1. Dubow, Racial Segregation, passim.

2. Margaret Ballinger notes that this tendency was exacerbated by two other factors: Smuts’ penchant for appointing to the DNA people (such as General E. Conroy) who possessed “little apparent qualification” for the job and his odd decision to pair the reactionary Heaton Nicholls with the liberal E. H. Brookes (after he recanted his support for segregation) on the NAC. When Smuts obtained Parliament’s mandate to assist Britain in the war against Germany in 1939, leading to the demise of the Fusion Government, the SAP government had to work with an NAC on which two of the five members belonged to the opposition party led by General Hertzog. It is also difficult to reconcile J. H. Hofmeyr’s liberal tone with Smuts’ strong personal support for more draconian controls over African urbanization in the late 1930s. See M. Ballinger, From Union to Apartheid: A Trek to Isolation (Johannesburg, 1969). Also see, by R. F. Hoernlé, “Present-Day Trends in South African Race Relations,” Race Relations, 8/1 (1941), and South African Native Policy and the Liberal Spirit (Johannesburg, 1945).

3. S. Dubow, “‘Holding a Just Balance between White and Black’: The Native Affairs Department in South Africa, c. 1920–33,” Journal of Southern African Studies (JSAS), 12/2 (1986).

4. Of the 28 seats the Nationalists won with a slim majority of less than one thousand votes, 14 were in the farming areas of the Transvaal and the Cape. Heard, General Elections, 46.

5. F. Hendricks, The Pillars of Apartheid (Ph.D. dissertation, Uppsala, Stockholm, 1990).

6. The DNA’s newfound “prestige” may be overstated in Dubow’s Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid. Bell suggests that the administrative changes of the late 1920s and 1930s barely altered the department’s profile within the state. M. M. S. Bell, “Politics of Administration,” 88. As Major M. Liefeldt (Chief Magistrate of the Transkei) informed his fellow CNCs in 1950, “…I cannot think of another Department which takes its orders as we do from other Departments—I am referring to [the Departments of] Justice and Lands.…” “Conference of Chief Native Commissioners,” 3 February 1950, in NTS 1812 1 138/276, Annexure.

7. It is emphasized that these acts defined largely formal orientations in the 1920s and 1930s. The practical significance of the linkages among these three pieces of legislation is amplified in Lacey’s account of the labor market in the interwar years. The discussion that follows draws extensively from D. Hindson, “The Pass System and the Formation of an Urban African Proletariat: A Critique of the Cheap Labour Thesis” (Ph.D. dissertation, Sussex University, 1983), chapters 2 and 3.

8. Cited in Hindson, Pass Controls, 84.

9. Only in the 1950s, however, was the Native Labour Regulation Act specifically amended to prevent mineworkers from remaining on in an urban area once their service contract had expired. Hindson, Pass Controls, 69.

10. The Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA) secured black labor throughout sub-Saharan Africa, while the Native Recruiting Corporation was established to recruit within the reserves and in the High Commission Territories (Basutoland, Swaziland, and Bechuanaland). Both of these apparatuses were monopsonies (i.e., they possessed a monopoly on labor in certain defined territories) and were established not only to regularize the procurement of vast amounts of labor, but also to suppress competition between mines for black labor, to disperse labor across individual mines, and to standardize working conditions across the industry. F. Wilson, Labour in the South African Gold Mines, 1911–1969 (Cambridge, 1972); J. Crush, A. Jeeves, and D. Yudelman, South Africa’s Labour Empire (Boulder, 1991).

11. H. Rogers, Native Administration in the Union of South Africa (Johannesburg, 1933), 208. The Director of Native Labour (DNL) also served as the Chief Native Commissioner (CNC) for the Witwatersrand; this arrangement was terminated only in the 1950s, when the positions were split.

12. These duties included “the general adoption of clean methods of recruiting, fair and careful consideration of legitimate grievances of Natives, greater attention to efficiency and the conservation of labor, improved status and responsibility of compound managers and of those in immediate control of Natives, vastly improved hospital provision with full-time medical officers on nearly all the mines, the substantial reduction of death rates from disease and accident, and greatly improved conditions of living for Natives in urban locations.” Rogers, Native Administration, 211.

13. Director of Native Labour (DNL) to Secretary for Native Affairs (SNA), 3 October 1944, in NTS 2239 1 477/280.

14. Unable to convert to mechanization and wage labor, most white farmers became dependent on a system that, for approximately half of the year, permitted them access to the unpaid labor of African communities resident on their farms. In exchange, the farmer permitted his labor tenants to cultivate a certain portion of the farm for their own subsistence; moreover, with the permission of the farmer, labor tenants could seek temporary work in the urban areas, after which they were required to return and continue their obligations to the white farmer. This basic arrangement addressed the penurious condition of most white farmers, affording the less well-off among them access to resident pools of cheap labor and providing farmers with a generous forty-year interregnum to wean themselves off labor tenancy, greatly easing the transition to fully capitalist production methods. See Lacey, Working for Boroko; Mike Morris, “The Development of Capitalism in South African Agriculture: Class Struggle in the Countryside,” Economy and Society, 5/3 (1976). The Urban Areas Act and the Native Land Act prohibited Africans from owning land in the urban areas, confining such rights to the reserves only.

15. Rogers, Native Administration, 87.

16. “Memorandum by Controller of Native Settlements,” April 15, 1939, NTS 8834 1 97/362.

17. B. Vosloo, B. Kotze, and W. Jeppe, Local Government in South Africa (Cape Town, 1974), 23.

18. Report of the Transvaal Local Government Commission, TP 1/1922, para. 42.

19. T. R. H. Davenport, “The Beginnings of Urban Segregation in South Africa: The Natives (Urban Areas) Act of 1923 and Its Background” (Occasional Paper 15, Institute for Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, 1971), 17–19.

20. M. Burawoy, “State and Social Revolution in South Africa,” Kapitalistate, 9 (December 1981); Lacey, Working for Boroko; Davenport, “Beginnings of Urban Segregation.”

21. M. Swanson, “The Sanitation Syndrome: Bubonic Plague and Urban Native Policy in the Cape Colony, 1900–1909,” Journal of African History, 18 (1977), 387.

22. P. Rich, “Ministering to the White Man’s Needs: The Development of Urban Segregation in South Africa, 1913–1923,” African Studies, 37/2 (1978); T. R. H. Davenport, “African Townsmen? South African Natives (Urban Areas) Legislation through the Years,” African Affairs, 68/271 (1969).

23. Lacey, Working for Boroko. With the aid of a small grant secured from the DNA, representatives from the various advisory boards met annually from 1930 onward until they were replaced by Urban Bantu Councils in 1959.

24. To distinguish the two bodies I have adopted the following abbreviations in this study: “NAD” always refers to a municipal Native Affairs Department, while “DNA” always refers to the central Department of Native Affairs.

25. “Notes on Urban Areas Legislation,” in NTS 4447 3 418/313.

26. Gardener (Cape Town City Council), in “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department held at Pretoria on 28 and 29 September 1937, to Discuss the Provisions of the Native Laws Amendment Act (No. 46 of 1937),” Government Printers, UG 56 (1937), 17.

27. B. Porter (Town Clerk, Johannesburg City Council), newspaper clipping, n.d., in NTS 5372 1 51/3131K.

28. Posel, Making of Apartheid.

29. Native Laws Commission (NLC), Report, Government Printers, UG 26 (1948), 54.

30. Cited in Hindson, “Pass System,” 142.

31. For an extensive analysis and discussion of each of these provisions, as well as the contradictions between them, see Posel, Making of Apartheid.

32. Native Farm Labour Committee, Report, 1937–39 (Pretoria, Government Printer, 1939), 46.

33. Ibid.

34. Crush, Jeeves, and Yudelman, South Africa’s Labour Empire, chapter 1.

35. Morris, “Development of Capitalism,” 305.

36. W. J. G. Mears, “Farm Labour,” 24 April 1945, in NTS 2229 2 463/280, 69.

37. A. Cook, Akin to Slavery: Prison Labour in South Africa (London, 1982).

38. Morris, “Development of Capitalism,” 305; H. Bradford, A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa (New Haven, 1990); Cook, Akin to Slavery, 39.

39. Lacey, Working for Boroko, 161.

40. Native Farm Labour Committee, Report, 1937–39, 23. Tribal control was thus loosened by the very system it was designed to serve. In 1936, D. L. Smit sent a circular to Native Commissioners warning them about “farm labourers who evade their contractual obligations” and the consequent appeals the department had to deal with. The circular captures the convergence of interests among a diverse number of groups with significant interests in the preservation of tribalism: “These representations emanate not only from farmers’ associations and individual farmers, but also from Native sources, chiefs, headmen and parents having complained that young natives of both sexes are leaving the locations and farms in growing numbers without their permission. In some cases these young Natives are not heard of again by their parents while in others they have returned home after a lengthy spell in some urban or industrial area where, through undesirable associates, they have acquired evil habits or have even drifted into crime.…” Circular letter from SNA to NCs and magistrates, 14 March 1936, in NTS 8834 1 97/362.

41. Smuts’ comments are appended to a “Memorandum” (drawn up by the Lands Section[?, 1936) in NTS 2229 2 463/280. At a time when the labor shortage was described by farmers in the Eastern Transvaal as “acute” and farmers were addressing numerous letters to the department complaining of “the problem of farm Natives remaining without permission in the towns,” the Director of Native Labour proposed that the Theron Company and the Native Recruiting Corporation be permitted to undertake recruiting operations for the mines in the area. See DNL to SNA, 17 June 1936, in NTS 2097 222/280.

42. Ibid.

43. N. W. Neethling, “A Farmers’ ‘Native Labour Bureau,’” clipping from Farmers Weekly, 3 September 1930, in NTS 2139 1 257/380.

44. Ibid.

45. Controller of Native Settlements to Minister of Native Affairs (MNA), memo, 15 April 1939, in NTS 8834 1 97/362.

46. Ibid.

47. SNA to DNL, 29 April 1939, in NTS 8834 1 97/362. Moreover, the incident had raised a fundamental problem. Squatters affected by Chapter IV had two options. They could either remain in the rural areas as labor tenants and have the number of days they worked for the farmowner compulsorily set at 180 days, or they could, under the terms of Section 38 of the Land and Trust Act, demand relocation to the reserves on the grounds that they had been “displaced” by the operations of Chapter IV. Although many labor tenants did perform 180 days of unpaid labor, the SNA noted that a statutory requirement would introduce an “element of coercion” into rural administration and that its “application would be looked upon with the greatest mistrust and suspicion by the Native population as a whole.” Requests for trust land, he continued, would “embarrass the Department” since the released areas were “already barely sufficient to relieve congestion in the existing scheduled native reserves and locations.” Smuts to Controller of Native Settlements, 29 May 1939, in NTS 8834 1 97/362.

48. Smuts to Controller of Native Settlements, 29 May 1939.

49. Clipping of letter to the Farmers Weekly is in NTS 2139 1 257/380.

50. Circular No. 1 of 1934, in NTS 8834 1 97/362.

51. “Notes of a Meeting between the DNA and Northern Transvaal Co-op Recruiting Company,” May 1944, in NTS 2204 2 234/280.

52. “Department Circular No. [? of 1944” in NTS 2252 1 848/293.

53. See “Memorandum for MNA” (signed W. J. G. Mears, n.d.) in NTS 22229 2 463/280, and a handwritten note by Smuts on this memo. Also see Prime Minister to SNA, 9 October 1945, in NTS 2229 2 463/280; D. L. Smit to DNL, 31 March 1941, in NTS 4479 2 513/313. The “farm labour scheme,” involving the diversion of pass offenders from the courts to farmers, was instituted in 1947 and rapidly descended into barbarity. It is discussed in chapter 4.

54. Native Farm Labour Committee, Report, 1937–39, 4.

55. Cape Town City Council, “Minute of the Mayor,” 1946, 8.

56. DNA, Report, Government Printers, UG 7 (1919), 3. African urbanization was officially investigated on a number of occasions between 1910 and 1923. These reports are summarized in Hindson, Pass Controls, 29–39.

57. E. Hellman, “Urban Areas,” in E. Hellman (ed.), Handbook on Race Relations in South Africa (London, 1949), 251–52.

58. L. Venables to CNC, 8 June 1948, in NTS 5732 1 51/313K.

59. E. Roux, Time Longer than Rope: A History of the Black Man’s Struggle for Freedom in South Africa (Madison, 1948; reprint, 1964), 274.

60. Ibid.

61. T. Lodge, “Political Mobilization during the 1950s: An East London Case Study,” in S. Marks and S. Trapido, The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth Century South Africa (London, 1987), 318.

62. Secretary for the New Standholders Committee to MNA, 9 March 1945, in NTS 4238 8 80/313.

63. A. Cobley, Class and Consciousness: The Black Petty Bourgeoisie in South Africa. (New York, 1990), 169.

64. P. Wilkinson, “A Place to Live: The Resolution of the African Housing Crisis in Johannesburg, 1944–1954” (African Studies Seminar Paper, University of the Witwatersrand, July 1981), 12.

65. D. H. Reader, The Black Man’s Portion: History, Demography and Living Conditions in the Native Locations of East London Cape Province (Cape Town, 1961), 115; A. Stadler, The Political Economy of Modern South Africa (London, 1987).

66. Sunday Times, 22 April 1945, newspaper clipping in NTS 4238 8 80/313, 112

67. By this time, Mpanza had become well known to anyone who read Johannesburg’s newspapers. An ex-criminal convicted for murder in 1914, Mpanza emerged from prison a converted Christian and preacher and became a teacher in Pretoria before moving to Johannesburg. A. Callinicos, Gold and Workers: A Peoples’ History of South Africa, vol. 1 (Johannesburg, 1991).

68. B. Hirson, Yours for the Union: Class and Community Struggles in South Africa, 1930–1947 (Johannesburg, 1990).

69. See memo by Brian Porter (Johannesburg City Clerk) to DNL, 17 May 1947, in NTS 5372 1 51/3131K.

70. Taken from the Brian Porter memo cited in previous note.

71. Roux, Time Longer than Rope, 277.

72. In terms of War Measure No. 81 of 1943, the Railways Administration was authorized to refuse tickets; see memorandum “Influx of Natives into Urban Areas” 16 April 1946, in NTS 4479 3 513/313. Also see documents dated 1946 to 1947 in NTS 4479 3 513/313 for the optimism with which the DNA and the Cape Town City Council initially viewed the scheme.

73. These regulations are reprinted in Rogers, Native Administration, Appendix.

74. On one occasion, the Subtenants Association in Orlando sought the NC’s permission to “punish” a member of the advisory board. Accusing the board member (who, together with his colleagues, was contemptuously vilified by the association as “the sons of the Council”) of “betrayal,” the Subtenants Association was inclined to administer the “treatment given to German spies—he should be killed.” Recounted in a memo by K. Morgan, (NC, Johannesburg) to DNL, 17 May 1947, in 5372 1 51/313K.

75. Joint Council of Europeans and Africans to SNA, 1 June 1946, cited in “Representation of Non-Europeans in the Johannesburg City Council,” memo by Johannesburg NEAD, December 1946, in 5372 1 51/313(K).

76. Circular signed by F. Rodseth, 12 August 1947, in NTS 2246 1 603/280.

77. T. Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (London and New York, 1983).

78. Respectively, these clarion calls referred to the board’s opposition to the profits that municipalities gained from their monopoly on the production and sale of traditional beer and to the threatening powers that the superintendent exercised over advisory boards by virtue of his statutory position as chair of advisory board meetings. “Minutes of a Meeting of the Joint Advisory Board,” August 1939, in NTS 5732 1 51/313K.

79. J. E. Mathewson, “Policies and Practices of Native Participation in Municipal Government in Southern Africa” (Ph.D. dissertation, Potchefstroom University, 1958), 101; L. Reyburn, “The Urban African in Local Government: A Study in the Advisory Board System and Its Operation” (South African Institute of Race Relations, Fact Paper 9, 1960), 14.

80. Joint Council of Europeans and Africans to SNA, 1 June 1946.

81. Taken from memo by Brian Porter to DNL, 17 May 1947.

82. “Report of the Committee to Consider the Administration of Areas Which Are Becoming Urbanised But Which Are Not Under Local Government,” Government Printers, UG 8 (1940), 27.

83. Ibid.

84. Ibid.

85. “Minutes of a Meeting Held at the Office of the DNL,” Johannesburg, 17 February 1950, 2, in NTS 5310 7 51/313 E.

86. See comments of the Commissioner of Police in same folder cited above.

87. Cited by Smit in SNA to DNL, n.d., in NTS 4501 1 566/313.

88. Advisory boards complained that “whenever we bring up any complaint which in any way affects or casts a slur on the Location Superintendent then our remarks are not minuted and we are merely stultified in our efforts to get redress.” “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 20. Also see L. Kuper, An African Bourgeoisie: Race, Class and Politics in South Africa (New Haven, 1965), chapter 11.

89. H. J. Simons, “Some Aspects of Urban Native Administration” (SAIRR, 1940), 105.

90. A. B. Xuma, “Evidence Given before the Commission Enquiring Johannesburg 1/3/50 into the Riots on [sic] Newlands, Krugersdorp and Randfoentein,” A. B. Xuma Papers, Box M, 1949–60.

91. “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 2; Dubow, Racial Segregation, 124.

92. In terms of the Constitutions drawn up in 1910, local authorities occupied the third and lowest tier of government, below the central state and the provincial administration. Local authorities possessed no powers to override acts of parliament or provincial ordinances and served as subordinate agents to the provincial and central levels of government, while all capital programs undertaken by local authorities were controlled by the central state. Vosloo, Kotze, and Jeppe, 23. Also see chapter 6 for the department’s view of its specialized concentration on rural administration.

93. “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 3 and 33.

94. Smuts prefaced his support for strengthened influx controls with the observation that “one of the greatest difficulties with which we have to deal in this country is the scarcity of farm labour at the same time that there is a surplus of native population, many of them unemployed, in the towns.” Ibid., 2.

95. Rodseth to DNL, 11 March 1945 in “Transfer of Registration Fees,” in NTS 1954 1 286/278/I.

96. See Smuts’ comments in “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 3.

97. Memo by Brian Porter (Johannesburg City Clerk) to MNA, 21 June 1948, in 6282 7 51/313(P), 720.

98. L. Venables to SNA, 3 August 1946, in NTS 5372 1 51/3131K.

99. Posel, Making of Apartheid, 41.

100. Smit, in “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 12.

101. Ibid.

102. Ballinger, From Union to Apartheid. Also see the Reports of the NAC in the 1930s, as well as Nicholls’ comments in “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department.”

103. Two MNAs recorded their strong reservations about the pass laws in their memoirs: see D. Reitz, No Outspan (London, 1943), 58; and P. K. van der Byl, Top Hat and Veldskoen (Cape Town, 1973). Bell notes that Smit’s liberal views on the pass laws became more evident once he stepped down as SNA and served as a Member of Parliament (MP) in the 1950s; see M. M. S. Bell, “Politics of Administration,” 84. Deeply attached to the Cape’s liberal tradition, Mears recorded his unease with the pass laws in his doctoral dissertation, “A Study of Native Administration in the Transkeian Territories” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Africa, 1947).

104. Report of the Departmental Committee Appointed to Enquire into and Report upon the Question of Residence of Natives in Urban Areas and Certain Proposed Amendments of the Native Urban Areas Act, No. 21 of 1923 (mimeo, 1935); this report is also referred to as the Young-Barrett Report. The second quote is taken from Dubow, Racial Segregation, 125. Rodseth served as Secretary to the Commission. That he was in accord with the opinions of Young and Barrett, however, is clear from NTS 5372 1 51/3131K. Also see Rodseth’s memoir, Ndabazabantu: The Life of a Native Affairs Administrator (Johannesburg, 1984), and Dubow, Racial Segregation, 208, fn. 147.

105. J. M. Brink (NC, Johannesburg), “Influx of Natives on the Reef,” in NTS 4606 1 209/313(3).

106. Ibid.

107. See “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 2.

108. Interdepartmental Committee on the Social, Health and Economic Conditions for Urban Natives, Report, 1944.

109. See Verwoerd’s comments in House of Assembly Debates (hereafter, HAD), 77 (1952), col. 544.

110. Memo by D. L. Smit, 1944, in NTS 4606 1 209/313(3).

111. “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 3.

112. “Urban Areas Act,” 1934, in NTS 4606 1 209/313(3).

113. The Amendment Act had a long history; its origins were located squarely in the spirit of the Stallard Commission’s report. It flowed directly from the pen of Colonel Stallard in the form of recommendations he submitted in 1930 to the Joint Select Committee appointed to reach a compromise between the SAP and the NP over Hertzog’s contentious three “Native Bills.” By 1937, the compromises had yielded two pieces of legislation—the Native Representation Act and the Native Land and Trust Act. As D. L. Smit reminded delegates at the 1937 conference, the Amendment Act was the third and last measure that finalized the compromises between the SAP and the NP. See comments by Smit, Smuts, and Nicholls in “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 1–2; and Native Affairs Commission (NAC), Report, 1937–38, Government Printers, UG 54 (1939), 7–8. As part of the accords with Hertzog’s National Party, Smuts accepted the Amendment Act despite the fact that the Stallardist tone of the measure conflicted visibly with the support which he otherwise gave to liberal documents such as the report of the Native Economic Commission (NEC). Somewhat oddly, too, he sought the support of Heaton Nicholls, at best a lukewarm ally and generally a thorn in his side, to sell the 1937 act to skeptical municipal authorities. While Section 12 of the Urban Areas Act (providing for the registration of service contracts) was retained, a distinct and new Section 5 was added to gain greater control over African entrance into urban areas. This section provided penalties for introducing labor illegally into an urban area, controlled the employment of non-Union (i.e., “foreign”) labor in the urban areas and provided measures for expelling “to his home or last place of residence” any non-Union African found in the urban areas.

114. Smuts, in “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 3.

115. Ibid., 27.

116. Reaffirming the internal hierarchy of state power in this manner cannot be attributed directly to the Young-Barrett Report. It was also consonant with the committee’s ambiguous observation that “limitations of human freedom of this magnitude appear to us to be in principle a matter of state as distinguished from municipal control,” suggesting that oppression was acceptable only if it bore the impress of parliamentary approval. The point that Young and Barrett had been concerned to make was that municipal policy should conform to guidelines set by the central government. See Report of Departmental Committee…[on] Residence of Natives in Urban Areas.… Heaton Nicholls was adamant on this point—hence his appeal to the conference delegates to “take a national view” of the act. See “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 26.

117. “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 26.

118. Berman, Crisis and Control, 33.

119. Ibid.; G. Therborn, What Does a Ruling Class Do When It Rules? (London, 1978), chapter 2.

120. “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 25.

121. Bell, “Politics of Administration,” 34.

122. Cited in Dubow, Racial Segregation, 125.

123. Department of Native Affairs, Review of the Activities of the Department…, 1944–45, Government Printers, UG 1 (1945), 8.

124. See Memo by Brian Porter to DNL, 17 May 1947.

125. Springs Town Clerk [for AANEA] to SNA, 1 April 1935, in NTS 4461 1 456/313. Municipal interest in the distinction between rural and urban Africans is evident in the address that H. Junod, a leading anthropologist, gave before the Pretoria City Council on the subject. A copy of his address is in NTS 4461 1 458/313.

126. See General Manager, South African Railways and Harbours, to SNA, 8 July 1935, in NTS 1361 3 2027/170; and, for the Coordinating Committee re Natives in the Cape Peninsula, see “Control of Influx of Natives to Cape Western Districts” (1946), in NTS 4479 1 513/313.

127. Managers were licensed and given “the same measure of security accorded to Public Health officials…in recognition that they are often called upon to perform unpopular work.” “Notes on Conference between Municipalities and Native Affairs Department,” 20.

128. L. Venables to SNA, 8 June 1948, in NTS 5732 1 51 313K.