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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Strangling South Africa's Cities: Resistance to Group Areas in Durban during the 1950s |
Author: | Southworth, Hamilton |
Year: | 1991 |
Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies |
Volume: | 24 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 1-34 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | apartheid property rights urban history Politics and Government Ethnic and Race Relations Urbanization and Migration Law, Human Rights and Violence |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/220091 |
Abstract: | The Group Areas Act, enacted in April 1950, gave the national government power to segregate South Africa's cities compulsorily. In Durban, as in other South African cities, the members of Indian and African political organizations and neighbourhood ratepayers associations as well as grassroots protestors fought Group Areas. In 1958, the all-white Durban City Council and many of Durban's whites joined the resistance. The national government, however, ignored their protests, and the resistance failed. During the 1960s, the national government began to remove Durban's nonwhites from their homes and neighbourhoods. An analysis of Durban's resistance to Group Areas and its failure shows how interracial tensions and divisions as well as nonwhite poverty and powerlessness empowered the National Party and how the National Party used its power to create a system of social engineering that divided its victims into competing factions. The analysis also shows how the National Party's idealistic vision behind Group Areas forced a confrontation between it and local government. Notes, ref. |