“Integrated Regional Planning”
Chapter 3 observed that in the 1940s managers of municipal Native Affairs Departments, unable to cope with local problems arising out of rapid African urbanization, had acquired a keen interest in “regional planning.” This gathering interest served as a precursor to the department’s approach to the construction of locations from 1955 onward. At a meeting of Reef municipal officers in 1941, representatives of smaller towns—already anxious about the growing number of Africans within their boundaries—set aside their fear of domination by the Johannesburg City Council and acquiesced to the recommendation of Graham Ballenden, Manager of Johannesburg’s NEAD, that Reef authorities should coalesce behind a “co-operative effort on the lines of the Rand Water Board.” [122] The tone behind the new interest in regional planning may be gauged by a suggestion made by the representative for Boksburg that the proposed body (AANEA) “might ask the Government to give consideration to the establishment of Native areas within 40–50 miles from the Witwatersrand.” [123] As squatter camps erupted close to the city center and white residential areas, administrators increasingly conceived of urban space as a racial polarity, with whites and Africans congregating at opposite ends of the spatial spectrum. In the dense and sprawling Witwatersrand conurbation, therefore, a racial perspective saturated the gathering interest in regional planning, a principle that was also central to Le Corbusier’s terse view on the matter (and therefore approvingly cited by officials of the NBRI): “The city must be studied within the whole of its region of influences. A regional plan will replace the simple municipal plan. The limit of the agglomeration will be expressed in terms of the radius of its economic action.” [124]
A major impetus to the interest in regional planning in the Reef area was the recognition that industrial and urban expansion in metropolitan areas made it difficult for one local authority to establish new locations or extend existing ones without impinging on the plans of contiguous municipalities. Another closely related issue concerned a long-standing dispute between contiguous municipalities over responsibility for Africans who worked in one district but lived in another.[125] Against this background, “integrated regional planning” in the 1940s came to mean the strategic siting of locations to serve more than one municipal area. This approach to the racialization of urban space meant that the patchwork of locations across the Reef would be replaced by a smaller number of large locations.
The idea was strongly promoted by the Johannesburg NEAD in the early 1940s and gradually gained favor with nearby local authorities on the Reef. In support of this approach, the mayor of Roodepoort-Maraisburg “asked the Conference if it would not pay local authorities far better to join in the scheme that the Johannesburg Municipality had initiated of a native freehold township away from the Reef but accessible by railway on two lines, than to have natives living in their areas.” [126] Even influential liberals found the suggestion attractive. Rheinallt Jones, a stalwart of the SAIRR but present at the conference in his capacity as one of the Native representatives elected to the Senate, argued that a regional approach redounded to the benefit of Africans: “It would be of very great advantage to Natives if they could feel that the whole of the Reef could be considered as one [administrative] area, and for a married Native, for instance, to know that in order to get a job and keep his family going it would not be necessary for him to vacate his house.” [127]
Verwoerd immediately supported the regional approach formulated by segregationist administrators. In 1952, he argued that,
The entire process of identifying suitable residential areas, clearing “black spots” and overcrowded areas in the urban areas, planning the layout of the township, and providing the essential services that would serve the “planned location” was referred to as “integrated regional planning.” Integrated regional planning had two interrelated goals. The first and most immediate was “to house as many people in as short a time as possible without undermining the government’s policy of separate development.” [129] The second goal echoed the preference of administrators in the 1940s for large, strategically sited locations but now also incorporated the entirely novel policy of “ethnic zoning” within locations. It envisaged the establishment of “one or two large Bantu residential areas located at appropriate distances from the European urban area and subdivided into a number of locations which, as far as possible, should be internally zoned according to the different ethnic groups within the Bantu population.” [130] The principal goal of integrated planning, therefore, was to establish strategically sited giant locations designed to service the labor needs of the entire metropolitan area, instead of establishing a number of smaller locations linked to different parts of the metropolis: “It is of great importance that locations should be established in the right places, properly planned on a regional basis, and wherever possible there should not be more than one in any neighbourhood.” [131] All other considerations—whether the land was flat, well-drained, undulating, or composed of expansive soil; proximity to electrical and water mains; the possibility of laying railway tracks or widening existing roads to absorb increased bus traffic; and so on—were subordinated to this cardinal principle of the integrated approach.[132]as a first principle, it must be laid down that in every town and particularly in every industrial area, a potentially comprehensive location site, virtually a Native group area for their occupation must be found. It will have to be large enough to house the whole of the Native working population, so that periurban squatting, the overcrowding of Native residential areas and unlawful lodging in backyards may be stopped.[128]
Squatter movements in the 1940s had galvanized administrators’ discussions about the “proper siting” of locations.[133] The debate frequently hinged around the proximity of locations to white residential areas. Closely tied to this debate, however, was the issue of equipping locations with adequate commercial outlets. There were two contending views. One was associated with the Fagan Commission’s liberal proposition that Africans formed “a permanent part” of the Union’s urban areas. Advocates of this view, such as A. J. Cutten, proposed to establish “sub-suburbs within walking distance of the European townships which [Africans] are to serve…capable of integration therein only in respect of the provision of services.” In this view, segregated African residential areas should be located fairly close to the white urban area principally to reduce the heavy costs of extending essential services to these areas. A further reason for locating African residential areas close to the city was that it reduced the time and money spent on transport.[134] But the short distance also meant that Africans would shop in the white central areas, so that profits would not be diverted to African traders in locations.
The other view appears to have been promoted by the department itself immediately after 1948. This view held that held that Africans should be insulated in distant “satellite townships” from which inhabitants would emerge only to work in the white towns. In this conception, locations would contain within their spatial boundaries all necessary recreational, social, and economic outlets to minimize the need for Africans to enter the white areas. A crucial possibility, therefore, was that Africans would be permitted some measure of property rights in locations that would lie within “the European areas.” Surprisingly, Eiselen outlined this argument in a speech in 1952. He described “the right to invest one’s earnings in fixed or permanent property” as a “fundamental right” and “the exercise of this right [as] basic to the development of stable, respectable, responsible communities.” Expanding on E. G. Jansen’s decision to permit Africans to own private property in the locations, Eiselen continued, “There is the question whether the locations should not be planned as a series of self-contained community units to encourage easier control. I would regard that as a step in the right direction.” [135]
Verwoerd determined otherwise. His solution borrowed selectively from both positions. Rejecting the liberal support for spatial proximity of white and black residential areas, he instructed the Urban Areas Branch to ensure that “Native locations are located at appropriate distances from the White areas.” [136] But he also rejected the propositions that Africans should be entitled to own immovable property in perpetuity and that locations should be commercially self-sufficient, on the grounds that such policies would undermine commerce in the white urban areas. Upon learning from the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut (AHI) that “organized Afrikaner commerce” was opposed to the prospect of the competition posed by African petty trading in the townships, Verwoerd sympathetically invited the body to consult with him further on the matter.[137] But he was equally insistent that the policy of “separate development” precluded whites from trading within “Native areas,” just as the policy prevented Africans from trading within the white areas. Verwoerd’s solution stood midway between the positions of the liberals and of the “total segregationists.” African traders were allowed to pursue small-scale retail operations in buildings that they would rent from local authorities; state control over trading rights would ensure that these did not develop into “large commercial enterprises that would conflict with European-owned businesses.” Once they had accumulated adequate trading skills and small amounts of capital in the urban areas, African traders would be “returned to the Native reserves where [they] will enjoy a monopoly in commerce” as soon as “the formation of towns through closer settlement in the [reserves]” was under way.[138] This solution enabled him to situate “planned Native residential areas” far away from the European areas “and still give adequate protection to White businesses in White areas.” [139]
The Federated Chamber of Industries responded with alarm to a new direction in the “rational planning” of locations that was part of the Native Labour and Accommodation Bill introduced in Parliament in 1953. The bill reinforced the MNA’s powers to veto the siting of locations on a number of grounds and, in a new provision, enabled him to veto the establishment of industrial enterprises “unless the minister first certifies that sufficient accommodation for the Natives to be employed thereon will be available.” Once fixed, the number of workers could not be increased without the minister’s approval. The major intention of the Bill was to compel industry to “decentralize”—to locate industry as close to the reserve borders as possible, so that a commuter labor system could be established as an alternative to the migrant labor system. This provision alarmed industrialists, for now “regional planning meant planning the siting of industry, not locations.” Outraged, the Board of Trade and Industries (BTI) attacked the new approach as an attack on “the free market” and an inversion of the principle that “industrial development…ultimately justifies, demands and pays for housing, and not the reverse.” [140] The DNA retreated from the provision, but did not abandon the concept.[141]