Moral Tribes and Corrupting Cities

In the early 1930s the Department of Public Health (DPH) blamed the ‘increased prevalence [of VD] especially amongst the urbanised and detribalised class of natives’ on ‘the slackening or absence of moral restrictions amongst them’. Administrators and liberal and missionary philanthropists linked the extent of VD in the general African population to widespread cohabitation, illegitimacy, prostitution and beer brewing, which they attributed to the presence of African women in the towns. The belief that urban life was corrupting and town women were diseased prostitutes was also shared by Africans in urban and rural areas. By the late 1920s, among rural and urban communities the terms ‘Basuto woman’ and ‘town woman’ were euphemisms for a prostitute. 2 A genre of African literature also emerged around the themes of the provocatively sexual ‘loose town woman’, who was promiscuous and enticed by money, and the evils of city life luring young men and women from the country to disease and personal destruction. 3 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Cohabitation · Geography · Political science · Population · Socioeconomics · Sociology · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Demography · Gender Studies · Law · South African History and Culture