In 1948 the National Party came into power with a very clear political agenda based on "apartheid policies". The main emphasis was on the total control of African movement and the resolution of the African "housing problem". The approach was clearly stipulated in the Colour Question Committee of the Reformed National Party mimeo of 1947: "The native in the white urban areas should be regarded as a Visitor' who has come to offer his [labour] services to his own advantage and that of the white man" (par. 3.2). It is important to note that paid labour was still equated to male labour. Some of the main features of housing policy during this period included: full segregation; erosion of the rights of Africans to freehold tenure in white areas; control of African movement into urban areas; and removal of informal African settlements. Africans were offered limited tenure in native locations on the basis of a thirty-year leasehold, which was revoked in 1968.
The state also moved to limit Africans' use of land and their freehold rights in white urban areas through the passage of the Group Areas Act of 1950 (and subsequent group areas legislation). This Act was aimed at race-based allocation of residential land for acquisition, occupation and use. Consequently a number of Africans were forcibly removed to African locations from areas designated non-African. This removal of Africans from freehold areas, inner city slums and racially integrated areas in the 1950s was accompanied by a massive public housing programme in townships such as South West Townships (SOWETO) in Johannesburg, and Nyanga and Gugulethu in Cape Town. In the Durban Functional Region, Africans and Indians were removed from Cato Manor to Umlazi, KwaMashu and Chatsworth. However, people deemed illegal in the city did not qualify for housing in the new public housing schemes. Such people "disappeared" into African and Indian freehold areas like Inanda and Clermont, where they built their own dwellings or rented rooms (Morris & Hindson, 1995). Watson (1986) notes similar processes regarding removals from Mooiplaas near Pretoria to Mamelodi and Atteridgeville in 1960. It is important to note that the houses of the new public housing schemes were all for rent. Most of the people who “disappeared” tended to be women because they were not deemed to be workers, and therefore they were regarded as illegal in the city. Consequently, they did not have access to regular and sufficient income to afford rent.
During the removals mentioned above, compounds and hostels for male workers were maintained. In fact, new large ones were built on the edges of new townships, like the Jacobs / Mobeni area in the Durban Functional Region (DFR). Furthermore, as these townships were being established, new small informal settlements were emerging near
them because housing shortages continued. In the DFR these informal settlements were mainly in the tribal areas adjacent to the municipal boundary and in freehold areas.
Another important feature of the 1950s was that government introduced a key amendment to the Black (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act of 1923, namely the Native Laws Amendment Act, which extended the influx control measures to all urban areas, and included women. According to Duncan (1984), the state imposed a total embargo on the entry of women into urban areas in the 1950s. She also shows how difficult it was from the late 1960s for women from homelands (and their children) to join their husbands who had legal residence in terms of Section 10 of the Urban Areas Consolidation Act of 1923.
This embargo led to the development of a number of illegal households once "illegal wives and children" joined their husbands and / or parents, respectively. This semi permanent population was unable to live a "normal" family life in officially sanctioned accommodation in the urban areas. A husband with an "illegal" family was not eligible to rent a house in a township unless his wife was lawfully resident with him (Duncan, 1984:78). The implications were that, first, accommodation could only be found in informal settlements. Second, households had to live with others as tenants, sharing a house or living in a backyard structure. Third, the embargo promoted the development of extended households, as adult children were unable to acquire legal accommodation on their own. Fourth, men left their families in rural homelands and entered into "loose" relationships with "illegal" female residents in urban areas.
Todes and Walker (1992) elaborate on specific constraints that women faced during this phase. Because of the embargo on their movement and access to the city, they had even more limited access to formal employment. Consequently, the earning power of women was very limited, and hence they had a limited ability to rent state houses (even where they were legally qualified to do so). Most important though, access to housing for women was implicitly, if not explicitly, generally through men. Furthermore, in KwaZulu-Natal lack of access for women was exacerbated by the Natal Code in terms of which women were minors with no contractual powers. In a sense, the combination of these factors relegated women and woman household heads to informal settlements. In some instances women "were forced into convenience marriages, or were obliged to become domestic workers in order to gain access to housing" (Todes & Walker, 1992:117). So both the urbanisation policy and the housing policy during this period were informed by the ideological role of men as breadwinners
and benevolent heads of households - hence linking housing access to them.