The Context - Parallel Lives

In a speech to the Imperial Insitute on 22 May 1917 General Smuts, who two years later was to become the the fifth Minister of Native Affairs, said the following on the development of policy with respect to African people in the country;

“There is now shaping a policy which may have far reaching effects… we have realised that political ideas which apply to our white civilisation largely do not apply to the administration of native affairs… and so a practice has grown up in South Africa of creating parallel institutions… giving the natives their own separate institutions on parallel lines with institutions for whites… In land ownership, settlement and forms of government, we are trying to keep them apart, and in that way laying down a policy which may take a hundred years to work out, but which in the end may be the solutions of our native problem”

Six years later on 7 February 1923, Smuts introduced the Native (Urban Areas) Act. According to this Act,

• The responsibility for town planning fell upon the urban local authorities, however if the local authority failed in its duty, then the Act authorized the government to step in to take the necessary action. The Act laid that the municipality may set aside land for African occupation, for those Africans employed within its area of jurisdiction.
• African people were forbidden to acquire title to land in an urban area, and the act provided for the prohibition of residence in an urban area by black people
• It also provided for the removal of African people to locations
• Restrictions were also placed on the employment of African people without the permission of the local authority.

By 1927 the Johannesburg City Council (JCC) had decided to create a Department of Native Affairs to deal with matters concerning local African administration. In 1929, with the pressures of influx of African people to Johannesburg, the removal of African people from the whites-only designated residential areas became a priority for the council. So began a process of segregation and removals to the area now known as Soweto.

Early Settlements: The Slums The Klipspruit Native Location is Proclaimed The Creation of Soweto: Orlando The Context - Parallel Lives From the Western Areas to Soweto: forced removals The Second World War Conclusion

Mpanza

Ongoing project: Last updated October 2007