In a letter dated May 27, 1940, from the Native Commissioner to the Director of Native Labour, a number of concerns on Alexandra were raised: morality and crime, growing lawlessness, lack of parental control, prostitution and defiance of authority. These conditions existed in municipal townships as well but were more marked in Alexandra. The
Commissioner motivated for the complete abolition of Alexandra by pointing out that
Alexandra harboured criminals of all sorts and engaged in illicit liquor brewing. Additionally, he stated that the city clearance scheme exacerbated the abnormal influx of “natives” to Alexandra due to scarcity of accommodation elsewhere in Johannesburg. This scheme was required by the 1934 Slums Act, and it provided for the removal of residential areas that were declared slums. In Johannesburg the Western Areas Removal Scheme (WARS) which was executed in 1940, laid the foundation for removals and resettlement of urban black people (van Tonder, D. 1993). His further motivation was that the south west of Johannesburg was connected to the railway and road to Johannesburg. Alexandra bommastandi would not only be provided with housing in the new area but they would get monetary compensation for land as well.
203 Pretoria National Archives File WLD 5/132 178/1909. According to this source Papenfus was also the MP of Hospital Hill.
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The report of the Director of Labour of May 27 1940 (: 6) to, the Native Affairs Commissioner expressed his doubt regarding the wisdom of retaining Alexandra Township.
He stated:
One of the most serious objections to the Township... the objection of the adjacent Europeans... There (will) would be a constant sense of insecurity on their part, and growing hostility from the Europeans.
The same year in May, Falwasser resigned from the AHC. (Bonner and Nieftagodien, 2008:57) He could not cope with the difficult position of occupying a dual role of both Township Manager and chair of the AHC. Subsequently the Native Affairs Commission, also known as Heaton Nicholls, was tasked to investigate Falwasser‟s resignation and to look into the feasibility of establishing an all-white AHC with a “non-European” advisory board. The Commission suggested that Alexandra had been in existence for too long a time for
bommastandi‟s rights of freehold to be denied. At the time Alexandra Township had been in existence for 28 years. The commission recognised the failure of the AHC to stop
overcrowding. Such overcrowding in Alexandra was exacerbated by high interest rates that bommastandi had to pay on their mortgage bonds. The white money lenders deducted 40%
interest before the loaned money was paid out. Furthermore, the bondholders were not allowed any period of grace regarding their repayment dates (Tourikis, 1981; Sarakinsky, 1984).
The commission stated that overcrowding was a broader policy issue which was not restricted to Alexandra as other Johannesburg municipality controlled townships also faced the same problem. By contrast, while they acknowledged that conditions such as growing lawlessness, illegal brewing of alcohol, prostitution, other crime and defiance of authority existed in municipal townships, they argued that these were more prevalent in Alexandra.
However, the problem of crime could not be solved under the then existing circumstances in the township.
The application of the NUAA in Johannesburg meant controlled and limited access to Johannesburg to most black people. Coupled with this was lack of accommodation in
Johannesburg. These unfavourable conditions for Africans in Johannesburg served as factors drawing Africans to Alexandra.
The commission suspected that such difficult conditions would be alleviated through provision of assistance to the AHC by the state, for example, increasing the powers of the
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AHC to include power to prevent slums among others. By so doing, government would gain the support of bommastandi. The commission also recommended that although the AHC could still be left to elect a town manager, such a manager not supposed to be a member of the AHC.
They also noted that the absence of an assistant commissioner to deal with civil and criminal jurisdiction exacerbated challenges of governance in Alexandra. However, the commission, like the others preceding it, acknowledged progress made by the AHC, who did their best under very difficult circumstances. Rather than focusing on the technical failure of the AHC the commission recommended that government would do well to encourage the AHC by concentrating on lessons and positive experience gained from their period of self-governance. Since as mentioned in chapter 3 the commission had acknowledged that they had made progress the removal of the township was not recommended.
By October 2, 1940 the right to vote for “non-European” members of the AHC, which was reinstated in 1937, was once more withdrawn from Alexandra residents. Instead,
Administrators Proclamation No 181 decreed that an all-white three-member AHC be appointed by the Administrator including the chair, who was to be paid £250 per annum for the position. The only “native” representation in governance was to be through an advisory board.
In the same year, a submission for resettlement of “non-Europeans” from Alexandra Township by the North Eastern District Protection League (NEDPL) queried the continued existence of Alexandra Township. The NEDPL, who started campaigning for the removal of Alexandra in the late 1930s, comprised representatives from white suburbs that were close to Alexandra such as Rosebank, Parktown North, Norwood, Orange Grove, Orchards,
Linksfield, Waverley, Highlands North, Bramley, Lower Houghton and Lombardy West, (Nauright 1992: 258). Although Nauright argues that those who were not in support of removal of Alexandra were not allowed to speak at the NEDPL meetings, the organisation seems to have enjoyed prominence in removal campaigns.
The NEDPL critiqued some of the findings of the commissions of inquiry such as the Young Committee and the Feetham Commission. They believed that overcrowding in
Alexandra threatened public health. Like the AWNRP before them, they also used the NUAA discourse and quoted crime and welfare among the “natives” in Alexandra, among others, to support their demand for abolition of Alexandra (Rand Daily Mail May 10, 1939).
The government increasingly seemed to see the Alexandra problem as mainly a governance one. This was a problem for a racist government which did not cater for African
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leadership in urban areas. The solution therefore seemed to lie in correcting the governance anomaly; that of having a black settlement outside a municipality or a settlement whose governance structure included Africans. Interestingly, it would appear that except for the Feetham Commission of 1936-1937, none of the commissions recommended training of members of the AHC, more particularly in view of negative reports on their performance such as the one by Murray, the assistant Medical Officer of Health (MOH) in 1926.
Furthermore, the problems of the governance of Alexandra by the AHC were still raised eleven years after the report of the Young Committee which was the first to conduct the inquiry into the governance issues of Alexandra.
As a black freehold area, Alexandra was not supposed to be ruled by a completely white committee as bommastandi would not be in favour of a governance structure which would exclude them from direct governance of Alexandra (Nauright 1992:218, Bonner and Nieftagodien 2008:57). They recommended instead that the committee should consist of twelve members, with four white people to be nominated by the Administrator in consultation with the Minister of NAD. One of these members had to be approved by the Health
Department of the Johannesburg City Council. The eight “non- European” members were to be elected by Alexandra residents. Interestingly, while the AHC was supposed to be
independent, the JCC seemed to be drawn in indirectly.
In response to the recommendation of the Nicholls Commission, the right to vote was reinstated in 1941. Proclamation No. 162 provided once more for election of two resident members of the AHC. The following year, a print media report described Alexandra as:
... South Africa‟s number one problem township – (a) long-standing headache to Union, Provincial and Municipal authorities, the despair of those interested in Native welfare, and an urgent challenge to democracy in South Africa. (Libertas, 8/1942)
On October 23, 1942, two months after this report, a conference chaired by the Minister of Interior and Public Health, H.G. Lawrence, was called at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.
Although the conference was supposed to be exploratory, their deliberations were sent to Cabinet. The conference was attended by representatives from the Union and provincial governments, the JCC, the South African Police (SAP), the NEDPL as well as the AHC. This conference was intended to investigate the recommendations of the Thornton Commission, which reported three years earlier. The commission‟s brief was to analyse difficulties
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experienced by the Provincial Administration regarding Union legislation that governed local government administration.
Some JCC members present expressed the view that the residents of Alexandra be resettled. However, the new residential area that was to be built was to fall under municipal control. The JCC would cover a third of the removal costs. Also, the body responsible for removal was to make sure that accommodation was available for all the families before moving them.
The representative of the SAP did not seem to support any of the views expressed. He felt that if Alexandra was not removed then it should be controlled by a municipality. He revealed that at the time Alexandra fell under the Wynberg police station, which was staffed by fifteen white people and five “native” police. His concern was that since Alexandra was outside a municipality it had no influx control measures in place, thus ordinarily disallowing the SAP from removing people contravening influx control policies. He cited the example of a large number of Rhodesians who could not be resettled. However, he acknowledged the presence in Alexandra of a large number of respectable “natives”.
The SAP representative further pointed to overcrowding, which he felt posed a health threat to “Europeans”. He estimated that out of about fifty to sixty thousand people living in Alexandra about thirty thousand were unemployed and unemployable, thus raising the important issue of provision of labour as a significant factor in maintaining the presence of Africans in urban areas. This does not account for freehold settlement. On the question of the Thornton commission‟s recommendation that conditions in Alexandra be improved he argued that bommastandi could not afford those improvements. If “Europeans” were going to bear the improvement costs he felt they would have to decide where Alexandra should go. He felt strongly that alternative land was to be provided and “natives” be taught self- government in due course.
The AHC representatives felt that abolition and removal of Alexandra entailed incurring unnecessary costs and that the existing problems could be solved at a lesser cost.
For example, if people were given an opportunity to access houses at low interest rates, they would not crowd into a single room. However, one view was that the AHC would consider abolition of Alexandra if its terms were first presented to inhabitants for consideration. This
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was said while the representative knew very well that bommastandi would not accept abolition, as it would mean the end of freehold rights for them.204
Bell, the Union government Member of Parliament (MP), raised concerns about the physical location and condition of Alexandra. Regarding the former, he termed Alexandra a
“black island in a white sea” as it was increasingly being surrounded by white
neighbourhoods, In as far as physical conditions were concerned Bell claimed that a large percentage of stands were slums as they were each occupied by between sixty and eighty people.
The provincial secretary, H.F. Pentz, expressed the reluctance of the Provincial Administration to be involved in the abolition and removal costs of Alexandra as it fell outside the scope of their duties. Provincial administration was solely concerned with matters of local government and not expropriation. The proceedings of this conference were sent to cabinet for consideration.
The JCC “threatened to alter the position taken by the Young Committee (1928-1929), The Feetham commission (1936–1937) and the Thornton commission (1938–1939), all of which argued for the retention of Alexandra” (Nauright 1992: 292). However, in 1942 the Transvaal African Congress urged the government to adhere to the recommendation of these commissions, including the native affairs commission of 1940. The decline led to establishment of the Alexandra Anti-expropriation Committee (AAEC). This probably added further value to the significance of Alexandra on the national map. In April 1943 the AAEC collected 700 pounds for expenses incurred in defence of Alexandra.
Another argument that was mounted against removal was that the old mud brick house type was being substituted by the redbrick “bond” house. Also one of the housing and density regulations at the time was that a plot should not be covered by more than 33⅓ per cent of housing. However, Sophiatown, a municipal township, had smaller stands which were far more covered with buildings than most of Alexandra‟s.
At the general purpose committee Agenda 682 ordinary meeting of 26 January 1943 the following statistics were presented. Out of 2 541 stands, 1 589 were occupied by
“natives” and “coloured” people while the ATC had 910 and 42 were registered as others. Of the 1 589, 546 were still under mortgage. This probably meant that the remaining 1 043 were fully paid up and transferred to the owners.
204 Minutes of the conference chaired by H.G. Lawrence, the Minister of Interior and Public Health that was held in Pretoria, on October 23 1942.
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In 1943 a Peri-Urban Areas Health Board (PUAHB) was established as per Transvaal Ordinance No. 20. As the name denotes, the board was meant to take charge of areas that were not urban and as such did not fall under any urban local authority.205 However, it would appear that townships that were proclaimed before this ordinance were not affected.
Furthermore, Alexandra had the AHC as its urban local authority hence it did not fall under the PUAHB. The 1944 deputation to meet with the Secretary of Native Affairs, D.L. Smit, to discuss bus service206 elicited no positive response. The group urged government to take over the Alexandra bus route as the AHC was too poor to do it.
The fact that in the first decade of the 1900s Africans were buying land freehold in urban areas means that their permanence in urban areas was recognised. Also the Fagan Commission recognises the reality of African urban permanence. By contrast, Parnell (1993) and Hindson (1987) date the permanence of Africans in urban areas to earlier times.
Critiquing the reference to Africans as temporary sojourners by the Transvaal Commission of 1922, Parnell speaks of “a state rhetoric that identified Africans as temporary sojourners”
(Parnell 1993: 8) while there were families that had been living in Johannesburg for long periods at the time. Hindson refers to government policies that acknowledged this
permanence where he states that “Since at least the 1920s influx control in the cities was closely associated with preferential allocation of employment, according to which local residents were favoured above migrants from the countryside” (Hindson, 1987: 10).
Nonetheless, legislation such as the Native Urban Areas Act of 1923 was passed to ensure the temporary status of Africans in urban areas. The expunging of the African
presence from urban South Africa was done systematically through legal instruments. Hence the government did at first acknowledge the permanence of Africans in urban South Africa.
However, in spite of their attempts to remove Africans from urban areas, at the end of the Second World War the government seemed to accept the fact that they cannot undo this permanence.Nonetheless in the case of Alexandra the application of the Native Urban Areas Act has always been problematic since “it lay outside of Johannesburg boundaries and wae neither fully regulated nor contained by Johannesburg‟s system of labour or residential controls…”(Bonner and Nieftagodien, 2008:106)
The appearance of “bond” houses in Alexandra coincided with the acceptance of the permanence of Africans in urban areas by government. Thus this final change seems to
205 Pretoria National Archives File URU 2247 2297 (1956) Band 3575 and the letter from P.A.G. Grey, Secretary for Native Affairs to The secretary for Justice dated 16/5/1957.
206 D.L. Smit was the secretary of Native Affairs, Minutes of Conferences of October 23 1942 and July 14 1944.
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correspond with dating of the appearance of brick houses – most commonly referred to as
“bond” houses – in Alexandra by some of the bommastandi families that were interviewed.
As stated in Chapter 3 the Native Urban Areas Consolidated Act No. 25 of 1945, prohibited Africans from acquiring or leasing urban land unless approved by the Governor General. South African urban research including work by Horrell; 1978, Hindson 1987, Nauright 1992, Parnell 1993 discuss at length the conditions set out by this Act. These discussions cover – among others the fact that the local authorities were called upon by this law to set aside land for the establishment of African locations and hostels where all Africans, except those who fall under exempted categories, would be forced to reside as municipal tenants.
Further, research such as that conducted by Morris 1980, Platzky and Walker 1985, Hindson 1987, also discuss at length section 10 rights of the Native Urban Areas
Consolidated Act No. 25 of 1945. Such rights determined who qualified to be in urban areas as well as conditions under which they qualified. It prevented black people from living in urban areas unless they were born there and lived there lawfully and continuously for fifteen years and could provide documentary proof that they had done so. Once more urban Africans en masse were deemed illegal as was the case when Johannesburg was declared white in 1933 since Section 10 rendered a large number of urban dwellers and potential residents
“illegal” and hence removable (Morris 1999).
Acknowledging the permanence of Africans in urban areas was problematic for several reasons, for example there was a housing shortage for Africans with a shortage of 10 730 in Johannesburg between 1940 and 1947, and the government would have to deal with the question of justifying their exclusion from the franchise (Morris 1981, SPP Vol.1 1983).
As asserted by Hindson (1987) this argument reveals that government was
recognizing two types of Africans in urban areas: those who were regarded as urban residents because they were settled in urban areas and therefore permanent and the outsiders which refers to new arrivals from rural areas. This argument also reveals an official
acknowledgement of local urban residents who were settled Africans and preferable to the outsiders from the countryside.
If permanent settlement is measured by the existence of families then records of African graves in the Braamfontein cemetery dating 1899 not only locate African families in
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Johannesburg but tend to suggest government recognition of this permanence through keeping their burial records.207
One other useful discussion for understanding the issues of bommastandi stems from the 1948 Fagan Commission or Native Laws Commission whose brief was to look into the Union laws that governed “natives” living in or near urban areas as well as all the other
“natives” who were involved in all the other industries but mining.
Referring to the Native Economic Commission Report of 1932 UG 22 -which made it clear -that it did not make sense for government policies to continue operating on the
Referring to the Native Economic Commission Report of 1932 UG 22 -which made it clear -that it did not make sense for government policies to continue operating on the