Capture: Urban History in South Africa Captured at: H-URBAN mail-list Originally from: Keith Tankard [This is an update of an article on South African urban history that Keith Tankard, Lecturer in History, Rhodes University, East London, wrote in July, 1995 for H-Urban. -- W. Plotkin, H-URBAN] Posted by Keith Tankard Urban History in South Africa is still in a fledgling state. We have not yet got into the debates which occupied American and British historians of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s concerning definitions of cities, theoretical frameworks or the difference between History as site or process. Indeed, in the South African context, such distinctions seem hardly relevant because there are few places which qualify as cities and those with historical significance are a rarity. Many of the towns which assumed an early importance (centres such as Graaf Reinet, Swellendam and Potchefstroom) lost their primacy when the economic focus of the sub-continent shifted first to the diamond fields of Kimberley and then to the gold reefs of the Witwatersrand during the late 19th century. If one measures cities in terms of antiquity, few in South Africa are more than a hundred years old. In the Western Cape there is only Cape Town while the Eastern Cape has three (Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown and East London). There are two in Kwazulu-Natal (Durban and Pietermaritzburg) and two in Gauteng (Pretoria and Johannesburg). The Free State and Northern Cape have one historical city each (Bloemfontein and Kimberley respectively). The rest are either very recent cities or old community towns whose histories are inextricably intertwined with their surrounding countrysides. Historians have therefore been forced to follow a traditional approach and those who have looked at the early market towns have usually widened their scope to include the adjacent agricultural districts as well, such as Ken Smith's work on Graaf Reinet. [1] Indeed, South Africa's only national Journal of Local History, _Contree_, was dedicated to both town and country until lack of finance and readership forced it to suspend publication at the end of 1995. South African academics who have produced major works on towns and cities are also few in number. Only about 30 theses (mostly at Masters level) have been written with an urban flavour since 1918 and, of these, less than 20 would qualify as urban histories. None have followed the quantitative methods which seem to be preferred in America and it is doubtful whether many South African historians could be classified as urban historians in the mould of Britain's Harold (Jim) Dyos. The most consistent early work on Urban History was done by Rhodes University (Eastern Cape), with its series of theses on Grahamstown. The initiative was taken by Keith Hunt in 1959 with his own master's study on the development of municipal government in that settler city. Thereafter he supervised three more dissertations which further explored that topic. [2] Since then my own masters and doctoral theses has been produced on East London, also through Rhodes University. [3] Yet even Professor Hunt would hardly have classified himself as an urban historian because his wider interest focused on other aspects of South Africa and his lecturing encompassed themes in International History, especially Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Indeed, the demands made on our historians make little allowance for specialization. Even the existing sub-categories such as Economic History (of which few departments have survived at local universities) are losing ground as government subsidies shrink annually. Today it seems that History itself is an endangered species. At most, therefore, South African historians can be said to have an interest in the urban but can neither devote their entire career to it, as in the Dyos definition, nor embark upon complex quantitative surveys, as in the American approach. The latter method would be difficult to adopt, in any case, because South Africa, like Australia, lacks the detailed archival census material. In short, Urban History in South Africa has followed another route or, to echo Britain's Derek Fraser, if it deepens the understanding of any historical process or situation, it hardly matters where the academic community places it. [4] Urban History nevertheless has an important role in the South African context, indicated by the fact that more and more historians are dabbling in it even though few actually call themselves Urban Historians. The city is seen as functioning in two ways. First, it is a microcosm of social development in the region as a whole but it is also a major instrument in the development of the wider community. Furthermore, with the current stress on making History more relevant at all levels, Urban History takes on greater significance. More people than ever before are living in urban areas and, with less working hours and consequently greater leisure time, there is an ever-increasing group of urban dwellers who are taking an interest in their History. Historical artifacts are all around them, in the ruins, the old buildings, the antique furniture and even the very lay-out of the town itself. People are asking questions but, without thorough research by properly trained historians, the answers tend to be either superficial or, as is often the case, erroneous. Urban historians are attempting the explanations, albeit on a part-time basis. Another function of Urban History is currently being stressed. As South Africa moves away from the apartheid era, historians are becoming increasingly interested in trying to explain how the draconian system of legal segregation came about in the first place. Scholars are therefore immersing themselves in research into the growth of the `location' systems, as the townships set aside for the Black communities were called. They are trying to explain how attitudes of racism were formed, how it was influenced by such factors as disease, hygiene, or simple labour exploitation. Several Masters Theses on these topics are in the process of being researched at present. As in South Africa's History proper, there are really three distinct schools of historiography. The Afrikaner Nationalist school (now a dying breed) used History as a means of fostering the development of the Afrikaner `Volk'. Their emphasis was therefore on the History of the White Community in general and the Afrikaner Community in particular. The Black people would enter the picture only when they affected the White community, and especially the Afrikaner folk. The Liberal historians, on the other hand, have been more interested in examining the growth of the towns and cities in a more holistic way, examining trade, economic development, physical growth of the urban areas, social forces, prostitution and crime. They would look at the History of the whole community, both Black and White, as a means of explaining the dynamics of the urban situation and it is from this group that most of our modern urban historians appear. Our Radical (often Marxist) historians on the whole have not been particularly interested in Urban History as such but have concerned themselves rather with explaining the emergence of the apartheid system in the light of what they would call `capitalist exploitation and domination'. Theirs has also been a History with a purpose, to aid in the `liberation struggle' for the overthrow not only of the Apartheid Regime but of the Capitalist System generally. Strangely enough, it is perhaps this latter group which triggered the present increasing research into the origins of segregation within the urban context. Because the Radical School is committed to the paradigm that Capitalism caused Apartheid, its scholars began examining the emergence of segregation within the early mining communities of Kimberley (1869) and Johannesburg (1886). They concluded that there was indeed a clear connection between the development of Mining Capital and the need for an exploitation of the proletariate through segregated Black compounds and `locations'. It was largely in response to this conclusion that new studies began to emerge which indicated that urban segregation did not necessarily have its origins in Industrial and Mining Capitalism. Maynard Swanson, for instance, points out that segregation at Cape Town at the turn of the century was due to a fear on the part of the White Community that the Black people harboured disease, especially during the bubonic plague pandemic. [5] Indeed, since Cape Town was a pre-industrial town, the Marxist paradigm just did not apply. More recently Christopher Saunders of the University of Cape Town has reinterpreted Swanson's conclusions. The concept of legal segregation was already forming in the minds of Capetonians during the latter half of the 1890s, he argues, and the bubonic plague pandemic merely galvanised government reaction. The idea of segregated locations did not, however, originate in Cape Town but was drawn from the example of the Eastern Cape where towns like Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown and East London already had locations. The idea of legal segregation was therefore an import from the Eastern Cape. [6] Vivian Bickford-Smith, in his recently published monograph on the rise of segregation in Victorian Cape Town, further clarifies the issue. Racist attitudes were already clearly discernable there by the late 1870s, were cemented during the recession years of the mid-1880s and were taking a clearly visible form during the 1890s. The stumbling block to the implementation of legal segregation was essentially the question of finance. Who would pay for the system: the Colonial Government or the Cape Town Municipality? The bubonic plague pandemic settled those questions. [7] Saunders' idea that Cape Town was imitating a system already in vogue in the Eastern Cape would appear to have a great deal of truth. Professor AJ Christopher has consistently argued that `locations' existed at towns like Port Elizabeth from at least the middle of the 19th century. [8] My own research into East London agrees with this finding. [9] In other words, urban segregation was alive in the Eastern Cape long before `Capitalist Exploitation' of industrial South Africa found its way into the Cape Colony. Urban History is alive and well within this social context. South Africa, however. is on the verge of a new era, particularly as it relates to museums which are totally dependent on government funding. Up until the late 1980s, with the Nationalist Party firmly in power, museums portrayed mostly White History. Now that Black Majority Rule has been established, however, radical change is being demanded: the displays must depict the life of the people as a whole and of the former politically `disadvantaged' community in particular. Since most Museum History is specifically geared to the urban milieu, urban studies will probably soar. Most of our urban historians, however, are still `dabblers' and most of their `salaried' activities take place in other avenues. Even as Urban History spreads its wings in the future, I doubt whether it will move in the way of the statistical approach simply because statistics are simply not readily available. The Black Community has been a phantom people as far as statistics are concerned and even the most recent census figures represent a hopelessly inadequate view of the situation. Urban History in South Africa will therefore probably remain a mixture of Social, Economic and Political History applied to the urban milieu, but incorporating anything else to help paint the whole picture. Notes: 1. KW Smith, `From Frontier to Midlands: A History of the Graaf-Reinet District' (Doctoral Thesis, Rhodes University, 1975). 2. KS Hunt, `The Development of Municipal Government in the Eastern Province of the Cape of Good Hope, with Special Reference to Grahamstown, 1827-1862' (Masters Thesis, Rhodes University, 1959); M Gibbens, `Two Decades in the Life of a City: Grahamstown 1862-1882' (Masters Thesis, Rhodes University, 1982); R Sellick, `A Study in Local History: Grahamstown 1883-1904' (Masters Thesis, Rhodes University, 1983); ND Southey, `A Period of Transition: A History of Grahamstown, 1902-1918' (Masters Thesis, Rhodes University, 1984). 3. KPT Tankard, `East London: The Creation and Development of a Frontier Community, 1835-1873' (Masters Thesis, Rhodes University, 1985); `The Development of East London through Four Decades of Municipal Control, 1873-1914' (Doctoral Thesis, Rhodes University, 1991). 4. D Fraser, `The Urban Masquerade: Recent Trends in the Study of English Urban History' in _The Historical Journal_, 27, 1, 1984, 254. 5. MW Swanson, `The Sanitation Syndrome: Bubonic Plague and Urban Native Policy in the Cape Colony, 1900-1909' in _Journal of African History_, XVIII, 3 (1977), 387-410. 6. C Saunders, `The Creation of Ndabeni: Urban Segregation and African Resistance in Cape Town' in _Studies in the History of Cape Town_, 1 (1984), 165-76. 7. V Bickford-Smith, _Ethnic Pride and Racial Prejudice in Victorian Cape Town_ (Johannesburg, 1995). 8. AJ Christopher, `Race and Residence in Colonial Port Elizabeth' in _South African Geographical Journal_, 69, 1 (1987), 3-20; `Apartheid Planning in South Africa: The Case of Port Elizabeth' in _Geographical Journal_, 153 (1987), 195-204; `Formal Segregation and Population Distribution in Port Elizabeth' in _Contree: Journal for South African Urban and Regional History, 24 (1988), 5-12. 9. KPT Tankard, `Urban Segregation: William Mvalo's Celebrated Stick Case' in _South African Historical Journal_, 35, 1996 (forthcoming issue). -- +++++++++++++++++++++++++ Web Architecture Magazine email: wam@arch-mag.com http://web.arch-mag.com +++++++++++++++++++++++++