Orlando West, Soweto

An Illustrated History

Noor Nieftagodien, Sally Gaule

• Publisher: Wits University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781776141142
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Until the end of the First World War, urban growth in Johannesburg proceeded unevenly and haphazardly, but under the impact of a wave of militant struggles by black workers and in the context of the devastating impact of the 1918 influenza epidemic, the state became determined to better manage the movement of Africans into the urban areas and to place them in properly controlled locations. The promulgation of the Native (Urban) Areas Act of 1923 was intended to meet these objectives. The Act was a hybrid piece of legislation. On the one hand, it espoused the principles enunciated by the Stallard Commission of 1922, which had infamously declared that an African 'should only be allowed into the urban areas, which are essentially the white man's creation, when he is willing to enter and minister to the needs of the white man, and should depart therefrom when he ceases so to minister'. On the other hand, when it empowered local authorities to set aside land for black residential purposes, it recognised the need to create conditions for the settlement of an urban African population in order to provide a reliable supply of labour to secondary industry. The growing demand for housing led the government to establish Orlando (named after the chairman of the Native Affairs Committee, Edwin Orlando Leake) in 1931, when thousands of African families were evicted from urban slums in and around the city centre and moved there. The authorities described this as a 'model native township' that was supposedly planned along the lines of a garden city. The new location, it promised, would be characterised by tree-lined streets, business opportunities and recreation facilities. Reflecting the views of a somewhat conservative section of the African urban elite, the popular African newspaper Bantu World predicted on 14 May 1932 that the new township 'will undoubtedly be somewhat of a paradise [that] will enhance the status of the Bantu within the ambit of progress and civilisation.' Orlando West, Soweto illuminates the genesis of Orlando township and its well-known subsequent history, which is inextricably linked with the lives of prominent South Africans such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, amongst many others. A beautiful photographic essay complements the testimony from residents, who describe the way things were, and the way they are now, in the heart of Soweto, South Africa's most iconic African township.

CHAPTER ONE

ORIGINS

SOWETO AND JOHANESBURG, INEXTRICABLY LINKED. THEIR SEPARATE histories cast light on each other.

Formally established in 1886 after the discovery of gold, Johannesburg grew rapidly over the next couple of decades to become South Africa’s main economic centre and its most populous city. In 1887, the mining town set up to accommodate early mine diggers contained a mere 3 000 souls, but as the gold rush gathered momentum its population exploded. Immigrants poured in – from the region and from all over the world. By 1899 there were 100 000 people in Johannesburg. And in 1911, only a quarter of a century after the founding of the city, there were about 240 000. Johannesburg’s rate of growth was exceeded only by New York’s.

The name Soweto was only adopted in 1963, after the rapid expansion of townships in the south-western areas of Johannesburg from the 1950s. Before then, the city’s non-mining African people, like many other poor inhabitants of this rapidly expanding ‘city of gold’, were to be found in the inner city slums and municipal locations. But the origins of Soweto go back to the turn of the twentieth century. There were three pivotal moments in the pre-apartheid development of the township: the 1904 plague, the establishment of Orlando in 1930, and Mpanza’s squatter movement of the mid 1940s. Each of these contributed in its own way to making Soweto the pre-eminent location of Johannesburg’s African population.

At the end of the Anglo-Boer War, the newly appointed engineer of Johannesburg, Major WAJ O’Meara, expressed outrage over the slumyards in the north-west of the city. There was no public housing, and Burghersdorp, Brickfields, Fordsburg, ‘Kaffir Location’ and ‘Coolie Location’ had become the main residential sites for the city’s poor working class. It was ‘Coolie Location’ that most angered city officials, not only because they saw it as a risk to the health of the town, but also because Indian traders living in the location were perceived as a threat to white small businesses. Writing recently about the contestations that preceded the early founding of what was to become Soweto, the medical historian Howard Phillips has explained that the city authorities proposed to deal with these ‘problems’ by an improvement scheme, the primary aim of which was to re-order ‘the racial, social and sanitary geography of a key part of Johannesburg, which it now damningly labelled “the insanitary area”.’ A commission established to consider the future of this area proposed the destruction of the location and removal of its inhabitants to racially segregated areas.

The Public Health Committee was appalled that ‘the Malays, Indians and Kaffirs were jumbled all over the place … [alongside] men and women of various colours and nationalities’. What the planners, engineers and doctors who ran the committee aspired to, argues Phillips, was ‘a modern, ordered city, with its population clearly sorted by race, class and ethnicity once and for all.’ Johannesburg was to be properly segregated for the benefit of its white population. ‘The existence and future of Johannesburg as a white man’s town in a white man’s country,’ stated the committee, ‘is, in our opinion, involved … [as] the proper development of the European population would be endangered by the present state of things.’

Source: Wits Historical Papers

Early Johannesburg, 1886–1888

Source: Wits Historical Papers

Johannesburg, c1900?

Source: Wits Historical Papers

Johannesburg, 1911

The opportunity to realise this vision of the city, a white man’s town in a white man’s country, arose in March 1904 with the outbreak of pneumonic plague in ‘Coolie Location’. Indian and African residents were blamed, and although none of the more than one thousand African residents of the location succumbed to the disease (it was probably imported from outside the country), the authorities moved swiftly to destroy the slum. On 20 March, a police cordon surrounded the location to prevent anyone from entering or leaving. Plans were then implemented to move the residents to a quarantined site, and finally ‘Coolie Location’ was demolished by fire. All of this took place in a matter of days.

The authorities wanted to move coloureds and Indians to an area around Fordsburg and Mayfair, but strident objections from white residents thwarted that plan and so it was decided to move all ‘Coolie Location’s’ population to Klipspruit Farm, about twelve miles from the city. Klipspruit Farm’s main connection to the city had been as the proposed site of a sewage farm. The city, though, owned the Klipspruit, and the main railway line ran past it. In September 1904, the Johannesburg Council decided to declare Klipspruit a permanent settlement for the city’s African population – or at least for those not living in compounds or in backrooms on their employers’ properties. In 1906, residents of ‘Kaffir Location’ were moved to Klipspruit. By 1908, the number of African people in the new location stood at 2 500. Indians were relocated to ‘Malay Location’, which was situated near the old ‘Coolie Location’.

The primary objective behind this early urban segregation project was succinctly captured by the Public Health Committee: ‘The advantages of keeping the native quarters completely away from the white population will be obvious to everyone, whether one considers the interests of the native or those of the poorer class of Europeans.’ Keeping the ‘races’ apart was supposedly desirable for everyone, but especially for poor whites who tended to live and mix with poor blacks in the urban slums.

But despite this removal scheme only a small percentage of the city’s African population not residing in compounds was relocated to Klipspruit. The rest continued to live in and around the city and, after the formation of Union in 1910, which united the British colonies of the Cape and Natal with the Afrikaaner Republics of the Free State and Transvaal into a single country, they also set up homes in freehold and municipal locations.

Johannesburg’s African population after the First World War was in the region of 105 000 persons, nearly half of them working on the mines and accommodated in prison-like compounds. A further 30 000 were domestic workers who lived on the premises of their employers, and a mere 4 000 lived in municipal locations such as Klipspruit. Then there were a further estimated 17 000 Africans crammed into the insalubrious slums dotted across the city. The discrepancy between the populations of the official municipal locations and the slums reflected both the tardiness in the state’s provision of formal housing to urban Africans, and the preference of people to live close to the city.

In the post-war period there was a continued influx into the urban areas and, in the absence of housing, more and more people were forced to settle in the already overcrowded slums. By 1927 the overall population of these settlements had increased to 40 000. It was this steadily growing urban African working class, desperately struggling to establish roots in the city, that caused consternation for the authorities. From the perspective of the state, slums were sites of all sorts of antisocial behaviour, including oppositional politics. Its response was to plan for the systematic elimination of the slums, and to move Africans to better controlled municipal locations.

Until the end of the First World War, urban growth proceeded unevenly and haphazardly, and the authorities tended to respond to urban crises in an ad hoc way, as they happened. But under the impact of a wave of militant struggles by black workers, and in the context of the devastating impact of the 1918 influenza epidemic, the state was spurred into more decisive action. Some town planners attempted to import the notion of the ‘garden city’ which would provide more public direction over the mainly uncontrolled private development that characterised urban life in the early part of the century. Above all, the state was determined to better manage the movement of Africans into the urban areas and to place them in properly controlled locations when they settled in the cities.

Source: Wits Historical Papers

Inner city slum removals

Source: Wits Historical Papers

Prospect Location, 1937

The promulgation of the Native (Urban) Areas Act of 1923 was intended to meet these objectives. The Act was a hybrid piece of legislation. On the one hand, it espoused the principles enunciated by the Stallard Commission of 1922, which had infamously declared that an African ‘should only be allowed into the urban areas, which are essentially the white man’s creation, when he is willing to enter and minister to the needs of the white man, and should depart therefrom when he ceases so to minister’. On the other hand, when it empowered local authorities to set aside land for black residential purposes it recognised the need to create conditions for the settlement of an urban African population in order to provide a reliable supply of labour to secondary industry.

The growing demand for housing and the desire to eliminate slums led the government to establish Orlando (named after the chairman of the Native Affairs Committee, Edwin Orlando Leake) in the early 1930s. The promulgation of the Slums Act in 1934 gave the government the legislative muscle to act decisively against urban slums, with the result that thousands of African families were evicted from areas in and around the city centre. For example, in the late 1930s approximately 7 000 African residents of Prospect Township on the south-eastern outskirts of Johannesburg’s central business district, were removed and offered accommodation in Orlando.

When the original Orlando (Orlando East) was established in 1931, the authorities described it as a ‘model native township’ that was supposedly planned along the lines of a garden city. The new location, it promised, would be characterised by tree-lined streets, business opportunities and recreation facilities. So impressed were town planners with this new scheme that the plans for Orlando won a town-planning competition. Reflecting the views of a somewhat conservative section of the African urban elite, the popular African newspaper Bantu World, predicted on 14 May 1932 that the new township ‘will undoubtedly be somewhat of a paradise [that] will enhance the status of the Bantu within the ambit of progress and civilisation.’

In reality, the new municipal location was only a ‘model township’ from the perspective of the authorities. It fell far short of providing its residents with even the basic amenities required for decent living. In the book Soweto – A History, Nelson Botile, a resident of Orlando, vividly described the condition of the house his family moved into:

The walls were not plastered, they were rough and the floor was just grass. It was not cemented. My father started plastering the house once we were inside. The houses had no taps. We didn’t have sewerage – we had what was called the bucket system and we had these people coming at night to remove the sanitation. The streets were not tarred and they had no names. The houses only had numbers.

Source: Wits Historical Papers

New housing in Orlando

The low standard of housing erected in Orlando prefigured the massive housing development in ‘model townships’ under apartheid. In his 2004 work Johannesburg: The Making and Shaping of the City, the urban geographer Keith Beavon describes the township that emerged to the south west of Johannesburg after 1940 as ‘a large, sprawling urbanised area without true urban amenities. It was threaded through by dusty, unpaved roads along which were erected monotonous ranks of identical, small, temporary, single storey “matchbox” houses (predominantly between 40m² and 44m² in size) lit by candles and oil lamps, where cooking was done on paraffin and coal stoves. All but the barest of daily necessities had to be bought in Johannesburg and carted back on the inadequate public transport system from the white city.’

In the mid-1930s, the authorities may have imagined that they had achieved a degree of control over the lives of urban Africans: slums were successfully being eliminated and municipal locations appeared to be functioning relatively well. Although the African population of Johannesburg continued to grow, the rate of increase was rather modest and at the start of the Second World War the number of African people living in locations had increased to just over 100 000 (importantly from the perspective of the authorities, nearly half of this number, according to Beavon, lived in Pimville and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Interviewees
• Chapter One: Origins
• Chapter Two: A Right to Live in the City
• Chapter Three: Place of Defiance
• Chapter Four: Uncertain Times
• Chapter Five: Good Times
• Chapter Six: Work and Education
• Chapter Seven: Inspired By Black Consciousness
• Chapter Eight: The Beginning of The Uprising
• Chapter Nine: The Making of a Middle Class
• Chapter Ten: Making a Revolution
• Selected References
• Chapter Eleven: Photographic Essay
• Introduction