DOORNFONTEIN AND ITS AFRICAN WORKING CLASS, 1914 TO 1935*• A STUDY OF POPULAR ...

287 Pages·2014·10 MB·English

DOORNFONTEIN AND ITS AFRICAN WORKING CLASS, 1914 TO 1935*•
A STUDY OF POPULAR CULTURE IN JOHANNESBURG
Edward Koch
I
A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Arts
University of the witwatersrand, Johannesburg for
the Degree of Master of Arts.
Johannesburg 1983.
Fc Tina
I declare that this dissertation is my own, unaided work. It is being
submitted for the degree of Master of Arts in the University of the Wlj
Witwaterirand Johanneaourg. It has not been submitted before for any
H 1 9 n
degree or examination- in any other University.
till* dissertation is a study of the culture that was made by tha working people who
lived in the slums of Johannesburg in the inter war years. This was a period in
which a large proportion of the city's black working classes lived in slums that
spread across the western, central and eastern districts of the central city area
E B 8 mKBE MB'-';
of Johannesburg. Only after the mid 1930‘s did the state effectively segregate
the city and move most of the black working classes to the municipal locations that
they live in today. The culture that was created in the slums of Johannesburg is
significant for a number of reasons. This culture shows that the newly formed 1
urban african classes wore not merely the passive agents of capitalism. These
people were able to respond, collectively, to the conditions that the development
of capitalism thrust them into and to shape and influence the conditions and pro­
cesses that they were subjected to. The culture that embodied these popular res­
ponses was so pervasive that it's name, Marabi, is also the name given by many
people to the era, between the two world wars, when it thrived. The values and
attitudes that were incorporated into marabi culture also had an important influence
over the kinds of political activities that were undertaken by the working classes
in Johannesburg. Finally, despite the destruction of the slumyards and the culture
I that was spawned in t.h«a, Marabi continues today to influence the culture of black
urban townships. This study is an examination of the conditions tha gave rise to
E [
marabi culture, the network of activities and institutions that made it up, the
effect that it had on popular politics in Johannesburg and the forces that went into
the segregation of the city and the slums in which Marabi was spawned. Docrnfun-
tein is often popularly referred to as the 'home' of Marabi. Thus this slumyard
area forms the central focus of the thesis, although other slum areas are also
LIST or ABBREVIATIONS
ANC African ifetio
CAD Central Archives Depot
Communist Party
Church of the Province of South Africa
Johannesburg City Library
Natal Archives Depot
SAIRR South African Institute of Race Relations
SAP South African Police
SNA Secretary for Native Affairs
CONTENTS
— I I
PREFACE .................................................................. 3
K m
B'; r i i a E H H M g B H /' ^1 . '. '\:\
C HAP TER ’/ I H I n ' I E”
% ' I V M M E j ^ S ^ j i B A :
'
1. CULTURE, IDEOLOGY AND CLASS STRUGGLE - A THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION ... &
Definitions i ......... |j.............................................. 9
Culture and Class Formation ........................................ *3
Culture as a Site of Struggle ...................................... 3,8
Culture and Political Organization ........ U. ....*..............
Cult'ire and Oral History • • * • • 29
2. THE ORIGINS OF SLUMYARDS IN JOHANNESBURG 1900 - 1923 42
H Fj
The Emergence of An Urban Proletariat and Its Response to Housing 1®5«
i u ^
Conditions in Johannesburg before 1923..........BE.....................
Black Working Class Residential Areas in Johannesburg 1900 - 1923 .. 49
Capital and Black Working Class Housing in Johannesburg before
1923 ..................................................... 55
Bousing, Class Struggle and the Local State ....................... - ^5
3. "WITHOUT VISIBLE MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE") MARABI CULTURE IN THE INTER
102
WAR YEARS ........................................................
Conditions of Life in the Slums ...................................... 102
Marabl .............................................................. 108
4. "MOBILIZING IN THE STREET". MARABI CULTURE AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
IN THE SLUMYARDS OF JOHANNESBURG - 1920 TO THE DEPRESSION ......... 138
The Black Petty Bourgeoisie and Political Leadership in
144
Johannesburg ....................................................
The ICU and ANC in Johannesburg in the 20's .................... 347
Spontaneous Responses to State Action in the Slums ................. 155
The Liberal Reform Movement in Johannesburg and its Effects on Political
157
Organization ........................................................
Political Organization in Municipal Locations - A Brief Comparison .. 166
The Depression and Popular Struggles in Johannesburg .............. 170
p/vas
Is,' ■
MARABI CULTURi: - ATTEMPTS AT URBAN SEGREGATION
IH W ^ -S 184IP
IN THE 1920’S AND 1930’s ,r g ....-..b..J... ....
"The Absence of affective Mecbinory" - Contradictions within the
m E| 187
local state in the 1920'• ft**.........................
Conflicts Between Central and Local State Authorities!........ W
liiL'
197
Hrhe Depression and its Aftermath ...................... *...........
Conclusion ................................ 209
6. THE EFFECTS OF URBAN SEGREGATION ON POPULAR UEBAN MxLITANCY IN
1«0'» .....................f l ................................ U ™
The Growth of a New Militancy- - Early Signs g ......................
The Causes of Urban Militancy in the Forties .......ijls*.......... 228
Popular Struggle and Political organization in the1 940's .......... 237
Popular Strjl^gle and the Apartheid State............................. 242
I | | I I I
I | 255
'
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................ "
For almost two decades after the First World War the predominant form of housing
for Johannesburg's black workers was the brick and tin shanties of the elumyard*
[ that spread across the central districts of the city. These slum, made up | § »Hieu
in which most of the city's labouring poor struggled to survive and cope with the
conditions off exploitation that came with living in the city under capitalism. The
slumdwelJ ers' struggle to survive, and to humanize the brutal conditions of town life
involved the creation of a variety of new institutions and social relationships in
Johannesburg. These included new family structures, welfare networks, forms of
mutual cooperation and assistance, informal economic activities and a range of leis­
ure time activities - all of which were accompanied by the creation of a new ident­
ity and set of value, on the part of the cown newly urbanized black working classes.
Thus the slums of Johannesburg, in the inter war period, were a major part of the
terrain upon which, to use E.P. Thompson's celebrated phrase^ the black working
class of Johannesburg, "made iWelf as much as it was made."
This thesis is about the emergence of the slums and the struggles that went into
the making of uhe culture of the people who lived in cnem.
■
Some academic work touching on these issues has already been undertaken. In the
1930's, after the depression, the increasing poverty of South African cities stimu­
lated an academic interest in the problems of urbanization. An important product of
the spate of academic work that followed was Ellen Heilman's study of life in a slum-
yard in Doornfontein in the early 1930's - Roolvard: A Sociological,Study o_f an
Ttrban Native Slum.2 My thesis draws extensively on the extremely valuable empirical
material presented in Heilman's work. However much of her interpretation is coloured
by a dominant liberal concern at the time for the "problems"and "difficulties" in­
volved in african adaptations from "traditional" society to "western" urban condi­
tions. This thesis uses a different analytic1 framework. It attempts to show that
black responses to urban conditions were rational and often ingenious forms of coping
with a new environment rather than awkward attempts to adapt from a conservative
precolonial culture to a new western life style. The thesis also attempts to situate
tho responses of the black working classes in Johannesburg to their urban environ-
within a more historical and materialist context. This is done by looking at
jjjfLforces that went into the growth of the slumyards and which accounted,two decades
jMt, for the destruction of the slums and the way of life that had grown up in
them. Another aspect of the thesis, tba. differs from Heilman's work is it, use
ojjoral testimony to present the experience of life in the slums through the word,
of people who lived in them.
Tl,e thesis also attempts to provide an explanation of urban segregation in Johannes­
burg in the 1930's that is rooted in a historical materialist approach. Here a
range of recent Marxist theoretical works on urbanization have been used to gain
insight into the class forces that gave shape to the city of Johannesburg in the
The thesis especially look* at the way in which the stubborn de­
inter war yf«ears
termination of the working classes to remain in the slums opened up a series of con­
flicts and tensions within the town's ruling classes that delayed the iaplementatiog
jjjjpl
of segregation and allowed the culture of tha siumyards to grow and thrive,
thesis argues that intra ruling class confllr" ever who was to pay for the conlW|
of the black urban working classes was a ctusU/. L factor in this delay in urban seg­
regation. It was only when more financial resources became available during the
post depression economic boom that these contradictions were resolved and segregation
I TT I I I I I I
.„«Uv.ly W l - n t * .
This interpretation is based upon and ex^'vs upon ideas that wer^ developed by Paul
Rich .hi Anflr. Proctor in «rli« wrk-.ig F Th. -t.rl.llst «.pha.l. of the
thesis and of the above works thus depart from the liberal tradition that sees urban
segregation primarily in terms of the parliamentary machinations of individual poflrJ
ticians who were motivated primarily by racial nostility. This^kin* of approach to
urban segregation is best seen in the work of Rodney Davenport.
David Coplan's work on the history of black music and entertainment in South Africa
presented in his thesis. 'In Township Tonight'. South Africa's Black City Music and
Theatre', also provided useful background material for the sections of the thesis
that deal with the recreational aspects of slumyard culture. My the-M s however
focusses specifically on slumyard culture in Johannesburg and employ. eix.iition
of culture that necessitates an examination of a wider network of social slation-
ships - such as family structures and informal economic activities - as we. - as a
close:Jlook at the wider class struggles that went into the making of the urban en­
vironment in which slumyard culture was formed and later destroyed.
Another important aspect of the thesis, not dealt with in existing literature on
black urbanization in Johannesburg, is the role played by cultural activities in the
reproduction of the black working classes. Many recent studies, such as those by
Harold wolpe and Dan C'Meara have examined the role played by the reserve economies
in allowing the black working classes to reproduce themselves in the face of wages
6
inadequate to their subsistence needs." The decline of the productive capacity of
the reserve economies is seen by those writers as major reason for the growth of
urban militancy and the emergence of the repressive Apartheid state in the 1940’s.
My thesis however,attempts to show that the cultural activities of the urban wo- ng
classes were as important as the reserve economies in subsidizing tjRiages of the
black working classes and in maintaining the unemployed and marginilized classes in
ti-a towns. This had important effects on *$* political outlook and behaviour of
these classes and it is argued that the disintegration of slumyard culture a
major factor to be considered in any explanation of the popular struggles in Johannes­
burg to which the Apartheid state was a response.
The examination of the role that the disintegration of slumyard culture playea in
politicizing the black urban population of Johannesburg, in the thesis, is intended
as a supplement to the otherwise thorough analyses of popular struggles in the for­
ties presented by Alf Stadler and David Harris.
Chapter one of the thesis is a theoretical chapter which attempts to arrive at a
working definition of culture and looks at the theoretical debates that exist around
the nature of the relationship between, class formation, class struggle and culture
Chapter two is an examination of the forces that went into the making of the slum­
yard. and the nature of popular and state responses to the urban problems created
by the slums in the period before 1923. Chapters three and four are the central
chapters of the thesis. Chapter three examines the various components of slumyard
culture in the period between 1923 and the mid thirties - the date when the slumyards
and their culture were destroyed by urban segregation. Chapter four deals with the
relationship between slumyard culture and black political organization in Johannes­
burg in the same period. Chapter five examines the responses of the dominant classes
in the city to the slum question, the nature of state and local state interventions
into the slums and the eventual removal of the slums in the mid 1930's. Finally
chapter six looks at the effects of the destruction of slumyard culture and the
influence of this on mass based political action in Johannesburg in the 1940's.
Before moving on to chapter one, mention must be made here of my indebtedness to
Modikwe Dikobe, whose friendship, patience and endless supply of information about
life in the slums of Doornfontein provided me with much of the information and
motivation that made this thesis possible. I am also deeply grateful to Wilson
•King Force' Silgee, the late Jacob Moeketsi, Ernest 'Palm' Mochumi, Peter
Bezant, Mrs. Cole, Schreiner Baduza and the late Selby Maimang for the generous
hours they gave in providing me with information necessary for this thesis. I only
hope tha* my use of their words does not completely crudify and distort the com-
plexitv, richness and subtlety of the history they lived and helped make.