By 1930 large extensions had been made to Western Native Township, and the new suburb of Eastern Native Township had also been established. The latter was never permitted to grow to any significant size and today survives only as a Municipal single men's hostel. In the same year 2 500 acres were purchased near Klipspruit, and in 1931 a start was made on the suburb of Orlando, named after Councillor Edwin Orlando Leake. Progress was slow, and by 1939 Johannesburg could only boast a total of 8 900 houses and hostel accommodation for 6 700 single men. By then the Black population was 244 000 with a male to female ratio slightly below 3:1.
The next 5 years were an important period in the history of Johannesburg's Black residential sector. With most of the White labour force engaged in overseas war duties, increasing demands were made upon local skilled and unskilled labour. The war effort not only boosted the industrial and manufacturing sector, but its demands for material production broke down many old prohibitions regarding the use of Black labour. As a result more Black workers were brought into urban centres, effectively sensitising them to labour and other economic issues, and forging them into a well-politicised industrial proletariat. The effects of this were only fully felt during the 1950s, once the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) began organising campaigns of resistance against continued White political, cultural and economic domination. By the end of the Second World War, Johannesburg's Black population had increased to 395 231, with a male to female ratio of nearly 2:1. Over 20% of this population consisted of young children, a clear indication that many families had cut their rural links and were forging a new urban society. It also meant that the needs of education would henceforth also have to be taken into account when planning for the infrastructural needs of the Black community.
A factor that became increasingly manifest during this period was the failure of the Johannesburg Municipality to cope internally with the health problems that its own department of "Non-European Affairs" (NEAD) was generating. During the 1930s the work of the MOH had been severely hampered by manpower shortages. This was aggravated by the massive housing backlog and rapid rate at which urbanisation was taking place, which made attempts at establishing a sanitary infrastructure virtually impossible. An attempt to bring order to the situation was made in 1935 when the Murray Thornton Commission managed to institute some changes in the organisational structure of the Health Department. By the end of the War, however, the housing shortage was again reaching such proportions that it was not uncommon to find dwellings so overcrowded that one family was being accommodated in each room.
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