It has been suggested that I post a summary of the paper I presented to
the Urbanisation, Apartheid, Resistance, History and Culture Conference
held in Pretoria (South Africa) from 23-25 May. So here we go!
Urbanisation and Cultural Loss
A Case Study from the Eastern Cape, South Africa
The starting point of my paper is the question of urban
culture, that form of culture which makes one city different
from another. It's an almost nebulous soul that informs the
city, an intangible quality which is unique to each individual
urban area.
I don't want to describe it, or attempt to analyse it but
it's there in every city. I first became aware of its existence
when as a child I was taken on an annual pilgrimage to
Cape Town, South Africa's oldest city. I also noticed it when
I went to Durban for the first time. When, as a teenager, I
went to live in Pietermaritzburg, I found that it too had a soul
that was uniquely its own. I have felt it in Port Elizabeth,
especially in the exuberance that is shown during the sports
matches played there.
I have lived in East London for some fifteen years
now and I have found that something is amiss. It's as if our
Eastern Cape port doesn't have a soul, doesn't have a culture
that is uniquely its own. This point has often puzzled me and
I wanted to explain it in this paper.
One is accustomed to accepting that the South African
system of legalised segregation known as `Apartheid' was an
invention of the National Party regime during the post-1948
years. In actual fact, however, a system much akin to the
apartheid era was developed at the Eastern Cape port of
East London as early as 1848, a whole century earlier. This
fact is important because it allows one to study the forces that
created a system of racial separation and evaluate the effects
of those forces within a microcosmic community.
Urbanisation is a natural phenomenon which follows
automatically in the wake of the establishment of trading and
industrial centres. If allowed to proceed unhindered, it
eventually results in a new urban community with a culture
that is unique, the product of the various diverse parts which
make up the whole, a multicultural transformation. To an
extent one sees this in a city like Cape Town which definitely
has a culture all its own despite the ravages of the apartheid
era.
Most of the larger towns of the old Cape Colony were
originally part of this natural evolution. Cape Town,
Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown and Kimberley each attracted
indigenous peoples who established themselves in
homogeneous communities on the outskirts of the towns.
Important to this discussion is the fact that, until the bubonic
plague outbreak of 1901, no official barriers would be set up
by the towns to prevent this migration. Many of the people
would eventually move into the town proper as their financial
circumstances made it possible. The Colony's so-called
colour-blind constitution encouraged this evolution because it
discriminated only in terms of class and not race, and
therefore allowed a person of `colour' to take up residence in
whatever suburb he could afford.
The homogeneous communities, or `locations' as they
came to be called, tended to be haphazardly governed, with
little attempt made to restrict urbanisation or to maintain a
thorough administrative system. The people were effectively
regarded as part of the town; they were able to put down
roots and call the place `home'. Only at East London, where
the growth of the locations was strictly controlled, did early
urbanisation takes place in an organised and orderly fashion
so as to facilitate the mostly White trading community.
There was a reason for this but it is too complex to
explain here. Suffice it to say that a series of bizarre
accidents led to the creation of a segregated community at
East London from 1848. When a municipal council was
eventually established in 1873, it would then look to its
`tradition' for guidance in the treatment of its `coloured'
population and so perpetuated the system of separation.
The inherent nature of the East London locations was
therefore established as early as 1848 and would not be
substantially altered until the Native (Urban Areas) Act came
into force in 1923. The central tenet of policy was that no
`native' was allowed to enter East London unless he or she
was in possession of a pass issued only to those who were
desirous of seeking employment.
After 1876 the East London Town Council maintained
this policy, a point clearly illustrated in 1903 when Location
Superintendent Charles Lloyd testified before the Lagden
Commission that his two locations existed purely to supply
labour for the harbour and town. Indeed, he said, he would
never allow a resident to absent himself from work for more
than one day without serving an eviction order on him. His
`general view' was that it was `not reasonable' for a Black
person to rest even on Saturdays, the only exception being
someone who met the Government's norm for `exemption'
(meaning that he had to be a registered voter). As late
as 1920 the East London locations were still raided
periodically so as to expel unemployed people from the town.
This situation was unique in the Cape Colony and
would have several consequences. It created a situation in
which the Black people at East London existed entirely for the
benefit of the White community and under its sufferance.
Any person who was perceived as not being of service could
and would be expelled with 24 hours notice. East London
was not seen as a place of permanent residence but a
temporary abode for those capable of serving the town
through their provision of labour. Thereafter they were
expected to leave the location and return to their former tribal
homes.
Perhaps more importantly as regards the development
of culture amongst the port's Black community was the fact
that the location dwellers were never able to put down roots
and call the place `home'. The land belonged to the Council
and, although the people were expected to build or buy their
own huts, they could be evicted at short notice. This feature
militated against any substantial outlay on buildings and the
residents tended rather to build from whatever scraps they
could scrounge from the neighbourhood, using especially the
wood and metal lining from tea-chests. While in 1892 all
huts were of the traditional wattle-and-daub rondavel style,
by 1900 more than 50 percent were shacks and by 1913 that
figure had risen to 87 percent.
I draw a number of conclusions from the East London
case-study. East London is an example of a town which has
developed from its inception along the lines of carefully
engineered segregation. The other larger towns of the Cape
Colony were making the transformation into the development
of their own unique urban culture through the mixture of the
various elements of their population. Even Port Elizabeth,
which was a mere 20 years older than East London, was
showing clear signs of this cultural evolution. This
transformation would continue until the 1923 Native (Urban
Areas) Act would interfere with it and then the National Party
regime would arrest its further growth by the imposition of
Apartheid after 1948.
East London, on the other hand, never even started
along the road to the development of its own unique culture.
For 150 years the port has maintained a strict segregation, so
much so that the Native (Urban Areas) Act, regarded as a
backward (and draconian) step by most of the urban Black
people, was actually seen as a positive move by the
East London location population. Moreover, because location
policy ensured that the residents remained rootless, this in
itself stifled the development of any form of cultural
development. Culture can grow only in circumstances where
the residents are able to put down roots.
East London is also an example of what unbridled
racial segregation like that of the apartheid era would have
produced. Apartheid meant rootlessness, where the Black
people theoretically did not belong in the White towns. In the
national case, apartheid did not fully function because, despite
the many forced removals and the draconian apartheid laws,
the population of South Africa was just too big and the forces
militating against segregation too enormous to allow it to
work properly. As a result, residents of towns like Soweto
have put down roots and indeed a distinct culture has
emerged. East London, on the other hand, was small and the
local authorities were able to maintain rigid policies for
almost 150 years. East London is therefore the apartheid
monster writ small, small enough to ensure that it would work
successfully.
The times have at last changed. Cities like Cape Town
and Port Elizabeth can proceed on their journey of unique
cultural development which was so rudely arrested during the
apartheid era. East London, unfortunately, really has to start
from scratch and, since culture takes decades to evolve, a
distinctive East London culture is probably beyond my
life-time. In the meantime, we can only document what went
wrong, write our histories to explain what happened and what
might have been. The East London museum will have to find
some way to exhibit something that is almost entirely
negative. Hopefully, however, there will be good-nature on
the part of the new `rainbow' townspeople so that cultural
growth will quickly take root and a vibrant plant at last begin
to grow. Hopefully East London can at last find its soul.
_____________________________________________________________________
Keith Tankard email: ktankard@lark.ru.ac.za
Rhodes University post: P.O. Box 7426, East London 5200
Eastern Cape phone: 0431-22539 (W)
South Africa fax: 0431-438307