports flowed in from all over the region virtually every quarter of an

hour. First Katlehong and then Thokoza took centre stage. On the night of 20 June the police diary records: 19h30: Gatsha Buthelezi sighted at Natalspruit Hospital and was being watched by the police. Information about an alleged plan to attack railways and buses on Monday 21 June. 20h20: Unrest at Kwesine Hostel. Ambulance set alight. 21h15: All ERAB staff removed from the hostel. 21h20: SAP also withdraws from the hostel. 22h20: Hostel set alight. 01h30: Police suppress unrest at Kwesine hostel. The involvement of hostel dwellers in the June uprising is significant, as they have been portrayed as always being opposed to student struggles. This was in part due to the rapid transformation of the focus of the struggle from being against the imposition of Afrikaans to opposition to Bantu Education and the entire apartheid system. Workers, who were already shocked and outraged by the state’s brutal repression of the student demonstrations, easily identified with the broader objectives of the uprising. The authorities closed all township schools and ordered a pantser to patrol Katlehong. Over the next few days groups of youth attacked official buildings, houses and vehicles. ERAB officials residing in the township were also targeted. However, students vented most of their anger at the most conspicuous and reviled symbols of apartheid exploitation, the ubiquitous beer halls. In Katlehong, beer halls and bars including Wag-’n-bietjie, Calypso, Last Chance, Pilot and Cyril Victor came under attack. In Thokoza and Vosloorus fewer beer halls were attacked but the ones that were sustained considerably more damage. Although regular clashes occurred between the police and students, there were no reports of killings, even though the police used live ammunition. However, the uprising in Ekurhuleni was under-reported due to

the almost exclusive focus on Soweto. A week later, Ekurhuleni police reported that, ‘The situation has calmed down considerably’.10 Despite the apparent return to normality, the authorities only decided to reopen schools in mid-July. Even then extra police were deployed as trouble was still expected at the schools.11 Students utilised the opportunity provided by the reopening of the schools to mobilise against police action during the June uprising and the detention of their colleagues. A week after the schools were reopened Tokothaba Secondary School in Thokoza was partly gutted after being set alight.12 Throughout August there were reports of marches and demonstrations. On 5 August students at Ilinge Secondary School in Vosloorus approached the principal, Xulu, to ask why one of their colleagues had been shot and another detained. Xulu, who was also a councillor, was accused of colluding with the police. Students then left their classrooms carrying placards that read: ‘Why was Herbert shot and Walter detained?’ They marched to other schools and successfully persuaded students to join their protest. Later that month hundreds of Thokoza students marched through the township and ERAB offices in Katlehong were burnt.13 During one of these marches a student, Mokethi Radebe, went missing. The police claimed he was not arrested, but his parents were unable to find him. This kind of incident aggravated an already tense situation. By the end of August it had become abundantly clear that the school boycott in Katlehong High would not end soon. Only 150 out of 830 students at the school were attending classes regularly.14 Similar situations existed at the other secondary schools in Kathorus. By the end of the year most students were neither prepared nor willing to take the final examinations. Attempts by the school authorities to insist on the examinations provoked angry responses. Vosloorus students expressed feelings about the situation in a handwritten letter left under the door of their principal’s office: Dear Xulu you blady cell out. Just continue with that exam of yours. You’ll suffer within a minute. It means you’re happy with those who were detained. You cell out. We will be there tomorrow,

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Performers like Thandi Klaasen were part of a cultural revival in townships

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you must make up your mind otherwise that school of yours will into flame today at night. Please those exam papers we want them we will burn them in front of you your cell out. Xulu you’re busy writing, other people are suffering in detention.15

Repression As was the case in Tembisa, the police acted swiftly to undermine the burgeoning student movement and arrested scores of students. Some of them faced charges ranging from sabotage to distributing pamphlets. In November, 13 Katlehong students appeared in court on charges of sabotage. They were accused of inciting other students from Katlehong Secondary School to march to the police station to demand the release of detained students. They also allegedly burnt ERAB offices in Hlalatse and Tsolo sections, destroyed a tractor and looted about 12 shops. A witness, Mavis Tsibanyoni, claimed that two of the accused, Elliot Radebe and Carel Manake, had told them to burn the buildings, but also told students not to use violence on the march to the police station. She recalled that students sang ‘Nkosi Sikeleli’ and ‘Kruger shall never go to heaven’. When they reached the police, teargas canisters were shot at them, causing pandemonium.16 In what was probably the biggest trial in the region, 57 people from Katlehong and Daveyton were charged with public violence in the Germiston regional court. The ages of the accused ranged from eight to 47 years, a span that effectively refuted the authorities’ claim that only youth were involved in the uprising. The mass arrests of students and the charges brought against them undermined the capacity of the fledgling movement to consolidate formal organisations. One of the consequences was that student protests began to lose their mass character and became fragmented, with small groups of students embarking on acts of sabotage. For example, the Cillie Commission reported that on 27 July an explosion at the Sedibeng Primary School in Tembisa caused some damage to the principal’s office. Moloi explains that there were sporadic outbreaks of rioting in Tembisa despite widespread detentions. The Cillie Commission report that the last demonstration occurred on 1

November when students from Tembisa High School protested against the writing of school examinations. Several of Moloi’s respondents explained that they were forced to go into hiding to avoid further harassment and arrest by the state. Moreover, increased state repression caused many of them to seriously consider going into exile. Many of those who remained behind committed themselves to building a new movement against the apartheid system. Their efforts resulted in the proliferation of community-based organisation over the next few years. In Tembisa, some of the prominent activists of the uprising in June 1976 decided to emulate their counterparts in Soweto and established a Committee of Ten. Malebo provided some insight into the challenges faced by activists at the time: Because of the repression we were not able to meet until we formed the Committee of Ten. We were ten people that would meet and talk. We had Shadrack Mkhonto. Mkhonto left the country in 1979 or 1980. And we had Nicholas Molutsi, we had Pule Tsatsi, and there was Tshepo (I have forgotten his surname) and there was Eddie Dludlu. You see many of them decided not to take part after the Boers had beaten them up. It was discussions – political discussions. But let me be honest it never had direction. You know we were a group that would meet every day to check what was going on in the township; check Brian Mazibuko’s family; whoever gets arrested we would go in there to talk to the family, comfort the family. We were more of that than organizing students. Because of oppression it was risky to do that.17 According to Moloi, some of the members of the Committee of Ten went on to join the Black People’s Convention (BPC) after being recruited by James Moleya, and ultimately the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the early 1980s. Elsewhere in Ekurhuleni activists also came to the conclusion that they needed to build new and locally based organisations. In the aftermath of the June 1976 uprising, Katlehong students embarked on a number of initiatives to

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organise themselves in schools. In the latter part of 1976 a number of attempts were made to establish Students’ Representative Councils (SRCs) in the secondary schools. In Vosloorus, Rankele Ratswane and his colleagues formed a branch of the Student Christian Movement (SCM), which he says: used to run the religious items at school and giving debates. And we were visited by other students from Soweto with the influence obviously of activists, an activist that’s Moses Mochadibane … he actually invited them to come and empower us politically to a certain extent. At one state we initiated to form Lesedi Youth Organisation.18 Black Consciousness students dominated the SCM and made an impression on many students. Seven Katlehong students were found guilty of producing and disseminating BC pamphlets. Despite widespread sympathy for these ideas, the BC movement was not yet able to translate this into strong organisational support. That would only happen towards the end of the 1970s.

Emerging crisis In the aftermath of the 1976 student rebellion the state moved hesitantly and without too much political conviction to introduce limited political reforms and to respond to some of the underlying socio-economic grievances affecting the African population. Soweto was the primary target of these interventions, albeit at levels too low seriously to address the mounting needs of poor communities. Elsewhere state investment in the upgrading of townships was even more modest but at the time appeared to signal a shift away from the policy inaugurated in the 1960s to direct investment to the homelands at the expense of urban townships. There was some hope that things would get better. For example, in 1977 the ERAB announced an ambitious investment plan to upgrade housing and improve facilities in Daveyton, Wattville and Vosloorus. Approximately R2.7 million was allocated for housing in the whole of Ekurhuleni, with about

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R380  000 of this amount dedicated to the three aforementioned townships. The Benoni City Times reported that R120 000 will be spent as an instalment on the 3 000 house scheme in Daveyton, R100 000 as an instalment on a hostel of 5 000 beds in Daveyton and similarly, in Vosloorus R50 000 will be spent on a 1 000 house scheme. R100 000 is provided as an instalment on a hostel of 5 000 beds. Other developments included the upgrading of street lighting, ‘rudimentary roads’, tarring of bus routes and extension of water reticulation systems.19 However, this development plan proved woefully inadequate and barely met the existing needs in townships, where the growing population, augmented by increases in inward migration, had created huge demands for housing. Massive overcrowding in existing houses and hostels forced people to establish squatter settlements in and around the periphery of townships. Under these circumstances, housing became a critical source of tension between township residents and the authorities. By the end of the decade stand-offs between squatters and the ERAB became regular occurrences, as poor African families attempted to find a foothold in urban areas and the authorities desperately and often violently attempted to maintain influx control. For example, in April 1979 about 250 squatters demonstrated outside the Daveyton Administration Building to object to the ERAB’s demolition of their shacks earlier in the day. Comprising mainly women, who bore the brunt of the state’s attacks against squatters, the demonstrators asked the simple question: Where must we sleep? Several of the women returned to the open veld that evening as they had nowhere else to go.20 The housing crisis in Daveyton had become so grave that it triggered a public outcry even from members of the usually compliant Community Council. Two of its most prominent members, Shadrack Sinaba and Tom Boya, expressed support for a demonstration by more than 100 women who congregated at the Council’s chambers to highlight the lack of proper housing in

Daveyton Council

Daveyton. Sinaba called on the Council to: adopt a resolution of no confidence in the East Rand Administration Board in the building of houses in Daveyton … They cannot point out anything of pride they have created since taking over … There is no happiness in Daveyton. Numerous press statements have been made by the Board as far back December 8 1978, promising that they have plans to build 3 000 houses in Daveyton. I want to warn the Board that people are desperate and will be compelled to go squatting because we know this is done purposely by the authorities to make us go back to the homelands.21 Sinaba also reported a growing trend of registered tenants evicting lodgers in order to attract new lodgers who could afford higher rents. ‘If the lodger does not pay, he is thrown out without warning and

his lodger’s permit is cancelled at the office. A new lodger is found in a short time as there are many looking for accommodation in the township.’ He ascribed this partly to the growing need for income by tenants who were also affected by unemployment and inflation.22 Sinaba was a prominent political figure in Daveyton since the 1960s and enjoyed a degree of popular support despite his participation in the widely criticised Community Councils. He and later Tom Boya were able to use their positions within the system to win some concessions to particular constituencies in the township, which gave them sufficient space simultaneously to criticise aspects of the government’s policies and to court sections of the anti-apartheid movement.

Conservative but popular In his analysis of emerging civic politics in the late 1970s, Seekings describes the political phenomenon represented by the likes of Sinaba as ‘Conservative

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Katlehong squatters demonstrating against forced removals

Populism’. He has argued that these councillors, who were later almost universally rejected, were pivotal in the politics of townships in the late 1970s and early 1980s: Until the early 1980s many township councillors provided residents with one channel through which they could raise and resolve certain limited problems. Councillors served as arbiters in township disputes, mediators for residents with the authorities, and dispenses of limited forms of patronage. These roles brought some councillors significant popular support.23 One such figure was Gideon Ngoduka who launched the Vosloorus Progressive Party (VPP) in 1980 after he fell out with fellow local Xhosa representative, Ezra Jukuda. Ngoduka was a longstanding and prominent

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figure in homeland politics, having been active in the Transkei during the 1960s, and served on the Xhosa ward committee which advised the local councillor on matters pertaining to the Xhosa population in the township. He claimed to have parted ways with his erstwhile ally when Jukuda reneged on an undertaking to provide work to Xhosa migrants. Supported by a constituency of migrants, Ngoduka launched the VPP to oppose what he perceived to be corruption in the Council. Very soon, however, his ambitions extended to broader political objectives. The VPP became very critical of the local council, especially Jukuda, which made it a pole of attraction for a range of opposition voices. On the one hand, the party articulated a moderate programme that ‘pledge[d] its moral support to the authority that be.’24 It also took a firm stand against ‘foreign ideologies that spill even to our door-steps from the civic groups from over

our borders.’ This rather cryptic broadside was likely directed at the nascent civic movement that was taking shape in places such as Thokoza and Tembisa. On the other hand, the VPP also attracted migrant workers who were active in the emerging independent trade unions and were exposed to far more radical politics. The party’s newsletter, Internos, gave its full support to the new unions stating that, The future of the people in South Africa is in the hands of the workers. Only the working class, in alliance with other progressive minded sections of the community, can build a happy life for all South Africans, a life free from unemployment, insecurity and poverty, free from racial hatred and oppression. A life of vast opportunities for all people.25 In 1984 the VPP turned its attention to the problem of housing in the township. It protested that houses for sale were too expensive (ranging from R7  000– R10  000) and demanded people should be given sites on a site-and-service scheme basis. Importantly, it insisted that unmarried mothers and lower income groups be provided with rented accommodation. In the same year the party took up the grievances of hostel dwellers who accused the Council of allocating houses to people who were not on the waiting list.26 The VPP contested the 1982 elections and stood on a platform that rejected ethnic divisions and called ‘for a fair deal for every resident irrespective of creed and tribal division’. Ngoduka and his supporters failed to win any of the wards, which seemed to push them into a more adversarial stance in relation to the Council, including seeking alliances with more radical township organisations. But this proved to be a shortlived political shift. In the mid-1980s, when Black Local Authorities (BLAs) were universally denounced as irrelevant and powerless, Ngoduka insisted that they were useful platforms to change the system from within. He became a vociferous opponent of the UDF, accusing it of political arrogance. One of the better-known conservative populist movements was the Thokoza Progressive Association

(TPA), which was also established in 1980. Like the VPP, it opposed ethnic divisions and participated in the local elections on a non-ethnic basis. During the first two years of its existence the organisation took up community grievances such as housing and the lack of facilities in the township.27 Under the leadership of Phineas Lekolwane, the TPA organised a petition in 1981 that was signed by 2 000 residents of Thokoza, calling for the resignation of councillors, thus anticipating a campaign that would become popular in the mid-1980s.28 The Association was so popular that it was able to attract up to 1  000 people to its public meetings, something which caused serious concern among the authorities. In order to undermine the TPA, the state refused to renew Lekolwane’s lodger’s permit, even though he lived in the township since 1973; his taxi and business licence was revoked; and his wife’s pass book was withdrawn. As a result he was forced out of the township. In his absence the TPA became embroiled in internal squabbles, which resulted in open divisions and eventually a formal split. The Katlehong Residents’ Action Committee under the leadership of Jacob Khoali played a similar opposition role in Katlehong. Although elected to the local council in 1982, Khoali and E.A. Sukazi, proved to be a thorn in the side of the Community Council and later also the BLA. Both of them boycotted the inauguration of the Council ‘until such time we are given real powers to govern ourselves.’29 In 1985 Khoali threatened to resign from the Council if that body proceeded with the proposed rent increases. Later that year the state arrested him under the Internal Security Act. It may be argued that these local councillors, and the organisations they created, represented an early shift in civic politics in the direction of a more critical stance towards the government and an attempt to articulate some of the demands of township residents. However, most of them remained committed to working within the system, a tactic that quickly became discredited in the 1980s as conditions in townships deteriorated rapidly and new, more radical political formations sprang up. These processes are the subject of the following chapter.

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Chapter 13

Ekurhuleni and the struggle against apartheid

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T

he radicalisation of student politics in the 1970s signalled the beginning of a new wave of anti-apartheid mobilisation that reached its climax in the mid-1980s. By that time hundreds of thousands of township residents, mainly the youth, were involved in numerous campaigns and struggles against the apartheid government: school and rent boycotts, and campaigns for housing, improved social amenities and better education punctuated the political life of virtually every township across the country. The government responded by unleashing a vicious campaign of repression against black communities. This resulted in widespread deaths and detentions, the declaration of states of emergency, the banning of organisations and the occupation of townships by security forces. State repression provoked further resistance by communities and contributed to the militarisation of conflict between a section of the youth and the security forces. Despite widespread repression, including the imposition of successive states of emergency, mass detentions and the mobilisation of vigilante organisations, the state failed to stem the tide of rebellion, in which Ekurhuleni played a pivotal role.

ERAPO attempted to unite civic struggles across the region

Ekurhuleni and the struggle against apartheid 149

Deepening crisis Township-based organisations and trade unions constituted the heart of the anti-apartheid rebellion, and the Ekurhuleni region with its concentration of about ten townships and major industrial areas emerged as one of the most significant sites of the struggle for freedom. The residents of these townships found living conditions under apartheid increasingly intolerable and from the late 1970s began to mobilise against the onslaught on their already poor living conditions. The political movement of the 1980s arose from the convergence of several distinct currents of resistance against the apartheid state, which were channelled through the student, trade union and civic movements respectively. The effects of the deteriorating conditions in the townships (including in the schools) and the deleterious consequences of the economic crisis on employment and wages in the industrial areas combined to generate resistance at multiple levels in the region. These factors tended to facilitate unity between youth and workers around issues faced by each constituency, such as strikes and school boycotts, resulting in periodic co-operation between the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) and the Congress of South African Students (COSAS). One of the main underlying causes of the explosion of struggles in the region was the combined effects of the recession and high inflation that hit the country in the early 1980s, and resulted in mass retrenchments and a squeeze on wages. In response a strike wave spread across Ekurhuleni as workers flexed their newly found union muscles to defend their jobs and demand higher wages.1 In the townships the new civic movements offered an organisational space for worker and youth activists to work together in a more systematic manner around issues of mutual concern, such as high rents, deteriorating living conditions, overcrowding and rising poverty levels. Despite stringent influx control measures to curb African urbanisation, Ekurhuleni’s population grew steadily throughout the 1970s, a trend that was particularly noticeable in the township agglomeration of Kathorus. According to official statistics, in 1970 Kathorus’s population stood at 151  000 (Katlehong

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– 95 751; Thokoza – 25 673; Vosloorus – 29 689). By 1979 this figure had grown by nearly 30% to 191 000 (Katlehong – 103 284; Thokoza – 47 900; Volsoorus – 42 039). The real figure was probably much higher since the urban African population grew rapidly in the early 1970s2 and official records notoriously underrepresented this population group. In the course of the 1980s the rate of growth became explosive. In 1988 the official population figure for Katlehong alone was estimated at 400 000, nearly quadrupling in less than a decade. Thokoza’s population also rocketed to 228  000 by 1990. Vosloorus’s population remained

Deteriorating conditions in Daveyton lower than its neighbours, but also experienced rapid growth between 1982 and 1985 when the number of residents nearly doubled from 60 000 to 112 500. By 1990 the population of Kathorus was at least threequarters of a million, making it the second-largest township complex after Soweto.3 The state responded to the rapid increase in the region’s population by turning a blind eye to the growing demand for housing, which resulted in a drastic reduction in the provision of state housing in African townships. Between 1973 and 1979 fewer than 7  000 houses were built in Ekurhuleni’s townships,

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Life in Ekurhuleni hostel that is, less than 100 a year in each of the region’s ten townships.4 This created an unprecedented housing crisis. In 1981 the official housing waiting list for Katlehong was already desperately high at 4 000.5 By 1987 this had swelled to a massive 19  000 families or just over 95000 people. In Thokoza, in the same year, an estimated 69  000 people lacked housing.6 Daveyton was also fast becoming overcrowded with an estimated 5  000 families in need of houses. The state’s lack of investment in housing resulted in the proliferation of squatter camps. Massive overcrowding was inevitable. In Katlehong in the early 1980s population density stood at 23 to 30 per stand.7 A survey conducted in 1988 found an incredible 16 to 20 households crammed on to each stand in Thokoza.8 Only Vosloorus managed to escape these high levels of congestion.9 In the 1980s Katlehong and Thokoza had among

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the highest number of shack dwellers in the PWV area. Katlehong especially experienced an explosion in the number of backyard shacks between 1980 and 1982, from 8  000 to 34  000 (at the time there were only 17 000 houses in the township).10 Thokoza too had more than double the number of shacks compared to houses (35 000 to 17 000). By 1991 the number of shacks in Katlehong and Thokoza was 81  000 and 65 000 respectively.11 The state responded in typical kragdadige fashion to the proliferation of shacks, with the ERAB12 being especially vicious towards squatters, declaring that it would not permit any squatters anywhere in Ekurhuleni. Such belligerence set the scene for regular clashes between the state and squatters in which women were both the main victims and the most resolute defenders of African people’s right to a decent place in the urban areas. The often cruel demolition

of shacks that left scores of families homeless and exposed to adverse weather conditions became one of the most notorious displays of the harsh realities of apartheid rule. In 1982/83 the ERAB launched a series of blitzes against squatters in Kathorus. For example, in 1983 alone more than 68  000 people lost their shacks and 29  000 ‘illegal’ residents were forcibly returned to the homelands.13 Lack of decent housing and overcrowding became the most visible signs of the deteriorating conditions in the townships. Added to this was a host of other issues that reflected the state’s neglect of these areas, including dilapidated or non-existent sewerage systems; lack of electricity; poor transport; and a general lack of social facilities. These factors, combined with rising unemployment and low wages, created a volatile situation in the townships.

New civic movements The early 1980s witnessed the birth of a new generation of civic organisations that aimed to mobilise residents against the rapidly declining living conditions in the townships. A discernible pattern of civic mobilisation unfolded in the region in the early 1980s: often the early civic movements, led by adults, focused their attention on improving the living conditions of township residents and did not always articulate overt political demands. However, the introduction of the BLAs in 1983 created a focus for radical political mobilisation against undemocratic state institutions, which thrust the civics into the forefront of local political campaigns. The trigger for the escalation in struggles was usually the imposition of steep rent increases by the township authorities, which were necessitated by central government’s failure to invest in these areas. Official attitudes to urban Africans were still framed by influx control policies, resulting in the state’s refusal to invest heavily in urban townships in case it encouraged permanent settlement there. In the wake of the 1976 uprising the state began to shift its approach towards urban Africans and acknowledged that it had neglected the development of African townships. By that time however the country was in the midst of economic difficulties that curtailed the state’s capacity for social investment. The state also

began following international trends of support for the privatisation of public and social services, which marked the beginning of a process of relying on the private sector to provide housing in African townships. As a result of these factors the Nationalist government failed again to invest the requisite resources to stem the precipitous fall in living standards among the urban African population. Furthermore, the township-based sources of funding, especially revenue from beer halls, had dried up, leaving the township authorities with few sources of income. When the BLAs were installed in 1983 the state insisted they be financially self-sufficient, meaning they had to raise revenue from township residents to effect investment in these areas. Under the circumstances rent increases became the only viable option for raising revenue. In fact, the government insisted that rent increases be imposed, triggering widespread rebellion against the newlycreated BLAs. A number of townships in the region only witnessed the launch of new civic organisations in the early 1980s. Duduza is a case in point. The Duduza Civic Association (DCA) was formed in October1982 in response to the Council’s proposed ‘master plan’ for overhauling the sewerage system in the township. Residents welcomed the belated plan to remove the bucket system, but rejected the proposal that they should bear the financial costs for the provision of basic services. In fact, it was calculated that the proposed increases would result in a doubling of rents within the space of three years. The Civic Association first tried to negotiate with the Nigel Administration but to no avail. It convened public meetings to consult the community and quickly established itself as the voice of the community on civic matters. By the time the BLA was inaugurated at the end of 1983, the scene was already set for an intense contestation between itself and the DCA. The latter persisted with its campaign to oppose unreasonable rent increases, which brought it to the attention of more established civic organisations on the PWV. In 1984, the DCA together with a host of other local civic movements, affiliated to the United Democratic Front (UDF). A similar set of circumstances also saw activists in Tembisa galvanise to launch the Tembisa Civic

Ekurhuleni and the struggle against apartheid 153

Association (TCA). In 1983 the state launched a programme to install a sewerage system in response to people’s demands for the eradication of the bucket system. However, as was the case elsewhere it wanted to shift the financial burden of these improvements onto residents and at the beginning of 1984 announced a R4 per month rent increase. The TCA immediately mobilised a mass campaign against the increase, forcing the Council to rescind its decision. However, in May the Council again attempted to enforce the increase, triggering further protests by the civic association and its supporters. Sharp rent increases also triggered the birth of civic struggles in Ratanda, arguably the smallest township in Ekurhuleni at the time, with a total population of only about 50  000. From the 1970s to the early 1980s residents had become accustomed to annual rent increases ranging from between 25 cents and 50 cents per annum, which seemed sufficiently moderate not to generate antipathy towards the authorities. Although poverty was as widespread in Ratanda as in other townships, it appeared not to have experienced the same degree of social decline as its neighbours, which might explain why the BLA elections of November 1983 went ahead without much opposition. Seemingly buoyed by the absence of mass opposition to the BLA, the authorities announced a R5.50 rent increase in June 1984. This move turned out to be a serious miscalculation by the ERAB. Residents were incensed, especially as there was no consultation on the matter. Moreover, many workers only earned R40–R80 per week. Women felt especially threatened because they experienced high levels of unemployment and those who were fortunate to find employment as domestic workers earned miserly wages of about R100 per month. The unilateral rent increase provoked angry responses from residents and led to the sudden transformation of politics in the township. In July the Ratanda Civic Association was formed to lead the struggle against rent increases, signalling the township’s formal entry into the regional struggles led by the civic movements. In Tsakane, civic struggles in the early 1980s seemed to be dominated by the campaign of the residents of Silverton squatter camp (also known as

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Kwavevi) for proper housing. Nearly 6 000 residents of the Brakpan Old Location, which was finally demolished between 1981 and 1983, had been promised four-roomed houses in Tsakane but the authorities reneged on this promise and dumped the residents in a squatter camp instead. In response the residents formed the Silverton Ad-Hoc Committee to press home their demands for proper housing. In early 1985 several residents were ordered to vacate their shacks and to occupy the two-roomed stand provided by the authorities. Hundreds of residents marched to the offices of the administration board to voice their opposition to this move and to demand four-roomed houses for all the 6 000 residents of Silverton. Vosloorus was one of the few townships where Black Consciousness activists were able to establish control over a civic organisation, the Vosloorus Civic Association. In other townships where the Pan Africanist Congress or the Black Consciousness Movement had a substantial presence, such as KwaThema, they tried working with activists from the Congress movement. Until 1984 most of the civic organisations in Ekurhuleni were largely confined to activities in particular locations. Some efforts were made to link up with the Soweto Civic Association, but these were sporadic at best. The one exception to this trend was the East Rand People’s Organisation (ERAPO), led by a number of trade unionists such as Sam Ntuli. Launched in June 1981, the organisation had the express objective of creating a movement across Ekurhuleni to campaign on ‘bread and butter issues’. Ntuli and his comrades were determined to build a civic movement that had explicit political objectives, with a clear orientation to the Congress movement. While committed to campaigning for improvements in living conditions in the townships, ERAPO tended to place greater emphasis on regional and national political campaigns. It played an important role in attempting to mobilise a regional movement against the Community Councils and the ERAB and became one of the first Ekurhuleni-based organisations to affiliate to the UDF, which allowed it to connect with similar movements across the country. ERAPO was one of the torch-bearers of the UDF’s campaign against BLA

elections and was also in the forefront of the ‘Million Signature Campaign’. Although its campaigns had a wide appeal, ERAPO’s influence was largely confined to Thokoza, Katlehong and Daveyton. In Daveyton ERAPO initially appeared to enjoy an unusually amiable relationship with Tom Boya, the ‘mayor’ of the township, even as it campaigned for improvements in residents’ living conditions. But the relationship soured when Boya announced a proposed rent increase without consulting the community. ERAPO’s housing campaign and protest against rent increases were major foci of mobilisation, transforming it into one of the leading local movements, as evidenced by its ability to attract thousands of residents to public meetings at the Lionel Kent Centre. Therefore, by early 1984 almost every township in Ekurhuleni had witnessed the formation of at least one civic organisation, which played the leading role in campaigning for improvements in living conditions, mobilised against steep rent increases and became increasingly politicised in the struggle against the creation of BLAs. The second half of 1984 would became a watershed in the political struggle in the region, as the civic movement linked up with the rapidly radicalising student/youth movements, which in turn forged strategic alliances with the independent trade union movement.

Students and youth take the lead The student uprising of 1976 decisively placed students at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid. Although that movement suffered some setback under the whip of state repression, it was not eliminated. Students continued to organise and mobilise throughout the late 1970s, albeit on a much smaller scale and often not on an overtly political programme. But most of the underlying causes that ignited the Soweto revolt still prevailed. In fact, conditions in black schools across the country deteriorated rapidly from the late 1970s: overcrowding, underqualified teachers, draconian discipline and outdated syllabi were among the factors contributing to the simmering discontent among students. The crisis was perhaps most visible in the schools of those townships that experienced a massive influx of people

from the rural areas, such as Katlehong. At the end of the 1970s in Katlehong the student– teacher ratio was approximately 54:1. With an estimated shortage of nearly 200 classrooms, it was not surprising that between 50 and 88 students crammed into single classrooms, rendering any effective teaching virtually impossible. In neighbouring Thokoza, overcrowding in schools was worse with reports of up to 96 students in a classroom. Perhaps the most damning indictment of the state of education in Kathorus was the rapid increase in the failure rates. Between 1979 and 1983 he number of failures in Kathorus schools rocketed from 2  336 to an alarming 41  627.14 Education in these two townships was particularly calamitous but all townships experienced varying degrees of crisis that had been developing since at least the early 1970s. Schools therefore became important sites of mobilisation, first against the deterioration of education and then against the apartheid system. The intensification of education struggles in the early 1980s created favourable conditions for the development of student political organisations. COSAS was founded in 1979 and by the time it was banned in 1985 had established itself as the leading student body in the country. However, its status as the leading student organisation was not assured at its founding. In the early days COSAS activists often found the general student body reluctant to engage in overt political activity, mainly because the repression following the 1976 uprising was still fresh in people’s minds. To some extent COSAS’s later success emanated from the way it dealt with the difficulties it experienced in its formative years. Importantly, the leadership of COSAS concentrated on nurturing a committed cadre of activists, who were prepared patiently to build the structures of the organisation. It took some time for COSAS to take root in the townships of Ekurhuleni, but once it did, it played a leading role in co-ordinating local and regional struggles. Many students were initially hesitant to join COSAS because they did not trust student politics. But COSAS successfully mobilised around issues that affected most students, such as corporal punishment, lack of textbooks, sexual harassment, and the age limit. It also campaigned for the election

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COSAS rally in Daveyton

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of democratic SRCs and organised lively debates and discussions. From 1983 a growing number of schools embarked on boycotts. Buoyed by the launch of the UDF in August 1983, students confronted the authorities in what became a protracted struggle first to improve education for black youth and which then developed into a generalised struggle to overthrow the entire apartheid system. From the beginning of 1984 COSAS quickly established a more organised presence in secondary schools across the region, and its influence spread rapidly as one school after the other joined the boycotts. Typically, boycotts were mounted by the better organised and most politicised schools, from where the action usually spread to other secondary schools. This pattern was evident in Tembisa in early 1984. A one-week class boycott took place in March 1984 at Tembisa High School to press home students’ demands for SRCs. In July Boitumelong and Tembisa High Schools embarked on a boycott to demand an end to the age limit and corporal punishment, as well as demanding the right to form SRCs. By mid-August the class boycott had extended to the primary schools, involving about 24  000 students in total. By mid-1984 no fewer than 29 schools in Katlehong were permanently on boycott, affecting thousands of secondary and primary school students. Similar levels of boycotts existed in Thokoza and Vosloorus. On 21 July 1984 students from four schools in Daveyton (Mayebuya High, Hulwazi Senior Secondary, H.B. Nyathi Senior Secondary and Daveyton Junior Secondary) embarked on a boycott to press home their demands, which included scrapping the age limit, ending excessive corporal punishment, stopping sexual harassment and establishing democratic SRCs. Until mid-1984 the schools in Duduza were relatively quiet compared to other townships in the region. However, the situation changed dramatically in July of that year when students from M.O. Sebone High decided to boycott class to protest the dismissal of the matric English teacher, a Mrs Twala. Police harassment of boycotting students caused an escalation in the tension between the students and authorities, and also had the effect of rapidly radicalising a layer of students in the township. Soon these students came

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FOSATU strike

to the attention of older activists who put them in touch with COSAS leaders in other townships. Within weeks of the boycott a steering committee was elected that included one of the main female student leaders in the area, Sonto Thobela, who became the secretary of the committee. Her sister, Zanele, was elected as an additional member. A COSAS branch was formally launched in the township in March 1985. The state responded to the escalation and spread of student struggles through the implementation of a series of repressive measures: schools were closed and sometimes occupied by security forces; student activists were expelled and often detained; and

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students were generally harassed by the police. State violence, which regularly resulted in shootings and deaths, triggered a cycle of violent confrontations between boycotting students and security forces that transformed the streets of townships into battlefields. Parents were generally sympathetic to the demands of their children and expressed anger at state repression. However, an increasing number also expressed serious concern over the protracted disruption of schooling. The National Education Crisis Committee (NECC) was launched by prominent national activists in an effort to resolve the education crisis. Parent and student committees were established in townships, often at the behest of the students, to intervene in the local manifestations of the education crisis. In KwaThema COSAS took the lead in convening several meetings in September 1984 to mobilise support for the establishment of a parent–student committee. In mid-October an estimated 4  000 residents attended a meeting at which such a committee, comprising ten parents and ten students was created. Significantly, the new committee had a strong representation of unionists, including Chris Dlamini, the president of FOSATU. The primary mandate for the committee was to send a list of demands to the government, which included a call to release political prisoners; for the withdrawal of police from the townships; and for the resignation of councillors. Not surprisingly, the state chose to ignore the committee’s plea, to which the community responded by calling a stayaway on 22 October that was reportedly supported by 80% of residents. In the same month about 8  000 parents and students from Katlehong met to discuss the school boycott, with parents giving their support to the demands of the students. In particular, parents strongly objected to the activities of the security forces in the township. By all accounts this was an exceptional demonstration of unity between parents and students, manifested in the meeting’s decision to form a joint parent and student body. However, parents also articulated their growing concern over some aspects of the struggle being waged by the students and resolved ‘that burning and looting in the township should be stopped’.15

Independent unions on the march The Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) was launched in April 1979, bringing together thousands of workers under a single national banner for the first time since the 1950s. Initially the new federation remained aloof from community politics as it aimed to establish strong workplace organisations and feared that workers’ interests could be undermined if they joined political organisations. However, FOSATU members were increasingly drawn into the mounting anti-apartheid struggle in the townships. As a result, the union movement began to work with community-based movements, while insisting on the primacy of workers’ leadership. The links between these unions and community organisations were further strengthened by joint solidarity campaigns to support workers’ strikes. Ekurhuleni emerged as one of the most highly unionised centres in the country. Some of the most prominent and militant unions, like the Metal and Allied Workers Union (MAWU) and the Chemical Workers Industrial Union (CWIU), were especially strong in factories around Alrode and Wadeville. In the late 1970s MAWU opened offices in Boksburg and relatively quickly established a presence in the surrounding industrial areas. Migrant workers, who made up about 80% of the workforce in the metal industry, were especially responsive

to unionisation because they felt the brunt of the economic downturn and were especially vulnerable to retrenchment. Hostels in the township also became critical sites of recruitment. Moses Mayekiso, who had been appointed a full-time organiser of the union in 1979, led this drive to recruit migrant workers in hostels such as Kwesine. A defining struggle in the region occurred in 1979 when members of the CWIU organised a strike at Colgate-Palmolive to force management to recognise the union. When management refused to deal with the union, the CWIU called a consumer boycott of the company’s products, which was strongly supported by other FOSATU affiliates and community groups. The success of this campaign not only injected workers in Ekurhuleni’s industrial areas with huge confidence but also signalled the importance of solidarity between unions and community organisations. In the early 1980s the industrial areas in the region experienced an explosion of strikes as FOSATU unions fought for recognition and struggled for higher wages and against retrenchments. Between July and November 1980 there were 50 different strikes involving about 25  000 workers. In early 1982 another strike wave engulfed the region mainly around wage demands.16 Organised workers led primarily by FOSATU had thus established a powerful presence in Ekurhuleni in the early 1980s.

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Chapter 14

A time of insurrection

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T

he brief period from September to November 1984 was characterised by acceleration in the tempo and character of the struggle that marked a decisive turning point in the liberation movement. A year before, on 20 August 1983, the UDF was launched to mobilise boycotts of the BLA elections of 1983 and the Tricameral elections of 1984. Although relations between the UDF and FOSATU remained somewhat strained, the union federation threw its weight behind the boycott campaign. By 1984 the anti-apartheid movement had spread to virtually every corner of the country, representing the most significant national uprising against white minority rule. It may be argued that the industrial heartland of the country, the PWV, was the centre of this rebellion. This was no better illustrated than in the dramatic events of late 1984, especially the regional general strike of 5 and 6 November. The regional insurrection started in the Vaal townships in response to the Lekoa Town Council’s announcement of a rent increase of R5.90. Led by the Vaal Civic Association residents protested throughout August and called a stayaway on September 3 to support the call for a rent boycott. The stayaway was a huge success and was reportedly supported by up to 60% of the workforce in the region. The state reacted viciously to the demonstrations that took place in the townships on that day, resulting in the killing of 31 people. Other parts of the PWV were inspired by the action in the Vaal. In Soweto the Release Mandela Committee called for a stayaway in solidarity with Vaal residents, but a lack of proper organisation led to only between 30% and 65% of workers heeding the call. At this point the epicentre of the struggle shifted decisively to the townships of Ekurhuleni.

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UDF rally

Student struggles in Ekurhuleni entered a new phase on 3 October 1984 when 20  000 secondary school and 68 000 primary school students across the region heeded a call by COSAS to boycott schools.1 After lagging somewhat behind the rest of Ekurhuleni the townships of the Far East Rand (Duduza, KwaThema and Tsakane) now took centre stage, first in the student boycotts and then in mobilising joint struggles between workers and students. In Duduza on October 3 thousands of students marched through the streets attacking the beer hall and post office. About 400 also attempted to march to Tsakane to persuade students there to join the boycott but the march was dispersed by the police. After a couple of weeks of school boycotts and confrontation with the police, COSAS approached parents for assistance, which led to the formation of a parents’ committee.

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The next major political event in Duduza was the funeral of MAWU member, Douglas Buyilo Mchunu, which was organised by his union on 3 November 1984. Reflecting the shift in the unions to becoming more involved in township politics, speakers at the funeral repeated the call for councillors to resign. When the funeral procession returned from the cemetery they were shot at by two policemen at the local beer hall, causing the mourners to turn on them, which resulted in the death of one policeman. These events galvanised the local community behind the regional stayaway of 5 and 6 November that by all accounts was supported by 100% of residents, including hostel dwellers. Two days after the stayaway the mayor, Kebane Moloi, and several of his fellow councillors announced their resignation. Until October the authorities alleged that there

was ‘peace’ in KwaThema, which from their perspective meant that the township had not experienced major student upheavals. However, this apparent ‘peace’ was shattered by the regional student boycott. On 2 October youths in the township clashed with police resulting in the death of three people. Their funeral was attended by approximately 8  000 mourners in a massive display of solidarity. As was the case in neighbouring Duduza the police attacked the mourners on their return from the funeral, sparking violent confrontations between them. The police made a similar assessment of Tsakane as it did of KwaThema prior to October 1984, declaring there was very little evidence of unrest in the township. Despite such official optimism, the police virtually occupied the township on the night before the regional student boycott. But this crackdown enraged students and probably caused all the schools in Tsakane to support the boycott. A day after the regional boycott students from KwaThema and Duduza joined their fellow comrades in Tsakane in a mass march through the township. Police broke up the march by firing teargas and rubber bullets at the students, who then attacked beer halls and shops. During the melee that followed Vusi Michael Diale was shot on his way to pay rent for his family at the administration offices. Thousands of residents attended his funeral which was held on 14 October. Again police violently dispersed mourners, leading to further attacks on beer halls in the township. On 25 October the mayor, S.C. Masilo, and his deputy, Philip Buthelezi, resigned from the Council after their families allegedly received death threats. Residents of the township called a successful stayaway on 29 and 30 October, which served as a prelude to the even more successful stayaway on 5 and 6 November 1984. Local struggles against councillors in Tembisa, led by the Tembisa Civic Association and COSAS, escalated in October and November 1984. Confrontation between the state and residents reached particularly high levels in mid-October. Anticipating the worst, the state flooded the township with approximately 3  000 troops on the first day of the general strike. Confrontations between the youth and security forces very quickly turned deadly and by the end of the

stayaway at least 22 people had lost their lives. Residents of Daveyton also supported the stayaway in huge numbers. To some extent this was due to the prominent role played by ERAPO in support of the action. Events in Daveyton took a turn for the worse on the first day of the strike when the police shot and killed Gladys Khabeke, which sparked a spontaneous eruption of anger as residents set up barricades, and attacked shops and the houses of councillors. Fierce battles were fought with the police that resulted in the deaths of 23 residents, with many more injured. Ratanda always seemed to operate on the periphery of regional developments, including the emergence of mass political mobilisation. However, from mid-1984 it too experienced a rapid increase in civic and student struggles, culminating in massive support for the stayaway. The ERAB’s insistence on implementing the proposed rent increases alienated residents many of whom hoped the local council would support their demand for the rents to remain at their existing level. When it became apparent that the council supported ERAB’s proposal, residents threw their weight behind the newly established Ratanda Civic Association. Initially a committee comprising four local leaders – Daniel Nkosi, ‘Sparks’ Mokoena, Thomas Motsile and Jonas Moagi – were elected to negotiate on behalf of the community on the issue of rents. The mood in the community shifted dramatically when on August 26 more than 1 000 residents converged on the community for a public meeting to discuss the rent increases. They found the hall closed and proceeded to march to the houses of councillors to force them to open the hall and attend the meeting. Although protesters in Ratanda also demanded the resignation of local councillors, which was acceded to almost immediately, there were no obvious signs of a radicalisation of local politics. Only when the civic association became affiliated to the UDF in September did it become apparent that the area was linking to the broader political movement. Even then it only learnt of the regional stayaway a day before. Nonetheless, activists reported that the action was a great success. Efforts by the civic leaders to keep the strike action peaceful were shattered when the police invaded the township, triggering violent confrontations with

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youth groups and resulting in the deaths of six people. The involvement of small and relatively peripheral townships like Ratanda in the stayaway helped ensure that over 60% of workers in the PWV and an even larger percentage in Ekurhuleni participated in the strike. Official figures estimated that more than 800 000 workers and about 400 000 students joined forces in this dramatic show of force to demand the recognition of SRCs, the release of detainees (including union leaders) and a reversal of rent increases.2 This was perhaps the single most important demonstration of the power of the black working class since the dark days following the Sharpeville killings. It injected enormous confidence into the mounting anti-apartheid rebellion and sent a strong signal to the state that it was confronting the most concerted, militant and best organised challenge to white minority rule.

Violence and ungovernability The two years following the historic stayaway witnessed the most intense and widespread struggle across the country. Youths and students were in the forefront of the township-based mobilisation and were effectively the shock troops of the uprising against the state. The state responded with more repression particularly against the student and youth movements. In a massive blow to student and community struggles, the state closed schools in the townships and banned COSAS. Student activists were immediately denied a base from which to operate and thousands of students were dispersed into the townships. These were to have far-reaching consequences for the youth struggles. The security forces became a permanent feature in the townships. In fact, as the local councils crumbled in the face of mass opposition, the central government intervened more directly in its attempts to control and govern the townships, mainly by force. Having achieved one of its main objectives in destroying the undemocratic town councils, the township uprising thus had to confront directly the more powerful and resilient forces of the central government. During 1985 the townships of Ekurhuleni continued to feature prominently in the national revolt. In January the Katlehong Council announced rent

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increases of 23% and electricity increases of nearly 100%, sparking immediate and huge protests across the township. A Council meeting convened to discuss the proposed rent increases was disrupted and angry residents refused to permit the councillors to leave the meeting. A squad of police eventually freed the councillors but in the ensuing confrontation with youths two residents were shot dead.3 In response the community launched a rent boycott forcing the authorities to suspend the proposed increases. Similar events occurred in the other townships where residents, tired and frustrated by the local councils’ ineptitude and corruption, demanded the resignation of councillors and embarked on rent boycotts. From this time the houses of councillors and policemen came under regular attack. In March more than 1 000 residents attended a meeting called by the Katlehong Action Committee where it was resolved to stop paying rents until all councillors had resigned and to boycott all businesses owned by councillors.4 The township local authorities were exposed as corrupt and conservative bodies, unwilling to or incapable of addressing the needs of residents. Tom Boya recognised that the community of Daveyton was turning decisively against him. Councillors across Ekurhuleni faced similar opposition and isolation from the communities they purported to represent. The explosion of political upheavals was graphically illustrated in Duduza during 1985. Early in that year the Duduza Civic Association (DCA) stepped up its campaign for improvements in the township. A mass meeting held on 17 February 1985 that was addressed by representatives of the DCA, ERAPO and the UDF revealed important characteristics of the movement at that time. It reflected the concerted effort by activists to create linkages between the various local struggles in Ekurhuleni. The November 1984 stayaway had demonstrated the power of regional solidarity action and provided a major impetus for co-operation between activists from different townships that, in turn, encouraged further mobilisation in each area. From the perspective of the UDF leaders the main vehicles by which to achieve such regional co-ordinations were ERAPO and the UDF. Sometimes this meant that local movements

Political funeral in KwaThema

shifted their attention to broader political issues at the expense of local campaigns. The DCA tried hard to foreground local social campaigns and had some success in the early part of 1985. However, increasing state repression unleashed a cycle of violence between the state’s armed forces and youths. At the public meeting in February hundreds of residents supported the DCA’s demands for the removal of the bucket system and for more houses. Residents especially vented their anger at the persistence of the archaic and unhealthy bucket system. Women were the most vocal and militant on the issue, largely because they were usually responsible for emptying the buckets. A number of speakers suggested that the buckets be deposited at the administration offices the following day as a sign of protest.

However, several youths attending the meeting called for the immediate implementation of the proposed action. After the meeting residents collected buckets from their homes and proceeded to the administration offices where they planned to deposit them. But the police were already alerted to the plan and shot at demonstrators before they could reach the buildings. This action triggered a violent response from the youths who proceeded to attack the houses of local policemen. The following day students refused to attend school and lined up sewerage buckets in the streets of the township. During the demonstrations, the police shot and killed 13-year-old Lucky Mkhwanazi. Residents were enraged by what they perceived to be an unprovoked murder of a youth who was not

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Burning car of an impimpi in Duduza

even involved in the demonstration and retaliated by burning down five houses belonging to local policemen. These events completely transformed the nature of the confrontation between the state and residents. The police immediately unleashed a serious crackdown in the area, starting with the arrest of 35 residents who were charged with public violence. Thereafter they insisted that the funeral for Lucky Mkhwanazi be postponed and on 24 February detained seven leading activists from the

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area. They were Alex Montoedi, John Radebe, John Mlangeni, Veli Mazibuko (COSAS publicity secretary and chairperson respectively), Irene Moatlhudi, John Thobela (chairman of the Parents’ Committee) and his daughter Sonto. On the same day the Parents’ Committee convened a public meeting to discuss negotiations between the NECC and the Department of Education and Training (DET) and in response to the wave of arrests in the area called a stayaway to coincide with

Lucky Mkhwanazi’s funeral. It is unclear whether the stayaway was successful but the funeral proceeded without incident until police fired teargas into the mourners as they returned from the cemetery, triggering another cycle of violent confrontation between the youth and the police. Although tensions remained high, relative calm descended on the area for a few weeks until April 1985 when violence again erupted in the township, this time with new sinister elements. Tensions between the DCA and the small local Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) branch reached fever pitch in April because the latter was given permission to use the Community Hall, something that was denied the DCA. At a meeting between the two organisations, the Inkatha representatives allegedly warned Barnabas Chete, a member of the Parents’ Committee, that his house would be burnt down if anyone interfered with the Inkatha meeting. Five days later the threat was carried out when Chete’s house was petrol-bombed. In neighbouring KwaThema similar attacks were carried out on the houses of prominent activists: Duke More of AZAPO; Thukela Jantjies, the chair of the KwaThema Parent–Student Committee; and Skhumbuzo Mtsweni of COSAS all narrowly escaped injury, but their houses suffered extensive damage.5 Rumours of collusion between the police and the IFP spread through the townships, especially in Duduza. Fears of further attacks were also confirmed when the house of the Thobela family was firebombed in early May. Mr Thobela and his two daughters were outspoken and prominent activists in the Duduza civic and student movements. The police and Inkatha blamed each other for the attack that killed Sonto Thobela and badly burnt her sister, Zanele. Sonto’s funeral held on May 18 witnessed an outpouring of community grief and renewed commitment to political mobilisation. Fear and anger now gripped the community. The following day panic spread when residents spotted a combi with a Durban registration driving around the townships raising alarms of Inkatha infiltration in the township and of imminent attacks against activists. It was in the context of this volatile situation that a young white woman, a Miss de Lange, was ambushed as she

drove through the township and was killed by a group of youths. In response the police virtually invaded the township and arrested several more activists. At the same time the state unleashed an even more sinister part of its campaign against anti-apartheid organisations, in the form of vigilantes. The first reported instance of vigilante activity in Duduza was the abduction in June 1985 of Alexander Pailane, a COSAS member, who was severely assaulted and then died of his injuries. One of the vigilantes, ‘Billy’, was apprehended and exposed a plot by the security police to eliminate COSAS and civic activists. It was alleged that the vigilantes were paid the paltry sum of R30 each for their role in Alexander’s abduction and were promised a further R700 if they killed those on the hit list on June 16.6 On 17 June Zanele Sonto died of her wounds. When residents heard the tragic news, they attacked houses and shops of suspected collaborators. A mass funeral was held for Zanele Thobela, Alexander Pailane and others killed by the police on Saturday 22 June. The sinister activities of the security police, especially of the hit squads operating from the infamous Vlakplaas, began to emerge at this point. Joe Mamasela, a convicted assassin, explained in detail to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings in 1996 how the security police planned to eliminate young activists. By mid-1985, Mamasela told the hearing that the security police had already identified COSAS members as the main troublemakers in the region and devised a plan to stop them. Mamasela was instructed to infiltrate COSAS, which he did by posing as an MK operative. He had in fact joined the ANC in exile in 1977 but turned against the movement and began working for the security police from 1979. Known as an ‘askari’, Mamasela became a key figure in the hit squads that assassinated prominent activists across the country. Initially his brief was to uncover information about the activities of COSAS. However, the murder of the white nurse altered the operation from information-gathering to revenge. According to Mamasela he was ordered to set a trap for the COSAS members to teach them a lesson. In the early hours of June 26 – Freedom Day – he handed booby-trapped hand grenades to

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a group of youths, who believed they were receiving weapons from MK to attack the local police station on the commemoration of the adoption of the Freedom Charter. Instead, the grenades exploded in their hands instantly killing four – Lucky Mogodi, Solomon Mashabane, Mongezi Dlamini and Mbuwa Mashiane – and seriously injuring the rest. Tankiso Moshoeshoe was active in COSAS at the time and had known Lucky Mogodi since they were young children. He credits Lucky for his politicisation and involvement in COSAS. On the night of the booby trap killing he heard an explosion and immediately thought the police station was under attack from MK: At first it felt like something heavy falling and I thought, ‘what was that?’, and the second one and the third one, I thought maybe the MK is here; I was excited. I asked Jabu who was my cousin, I said let us go out and check and he was one of those people who would like to go and check. And … where I was sleeping it was 1 km away from the police station so I had a view … and I wanted to go and see for myself. I thought I would see fire or something. But we were scared because this one was frightening. Anyway I went down and I looked at the police station and there was nothing but … one or two cars going up and down on the main road. I just went back and slept because I couldn’t see anything.7 The horror of the previous night’s events only became clear the following morning when his aunt returned from work. ‘She was crying’, he recalls. ‘She woke us up and said go and see what is happening there … She said kids are dead now, what is happening now, what is this?’ Tankiso and other youth rushed to the place where the bombings occurred. What he saw left an indelible impression on him: I think the first side was Mbuwa with his head blown … and we couldn’t understand what happened. They said Lucky is dead and I went and looked and there was Lucky lying there, dead … bodies were there for everybody to see

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and the police were there guarding the bodies … So everybody came out, by 6:30 am the whole township was there … Duduza was thrust into the national spotlight by these murders. The Star newspaper graphically captured what had happened in the township. ‘Until recently’, it reminded its readers, ‘the dusty township near Nigel was little known, certainly among the white community at large.’ The editorial listed the all-toocommon features of the township uprising: boycotts, stayaways, detention, funerals, etc., but suggested that a reign of terror had been imposed on Duduza. It opined: What is different about Duduza is the reign of terror which has led to at least five deaths in recent days. Many … youngsters are in hiding or missing. Last Friday youths were seen being rounded up by men masked in balaclavas. Others were seen being beaten and sjambokked, or interrogated with some violence.8 The reign of terror also engulfed neighbouring KwaThema where a group of youths was led into a trap by the same security police operatives from Springs. Jabulani Mahlangu, Skhumbuzo ‘Congress’ Mtsweni, Khole Vincent Nokwindla and Petrus Stephen Modisane were also killed by booby-trapped hand grenades. More than 15 000 mourners packed the local stadium to bid farewell to the four youths on 9 July 1985. Thousands of mourners also attended the funeral of the Duduza victims. However, here people’s anger boiled over causing some of them to attack a suspected informer. Tankiso recalls what transpired on that fateful day: Now you see after the 26 June incident, I’m saying that now the Comrades are dead and the community is angry and I think this was a turning point because on the day we were burying them … remember I told you that there was confusion … There was confusion as to what happened and who was involved and Maki Sikhosana was fingered as being the collaborator. Unfortunately

for some reasons unknown to us she resigned that week from where she was working and it was alleged that she came with this guy who was a notorious policeman in the township, Joel, … and we don’t know how true is that. But those were rumours flying around and when she came to the funeral she was wearing a full leather jacket and a full leather jacket by then it was considered that you have money. It was difficult to get a half leather jacket so when you are wearing a full jacket, then you had money. She came wearing a full set of leather … I think the suspicions were confirmed and she was killed and after that I think that is when all the police who were living in the townships … the houses were chased out.9 Maki Sikhosana was one of the first reported victims of the infamous ‘necklacing’ meted out to alleged collaborators. Her killing was captured in the news and it brought to the attention of the world the extent of the violence in the townships. A further cycle of violent confrontations followed the funeral and killing of Sikhosana. In KwaThema mayhem ensued in the week after the funeral. Twelve people were killed over two days of intense fighting between residents and the police10 and residents alleged that seven of the victims were killed during a confrontation between youth and the police at the KwaThema Cinema.11 Violence in Tsakane assumed a different character from that in Duduza and KwaThema. There appears to have been less direct involvement of the state’s hit squads, and the political contestation was primarily between hostel dwellers and township residents. On 4 May, youths returning from a comrade’s funeral marched to the hostel to demand that hostel dwellers burn the beer hall in the complex. The hostel dwellers refused. For the youth beer halls were a symbol of apartheid oppression, whereas most hostel dwellers regarded them as places of leisure. Moreover, the hostel dwellers were not inclined to agree to demands from young people regarding their place of residence. A tense standoff between the youths and hostel

dwellers was only ended when the police arrived and chased the youths away. It is unclear what prompted the youths to march to the hostel, but their action alienated the hostel dwellers and, more seriously, provided the security forces with an opportunity to mobilise hostel dwellers against the township youth. In fact, residents reported seeing police reinforcements enter the hostel and, after they left, hostel dwellers, who were then armed, swarmed into the township attacking youths and other residents indiscriminately, killing 20 people and injuring many more. From the perspective of the township residents, the hostel dwellers had firmly nailed their colours to the mast of the government. The following day residents of the township met and decided to form Self-Defence Units (SDUs) to defend the township against future attacks by hostel dwellers. Migrant workers were labelled as the ‘enemy’ and became easy targets for angry youths. Three days after the attack was launched from the hostel township, youths killed two migrant workers, triggering a battle between the newly formed SDUs and the hostel dwellers, who were supported by the police. Approximately ten people lost their lives that night. The following day, Wednesday 8 May, thousands of Tsakane residents stayed at home and launched a massive attack on the hostel, first driving out all the inmates from the hostel as well as from the township and then proceeding to dismantle the hostel brick by brick, which action brought the orgy of violence to a sudden halt. Thirty-three people lost their lives in this brief but bloody episode. The state responded to these events with even more repression: COSAS was banned, a partial state of emergency was declared and leading activists were detained for protracted periods. By 1986 a stalemate had been reached between the mass movement and the state. Severe repression took its toll on community-based struggles and as a result the momentum of the previous period was halted. A political lull followed, which affected both the character of community struggles and the relationship between parents and youth.

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Chapter 15

Politics of the stalemate

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T

he leadership of the student, youth and civic organisations bore the brunt of state harassment. Civic and union leaders such as Sam Ntuli and Enoch Godongwana were arrested and spent long periods behind bars. The key leaders of Kathorus’s youth movement, including Viva Makwena, Kapeng Makoko and Dumisa Ntuli, were also detained. Sochs Khanyile, a leading figure in Thokoza’s Youth Congress only evaded arrest by moving to Soweto. Many others spent their time ‘on the run’ from the police or were detained for shorter period under the states of emergency. The effect of this harassment was to purge community organisations of their most experienced leaders. Even though a new layer of leaders emerged, they had neither the same experience nor commanded the same popular support as those who were detained. The closure of schools denied students access to meeting places, which made it more difficult to maintain democratic structures or to mobilise students around individual campaigns. This all contributed to the fracturing and weakening of the student and youth movements. A degree of de-politicisation also occurred. Many of the new leaders were thrust into key positions without the benefit of the political and organisational training that their predecessors experienced in the early 1980s. Students attempted to replace COSAS by forming new student bodies. The Transvaal Student Congress (TRASCO) and its local chapters in Ekurhuleni were generally unable to regain the political ground occupied by its predecessor. The civic organisation suffered similar setbacks under the whip of state repression. Although they were not subjected to the same degree of harassment as the youth, civics also lost several of their key leaders. Thus organisations found it difficult to mobilise and organise, resulting in the decline.

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The UDF galvanised community struggles nationally

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For young activists such as Churchill Mhlongo it felt like ‘KwaThema was under siege’. The virtual occupation of townships by the state’s armed forces strengthened the resolve of youth to continue the struggle. Churchill remembers that, In ’86 we said we are not no more going back to school until COSAS is unbanned, ANC is unbanned, our leaders are being released from jails. We said we are no more going back to school and KwaThema was surrounded by the whole army. Every car that you can mention of the army was in KwaThema. KwaThema was closed down …1 With media restrictions imposed the police often acted with impunity against residents. According to Churchill the police randomly beat up residents in the streets of KwaThema, including the aged, forcing them into schools. The virtual occupation of the township by the armed forces led to regular violent clashes with the youth. Tankiso Moshoeshoe recalls some of the tactics employed by the youth in Duduza in the daily battles with the police: Yes, it was intensifying and the police were … you see it was part of the struggle and we were engaging police in and out, we would have running battles at night with them. We would dig holes and trenches so that we can trap those hippos and burn them … Well, they caught one, they caught one I was told because I was in the other part of the township, and I was told that one fell into the ditch in Ezinzuleni Section but it managed to pull out. It was those things, running battles usually at night, we used to have serious battles at night with the police. We would stone them and use petrol bombs. There was this young man Ganyapa in my section, in my neighbourhood Sotho, he was very young by then … he was about 10 or 13 years of age. His job was to switch off these ‘Apollo’ lights so the hippos will come and we will deploy with stones and petrol bombs and we would indicate

to him when to switch off. So when the hippo goes inside the net we will indicate and he will switch off then stones and petrol bombs and then the hippo will drive away fast in flames.2 Funerals of activists were emotionally charged events, in which police regularly clashed with mourners. In 1986 the funeral of Samuel Segola, an Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) operative from Vosloorus, is a case in point. The police imposed tight restrictions on the funeral, but these were defied and thousands attended the funeral. The Vosloorus Stayaway Supporters Committee called on residents to stay at home to attend the funeral. Fifteen thousand mourners attended the funeral in what was a massive demonstration of solidarity and defiance. The funeral was disrupted by police and in the ensuing clash five youths were killed.3 The military-like standoff between the youth and the security forces led to an increase in insurgent activities, especially by the youth. There were two types of insurgency: the semi-organised type and that which occurred under the direction of MK.4 The former occurred regularly in the course of the ongoing battles between youth activists and the armed forces. These semi-organised insurgent activities were most pronounced during 1984 and 1986 as youth attacked various symbols of the apartheid government, such as beer halls, municipal offices and police stations.5 Groups of youths often attempted to ambush police vehicles. In Katlehong there were well-known militant sections such as Padime and Tsolo (later renamed the Soviet Union) where such activities were common. Councillors, their families and supporters were often driven out of the townships. In July 1986, five ERAB employees were killed and 12 injured.6 Similar campaigns were also waged in Thokoza and Vosloorus. In all three townships councillors were forced to resign and some fled the townships. It was also during this period, especially from 1986, that MK’s popularity in the townships soared. Key activists, such as Viva Makwena, were recruited into MK. Makwena recounts his entry into the ranks of the ANC’s armed wing: In my case by 1987 already I was roped into

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Umkhonto we Sizwe unit activities. I became a member of the regional command of Umkhonto we Sizwe which was known as Johannes Nkozi, which operated in the East Rand. The unit obviously carried out a series of operations on the East Rand, including Katlehong.7 Makwena and his unit were responsible for the bombing of the railway line and substation near Katlehong station. In the late 1980s Katlehong was widely known as a centre of MK activities, although it remains unclear whether all ‘sabotage’ activities were carried out by MK. In the first two months of 1989, for example, four policemen were killed and over 30 were injured in grenade attacks.8 The local MK structures in Duduza were based on the recruitment of known activists, as was the case in Kathorus. Often these cadres were youths drawn from COSAS and the Youth Congresses. Veli Mazibuko emerged as a key operative in the Far East Rand and took responsibility for recruiting new cadres. Tankiso Moshoeshoe recalls in detail how Veli recruited him: It was in ’86 … It is Veli … he called me into his house’s garage and he showed me an AK and asked me if I knew what it was … It started (before that) … Dan had a meeting with somebody at my place that was before Veli showed me. Dan had a meeting with somebody that I later discovered that … was an MK guy … yes, at my place in my bedroom. The funny thing about it is that he didn’t tell me; he just said he’s going to meet somebody and they were going to talk about things … By then I was matured and I could put two and two together because I knew Dan, and this guy came and he said to me I must watch outside … My mother was there, everybody was there, and he greeted them and I put them in my room and I went out. I was like a ‘post’ checking everything. And there was this Volkswagen – you know these station wagon Volkswagens. It was standing like 500 m, three houses from my house. For some reason nobody told me that those guys belonged

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to this man. By then Duduza didn’t have squatter camps so we knew all the cars … Yes, so I knew that car is not from Duduza, so I calculated that it is with this guy, so I just ignored it and after an hour or two they came out and he introduced him to me then this guy went out and said ‘sharp, my aunty’. You know after that meeting some of the things you don’t ask, you don’t have to ask – you just formulate your own answers. The only serious part came when my mother called me and asked me what was happening … Yes. She asked me why Ben was meeting with this man in my room and I was not part of the meeting, what is happening? And I said I don’t know because I was standing outside and she asked me what they were talking about … I didn’t lie, I told her I don’t know what they were talking about and I don’t know who he was … And then I think a week later Veli approached me and I was in.9 Unfortunately for Tankiso the MK cell to which he was assigned failed to constitute itself because one of the new recruits withdrew when he discovered that biographies of each new member had to be sent to the ANC’s headquarters in Lusaka. There was very little time or expertise to induct recruits properly into underground armed struggle. ‘I saw a grenade and was showed how it works’. A ‘crash course’ is how Tankiso now describes his training. ‘The day Veli showed me an AK I think he showed me the grenade as well, how to aim.’ Soon after being recruited Tankiso was given a mission to kill a policeman but, as he explains, his role as an MK cadre faced further difficulties: I couldn’t carry out the task. I was suppose[d] to blow [up] somebody with a grenade, a police man. I placed a grenade somewhere so that I can pick it up later. I put that grenade there and when I was suppose[d] to fetch it and carry out the mission the grenade was not there. I still don’t know whether I miscalculated the area where I

placed it but I’m hundred per cent sure where I placed it. That one I don’t have a doubt about … No, it was not there. The next day Veli came because I told him I was going to strike on this day, and he was listen for explosion and it never occurred. The next morning he was there wanting to know what happened and I said no, I couldn’t find the thing and we went to a spot … Yes, we looked and looked but couldn’t find it. Up until today I don’t know, it is still a mystery to me to know what happened to the grenade. I sometimes get worried that, you know, if it is still there by any chance and it is next to a school where innocent kids can be hurt.10 State repression forced many young political activists to seek military solutions to the struggle against apartheid. Their willingness to die for the cause reflected the inability of the state to crush the spirit of resistance. The upsurge in insurgent activities towards the end of the decade was related to the mobilisation against the October 1988 municipal elections. MK cadres were among the most committed and heroic figures in the township movement. Some of them, like Makwena, played leading roles in the mass organisations but their involvement in MK structures invariably meant having to forego leading and public roles in organisations, which further denuded the latter of capable activists.

Resurgent gangsterism There seems to have been an inverse relationship between gangsterism and political struggle. The political upsurge from the early to mid-1980s resulted in a marked downturn in gangsterism. This can be accounted for by the general discipline that the liberation movement asserted over the communities; the moral authority among residents enjoyed by political and community organisations; and better organisation – all of which made it extremely difficult for criminals to operate without detection. These organisations and street committees often established community courts, which meted out summary justice in order to

maintain order and discipline in the townships. The anti-apartheid struggle also provided disillusioned youth with hope for the future and it became common for gangsters to reform and join the struggle. One of the adverse consequences of the political lull in the late 1980s was the resurgence of gangsterism. The difficulties experienced by mass organisations in the late 1980s created the space for the mushrooming of gangs. An especially disturbing development was the turn to crime by young comrades, who became known as ‘comtsotsis’. Youth who had previously been disciplined political activists found themselves without structures and leadership as the school boycotts, the arrest of key leaders and the stagnation of organisation took their toll. In Katlehong the BMX gang, named after the bicycle that had recently become popular in the township, emerged in the Shongweni section. Their leader, Hoshi, was especially feared and was apparently responsible for several murders. There were also the Bad Boys gang and the notorious ‘jackrollers’, groups of youth operating in many townships and infamous for raping women. The authorities blamed the anti-apartheid struggle for the surge in criminal activities, hoping to discredit community organisations and win the sympathy of older residents. Community organisations were extremely concerned by this development and embarked on so-called clean-up campaigns to rid the townships of gangsters. In Katlehong students and residents appealed to the Youth Congress to deal with the BMX gang. School students resorted to marching en masse to the houses of gang leaders to ‘discipline’ them. According to George Ndlozi, a student leader at the time, such gangsters were severely beaten and sometimes killed.11 One of the most successful anti-crime campaigns occurred in Thokoza. There the Youth Congress launched ‘Operation Clean-Up’. Members of the youth organisation patrolled the township, especially over weekends, looking for gangs and potential criminals. Often they had to intervene in domestic disputes and they also disarmed criminals.12 Dumisa Ntuli recalls that the campaign lasted three or four months: We used to sjambok some of them and then

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maybe take some of them to kangaroo court to discipline them in front of maybe 200 or 300 students … it was quite a successful campaign … Some of the gangs were brutal and some of those ones who wanted to join the gangs couldn’t, precisely because of the campaign, so they started joining the Youth Congress and we accepted them.13 The clean-up campaigns demonstrated the commitment of student activists to maintain a dynamic and disciplined student movement. Although these activists enjoyed some success in halting the activities of gangsters, they were less effective in rebuilding student organisations. The problem was compounded by the unwillingness of many youth to engage in the painstaking task of building organisations, as happened in the early 1980s. They were far more attracted to insurgency activity because it appeared to be much more militant, and because of the belief that such military confrontations with the security forces would lead to the rapid overthrow of the government. Neither was true of course, and as the prospects of an immediate smashing of the state declined, so too did the involvement of youth in any kind of political activity. But, as the township struggles stuttered ahead, the initiative shifted to the industrial areas where the independent union movement was making its presence felt in dramatic fashion.

Workers’ power The launch of COSATU in December 1985 injected a new dynamism into the resistance movement. The new giant federation rapidly emerged as a formidable political and economic force, especially in the industrial heartland of the country, the PWV. During the first six months of its existence COSATU called two general strikes (May Day and June 16), the first such national stayaways since the early 1960s, which Kathorus workers supported in large numbers. Although more than 2 000 COSATU members were detained during the state of emergency in 1986, the federation’s strong shop floor organisation allowed it to weather the storm and to continue consolidating and growing. In fact, in the late 1980s, while the UDF

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and its youth and civic affiliates were largely rendered ineffective by state repression, COSATU embarked on a series of struggles against low wages, dismissals and unfair labour legislation. The industrial areas around Kathorus were at the centre of these struggles.14 The first nine months of 1987 witnessed an explosion in strikes, including a national general strike in May. Kathorus workers supported these demonstrations of workers’ power en masse. Township youth also supported these general strikes but increasingly as enforcers of support for the stayaways. By this action, they alienated themselves from sections of the community, especially migrant workers who had developed serious concerns about the value of strikes.15

Deepening urban crisis The deteriorating socio-economic conditions that provided the context within which the political upsurge of the early 1980s developed continued its downward spiral in the late 1980s. The struggle over diminishing resources that ensued strained relations between different sectors of the community and, in the absence of unifying organisations, eventually spilled over into open conflict. By the late 1980s the worsening economic situation exacerbated the existing problems. Rising unemployment now joined overcrowding and homelessness as among the most serious problems facing residents of Kathorus. However, these difficulties affected the townships differently. Katlehong and Thokoza were more adversely affected by them than Vosloorus. For example, in 1990 the official unemployment rate among Vosloorus’s males and females was 8% and 16% respectively, well below that of its neighbours. But it was especially on the housing front that Vosloorus fared considerably better than Katlehong and Thokoza. Vosloorus was able to attract more funding for housing and infrastructural development than other townships and actively pursued a policy of attracting professionals to its new elite suburbs. Between 1987 and 1989 the Vosloorus Council successfully attracted nearly R40 million for infrastructural and housing development. As a result the number of serviced sites increased from 5  500 in 1984 to 32 087 (most of which had electricity) in

Launch of COSATU, December 1985

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New squatter settlements proliferated across Ekurhuleni

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1993. Although the township’s population increased rapidly to 200  000 by 1993, there were only 604 squatters.16 The Vosloorus Council’s ability to attract financial support was in part due to the fact that it broke the rent boycott very quickly. Mthuthuzeli Ziboza recalls that when the boycott started in 1985, the ‘police came in, started harassing people at the entrance of the township and everybody went straight to Council offices to pay. Army was deployed, presence of the police and so on, intimidation and people were scared. So the rent boycott didn’t in fact even last a week’.17 By the end of the 1980s Vosloorus became a magnet for those from the Rand, especially civil servants, who sought peace and stability. Katlehong and Thokoza could not have been more different. Overcrowding had reached alarming proportions in the late 1980s. The sale of township houses prompted large-scale rack-renting as landlords crammed as many shacks as possible onto the stands in order to extract maximum rent from desperate lodgers. The prevailing extreme congestion in Katlehong and Thokoza forced residents to spill out into vacant parcels of land, resulting in the establishment of two massive squatter camps, Crossroads and Phola Park. Phola Park, which was established in 1987 adjacent to Kalanyoni Hostel in Thokoza, witnessed a very rapid increase in its population. By 1988 there were 2  350 shacks (approximately 15  000 people) in the camp. A survey conducted in 1991 recorded a population of between 24 000 and 30 000 people in 3  250 shacks in the camp.18 Life in the squatter camps was precarious. Four years after the establishment of Phola Park there were only a couple of dozen toilets and almost no access to water supplies. The Thokoza and Alberton local authorities also intended for Phola Park to be only a temporary residential site, the area on which it was located being earmarked for industrial purposes. In 1989 the Thokoza Town Council (TTC) imposed a R50 levy on Phola Park shacks for still non-existing services – a move that the residents resisted. A distinct shift can be discerned in the political demeanour of squatter camps such as Phola Park and Crossroads in the late 1980s. Through most of this time the profound sense of insecurity felt by their inhabitants drove them to

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seek the protection of imagined patrons or protectors, on virtually any terms. This left them acutely vulnerable to exploitation. In 1988 the TTC officials illegally sold plot numbers in Dunusa (Phola Park) for R70 each. In late 1988 in both Phola Park and Crossroads, aspiring councillors in the BLA elections promised houses to squatters or the abolition of levies in return for their vote. Once their votes were duly cast and the councillors elected they were heard of no more.19 During 1989 these two squatter camps began to display a more combative spirit. This was partly under the pressure of compulsion as the two councils moved to demolish the camps. From August 1989 to December 1989 the Council removed 888 squatters to Zonkizizwe. After that squatters refused to be removed. In January 1990 eviction notices were handed to squatters and the authorities destroyed some shacks, which resulted in violent clashes between squatters and the police. During these conflicts the Mobil garage belonging to Councillor A.M. Yende was destroyed. Although some squatters moved voluntarily, the camp continued to grow at an alarming rate.20 In March 1990, the Council complained that they were unable to remove squatters because of the volatile political situation in the township. The issues of the squatters had become a focal point of agitation in the township and had successfully brought the removals to a standstill. It was also acknowledged that the squatter problem could not be resolved locally, but had become a national problem that had to be resolved at that level.21 An additional influence, however, was the revival of the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) after the nationwide repression between 1986 and 1988. The resistance by squatters had been isolated for some time but now their cause was taken up by community organisations affiliated to the MDM. In a critical intervention, for example, in January 1990, the Thokoza Youth Congress appeared in force to resist the councils’ demolition of Phola Park shacks.22 This was a development of the utmost importance since it sealed an alliance between Phola Park’s residents and Thokoza’s militant youth. Hostels throughout Kathorus suffered a similar plight. A civil engineering company in 1985 bemoaned

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the state of disrepair of the Vosloorus hostels. A report by the company found that general amenities in the hostel were in decay, security was virtually non-existent and that several shebeen owners plied their trade in the hostels. The situation in Katlehong and Thokoza was much the same, and in some instances worse. The inauguration of self-financing BLAs in 1983 exacerbated the difficulties faced by the hostels as little money was made available for the maintenance of these centres. The deterioration of the hostel complexes was accelerated by the abolition of influx control, which resulted in a massive influx of unemployed and destitute people from the rural areas into the urban centres in search of work. The hostels, like other parts of the townships, became even more overcrowded. By the mid-1980s the situation in the hostels had become desperate. The Thokoza Council complained in 1987 that hostels ‘have become infested with illegals to an alarming proportion’.23 In July 1987 hostel dwellers complained about the adverse effects of the withdrawal of police security from the hostel, which included regular theft and even murder. They called for the immediate reintroduction of the police and regular raids to check on rent defaulters and illegals.24 The situation was worsened by the establishment of a large squatter camp without facilities adjacent to the hostel. Residents of Phola Park in fact had few options but to utilise the facilities available in the hostel, but this merely created friction between the hostel dwellers and squatters. In September 1987 the hostel management complained that squatters had made holes in fences to gain access to the hostels, through which they allegedly stole coal and water.25 The presence of females, especially beer brewers, had become a serious bone of contention for hostel inmates.26 Consequently, friction within the hostels and between hostel dwellers and squatters continued to mount during this period. This combustible situation was aggravated by the fierce taxi rivalries that had been building up throughout the 1980s. The worsening economic conditions caused a massive increase in unemployment. The mushrooming taxi industry, which had been deregulated in the 1980s, became an important source of employment opportunities for thousands

of unemployed young men. Migrant workers were among the first to use minibus taxis on a large scale, mainly for travel between the urban areas and their rural homes. They also played a dominant part in the emerging taxi industry in urban townships. Competition was stiff and taxi associations were formed to protect routes. There was also a proliferation of pirate operators, who encroached on the preserve of those with official licences. In Germiston the taxi operators from KwaZulu-Natal who initially plied long-distance routes between Germiston and KwaZulu-Natal, formed the Germiston and District Taxi Association with the purpose of suppressing pirate operators. The rivalry between legal and

illegal operators frequently turned violent. In 1988 township operators established the rival Katlehong Taxi Organisation, which soon won the support of township youth. The scene was thus set for a bloody war and in 1989 these rivalries reached boiling point. In that year a taxi owned by a hostel dweller was burned by young comrades during a stayaway called by COSATU. The death of the passengers enraged hostel dwellers who armed themselves and attacked township residents, especially the youth. The ensuing bloody conflict between hostel dwellers (at this stage incorporating most ethnic groups) and the township youth set the tone for the subsequent war in which these two groups became the main protagonists.

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Chapter 16

The politics of transition

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T

he transition to democracy that followed the unbanning of political organisations in 1990 marked a decisive phase in the country’s history. The process of transition was characterised, on the one hand, by the negotiations between the leaders of national organisations, and on the other hand, by continued confrontations between the MDM and pro-apartheid forces. These processes occurred in a particularly concentrated and dramatic form in Ekurhuleni, and in Kathorus in particular. The violence than engulfed the township in the early 1990s had a profound effect on the negotiations that were taking place only a few kilometres away in Kempton Park. The violence was intended to derail the negotiations process and, when that objective failed, to influence the outcome of the negotiations in their favour. The attempt to endanger the birth of democracy was thwarted by the efforts of hundreds of activists, many of whom were barely in their teens and who organised themselves into Self-Defence Units (SDUs) to defend their communities and the promise of freedom. The end of the 1980s witnessed a new phase of political mobilisation. On the one hand, state repression had failed to halt the tide of anti-apartheid resistance. On the other, the continued growth and militancy of COSATU and the resilience of township mass organisations were indicative of the shift in power relations in South Africa. Having largely withstood the government’s onslaught, the MDM regrouped and in 1989 launched a national mass defiance campaign that signalled the failure of the state to destroy the internal liberation movements.

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The boycott of Boksburg’s white businesses in 1988 was one of the first signs of change in the mood of black residents and of a shift in the balance of forces. In that year the Conservative Party, which controlled the Boksburg Council, reintroduced petty apartheid, provoking a massive backlash from black residents and many businesses in the town. Boksburg had a reputation of being the most conservative town in the region, stretching back to the 1950s when it became a stronghold of the National Party. Clearly, the municipality was determined to maintain the racial order that it had embraced and defended for many decades. The ensuing consumer boycott crippled many businesses as black residents of Boksburg who lived in Vosloorus and Reiger Park united in their determination to prevent the right wing Council from turning back the clock. Their eventual success sent a clear signal to the authorities that racial discrimination would not be tolerated. Apartheid, in both its grand and petty forms, had obviously become totally unworkable. The unbanning of the ANC and PAC and the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 acted as catalysts for the rebuilding of political and community organisations (especially civics and youth congresses). Thousands of people streamed into the ANC and local organisations. Although COSAS was also unbanned it did not experience the same revival as other organisations. The deep crisis in the schools made it extremely difficult to re-organise students, even under circumstances of political liberalisation. Moreover, most students wanted to use the changed political situation as an opportunity to return to school, and regarded efforts at political mobilisation as a threat to their education. This trend was especially noticeable among the younger generation of learners who did not experience the vitality of COSAS in the previous era of school struggles. As a result it was very difficult for COSAS and other radical student bodies to regain the political authority and influence it commanded among students in the mid-1980s. Civic and youth congresses fared considerably better. For example, in January 1990 the Thokoza Youth Congress organised a mass rally in the stadium. Sam Ntuli addressed the people on the problems of rent and crime. The

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success of the rally gave a boost to the plans to form a civic association and it was immediately decided to divide Thokoza into 18 sections. This was an attempt at establishing a local mass democratic formation not only to campaign on local demands but also to prepare for taking over local government. The representatives from the sections formed a central committee which decided to launch a civic association. It was agreed to announce the formation of a civic association at the stadium. On the day of the launch the stadium was packed to capacity, with 15 000 to 20 000 members of Thokoza in attendance. It was decided that they would march to the Town Council to demand a flat rate for services and the resignation of the councillors. An estimated 80  000 people joined the march, the biggest ever in the township. There was no doubt who the legitimate leaders of the community were. The Thokoza Civic Association also aligned itself unequivocally with the ANC. Thokoza residents had not been paying their rents and service bills for years. In 1991 the electricity arrears alone stood at R1 833 706. The authorities responded by regularly cutting the electricity supply to the township, claiming that arrears for services were crippling Eskom. Many Thokoza residents had been without electricity since December 1990.1 These punitive measures failed to break the residents’ resolve. The Council was forced to enter into negotiations with the civic associations. In itself this was a recognition of the authority of the community organisation. However, the ensuing negotiations were protracted and punctuated by deadlocks. On the one hand, the civic associations wanted residents to pay affordable rates. On the other, the authorities insisted on the repayment of arrears and that residents pay officially determined rates. The civic association proposed a flat rate of R40 per month. This the Council rejected as inadequate and wanted residents to pay the electricity debt of R1.8 million and a minimum payment of R104 per month.2 Underlying these negotiations was the all-important issue of local power, which the authorities were desperate to retain as they recognised it was slipping out of their hands. The civic called a consumer boycott to exert

SPU leader in Thokoza pressure on the Council. It then successfully negotiated the reconnection of electricity and an end to the boycott in June 1991. It was also agreed that an interim flat rate of R71, applicable for two months, be installed, during which time the Council would repair faulty meters. The civic struggles in Thokoza and Katlehong were overtaken by violence and although the boycotts continued, the civic associations were unable to give proper attention to these matters. In the case of the TCA, its leaders became prime targets for assassination. In September 1991 the TCA leader, Sam Ntuli, was gunned down and in subsequent months a number of other leaders suffered similar fates. Under these circumstances, protracted negotiations with the local authorities assumed secondary importance. It was probably not coincidental that civic leaders like Ntuli were in the forefront of efforts to negotiate a truce between the warring parties in Thokoza. Civic organisations were also growing in authority and power, posing a serious threat to the old order at a local level. The elimination of civic

leaders thus ensured that a peaceful transition would be difficult to achieve. As usual Vosloorus presented a different situation. In November 1989 various activists, especially unionists, among them Ali Mazia and Gwede Mantashe, decided to form a civic association. According to Vusi Sikhakhane they met in a house in Section 9 where it was agreed to form an interim structure in November 1989. Being uncertain about the reception their idea of a civic association would get from the community, they decided to test ‘why people are so quiet; is it because people are happy or they are suppressed?’ In the event, thousands of Vosloorus residents joined the march organised by the civic association to protest against declining living conditions and to call for the resignation of the councillors. The Vosloorus Civic Association (VCA) adopted a strict and unaligned position. When Dan Mofokeng, a leader of the ANC-aligned South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO), addressed a public meeting and shouted pro-ANC slogans, he was

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reprimanded because the VCA ‘didn’t want to be seen at that point in time to be biased’.3 Ironically the civic association gained most of its support from the residents of the elite suburbs, who were struggling to pay their bonds and exorbitant service charges. As early as January 1990s the Vosloorus Crisis Committee called a meeting with the council to discuss the charging of exorbitant electricity bills, which in areas such as Marimba Gardens and Mabuya Park had risen to as high as R500 per month.4 Over the next three years the VCA was involved in an unremitting struggle against the authorities over flat rates, electricity supplies and political authority in the township. In September 1990 the Council threatened to cut off electricity if residents did not start paying rent and service charges. The township arrears had by that stage accumulated to R12.5 million.5 The VCA denounced the threat as a recipe for disaster. In the same year a forum for negotiation, the Joint Technical Committee (JTC) was established to deal with the crisis in Vosloorus. The forum consisted of the VCA, the Vosloorus Council, TPA, Eskom, National Council of Trade Unions (NACTU), Vosloorus Residents’ Committee, Boksburg Council and the IFP. By March 1991 the authorities agreed residents could pay a flat rate of R57 a month. At the May meeting of the JTC it was reported that 80.75% of residents had paid the R57 flat rate. However, the figure declined to 57% in April when residents paid R60 and by May only 51% had paid. It was previously agreed to reach a payment level of 70%. The Council continued to act against individual defaulters.6 The VCA challenged the validity of the bills claiming that many meters were faulty. By July nearly 3 000 residents were still not paying electricity and tariffs and the Council increased the cut-offs from 250 to 400 a week. The authorities agreed that Eskom should test a further 300 meters in the presence of the community representatives and that a flat rate of R60 would be paid until July 1991, after which payment would be made on the basis of the metered readings. The VCA’s spokesperson, Keith Montsisi, however, insisted this could only proceed if meters were repaired.

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National Peacekeeping Force

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Throughout these negotiations the Council questioned the legitimacy of the VCA, despite the overwhelming support enjoyed by the civic association. In September 1991 the VCA, concerned that the other bodies involved in the forum were not representing any meaningful constituency, called for the establishment of a local Constituent Assembly. This was to test the legitimacy of other local negotiators. It believed that elections to such a body would not only confirm its majority support in the community but would expose its political opponents’ lack of support. Five thousand residents marched to the TPA offices in support of the VCA’s demands and called for the exclusion from the JTC of non-representative bodies such as councillors and the IFP.7 The memorandum submitted to the TPA explained that demands were being put forward because of the difficulties experienced in the local negotiations. The stalemate continued. In March 1992 the TPA announced that defaulters’ electricity would be disconnected and that the reconnection fee would be R50. It also threatened to take legal action against defaulters.8 In December 1992 the Council revealed that 2% of residents had paid service charges and that electricity to 8 000 houses had been cut.9 The defaulters’ property was also seized. The VCA responded by calling a consumer boycott of Boksburg shops, a tactically astute move because of the success of the previous boycott in 1988. The Council reluctantly reconnected electricity subject to residents paying R100 for services. The VCA refused, offering only R20 in terms of the agreement previously negotiated between the Council and the VCA. The VCA demanded that the Council sign an agreement immediately for it to take over the supply of electricity and that councillors resign. Eskom took over the supply of electricity in April 1993. In September 1993 it was agreed that residents would pay 16.3 cents per unit for domestic electricity. Once Eskom took over, meters were checked and the network was refurbished. At this stage residents agreed to pay for the electricity but not for services provided by the Council. In September 1993 the effects of the service boycott were hitting the Council hard. After nearly three years of intense struggle the

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Council eventually conceded that power had shifted decisively in favour of the VCA and the community. After further negotiations the Council agreed that residents could pay a flat rate of R25 per month. The success of the VCA was due to the huge support it gained from the Vosloorus community as well as to an astute leadership, which used its extensive trade union experience in the negotiations with and struggles against the Boksburg Council. The civic struggles were also important because they mirrored the national negotiations process in a number of respects. Like the national process, the local struggles were about securing a better life for residents as well as engaging the local authority on the crucial matter of transferring power to the majority of the towns’ people, namely, the residents of Kathorus. Older residents played the pivotal role in the civic struggles of the early 1990s. It is interesting that although many residents of Kathorus joined the ANC, they did not abandon the civics. Civic organisations, especially in Vosloorus and Thokoza, developed a new momentum and focused much of their efforts on local issues affecting residents of the township. In this way they emulated the civics of the early 1980s. Similar trends were evident in townships across the country.

Civil war The violence of the early 1990s transformed townships across the PWV into war zones and caused the deaths of more people than in the preceding 30 years. Ekurhuleni again became a focal point of this internecine war. The bloody civil war had multiple causes, affected by national political dynamics and a variety of local tensions. It may be argued that the intervention by entities such as the security forces and Inkatha warlords was motivated by opposition to the prospect of democracy and majority rule. In Kathorus, the character and trajectory of the violence were also shaped by a series of interlocking factors, such as taxi wars, mounting tension between hostel dwellers on the one hand and youth and squatters on the other.10 Conflict erupted in July/August 1990 with places like KwaThema instantly engulfed in the flames of warfare. Tension between hostel dwellers and

township residents had been simmering for several months with sporadic incidents of conflict especially between youth and hostel inmates. The immediate factors leading to the outbreak of violence that erupted in KwaThema on 19 August 1990 echoed the experiences in townships across the PWV. A few days before, rumours had spread of Inkatha members being bussed into the township, causing considerable anxiety among residents, especially as similar events had preceded the outbreak of violence in the Vaal and Soweto. Fearing imminent violence school principals sent their pupils home. On the evening of 18 August, the township’s worst fears were confirmed when IFP-aligned Zulu hostel dwellers attacked and evicted non-Zulu inmates from the hostel. An elderly inmate recalled what happened that night: The Zulus came into the room and asked me what I was and I told them I was a Pedi. They then asked my roommate his tribe and he said he was Ndebele. However, they didn’t believe him because he spoke with a Xhosa accent and he was shot in the stomach and head. As they stepped outside one of them shouted that the ‘dog may not have died’. They then came back and stabbed him several times.11 Inmates, including Zulu-speakers complained that the attackers were outsiders. One hostel dweller dissociated himself from the attacks and denied being against the ANC. ‘Some of us here are COSATU and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), just like some Sothos and Pedis are. Why then should we only attack Xhosa ANC members?’ These pleas fell on deaf ears as the IFP attackers wreaked havoc in the hostel, causing ethnic tensions to flare up. The following morning the evicted residents, who were mainly Xhosa-speaking, armed themselves with sticks and pangas and gathered outside the hostel. Community leaders tried to defuse the tension in an effort to avoid ethnic conflict and to prevent a repeat of the mayhem unfolding in other townships. Leading figures of the Civic Association and COSATU, such as Cyril Jantjies, George Nkadimeng, George Khumalo

and Vincent Bashielo, tried the whole day to persuade the different sides to disarm and called on the police to protect the community. These efforts were undermined when unknown people handed out rifles to IFP hostel dwellers, triggering open war between the two sides. A pitched battle ensued outside the hostel, initially between the two migrant groups. However, township youth quickly entered the fray against the IFP group. At least 56 people were killed in what was one of the single deadliest incidents of violence during the civil war of that period. The intensity of this battle prompted an immediate response from the community. A day after, on Monday 20 August 1990, residents stayed at home determined to end the violence. That morning people from across the township gathered and marched to the hostel. About 1 000 youths surrounded the hostel while groups of residents used hammers to break down the hostel.12 This decisive mass action prevented the hostel from being converted into an armed fortress from which the IFP could launch attacks on the community and went a long way to reducing the level of violence in the area. Kathorus was also very rapidly engulfed by the violence but unlike KwaThema residents they could not prevent the IFP from securing the hostels as bases for their operations. As a result Katlehong and Thokoza became the epicentres of the civil war. Hostel and squatter settlements, both the product of apartheid urban policies, became important sites of violent contestation in this period. A critical point of friction that proved explosive was between Phola Park and the Khalanyoni hostel. At the base of this friction were the rapidly deteriorating conditions in both locales. From the end of 1989 a series of events occurred that aggravated the points of friction: • •

•

The taxi violence of 1989 pitted hostel dwellers against township youth. In December 1989 the Thokoza Youth Congress threw its weight behind the Phola Park resistance to eviction. In June 1990 the Tripartite Alliance called a national stayaway to protest the role of the IFP in the violence in KwaZulu-Natal.

The politics of transition 189

•

•

•

In July the IFP announced its intention to launch itself as a political party. The political temperature began to rise in hostels all over the Witwatersrand. In late July and early August clashes broke out between IFP and other supposedly ANC-aligned hostel groups in Kagiso and Sebokeng.13 At this stage pressure was also mounting on Xhosa-speaking residents of Khalanyoni hostel to vacate it. In mid-August violence erupted between Phola Park residents and hostel inmates. This violence was apparently triggered after a conflict over a woman. However, oral evidence suggests that there were simultaneous attacks on Crossroads squatter camp (in Katlehong) and Lindela hostel, and that Khutata hostel played a central role in the planning of these attacks.14 In response to these attacks the residents of Phola Park, having identified the hostels as the centres of violence against them, dismantled Khalanyoni.

To hostel dwellers such actions would have seemed to be a vindication of their worst fears. Many shared the belief that township residents, especially youth comrades, wanted to remove them from the townships. During August and September 1990 hundreds of people lost their lives. Zulu migrants forcibly evicted non-Zulu migrants from the hostels, many of whom then sought refuge in the squatter camps. In late 1990, Zulu migrants launched a series of attacks against squatter camps in Thokoza and Katlehong. Between 10 and 13 September, migrant armies, assisted by the police, attacked Phola Park resulting in the destruction of hundreds of shacks and the murder of 80 people. White men dressed in balaclava hats and with their faces somewhat absurdly covered in black boot polish attacked the camps with guns and grenades. Police Casspirs escorted the attackers and stood by throughout. In mid-November IFP supporters drove out all ANC sympathisers and neutrals from Zonkisizwe squatter camp and a week later a similar attack was launched against Holomisa

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squatter camp. Thousands of refugees from these camps fled to Phola Park. In April, Xhosa residents of Holomisa camp expelled Zulu-speaking residents of Mandela View camp, perpetuating the cycle of ethnic cleansing.15 Violence between the IFP and either Xhosa or township dwellers continued at varying levels of intensity through 1991 and 1992. By this time the conflict had also assumed an explicit political character as a war between the township-based ANC and the Zulu-migrant-based IFP. As the political stakes were raised in 1993 in anticipation of the 1994 elections (and were exacerbated by the assassination of Chris Hani in April 1993), violence exploded with unprecedented ferocity. At this stage the war in Kathorus not only shattered the lives of township residents but threatened to derail the entire negotiations process. Various parts of the township became no-go areas and Kathorus was declared one of the most dangerous places in the world. At the height of the battle in July and August 1993 hundreds were driven out of their properties and lost their lives. In the process entire districts like that of Phenduka, which borders Thokoza’s hostel complex, were cleared of their inhabitants and commandeered by IFP warlords. In areas adjacent to Phenduka section the SDUs evicted Zulu-speaking shack dwellers living in the yards.16 As the violence escalated, the entire character of hostel life began to change. Many migrants either returned home or sought accommodation in the squatter camps or white suburbs.17 Their places were taken by young unemployed migrants from the rural areas, many of whom came with the prime objective of fighting and looting. The hostels were converted into military strongholds, barricaded in and deliberately separated from the township. Conflict between hostel dwellers and squatter camp residents became a common feature throughout Ekurhuleni. So too were the involvement of the youth and the establishment of SDUs. Although Ratanda exhibited some of the same features there were also important differences in the way the conflict unfolded there, especially in relation to its immediate causes. Until mid-1992 Ratanda had remained largely untouched by the violence that had swept across the

rest of Ekurhuleni, which again was due to its relative isolation from the rest of the region. However, the presence of hostels in the township suggested that it would eventually be drawn into the war. Violence broke out during a legal strike by the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) members employed at the Escort meat processing factory and R&R Tobacco Manufacturers that started on 22 July 1992. In order to counter the effects of the strike, the employers of the two companies immediately used scab labour. In what was clearly designed as a provocative political move, they employed members of Inkatha’s trade union, the United Workers’ Union of South Africa (UWUSA), who were mainly not from the area. This move undoubtedly created tensions between strikers and scabs, but was also deliberately politicised as a stand-off between the ANC and the IFP. Matters were made considerably worse when the employers and UWUSA decided to house the scab labourers in the same hostel as the striking workers. Almost immediately, they began evicting FAWU members from the hostel, threatening to kill them if they were found anywhere near the hostel precinct. By 27 July all non-Inkatha hostel dwellers were evicted from the hostel and, it seems, with very little resistance. Buoyed by their swift success in transforming the hostel into an IFP/UWUSA stronghold, the new hostel dwellers began attacking the neighbouring Mandela squatter camp, where a number of the evicted hostel inmates had decamped to and which was seen as a stronghold of the ANC. During one of these attacks three residents were killed. To add insult to injury the IFP attacked the people attending the funeral of these residents held on 4 August, resulting in the deaths of a further four people. Resistance from the squatter camp was weak, allowing the IFP to act with virtual impunity in the area. Hostel dwellers now began extorting money from residents of the squatter camp. Despite regular reports of intimidation, attacks and abductions by the hostel dwellers, the police did little, if anything to stop this reign of terror. Initially the community also appeared too weak to mount a concerted response. As a result many residents of Mandela camp simply relocated to the Chris Hani squatter camp on the opposite side of the township

where they hoped to be safe from the IFP’s control. However, the IFP seemed determined to assert their control over this area and in mid-September launched a pre-dawn attack on the camp, killing at least three people. Confident that their actions would not be stopped by the police, IFP members also attacked buses ferrying workers to and from their workplaces. In one such attack, during which hand grenades and petrol bombs were used, one worker was killed and 28 injured.18 By this time the local ANC had recovered from the initial shock of the attacks and began to organise SDUs, which then launched reprisal attacks against the hostel dwellers and IFP members in the township. The resolution of the strike in early October did little to halt the violence even though a formal truce was signed between FAWU and UWUSA. IFP members were annoyed that they would lose the jobs they were given during the strike and would also have to vacate the hostel. Thus, when the FAWU workers attempted to return to work they were attacked by UWUSA members who had taken their jobs during the strike. As a consequence the violence in Ratanda settled into a familiar pattern: sniper attacks from the hostel became routine; armed attacks on the township and squatter camp occurred regularly at the end of 1992 but then waned from early 2003; and SDUs continued in their efforts to protect the community, but with only sporadic success. SDUs played a far more critical role in Thokoza and Katlehong. One of the first SDUs to be formed was created in Phola Park to defend the community against attacks from the hostels. From 1991 several SDUs comprising mainly youth were formed in the township as the violence spread to the established residential areas. Initially the SDUs enjoyed widespread support from the local communities who raised funds to procure arms for them. There was also a stringent selection process, which was undertaken by recognised community leaders, to ensure that only the most committed and disciplined youth were recruited to the SDUs.19 The activities of the SDUs were therefore initially endorsed because they were intended to protect the community against violence from the hostel dwellers and the state. But the community’s support for the SDUs did not

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Chris Hani, leader of the SACP

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translate into control over their activities. The SDUs functioned as autonomous entities with little, if any, accountability to anyone.20 Moreover, the most politically experienced youth were not drawn into the SDUs, which were perceived as military structures. A significant proportion of the youth who were drawn into the SDUs were very young, sometimes in their early teens.21 The separation between the political and military aspects of the struggle in Kathorus meant that the SDUs became progressively isolated from the communities they were supposed to serve. Not all self-defence operations were dominated by young people. In Daveyton the first seriously organised SDU emanated from the hostels. According to Zenzele Mdutwa, a member of Amabutho, the group was formed in 1990 after violence erupted at the Daveyton hostel. Non-Zulu-speaking people in the hostel fled and sought refuge in the township. These people felt very threatened and formed this solidarity group. Amabutho in ‘Beirut’ is predominantly Xhosa-speaking; there is another group in the Sotho section. What is common is that we are all from the hostel and we all ran away from Zulu-speaking people inside the hostel. Amabutho work very closely with the comrades in the township.22 Violence in the township reached a peak in March 1991. In mid-March it transpired that the IFP had planned to hold a mass rally in the township to mobilise support for itself, a tactic it had pursued with some success in other townships. Residents feared that violence would follow the rally as had been the case elsewhere and requested that certain conditions be attached to the event in order to minimise the potential for violence. It was agreed that the IFP would not march through the township but would be taken directly to the venue, Sinaba Stadium. Inkatha agreed to these conditions. However, on the day of the rally (24 March 1991), IFP members were bussed in from other townships and taken to the hostel with the intention of marching from there to the stadium. In the meantime 200 members of Amabutho gathered

in the veld behind the Roman Catholic Church, about 5 km away from the stadium, ‘because we know what Inkatha does after their rallies, so we were waiting to defend and protect residents and property against Inkatha attacks. We were all sitting down talking, not singing.’23 At about 12 noon the police arrived and warned the leaders to disperse the gathering within 10 minutes. The leaders, Khaya Leve, Zenzele Mdutwa and Xhara, asked the Amabutho group to sit down so that they could address them. Wilfred Mtyobo described what happened thereafter: The policemen formed a semi-circle around us, blocking the way to escape. A white policeman in camouflage uniform was in front of the others, he shouted at the others ‘Bulala Zonke’ (Kill All), again in Afrikaans ‘Skiet’. A tear-gas carnister (sic) was fired. Every one rose to their feet. This white policeman fired with a hand gun and other policemen also started shooting. There was a lot of confusion and people were panicking. The police nearest to us in front were not as many as the police who came out of the ‘mellow yellow’. We all ran forward trying to find the smallest possible space to escape. Fortunately I did manage to find a way through the police and run away. I ran away from the scene and went home.24 The police claimed that the Amabutho had attacked them and killed Lance-Sergeant P.J. van Wyk. Eleven members of Amabutho were killed and about 30 injured during the five minutes in which the police fired about 250 rounds of ammunition into the fleeing group. The ANC described the incident as the ‘Massacre of Daveyton’. After the rally Inkatha members marched through the township and killed an 87-year old resident. Police also shot and killed 9-year-old Nomathamsanqa Matsolo while she was playing in the street. Although the Amabutho was not disbanded it was severely shaken by the massacre and its members integrated into the township-based SDUs. Hereafter the conflict appeared to involve mainly IFP hostel dwellers and residents of a number of squatter camps. In March 1992 members of the

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Chris Hani Action Committee, an organisation of the residents of the Chris Hani squatter camp, alleged that members of the police had been seen shooting indiscriminately into the camp. A year later six people from the camp were killed, which the regional ANC leadership and police attributed to the work of criminals.25 In July violence again broke out between hostel dwellers and residents of the Zenzele squatter camp. Tensions had been mounting since the IFP had renamed the camp the Mangosuthu squatter camp. Most residents of Zenzele and Chris Hani squatter camps rejected the renaming. After a rally at the hostel about 100 inmates ransacked Zenzele camp, at the end of which 16 shacks had been destroyed and nine people killed.26 This cycle of attacks and reprisals between the hostels and squatter camps continued for several more months, but did not erupt into major conflict before the 1994 elections. The pervasiveness of violence in Kathorus catapulted the military activity of the SDUs to a dominant position in the political life of the townships. To a large extent the youth movement in Kathorus during this period became heavily militarised. The commanders of the SDUs supplanted the political and more experienced leadership. As a result the mass-based political leaders of the community exerted less control over the activities of the SDUs. These factors all contributed to the demise of the SDUs. By 1994 many SDUs had become laws unto themselves and turned against the community. Some of them became criminalised, infiltrated by the security forces, and were involved in unprovoked attacks against hostel dwellers. The youth movement, which started its heroic defence of the community with widespread support from the people of Kathorus, had once again become isolated and regarded as a problem in the community. Tembisa was perhaps the only other township in Ekurhuleni where the violence continued for as long as it did in Kathorus. The eruption of violence in Tembisa appears to have been linked to the mounting campaign by residents against threats by the authorities to disconnect their electricity and water supplies, and the BLA Councillors’ growing anger about their loss of authority to the ANC and its allies. In July 1990 residents of the township met to discuss reports of the

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imminent disconnections and resolved to ‘fetch Mr Sithole, the town councillor in Mthambeka section, to open the supplies’. Charles Sithole seemed to have interpreted this as a threat and mobilised a group of Zulu migrants from Ihlazeni hostel to support him. Johnson Ncube, a resident of Tembisa, met Sithole to discuss the issue. At the end of their meeting, according to Ncube: ‘Mr Sithole concluded by saying that we are going to witness bloodshed in Tembisa. The Zulus said that should Mr Sithole be assaulted, his house be burnt or his children be assaulted, they would attack residents in Mthambeka Section.’27 In early August 1990 residents noticed that minibuses full of Inkatha supporters were entering the township, raising fear of an outbreak of violence. In mid-August a pamphlet was distributed in the township instructing people to join Inkatha, and threatening those who refused to do so. Within days this threat was carried out, with deadly effect. On 20 August violence broke out between hostel dwellers and residents and, in the space of a few days, 26 people lost their lives in this orgy of violence. Another sinister, and an increasingly common feature of the state’s campaign against township residents, was launched in Tembisa on the night of 1 September 1990 when a group of vigilantes wearing red headbands drove through the township attacking residents. Nine people were killed that evening. A resident of Ethafeni hostel in Tembisa alleged that IFP-aligned municipal police were involved in the attacks. One of the policemen, Dumisane Myeni, was well known in the area. The organisation of SDUs temporarily halted the onslaught by the IFP, resulting in a lull in the mayhem. In May 1991 about 3  000 ANC supporters marched to Vusumuzi hostel to demand the closure of the hostel and for the police to act against perpetrators of violence. A gun battle erupted between the marchers and hostel dwellers, supported by the police and members of 32 Battalion, resulting in the deaths of six people. In 1992 the conflict in Tembisa took on a new character with the creation of an alliance between the IFP and the notorious local gang known as the ‘Toasters’. The gang, comprising mainly young men,

had been responsible for a reign of terror in the township since 1990. Largely a criminal gang, the Toasters were involved in at least 200 cases of murder, rape, assault and robbery. On April 12 the ‘Toasters’ and IFP hostel dwellers joined forces to attack a meeting in Umthambeka section. Seven people were killed in this attack. The ‘Toasters’ operated from the Vusumuzi hostel. Only when residents marched to the police station and threatened to take the law into their own hands, did the police begin to round up members of the gang. Leader of the Toaster gang, Clement ‘Yster’ Jonas, was himself shot and killed in May 1993, together with an IFP member, which signalled the demise of the gang. In Thokoza the IFP had similarly aligned itself to the notorious Khumalo gang, which imposed a reign of terror in that township and was allegedly responsible for several murders including that of Sam Ntuli. The following month, on 19 June 1993, the anniversary of the Boipatong massacre, a gang of hostel dwellers from Vusumuzi drove around Tembisa opening fire with AK-47s. Ouma Mpaza’s mother and sister were shot outside their home. She explains: My mother, Janet, was on her way to work when I heard AK-47 gunfire rattling outside the yard. I looked through the window and saw my mother falling down. She had been shot in the shoulder but the gunmen pumped more bullets into her body. My sister, Beauty, left the house, thinking that the gunmen had already left, but she was wrong as they shot her in the leg as she tried to save mother. Eight people were killed in different parts of the township on that day. In response, the residents of the township called a one-day stayaway to express their deep anger at the violence emanating from Vusumuzi hostel. In a massive show of force approximately 50 000 residents met at the Jan Lubbe Stadium to voice their concerns about the hostel and police complicity in the violence. A significant section of

the crowd opposed handing the memorandum to the police and wanted to destroy the hostel immediately. Although this was not acted on, the threat of a massive attack and possible destruction of the hostel seemed to succeed in reducing the scale and regularity of attacks emanating from there. As the violence subsided in the townships and the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) talks, held in Kempton Park, seemed to be heading to a conclusion, the region was suddenly thrust into the centre of a political storm that threatened the entire negotiations process. On 10 April 1993 popular Communist Party leader, Chris Hani, was fatally shot outside his home in the Boksburg suburb of Dawn Park. The right-wing assassins responsible for his murder intended not only permanently to remove a leading radical figure of the liberation movements and someone who seemed destined to play a prominent role in a democratic dispensation, but also to scupper the negotiations. Public anger boiled over, with many people demanding an end to the talks. Hani had risen through the ranks of MK in the 1960s, been elected onto the ANC’s National Executive Committee in 1982 and had become the Political Commissar of MK the following year. He had also emerged as a leading figure of the Communist Party and in 1991 replaced Joe Slovo as General-Secretary. As the leader of the Party he had won widespread support especially in poor and working class black communities. Only Nelson Mandela was more popular than him. But the idea of a Communist leader, popular among the masses, playing a prominent role in a democratic government, struck fear in the ranks of the ultraconservatives and members of the security apparatus. Their decision to kill him brought the country to the brink of renewed conflict between the progressive movements and those opposed to change. As it turned out, the ANC, led by Mandela, used this moment of serious crisis to assert its authority over the negotiations and accelerated the process to open the way for democratic elections a year after Hani’s assassination, in April 1994.

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Chapter 17

City of fragments

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I

n December 2000 six metropolitan areas (Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg, Tshwane/ Pretoria, eThekwini/Durban, Cape Town and Buffalo City/Port Elizabeth) were established as part of the country’s most significant re-organisation of local authorities after the end of apartheid. These new metropolitan regions had at least two overarching objectives: • to unify the separate parts of the region into a centralised administration in order to facilitate the delivery of basic services, and • to promote the institution of local participatory democracy. Metropolitan governments, according to Wooldridge, ‘[were] seen primarily as a way of bringing sprawling black townships, white suburbs and city centres into a single municipality, and hence into a single tax base.’1 Furthermore, they were intended to bring South Africa in line with international trends in which megacities were deemed the pivotal nodal points in the global economy.

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Ekurhuleni was unique among these new urban conurbations as it was the only one created from multiple existing towns,2 whereas the other metropolitan areas emerged as logical outcomes of the development trajectories of each of their core cities, especially in terms of economic and population growths. These new cities may have developed ‘multi-nodal structures’ (for example, new industrial, financial or retails sites), but the principal cities, particularly their historical CBDs, remained dominant and have imposed their character on the enlarged metropolitan regions. By contrast, Ekurhuleni has been deemed to ‘lack a clear city identity’ and is instead characterised by multiple urban identities. A number of the towns that now constitute the Metro, as we have seen, developed their own distinctive characteristics over the course of nearly 100 years and often competed for access to resources and investment.3 These processes accelerated in the two decades preceding the launch of the Metro under circumstances of profound economic and political transformation, which not only entrenched divisions between these towns but also the spatial racial segregation and socio-economic inequalities created during the 20th century. Ironically, the fragments that constitute Ekurhuleni have often become more distinct over the past decade as the authorities have striven to construct a unified identity for the new Metro. A recent report by the Council provided a brutally frank assessment of the challenges that the new Metropolitan Region faces: The former nine East Rand towns and large vacant land parcels in the mining belt around the urban core, create a fragmented spatial distribution and cause an inequitable city. This leads to low development densities with historically disadvantaged communities situated on the urban periphery. Many areas in the city have challenges with transportation linkages and inadequate mobility. … Due to mining activities, urbanisation and industrialisation, environmental problems such as dolomite, informal settlements, industry and pollution, Ekurhuleni is characterised by large areas of degraded environment.4

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Another distinguishing problem identified by officials is the state of decay of many of the historical CBDs, caused by economic stagnation and the migration of the mostly white middle class to suburban complexes. In addition, the rise of shopping mall complexes (Eastgate, Alberton Mall, the East Rand Mall, Bedfordview and Lakeside Mall) dealt a severe blow to the inner city retail sector, which had traditionally been a crucial component of the economies of the CBDs. So these CBDs remain intact but sapped of economic vitality, and the shopping malls add to the fragmentation of the area.5 Therefore, at the turn of the century, the newly inaugurated Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Council was required simultaneously to forge a single metropolitan area from ten urban fragments and to overcome the racially skewed developmental problems bequeathed by apartheid. These challenges had to be confronted under difficult economic conditions as the region’s traditionally strong manufacturing sector came under pressure due to instability in the global economy. Relatively rapid population growth further contributed to stubbornly high rates of unemployment, which, in turn, have contributed to the deepening of inequality.

Developmental local government The dawn of a democratic order in 1994 promised not only to finally end the discriminatory policies of apartheid but, equally importantly, to transform the lives of millions of oppressed South Africans. These ideals were captured in the ANC’s election slogan of ‘a better life for all’. Drawing on the Freedom Charter, the ANC produced the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), which promised high quality education, decent and affordable housing, water, electricity, etc., for all. As the main party of liberation the ANC won a significant majority in the first democratic elections of 1994 and subsequently in the first democratic local elections, giving it the political authority to undertake far-reaching changes at national and local levels. It has dominated the National Assembly, the Gauteng Provincial Legislature and the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Council. The first democratic local elections, held in 1995, created

new local political orders, and for the first time black and white areas came under single administration. New councillors and mayors were elected, most of these belonging to the ANC and its alliance partners, especially the trade unions and civic organisations. Among these were Ali Tleane (unionist and civic leader who became mayor of Kempton Park); Mlahleki Kaifus Sambo (unionist and co-founder of Katlehong Crisis Committee in the 1980s, who became mayor of Germiston); and Lungile Mtshali (a former member of the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union [SACCAWU], and who played a prominent role in the local authority for more than a decade). Like most other metropolitan areas, Ekurhuleni has become a site of contestation between the ruling ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA). At the time of the formation of the Ekurhuleni Metro, the ANC achieved its lowest proportion of the votes of slightly more than 56%, whereas the newly created DA won more than 31% of the votes. In the preceding years several townships had been hit by service delivery demonstrations and growing tensions between a range of new civic and community organisations and the ANC (as well as it civic partner, SANCO). According to Lodge, eight of the independent councillors elected in the 2000 elections represented township-based civic groups, and reflected a new level of discontent with local ANC councillors.6 One such example was the Simunye in Christ Organisation, based in Tsakane, which garnered about 5 000 votes.7 By the next local elections in 2006 the ANC had regained some of the lost ground by garnering more than 61% of the votes, while the DA experienced a decline to slightly less than 26% of the votes. Arguably more significant than the proportion of votes won by the parties, was the sharp decline in the number of votes cast in the local elections. Here Ekurhuleni followed the national trend, with only 36% of eligible voters bothering to participate in the local elections. These figures reflect the steady decline in electoral participation since 1994 when extremely high levels of voter turnouts were typical as the majority used the opportunity to make their mark for freedom. Factors contributing to the low voter turnout range from voter apathy to deep

dissatisfaction with the performance of the state and political parties. The 2011 local elections witnessed a revival in voter participation. The ANC and DA received 968  302 and 475  985 votes respectively, compared to 642 733 and 270 267 in 2006. While the ANC held onto its proportion of the votes, of around 61%, the DA made important gains by increasing its percentage of the votes from 25.80% in 2006 to 30.29% in 2011.8 Despite the decline in voter turnout for local elections, there remains widespread support for the transformation agenda promised by the ANC.

The challenges of incumbency Immediately after its unbanning in 1990, the ANC’s membership soared as tens of thousands of Ekurhuleni’s residents, overwhelmingly from the townships, joined the party of liberation. Support from the strong union base in the region further bolstered the ANC. Since then the party has maintained high levels of membership in some townships, but has also experienced decline in others, as it has settled into its new role as the governing party. Membership of the party in Gauteng reached an unprecedented 215 000 in 1994, but experienced a precipitous, but not unexpected, drop over the subsequent period, with figures ranging between 42 000 and 48 000 for the years 1995 to 2001. Since then membership has increased steadily to reach approximately 59  000 in 2007.9 A similar picture is evident in Ekurhuleni. In the early 1990s the Katlehong ANC branch alone had 20  000 members. Although the region also experienced a sharp decline in the late 1990s, membership began to stabilise from 2001. In that year, the number of people belonging to the ANC in Ekurhuleni stood at 9 958. Three years later the figure had increased to 13 936 and then declined to 12 498 in 2007. At the last conference of the party it was reported that ANC membership in the region had reached its highest level in more than a decade at 14 216. This was still considerably lower than Johannesburg’s membership figure of 21 551.10 The fluctuation of membership in Ekurhuleni reflects national trends, but there have also been specific factors that have affected the party in this region, albeit in varying degrees. For example, Bantu

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Bavumile Vilakazi

Duma Nkosi

Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement (UDM), launched after his expulsion from the ANC in the mid-1990s, gained a foothold among some of the ANC constituency, mainly in the informal settlements of the Near East Rand. Subsequently, the ANC was able to win back these voters. Following the Polokwane conference, dissatisfied members of the ANC launched the Congress of the People (COPE) in December 2008, which succeeded in establishing about 26 branches in Ekurhuleni with a membership of several hundred. Although the new party posted some gains in the 2010 national elections, internecine squabbles led to its demise. In May 2011, days

before the local elections, the new party was dealt a severe blow when its leadership in Ekurhuleni publicly denounced it and joined the ANC. Zingisile Mathiso, COPE’s Ekurhuleni leader, told a public rally in Boksburg that 22 out of 26 branches in the region had decided to throw in their lot with the ruling party. The national leadership of the ANC has described the complex problems experienced by the party as the ‘challenges of incumbency’, which affects every level of the organisation from the national executive down to branch level. On the one hand, the party in Ekurhuleni is still imbued by the spirit of ‘the struggle’, namely, a commitment to the ideals of liberation

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Ntombi Mekgwe

Mondli Gungubele

and pro-poor development. Many of its leaders are drawn from the student, youth, civic, trade union and underground movements from the 1970s and 1980s. These former activists are also found in key positions in the Ekurhuleni Metro. On the other hand, as bemoaned by the national leadership, many ANC branches have become dysfunctional. The Gauteng ANC conference of 2010 pointed to several factors causing weaknesses in the branches, such as ‘seasonal activism’, ‘bureaucratisation of the branches’ and the lack of leadership by branches ‘on matters on service delivery and community development’. Kgalema Motlanthe, the deputy president, spoke even more

pointedly of the organisational problems facing the ruling party, referring to ‘gate-keeping ghost members, rent-a-member, commercialisation of membership, branch numbers that rise on the eve of elective conferences and collapse shortly thereafter, and other forms of fraudulent and manipulative practices that seek to influence the outcome of elective processes’ in his last report as general secretary of the party. Internal disputes within the ANC have also been reflected in contestations for the mayoral position. The first mayor of Ekurhuleni, Bavumile Vilakazi, lasted barely a year in his post. His successor, Duma Nkosi, who had been a leading trade unionist in the 1980s

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and was seconded from the National Assembly to stabilise Ekurhuleni’s administration, largely succeeded in steering the new Metro through the first years of its transition towards the creation of a single entity. Nkosi’s reign as mayor lasted until July 2008 when he was allegedly forced to resign due to dissatisfaction in the ANC over his handling of allegations brought against the chief of the Metro Police, Robert McBride. Ntombi Mekgwe, a long-standing activist from the Far East Rand, replaced Nkosi until the appointment of Mondli Gungubele in late 2010. That appointment, plus the election of a new ANC executive in 2011 led by Moses Makwakwa and Queen Duba, seems to have opened a new chapter for the ruling party. Jacob Dlamini, in his research on an ANC branch in Katlehong, revealed some of the internal dynamics, intrigues and problems besetting local branches. He notes that in 2001 the ANC re-organised branch structures to align them more closely with the new ward demarcations and in order better to manage huge branches such as existed in Katlehong. There were 66 branches in 2001 and 76 in 2010. Katlehong has 11 branches. Dlamini described the branch on which his research focused thus: The branch I studied covers one municipal ward and has 178 paid up members. However, only about 40 people attend branch general meetings regularly. There is a fifteen-member executive committee. Katlehong is predominantly a working class township and this is reflected in the composition of the branch membership. Only two members of the branch’s top five have regular jobs. You would think that with 178 members, the problem of quorums would be easier to manage. Wrong. In 2008 it took the branch eight attempts to finally hold its annual general meeting (AGM). I do not mean to suggest that this branch is typical of an ANC branch. No two branches are the same.11 He found a branch riven with factionalism, which an executive member succinctly captured in the following terms: ‘We do not have members of the ANC in the branch; we have members of members. Members

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are more loyal to other members than they are to the ANC, despite the ANC oath that new members must take, pledging to fight factionalism.’12 These factional disputes became particularly acrimonious in the run-up to the Polokwane conference in 2007. Dlamini also observed that the leadership of branches was determined less by popular support in the community than by incumbents’ capacity to mobilise factions within a branch. Most seriously was the manner in which leadership of branches were utilised to vie for contracts in development projects, reflecting the emergence of a class of ‘tenderpreneurs’ in the ANC. Despite these difficulties, Dlamini notes, the ANC remains ‘the only game in town’. In the 2010 national elections, the party garnered 10  036 in the ward, compared to 528 for COPE, 110 for the IFP and 78 for the DA. Since the mid-1990s and especially after the promulgation of the new legislation in 2000, local government has been identified as a key sphere of social and political transformation. ‘Local government’, Parnell and Pieterse have argued, holds the promise of being the crucial sphere of state action to extend democracy to all South Africans and to change the traditional relations of power and wealth … Most importantly, the functions of local government are expanded to include eradicating poverty, local economic development and sustainable management of the environment.13 Critically, local government was also imagined as the main site for the development of participatory democracy, premised on the idea of active citizen participation in the decision-making processes of the local state. Ekurhuleni Municipality comprises 175 councillors, which includes elected (88 ward representatives) and proportional (87 councillors) representation. Each of the 88 ward councillors chairs a ward committee as part of the Ward Participatory System at community level. Ward Councils, together with structures such as Community Policing Forums and civil society organisations, are meant to be the basic building blocks of participatory democracy.

Street hawkers in Katlehong

When the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Council was established it was tasked with the responsibility of formulating Integrated Development Plans that would achieve broad transformation objectives. In the case of this region that included overcoming racial segregation and special fragmentation, generating new paths of economic development and eradicating poverty. However, these aims had to be achieved in a context of substantial economic stress.

Economy in transition As earlier chapters have explained, Ekurhuleni’s consistently sound economic performance from the time of World War II and particularly from the late 1950s transformed it into the country’s pre-eminent manufacturing region. By 1980, it arguably contained the largest concentration of industries in a single geographical region in the country and was widely acknowledged as Sub-Sahara’s, and possibly Africa’s,

‘industrial workshop’.14 Although this reputation appeared to be sustained into the post-apartheid era, the region also faced the threat of debilitating de-industrialisation. If the preceding era was characterised by sustained growth in generally favourable global economic conditions, the succeeding period was one of profound uncertainties and crises.15 Until the 1990s Ekurhuleni was buffered to some extent from the gusty winds of global change by the country’s relatively high tariff regime. However, South Africa could not remain entirely cut off from the effects of a slow-down in global demand for manufactured goods as well as the growing competition from the newly industrialised countries, especially in South East Asia. These factors, together with growing difficulties experienced in gaining access to export markets caused by the apartheid government’s international isolation, generated serious challenges to the region’s manufacturing sector. Consequently, from

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the 1980s many companies were confronted with the unusual prospects of stagnation, decline and threats to their profitability. Following the country’s liberation from its international pariah status in the early 1990s, the economy was suddenly exposed to the vagaries of a highly competitive and unsympathetic global economy. The different responses by Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni to these new realities were striking. Johannesburg embraced the country’s re-entry into the global market with unbridled fervour and embarked on an innovative path of reconfiguration to become the continent’s financial centre. By contrast, Ekurhuleni remained largely confined to its traditional economic base and, notwithstanding important shifts in the structure and focus of manufacturing in the region, adapted much slower than its neighbour, resulting in considerable stresses and strains. Manufacturing had already begun to exhibit signs of crisis from the late 1970s, which was reflected in sluggish increases in employment figures: between 1976 and 1988 employment in the sector increased by a mere 2 800.16 And, as a harbinger of future developments, total employment in the regional economy increased by only 4.7% in the 1980s (from 584 833 to 612 116), with most of this growth occurring in the services sector.17 As the national economy opened up in the early 1990s and recessionary conditions took their toll, manufacturing employment levels dropped. Approximately 32 000 jobs were shed between 1990 and 1994, and over the course of the 1990s the region experienced a nett loss of 90 000 jobs.18 A salient feature of the regional economy’s troubles was the ‘demise’ of core sectors such as fabricated metals, machinery and electrical machinery, which collectively lost 20 000 jobs in the five years following 1989. A further 6 000 jobs were cut in the iron and steel sector. Previously among the most reliable sectors of manufacturing, these sectors now seemed to drag down the performance of the entire regional economy. At the end of the 1980s they accounted for 50% of industrial employment but four years later this had decreased to 45.7%.19 Towns in the region experienced these economic hardships quite differently. For example, Benoni suffered a precipitous drop in manufacturing employment of 42%, losing about

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11  000 jobs between 1980 and 1994. By contrast, Kempton Park registered employment growth of 23  000 in the 1980s but over the subsequent five years lost 8 000 of these jobs.20 As the impact of the recession of the early 1990s began to be felt, South Africa’s ‘workshop’ appeared to be on a slippery slope. Traditional manufacturing regions across the world buckled under the multiple pressures of global transformation and recession. From being the mainstays of their national economies for most of the 20th century (and sometimes even longer) industrial zones in the Unites States and Europe collapsed ignominiously to become so-called rustbelts: de-industrialised, de-populated and desolate zones. Detroit was arguably the classic example of this process of de-industrialisation. Thomas Sugrue in the mid-1990s described the state of Detroit as follows: ‘Factories that once provided tens of thousands of jobs now stand as hollow shells, windows broken, mute testimony to a lost industrial past. Whole rows of small shops and stores are boarded up or burned out.’21 At the dawn of democracy Ekurhuleni seemed on the brink of suffering a similar fate. However, the region appeared to weather the worst effects of the global storm and avoided slipping into the dreaded category of a ‘rustbelt’. While Ekurhuleni continued to experience a decline or ‘hollowing out’ of its manufacturing sector, a process of restructuring of the region’s industrial economy stemmed the threat of terminal decline. A 1997 report by the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) on the region argued that the decline in ‘employment show[s] a diminution of the metals base of the manufacturing economy, rather than large-scale de-industrialisation which has occurred elsewhere in the world. Following intensive re-organisation, key firms and groups continue to be profitable.’22 There were at least two key aspects to this restructuring. First, fairly significant geographical shifts took place between different economic sectors across the Witwatersrand during the 1980s and early 1990s. In terms of the various sectors, the following trends are pertinent in relation to Ekurhuleni. Employment in the iron and steel industry dropped by 27%, with

firms in Benoni especially suffering severe losses. Nonetheless, the region continued to account for 70% of employment in this sector across Gauteng, with Germiston continuing to be a key player. A slightly different picture emerged in the machinery sector, which experienced reasonable growth in employment in the 1980s from 39 000 to 55 000, but then saw a decline to 47 000 in 1994. Benoni was again hardest hit during the recession of the early 1990s and ceded its leading position in this sector to Boksburg and Germiston. The chemicals and plastics sectors grew throughout this period. Ekurhuleni benefited enormously from this and accounted for about 80% of production in the industrial chemicals sector, which registered employment gains of 1  400 jobs. The performance of the plastics sector was even more impressive, as employment grew by a very healthy 153% or 12 000 jobs. In the case of the latter industry, Johannesburg asserted its dominance but Kempton Park emerged as the key new locus for the industrial chemicals and plastics industries. The proximity of the fast-growing OR Tambo International Airport bolstered Kempton Park’s position, which benefited from being the major source of supplies to the airport and from an influx of export-oriented light industries.23 The salient features of the spatial reconfiguration of industry in Ekurhuleni were the stagnation or decline of the Far East Rand and Benoni, Germiston’s consolidation as the heart of the regional economy and the emergence of Kempton Park as a new growth area. These processes produced new spatial inequalities and geographical unevenness in Ekurhuleni’s economy, and tended to intensify competition between towns as they struggled first to survive difficult economic conditions and second to reposition themselves as preferred centres for new investment. According to Chipkin, for example, Germiston’s insistence on only supporting plans that would assist its own economic strategy, which in the mid-1990s sought to diversify its local economy, led it to oppose integration and the creation of the East Rand Metropolitan Council.24 Second, from the 1980s smaller firms began to make an impression on the industrial landscape. During this time the total number of manufacturing

establishments increased by approximately one third from 1 507 to 2 054, while employment registered modest increases, indicating that smaller firms were probably the main source of job creation. Despite a drop in the early 1990s the number of small firms recovered to a figure of 1949 a few years later, thus maintaining positive growth over the two decades. Employment figures from this period reflect these shifts: large scale firms lost a staggering 100 000 jobs in the 1990s, whereas employment in small and medium enterprises registered modest increases (24 835 to 27 224 and 46 913 to 53 530 respectively) of slightly more than 9 000 jobs.25

Local economic development The formulation of the Developmental Local Government framework after 1994 represented a crucial policy intervention by the democratic government to confront the multiplicity of development challenges at the local level. Local Economic Development (LED) was a pivotal plank in this plan. It was underpinned by the idea that localities had to become more competitive by attracting investment and exporting locally produced goods. In this model successful localities would carve out niches for themselves in the global economy and the benefits accruing from this process would eventually result in overall development, including improvements in the livelihoods of the poor. At the centre of these plans was the objective of developing a ‘pro-poor’ approach to sustainable economic development.26 Smaller and more flexible enterprises were perceived as crucial to the success of LED. In this view, the era of large factories employing thousands of workers had come to an end. They were regarded as relics of the past, unable to respond to the rapidly changing demands of the export-oriented global economy. The Ekurhuleni authorities saw LED as a key intervention to re-orient and reinvigorate the regional economy. ‘There is evidence’, Rogerson noted, ‘of a new buoyancy and optimism in the emergent manufacturing SMME economy which contrasts with signs of a less optimistic mood for future growth possibilities among segments of established manufacturers.’27 This mood seemed especially strong in Johannesburg,

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Food co-operative in Ivory Park

Germiston and Kempton Park. However, on the Far East Rand, Springs and Brakpan lagged behind with little sign of them developing small and medium scale enterprises. Also, even though the smaller local firms seemed to represent the future, they proved equally incapable of creating jobs on the scale required to overcome the enormous and growing problem of joblessness. It was partly in response to this reality, that Ekurhuleni’s LED Department turned some of its attention to alternative forms of economic activity. From the early 2000s it actively promoted and supported the development of co-operatives in the region. In 2003 it formulated a plan to launch ‘25 light industrial manufacturing co-operatives based on the industrial hive model’, in an effort ‘to create

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jobs, promote sustainable livelihoods, and encourage collective economic activity.’28 Co-operatives were established in almost every township. For example, in 2005 recycling co-operatives (Itekeng Cooperative, Kathleho Cooperative, Ubuciko Bengilasi) were launched in Katlehong and the Khuthalang Cooperative (food packaging), Lesedi Cooperative (clothes manufacturing) and Takalani Cooperative (condoms) were launched in Tembisa. Each was given R100 000 as start-up capital investment for office and building equipment. Membership of the co-operatives ranged between 11 and 19. Despite some successes, these co-operatives were confronted with a range of problems, including delays in their establishment, lack of skills in the co-operatives and among officials in the LED Department.29 The authorities claimed that

by 2009 they had trained 137 participants in a range of skills linked to small-scale farming and on how to manage small businesses.30 But without sustained support from the local state to ensure the integration of the co-operatives into the mainstream economy, albeit on their own terms, the performance of this sector remained very uneven.

Neoliberal volatility From the mid-1990s South Africa’s economic policies were firmly framed within a neoliberal paradigm, which, as critics have pointed out is ‘characterised… by the expansion of opportunities and options for private capital accumulation.’31 By the mid-1990s Ekurhuleni was still ‘South Africa’s most important industrial agglomeration’ and covered the ‘largest concentration of industrial activity in South Africa and in all of sub-Sahara Africa… [it] accounted for 37% of South African output of machinery and 33% of metal products in 1996.’ But, as Machaka and Roberts explain, the region suffered in the 1990s due to trade liberalisation and the government’s macroeconomic policy of GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution).32 The promised trickle down to the poor majority remained a slow and inconsistent drip, even when the national economy registered sustained growth. Most seriously, the economy continued to shed jobs throughout this period, despite promises that GEAR would lead to investment, growth and job creation. Between 1994 and 2003 the Gross Domestic Product grew at a rather pedestrian annual rate of 2,8%, but between 2004 and 2007 this increased to a more brisk rate of 5%.33 The latter period of positive growth was reflected in a relatively healthy, albeit uneven, performance of Ekurhuleni’s economy. The economic performance of the region from the mid-1990s to 2010 has been characterized by sectoral and geographic unevenness, as well as volatility brought about by the vagaries of the global and national economies and fluctuations in the value of the Rand against the currencies of the country’s major trading partners. From 1996 to 2009, Ekurhuleni’s economy performed quite poorly in comparison to other metropolitan areas, registering the second

slowest growth with an average 3.0% per annum. Moreover, this average figure obscures the extreme volatility of the region’s economy, which oscillated between negative figures of -3.3% to exceptionally high growth rates of +10.9%. The recently released five year review of the region’s performance ascribes the high growth in 2001 and 2002 to the depreciation of the Rand, with the resultant positive effect on the export sectors, such as mining and related industries, which, in turn, provided fillip to other sectors such as construction, transport, trade and financial services.34 It explains why at the time manufacturing in the region reportedly expanded at almost double the growth rate of the national sector.35 From 1999 to 2004, Ekurhuleni’s average annual growth of manufacturing output was 7.3%, compared to 3.1% per annum nationally. Employment in the region grew at an average annual rate of 3.3% during this period, while jobs were lost nationally.36 Labour-intensive industries tended to perform better at job creation: fuel, chemical, rubber and plastics sector recorded annual average growth of 4.2% per annum, while furniture and the wood products sectors grew by 9.8% 7.3% per annum respectively.37 These were undoubtedly significant contributions to the project of job creation. Yet, they made only a minor dent in the overall problem of unemployment. The 2001 census revealed an official unemployment rate of 40% in Ekurhuleni compared to 35% for Gauteng and 29% for the country as a whole.38 Manufacturing’s contribution to total employment decreased from over 50% in 1970 to 32% in the early 2000s. Conversely, the tertiary sector’s contribution to employment increased to 44.3% and was mainly concentrated in the public services, wholesale and retail trade.39 But, argues Barchiesi, the new growth of the tertiary sector has brought with it conditions of precarious employment, casualisation and subcontracting.40 Another salient feature of the labour market is that the unemployment rate of females is estimated at 51.8%, compared to about 31.8% for males. Furthermore, the Ekurhuleni 2025 document contends that a ‘dichotomised labour market’ exists in the area, ‘comprising what can be termed ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. Insiders, it suggests, are those who have

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O.R. Tambo International Airport

necessary and relevant skills, while the outsiders are generally unskilled. Significantly, informal employment has grown steadily throughout the period and now contributes between 10% and 20% of the total employment in Ekurhuleni.41 Women constitute a disproportionately high percentage of both these categories of unskilled and informal. The onset of recession from 2007 brought to an end nearly a decade of relatively good economic performance in the country. Negligible growth has caused sharp increases in joblessness, with Ekurhuleni being hit particularly hard. At the height of the recession in 2010, the region’s economy declined by 7%. Most

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distressing has been the hike in unemployment. In 2008, the rate of unemployment in Ekurhuleni stood at 23,8%. In 2009 it increased to 25%, in 2010 to 31,9% and in 2011 to an unprecedented 35,2%. During the same period the overall unemployment rate in Gauteng Province increased from 21,6% to 28,2%. The comparative figures for Johannesburg are very revealing: unemployment in the country’s largest city also increased from 22% in 2008 to 27% in 2010, but has decreased marginally since then.42 By contrast, as the figures above show, unemployment in Ekurhuleni continued its sharp upward trajectory. Perhaps the most instructive indicator of the state

of the regional economy is unemployment of the youth. Nationally, youth (age 18–24), especially in poor black areas, have been hit hard by the recession. Unemployment among this section of the population in Gauteng ranged between 48% and 55% from 2008 to 2011. In Ekurhuleni the crisis was considerably worse, with youth unemployment ranging from 57% to 62% in the same period.43

Aerotropolis – the future? In July 2011, Ekurhuleni’s mayor, Mondli Gungubele, announced new plans to make OR Tambo International Airport the central hub of major future development in the Metro. ‘For Ekurhuleni to become a preferred destination for growth and development’, the mayor explained, ‘we need to adopt a particular strategy which is appropriate for the city... We are, therefore, pursuing the aerotropolis model, which talks to exploring economic opportunities around an airport city.’44 Following international trends, especially from the USA and South Asia, of developing an ‘airport city economy’, the primary idea is to take advantage of Ekurhuleni’s strategic position in the country’s transport network, particularly air transport, to foster economic development. For decades Ekurhuleni has been a pivotal transport connection point, with Germiston’s railway being a key railway hub connecting the region’s economy with other important economic centres such as Durban and Maputo. At its height the town’s railway junction was the most active in the country and employed approximately 5 000 workers. Major road freight companies are stationed in the area because of its centrality to the national road network, which facilitates transport of cargo throughout the country and the Southern African region. However, it has been the phenomenal growth of OR Tambo International Airport that has prompted the adoption of the aerotropolis strategy. Johannesburg’s first airport, known as Rand Airport, was built in Germiston in the late 1920s. The rapid growth of air-traffic before and during the Second World War required a bigger airport, which was established at Palmietfontein on the site of present-day Thokoza township. However, this was a short-lived move. In

the mid-1950s a brand new international airport was opened in Kempton Park. Jan Smuts International Airport quickly established itself as the premier airport in the country. In 1959, about 300 000 people used the new airport. More than half a century later, in 2011, it is estimated that approximately 18,5 million people would make use of OR Tambo. Continentally, it is rivalled only by Cairo International Airport.45 John Kasarda, a professor at the University of North Carolina and international expert and adviser on the idea of the aerotropolis, is leading a team of experts to develop the business plan for Ekurhuleni’s own aerotropolis. It is expected this process will take several months and possibly longer, and that the project of re-centering Ekurhuleni’s economy around the airport would require at least a decade. But mayor Gungubele is optimistic. In his opinion, ‘the basic support infrastructure required to exploit the opportunities of an airport city economy are already in place in Ekurhuleni. However, the existing infrastructure still requires reorientation.’46 The aerotropolis strategy may be viewed as another attempt to re-align Ekurhuleni’s economy by creating more dynamic links with global air-based trade and, in so doing, to generate local economic development especially around the airport precinct. Whether this will mitigate the deep-seated inequalities and uneven development in the region, and especially overcome poverty in poor black areas remains to be seen.

Persistence of Inequalities According to the 1996 Census, Ekurhuleni had a population of 2 026 807. Five years later the official figure stood at 2 480 276 million people, meaning that region experienced the fastest rate of population growth in the country of approximately 4 % per annum (or about 90 600 people per year). Despite problems with the 2001 Census, which make it difficult to know the precise figures of the population, this represented a significant increase caused mainly by inward migration. Over the subsequent six years, however, the rate of growth slowed considerably to 1.57% per annum caused by an apparent sharp drop in rural to urban migration. In 2007 the region’s population was estimated at 2 724 229.47 Despite or because of

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this, the socio-economic status of the average inhabitant in Ekurhuleni compares favourably with the rest of the country. Thus, the household and per capita income in the region exceeds the national average by 10% and 33% respectively, but does less well when compared to Gauteng. Ekurhuleni’s annual per capita income is estimated at R22 974 compared with R32 377 for Gauteng. The proportion of people living in poverty in Ekurhuleni is about 24.2% compared to the national figure of 44.4%.48 However, this data obscures one fundamental reality. Poverty overwhelmingly affects African people in the region. The CDE report of 1997 made the following observation about racial inequality in Ekurhuleni: The area’s 600 000 whites typically lead the suburban good life. Most are Afrikaans-speaking; well-educated; have full-time jobs; are married, with both husband and wife working; and are enthusiastic home-owners. About 60% of these households earn more than R4 000 a month. On average, whites earn nearly six times more than the two million Africans in the area. Almost 40 per cent of African adults are unemployed. Many of them earn below subsistence levels, with 35 per cent of households earning less than R500 a month, and 82 per cent less than R1 400 a month.49 Despite significant development over the past fifteen years, not much has changed in respect of the inequalities inherited from apartheid. Poverty levels among black people range from 40 to 46%, while a mere 6% of whites could be categorized as poor. To put this in a different perspective, nearly 98% of people in Ekurhuleni who live below the poverty line are Africans.50 Due to apartheid spatial planning, most of this poverty remains concentrated in the former African townships, which are situated on the periphery of the major urban nodes. Four major concentrations of historically disadvantaged communities exist in the area. The main township complexes are Tembisa, Kathorus, KwaTsaDuza and Daveyton/

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Etwatwa, which collectively accommodate nearly two thirds of Ekurhuleni’s population.51 The sharp upward trend in population growth began in the late 1970s, causing Ekurhuleni to become one of the most densely populated areas in the country. Population density is approximately 1 250 people per km², compared to 513 people per km² for the rest of Gauteng.52 And, the areas of highest density are African townships and informal settlements. An additional challenge faced by Ekurhuleni and one of the principal features of post-apartheid urban development, is the rapid increase in the number of households. The South African Cities Network (SACN) has argued that the nine cities which it analyses have all experienced ‘household growth far in excess of population growth’. This is a critical point, which shows ‘that people are not simply moving into…cities from rural areas and small towns, but that households already resident within the cities are splitting’. Annual household growth in Ekurhuleni in the early 2000s, it notes, was a ‘phenomenal’ 6.84%, while Johannesburg experienced a marginally higher growth of 6.88%.53 The SACN Report of 2004 explained that between 1996 and 2001 the number of formal backyard dwellings and informal backyard dwellings declined by 16 073 (5,1%) and 462 849 (65,7%) respectively and concluded that ‘The movement of residents out of backyards is one of the most important trends shaping South African cities.’54 Instead of being confined to backyards in the old townships, many of these people chose to establish themselves in new informal settlements, often in ‘greenfields’ adjacent to townships, in open spaces close to industrial areas or road networks (for example, along Main Reef Road) or in peri-urban areas, all of which rendered them more visible on the urban landscape. What these processes meant was that the developmental challenges faced by the authorities of Ekurhuleni were multiple and complex. Policymakers often took time properly to comprehend the profound reconfigurations underway in the character of the urban population and of the urban areas in general.

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Chapter 18

Informal and contentious city

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

‘T

he biggest challenge of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality’, the local authority acknowledged in 2007, ‘is its ability to respond to service delivery needs of the region. This varies from housing, provision of water and electricity … free basic services, road maintenance, provision of primary health care, waste removal, etc.’1 Since the first democratic elections in 1994, the ANC government has committed itself to provide ‘a better life for all’, which aim it pursued through multiple service delivery programmes. None has been more critical and urgent than the provision of housing. In a recent advertisement, the Department of Human Settlements reported that the government had delivered more than three million low-cost houses since 1994, benefiting around 13.5 million people.2 Gauteng has been a major site of this housing programme. According to the Provincial Government more than 500 000 ‘housing opportunities’ were created in the first decade of democracy and between 2004 and 2009 a further 374 619 houses were delivered.3

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receiving 6 kl free basic water per month since 2004.6 Although electricity connections proceeded slower than the provision of water, there were nevertheless demonstrable improvements in large parts of Ekurhuleni. For example, 29  178 stands have been connected to electricity since 2007. Impressively, the areas of Tembisa Extension 26, Esselen Park, Winnie Mandela Park, Eden Park, Tinasonke, Chief Albert Luthuli Park, Egoli Village and Palm Ridge all received electricity connections.7 Thus in 2007 the Ekurhuleni authorities could submit a rather sanguine report of its achievements:

Resident receiving RDP house

Ekurhuleni’s housing delivery programme was more mixed. Between 2000 and 2005, a rather modest 21 424 ‘RDP’ houses and 620 social housing units were built. In addition, 477 hostel spaces were converted to family units.4 However, the pace of housing delivery picked up, and approximately 50  000 new houses were erected in the subsequent five years. The Metro also did somewhat better in the provision of ‘subsidy linked serviced stands’, that is, stands with water and sanitation. Between 2000 and 2010 about 80 000 of these stands were made available.5 An important landmark of delivery was achieved in December 2007 when the notorious ‘bucket system’ was finally eradicated. Equally significant was the Metro’s commitment to apply the National Free Basic Water policy, resulting in the majority of households

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The housing programme is vibrant and is part of breaking new ground, to develop sustainable human settlements and develop inclusionary housing. A plan to deliver on the housing backlog has been developed. A total of 6 373 houses were constructed compared to 5 000 planned in the 2006/2007 financial year. A total of 5 897 stands were serviced compared to 5 700 planned through the MIG Programme [Municipal Infrastructure Grant Programme]. In the 2007/08 financial year, we aim to improve the intensity of stands serviced and houses constructed. Projections are the delivery of thirteen thousand nine hundred and eighty six (13 986) serviced stands, valued at approximately R223m. We will further construct thirteen thousand seven hundred and ninety four (13 794) houses.8 Delivery of basic services to the millions of impoverished South Africans has been a primary objective of the democratic government. Many of the challenges of inequality and under-development have been concentrated in the main urban areas. Like its metropolitan counterparts, Ekurhuleni has performed reasonably well in addressing some aspects of the multi-layered problem of poverty. Nonetheless, in a more recent assessment of the state of housing delivery in the region, the Council conceded that the rate of housing delivery is falling far short of the demand. Furthermore, most of the subsidylinked townships thus developed are situated in

Informal settlement

the peripheral urban areas and are monofunctional residential areas without any variety in housing options and typologies, and without the necessary social infrastructure to create sustainable communities.9 These problems reflect national trends of continued housing shortages and poor planning. Despite the massive roll out of public housing over the past 15 years, there remains a shortfall of 2.2 million units. Moreover, new housing projects have been located either in or adjacent to existing African townships, thereby reinforcing apartheid’s racial geography. A further criticism of the state’s RDP houses is that they are very small, even in comparison to the houses provided by the apartheid government. Minister of

Housing and Human Settlement, Tokyo Sexwale, has called them ‘ugly little pondokkies’. And, as the Ekurhuleni authorities admit, the new housing complexes have few social amenities required for the production of viable communities. The most visible manifestation of the persistence of the housing problem is the large informal settlements dotted across Ekurhuleni’s vast landscape.

Informal settlements Urbanisation has escalated since the 1980s, and overwhelmingly so in developing countries. For the first time in human history most Africans now live in cities, a historic shift that has occurred under very difficult global economic conditions. As Davis has rather pessimistically observed, a principal feature

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of this new wave of urbanisation is that it has been disarticulated from industrial development.10 The consequences have been devastating for hundreds of millions of poor urbanites who have little prospect of finding employment and generally find themselves squeezed into overcrowded slums and informal settlements. Although South Africa has done considerably better than most developing countries in the provision of public housing, millions of people still lack formal housing. Despite new housing provisions the percentage of households in South Africa living in informal dwellings remained constant at some 25% between 1996 and 2001. Homelessness was particularly acute in the urban areas with about 1 191 905 households lacking adequate housing in 2001 in the country’s major cities alone.11 A report issued in 2008 suggested that Ekurhuleni contained the highest number of informal settlements in the country, a consequence of processes that began in the late 1970s.12 As indicated in earlier chapters, ‘high’ apartheid government neglected housing provision for urban African, causing high levels of overcrowding and squatting from the 1970s. These problems were exacerbated by rapid urbanisation and slow housing delivery until the end of the 1990s. In 2003 close to 22% of the region’s population either still lived in informal settlements or in ‘inadequate housing’.13 By 2008 this figure had increased to 29%. Put differently, the housing backlog in 2004 was estimated at approximately 160  000 units, a figure that included people living in informal structures and in backyards, as well as those who were on the official waiting list since 1996. Three years later, the backlog had increased to 177 065 units.14 In its five-year review published in 2011, the Metropolitan Council issued a rather bleak assessment of the housing challenges: Many people in Ekurhuleni still live in overcrowded informal settlements without adequate access to engineering and social infrastructure … There is a housing backlog with 134 000 informal dwellings in informal settlements and 36 000 backyard informal dwellings. This is constantly worsening as the influx is set to continue and many informal settlements are situated on land

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not suitable for housing. Well-located land suitable for housing development is not readily available. Past subsidy schemes have resulted in monofunctional, non-sustainable areas.15 According to an official count in 2008 there are approximately 112 informal settlements in Ekurhuleni. In the north-eastern part of the region, including the areas of Etwatwa/Daveyton, Chief Albert Luthuli, Modder East and Wattville, about 46  000 informal structures are recorded as existing. At the opposite end of the region, comprising Palm Ridge, Eden Park, Vosloorus and Zonkizizwe, there were approximately 27 300 such structures in 2008.16 Clearly, the housing backlog and the large number of informal settlements are among the most intractable problems confronting the authorities. Informal settlements, with their densely packed shacks, dirt roads and lack of basic amenities, epitomise urban squalor and poverty. Following national policies, the Metro is formally committed to eradicating informal settlements and to replacing them with formal housing. These are perceived as critical indicators of development. Marie Huchzermeyer, however, offers a different interpretation of the authorities’ approach to informal settlements: Shacks, the visible dimension of informal settlements, remained an embarrassment to the newly elected democratic state, which envisaged them being replaced by neat estates of pitchedroof houses. A more explicit drive to eradicate informal settlements began in 2000 with the perceived MDG [Millennium Development Goals] obligation to achieve ‘slum-’ or shack-free cities. This drive intensified from 2004 to 2009, a period shaped by preparations for the 2010 FIFA World Cup and involving a realignment of power within the ANC.17 Partly in recognition of this kind of criticism, the authorities shifted gear in the mid-2000s to a programme of formalising these settlements. In Ekurhuleni, by August 2008, 68 settlements had been formalised, and plans were afoot to formalise a

Forced removals further 56 in 2009.18 But, as the Council admitted, ‘Although all the informal settlements are provided with emergency water and are in the process of being provided with sanitation facilities, they do not have permanent and adequate access to the four basic services (water, sanitation, electricity and social services).’19 The problem, it seems, is not going away. As a result, the dilemmas associated with informal settlements have become a critical source of contention in Ekurhuleni and have generated serious struggles between the authorities and the residents of poor areas that have been one if not the defining feature of politics in the region. None has been more contentious than the plans to remove squatters.

Removals – a ghost from the past? The tension between informal settlements and the authorities has centred on often divergent views about the future of such settlements. As indicated above, it has frequently taken a long time for the most basic services to be provided to these areas. Even then these have tended to be inadequate as the authorities have found it difficult to keep up with the population growth that was occurring. An even more serious source of friction has been the attempts by the

Council to remove several informal settlements and to relocate residents to new areas. The case of the Harry Gwala informal settlement near Wattville has perhaps become emblematic of the fractious relationship between the residents of such settlements and the Ekurhuleni authorities. Since 2004 the residents of Harry Gwala have faced the constant threat of evictions. Although the authorities had consented to the occupation of the land, they in fact prepared for the removal of the people. According to Huchzermeyer, Without consultation, the municipality had prepared a relocation site in Chief Albert Luthuli (Extension Four) 13 km to the north-east of the settlement. This, it argued, needed to be occupied to ensure the presence of sufficient people in the area for the municipality to apply for the Department of Education for the construction of a school…20 Both the apparent lack of consultation and the plan to remove residents far from their existing place of residence caused tensions to run high in the community.

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Led by the Harry Gwala Committee, later reconstituted as the Simbumbene Civic, the people of the area campaigned against the removals and also demanded in situ development. In 2005 the Civic joined the Landless People’s Movement and led a march of several hundred to demand water and electricity. It also launched a legal challenge against the removals, which had been justified among other things by the presence of overhead electricity lines and the proximity of the site to a mine dump. In May 2005, the authorities announced removals would be effected within a week, but resistance from the community stalled the move. The Ward Councillor then promised to engage the Civic Association with a view to agreeing on which parts of the settlement could be upgraded. However, it appears that very little materialised from this initiative.21 In 2006 violence broke out when the police attempted forcibly to evict people from the area. A stalemate was reached when the residents refused to leave the area and went to the courts to legally force the Council to provide the area with basic services. The 800 households there had no lighting, six communal taps for the entire population and home-made pit latrines. In December 2008 the court instructed the authorities to provide refuse removal and to install seven additional taps within a month.22 However, in July 2009 The Sowetan reported that only two taps had been installed. The mayor, Ntombi Kegwe, argued that the municipality was subject to financial constraints and could not attend to all service delivery issues. Paseka Lihlabi, a local leader of the Landless People’s Movement expressed the deep frustrations of the community: We have no proper toilets. This place is filthy because there is no rubbish removal … Basically we have no services. We have to constantly fight for what the government is supposed to be giving us. We have been fighting for so long that some people feel like throwing in the towel. It is a shame that we, poor people, are being forced to take the government to court to get what we voted for.23

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Another perennial problem affecting informal settlements has been their location on or close to unstable land. This has been the cause of considerable controversy in Ekurhuleni over the past few years. In 2007, the Council invoked emergency measures to remove squatters from areas such as Makause and Chris Hani because, it claimed, these settlements were located on grounds threatened by floods and sinkholes. Residents vehemently objected to the evictions that were carried out by the notorious ‘Red Ants’ (a private security firm, whose members are dressed in red uniforms, employed to evict people) and their relocation to an area adjacent to Tsakane, which was nearly 40  km away from where they were living. More than 2 300 shacks were demolished in the process. A newspaper reported that when people arrived in Tsakane they found ‘their new homes were made of four poles and plastic bags’.24 Some residents and the movements representing them, such as the Landless People’s Movement, claimed the removals were taking place in order to remove unsightly poor areas from the view of tourists who were expected to visit the country during the World Cup. In June/July of that year the Makause Development Forum alleged that various forces, including the Visible Police Unit and the ANC/ ANC Youth League, were attempting to undermine its organisation in the community, in a similar manner to the campaign that was launched against Abahlali baseMjondolo in Durban.25 In December 2011, the Constitutional Court ruled that the Ekurhuleni Metro’s removal of people from Bapsfontein in 2010 was unlawful. After a number of investigations from 2005 had found ‘unstable dolomite formation as the cause’ of sinkhole formations, the Mayoral Committee had decided in August 2010 to relocate the community. In pursuit of this objective the Council declared Bapsfontein ‘a local state of disaster’ in terms of the Disaster Management Act (DMA).26 In February 2011 the authorities issued a directive stating that ‘all persons residing/squatting/renting or leasing in the abovementioned area be evacuated to temporary shelter due to the declared disaster and for the preservation of life.’ Again, the Red Ants were deployed forcibly to remove residents. An urgent interdict sought by the residents was rejected by the

High Court, and they turned to the Constitutional Court for relief. The community and their legal representative argued that their eviction and the destruction of their homes in terms of the DMA was unlawful and violated their constitutional rights. The Court agreed, and concluded that ‘the Municipality acted outside the authority conferred by the DMA and contrary to section 26(3) of the Constitution.’27 What this case highlights is the Ekurhuleni Metro’s determination, and perhaps growing desperation, to bring informal settlements under control. Equally, it shows the determination by residents to assert their rights and to resist what they perceive to be unlawful attempts to remove them through legal action and political mobilisation.

Re-emergence of local popular movements The 1990s were marked by a fundamental re-alignment of local township politics. Movements that had been in the forefront of civic and protest politics in the 1980s threw their weight behind the ANC’s election campaign. Many civic leaders joined the newly established local authorities in the hope of effecting change in the lives of poor people. One of the consequences of this shift from popular protest and participatory politics to governance was the weakening of civic organisations, as many key leaders were lost to government, and the movements as well as residents placed their hope in the new councils to deliver services to the people. From the late 1990s new local movements began to emerge to contest delays in and problems with service delivery. Several townships and informal settlements, at various times over the past decade, have experienced ‘service delivery protests’, which have tended to be directed at the local councils. In February 2004, residents of Khumalo Street, Katlehong, organised resistance against their proposed evictions. Led by an organisation known as the Kathorus Concerned Residents (KCR), the occupants of the self-help housing scheme insisted they had the legal right, for which they had documentary proof, to remain in their houses. However, the police ignored their appeals and proceeded to remove them. In the

ensuing confrontation, the police opened fire, directing it, among other targets, at children returning from school. Since then the KCR, an affiliate of the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), has been one of the prominent local organisations campaigning against the lack of service delivery and the privatisation of water and electricity. It has also stood candidates in local elections. Tembisa has been another prime site of political protests because, residents claim, the critical problem of the provision of electricity has not been resolved since they began campaigning on this issue in the 1980s. The Tembisa Residents’ Association (TRA) has been in the forefront of this struggle. Formed in 1985, at the height of the township uprising, the TRA quickly garnered support in the township because of its focus on everyday problems affecting the community. In fact, the white municipality was forced to recognise the civic body as a legitimate and popular representative of the township, and entered into negotiations with it over municipal services. The current leadership of the TRA remembers that the civic was so strong that the authorities allowed them to pay membership fees via the council. From the outset, says Moleseng Mogane (General Secretary of the TRA in 2011), the main problem in Tembisa has been electricity: Since the late 1980s our demand was to revoke the licence of the local council and to buy electricity directly from Eskom. In the early 1990s we came very close to completing the negotiations on this issue. Before the first democratic local elections of 1995 we decided to stop the negotiations because we hoped that the comrades who went into the new council would attend to this matter. But after the elections we realised that these comrades changed their attitude towards the community. They now instructed the community what to pay.28 Barchiesi has explained that during the transitional local government negotiations, the TRA persuaded the Transvaal Provincial Administration to disband the discredited Tembisa Council and, as was the case

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elsewhere in the country, to institute a new authority on the basis of the 50–50 principle. This meant the administration of the transitional council would be shared equally between statutory bodies (such as the Tembisa Council) and non-statutory bodies (such as the civics). During the course of these negotiations, the transitional council agreed in March 1993 to introduce a flat rate of R30 for all services. This idea emanated from the TRA, which wanted to reintroduce a culture of payment and to stem the decay of the township’s infrastructure. According to Barchiesi, ‘After the first local democratic elections in November 1995, the TRA (by then renamed SANCO Tembisa), expressed to the newly elected, ANC-dominated Council the residents’ desire that further reviews of the flat-rate agreement had to be part of a broader consultative assessment of local infrastructure.’29 Khali Mkhonza, an executive member of the TRA, recalls what transpired: In the late 1980s we joined the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) and our campaign for a flat rate of R30 was successful. Members of the TRA were part of the negotiations for new democratic local councils and proposed a new flat rate of R80. That was in the early 1990s. The council rejected our proposal and increased the flat rate to R120. They also said if we consume more, we must pay more.30 The TRA faced a dilemma because the new council consisted of their comrades, a number of whom were members of the organisation. The council decided unilaterally to introduce a new payment system according to which residents in informal settlements would pay a R3 minimum rate and those in formal houses with electricity, R80. The TRA objected, but reluctantly accepted the council’s proposals as an interim arrangement pending further negotiations. Much to their chagrin, the authorities reneged on this agreement too and began to issue bills to residents in the new houses on the basis of consumption. Those who were in arrears also received bills, which were often very high.31 Jacob Ntsie, an additional executive member of the TRA vividly recalls that,

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Problems began to emerge. SANCO now formed an alliance with the ANC and the comrades in council changed. The issue around electricity was that the council installed what we called the ‘master plan’, that is, electricity boxes in the street (i.e. prepared meters). Members of the community connected their houses to these boxes. That was the implementation of Operation Khanyisa. Then the Minister Valli Moosa said they must put steel boxes over the units to prevent our plan, but they failed because we could still connect.32 Somewhat unexpectedly, Hospital View, ‘a relatively better-off section of this sprawling township’ emerged as the epicentre of the protest against the council’s pre-paid meters. Hospital View, Barchiesi observed, ‘has dignified, fenced, brick houses lining the roads. Yet because infrastructure and services are poor, this zone of Tembisa has recently hosted some of South Africa’s most militant – and in many ways advanced – community politics.’33 Community members were prompted into action because the area became the first to be subject to the new system. The local SANCO leadership supported the council, but both the local SACP and COSATU branches rejected the pre-paid meters. Residents insisted that they receive free water and electricity, as set out in the ANC’s election campaign, and demanded the removal of pre-paid meters. Ali Tleane, a leader of SANCO and a former mayor of Kempton Park, played a prominent role in these struggles. According to Tleane, ‘People resolved by themselves to switch them [the appliances] on, and finally they did. How people did it is something someone couldn’t understand …’. Operation Khanyisa lasted until August 1997, when the Tembisa Council, confronted by riots that caused nearly R10 million’s worth of damage acceded to the demands of the residents.34 Moleseng Mogane, who was involved in these struggles, explains the ongoing campaign waged by residents of Tembisa: What happened was that we received very high billings and then cut-offs. The premier, Shilowa,

visited Tembisa. So he was aware of these problems but nothing was done to resolve our problems, even though we hoped he would do something. So you can see there was an accumulation of anger. We marched to the council several times. We even met the mayor at the time, Duma Nkosi. He listened. But the next mayor, Megoe, gave no response.35 Local leaders came to the conclusion in early 2011 that they should appeal directly to the premier. On 4 May, they submitted a memorandum to the premier who turned the matter over to the provincial department of local government. The TRA believed the matter would be resolved within a week. ‘But’, says Mogane, ‘there were further delays, which caused an uproar in the community.’ Other issues also came to the fore, causing anger to mount in the community. Mogane explains: Also, the TRA had a huge challenge regarding evictions. Once someone was evicted the community would rally at his or her house moving the furniture back into the house. On 21 and 26 July protest spread across the township. So on August 23 we held a meeting with the MCC, Aubrey Nxumalo, who is responsible for electricity and water in the Metro. We told him the protests were caused by the delays. Again the TRA tabled the community’s demand: we want to buy electricity from Eskom.36 According to Thali Mkhonza, residents were not allowed to purchase pre-paid electricity if they were in arrears in service charges. In his view this was ‘a human rights violation’. In mid-August the TRA planned another march but were denied permission. They decided to defy the prohibition and marched through the township on 19 August. The police used rubber bullets to disperse the protesters and arrested 18 of them, including some of the TRA leaders. Communities complained that their grievances were not taken seriously by the officials, and Tembisa residents argued that they had attempted to make their voices heard through various official channels

but, in their view, to no avail. Protesting was thus seen as an important way to draw attention to their plight. Similar protests have taken place in most of Ekurhuleni’s townships and informal settlements, and have often been led by new civic formations, concerned residents’ groups and new social movements. Their demands have included an end to local corruption and opposition to the commodification of basic services, especially water and electricity. Protests, such as those in Tembisa, have also been prompted by citizens’ desire to be properly consulted on matters affecting their lives. In other words, they have demanded substantive participatory democracy. Sometimes these protests have turned violent, generally due to a high level of intolerance by the police. Nonetheless, the democratic impulses inherent in many of these movements have been evident. However, there have been occasions when local politics have been influenced by regressive and sinister forces that have undermined the legitimate struggles of the aforementioned social movements. Perhaps the worst instance of this was the xenophobic violence of 2008.

Xenophobic violence In May 2008 the Ramaphosaville squatter camp, located close to Reiger Park in Boksburg, experienced some of the most intense conflicts during the xenophobic violence that swept across poor areas of Gauteng. It was on the streets of this informal settlement that Mozambican migrant worker, Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave, was set alight in what became the emblematic image of the horrors of xenophobia. For a couple of weeks the area resembled a war zone, reminiscent of the scenes in Katlehong and Thokoza in the early 1990s. Gangs of armed youth roamed the streets in search of foreign nationals, especially from other parts of Africa (and more particularly, Mozambicans and Zimbabweans). They broke into people’s shacks, attacking anyone who could not immediately prove they were South African. In the space of a month there were about 135 reported incidents of violence during which more than 600 people were wounded, 62 killed and an astonishing 100 000 people displaced.37

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Xenophobic violence in Ramaphosaville

Explanations for the outburst of violence and of the persistence of xenophobic sentiments in areas like Ramaphosaville point to a combination of multiple causal factors. These include high levels of poverty and inequality, poor service delivery, local political and territorial disputes, business competition and the absence of credible local leaders and organisations, among others. What is apparent, and was so vividly demonstrated in 2008, is that places like Ramaphosaville have become the dumping grounds of the marginalised and alienated. Poor people eke out an existence in the insalubrious warrens of congested squatter camps or the dilapidated prison-like hostels. They are subjected to the most degrading conditions, resulting in poor fighting against poor. Under these circumstances it is not unusual for national and ethnic

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identities to be mobilised to evict and even kill the ‘other’ or ‘outsiders’ in order to gain access to limited resources. The lack of proper housing has been a perennial source of contention in the area, as has the inadequate supply of toilets. A local leader in 2011 complained about the apparent tardy response of the council to their complaints about chemical toilets. Sipho Vanga, a local leader explained: A lot of plastic chemical toilets have been removed in the area, but in some other parts they are still using the plastic chemical toilets. The plastic toilets are a return to another form of bucket system. They are unclean, unsanitary and smell especially in summer.38

The community, he insisted, wanted pit latrines. Tired of waiting for the authorities to respond to their demands, residents removed the plastic toilets and dug their own pit latrines. Other service delivery issues, such as the provision of potable water, electricity, clinics and other social services, have all contributed to growing discontent in Ramaphosaville. Efforts by the authorities to address some of these concerns have been perceived as a case of ‘too little, too late’. One of the regular sources of mobilisation against foreign nationals has been local small businesses. Under the auspices of an entity calling itself a Chamber of Business, they routinely demand the removal of small foreign-owned businesses. One such businessman, who was part of a protest calling for the immediate eviction of non-South African businesses, explained that he wanted to make a profit and would ‘never allow foreigners to take bread from my mouth’. In his opinion, shared by his associates, ‘it would be a “criminal offence” to allow foreigners to dominate trade.’ The main targets of their campaign were Somali and Pakistani shopowners whom they accused of unfair competition because they were able to sell their goods cheaper than South African shopowners. However, other people from the informal settlement also mobilised to defend the presence of foreign nationals. They were motivated in part by a desire to halt any prospect of xenophobic violence, and also because the Somali and Pakistani shops sell their goods cheaper than locally-owned shops. The xenophobic violence of 2008 triggered a massive counter movement, led by local residents in places such as Ramaphosaville, Katlehong and Alexandra. A campaign against xenophobia mobilised tens of thousands of people and effectively halted the anti-foreigner violence. What this latter movement revealed was the deep-seated commitment among large sections of the population in the poorest areas to a politics of tolerance and inclusivity. At the time there was a proliferation of research into the causes of the violence, with multiple explanations being offered. One of the significant outcomes of much of the renewed focus on local politics was to expose the dearth of research on the ordinary experiences of people living in informal settlements. In the

final part of this chapter we draw on one piece of research from 2005 that sheds light on the daily lives of people in Daggafontein.

Making a life in Daggafontein Daggafontein, located on the outskirts of Springs, is one of the many informal settlements dotting Ekurhuleni’s landscape. In his dissertation, Sibongiseni Khumalo explains that the area was first occupied in the mid-1940s when African immigrants from the rural areas could not find accommodation in the existing locations and set up informal settlements in various peri-urban areas around Ekurhuleni. The state responded by moving residents of these areas either to new townships or, if they were deemed as ‘surplus’, back to the rural areas. Mrs Gumbi was born in Daggafontein in 1946 but her parents were forcibly relocated to KwaNdebele when her father lost his job on the mines. In the late 1970s, as conditions deteriorated in the rural areas, she joined a new wave of migration to the cities and decided to find her roots in Ekurhuleni by settling in Daggafontein.39 Daggafontein comprises two sections, one with formal housing and the other an informal settlement. By 2004 there were about 800 units housing approximately 3 200 people in the latter section.40 Informal settlements are typically described as sites of extreme poverty, disorder and chaos yet scrutinised more closely Daggafontein displays an underside of community cohesion and order, which may well characterise the majority of informal settlements in the Ekurhuleni area. Daggafontein has now become home to the poor and marginalised, and is characterised by a dire lack of services. In 2005 residents of settlement are still without electricity and use the pit latrine toilet system. There were only two taps in the entire settlement until 2004 when the municipality installed a further 17 street taps. Although this marked an improvement it still meant that 48 families share one tap.41 Unemployment levels are high, especially among the youth and women. An estimated 48% of women were without work in 2004, compared to 30% of men.42 Despite these hardships, the people of Daggafontein have attempted to create a semblance of order and

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normality for themselves. During his ethnographic research in the area, Sibongiseni Khumalo observed that: The interior of some of the houses is very beautiful, i.e. with clean floor tiles, wallpaper stuck on the corrugated iron walls, plastic flowers and framed photographs on display. Furnishings are very basic in many dwellings, but in others, there were television sets, beds with matching bedding, refrigerators connected to gas cylinders, chairs, televisions and hi-fi music sets connected to car batteries.43 Importantly, the perception of the spatial chaos enveloping informal settlements belies efforts by these communities to assert some control over the growth and spatial organisation of the area. Thus Khumalo found that: Daggafontein informal settlement is planned in such a way that people do not just erect a house wherever they want to. The Street Committee members are responsible for locating people in shack rows. Some rows are more congested and narrow than others. The passages in between the shacks are quite spacious as cars can pass without a problem … In Section C, passages are wide enough for cars to pass. The dense parts of Section A and B are crowded and have a large number of shebeens.44 The street committee seems to have been created in the image of committees in the 1980s, when they constituted the most basic form of local popular democracy. Daggafontein’s street committee, it appears, is not a formally elected body, but consists of a group of active community members and has one representative on the local Ward Committee. Beyond that several informal and formal associations provide a sense of social cohesion for sections of the community in the midst of daily struggles for survival. These range from generational networks among men, which congregate at shebeens or at the shacks of senior members, to a reasonably active Community Police Forum (which

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has about 24 members attending to petty crime in the area), to formal political parties (the ANC, DA and IFP). Khumalo found that residents place tremendous emphasis on the importance of home networks, abakhaya, because of the support and solace they provide in difficult times. Sandile, one of the respondents in the study, explained: ‘Abakhaya are important because they understand you and your problems. Again, umkhaya [singular form of abakhaya] sends messages home and from home to you in town.’45 These networks, explained Khumalo, are crucial for newcomers who want to gain access to accommodation: For those who do not have any contacts in Daggafontein, it may be hard to find a place to stay. Complete strangers often do not know which shacks are available to be rented out. People who get accommodation in these shacks are often referred by friends or family members. Mirriam has a spare shack attached to her main shack. This spare shack used to accommodate her granddaughters who were attending school at Springs. They have now gone back to Durban to their mother and the shack is rented to Nomzamo. Nomzamo is a friend of Mirriam.46 Religion plays an important part in people’s lives. According to Khumalo, the Methodist Church was the most popular religious organisation in the area, due to the permanent presence of a Mvangeli (evangelist), regular bible studies and active prayer groups, and the church’s involvement in social welfare projects.47 The only other church with a structured presence in the area was the Apostolic Faith Mission, but it had a smaller congregation. Members of the ZCC and Shembe churches, the two independent churches with significant support in the area, had to travel either to KwaThema or Johannesburg to attend weekly church services.48 This kind of associational life, which Simone encountered in various cities across Africa,49 is also typical of informal settlements across South Africa. They are created as part of people’s livelihood

strategies, but also as ways to make sense of and thus reconfigure life in urban areas. Arguably more significant has been the proliferation of contentious politics or popular protest (usually referred to as service delivery protests) in poor black areas since the late 1990s. Both these trends have been important in defining life in poor communities, which are far more complex and dynamic than the one-dimensional images depicted in the popular media. As Ekurhuleni enters the second decade of its existence, it undoubtedly faces numerous challenges: it may well be the case that the current global economic crisis will compound the existing socioeconomic dilemmas faced by the region. Evidence from elsewhere in the world suggests that inequality, poverty and homelessness are on the increase, even in countries such as the United States. The aerotropolis strategy may offer some solutions, although any benefits that may accrue from this project are likely to be concentrated around Kempton Park and will take some years to realise. What Ekurhuleni does have in abundance, as is evident from its rich history,

is a strong and enduring spirit of collective action, from the various miners’ strikes in the early part of the 20th century, to the mobilisation of new urban dwellers in the 1940s to demand rights in the city, to the mass defiance against apartheid in the 1950s and then again, in even greater numbers, in the 1970s and 1980s the mass mobilisation of workers in factories and residents in townships to overthrow the system of apartheid. In the post-1994 era citizens from various walks of life have made efforts to defend and advance the democratic order. Often, newly elected leaders in the region have been pivotal in the process. Even more significant has been the continued mobilisation by poor communities, in townships and informal settlements, not only to win improvements in their living conditions but also to deepen participatory democracy. Ekurhuleni has led the way in this kind of collective effort during key moments in its history of more than a century. Its future and the prospects of building a Metro characterised by equality, minimal unemployment, decent housing for everyone – in other words, a better life for all – surely depends on this.

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ENDNOTES

CHAPTER 1 1. P.J. Cockhead, ‘The East Rand: A Geographical Analysis of the Transition of the Economic Tradition of the Region from Gold Mining to Manufacturing’, M.A. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1970, p. 9, 193-199. 2. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas. Benoni, Son of My Sorrow, Benoni City Council, Benoni, 1967, p. 1. 3. Archaeology Department Museum, University of the Witwatersrand, card index 26 28 AA 30 2628, AD 26,28 BCI. 4. P. Mitchell, The Archaeology of South Africa, 2002, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 109. 5. R.J. Mason, ‘First Early Iron Age Settlement in South Africa’. Broederstroom 24/73 Britz District, Transvaal. South African Journal of Science, 68, 1973, pp. 324-326; R.J. Mason, The Origins of the Black People of Johannesburg and the South Western Central Transvaal, AD 350 – 880, University of the Witwatersrand, Archaeological Research Unit, Occasional Publication, No. 16, 1986, pp. 129-18; T.H. Huffman, ‘The Early Iron Age at Broederstroom and Around the Cradle of Humankind’ in Bonner, Esterhuysen & Jenkins (eds), A Search for Origins, 2007, Wits University Press, Johannesburg, pp 148-50. 6. ibid., p. 145 The Origins of the Black People of Johannesburg. 7. T.N. Huffman, ‘Regionality in the Iron Age: The Case of the Sotho-Tswana’, South African Humanities, 14, 2002, pp. 18-21; M.J. Taylor, ‘Late Iron Age Settlement on the Edge of the Vredefort Dome’ M.A. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1979, pp. 101-109. 8. T.N. Huffman, ‘Regionality in the Iron Age’, pp. 18-21.

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9. T.N. Huffman, ‘Archaeological Evidence for Climatic Change During the Last 2000 Years in Southern Africa’, International Quarterly, Vol. 33, pp. 55-60; K. Holmgreen, W. Klaren, S.P. Partridge & P.D. Tyson, ‘A Three-thousand Year High Resolution Stalagmitebased Record Polecine South Africa’, in Holocene, Vol. 3, May, 1999, pp. 253-309. 10. Archaeological Resources Management, Archaeology Department, University of the Witwatersrand, Report ‘Archaeological Investigations at Meyersdal Koppie, Alberton’, 1997. 11. Germiston City Council, Germiston Eeu Van Vooruitgang = A Century of Progress, Pinetown, Braby, 1986, p. 17. 12. D. Humphriss and D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 1 13. ibid.; A. Mason, ‘Conflict in the Western Highveld Southern Kalahari, c. 1750-1830 in C.A. Hamilton (ed.), The Mfecane Aftermath, pp. 323-361. 14. Germiston City Council, Germiston: A Century of Progress, p. 17. 15. Boksburg 1903-4 – 1978-79. 75 Years of Municipal Government, Boksburg Town Council, p. 3. 16. Boksburg Town Council. Boksburg 1903-4 – 1978-9. 75 Years of Municipal Government. S.1; Sr 1 1979, p. 3 17. D. Humphriss and D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 26. 18. ibid., p. 22; J.B. Whitehouse, History of Benoni, Geo Dunstable Ltd., Boksburg 1930, p. 1. 19. Boksburg Town Council, Boksburg 1903-4 – 1978-9, p. 3 20. Springs Town Council, Springs 80 Years On. A. Thompson, Springs, 1984. 21. Cockhead, ‘The East Rand’, p. 40. 22. ibid., p. 39. 23. Nigel Public Library, file behind Librarian’s Desk ‘Information about Nigel’ p. 1. 24. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 258-262.

25. ibid., pp. 26-27. 26. S. Ally, ‘Heroic Pioneers, Occluded “Natives” and the Virgin Wild Representations of Colonial Encounters in the Lowveld, South Africa’, English Studies in Africa, 53, 2, pp. 48-70. 27. Nigel Public Library, File behind the Librarian’s desk on Nigel’s history. ‘Information about Nigel’ typescript 1 July 1982; Nigel/Heidelberg Record p. 17 ‘How Nigel Got Its Name’. 28. Germiston. A Century of Progress pp. 17-18. 29. ibid., p. 40. 30. Kempton Park. From Humble Beginning to Pivot of Prosperity. Kempton Park, 1992, p. 2. 31. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 26-27 32. P.J. Cockhead, The East Rand, pp. 19-20, 40-41; D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 258. 33. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 263. 34. Boksburg 1903-4 – 1978-9 pp. 3-6. 35. ibid., p. 3; P.J. Cockhead, The East Rand, p. 39. 36. Boksburg 1903-4 – 1978-9, pp. 5-6, 9, 29. 37. C. van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, Vol I. New Babylon, pp. 4, 11. 38. ibid., p. 71. 39. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 264. 40. C. van Onselen, Studies, Vol I. pp. 11-12. 41. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 264-5, 271-2. 42. C. van Onselen, Studies, Vol I. p. 1. 43. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 45. 44. P.J. Cockhead, The East Rand, pp. 22, 40-42, 45. 45. Boksburg 1903-4 – 1978-9, pp. 3-4;. Germiston. A Century of Progress, p. 17. 46. J. Gray, Payable Gold, p. 197. 47. Boksburg 1903-4 – 1978-9 pp. 5-6. 48. Gray, Payable Gold, p. 272. 49. Germiston. A Century of Progress, pp. 5-6. 50. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 28-29, 32-34. 51. ibid., pp. 272-273. 52. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 7, 49. 53. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 40-41; Germiston. A Century of Progress, pp. 17-18; Boksburg 1903-4 – 1978-9 p. 7. 54. Springs Town Council, Springs 80 Years On, pp. 12-14.

55. Nigel Public Library. File behind the desk on Nigel’s History. ‘Information about Nigel’ typescript 1 July 1982; Nigel/Heidelberg Rekord 27 February 2007, p. 17. ‘How Nigel Got Its Name’. 56. ibid., p.18; D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 30. 57. P.J. Cockhead, The East Rand, pp. 40-41. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 55-56. 58. ibid., pp. 39-40, 45-47 D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni. 59. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 77; Germiston. A Century of Progress, pp. 25-29; Boksburg 1903-4 – 1978-9, pp. 9, 29. 60. ibid., p. 29. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 76. 61. ibid., pp. 59, 77-79. 62. ibid., pp. 55-6. 63. Germiston. A Century of Progress, pp. 47-49. 64. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 278-281. 65. ibid., pp. 15-16, 80-83.

CHAPTER 2 1. J.R. Shorten, The Johannesburg Saga, Proprietary Co., 1870, pp. 88-194. 2. J. Hyslop, ‘The Imperial Working Class Makes Itself ‘White’: White Labourism in Britain, Australia and South Africa Before the First World War’, Journal of Historical Sociology, vol.12, no.4, 1999. 3. P. Richardson & J.J. van-Helten, ‘Labour in the South African Gold Mining Industry 1886 - 1914’ in S. Marks and S. Trapido (eds), Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa, Longman, New York and London, 1982, p. 87. 4. F. Wilson, ‘Farming’, in M. Wilson and L. Thompson (eds.), The Oxford History of South Africa, Vol. II, Oxford, 1975, p. 133. 5. J.R. Shorten, The Johannesburg Saga, pp. 88-184. 6. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 47. 7. E. Katz ‘The Underground Route to Mining: Afrikaners and the Witwatersrand Gold Mining Industry from 1902 to the 1907 Miners’ Strike’, Journal of African History, 36, 1995, No 3, p. 488. 8. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 14.

ENDNOTES 227

9. R. Johnstone, Class, Race and Gold, pp. 106-7; see also L.R. Devitt, South African Quarterly IV, 21 March 1922, ‘War on the Witwatersrand March 1922’. 10. ibid., D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 14. 11. R. Johnstone, Class, Race and Gold, p. 105-107, 116. 12. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 18. 13. L.E. Katz, ‘The Underground Route to Mining’, pp. 485-486. 14. J. Hyslop, The Notorious Syndicalist, 2004, Jacana Media, Johannesburg, p. 270. 15. D. Berger, ‘White Poverty and Government Policy in South Africa, 1892–1934’ Ph.D. Thesis, Temple University 1982, pp. 18, 58, 115-116. 16. M. du Toit, ‘Women, Welfare and the Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism. A Social History of the Afrikaans-Christelike Vrou Vereeniging c. 1879–1939’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cape Town, pp. 93, 142-25. 17. U.G. 19’ 22, ‘Interim Report of the Drought Investigation Commission, April 1922’, Cape Town, p. 2. 18. M. du Toit, ‘Women, Welfare and the Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism’, pp. 137-138. 19. M.E. Rothman, Mother and Daughter in a Poor Family 1932, cited in du Toit ‘Women, Welfare and the Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism’, p. 140. 20. D. Berger, ‘White Poverty and Government Policy in South Africa, 1892–1934’ Ph.D. Thesis, pp 39-43. 21. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 12, 15-19. 22. ibid., p. 19. 23. E. Brink, ‘The Afrikaner Women of the Garment Workers’ Union 1918-1939’, M.A, Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1986, pp. 34; D. Humphriss & D.G Thomas, Benoni, pp. 19-20. 24. E. Brink, ‘Afrikaner Women of the Garment Workers’ Union’, p. 36. 25. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomass, Benoni, pp. 8, 14. 26. A. O’Quigley, ‘The 1913 and 1914 White Workers’ Strikes’, paper presented to the African Studies Seminar, African Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, 4 October 1978, Section 5, p. 18. 27. U.G. 51’13. ‘Report of the Small Holdings Commission’, pp. 17-22. 28. A. O’Quigley, ‘The 1913 and 1914 White Workers’ Strikes’, Section 5, p. 18.

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29. U.G. 51’13. ‘Report of the Small Holdings Commission’, pp. 17-22. 30. E. Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy, African Studies Institute, Johannesburg, 1976, p. 356. 31. A. O’Quigley, ‘The 1913 and 1914 White Workers Strike’ pp. 1, 24. 32. J. Hyslop, The Notorious Syndicalist, pp. 220-222. 33. E. Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy, p. 441. 34. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 2. 35. J. Hyslop, The Notorious Syndicalist, pp. 220-221. 36. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 18. 37. R. Johnstone, Class, Race and Gold, p. 104. 38. ibid., pp. 95, 98-100, 107-108, 128-131. 39. ibid., pp. 128-131. 40. E. Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy, African Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, 1976, pp. 186-189. 41. J. Hyslop, The Notorious Syndicalist, p. 167-168. 42. ibid., p. 181-182. 43. ibid., p. 241. 44. E. Katz, A Trade Union Aristocracy. African Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, 1976, p. 462. 45. C. Dugmore, ‘The Making of Krugersdorp’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 2006, p. 20. 46. C. van Onselen Studies Vol I, p. 45-54. 47. J. Hyslop, The Notorious Syndicalist, p. 267. 48. ibid., p. 202. 49. Dugmore p. 21 50. ibid., p 49 51. J. Hyslop, The Notorious Syndicalist, p. 298. 52. ibid., pp. 119-136; J. Krikler, The Rand Revolt, The 1922 Insurrection and Racial Killing in South Africa, Jonathan Ball, Johannesburg and Cape Town, 2005, pp. 46-48; G.56, pp. 160-163. 53. ibid., pp. 57-72. 54. ibid., pp. 130-150. 55. ibid., pp. 161-162, 167-168. 56. ibid., pp. 171-214, J. Krikler, The Rand Revolt. 57. R. Johnstone, Class, Race and Gold, pp. 135-136, J. Krikler, The Rand Revolt. 58. J. Krikler, The Rand Revolt, p. 192. 59. ibid. pp. 157-179, 167-168. 60. ibid., pp. 200-201. 61. ibid., pp. 10-14, 232-237. 62. ibid., pp. 192-99. 63. ibid., pp. 207-208.

64. ibid., pp. 201-202. 65. ibid., pp. 262-266, 276-278. 66. ibid., pp. 273-275. 67. ibid., pp. 200-202. 68. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 212-214. 69. J. Krikler, The Rand Revolt, p. 205. 70. ibid., pp. 57-59. 71. R. Johnstone, Class Race and Gold, p. 136. 72. ibid., p. 220.

CHAPTER 3 1. P. Richardson & J.J. Van-Helten, ‘Labour in the South African Gold Mining Industry, 1886 -1914’ in S. Marks & S. Trapido (eds), Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa, Longman, London and New York, 1982, p. 83. 2. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 6. 3. P. Richardson & J.J. Van-Helten, ‘Labour in the South African Gold Mining Industry’, pp. 91-92. See also C. van Onselen, ‘The World The Mine Owners Made’ in Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand 1886 - 1914’, Vol I New Babylon, p. 15, which records 15-25% of the back labour force always absent due to unfitness through drunkenness in 1895. 4. P. Richardson & J.J. Van-Helten, ‘Labour in the South African Gold Mining Industry’, pp. 88, 92. 5. P. Bonner & P. Lekgoathi, Rand Water: A Century of Progress 1903-2003, 2004, Rand Water, Johannesburg, p. 39. 6. S. Moroney, ‘Industrial Conflict in a Labour Repressive Economy: Black Labour on the Transvaal Gold Mines 1902 - 12’, Honours Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1976, pp. 117, 119, 121. 7. F. Wilson, Labour in the South African Gold Mines - 1911-1969, 2011, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 8. A.H. Jeeves, Migrant Labour in South Africa’s Mining Economy, 1985, Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg, p. 170. 9. S. Moroney, ‘Mine Married Quarters: The differential stabilisation of the Witwatersrand workforce 1900 -1920’, in S. Marks & S. Trapido (eds), Industrialisation and Social Change, pp. 261-263.

10. A. Potgieter, ‘Die Swartes aan die Witwatersrand, 1900 -1933’, Ph.D. Thesis, 1978, Randse Afrikaans Universiteit, pp. 130, 132. 11. ibid., p. 127. 12. ibid., p. 135. 13. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 94-95. 14. A. Potgieter, ‘Die Swartes aan die Witwatersrand, p. 145. 15. H. Sapire, ‘African Urbanisation and Struggles Against Municipal Control in Brakpan 1920 - 1958’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1988, pp. 7, 20-32. 16. A. Potgieter, ‘Die Swartes aan die Witwatersrand’, p. 128; Germiston Town Council, Germiston: A Century of Progress , p. 17; Boksburg Town Council, Boksburg 1903-4-1978-9, p. 7; J.B. Whitehouse, History of Benoni, Boksburg, Geo. Constable Ltd. no date, p. 65; Springs Town Council, Springs 80 Years On, p. 14. 17. A. Potgieter, ‘Die Swartes aan die Witwatersrand’, pp. 128-189. 18. ibid., p. 136. 19. ibid. p. 137. 20. D. Humphris & D.G.Thomas, Benoni, p. 94. 21. A. Potgieter, ‘Die Swartes aan die Witwatersrand’, p. 45. 22. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus: A History, Maskew Miller Longman, Cape Town, 2001, p. 8. 23. A. Potgieter, ‘Die Swartes aan die Witwatersrand’, pp.131-134. 24. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 94-95. 25. A. Potgieter, ‘Die Swartes aan die Witwatersrand’, p. 46. 26. ibid., pp. 46, 138-139; D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 95. 27. P. Bonner, ‘African Political Organisation on the Witwatersrand’, 9-19. Paper presented to the Conference on African Cities, University of London, 1994. 28. H. Sapire, ‘African Urbanisation and Struggles Against Municipal Control’, p. 92. 29. P. Bonner, ‘Backs to the Fence’, p. 299, note 11. 30. D. Coplan, In Township Tonight: South Africa’s Black Music and Theatre, 1985, Longman, London and New York. pp. 56-112; C.T. Ballantine, Marabi Nights: Early South African Jazz Vaudeville, 1993, Raven

ENDNOTES 229

31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

46.

230

Press, Johannesburg; Eddie Koch, ‘Doornfontein and its African Working Class 1914 to 1945. A Study in Popular Culture’, M.A. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1984. Bantu World, April 1932. A. Odendaal, Vukani Bantu - The Beginnings of Black Protest Politics in South Africa to 1912, 1984, David Philip, Cape Town, pp. 256-289; P. Walshe, The Rise and Fall of African Nationalism in South Africa, 1970, C. Hurst & Co. London, pp. 31-52. ibid., pp. 46-47. P. Bonner, ‘The 1920 Black Mine Workers’ Strike: A Preliminary Account’ in B. Bozzoli (ed.) Labour, Townships and Protest, 1979, Ravan Press, Johannesburg, p. 274. F.A. Johnstone, Class, Race and Gold, 1976, Routelege and Kegan Paul, London, pp 171-172, 186-188. ibid., p. 267. P. Bonner, ‘The Transvaal Native Congress,1917-20: The Radicalisation of the Black Petty Bourgeoisie on the Rand’, in S. Marks & R. Rathbone, Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa, pp. 274, 289-291. P. Bonner, ‘The 1920 Black Mine Workers’ Strike’, p. 277; P. Bonner, ‘Transvaal Native Congress’, p. 300. S. Marks & R. Rathborne, Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa, 1982, Longman, p. 280. ibid. p. 281. ibid. p. 282. P. Bonner, ‘Transvaal Native Congress’, pp. 279, 300-302, (quotation cited on page 279). P. Bonner, ‘The 1920 Black Mine Workers’ Strike: A Preliminary Account’ in B. Bozzoli (ed.) Labour, Townships and Protest, 1979, Ravan Press, Johannesburg, p. 278. P. Bonner, ‘The 1920 Black Mine Workers’ Strike: A Preliminary Account’ in B. Bozzoli (ed.) Labour, Townships and Protest, 1979, Ravan Press, Johannesburg, pp. 273-274. P. Bonner, ‘Home Truths and the Political Discourse of the ICU’, paper delivered at the South African Historical Association Conference, University of the Western Cape, 2006, p. 7. P. Walshe, African Nationalism, pp. 249-255.

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

CHAPTER 4 1. C. Walker, ‘The Women’s Suffrage Movement: The Politics of Gender, Race and Class’ in C. Walker (ed.) Women and Gender in South Africa to 1945, 1990, David Philip and James Curry, Cape Town and London, p. 325. 2. M. du Toit, ‘Women, Welfare and the Nurturing of Afrikaner Nationalism: A Social History of the Afrikaanse Christelike Vrou, Vereeniging c. 1879-1939’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cape Town, 1996, pp. 80, 92-93. 3. C. Walker, ‘The Women’s Suffrage Movement’ pp. 331-332. 4. ibid. pp. 333-334. 5. ibid. pp. 334-336. 6. D. Berger, ‘White Poverty and Government Policy in South Africa, 1892-1934’, Ph.D. Thesis, Temple University, 1982, pp.191, 295-296, 412; E.A. Brink, ‘The Afrikaner Women of the Garment Workers’ Union, 1918-1939, M.A. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1988, pp. 20, 25; A. Coetzee, Die Opkoms van die Afrikaanse Kultuurgedagte aan die Rand 1886-1936, Johannesburg, Afrikaanse Pers, 1936. 7. R.H. Davies, Capital, State and White Labour in South Africa, 1900-1960, 1979, Harvester Press, Brighton, p. 110. 8. ibid. pp. 208-209; W.I. Martin, ‘The Making of an Industrial South Africa: Trade and Tariffs in the Inter-War Period’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 23, 1990, pp. 59-85; I. Berger, Threads of Solidarity: Women in South African Industry, 1900-1980, 1992, James Curry and Indiana University Press, Bloomington and London, pp. 50, 54-57. 9. S. Parnell, ‘Johannesburg Slums and Racial Segregation in Cities, 1910-1937’ Ph.D. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand 1993, p. 104. 10. I. Berger, Threads of Solidarity, pp. 59, 153; Davies, Capital, State and White Labour in South Africa, p. 266. 11. E.A. Brink, ‘Afrikaner Women’, pp. 32-33; Germiston: A Century of Progress, pp.17-30. 12. E.A. Brink, ‘Afrikaner Women’, p. 33.

13. I. Berger, Threads of Solidarity, pp. 57, 73, 76. 14. E.A. Brink, ‘Afrikaner Women’, pp. 36, 97. 15. ibid. pp. 99-108; I. Berger, Threads of Solidarity, p. 60. 16. K. Jochelson, The Colour of Disease. Syphilis and Racism in South Africa, 1880-1950. Palgrave and St Anthony’s College, Oxford, Basingstoke, 2001, pp. 54-76. 17. E.A. Brink, ‘Maar `n Klomp van “Factory Meide”: Afrikaner Family and Community on the Witwatersrand During the 1920s” in B. Bozzoli (ed.), Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives, 1987, Ravan Press, Johannesburg. 18. E.A. Brink, ‘Afrikaner Women’ pp. 116-112; L. Witz, ‘Servant of the Workers: Solly Sachs and the Government Workers’ Union. 1928-1952’, M.A. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1984, pp. 54-56, 61-67. 19. L. Witz, ‘Servant of the Workers’ pp. 127-208. 20. P. Alexander, Workers War and the Origins of Apartheid, 2000, James Curry, Oxford, pp. 44-45, 66, 64-69; B.C. Kenny, ‘Division of Labour, Experiences of Class, Changing Collective Identities on the East Rand: Food retail works through South Africa’s democratic transition, University of Wisconsin, Ph.D. Thesis, 2004, pp. 75-84. 21. A. Potgieter, Die Swartes aan die Witwatersrand, p. 127. 22. P. Bonner, ‘“Desirable or Undesirable Women?” Liquor, Prostitution and the Migration of Basotho Women to the Rand, 1920-1945’ in C. Walker, (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945, 1990, James Curry, London, pp. 220-250; P. Bonner, ‘The Great Migration and the Greatest Trek: Some Reflections’ Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 1, 2004, pp. 95-102. 23. T.R. Davenport, ‘The Beginnings of Urban Segregation in South Africa: The Natives Areas Act of 1923 and its Background’, Rhodes University, Institute of Economic and Social Research, 1936. 24. L. Menachemson, ‘Resistance Through the Courts: African Urban Communities and Litigation under the Urban Areas Act, 1923-1959’, Honours Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1985, pp. 8-78. 25. P. Bonner, ‘Desirable or Undesirable Basotho Women?’, p. 230. 26. L. Menachemson, ‘Resistance Through the Courts’, pp. 16-49; H. Sapire, ‘African Struggles’ pp. 61, 71-81,

84-92; P. Bonner, ‘African Political Organisation’, pp.12-13, 122. 27. ibid.; P. Bonner, pp. 13. 28. P. Bonner, ‘Desirable or Undesirable Women’, pp. 222-234; ‘Backs to the Fence: Law, Liquor and the Search for Social Control in an East Rand Town’, in J. Crush and C. Ambler (eds.), Liqour and Labour in Southern Africa, 1992, Ohio University Press, Athens, pp. 268-78, 289-296. 29. P. Bonner, ‘African Political Organisation’, p. 14. 30. H. Sapire, ‘African Struggles’ pp. 89-91; P. Bonner, ‘Backs to the Fence’, pp. 270-278, 288, 292. 31. ibid., P. Bonner, pp. 276-278, 287; P. Bonner, ‘Desirable or Undesirable Women’ pp. 222-226. 32. M. du Toit, ‘Women, Welfare and the Nuturing of Afrikaner Nationalism – A Social History of the Afrikaans Christelike Vroue Vereeniging, 1879 – 1939’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cape Town, 1996, p. 9.

CHAPTER 5 1. N. Nattrass, ‘Economic Aspects of the Construction of Apartheid’, in P. Bonner, P. Delius and D. Posel (eds), Apartheid’s Genesis, 1994, Ravan Press, Johannesburg, p. 43. 2. ibid. p. 46. 3. T. Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945, 1883, Ravan Press, Johannesburg, p. 11. 4. This is the region that now constitutes Gauteng Province. 5. ibid., T. Lodge, pp. 18, 20. 6. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus: A History, 2001, Maskew Miller Longman, Johannesburg, pp. 3, 5; Germiston: A Century of Progress, pp. 47-48; P.J. Cockhead, ‘The East Rand’, pp. 27, 42, 51. 7. N. Nieftagodien, The Making of Apartheid in Springs: Group Areas, Forced Removals and Resistance, M.A. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1995 p. 98. 8. D. Gilfoyle, ‘An Urban Crisis: The Town Council Industry and the Black Working Class in Springs, 1918-1948’, Honours Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1982, pp. 6-7. 9. P.J. Cockhead, ‘The East Rand’, pp. 51-56; D. Gilfoyle,

ENDNOTES 231

‘An Urban Crisis’, pp. 11-15. 10. P. Bonner, ‘Eluding Capture: African Grass-roots Struggles in 1940s Benoni’, in S. Dubow & A. Jeeves (eds), South Africa’s 1940s: Worlds of Possibilities, p. 173; ‘“We are Digging, We are Slicing off Chunks of the Municipality’s Land”: Popular Struggles in Benoni, 1944-1952’, paper presented to the African Studies Seminar, African Studies Institute, 28 October 1985, pp. 1-2; D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 279-284. 11. NRDC, ‘A Planning Survey’, 1957, p. 20. 12. Boksburg Town Council, Boksburg 1903-4-1978-9, p. 43. 13. Kempton Park Municipality, Kempton Park: From Humble Beginnings to Pivot of Prosperity, 1992, pp. 76-95. 14. P.J. Cockhead, ‘The East Rand’, p. 42. 15. ibid., pp. 44-45. 16. P. Bonner, ‘Family, Crime and Political Consciousness on the East Rand 1939-1955’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 1987, pp. 393-394. 17. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni pp. 80-86; D. Gilfoyle, ‘An Urban Crisis’, p. 22. 18. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 85-87. 19. I. Berger, Threads of Solidarity, p. 252. 20. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 88. 21. R. Archer & A. Bouillon, The South African Game: Sport and Racism, 1982, London, Zed Press, p. 238. 22. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 89. 23. J.J. Fourie, Afrikaners in die Goudstad, p. 116. 24. R. Archer & A. Bouillon, The South African Game: Sport and Racism, 1992, Zed Press, London, pp. 38, 65, 86; J. Navright, Sport, Culture and Identity in South Africa, 1997, David Philip, Cape Town, pp. 27-30, 42, 50-51, 85. 25. A. Grundlingh, A. Odendaal & B. Spies (eds), Beyond the Tryline: Rugby and South African Society, 1995, Raven Press, Johannesburg, pp. 110, 118. 26. R. Archer & A. Bouillon, The South African Game, p. 99; D. Humphriss & D.G.Thomas, Benoni, p. 91. 27. A. Grundlingh, ‘The Politics of the Past and Popular Pursuits in the Construction of Afrikaner Nationalism’ in S. Dubow & A. Jeeves, South Africa’s 1940s, pp. 200-201. 28. ibid. p. 203; A. Grundlingh et al., Beyond the Tryline,

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pp. 68, 106-108. 29. K. Moony, ‘Die Eendstert Euwel’ and ‘Social Responses to White Youth Sub-cultural Identities in Post World War Two South Africa’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 2006, pp. 106-183. 30. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, pp. 5-7. 31. Interview with Mr A.M. Mandlathi, conducted by Thomas Mathole, Twala section, Katlehong, 7 November 1988. 32. Interviews with Raphael Palime conducted by Pascal Damoyi, Katlehong, 18 September 1985, 28 January 1986. P. Bonner & N. Nieftgodien, Kathorus, pp. 28-29. 33. ibid., p.29; interview Raphael Palime. 34. P. Bonner, ‘We are Digging, We are Seizing Huge Chunks of the Municipality’s Land’, pp. 3-5. 35. ibid., pp. 6-8. 36. D. Gilfoyle, ‘An Urban Crisis’, pp. 20, 23-26. 37. P. Bonner, ‘The Politics of Black Squatter Movements on the Rand, 1944-1952’, Radical History Review, Winter, 1990, No. 46-7, pp. 92, 113, note 9. 38. H. Sapire, ‘African Struggles’, pp. 9-12, in small holdings, 23 000. 39. T. Moloi, ‘Youth Politics’, M.A. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 2005, p. 28. 40. ibid. 41. P. Bonner, ‘Black Squatter Movements’, p. 92. 42. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, pp. 9-10; Interview Bonner, Moloi and Eddy Xaba, conducted by P. Bonner, Katlehong, 7 November 1988; interview Johannes Nkwanyana, conducted by Pascal Damoyi, Katlehong, 31 October 1984. 43. Interviews Mrs Madondo, Twala Section, Katlehong, 4 February 1989; Mrs Roselina Madlala, Katlehong early 1989; Mr Alfred Tsagane, Mhlapo section, Katlehong, 22 December 1988; Johannes Ramminiki, Hhlapo section, Katlehong, 28 December 1988; D. Molefe, Katlehong (no date); Naume Monhanyana Katlehong, 2 July 1990 (conducted by Khanya College Students); Milton Lehau conducted by Thomas Mathole, Katlehong, 11 September 198 . 44. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 41; interview Cass Khanyile. 45. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 10; interview Joe Mashao, Katlehong, 6 November 1988;

46.

47. 48.

49. 50.

51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65.

conducted by Khanya College Student; Mr Madalane, Katlehong, January 1988, conducted by Thomas Mathole; Cass Khanyile; Ngobeni, Katlehong, 1995, conducted by Jacob Nkosi; Gerald Vusithemba, Ndlime, Motlaung section Katlehong, 18 December 1988, conducted by Khanya College Student. Interview Ken Gampu, conducted by Sello Mathabatha, Vosloorus, 27 May 1999; interview James Ngubeni. Interview Cass Khanyile. Interview P. Mokhele, conducted by Thomas Mathole, Katlehong 1985; P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 11. ibid., pp. 11-12. Interview Mrs Yende, early 1989, Katlehong; Mrs Masupiles and Mr Mabone; Joe Mashoa, Mrs Matshite, Katlehong, conducted by Khanya College Students. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 12. ibid., pp. 37-38. Interview, Josephine Lehase and Henry Khumalo, conducted by Thomas Mathole, Katlehong, 20 March 1985. Interview P. Mokhele, Katlehong, March 1985, conducted by Thomas Mathole. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 13. ibid., pp. 14, 16, 521.05 P. Bonner, ‘Family Crime and Political Consciousness’, pp. 398, 401-404; University of the Witwatersrand Historical and Literary Papers, Archive Roll 34; Germiston Non European Affairs Committee, Minutes, 5 January 1949. Interview P. Mokhele. Interview Joe Mashao; P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 13. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 14. Interview Ken Gampu, conducted by Sello Mathabatha, Vosloorus, 27 May 1999. Interview Amos “Rubber” Molefe, Katlehong G, 1985 conducted by Thomas Molefe; Cass Khanyile. P. Bonner, ‘Family Crime and Political Consciousness’, pp. 465-466; interview Frank Ntlebere, conducted by Thomas Mathole, Daveyton. Interview Phyllis Soko, conducted by Thomas Mathole, Daveyton. Interview Frank Ntlebere; P. Bonner, ‘Family Crime

and Political Consciousness’, p. 409. 66. Interviews Mrs Monnauyane, Katlehong; Frank Ntlebere; D. Molefe, conducted by Thomas Mathole, Katlehong, 1985. 67. Interview Patrick Peterson. 68. Interview Joe Mashao; D. Molefe. 69. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus; interviews Joe Mashao; D. Molefe. 70. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 16; interview D. Ntlebere, conducted by T. Molefe, Daveyton, 1987. 71. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, pp.13-15; P. Bonner, ‘Family Crime and Political Consciousness’, p. 409.

CHAPTER 6 1. P. Bonner ‘“Eluding Capture”: African Grass-Roots Struggles in 1940s Benoni’ in S. Dubow & A. Jeeves (eds), South Africa’s 1940s: Worlds of Possibilities, 2005, Double Storey, Cape Town. 2. ibid. 3. T.D. Moodie, Going for Gold; Men Mines and Migration, 1994, Berkeley, pp. 226-227. 4. ibid. pp. 226-231; The Guardian, 8 August 1946; T.D. Moodie, ‘The Moral Economy of the Black Mine-Workers’ Strike of 1946’, Journal of Southern African Studies 13.1. (1986), pp. 1-35; T.D. Moodie, ‘The Black Miners’ Strike 1946’ (unpublished), p. 45. 5. ibid., Moodie, Going For Gold, p.240; Moodie ‘The South African State and Industrial Conflict in the 1940’s, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 21, 1988, pp. 72-78. 6. Benoni Times, 4 May 1951; Benoni Municipal Archives (hereafter BMA), Non-European Affairs Committee (hereafter NEAC), Minutes meeting, 14 May 1951. 7. Interview Shadrack Mthembu, conducted by Pascal Damoyi and Philip Bonner, Thokoza, 1985. 8. P. Bonner, ‘The Politics of Black Squatter Movements on the Rand’, pp. 104-105. 9. Interview Herman Zwane, conducted by Thomas Mathole, Daveyton, 18 July 1988. 10. Interview Mrs Christina Thibela, Wattville, 5 May 1985, conducted by Philip Bonner.

ENDNOTES 233

11. Interview Frank Mahungela, Daveyton, 8 April 1986, conducted by Pascal Damoyi. 12. Interview Shadrack Sinaba, Daveyton, 17 December, 1985, conducted by Pascal Damoyi. 13. Interview Christine Thibela, conducted by Pascal Damoyi and Philip Bonner, Wattville, May 1985. 14. Interview Shadrack Mthembu, conducted by Pascal Damoyi and Philip Bonner, Wattville, May 1985. 15. P. Bonner, ‘Eluding Capture’, p. 186. 16. Interviews Mrs Christina Thibela; Mrs E. Ntlokwana with Mrs Senosi, Wattville, 15 May 1985, conducted by Philip Bonner and Pascal Damoyi. 17. C. Simkins, ‘African Urbanisation at the Time of the Last Smuts Government’. Paper presented to the Economic History Conference, University of Cape Town, May 1982, Table 5. 18. P. Bonner, P. Delius & D. Posel (eds), Apartheid’s Genesis, pp. 10-11. 19. N. Nieftagodien, ‘The Making of Apartheid in Springs: Group Areas and Forced Removals’, M.A. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1995, p.105. 20. ibid. pp. 161, 173. 21. ibid. pp. 162-163, 173. 22. ibid. p. 174. 23. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, pp. 38-39. 24. ibid. p. 166. 25. Interview Noni Monare, conducted by Philip Bonner, Daveyton, 1986. 26. P. Bonner, ‘The Russians on the Reef’, pp. 184-185. 27. ibid., pp. 184-185. 28. ibid., pp. 180-183.

CHAPTER 7 1. D. O’Meara, Volkskapitalisme: Class Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934-1948, 1983, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 74-75; T.D. Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom Power Apartheid and the Afrikaner Civil Religion, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1980, pp. 110-114; I. Hexham, The Irony of Apartheid: The Struggle for National Independence of Afrikaner Calvinism Against British Imperialism, 1981, Edwin Mellen Press, New York and Toronto, pp. 131-147.

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2. S. Webster, The Brakpan Story, p. 59. 3. ibid., pp.58-59; T. D. Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom, University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 175-1996. 4. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 84. 5. D. O’Meara, Volkskapitalisme, pp. 126-133, 233; D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 85. 6. O’Meara, Volkskapitalisme, pp. 78-95, 238-292. 7. R.H. Davies, Capital, State and White Labour in South Africa, 1900-1960, Harvester Press, Brighton, 1979, p. 330, Note 142. 8. S. Webster, The Brakpan Story, pp. 67-68. 9. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 85-86; S. Webster The Brakpan Story, p. 67. 10. T.R.H. Davenport, South Africa: A Modern History, 4th edition, Macmillan, 1991, pp. 230-231. 11. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Alexandra – A History, 2008, Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg, p. 60. 12. P. Bonner, ‘We are Digging’, p. 2; P.J. Cockhead, ‘The East Rand’, pp. 50-52, 57-70. 13. H. Sapire, ‘African Urbanisation’; M. Brandel -Syrier, Reeftown Elite, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1971, pp. 3-63. 14. T. Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa Since 1945, 1983, Ravan Press, Johannesburg, pp. 119-120; H. Sapire, ‘African Urbanisation’, p. 184; P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 36. 15. H. Sapire, ‘African Urbanisation’, pp. 181-187, quotation p. 184. 16. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, pp. 36-37. 17. H. Sapire, ‘African Urbanisation’, pp. 187-191; P. Bonner and N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, pp. 36-37. 18. Interview David Bopape, conducted by D. Cachalia, Johannesburg, May 1982. 19. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 27. 20. P. Alexander, Workers, War and the Origins of Apartheid, 2000, pp. 80-84. 21. Interview Joshua Moagi, conducted by Mark Swilling, Katlehong, 8 December 1922, 31 November 1984 and 9 December 1984. 22. Interview Raphael Palime, conducted by Thomas Mathole, Katlehong, 18 September 1985, 28 January 1986. 23. Interview Bertha Mashaba, conducted by Mark Swilling, Katlehong, 26 December 1984.

24. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 27. 25. H. Sapire, ‘African Urbanisation’, p. 182. 26. P. Bonner, ‘The Politics of Location and Relocation’, pp. 183-184. 27. Interview David Bopape, conducted by Coco Cachalia and Andy Manson, Johannesburg, May 1982. 28. Inkululeko, 1 June 1944. 29. Inkululeko, 3 August 1944. 30. ibid.; P. Bonner, ‘The Politics of Location and Relocation’, p. 184. 31. H. Sapire, ‘The Stay-away of the Brakpan Location, 1944’ in B. Bozzoli (ed.), Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspective, 1987, Ravan Press, Johannesburg, pp. 358-61, 366-369, 382-393. 32. P. Bonner, ‘Backs to the Fence’, p. 297. 33. ibid.; T. Lodge, Blacks Protest, pp. 4-8. 34. P. Bonner ‘“Desirable or Undesirable Women?” Liquor, Prostitution and the Migration of Basotho Women to the Rand, 1920-1945’ in C. Walker (ed.), Women and Gender in South Africa to 1945, David Philip, Cape Town 1990, p.226; N. Nieftagodien, ‘The Making of Apartheid in Springs’, pp. 92-94. 35. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, pp. 9, 36-38. 36. Interviews Cass Khanyile; James Ngobeni; Bethuel Khubeka; Rosaline Sibeko; P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, pp. 42-43. 37. The Guardian, 20 October 1946; P. Bonner, ‘Eluding Capture’, pp 182-183; P. Bonner, ‘The Politics of Location and Relocation’, pp. 184-185. 38. P. Bonner, ‘Eluding Capture’, p 182-183. 39. P. Bonner, ‘We are Digging’, p. 14. 40. P. Bonner, ‘The Politics of Black Squatter Movements on the Rand’, p. 100. 41. P. Bonner, ‘The Politics of Location and Relocation’, p. 185. 42. H. Sapire, ‘African Urbanisation’, pp. 347-348. 43. Boksburg Adventure, 25 May 1950. 44. T. Lodge, Black Politics, p. 34. 45. Interview Piet Pheko, 20 March 1985, conducted by Philip Bonner, Benoni. 46. T. Lodge, Black Politics, pp. 33-35, 37, 42. 47. The Star, 26 June 1952; Rand Daily Mail, 26 June 1952; The Star, 27 June 1952. 48. P. Bonner, ‘Politics of Location and Relocation’, pp. 119-190; P. Bonner, P. Delius & D. Posel, Apartheid’s

Genesis, pp. 229-231, 239-243. 49. T. Lodge, Black Politics, pp. 46, 59-60; A. Mager & G. Minkley, ‘Reaping the Whirlwind. The East London Riots of 1952’ in P. Bonner, P. Delius & D. Posel (eds), Apartheid’s Genesis, pp. 229-231, 239-243. 1. T. Lodge, Black Politics, pp. 61-62.

CHAPTER 8 1. Dan O’Meara, Forty Lost Years. The Apartheid State and the Politics of the Nationalist Party 1948-1994, 1996, Ohio University Press, Athens and Johannesburg, pp. 60-64 2. Noor Nieftagodien, ‘The Implementation of Apartheid on the East Rand: The Role of Local Government and Local Resistance’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 2001, pp.102-141 3. ibid. pp. 158-160; P. Bonner and N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, pp. 18-23; P. Bonner, ‘African Urbanisation on the Rand between the 1930s and 1960s: Its Social Character and Political Consequences’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 21(1), March 1995, p. 121 4. C. Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa, 1982, Onyx Press, London, pp. 135-211; P. Bonner, ‘Family, Crime and Political Consciousness’, pp. 414-415, 419. 5. D. van Tonder, ‘Sophiatown: Removals and Protests’ 6. Central Archives Department (CAD), GGR 40, 14/1/4, Persverklaring oor Lokasie-beplanning in die Pretoria tot Vaal-rivier streek insluitende die Witwatersrand 7. CAD, GGR, 40, 14/1/4, Rand Daily Mail, 26.08.55 8. P. Bonner and N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 20 9. Springs and Brakpan Advertiser, 26.12.52 10. Government Publications (GP), University of the Witwatersrand Library (UWL), Mentz Committee Report, ‘Verslag Van Die Komitee Aangestel Om Die Vraagstuk Van Woongebiede Vir Naturelle In Die Omgewing Van Die Witwatersrand En Vereeniging Te Ondersoek’, 1954 11. CAD, Municipality of Springs (MSP) 1/3/5/1/42, Minutes of the Public Health and Non-European Affairs Committee, ‘Annual Report of the Manager of Non-European Affairs, 1958-59’

ENDNOTES 235

12. See for example the Deputy Minister of Bantu Affairs; ‘Blaar’ Coetzee’s address to the Daveyton UBC in Historical and Literary Papers (HLP), UWL; Report of Daveyton UBC, 22.07.66; Minutes of a special UBC meeting, 21.06.66; Record of proceedings of the fifth annual Conference of the Institute of Administrators of Non-European Affairs (IANA), September 1956; Opening Address by H.F. Verwoerd 13. ibid. 14. CAD, Files of the Department of Native Administration and Development (BAO) 24, 436/332, Benoni Town Council to The Native Commissioner, ‘Disturbances: Daveyton Bantu Township’, 08.03.57 15. ibid. 16. A similar clash between Basotho and Zulus in Johannesburg in 1957 was also blamed on ethnic grouping by the African National Congress and the Institute of Race Relations 17. CAD, Municipality of Brakpan (MBP) 2/2/859, 14/6/25, Minutes of the Non-European Affairs Department, 27.09.54 18. P. Bonner and N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, pp. 21-22 19. CAD, BAO 1048, A14/ 1077, Boksburg Bantu Affairs Commissioner to the Secretary for Bantu Administration and Development, 25.03.65 20. P. Bonner and N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 33 21. G. Carter and T. Karis, From Protest to Challenge, Vol. III, Challenge and Violence. pp. 4-6 22. CAD, GGR 40, 14/1/5, Verslag van die ad hoc komitee vir groepsgebiede 23. CAD, NTS 8056, 1039/400, Verslag van die ad hoc komitee vir groepsgebiede: Pretoria-Witwatersrand Vereeniging streek 24. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni 25. The government opposed the immediate removal of African residents from Wattville because they held 30-year leases, which were introduced to ensure that these residents pay off the loan that was raised to construct the houses in that township. 26. CAD, BEP 33, G6/23/2 (1), ‘Notes of meeting between the Benoni Council, Group Areas Board, Bantu Affairs Department and the Department of Coloured Affairs, 28.02.61’ 27. Benoni City Times, December 1961, ‘Will ratepayers pay for R1 000 000 Bantu move?’

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28. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 188 29. Interviews P.R. Deeva and J. de Jager, 11.11.2000, conducted by N. Nieftagodien, Johannesburg 30. CAD, Department of Planning File (BEP) 221, G7/168, ‘Verslag en aanbevelings van die Transvaalse en Vrystaatse Komitee van die Groepsgebiedraad insake groepsgebiede in Springs’ 31. CAD, BEP 33, G6/23/2 (1) ‘Memorandum from H.S.J. van Wyk (Chairman of the Transvaal Committee) to the GAB, Re: Benoni’, November 1958 32. CAD, BEP 172, G7/143/4, ‘Memorandum from the Asiatic Association of the Asiatic Bazaar to the Under Secretary of Indian Affairs’, 17.05.62 33. ibid., p. 12 34. ibid. 35. ibid., p. 14 36. ibid. 37. ibid., pp. 13-14 38. CAD, BEP 33, G6/23/1, ‘Groepsgebeidraad. Boksburg: Instelling van Groepsgebiede, besluit van 26.04.60’ 39. CAD, BEP 33, G6/23/2 (1) ‘Verslag en aanbevelings van komitee wat ondersoek ingestel het insake streeksbeplanning vir kleurlinge en Indiers op die Oos-Rand’, 11.02.60

CHAPTER 9 1. T. Lodge, Black Politics, pp. 114-118, 121-123; G. Carter & T. Karis, From Protest to Challenge, Vol. III, Challenge and Violence, 1977, pp. 29-35. 2. H. Sapire, ‘African Urbanisation’, p. 362. 3. P. Bonner, ‘The Politics of Location and Relocation; Germiston 1942-1960, African Studies 59, 2, 2000, pp. 192-193; Interview Johannes Nkwanyane; Interview Mr Sibanyoni, Katlehong, 1988 conducted by Khanya College Students; Interview Bertha Mashaba conducted by Mark Swilling, Katlehong, 26 December 1984; WHLP K.A. Roll 35 NEAC minutes May 1955. 4. P. Bonner, ‘The Politics of Location and Relocation’, p. 199. 5. P. Bonner, ‘Family, Crime and Political Consciousness’, pp. 414, 419; Interview Mrs. C. Thibela. 6. H. Sapire, ‘African Urbanisation’

7. C. Walker, Women and Resistance, pp. 356-366. 8. P. Bonner, ‘Family, Crime and Political Consciousness’, p. 419. 9. P. Bonner, ‘From Location to Relocation’, pp. 199-200. 10. ibid. pp. 191, 193-195; P. Bonner, ‘Family Crime and Political Consciousness’. 11. P. Bonner, ‘The Politics of Location and Relocation’, pp. 193-196. 12. ibid, pp. 195-198. 13. P. Bonner, ‘Family, Crime and Political Consciousness’, pp. 410-415; Interview Noni Monare. Conducted by P. Bonner, Daveyton, 07.05.86. 14. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 5. 15. N. Nieftagodien, ‘The Making of Apartheid in Springs. Group Areas and Forced Removals’, M.A. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1995, pp. 100-101. 16. N. Nieftagodien. The Implementation of Apartheid on the East Rand: The Role of Local Government and Local Resistance, Ph.D. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 2001, p. 279. 17. N. Nieftagodien, ‘The Making of Apartheid in Springs’, p. 100. 18. P. Bonner, ‘We are Digging’, pp. 3-4; P. Bonner and N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 5. 19. N. Nieftagodien, ‘The Making of Apartheid in Springs’, p. 103. 20. ibid., pp. 103-104. 21. P. Bonner, ‘The Politics of Location and Relocation’, p. 193; P. Bonner, ‘Family, Crime and Political Consciousness’, p. 412. 22. ibid., pp. 412-414. 23. G. Carter & T. Karis, From Protest to Challenge, pp. 56-62. 24. I. Vadi, The Congress of the People and Freedom Charter Campaign, 1998, Sterling Publishers Private Limited, New Delhi, pp. 111-124. 25. P. Bonner & R. Lambert, ‘Batons and Bare Heads: The Strike at Amato Textiles, February 1958’ in S. Marks & S. Trapido (eds), The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth Century South Africa, Longman, London and New York, 1987, pp. 333-634, 350-353, 360; T. Lodge, Black Politics, pp. 193-196. 26. Interviews Bertha Mashaba conducted by M. Swilling, Katlehong, 1985; Johannes Nkwanyana by P. Damoyi and P. Bonner, Tembisa, 1985; P. Bonner, ‘The Politics

of Location and Relocation’, pp. 198-199. 27. Interview, Piet Pheko conducted by P. Bonner, Benoni, 20.03.85 and 31.10.85. 28. T. Lodge, Black Politics, pp. 201-229; conversation between C. Dlamini and P. Bonner, 1984; T. Moloi, ‘Youth Politics’, pp. 57-58. 29. P. Bonner, J. Sithole, P. Delius, J. Cherry, P. Gibbs, T. April & B. Magubane, ‘The turn to armed struggle’ in the South African Democracy Education Trust (eds), The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Vol. 1 (1960-1970) pp. 53-145.

CHAPTER 10 1. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 259. 2. For a summary of Brakpan and Spring’s early economic development see H. Sapire, ‘African Urbanisation’ and D. Gilfoyle, ‘An Urban Crisis’, p. 5. For an overview of the mining industry in the PWV see Natural Resource Development Council (NRDC), ‘A Planning Survey of the Southern Transvaal’, Pretoria, 1957. 3. P.J. Cockhead, ‘The East Rand’, p. 19. 4. Government Publications (GP), University of the Witwatersrand, National Resource Development Council, ‘A Planning Survey of the Southern Transvaal’, 1957, p. 9. 5. H. Sapire, ‘African Urbanisation’, p. 5; D. Gilfoyle, ‘Urban Crisis’, p. 5. 6. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 266. 7. P. Bonner and N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, pp. 3-5. 8. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, p. 282. 9. ibid. and P. Bonner, ‘We Are Digging’, p. 2. 10. D. Humphriss & D.G. Thomas, Benoni, pp. 282-283. 11. NRDC, ‘A Planning Survey’, 1957, p. 20. 12. Germiston accounted for half of the 82 954 industrial employees in Ekurhuleni at the end of the 1940s, which confirmed its position as the second most important industrial town after Johannesburg on the Witwatersrand. Its proximity to Johannesburg and its position as an important railway link between the Witwatersrand and the rest of the country especially augmented its status as an industrial centre. 13. P.J. Cockhead, ‘The East Rand’; P. Bonner, ‘We Are

ENDNOTES 237

Digging’. 14. C. Rogerson, ‘From National Industrial Workshop to “Rustbelt”: Restructuring the Manufacturing Economy of Ekurhuleni, 1980-1999’ in S. Roberts (ed), Sustainable Manufacturing? The Case of South Africa and Ekurhuleni, 2006, Juta, Cape Town, pp. 114-115. 15. ibid., pp. 115-117. 16. B. Hirson, Yours for the Union: Class and Community Struggles in South Africa, 1930-1947, 1989, Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg, p. 2. 17. R. Fine & D. Davis, Beyond Apartheid, 1991, Ravan Press, Johannesburg, pp. 14, 156. 18. GP, Union Statistics for Fifty Years, p. A-33. 19. ibid. 20. GP, South African Population Census, 1951, pp. A-30-A-33. 21. NRDC, ‘A Planning Survey’, p. 16. 22. P. Bonner, ‘We Are Digging’, p. 2. 23. Central Archives Depot (CAD); Municipality of Springs Records (MSP) 1/3/5/1/25; Minutes of the Public Health and Non-European Committee; ‘Preliminary report of the Medical Officer of Health for the year ended 30th June, 1952’. 24. P. Bonner, ‘We Are Digging’, p. 2. 25. N. Nieftagodien, ‘The Making of Apartheid in Springs: Group Areas, Forced Removals and Resistance’, M.A. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 1995, p. 118. 26. K. Beavon, Johannesburg: The Making and Shaping of the City, 2004, Unisa Press, Pretoria, p. 151. 27. ibid. 28. Boksburg, 1903/04 – 1978/79: 75 years of municipal government, p. 34. 29. K. Beavon, Johannesburg, p. 181.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

CHAPTER 11 1. T. Lodge, Black Politics, pp. 201-210, 220; Interview Bethuel Khubeka. 2. University of the Witwatersrand (UWA) Historical and Literary Papers (HLP), Katlehong Archive Rol 11, Manager of Non-European Affairs, Report 4, April 1960. 3. D. O’Meara, Forty Lost Years – The Apartheid State. The Politics of the National Party 1948–1994, Ravan Press,

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Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

Johannesburg, pp. 100-103’; D. Houghton, The South African Economy, 1978, Oxford University Press, Cape Town, p. 186. D. Posel, The Making of Apartheid 1948-1961: Conflict and Compromise, 1991, Claredon Press, Oxford, pp. 231, 252. D. O’Meara, Forty Lost Years, p. 174. South African Democratic Education Trust, The Road to Democracy in South Africa, vol I (1960 – 1970), 2004, Struik, Cape Town, p. 43. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p.63. Benoni City Times, 5 January 1962. Benoni City Times, 15 June 1962. Benoni City Times, 20 April 1979. Institute of Planning, University of Potchefstroom, Boksburg 2000, 1985. ibid., p. 82. CAD, BEP 168, G7/141 (2), ‘Proklamering van groepsgebiede te Benoni, 16.11.62’. CAD, Department of Community Development Files (GEM) 196, G14/3/144, ‘Hervestiging van Indiers en Gekleurders: Oosrand’. ibid. CAD, BEP 33, G6/23/2 (1), ‘Samesprekings met verteenwoordiges van Bantoe-Administrasie en Ontwikkeling, Transvaalse Komitee en die Uitvoerende Komitee in verbande met streeksbeplanning op die Oosrand vir Indiers en Kleurlinge, 11.02.60’. ibid. Boksburg Advertiser, 24.03.64, ‘No transport so Vosloorus move held up’. ERPM was arguably the predominant business in the town, being the largest employer and contributor to the town’s economic development. As a result it was an influential player in the politics of the town. ibid. ibid. ibid. CAD, GEM 196, G14/3/141, ‘Memorandum van die Departement van Gemeenskapsbou: Herbevestiging van onbevoegdes aan die Oosrand, 18.09.64’. CAD, GEM 196, G14/3/143, ‘Memorandum van die Departement van Gemeenskapbou: Hervestiging van Kleurlinge en Indiers aan die Oosrand, 09.04.65’.

25. CAD, BEP 223, G7/168 (3) ‘Persverklaring deur Departement van Gemeenskapbou in verband met groepsgebiede: Springs, 21.02.64’. 26. ibid. 27. CAD, MSP 1/2/1/1/52 ‘Minutes of the Management Committee Meeting, Report of the Director of Non-European Affairs, June 1965’. 28. ibid. 29. Germiston Archives, Ekurhuleni Administration Board Files, H5/57/5, ‘Springs; Identifiseering van ’n verdere groepsgebied vir Kleurlinge van die oosrand, 11.02.67’. 30. Germiston Archives, Ekurhuleni Administration Board Files, H5/57/5, ‘Letter from the Secretary for Indian Affairs, 07.05.68’. 31. Germiston Archives, Ekurhuleni Administration Board Files, H5/57/5, ‘Notule van samesprekings: Hervestiging van Indiers en Kleurlinge en inlywing van grond vir nywerheidsdoeleindes, 12.02.73’. 32. Germiston Archives, Ekurhuleni Administration Board Files, H5/57/5, ‘Minute van die Departement van Beplanning en Omgewing: Indiers aan die Oosrand, November 1973’. 33. CAD, MSP 1/2/1/163, ‘Minutes of the Management Committee Meeting, May 1973’. 34. Quoted in Springs and Brakpan Advertiser, 18.11.94, ‘From Payneville to Ongeluksdal’. 35. ibid.; Joint Press Statement by the Departments of Community Development and Planning; Group Areas: Alberton, District of Alberton, 03.07.70. 36. Rand Daily Mail, 08.07.70. 37. ibid.; Joint Press Statement by the Departments of Planning and Community Development: Group Areas at Benoni, District of Benoni, 23.04.71. 38. K. Beavon, Johannesburg, p. 153. 39. Benoni City Times, 8 November 1968. 40. Benoni City Times, 25 February 1972. 41. Benoni City Times, 2 June 1972. 42. Benoni City Times, 1 December 1972. 43. Boksburg, 1903/04 – 1978/79: 75 years municipal government, p. 36. 44. Benoni City Times, 3 August 1962. 45. Benoni City Times, 6 September 1968. 46. Benoni City Times, 6 September 1968. 47. Benoni City Times, 11 February 1983.

48. Institute of Planning, University of Potchefstroom, Boksburg 2000, 1985, p. 134. 49. Boksburg, 1903/04 – 1978/79: 75 years of municipal government, p. 35. 50. J. Dlamini, Native Nostalgia, 2009, Jacana Media, Johannesburg, p. 19. 51. J. Dlamini, Native Nostalgia, p. 51. 52. J. Dlamini, Native Nostalgia p. 54. 53. J. Dlamini, Native Nostalgia, pp. 54-56.

CHAPTER 12 1. T. Moloi, Youth Politics: The Political Role of AZANYU in the Struggle for Liberation: The Case of AZANYU Thembisa branch, 1980s to 1996, M.A. Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 2006, pp. 76-82. 2. Interview with Mike ‘Figo’ Madlala, conducted by Tshepo Moloi, 07.09.2004, Kempton Park, SADET Oral History Project. 3. Interview with Teboho Tsenase, conducted by T. Moloi, 09.06.2004. 4. Interview with Mongezi Maphuthi, conducted by T. Moloi, 28.09.2004. Emphasis in original. 5. ibid. 6. Interview with Mike ‘Figo’ Madlala, 05.11.2004. Emphasis in original. 7. ibid. 8. ibid. 9. T. Moloi, p. 84. 10. The World, 25 June 1976. 11. The World, 23 July 1976. 12. The World, 30 July 1976. 13. The World, 13 September 1976. 14. The World, 25 September 1976. 15. Vaderland, 5 November 1976. 16. The World, 19 & 24 November 1976. 17. ibid. Emphasis in original. 18. Interview with Rankele Ratswane conducted by Kathorus research team, Vosloorus, 1999. 19. Benoni City Times, 12 February 1977. 20. Benoni City Times, 6 April 1979. 21. Benoni City Times, 14 December 1979. 22. ibid. 23. J. Seekings ‘Quiescence and the transition to

ENDNOTES 239

confrontation: South African townships, 1978-1984’, Ph.D. Thesis, Oxford, 1990, p. 69. 24. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus – A History, p. 99. 25. Vosloorus Archives, 1/5/4, Internos, undated. 26. The Star, 17 June 1985. 27. The Post, 3 April 1980. 28. Sowetan, 9 October 1981. 29. Sowetan, 19 January 1984.

CHAPTER 13 1. J. Baskin, ‘The 1981 East Rand Strike Wave’ in J. Maree (ed.), The Independent Trade Unions, 1974-1984, 1987, Ravan Press, Johannesburg. 2. G. Ruiters, ‘South African Liberation Politics’, p. 33. 3. ibid., pp. 41-42. 4. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p.88. 5. Sowetan, 30 November 1981. 6. H. Mashabela, Townships in the PWV, 1989, South African Institute of Race Relations, Johannesburg, pp. 94-95. 7. G. Ruiters, ‘South African Liberation Politics’, p. 39. 8. Community Research and Information Network (CRIN), ‘The Last Straw’. 9. Among the factors contributing to the lower population density in Vosloorus were availability of land for new housing projects, slower growth of Boksburg’s industrial township, large scale hostel development and better financial discipline and control over squatting by the Vosloorus Town Council. 10. J. Seekings, ‘Quiescence and the Transition to Confrontation: South African Townships, 1978-1984’, p. 94. 11. G. Ruiters, ‘South African Liberation Politics’, p. 62. 12. The Administration Boards were established in 1973 to manage the affairs of African townships on behalf of the government. ERAB was responsible for all the townships in Ekurhuleni. 13. Sowetan, 6 October 1983. 14. G. Ruiters, ‘South African Liberation Politics’, p. 122. 15. Sowetan, 12 October 1984. 16. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 84.

240

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CHAPTER 14 1. Rand Daily Mail, 4 October 1984. 2. N. Nieftagodien, ‘The Township Uprising, SeptemberNovember 1984’, Turning Points in History: People, Places and Apartheid, 2004, STE Publishers, Johannesburg. 3. Sowetan, 15 January 1985. 4. Sowetan, 4 March 1985. 5. Sunday Mirror, 5 May 1985. 6. Sowetan, 20 June 1985. 7. Interview with Tankiso Moshoeshoe, conducted by Sello Mathabatha, 22.11.2006. 8. The Star, 9 July 1985. 9. Interview with Tankiso Moshoeshoe, conducted by Sello Mathabatha, 22.11.2006. 10. City Press, 17 July 1985. 11. Sowetan, 10 July 1985.

CHAPTER 15 1. Interview with Churchill Sydwell Mhlongo, conducted by Sello Mathabatha, 11.10.2006. 2. Interview with Tankiso Moshoeshoe, conducted by Sello Mathabatha, 22.11.2006. 3. Sowetan, 4 April 1986. 4. G. Ruiters, ‘South African Liberation Politics’, p. 149; P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 111. 5. ibid.; Ruiters argues that non-MK activity peaked in 1984 and 1985. However, there is evidence to suggest that this kind of activity continued at relatively high levels in 1986 (See P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 111.) 6. The Citizen, 7 July 1986. 7. Interview with Viva Mokoena, conducted by Kathorus research team, 25.03.1999. 8. The Star, 22 February 1989. 9. Interview with Tankiso Moshoeshoe, condcuted by Sello Mathabatha, 22.11.2006. 10. ibid. 11. Interview with G. Ndlozi, Katlehong, conducted by Kathorus research team, 05.03.1999. 12. Interview with Sochs Khanyile, conducted by Kathorus research team, 23.02.1999.

13. Interview with Dumisa Ntuli, conducted by Kathorus research team. 03.03.1999. 14. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 113. 15. ibid., pp. 114-116. 16. Vosloorus Archives, S.4/12, ‘Profile of Vosloorus’, 30.05.1993. 17. Interview with Mthuthuzeli Ziboza, conducted by Kathorus research team, 14.04.1999. 18. CRIN Minutes of Catholic Church meeting, 1989. 19. H. Mashabela, Mekhukhu, pp. 19-26. 20. Thokoza Archive, 17-20-2, Community Service Files, Town Council letter to Transvaal Provincial Administration, 12/07/90. 21. Thokoza Archive, 17-20-2, Community Service Files, Town Council letter to the Regional Director of the TPA, 13/03/90. 22. H. Sapire, ‘Politics and Protest in Shack Settlements of the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging Region, South Africa, 1980-1990’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 18, 3, September 1992, pp. 693-694. 23. Thokoza Archive, 3-3-3-4, Council and Council Matters, Hostel manager, A. Magazi, letter to Mayor, 10/02/87. 24. Thokoza Archive, 3-3-3-4, Council and Council Matters, Hostel manager letter to Town Council, 17/07/87. 25. Thokoza Archive, 3-3-3-4, Council and Council Matters, Hostel manager to Town Council, 25/09/87. 26. Thokoza Archive, 3-3-3-4, Council and Council Matters, Report on hostels, 09/05/89.

CHAPTER 16 1. Sowetan, 15 April 1991. 2. Weekly Mail, 18-24 January, 1991. 3. Interview with Vusi Sikhakhane, conducted by Kathorus research team, 9 April 1999. 4. Sowetan, 4 January 1990. 5. Boksburg Advertiser, 21 September 1990. 6. Vosloorus Archives, F1/15/1, Minutes 30, May 1991. 7. Sowetan, 3 September 1991. 8. Vosloorus Archives, 03/23, Council Notice, 11.03.1992. 9. Vosloorus Archive, S4/23, Press Release, 22.12.1992.

10. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, ‘The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Pursuit of ‘Social Truth’: The Case of Kathorus’ in D. Posel and G. Simpson (eds), The TRC: Commissioning the Past, 2002, Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg. 11. Daily Mail, 21 August 1990. 12. Sowetan, 21 August 1990. 13. Independent Board of Inquiry, Monthly Reports, August/September 1990. 14. P. Bonner & N. Nieftagodien, Kathorus, p. 135. 15. Independent Board of Inquiry, Monthly Reports, November 1990 and April 1991. 16. Peace Action, Once we were friends, 1993, Johannesburg, pp. 1-45. 17. Vosloorus Archives, Bernard Dunstan Associates, Vosloorus Hostels. 18. The Star, 29 September 1992. 19. Interview with Solomon Musi, conducted by N. Nieftagodien, 2005. 20. Some separation between the SDUs and other community structures was of course necessary in order not to implicate non-SDU members in the activities of the SDUs. 21. V. Barolsky, ‘Transitioning out of Violence: Snapshots from Kathorus’, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (Violence and Transition Project), 2005. 22. IBI, AG2543/CB, ‘Statement by Zenzele Mdutwa’, no date. 23. ibid. 24. IBI, AG2543/CB, ‘Statement by Wilfred Mtyobo’, no date. 25. The Star, 8 February 1993. 26. Sowetan, 22 July 1993 and 23 July 1993. 27. IBI, AG2543/C24, ‘Statement of Johnson Ncube’, no date.

CHAPTER 17 1. D. Wooldridge, ‘Introducing Metropolitan Government in South Africa’ in S. Parnell, et al, (eds), Democratising Local Government: The South African Experiment, 2002, UCT Press, Cape Town, p. 128. 2. J. Machaka & S. Roberts, ‘Addressing the Apartheid

ENDNOTES 241

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

242

Industrial Legacy: Local Economic Development and Industrial Policy in South Africa – The Case of Ekurhuleni’, in S. Roberts (ed), Sustainable Manufacturing? The Case of South Africa and Ekurhuleni. Juta, Cape Town, p. 121. Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality Annual Report 2006/2007, p. 28. Ekurhuleni Full Term Report, 2006-2011, p. 23. Ekurhuleni GDS 2025, p. 13. T. Lodge, Politics in South Africa, From Mandela to Mbeki, pp. 118-119. B. Klandersman, M. Roefs & J. Olivier, The state of the people: citizens, civil society and governance in South Africa, 1994-2000, HSRC Press, p. 9. 2001 All election figures taken from Independent Electoral Commission. ANC Gauteng Report, 2010, p. 18. ibid., p. 27. http://journalism.co.za/2009-ruth-first-lecture-jacobdlamini.html, accessed on 25 January 2012. ibid. S. Parnell and E. Pieterse, ‘Developmental Local Government’, in S. Parnell, et al, (eds), Democratising Local Government, pp. 83-84. C.M Rogerson & J.M. Rogerson, ‘Intra-Metropolitan Industrial Change in the Witwatersrand, 1980-1994’, Urban Forum, 8:2, 1997, pp. 196-197. D. O’Meara, Forty Lost Years: The apartheid state and the politics of the National Party, 1948-1994, 1996, Ravan Press, Chapter 9; H. Marais, South Africa Pushed to the Limits: The Political Economy of Change, 2011, UCT Press, pp. 26-34. Centre for Development and Enterprise, ‘The East Rand: Can South Africa’s Workshop Be Revived?’, June 1997, p. 6. ibid., p. 12. C.M. Rogerson, ‘From National Industrial Workshop to “Rustbelt”? Restructuring the Manufacturing Economy of Ekurhuleni, 1980-1999’, pp. 112-114; C.M Rogerson & J.M. Rogerson, ‘Intra-Metropolitan Industrial Change in the Witwatersrand, 1980-1994’, Urban Forum, 8:2, 1997, p. 201. C.M Rogerson & J.M. Rogerson, ‘Intra-Metropolitan Industrial Change in the Witwatersrand, 1980-1994’, Urban Forum, 8:2, 1997, p. 218.

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

20. ibid., p. 219. 21. T.J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, 1996, Princeton University Press, Princeton. 22. Centre for Development and Enterprise, ‘The East Rand: Can South Africa’s Workshop Be Revived?’, June 1997, p. 12. See also C.M. Rogerson & J.M. Rogerson, ‘Intra-Metropolitan Industrial Change in the Witwatersrand, 1980-1994’, Urban Forum, 8:2, 1997, pp. 196-197. 23. C.M. Rogerson & J.M. Rogerson, ‘Intra-Metropolitan Industrial Change in the Witwatersrand, 1980-1994’, Urban Forum, 8:2, 1997, pp. 201-207. 24. I. Chipkin, ‘A Developmental Role for Local Government’, in S. Parnell, et al, (eds), Democratising Local Government, pp. 67-68. 25. C.M. Rogerson, ‘From National Industrial Workshop to “Rustbelt”? Restructuring the Manufacturing Economy of Ekurhuleni, 1980-1999’, p. 117. 26. C.M. Rogerson, ‘Tracing Local Economic Development Policy and Practice in South Africa, 1994-2009’, Urban Forum, 22, 2011, p. 151. 27. C.M. Rogerson, ‘Manufacturing Change in Gauteng, 1989-1999’, Urban Forum, 11:2, 2000, p. 325. 28. Cooperative and Policy Alternative Center (COPAC), Cooperative Support Institutions in the Gauteng Cooperative Sector: Case Studies, 2006, p. 14. 29. COPAC, Cooperative Support Institutions in the Gauteng Cooperative Sector: Case Studies, 2006, pp. 15-22. 30. Ekurhuleni Full Term Report, 2006-2011, p. 55. 31. H. Marais, South Africa Pushed to the Limit: The political economy of change, 2011, UCT Press, p. 136. 32. J. Machaka and S. Roberts, ‘Addressing the Apartheid Industrial Legacy’, pp. 121-122. 33. H. Marais, South Africa Pushed to the Limit, pp. 144-145. 34. Ekurhuleni Full Term Report, 2006-2011, p. 14. 35. Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality Annual Report 2009/2010, p. 7. 36. Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality Annual Report 2006/2007, p. 8. 37. ibid., p. 9. 38. J. Machaka & S. Roberts, ‘Addressing the Apartheid Industrial Legacy’, pp. 121-122. 39. F. Barchiesi, ‘Commodification, Economic

Restructuring, and the Changing Urban Geography of Labour in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Case of Gauteng Province, 1991-2001’, Urban Forum, vol.17, no.2, April/June 2006, p. 101. 40. ibid., p. 100. 41. Ekurhuleni GDS 2025, p. 28. 42. Gauteng City Region Observatory, ‘State of Gauteng Labour Market’, www.gcro.co.za, accessed on 31 December 2011. 43. ibid. 44. Mail and Guardian 23 December 2011. 45. ibid. 46. T. Hancock, ‘Aerotropolis concept at the heart of Ekurhuleni’s new development thrust’ Engineering News, 14 October 2011. 47. A. Todes, P. Kok, M. Wentzel, J. van Zyl and C. Cross, ‘Contemporary South African Urbanisation Dynamics’, Urban Forum, 21, 2010, p. 336. 48. Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality Annual Report 2009/2010, p. 7; J. Machaka and S. Roberts, ‘Addressing the Apartheid Industrial Legacy’, pp. 121-122. 49. CDE Report, p. 18. 50. Ekurhuleni GDS 2025, p. 31. 51. ibid., p. 13. 52. ibid., p. 9. 53. South African Cities Network Report 2004, p. 58. 54. ibid., p. 80.

CHAPTER 18 1. Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality Annual Report, 2006/2007, p. 18. 2. Sunday Times, 23 October 2011. 3. Gauteng Department of Housing, Gauteng Housing Delivery, 2004-2009, p. 4. 4. V. Naidoo, ‘Informal Settlement Upgrading in Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality: Capacity to Scale Up? B.Sc. Honours Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 2007, p. 43. 5. GDS 2025, p. 26. 6. Ekurhuleni Full Term Report, 2006-2011, p. 37. 7. ibid., p. 38. 8. Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality Annual Report

2006/2007, p. 19. 9. GDS 2025, p. 26. 10. M. Davis, Planet of the Slums, 2006, Verso, Brooklyn, pp. 12-15. 11. South African Cities Network Report, 2004, p. 82. 12. Setplan, ‘Densification Framework, Status Quo: Analysis & Findings Document’, January 2008, p. 120. 13. EMM, 2003. 14. V. Naidoo, ‘Informal Settlement Upgrading in Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality: Capacity to Scale Up?, p. 43. 15. Ekurhuleni Full Term Report, 2006-2011, p. 24. 16. Setplan, ‘Densification Framework, Status Quo: Analysis & Findings Document’, pp. 127-128. 17. M. Huchzermeyer, Cities with ‘Slums’: From informal settlement eradication to a right to the city in Africa, 2011, UCT Press, Cape Town, p. 112. 18. Gauteng Department of Housing, Gauteng Housing Delivery, 2004-2009, p. 8. 19. GDS 2025, p. 31. 20. M. Huchzermeyer, Cities with ‘Slums’, p. 227. 21. ibid., pp. 227-229. 22. www.abahlali.org, ‘The right to basic services in informal settlements: Notes on Harry Gwala High Court hearing 12 December 2008’, accessed on 14 October 2011. 23. www.abahlali.org, article from The Sowetan, ‘Squatters sue council – Residents want service’, accessed on 14 October 2011. 24. www.abahlali.org, article from www.mg.co.za, ‘A piece of plastic called home’, accessed on 14 October 2011. 25. www.abahlali.org, ‘Diary of Alfred Moyo from the deposed Makause Development Forum’, accessed on 14 October 2011. 26. Pheko and Others v Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (CCT 19/11) [2011] ZACC 34, pp. 3-4. 27. ibid, p. 23. 28. Interview with Moleseng Mogane (General Secretary), Khali Mkhonza (additional executive member) and Jacob Ntsie (additional executive member) of the Tembisa Residents’ Association, conducted by N. Nieftagodien, September 2011. 29. F. Barchiesi, ‘Delivery from below, resistance from above: electricity and the politics of struggle over basic

ENDNOTES 243

30.

31.

32.

33.

34. 35.

36.

244

needs in Tembisa’, Debate: Voices from the South African Left, vol.2, no.1, 1998, p. 13. Interview with Moleseng Mogane (General Secretary), Khali Mkhonza (additional executive member) and Jacob Ntsie (additional executive member) of the Tembisa Residents’ Association, conducted by N. Nieftagodien, September 2011. F. Barchiesi, ‘Delivery from below, resistance from above: electricity and the politics of struggle over basic needs in Tembisa’, pp. 13-14. Interview with Moleseng Mogane (General Secretary), Khali Mkhonza (additional executive member) and Jacob Ntsie (additional executive member) of the Tembisa Residents’ Association, conducted by N. Nieftagodien, September 2011. F. Barchiesi, ‘Delivery from below, resistance from above: electricity and the politics of struggle over basic needs in Tembisa’, p. 12. ibid. p. 16. Interview with Moleseng Mogane (General Secretary), Khali Mkhonza (additional executive member) and Jacob Ntsie (additional executive member) of the Tembisa Residents’ Association, conducted by N. Nieftagodien, September 2011. ibid.

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

37. J.P Misago, T. Monson, T. Polzer & L. Landau, May 2008, Violence Against Foreign Nationals in South Africa: Understanding causes and evaluating responses, Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP) and Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA), 2010, pp. 8-9. 38. Business Day, 13 May 2011. 39. S. Khumalo, ‘The Rural-Urban Interface: The ambiguous nature of informal settlements, with special reference to the Daggafontein settlement in Gauteng’, Unpublished M.A. Thesis, Rhodes University, 2005, p. 27. 40. ibid., p. 18. 41. ibid., p. 26. 42. ibid., p. 49. 43. ibid., p. 22. 44. ibid., pp. 23-24. 45. ibid., p. 111. 46. ibid., p. 108. 47. ibid., p. 119. 48. ibid., p. 124. 49. A. Simone ‘Between Ghetto and Globe: Remaking Urban Life in Africa’ in A. Tostensen, I. Tvedten & M. Vaa (eds), Associational Life in African Cities: Popular Responses to the Urban Crisis, 2001, Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Chapter 3.

ENDNOTES 245

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Interviews David Bopape John de Jager P. R. Deeva Frank Ntlebere Ken Gampu Johannes Nkwanyana Madlala Katlehong Cass Khanyile Sochs Khanyile Bethuel Khubeka Henry Khumalo Josephine Lehase Milton Lehau Mabone, Mr K. Madalane Mike ‘Figo’ Madlala Mrs Madondo Frank Mahungela Viva Makwena A. M. Mandlathi Bertha Mashaba

250

Joe Mashao Mrs Masupiles Mrs Matshite Churchill Sydwell Mhlongo Joshua Moagi P. Mokhele Amos ‘Rubber’ Molefe D Katlehong Molefe Xaba Eddy Moloi Noni Monare Naume Monhanyana Mrs Monnauyane Tankiso Moshoeshoe Shadrack Mthembu Solomon Musi D. Nbolere G. Ndlozi James Ngobeni Johannes Nkwanyana Mrs E. Ntlokwana Dumisa Ntuli

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

Raphael Palime Patrick Peterson Piet Pheko Johannes Ramminiki Rankele Ratswane Mrs Roselina Mrs Senoo Mr Sibanyoni Rosalina Sibeko Vusi Sikhakhane Shadrack Sinaba Phyllis Soko Christina Thibela Alfred Tsagane Teboho Tsenase Gerald Vusithemba Mrs Yende Mthuthuzeli Ziboza Herman Zwane

Ekurhuleni Interviews conducted Additional interviews not necessarily cited in the text

1. Vulindlela Mapekula Springs ANC 2. Busisiwe Vilakazi Springs MK 3. Sipho Sithole Kwa Thema Trade Unions 4. Timothy Mngomezulu Duduza Civics 5. Esther Dube Duduza Community 6. Micheal Mabote Duduza Ex- police 7. Thabo Silas Letsimo Duduza Trade Unions 8. Mathews Dlamini et al. Duduza Old location 9. Thokozile Khumalo Duduza Fawu/Unions 10. Otto Nyembe et al. Duduza Gangsters 11. Thoko Magagula Kwa Thema ANC 12. Veli Mazibuko Duduza ANC/Sayco 13. Charteston women Duduza Community 14. Dlamini Kwa Thema Unions/Civics Duduza MK 15. Lucky Mahlangu 16. Mrs Setenane Duduza Ex-teacher 17. Churchill Mhlongo Kwa Thema COSAS 18. Diliza Ncamani Kwa Thema PAC 19. Irvin Masike Kwa Thema PAC 20. Zanele Motha Kwa Thema COSAS 21. Ms Koki Mlangeni Duduza Civics 22. Bobo Monyai Duduza Gangsters 23. Meshack Mabogoane Kwa Thema PAC/BCM 24. Mxolisi Mswela Kwa Thema Azanla/Azapo 25. Lucky Moema Kwa Thema PAC 26. Fareast Madonsela Kwa Thema BCM Azapo 27. Msitho Ngobeni Kwa Thema 28. Veli Radebe Kwa Thema Cosas 29. McPeace Magudulela Kwa Thema Cosas 30. Mathousand Ndlengisa Kwa Thema Cosas

BIBLIOGRAPHY 251

INDEX Note: Page numbers in italics refer to . illustrations and tables.

A Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents Act 93 Act of Union 109–10 Actonville 128, 130, 132 Advisory Board, Benoni 68, 75, 86, 105, 107 aerotropolis 209 African Commercial and Distributive Workers’ Union 46 African Housing and Rates Board 68, 72 African Mine Workers’ Strike (‘ten shilling strike’) 69 African Mine Workers’ Union (AMWU) 69, 82, 87, 88 African National Congress (ANC) 75, 83, 84–91, 138, 198–9, 218, 224 aligned Civilian Guards 75 alliance partners 199 banning of 103 election campaign 219 election slogan, ‘a better life for all’ 198, 225 factional disputes 202 government 213 membership 199 multiracialism 112 National Conference, Durban 89, 104 Queenstown Conference 104, 109 unbanning 184 Women’s League 83 African nationalism 77 African Protection League 85 Africans 30, 32, , 54, 101 changes in politics 80–7 employment on gold mines 69 farm labourer families 47 industrial workers 80 limitation of Reserves 89 miners 24, 35 National Day of Protest 89 rural and urban populations 117

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women 46–9, 54 workers in semi-skilled jobs 118 Afrikaans-medium instruction 137–8 Afrikaner Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party (Purified National Party) 77 Afrikaner Nationalism 78–80 Afrikaner National Party 43 Afrikaners 16–17, 19 Christelike Vroue Vereeniging 49 immigrants/migrants 18 miners 24 opponents of World War II 78 working-class cultures 15 Afrikaner women 18 ‘factory meide’ 44 illness from malnutrition 44 insurgent Afrikaner women 43–4, 46 prostitution, promiscuity, racial mixing 44 worker trade unions 27 Alberton 6, 117, 119, 126, 129, 131, 179 old location 32, 63–4 riots 87 systems of lodgers and visiting permits 86–7 alcoholic liquor illicit brewing 33 sale and consumption 30 see also beer brewing Alexandra Township 137, 223 Alrode, factory in 118, 159 Amabutho 193 Amato Textile Company 53, 68, 70, 116 ANC Youth League 104, 105, 218 banning of 83 Conference 90 Anglican Church 59 Anglo-Boer War, see South African War 9 anti-apartheid mobilisation 149 movement 161 rebellion 150 anti-economic rentals campaign 104 anti-Indian agitation 103

Durban riots 109 anti-Nationalist politics, white 80 anti-pass action committee 88 Anti-pass Campaigns 39, 75, 85, 88, 103, 104 million signature target 84 Anti-Pass Conference 87 anti-pass demonstrations 111 anti-pass protest, PAC 123 Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) 219 Anti-Western Areas Removal Campaign 104 apartheid attacks on symbols of 139, 141, 173 policy of creating ‘modern townships’ 94 schools’ mobilisation against system 155 spatial planning 210 townships 133–4 Apex squatter camp 67, 67, 71, 88, 89 Apostolic Church 59 Apostolic Faith Mission 224 arme blankes (poor whites) in slum areas 18 Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO) 167

B Bad Boys gang, Katlehong 175 Bain, James 16, 20, 21 Bakerton, Indian group area 131, 132 Bantu Affairs Department 99 Bantu Authorities Act 89, 95 Bantu Education Act 98, 103, 104–6 Bantu Education Boycott 104–6, 109 Education Campaign 75 schools boycott 104–6 arson attempts 105 picket lines 105 statistics 104 women and children 105 Bapsfontein, illegal removal of people 218 Bashielo, Vincent 189 Basner, Hymen 57

Basotho miners 69, 73 beer brewing distilling tradition and black politics 87–91 municipal beer hall 86 umqombothi, mbamba, pineapple 60 woman beer brewer 48 see also under women Benoni 2, 7, 9, 30, 33, 108, 117, 205 aerial bombardment 26 Air Force camp 54 Asiatic section 58, 68 ‘Boom Town’ 61 commando 25 Council 13, 88, 99, 124, 128 discovery of gold 4 eye-witness record of bombardment 26–7 ‘Ghost Town’ 61 iron and steel industries 13 municipal status 10 ‘Poor White Mecca’ (East Rand Express) 21 population 53, 53–4 Shebeen (1950s) 62 ‘Son of My Sorrow’ 3 strike, 1922 23 Benoni African Pauper Relief 68 Benoni Coloured Vigilance Association 99 Benoni Gold Mining Company 6 Benoni Old Location 68, 99, 101, 128 Benoni Rent Board 68 Benoni Workers’ Hall 25 Berliners gang 61 Berrange, V. 85 Black Consciousness (BC) 138, 144, 154 rejection of white rule, poster 140 Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) 138, 154 Black Hawks gang 61, 65 Black Local Authorities (BLAs) 147, 153, 154, 155, 161 Black People’s Convention (BPC) 143 ‘Black Peril’ scares, Witwatersrand 22 black social life and recreation Alberton Fighting Juniors Gold Club 60 beer brewing 60

INDEX 253

boxing 60 church attendance 59 football playing and watching 59–60 music making and listening 60 West Rand Club 60 black urban youth 75 American influence 63 movies 62 poor provision of schooling and education 61 unemployment 61 see also tsotsi phenomenon Black Workers’ Strike (1920) 39 BLS (South Sotho) gang 65 BMX gang, Katlehong 175 Boipatong massacre 195 Boitumelong Secondary School 138, 139, 157 Bok, Dr W.E. 3, 4 Boksburg 3, 6, 7, 8–9, 25, 30, 117 Advisory Board 81 Council 31, 101, 129, 130, 184, 186 killing of strikers at 25 municipal status 10 Bopape, David 84, 84–5, 88 Botha, Prime Minister P.W. 21, 130 Boya, Tom 144–5, 164 Brakpan 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 30, 36, 108, 126 Advisory Board 81 African mine worker population 52 coal mining 115 commando 24, 25 Health Committee 10 location 33, 85 Town Council 10, 85 Brakpan Colliery 5 Brentwood Park small holding 70 Brickworks squatter settlement 58 British United Rubber Company 52 building societies 132

C Cachalia, Yusuf 90 Caledonian Society, Benoni 16 Cape Asbestos Insulations 116

254

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Carnegie Commission 17–18 Cason compound 36, 38 census results (1921), men to women rates 46 Central Business Districts (CBDs) 132, 198 Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) 204, 210 chain store workers 46 Chamber of Business 223 Chamber of Mines 23–5 Chemical Workers Industrial Union (CWIU) 159 Chete, Barnabas 167 Chief Albert Luthuli Park 214, 216 Chimes Company 6 Chimes location 30 Chimes Mine 19 Chinese 101 indentured labourers 29, 31 location 32 repatriated 30 Chris Hani Action Committee 193–4 Chris Hani squatter camp 191, 193–4, 218 Cillie Commission Report 139, 143 Cinderella Dam 101 Cinderella mine 7 Civic Association 218 civic guards 107 civic movements 150, 153–5, 199 civic politics 145–6, 188 and protest politics 219 civil war in Ekurhuleni 188–91, 193–5 clothing sector 116 manufacturing 206 coal 4, 5, 7, 10 Coetzee, Gerrie 56 Colgate-Palmolive, strike at 159 coloureds 32, 101, 108, 109, 128, 129, 130–2 group areas 130, 131 removal of from townships 99 vote 80 Commissioner of Mines 10 Committee of Ten, Tembisa 143 Communist Party of South Africa’s (CPSA) 81–2, 85–8, 195 banning of 83 Free Speech Convention 88 May 1st Campaign 112

Reef political campaigns 48 community-based organisations 143, 199 clean-up campaigns 175 community courts 175 compounds 30, 34 Congress Alliance, multi-racial 110 Congress of South African Students (COSAS) 150, 155, 157–8, 162, 164, 167, 169, 174 rally in Daveyton 156–7 unbanned 184 Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) 176, 181, 183, 189 launch of (1985) 177 Congress of the People (COP) 75 campaign to adopt Freedom Charter (1955) 103, 104, 109 see also Congress Alliance, multi-racial Congress of the People (COPE) political party launched in 2008 200 wards garnered in 2010 election 202 Conservative Party 184 ‘Conservative Populism’ 145–6 Consolidated Goldfields 30 Constitutional Court 218–19 Constitution of the Union of South Africa (1909) 109, 219 consumer boycott 159, 184 Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) 195 Cornish Association, Benoni 16 Cornish miners 14 Council of Non-European Trade Unions (CNETU) 82, 83–4, 88 Crossroads squatter camp, Katlehong 179–80, 190 Crown Mine 69 ‘cultural clubs’ for expelled children 195 curfew regulations 123

D Dadoo, Dr Yusuf 84 Daggafontein informal settlement, Springs 53, 223–5 local Ward Committee 224 religion 224 street committee 224 Dark Starring gang, Benoni 64

Darren Kids gang, Alberton 63–4 Daveyton township 93, 129, 155, 162, 193, 210, 216 charges of public violence 143 clashes between Xhosa and Swazi/Ndebele areas 96 demonstrations by squatters 144 deteriorating conditions 150–1 housing crisis 144–5 schools’ boycott 157–8 Dead Man Gulches (DMGs), Boom Town gang 61, 62, 64 Defiance Campaign, ANC 71, 75, 89, 90–1, 104, 109 register of arrests (1952) 91 deflation 38–9 de-industrialisation 204 De Jager, Derek 110 Democratic Alliance (DA) 199, 202, 224 democratic local elections 198–9 Department of Coloured Affairs 129 Department of Community Development 129, 132 Department of Education and Training (DET) 166–7 Department of Human Settlements 213 Department of Indian Affairs 129 Department of Labour 44 depression, economic 47, 81 De Rietfontein 3, 4 developmental local government 198–9, 205 Dlamini, Chris 158 Dlamini, Jacob (author of Native Nostalgia) 134–5, 202 Driefo ntein mine 7 drought 7, 17 Drought Commission 17 Dry Cleaners’ Union 83 Duba, Queen 202 Duduza Civic Association (DCA) 153, 164, 165, 167 Dukathole location, Germiston 47, 59, 90, 107, 108, 109 burning car of an impimpi 166 Ghost Town–Boom Town divide 61 reign of terror 168 rival gangs 61–5 standholders 57 Dunlop Industrial 124 Dunswart Iron and Steel Works 73–4 mortars and bombs for Allied Forces 116 Du Plessis, George 108, 110 Dusting Chemicals factory 70 Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) 18

INDEX 255

E East Rand Basin 8 clothing factories 44 East Rand Administration Board (ERAB) 140, 141, 144, 152–3, 154 East Rand Metropolitan Council 205 East Rand People’s Organisation (ERAPO) 154, 155, 162, 164 attempt to unite civic struggles, poster 148 East Rand Proprietary Mines (ERPM) 7, 101 economic development 115–17 economic policies 207 ‘economic’ rentals imposition of 103 regulations 107 tensions and internal conflicts 106–9 economy 80 in transition 203–5 Eden Park 131, 132, 214, 216 Edenvale location 126, 129, 131 education 18, 155 Eeufees (centenary) of the Great Trek 78 Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality 199, 213 Community Policing Forums 202 Integrated Development Plans 203 Metropolitan Council 198 Ward Councils 202 Ward Participatory 202 Ekurhuleni region (previously East Rand) 1, 6–8 black politics 103 black urban population 30 early settlement 2–4 gold fields 8–9 internecine war 188 LED Department 206 living in 8–13 metropolitan regions 198 mines 69 pioneering history 5 population Census (1996) 209–10 referred to as ‘rustbelt’ 117 transport connection plant 209 white politics 125–7 white population (1951–1980) 125

256

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electricity 11–12, 53, 184, 186, 188, 214, 217, 219–21 Elsburg 131 employment 119, 205 casualisation and subcontracting 207 engineering 52 Esakjee, Suliman 110 Escort meat processing factory 191 Eskom 184, 186 Esselen Park 214 ethnic zoning 95–6 evictions, threat of 217

F factories 54 Far East Rand Basin 6 Farrar, Sir George 7, 10, 16 Fast 11s gang 61, 62 Fast Sixes gang, Alberton 63–4 Federasie van Afrikaner Kultuurvereenigings (FAK) 78 Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) 150, 158, 159, 161 strike 158 Federation of South African Women (FSAW) 106 Federation of Trades executive, Johannesburg 21 flat dwellers 54 Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) 191 food co-operative, Ivory Park 206 packaging 206 forced removals 217, 217–19 Ford Motor Company 13 foreigners 16 Freedom Charter 104, 109, 111, 198 Freedom Day 167–8 funerals of activists 173 Duduza victims 168–9 violence at 162, 166–7

G aleview 130 gangs 61–5 civic guards 107 warfare 65 xenophobic violence 221 youth 105 gangsterism, resurgent 175–6 Garment Workers’ Union (GWU) 44–6 striking women members 44, 45, 46 Guateng ANC conference 201 Gauteng Provincial Legislature 198 Geduld, Springs 3, 4, 36 Geduld Proprietary 32 Geluksdal 132 gender bias 105 General Electric company 116 General Laws Amendment Act 124 known as Sabotage Act 124 Germiston 2, 9, 30, 90, 104, 117, 119, 131, 205 commando 25 gold mines 5, 6, 43–4 industrial expansion 116 industrial townships 13 location 48 Location Residents’ Committee 57 municipal status 10 1900 xvi railway 209 Town Council 31, 43, 84 Wives’ Association 47 see also Dukathole location Germiston and District Taxi Association 181 Germiston clothing factory 83 Gibbs, Edwin 25 Glass and Chemical Workers’ Union 83 global economy, instability of 198 Godongwana, Enoch 171 gold 6–8 changing fortunes in mining industry 119 discovery at Benoni 4 discovery at Langlaagte, Johannesburg 115

discovery on Witwatersrand 4–6 exploration and development 52 rise in price 23, 52 Gold Law 31–2 Gold Mining Company 32 Gold Standard, abandonment of 52 Government Areas South Mines 35, 36 Government Rent Board 57 Great Depression 78 Gross Domestic Product 207 group areas, consolidating 98–9, 101 Group Areas Act (GAA) 89, 93, 98 Group Areas Board (GAB) 128 hearings 99, 130–1 Growth Employment and Redistrubution (GEAR) policy 207 Gungubele, Mondli 201, 202, 209

H ani, Chris assassination of 190, 195 leader of SACP 192 Harry Gwala Committee 218 Harry Gwala informal settlement, Watville 217 Hartbeespoort Dam 27 Hercules Gold Mining Company 30, 31 Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) 78, 79, 80, 126, 127 Hertzog, J.M.B. 22, 43 Holomisa, Bantu 199–200 Home Boys gang 65 homelessness in urban areas 216 Homestead Dam 7 Hong Kong gang, Benoni 64 Hospital View, Tembisa 220 hostels dwellers and youth and squatters tensions 188–90 in townships 159, 180 Hotel Cecil 26 housing 213 backlog 216 demand for 151–2 delivery programme 214 ERAB plan to upgrade 144

INDEX 257

overcrowding 152 shortage 54, 58, 68 see also sanitation

J

I Ihlazeni hostel, Tembisa 194 immigrants 15, 70 Imperial troops 20 import substitution policy 51 Indian/African political co-operation 103 Indians 99, 101, 129, 130, 131–2 store owners 109 traders as rivals 22, 30 traders of Georgetown 32 Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICWU/ICU) 39 industrial chemicals and plastics industries 205 industrial economy 51 industrial employees 43, 117 industrial employment 204 industrialisation 42, 52–3, 57–9, 111 industrial sector 69 industrial trade unionism in secondary industry 46 industries, heavy and light 116–117 inequalities 209–10 inflation 36, 81 influx control 110, 123, 150 informal mine locations 30 informal settlements 215–17 infrastructural and housing development 176, 179–81 Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) 167, 186, 190, 193, 202, 224 IFP-aligned Zulu hostel dwellers and non-Zulu inmates 189 IFP/UWUSA stronghold 191 hostel dwellers 194–5 violence in KwaZulu-Natal 189–90 warlords 190 Inter-Departmental Committee for the Transport of Non-Whites 131–2 International Monetary Fund 124 Irish Association, Benoni 16 Iron Age, early and late 2

258

Iron and Steel Workers’ Union 83 Israelites, assault on in Eastern Cape 39

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

Jack, John 9 ‘jackrollers’, groups of youths 175 Jan Smuts International Airport 53, 121, 209 Jantjies, Cyril 189 Jantjies, Thukela 167 Japanese gang 73 Jews 16, 19 traders 30 job creation project 207 job market after World War II 54 ‘floating colour bar’ 54 Joint Technical Committee (JTC) 186, 188 Joseph, Helen 106 Jukuda, Ezra 146–7 juvenile delinquents/criminals 74 blacks (tsotsis) 56 whites (‘ducktailism’) 56, 65

K agiso 190 Kalanyoni Hostel, Thokoza 179 Kasarda, John 209 Kathorus Concerned Residents (KCR) 219 self-help housing scheme 219 Kathorus township 176, 188, 189–90, 210 population 150 schools 155 students 140 violence 183 Kathrada, A.M. (Kathy) 88 Katlehong Crisis Committee 199 Katlehong Residents’ Action Committee 147, 164 Katlehong Taxi Organisation 181 Katlehong township 93, 97, 106–7, 123, 129, 152, 155, 158, 191–2, 206, 221, 223 boycott in Katlehong High School 141 charges of public violence 143

Community Council 147, 164 march from Katlehong Secondary School 143 militant sections, Padime and Tsolo 173 overcrowding 179 population 150 resistance against evictions 219 squatters demonstrating against forced removals 146 student–teacher ratio 155 Kelvin Power Station 53 Kempton Park 6, 119, 129, 131, 205, 209, 225 airport 121 employment growth 204 Isando industrial area 53 pharmaceutical factories 53 Town Council status 53 Khalanyoni hostel, Kathorus 189, 190 Khanyile, Sochs 171 Khoali, Jacob 147 Khumalo, Absolom 86 Khumalo, George 189 Khumalo, Sibongiseni 223–4 Khumalo gang, Thokoza 195 Khutata hostel 190 Klaasen, Thandi 142 Kleinfontein 30, 36 Estates Company 7, 18, 29 farm gold digging site 115 Knights Central Gold Mining Company 32, 38 Kruger, Paul 3–4 KwaThema Parent–Student Committee 158, 167 KwaThema township, Springs 93, 95, 97, 108, 129, 131, 188–9 mass march of students 162 political funeral 165, 166, 167 reign of terror 168 KwaTsaDuza township 210

L labour 22 demand for 117 shortages 29, 80 unskilled 29 labour-intensive industries 207

Labour Party 99 land floods and sinkholes 218 invasions 67 Land Act 35 Landless People’s Movement 218 Legodi, W. 86 Lekolwane, Phinea 147 Leve, Khaya 193 light industrial manufacturing co-operatives 206 Lihlabi, Paseka 218 Lindela hostel 190 liquor laws 123 Local Economic Development (LED) 205–7 local popular movements 219–21 location regulations 47 Lodgers’ Association 57 lung disease of miners 16 silicosis or phthisis 16 Luthuli, ANC President Albert 123

M Mabuya, Harry Don 68, 68 Mabuya Township Trading Co-operative Society Ltd 72 Madalane, Kenny 108 Madlala, Figo 137 Main Reef series of conglomerate ore 1 Maize Control Board 86 Makause Development Forum 218 Makoko, Kapeng 171 Makwakwa, Moses 202 Mokoena, Viva 171, 173, 174, 175 male dependants (zimbangodi, ‘slaves’, ‘trench diggers’) 60 Mamasela, Joe (known as an ‘askari’) 167–8 Mandela, Nelson 107, 109, 195 release of 184 Mandela Camp 191 Mantashe, Gwede 185 manufacturing sector 198 employment levels 204 expansion 80 new investment 116 output 51, 207

INDEX 259

Maré, Landdrost 4 Martial Law Court sittings on strikers 27 Mashaba, Bertha 83, 104–5, 106 Mashalashala gang 64 Masiza, Mr 138 Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) 180, 183 mass detentions 149 Massu, Mohau 73 Mathiso, Zingisile 200 Matshiqi, J.G. 37 Matthews, Z.K. 109, 110 Mau Mau gang 62 May Day stayaway/boycott 88–9, 176 Maile, Dinah 86 Mazambane squatter settlement 58 Mazia, Ali 185 Mazibuko, Veli 166, 174 McBride, Robert 202 Mchunu, Douglas Buyilo 162 Mdutwa, Zenzele 193 media restrictions 173 Mekgwe, Ntombi 201, 202 Mentz Commission 101 Mentz Committee Report 94–5, 98 Metal and Allied Workers Union (MAWU) 159 funeral of member in Duduza 162 metal and engineering sectors 53, 116–17 Methodist Church 224 Metropolitan Council 216 Metropolitan governments 197 Mgali, Lilian 81 Mhlongo, Churchill 173 migrants 29 illegal 110 shanty settlements and compounds 29 workers 147, 169 Zulu and non-Zulu 190 ‘Million Signature Campaign’ 155 miners Afrikaners 24 ‘backvelder’ or ‘bywoner’ Afrikaners 16 Basotho 69, 73 black 29 English-speaking 16 ‘imperial working class’ 16

260

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

South African-born 69 Miners’ Union 20 Mine Workers’ Union 79 mining deep-level 7 early compound 34–5 operations in Nigel and Benoni 115 Minister of Community Development 128 Ministry of Welfare and Demobilisation 79 MK, see Umkhonto we Sizwe Mkhonga, Thali 221 Mkhwanazi, Lucky 166–7 Mkwanazi, J. 83, 107 Mlangeni, John 166 Moagi, Jonas 163 Moagi, Joshua 90, 108 Moatlhudi, Irene 166 Modder Deep, Benoni 38 Modder East area 216 Modderfontein 6, 36 farm gold digging site 115 Mofokeng, Dan 107, 185–6 Mogane, Moleseng 219, 220–1 Mogodi, Lucky 168 Mokgado, Nebjah 86 Mokoena, ‘Sparks’ 163 Molapo, Mabula 73 Moleya, James 143 Moloi, Kebane 162 Monare, Noni 105, 109 known as ‘black Pimpernel’ 108 Montoedi, Alex 166 Montsisi, Keith 186 Moodley, Mary 110 Morake, Wessels 37 More, Duke 167 Moshoeshoe, Tankiso 168 Mothiba, Ralph 138 Motlanthe, Kgalema 201 Motsile, Thomas 163 Mtshali, Lungile 199 Mtsweni, Skhumbuzo 167 multi-racial slums, Rand 44 municipal tent town 71 Mvabasa, Benjamin 81

Mvangeli (evangelist) 224 Myeni, Dumisane 194

N National Assembly 198 National Convention 109 National Council of Trade Unions (NACTU) 186 National Education Crisis Committee (NECC) 158, 166–7 national elections (2010) 200 National Free Basic Water policy 214 Nationalist Government 65, 123 Nationalist Members of Parliament 79 National Party 22, 93, 99, 126, 127, 184 National Peacekeeping Force 187 National Union of Distributive Workers 46 National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) 189 Native Affairs Department (NAD) 68–9, 94–5 Native Grievances Enquiry 35 Native Labour Regulations Act 35 Natives’ Laws Amendment Act 49, 85, 98 (Natives) Urban Areas Act 47 Native Youth Board 61 Ncube, Johnson 194 Ndlozi, George 175 ‘necklacing’ of collaborators 169 Nederlandsche Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorweg-Maatschapij (NZASM) 10 neoliberal volatility 207–9 Nestadt, Morris 117 New Comet mine 7 New Doornfontein Mine, Benoni 20 New Kleinfontein Gold Mining Company 6, 7, 29, 30, 31–2, 71 strike action 69 New Modder, Benoni 38 New Modderfontein Mines 7, 35–6 New State Areas mines 30 N.G. Kerk 99 Ngoduka, Gideon 146 Nigel 4, 5, 6, 126 Administration 153 discovery of gold at Sub Nigel 10

Nigel Gold Mining Company 5 Nkadimeng, George 189 Nkadimeng, John 83 Nkosi, Daniel 163 Nkosi, Duma 200, 200–1 Ntuli, Dumisa 171 Ntuli, Sam 154, 171, 184, 185, 195

O OR Tambo International Airport 205, 208 Ossewa Brandwag (OB) bombing of Benoni post office 79 ultra-hard-core fascist right 78–9

P Pact Government 22, 43 Pailane, Alexander 167 Palime, Raphael 57, 83, 107–8 Palmietfontein Airport 53, 121, 209 Palm Ridge 132, 214, 216 Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) 123, 154 armed wing Poqo 111 banning of 103 Paarl uprising 111 protests against passes and pass-burning 110–11 unbanning 184 Parents’ Committee 166–7 Parliamentary Act 43 pass(es) arrests 110 laws 89, 123 proposal to abolish 123 system 36–7 Payneville/Bakerton complex 131 Payneville settlement, Springs 32, 58, 72–3, 85–6, 130, 131 Indian trading section 108 after tornado 92 Pennyville squatter settlement 58 permit regulations 90, 107 Phenduka district 190

INDEX 261

Phola Park squatter camp 179–80, 189, 190 Plantation squatter settlement 58 police 88–9, 164–6, 194 action at funeral 162 arrests for illegal squatting 70–1 and boycotts of schools 105 Casspirs 190 evictions of people 218 patrols 71 repression 37–8 response to demonstation in Orlando 138 response to student uprising 137, 143 running of townships 140–1 use of live ammunition 141 use of teargas canisters 143 political and class struggle 33, 35–9 Polokwane conference 200, 202 poor whites (arme blankes) 17–18 population density 210 growth 198 Population Registration 98 potato boycott 103, 110 poverty 210 Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging (PWV) 51, 153, 161, 164, 188, 189 price of goods 36 prisoners 9, 110 pro-apartheid forces 183 Progressive Federal Party (PFP) 127 Putco bus company 139 Putfontein 25, 70 Putfontein Small Holdings 18

R racial restructuring of urban areas 99 racial segregation 94, 128–32 racial social engineering 93 racism 22 Radebe, John 166 railway network, Germiston 9, 52, 116 Ramaphosaville squatter camp 221–3 xenophobic violence 222

262

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

Rampai, Timothy 105, 106, 106–7 Rand Airport 121 Rand Gold Refinery 44 Rand Mines Group 6 Rand Rebellion 15 Rand Revolt (1922) 22, 23–7 R&R Tobacco Manufacturers 191 Rand Airport 209 Rand Strike 39 Rand Water Board 11 Ratanda 154, 190–1 Ratanda Civic Association 154, 163–4 Ratswane, Rankele 144 recession and inflation 150, 208 Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) 198, 215 recycling co-operatives 206 ‘Red Ants’, private security firm 218–19 Reiger Park 128–9, 130 Release Mandela Committee 161 removals of communities 128–30 rented accommodation 147 rents boycott 161 increases 153, 154, 161, 163, 164 Report of the Inspector of White Labour, Johannesburg 19 repression 149, 169 residential areas black 99 Indians, Chinese 101 resistance, acts of 90–1 retail sector 120, 198 Rietfontein Colliery 30 Rietvlei small holding 70 Rissik, Johan 3 Rivonia Trial 124 road freight companies 209 Rooikamp gang 64 Roman Catholic Church 59 Russians, Twatwa Basotho 75 ‘amaRashea’ gang 67, 73–4 migrant South Sotho gang 65

S Sambo, Mlahleki Kaifus 199 sanitation services 217 ‘bucket system’ 214 pit latrines and plastic toilets 223 supply of toilets 222 San people 3 Scaw Metal Factory 59 schools closure of 171 crisis in 184 Sebokeng 190 secondary industrial development 46, 52, 54, 117 security police forces arrests of students 139 booby-trapped handgrenades 168–9 hit squads from Vlakplaas 167–8 military-like standoff with youth 173 Sedition Law 21 Self-Defence Units (SDUs) 169, 183, 190, 191–4 self-governing municipal status 30 separate development policy 95 services delivery 214–15 settlements 30–1 social life in 10–11 Sexwale, Tokyo 215 shacks and shanties demolition of 152–3 disputes between lodgers and site holders 58 Indian, Chinese site holders 58 Rietpan 70 sub-letting and escalation of rents 80–1 Zulu-speaking dwellers 190 Sharpeville massacre 103, 122 economic and political crisis 123 Shembe church 224 Shiba, Motsarapane 74 shopping mall complexes 198 Shop Workers’ Union 82 Sibekos gang 64 Sikhakhane, Vusi 185 Silverton squatter camp, Tsakane also known as Kwavevi 154 Ad Hoc Committee 154

Simmer and Jack, Boksburg 38 Simunye in Christ Organisation, Tsakane 199 Sinaba, Shadrack 144–5 Sisulu, Walter 89, 90, 109 Sita, Nana 90 site-and-service scheme 95 Sithole, Charles 194 Slovo, Joe 195 slum areas 18 small businesses 207 Small Holdings Commission 19–20 small-scale farming 207 SMME economy 205–6 Smuts, General 20–1, 22, 25, 78 nickname ‘Jannie Promises’ 79 social dislocations 51 social disorder 51 social engineering 103 social services 217 social strains, white society’s 53–4 Social Welfare Society 68 soldiers demobilised 54, 79 ex-servicemen supporters 80 white servicemen 79–80 Sotho Tswana people 2 South African Cities Network (SACN) 210 South African Clothing Workers’ Union (SACWU) 46, 57, 82–3 South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU) 199 South African Communist Party (SACP) 22, 220 see also CPSA South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) 83 South African Constitution 80 South African General Electric 53 South African Industrial Federation (SAIF) executive strike committee 24 South African Labour Party (SALP) 15, 21–2, 27, 79 South African Mounted Rifles 24 South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) 185–6, 199, 220 South African Native National Congress (SANNC) 33, 35–6 see also ANC South African Pulp and Paper Industry (SAPPI) 53

INDEX 263

South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) 138 South African War 9, 10, 16, 29, 30, 39, 42 South Sothos 57 Soweto 137, 144 Soweto Civic Association 154 Spoilers, Sotho-speaking gang 61, 65 Dira (enemies) head of gang 64 Springbok Legion 80 Springs 2, 3–4, 5–6, 7, 25, 30, 36, 101 African community 85 black female population 33 coal mining 10, 115 coloured and Indian population 130–1 Council 85, 86, 95 gold mining 52–3 Inkspots performing 134 New Era industrial township 53 Nuffield Township 53 proclaimed as white ‘group area’ 131 total population 53 squatter camps/settlements 178–9 and immigrant culture 68–71 migrant/immigrant gang, ‘amaRashea’ (Russians) 67 women 67 squatter politics 71–5 squatters and ERAB stand-offs 144 squatter settlements, Kempton Park/Edenvale area 58 Standard Brass company 116 stand owners 57 state harassment 171 repression 149, 175 states of emergency 149, 169 stayaway, call for 161 Stirtonville location, Boksburg 75, 81, 86, 130 illicit beer-brewing women 81 liquor raid 86 ‘tsotsi menace’ 62 Stone Age hunter-gatherers 2 stores boycott 36 street committees 224 strikes 24, 161 black mine workers 35–6 bombing and strafing of strikers 26 commandos 24

264

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

confrontational militancy (‘Wild Women’) 46 first on gold mines 16 garment workers 45 general strikes 176 1913 Miners’ Strike 19 1922 strike, Benoni 23 1932 and 1932 46 Rand 16 second miners’/general strike on Rand 20 violence and riots 21 white miners 18–21, 35, 79 Student Christian Movement (SCM) 144 Students’ Representative Councils (SRCs) 144, 157, 164 student struggles (1984), Ekurhuleni 162–8 student uprising (1976) 136, 137–41, 143, 155, 157–9 acts of sabotage 143 conservative but popular 145–7 emerging crisis 144–5 involvement of hostel dwellers 141 ‘Kruger shall never go to heaven’ song 143 mass arrests 143 ‘Nkosi Sikeleli’ song 143 repression of 143–4 role of young intellectuals 138 Subsidiary Planning Committee (SPC) 98, 99, 101 sub-tenants 57 Sukazi, E,A. 147 Suppression of Communist Act 89 Suzman, Helen 131

T Tambo, Oliver 107, 109 Tariff Act 43 tariff regime 203 taxi industry 180–1 licences to Indian entrepreneurs 109 violence 189 wars 188 Taylor, W.P. 6 African Treasure, autobiography 6 teachers school boycotts 104–6

wages 81 Tembisa Civic Association (TCA) 154, 162 leaders targets for assassination 185 Tembisa Residents’ Association (TRA) 219–21 renamed SANCO Tembisa 220 Tembisa Student Organisation 137 Tembisa Students’ Representative Council (TSRC) 139 Tembisa township 58–9, 93, 127, 137, 194–5, 206, 210 Council 219–20 explosion at Sedibeng Primary School 143 Extension 26 214 High School 138–9, 157 ‘tenderpreneurs’ 202 Tent Town squatter camp, Benoni 67, 69, 71–2, 74 civilian guard 73 ethnic conflict, Russians and Xhosa residents 73 police crackdown 74 Terrorism Act 124 Theron, Charlize 13 Thibela, Mrs 105 Thobela, John 166 Thobela, Sonto 166 Thobela, Zanele 167 Thokoza Civic Association 184 Thokoza Progressive Association (TPA) 147, 186, 188 Thokoza Town Council (TTC) 179–80 Thokoza township 93, 121, 123, 129, 141, 152, 155, 176, 188, 191–2, 195, 209, 221 anti-crime campaigns 175 overcrowding 179 population 150 SPU leader 185 Tokothaba Secondary School 141 Thokoza Youth Congress 171, 180, 184 resistance to eviction 189 Tikkieline squatter settlement 58 Tladi, R.M. 36–7 Tleane, Ali 199, 220 Tloome, Dan 88 ‘Toasters’ gang, Tembisa 194–5 Torch Commando 65 of War Veterans 80 torture of detainees 124 Toweel, ‘Pappa’ Mike 55 Toweel, Vic 55–6

township-based mobilisation 164 township-based organisations 150 Township Company 7 trade unions 82, 150, 199 transition process, negotiations and confrontations 183 transport, cost of 106 Transvaal African Teachers Association (TATA) 81 Transvaal Coal Trust Company 5 Transvaal Coloured People’s Organisation (TCPO) 109 Transvaal Independent Labour Party (TILP) 21 Transvaal Indian Congress (TIC) 84, 89, 90, 109 Transvaal Miners’ Association (TMA) 20–1 Transvaal Native Congress (TNC) 36 Transvaal Provincial Administration 32, 219–20 Transvaal Student Congress (TRASCO) 171 tribal authorities 95–6 Tricameral elections 161 Trollip, A.L. 79 trust farms 69 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) 167 Tsakane township 93, 97, 154, 169, 218 Tsenase, Teboho 138 tsotsis 61–5, 109 black urban youth 61 gang warfare 65 soccer 64–5 Twatwa, Benoni 25, 57–8, 61, 73, 87, 109

U Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) 111, 167, 173, 174–5, 195 unemployment 180–1, 198 poor whites 18 rate of females 207–8 township youths 68, 93 women 154 young men 181 Union of South Africa 21 unions, independent 159 United Cotton and Textile Company, see Amato Textiles United Democratic Front (UDF) 143, 147, 153, 154–5, 161, 163–4 community struggles poster 172 United Democratic Movement (UDM) 200

INDEX 265

United Party (UP) 78, 79, 99, 126 United Workers’ Union of South Africa (UWUSA) 191 Urban Areas Act 69 Urban Bantu Councillors 140 urban crisis, deepening 176, 178–81 urban culture (‘marabi’) 33 urbanisation 42, 33, 61–5, 74 urban landscape, reshaping the 94–8 urban population 119 living standards 153 urban settlement 117, 119, 121

Vosloorus Stayaway Supporters Committee 173 Vosloorus township 93, 129, 130, 154, 176, 185–6, 188, 216 Council 179, 186, 188 local Constituent Assembly 188 population 150 uprising 139, 140, 141 Voster, B.J. 79 Voters’ Representation Act 89 Vultures, Ghost Town gang 61, 62, 65 Vusumazi hostel, Tembisa 194

V

W

Vaal Civic Association 161 Van Coller, location superintendent 86–7 Van Deventer, General Japie 25–6 Vandeyar, Reggie 110 Van Dyk Gold Mine 52 Vanga, Sipho 222–3 Van Rooyen, Inspector 86 Van Ryn Deep Mines 35, 36 Van Ryn East, Geduld 38 Van Ryn Estates 7 Van Ryn Mine 6, 7 Van Wyk, Lance-Sergeant P.J. 193 Verwoerd, Prime Minister H.F. 95, 97–8, 104, 123–4 architect of apartheid 100 Victoria Falls Power Station 11–12, 83–4 vigilance associations 81 Vigilance Committees 49, 75, 81 vigilante organisations 149, 167, 194 Vilakazi, Bavumile 200 violence and ungovernability 164–8 Visible Police Unit 218 Vlakfontein farm gold digging site 115 Vlakplaas 167 Von Brandis, Landdrost 7 Voortrekker occupation 3–4 Vosloorus Civic Association (VCA) 154, 185, 186, 188 Vosloorus Crisis Committee 186 Vosloorus Progressive Party (VPP) 146–7 Internos, newsletter 147 Vosloorus Residents’ Committee 186

Wadeville factory 159 Wage Board 43 wages 23, 29, 35 African and Chinese workers 30 black and white workers 79 demands 159 protests 38 women 154 Walker, Evelyn 23 water 9 basic service 217 building of dams 7 scarcity 7, 9 water-borne sewage system and flush toilets 11 Wattville township, Benoni 109, 216 Welgedacht, Benoni 38 Wesleyan Church 59 White, Montagu 9 white economic and suburban development 132–3 White Leagues 22 white leisure boxing 55–6 dog racing 54–5 football (soccer) 54 lakes as sites for whites 51 rugby 56 see also juvenile delinguents/criminals white people bywoner farmer (tenant farmer, share cropper) 17, 18 elections in Benoni 125

266

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region

expansion of suburbia 132–3 home ownership 133 middle class 133 population 10, 124 white workers 35 male (semi-skilled, Afrikaners) 79 politics (1910–1924) 21–3 retrenchment of semi-skilled workers 23 white working class emergence of 16–17 strikes 15 Winnie Mandela Park 214 Wittstock, Charlene 13 Witwatersrand 79, 101, 119, 204–5 African communities 48 municipalities 49 Witwatersrand Tailors’ Association 44 changed to GWU 44 women anti-pass movement 104 Basotho beer-brewing 85–6 factory employment 43–4 franchise at municipal level 22 garment workers 18 liquor brewing and selling 33 liquor-brewing mothers 60–1 passes 93, 106 single 68 struggle for equal rights 41 unskilled and informal employment 208 white women’s politics 42–3, 79 widows 33 see also Afrikaner women Women’s Christian Temperance Union 42 Women’s Enfranchisement Association of the Union (WEAU) 43 Women’s League, ANC 104, 110 Women’s League of Justice (WLJ) 47–8 Women’s Reform League 22, 43 workers’ power 176 World Cup 218 World War I 11–12, 13, 16, 23, 35, 42, 46, 52 World War II 13, 51, 77 economic activity during and after 53 military requirements 116

South Africa’s recruitment into armed services 80 worship and church-going of whites 13

X xenophobic violence 221–3 displaced people 221 Mozambicans and Zimbabweans 221 in Ramaphosaville 222 Somali and Pakistani shopowners 223 Xhosa people 57

Y ende, Councillor A.M. 180 Young Americans gang 61 youth gangs 105 struggles 164 Youth Congress 174, 175 ‘Operation Clean-Up’ 175–6 Youth League, see ANC Youth League

Z Zenzele squatter camp 194 Zindabad, Indian area 101 Zionist Christian Church (ZCC) 59, 224 Zonkizizwe squatter camp 180, 190, 216 Zuid-Afrikaanse Republiek (ZAR) 30 Zulu people 57 Zulus gang 61

INDEX 267

268

Ekurhuleni: The making of an urban region