An earlier feature of these developments was that at first the poor were racially mixed and lived in the same neighbourhoods. The rich, who were white, lived separately in better housing than the squalid conditions the poor were living in.
The Water and Sanitation Board, which was later given local government powers, was concerned about the diseases that could spread as a result of conditions in the slums.
This fear was exacerbated by the kinds of vice the discovery of gold brought to a racially conscious republic. The discovery of gold brought to the Rand not only gold seekers. From its early beginnings, some people realised the potential benefits of opening a business near the mines. Such people were the AmaWasha, Zulu laundry washers, Zulu ‘houseboys' who served as domestic workers for white middle class and prostitutes who alarmed the authorities by sleeping also with black mine workers.
Fifteen years after the discovery of gold in the Rand, more blacks were coming to Johannesburg to make a living and increase their fortunes. Similar to mining developments elsewhere, for example Kimberly, black people were forbidden from owning land to prospect for gold. Prospective rights were for whites only. This meant that black people would have to work for the mining industry or seek employment elsewhere.
Despite this disheartening obstacle, a large number of black people continued to flock to the Rand because of a combination of factors such as the hut tax introduced in 1890 to increase the dwindling revenue of the British Cape colony. The loss of land after 1913 pushed many black people to seek alternative earnings by coming to the Rand.
