The immediate effect of the Native Building Workers Act was the formation of a Housing Division within the City Council. With the assistance of Governmental subsidies, and a series of loans raised from Johannesburg's mining companies, most specifically Sir Ernest Oppenheimer of Anglo-American, the Housing Division was able to implement a number of site-and-service schemes, which eased the crisis to a small degree. By the time building operations reached their peak in Johannesburg in 1958, 40 houses per day were being handed over for occupation by the Housing Division, and by 1969 a total of 65 564 houses had been built in Soweto alone.
The houses were built as the result of research conducted by the National Building Research Institute (NBRI) between 1948 and 1951. Although this project is generally considered to have been the result of group effort, much of it revolved around the ideas of Douglas Calderwood, a young architect working at the NBRI at the time. He subsequently incorporated his work into two academic dissertations for which he was awarded a March and, later, a PhD, by the Department of Architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand. The dwellings were probably designed by another young architect employed by the NBRI, Barrie Biermann, who has since become better known for his research in Cape Dutch architecture. Biermann's knowledge of the Cape vernacular is evident from the plan of the average Soweto house, a four-roomed unit which resembled a double-pile lang huis. It became generally known as the NE 51/6, where "NE" stood for "Non-European, "51" was 1951, the year of Calderwood's doctoral thesis, and "6" was the drawing's number in the thesis. Other designs included the NE 51/7, consisting of a pair of semi-detached NE 51/6s, and the NE 51/9, a slightly larger version of the NE 51/6 with an internal bathroom. In later years Johannesburg's Housing Division also evolved their own versions of the NE 51/9, which they called the "Type L" and the "Type M" respectively. Few of these, however, are known to have ever been built.
These designs, however, should not be read in isolation of White opinions prevailing at that time. In April 1950, the Minister of Native Affairs, Dr E G Jansen stated in Parliament that it was a:
"…wrong notion that the Native who has barely left his primitive conditions should be provided with a house which to him resembles a palace and with conveniences which he cannot appreciate and which he will not require for many years to come".
Jansen, who went on to become Governor-General of the Union of South Africa, was, in many ways, echoing the sentiments of previous colonial governments. In 1894, during the planning stages of Vrededorp and the nearby Malay Location, for example, President Paul Kruger is reputed to have slashed the size of plots down to 250 sq ft, claiming that:
"Ek sal hulle nie plase gee nie, maar net sitplekke". (I will not give them farms, but only places to squat)
Calderwood's work for the NBRI in the early 1950s was therefore designed to meet such governmental standards and, ironically, formed the basis for Nationalist housing policy right up to the mid-1980s.
The NE 51/6 included two bedrooms, a lounge and a kitchen beneath a simple, end-gabled ridged roof. Rudimentary toilet facilities were provided in a separate external WC located to the rear of the stand. The walls were 150mm wide, usually constructed out of cement-ash blocks laid on a minimal 75mm concrete foundation, and roofed over with asbestos-cement fibre corrugated sheeting. There were no ceilings or internal doors, and costs were budgeted at about œ250 per unit. Although building was conducted by a number of contractors, the major share of the work fell upon Roberts Construction, while the main suppliers of materials were the South African Rapid Block Company for the blocks, and Everite for the roof sheeting.
The planning of Soweto incorporated a number of important features. There is no doubt that its town planners were inspired by "garden city" theories current in Europe at that time. Its streets broke with the grid-iron pattern common in other parts of Johannesburg, and were designed to promote a hierarchy of traffic routes. Suburbs were laid out to create neighbourhoods, and green areas and civic spaces were integrated into the overall plan. Houses were detached and each was set on its own plot of land.
The idealism of the planners was, however, offset by the unavoidable fact that Soweto was the brainchild of racist and segregationist thinking. This manifested itself in a number of ways:
- When the residents of squatter camps were forcibly resettled in Soweto, there was no attempt to respect existing social structures and neighbourhood units. Instead these were willfully split up, seemingly as an act of bureaucratic terrorism aimed at breaking the spirit of the community.
- Vehicular access to Soweto was limited to three major arterial routes and one small gravel road. The intention here was to restrict movement in and out of the area in times of civil insurgency.
- Many of the older suburbs of Soweto, such as Orlando East and Meadowlands, were laid out on a "honeycomb" pattern. Calderwood tells that this was done on the specific instructions of Hendrik Verwoerd, then Minister of Native Affairs and acknowledged architect of "grand Apartheid". The intention here was to locate police stations and nests of machine-guns at the hubs in order to control any potential civil insurrections. In many ways this attitude is a continuation of the philosophy that created radially planned, single-sex compounds on the gold mines.
- Soweto was divided into "ethnically" predetermined suburbs separated by open pieces of veld, on the assumption that if the various "tribes" were not set physically apart, they would be at each others throats at the slightest provocation.
- No provisions were made for the creation of business districts, or for the establishment of industrial and manufacturing areas. There was no intention of allowing Soweto to break its "company store" relationship with white Johannesburg.
- Stands were kept deliberately small and of a uniform size to prevent any distinctions arising between professional and working classes.
- Most of the open spaces, designated as "green" areas on town planning maps, were no more than utopian dreams included for liberal public consumption which the government had little intention of realising. In virtually every case these have remained open pieces of undeveloped veld, dumping grounds for car wrecks and havens for vagrants and criminals.
One of the more lunatic proposals put forward by the newly elected Nationalist Government in 1948 would have located Soweto, or whatever its name might then have become, near Newcastle, in Natal. The theory then was that high-speed trains, as yet uninvented, would have commuted workers into Johannesburg on a daily basis. In spite of its final location in proximity to Johannesburg, the Nationalist Government has never intended Soweto to be anything other than a temporary dormitory suburb. The name "Soweto" itself is little more than a cold acronym, invented to denote the words "South Western Township".
The growth and development of Soweto may be summed up by the tabulation below. The year refers to the date of the suburb's declaration. The population and housing figures reflect the numbers as they stood on 30 June 1964. This data has been drawn from official NEAD reports of that time.
TOWNSHIP
|
YEAR
|
POPULATION
|
No OF HOUSES
|
| Pimville |
1906 |
29 088 |
1 232 |
| Eastern Native Township |
1926 |
3 968 |
627 |
| Orlando |
1930 |
65 593 |
11 314 |
| Jabavu |
1948 |
25 468 |
5 100 |
| Dube |
1948 |
12 727 |
1 957 |
| Mofolo |
1954 |
28 284 |
4 543 |
| Central Western Jabavu |
1954 |
25 468 |
1 432 |
| Moroka North |
1955 |
15 207 |
2 693 |
| Molapo |
1956 |
8 188 |
1 466 |
| Moletsane |
1956 |
10 360 |
1 962 |
| Tladi |
1956 |
10 000 |
1 860 |
| Dhlamini |
1956 |
9 015 |
1 422 |
| Tshiawelo (Chiawelo) |
1956 |
20 152 |
3 989 |
| Zondi |
1956 |
8 861 |
1 548 |
| Phiri |
1956 |
11 332 |
2 190 |
| Mapetla |
1956 |
11 476 |
2 105 |
| Jabulani |
1956 |
11 721 |
2 039 |
| Naledi |
1956 |
19 923 |
4 043 |
| Senaoane |
1958 |
8 732 |
1 511 |
| Zola |
1958 |
30 630 |
5 572 |
| Emdeni |
1958 |
11 680 |
2 298 |
TOTAL |
|
360 994 |
60 902 |
Many of Soweto's suburbs also owe their birth to the destruction of other Black residential areas, such as Western Native Township, Eastern Native Township, Sophiatown and the Moroka squatter camp. Each of these, in its own time, represented a pocket of political resistance against White racism and segregationist ideology. Each was destroyed in its turn, willfully and systematically, by a governmental bureaucracy bent upon breaking down existing social structures and democratic political movements. Resettlement was therefore used as a political weapon, deliberately dispersing neighbourhood units and support groups, separating families and neighbours, as a means of maximising the shocks of removal and dispossession. Soweto is the spawn of apartheid, and its location, planning and architecture serve as constant reminders of this fact to its residents.
After 1963 Municipal housing activities in Soweto began to wind down and after 1969 these came to a virtual standstill. In 1973 the West Rand Administration Board (WRAB) took over the control and day-to-day administration of Soweto from the Johannesburg's NEAD. However, by 1976, housing had, once again, become a major political issue in Johannesburg's Black community. This may be ascribed to a number of factors, including:
- WRAB's failure since 1973 to provide additional "official" housing in Soweto.
- WRAB's refusal to conduct, or even condone, maintenance work upon their own houses.
- WRAB's continued use of former municipal liquor outlets and beer halls.
- Central Government's obsessive attempts to implement a policy of separate homeland development, which sought to decentralise industry and remove all Blacks resident of urban areas to a series of "self-governing states". The intention was to make all urban Blacks "temporary residents" and, at one stage or another, resettle them, with or without their own permission, to an "ethnically" predetermined rural area. Their temporary status gave their housing needs low priority, and governmental funds for new house construction were only made available to those who voluntarily endorsed themselves out of their urban area. This scheme is recorded to have suited some elderly persons wishing to retire on pension, but few others are known to have availed themselves of this opportunity.
- Because all urban Blacks were regarded as being "temporary", applications for the construction of privately funded housing in Black-designated suburbs were not entertained.
- For the same reason, residents of these areas were also not permitted to gain ownership of their properties. This failure to grant residents security of tenure discouraged even basic, self-initiated, maintenance work upon existing housing units. This resulted in a steady degradation of existing urban environments. Although attempts were made in the early 1980s to implement a scheme permitting a limited 30-year tenure, this was resisted politically by residents who opted for an "all or nothing" attitude. As a result, less than 10% of homes in Johannesburg's Black suburbs are known to have been purchased under this dispensation.
Although the 1976 Soweto Uprising was sparked off primarily by dissatisfaction with current standards of Black education, popular grievances with local housing conditions were important lateral issues in the conflict that ensued.
Soweto's next stage of development also begins in 1976, and coincides with the inauguration of the Urban Foundation. This is an agency funded by the private business sector for the specific purpose of conducting housing and development work in Black urban areas. As a result of its involvement a number of major housing and community projects have since been undertaken. Among the first was the provision of an electrical infrastructure over the area, a project that was not initiated out of civic altruism, but out of a necessity to reduce current levels of air pollution over Johannesburg as a whole. Much of this can be traced back to Soweto's innumerable wood fires, most particularly in winter when local temperature inversions and southerly winds combine to carry these fumes northward to Johannesburg's White residential suburbs.
During the early 1980s conditions regarding the construction of privately funded housing were relaxed, allowing banks and building societies to enter the Black housing market. This, together with the availability of small pockets of land, has allowed a modest amount of middle income housing activity to take place. Normal population expansion, an existing housing backlog, and the relaxation of rural influx laws have, however, ensured that, today, the housing crisis is as pressing as it was forty years ago. As a result squatter settlements are once again developing in such places as Kliptown, and on White-owned farms bordering on Soweto. The majority of shack dwellers cannot afford conventional housing of any kind, and their needs are not being met by either government, Urban Foundation or the private sector. The result has been the creation of yet another housing emergency that ultimately may only be resolved by the intervention of central government.
Today Soweto appears to be reaching yet another stage in its development. With the Government's homeland policy coming to a predictable standstill, the status of the urban Black community was under constant revision. The initial emergency, based upon a shortage of basic sanitary infrastructural needs, had been met. Since 1966 however, little progress was made to meet other community needs, such as security of tenure and land control. The next emergency was therefore likely to focus upon such issues as access to land, and the redistribution of resources, thus being part of a wider social and political debate having implications for South Africa as a whole. Soweto is now estimated to have reached optimum lateral growth and, during the early 1980s, plans for high-rise residential development were mooted. If implemented without prior consultation with the community concerned, this could have proved to be yet another controversial decision.
An important factor in the development of Johannesburg's Black residential sector was the promulgation of influx control regulations governing the movement of rural residents into urban areas. This legislation was repealed in 1983 and is generally considered to have failed, for although it probably retarded urban drift, it did not altogether stop it. Ultimately it proved to be a purely prohibitive measure that did nothing to promote a parallel programme of rural development, or to encourage farmers to remain on their land. No matter how overcrowded facilities have become in the city, these were preferable to the poverty, squalor and even starvation of a rural and overcrowded homeland. Thus overcrowded housing conditions did not become a deterrent to urban migration. They are stoically accepted as unavoidable components of daily urban life. The 1974 census established that the Black population of Johannesburg was 741 094 persons, but officials admitted that, because of the Influx Control Laws, the "lie factor" could have been at least 30%. Other authorities, however, estimated this error to be as high as 60%. This means that, by the mid-1970s, Johannesburg's Black population was over 1,2 million persons.
The provision of road and rail services to Johannesburg's Black suburban residential areas have been improved in recent times, but are still not sufficient to cope with the needs of their residents. In the long term it is probable that the urban planning concepts applied to the Black residential sector will have to come under serious revision, to separate them from their historical racist and separatist intent.
