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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | The politics of location and relocation: Germiston 1942-1960 |
| Author: | Bonner, Philip |
| Year: | 2000 |
| Periodical: | African Studies |
| Volume: | 59 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Period: | December |
| Pages: | 181-203 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | segregation protest Ethnic and Race Relations Politics and Government History and Exploration Development and Technology |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/00020180020011186 |
| Abstract: | From the mid-1940s the East Rand has been the industrial powerhouse of South Africa. Its industrial working class has exercised an influence on political organization and political life not matched anywhere else in urban South Africa. Little has been written on how the twin processes of industrialization and urbanization translated themselves into the political militancy that coursed through the East Rand in the 1950s. A related issue which has also not attracted much attention is the impact of the key social engineering initiative undertaken by central and local government in the 1950s: removal and rehousing. This article explores how the population of Germiston sought to come to terms with the process of rapid urbanization and the programme of social engineering upon which the Nationalist government embarked in response. It begins by highlighting the industrial character of Germiston's African population in the 1940s and 1950s and the powerful impression made by African trade unionism on Germiston's black political leadership and community at large. It then shows how class cleavages between lodgers and stand holders inhibited broader political mobilization in the 1940s. It goes on to plot the rise of a second-generation African youth culture in the 1940s and 1950s and the way this was harnessed to spearhead mass opposition to removals from the old location of Dukathole, to 'economic' rentals in the new apartheid township of Katlehong, and to Bantu education in both. It traces ethnic and first/second-generation divisions in Katlehong, and the transformations of ethnic, youth and elite cultures. It concludes by discussing the extraordinary political mobilization that the latter permitted and promoted. Bibliogr. |
