1950s-1960s
Summary
The National Party government introduces legislation to segregate races in every facet of life. The Group Areas Act (1950), for example, requires blacks to live in segregated areas, and restricts residence to those who are employed. Large-scale, segregated dormitory townships for blacks around major cities are constructed to meet the labor demand of high economic growth.
In response to the apartheid policies, the African National Congress (ANC) adopts the Freedom Charter (1956), demanding that all South Africans be treated equally, regardless of race. Several years later, the ANC launches a campaign against laws requiring blacks to carry passes entitling them to live in urban areas ("pass laws"). While demonstrating against such laws, violence erupts in Sharpeville, resulting in the death of 70 people. The national government declares a state of emergency and imposes tighter restrictions, including a plan to resettle "non-productive" blacks to homelands.
Influences
- Economic boom fuels massive urban development: construction of office skyscrapers, apartment blocks, and major infrastructure investment.
- Economic boom (6%-7% sustained annual growth) money spent internally due to trade sanctions imposed by some trading partners.
- Black political parties (ANC and PAC) banned.
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Policies and Programs
- Formation of Grand Apartheid and homelands policy: separate development, separate governance.
- Responsibility to develop black housing taken from local government and assumed by the state.
- Legislation passes to give colored people preference over blacks in the Western Cape.
- Physical Planning Act (1967) provides local governments greater control over natural resources.
- Job Reservation Act (1954) prevents blacks from competing with whites for certain skilled jobs.
- Native Building Workers Act (1951) defines types of jobs available to natives.
- Group Areas Act (1950) assigns races to separate residential and commercial sections of urban areas.
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Institutional Roles
- Local/national government conflicts over policy implementation.
- Local authorities responsible for service delivery during the 1950s; national government assumes control during the 1960s to slow black housing growth.
- National Department of Bantu Administration: control of blacks in labor, education, and health affairs.
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Methods, Tools, and Practices
- Emergence of high-density, inner-city housing for whites.
- Transportation subsidies for blacks to travel to work from townships.
- Forcible removal of blacks to homelands.
- Regional planning.
- Industrial incentives.
- Township development (e.g., Soweto).
- Administrative separation: one for blacks, one for everybody else.
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Lessons and Outcomes
- Sharpeville Riots against pass laws.
- Large-scale public housing estates for labor.
- Top-down control; politics repressed.
- Public housing in Johannesburg increases from 800 houses per year for the period 1900-1950 to an average of 11,074 houses per year between 1957 and 1958.
- Massive investment in road network and other infrastructure to facilitate industrial investment.
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