Between 1936 and 1946 Johannesburg's Black population grew by 59% to a total of nearly 400 000. During the same period the comparative growth of the White sector was 29%. However, by the end of the Second World War, the Municipality had only erected 9 573 low income housing units and made 7 270 beds available in male, single sex, hostels. This means that officially, only some 55 000 persons were being housed in municipal residences. Unofficially, of course, the figure was much higher. The remainder had to make do as best they might, and although some people worked and slept over in the White suburbs, few could claim a home of their own. The majority was forced to move illegally into vacant tracts of land in such areas as Orlando, Pimville, Dube, Newclare and Alexandra, where squatter suburbs sprang up virtually overnight. When the largest of these camps was eventually cleared in 1955, it was found to have housed an estimated 60 000 persons. The lack of sanitation and the overcrowding of housing in these areas caused the overload of an already meager infrastructure. In time these communities also began to demand other facilities, such as schooling, which was either rudimentary or non-existent, or was being withheld by the authorities as a matter of policy.
Over the years the quality of life available to residents in these areas has become a matter of some debate. Liberal commentators have pointed out, with some reason, to the richness and variety of sub-cultures that existed in places such as Sophiatown. It is true that these squatter areas gave rise to some of this country's most notable Black poets, writers, artists, singers, musicians and political leaders. It is also true, however, that they suffered from a high crime rate, and that residents were generally at the mercy of profiteers, slum-lords, farmers of shacks and any carpet-bagger unscrupulous enough to exploit the despair and plight of others. Richard Rive has pointed out that, contrary to the romantic image that White liberals have painted about District Six, in Cape Town, the residents themselves considered it to have been a slum and often "could not wait to get out". The same sentiments were also expressed by the people of Pageview or "Fietas", prior to the demolition of this area.
Such conditions, not unnaturally, also gave rise to a generation of political leaders and socially involved persons who voiced the grievances of Black workers. Patrick Lewis has called them "leaders outside the law" and, in view of subsequent events, it is significant that the City Council of that time found itself powerless to act against them. It was only the coming to power of the Nationalist Party (NP) in 1948 that temporarily stilled the voices of legitimate Black protest and forced many of its leaders into exile or jail. The Communist Party was banned in 1952, and following eight years of sustained political protest, the ANC and PAC were also banned in 1960. The formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) the subsequent year marked the beginnings of an armed struggle against White oppression that continues to this very day.
Predictably a riot did eventually occur in August 1947 when municipal offices were attacked and three White policemen were killed. The Council's attitude at the time may be best summed up by a memo they submitted to the Governmental Commission of Enquiry into this event. Under the heading of "Fundamental Causes", they claimed that:
"In the submission of the Council, the fundamental cause of the riot is the attitude of mind produced in the urban native population by the series of squatter movements which have occurred in Johannesburg since 1944 and which may best be summarized as one of contempt for authority and for constitutional methods in favour of direct action, however illegal and violent, coupled with growing political and national consciousness of the urban Native population".
Writing some 19 years later, Patrick Lewis, a self-professed liberal and a Johannesburg City Councillor during that period, also attempted to dismiss the social and political realities of the squatter movements. He claimed that their leaders were acting as the agents of financially motivated profiteers and slum lords, a naive assertion that indicates, if nothing else, an ignorance of local housing conditions, and of the needs and aspirations of urban Black residents.
The period between 1939 and 1945 is also significant for it marks a time when the economic and residential make-up of Johannesburg's urban Black population underwent final and irrevocable change. Before the War this community was marked by a sizeable component that retained seasonal links to the rural areas. This was owed to the rotational nature of the migrant labour system, which brought rural workers to the city on eleven-month contracts and then expected them to return home until the cycle was repeated the following year. After 1945 the make-up of urban Black society changed to include a greater proportion of children. This indicated a tendency on the part of Black families to sever their rural roots and to establish permanent homes in urban areas. In 1948 the Nationalist Government attempted to reverse this trend by introducing a policy of forced "repatriation" to "independent states" having a predominantly agrarian economic base. This promoted a myth of "rural ethnicity" which sought to deny the existence of an industrial proletariat, a position which the Government only abandoned relatively recently.
Thus the planning and implementation of urban housing programmes in Johannesburg after 1945 had to take into account the existence of an expanding and permanent urban Black population. A realisation that demographic changes had taken place was slow in percolating through to the civic decision-making process, and of the 10 730 house contracts placed between 1940 and 1947, only 1 538 were built. Instead it was thought that relief for squatters could be found in a policy of temporary housing. Although some units were built on a short-term basis, they were experimental in nature and suffered from some notable technical and planning flaws. The concrete-roofed houses of Jabavu, or "White City", are an example of one such project. Almost inevitably these have also become permanent in nature and, in time, have degraded to the point of becoming unfit for habitation. Further housing activity took place between 1947 and 1951, when a total of 6 788 units were built. It was not until 1951 when two acts, designed to ease the nation-wide housing crisis, were promulgated. The Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act was the first of over one hundred pieces of similar legislation designed to give local authorities the means of removing squatters from land. The Native Building Workers Act authorised the utilisation of skilled Black labour on low-income housing schemes. The combination of the two, together with a large infusion of State funds, allowed Municipal housing agencies to initiate new and large-scale housing programs in Johannesburg's Black residential areas.
