Apartheid's ‘Testing Ground’
Urban ‘Native Policy’ and African Politics in Brakpan, South Africa, 1943–1948
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8980133 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hilary Sapire (Universidad de Londres, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 99-123 |
| Publication date | 1994-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of African History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0021853700025986 |
| OpenAlex | W1973314071 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 25 |
Although studies of both state ‘urban native’ policy and African life on the Witwatersrand in the 1940s have increased in volume and sophistication over the last decade, these two themes have generally been treated discretely in the literature. While a regional focus has yielded a complex and differentiated picture of urban African politics and culture, studies of the state still tend to miss this complexity by focusing on the ‘view from above’, from the vantage point of central state institutions. This article draws together these two separate historiographical threads to examine state policy from the perspective of local state officials, those individuals most intimately concerned with day-to-day administration of urban African communities in the rapidly industrialising Witwatersrand of the 1940s. Through the narrative of a deep personal antagonism between an African politician in the Witwatersrand location of Brakpan and a white administrator, the article explores the intersection of two microcosms: the world of the Afrikaner intellectual, educated in the tradition of ‘volkekunde’ and thereby claiming expert knowledge of the African, and the real worlds of the Africans the expert claimed to know—themselves shaped by new, radical currents in the changing wartime urban context. Using the Brakpan case study, the article also shows that in contrast to the national government's fumbling indecision in the face of the urban crisis, it was the municipalities which agitated for state control over all Africans, tighter influx and efflux controls and the more efficient distribution of African labour between different economic sectors. In voicing their discontent with state policy and in their policy improvizations, local officials anticipated much in the apartheid order of the 1950s
Context (archaeology · Historiography · Narrative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Sophistication · State (computer science · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · South African History and Culture
Women and gender in southern Africa to 1945
From Protest to Challenge
Class, Community and Conflict
Black politics in South Africa since 1945
The Making of Apartheid 1948–1961
Class and Consciousness
The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth Century South Africa
Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919–36
Afrikaner Nationalism, Apartheid and the Conceptualization of ‘Race’
The roots and development of Volkekunde in South Africa
African political organisation in Brakpan in the 1950s
The Communist Party of South Africa and the African Working Class in the 1940s
Birds in the cornfield
The meaning of apartheid before 1948
Sebatakgomo; migrant organization, the ANC and the Sekhukhuneland revolt
Democratic Liberalism in South Africa
White Power and the Liberal Conscience
Pass Controls and the Urban African Proletariat in South Africa
Yours for the Union
Herkoms en geskiedenis van Die Tlhaping
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.13 |
| Citation span | 1995 - 2013 (19) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |