Strategies of Landlords and Tenants

Under Construction Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde

Edited by Rosemarijn Hoefte KITLV, Leiden Henk Schulte Nordholt KITLV, Leiden

Editorial Board Michael Laffan Princeton University Adrian Vickers Sydney University Anna Tsing University of California Santa Cruz

VOLUME 246

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vki Under Construction

The Politics of Urban Space and Housing during the Decolonization of Indonesia, 1930-1960

By Freek Colombijn

With the assistance of Martine Barwegen

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2014 This hardback was originally published in paperback by KITLV Press, Leiden, The Netherlands, in 2010 under ISBN 9789067182911.

Cover illustration: Creja ontwerpen, Leiderdorp. House under construction in Kebayoran Baru (front page Sociaal Spectrum van Indonesië 3(1) 1949).

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013951262

ISSN 1572-1892 ISBN 978-90-04-25864-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-26393-2 (e-book)

This work is published by Koninklijke Brill NV. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of off prints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re‐use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV.

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents

Abbreviations ix

List of figures and tables x

Preface xiii i introduction 1 decolonization 6 Urban space and ethnicity 13 Housing 19 Methodology 21 six portraits, one story 24 conclusion 26

II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 29 the Dutch colonial period 30 the Japanese period 36 the Indonesian Revolution 46 the postcolonial democratic experiment 54 runaway urbanization 65 conclusion 69

PART ONE URBAN SPACE: RACE AND SOCIAL CLASS iii race, class, and spatial segregation 73 ethnic divisions in colonial times 77 the case for racial segregation 82 social class divisions 85 the housing market 92 race, social class and spatial segregation 96 Live histories 97 conclusion 100 vi Contents

IV Life in the kampongs 103 Kampongs: chaos or order 104 Living conditions in kampongs 111 social composition of kampongs 117 indigenous and European types of houses 123 Urban planning 133 conclusion 138

V Land tenure 141 Formal and informal forms of ownership 143 Local diversity and spatial patterns of land tenure 156 insecurity of land tenure during decolonization 164 conclusion 177

PART TWO HOUSING: INSECURITY AND OPPORTUNITY

VI Housing in the kampong; The contest between dwellers and 183 the government strategies of kampong improvement 184 Boon or burden of kampong improvement 194 the size of the investments 199 squatting: the spread of mushrooms in the wet season 207 1950-1954: ad hoc moves against squatters 211 1954-1956: concerted actions 215 After 1956: facing the facts 221 conclusion 224

Vii the housing crisis during the years of turmoil 229 Housing shortages 231 the crisis in Jakarta 241 tensions between the Army and the civil government 249 tensions between the civil government and private property owners 253 tensions between corporate enterprise, the military, and the state 258 the Housing Allocation Bureaus 263 conclusion 273

VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 277 A Japanese-Indonesian think-tank 279 Contents vii

reconstruction of eastern Indonesia 281 Post-war urban planning 288 Kebayoran Baru 297 conclusion 307

IX construction; Public housing and the private sector 311 the building sector 313 real-estate developers 317 company housing 320 Private house owners 322 Public housing in colonial times 325 the end of the NV Volkshuisvesting corporations 333 Public housing in independent times 336 the balance sheet of public housing in the 1950s 343 the rise of the concept of self-help housing 348 conclusion 352

X strategies of landlords and tenants 355 the composition of the rental sector 356 Housing agencies 363 How landlords and tenants reacted to fluctuations on the rental market 368 the rental market after 1945 373 the Rent Tribunals 379 Forum shopping 384 conclusion 388

Xi conclusion 393 A landscape of chaos 393 ‘Race’ and class 396 Becoming a developing state 402 three ugly legacies of the housing crisis 405 surviving the chaos 407 national integration 409 the politics of housing during the long decolonization 411

Appendix 1. Population figures of Indonesia’s major cities 413

Bibliography 417

Index 463

Abbreviations

ANRI Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia DPd dewan Pemerintahan Daerah DPrd dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah NA Nationaal Archief NEFIS/CMi netherlands Forces Intelligence Service/Centrale Militaire Inlichtingendienst NICA netherlands Indies Civil Administration PN Pengadilan Negeri PT Pengadilan Tinggi RI Republik Indonesia List of figures and tables

Figures

1 the removal of the Jan-Pieterszoon Coen monument, Jakarta 42 2 Becak in Japanese times 44 3 inside a tram in Japanese times 44 4 Municipal council (DPRD) in Bandung under construction, 1955 56 5 national Monument in Jakarta under construction in the early 1960s 64 6 Population of major cities, 1920-1960 66 7 Population of medium-sized cities, 1920-1960 67 8 chinese quarter of Batavia, circa 1930 83 9 Kampong in Surabaya, late 1910s 104 10 Map of kampongs in Semarang 105 11 Kampong in Semarang around 1930 106 12 Petak multi-family dwelling in kampong Malokoe, Makassar 109 13 subdivided kampong house 115 14 Middle-class house in Medan, circa 1930 127 15 Middle-class house in Semarang, circa 1930 128 16 Blueprint of a middle-class dwelling, 1912 129 17 Blueprint of a small villa, 1948 130 18 House designed by Liem Bwan Tjie for Tan Hong Hie, Semarang, 1941 131 19 Public housing built during Japanese times 131 20 A contested shop (kedai) 166 21 Kampong in Batavia before and after improvements 190 22 Map of building lines in kampong Pandjoenan, Cirebon, 1938 192 23 Kampong Kjooëi Matji, Cirebon, 1943 203 24 Kampong Ngaglik, Surabaya, 1955 211 25 Panitya Perdjuangan Tanah dan Rumah Ngaglik 218 26 Japanese soldiers search houses in Kupang destroyed by Allied bombing 235 List of figures and tables xi

27 Lodgings in Hotel des Indes, Jakarta 262 28 design for a kampong house in Kebayoran Baru, circa 1949 305 29 nirof apartment building built by Associatie NV 314 30 Advertisement for Darmo Boulevard, Surabaya 322 31 Public housing at the Sekip project, Medan 326 32 Public housing at the Djati Oeloe project, Medan 327 33 Poster for Congress on Healthy Public Housing (Kongres Perumahan Rakjat Sehat), 25 August 1950 337 34 Advertisement for the housing agency Nederlandsch-Indisch Verhuur en Administratie Kantoor 363 35 Front cover of Van Vloten’s Woninggids voor Soerabaia 364

Tables

1 Population and ethnic composition (in per cent) of major cities in 1930 25 2 dates of return of Dutch administration to major cities 48 3 Average annual rate of population growth of major cities, 1920-1960 66 4 Gross monthly income of various occupations (unmarried workers) in guilders, 1942 and 1948 90 5 Percentage distribution of rental values of houses in Malang (1937) and Medan (1948) 93 6 Percentage distribution of monthly rents of houses, 1930-1940 94 7 ethnic background of landowners in kampongs in Medan, 1923 120 8 ethnic composition of kampong Tanah Tinggi, Batavia, 1939 120 9 Building material and ethnic background of occupants of houses in Jakarta, 1930 121 10 Building material and ethnic background of occupants of houses in Bandung, Semarang, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya, 1930 122 11 Government funds spent on kampong improvement, 1925-1940 200 12 central government share in kampong improvement in Java, 1925-1937 201 13 number of damaged houses, as reported in 1948 238 14 Private buildings in Jakarta occupied by military and other institutional users, December 1947 252 15 Budget for Kebayoran Baru, 1948 (in guilders) 299 16 number of houses built for municipal housing authorities (gemeentelijke woningbedrijven) by the end of 1929 325 17 capital and stock of houses of NV Volkshuisvesting corporations, 1930/1932 328 xii List of figures and tables

18 number of houses and their building material in major Javanese cities, 1930 329 19 share of public housing in the total housing stock of Javanese cities, 1930s 330 20 Percentage distribution of monthly rents of public housing, 1929, 1932 331 21 number of houses financed by Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat, 1951-1954 342 22 investments made by Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat, 1951-1954 343 23 owner-occupied houses vs. tenant-occupied houses, Semarang, 1929 357 24 number of houses owned per landlord, Surabaya, 1943 361 25 Average rent of upper-class houses advertised in Surabaya, Makassar and Medan (in guilders) 370 26 rent reduction in Javanese cities in Japanese times 372

Preface

This book is an outcome of the research programme Indonesia across Orders: The reorganisation of Indonesian society, which was coordinated by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, NIOD) in Amsterdam. This research programme was funded generously by the Dutch Ministry for Health, Welfare and Sport (Ministerie van Volksgezondheid, Welzijn en Sport). The stated aim of the Indonesia across Orders programme was ‘a broadly based historical investigation focusing particularly on the social and economic consequences of the Japanese occupation and the subsequent Bersiap and revolutionary period, as well as the decolonization process, for the different population groups in the different regions of the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia’. The fact that the research for this book was undertaken in the context of a large programme has had various consequences. The programme laid down important parameters: the focus on social change in the cities, the period 1930-1960, and the ambition to somehow cover the whole country. Although the programme stipulated explicitly that all the different population groups should be taken into account, the Ministry wanted to make sure that the stories of Eurasians and other Dutch citizens in Indonesia would not be forgotten, such that perhaps these groups receive more attention in this book than warranted by their actual role in the events. Within these parameters, I was free to choose a specific topic as a lens through which to view the social changes. From the start I chose housing as my lens, instead of, for instance, food, traffic or entertainment, because housing was an important issue for the Eurasian community in the Netherlands. The loss of their homes during the Japanese occupation and the Indonesian Revolution, whether by expropriation, squatting or demolition, was a common and often traumatic experience for many Eurasians, and naturally had financial repercussions. The topic was expanded to include urban space, because of the often-mentioned racial segregation in the towns. Little could I know in the beginning that precisely because of the choice of housing as a theme, the significance of ethnic differences diminished in the research process, while class difference gained in importance. Nevertheless, I believe that former Dutch residents of the xiv Preface

Indonesian towns will still recognize much of their own lives in this book, although they will find the narrative under certain income categories rather than under ethnic groups. Some members of the Indische community in the Netherlands were sceptical at first about my urban research project; I hope they will find the book has some worth after all, even though it speaks primarily to an academic audience. It is first of all to these Indische readers that I apologize for the delay in finishing the book, the more so because some of them helped me by serving as informants. I thank the interviewees in the Netherlands, and I am grateful to the much larger number of people interviewed in Indonesia. An unexpected outcome of the research for myself was the fact that I have learnt to appreciate several aspects of the Dutch colonial state. I have tried to avoid explicit value judgements in the text, but nevertheless, as a Dutchman, I am susceptible to the critique of apologetic history writing. The Indonesian case is in this respect comparable to Dutch history in Europe. The Habsburg monarchy that governed the Netherlands in the sixteenth century was in many ways more modern than the Dutch nobles and citizens who rebelled against it (and in the process gave birth to the Dutch nation), and the French that held power during the Napoleonic years were more progressive rulers than the Dutchmen that preceded them. Nonetheless the Dutch rejected foreign dominance. The same applies to Indonesia. Regardless of benevolent intentions, contemporary rationalizations, and real achievements of colonial rule, at the end of the day no country has the right to subjugate another country. The occasional positive words in this book about the actions of the Dutch colonial state are not intended as an extenuation of colonialism as such. The last effect of being part of a large research programme, and in particular the lavish funds from the Ministry, is that an unusually large number of people could be involved in the production of this book. I will try to mention the most important persons. It is no hollow phrase to say that this book could not have been written without Martine Barwegen. Martine assisted the research for three years. In addition to countless other things she did, she browsed through time-consuming sources like newspapers and other serials stored in Dutch libraries, conducted the archive research in The Hague, Makassar, Bandung, and Bank Indonesia (Jakarta), and made the statistical analysis on spatial segregation. On top of that she was a very good companion. Purnawan Basundoro, Sarkawi B. Husain and Moordiati (of Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya) and I discovered together the municipal archive of Surabaya. They collected some data for me at first, but quickly embarked on their own independent research. Young historians Fauzan Hamirza and Haryanto collected most of the data from the press reports by the Indonesian press agency Antara (stored at the national library, Perpustakaan Nasional, in Jakarta). Preface xv

R.J. Clason, S. Karsten and Liesbeth Dolk kindly lent me material about their respective famous fathers. Hasti Tarekat allowed me access to the library of Badan Warisan Sumatera – The Sumatra Heritage Trust in Medan. Shigeru Sato, Goto Ken’ichi, Murakami Saki, Atsushi Ota, Miki Moriyama, and Yamada Naoko all helped me find material about the Japanese period in Indonesian history. Margaret Leidelmeijer subsequently kindly helped me to get hold of some of these documents from the Japanese period. Peter Keppy and Pauline van Roosmalen shared liberally their own material with me. The library staff of various institutes behind the scenes performed a lot of work. Most of them remain anonymous, but I would like to thank explicitly Rini Hogewoning, Nico van Rooijen, Alfred Schipper, and Josephine Schrama of the KITLV library. I was fortunate that the KITLV (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) in Leiden, to which I was seconded during the research, provided me accommodation and other facilities; practical support came from Ellen Sitinjak, Rinus Gravekamp, and Ton van der Mark. Two teams of Indonesian scholars took part in the Indonesia across Orders programme, skilfully led by respectively Moh. Hisyam (Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia in Jakarta) and Bambang Purwanto (Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta). We have collaborated in several workshops and I have profited greatly from their many papers and debates. I will not thank every individual researcher, but remember especially warmly my partners in urban history: Sarkawi, Purnawan, both already mentioned, Johny Alfian Khusyairi, Idaliana Tanjung, Radjimo Sastro Wijono, Farabi Fakih, and Eva Nur Arovah. I hope they took as much pleasure in our collaboration as I did. I am also grateful for various reasons to Taufik Abdullah, Sukri Abdurrachman, I Ketut Ardhana, Dirk Buiskool, Pratiwo, Johan Silas, and Soehardi Hartono. The Indonesia across Orders programme enjoyed the careful attention of a steering committee of history professionals and an advisory board of representatives of the Eurasian community and other scholars. Without belit- tling the input of others, I have profited especially from detailed comments by Elsbeth Locher-Scholten. This research was furthermore embedded in two informal discussion groups, one covering urban anthropology in more theoretical fashion, and the other the history of the Indonesian city: the Kring van Leidse Urbanisten (KLU, in particular Peter J.M. Nas, Rivke Jaffe, Christien Klaufus, Leeke Reinders, Annemarie Samuels, Ed Maan, and Marc Jansen) provided much anthropological theoretical input; the KOTA group (I mention by name Marieke Bloembergen, Cor Passchier, Remco Raben, Gustaaf Reerink, Pauline van Roosmalen, Arjan Veering, and Hans Versnel) historical empirical insights. The meetings with the KLU and KOTA groups were not only inform- ative, but also very pleasant. Els Bogaerts, Richard Harris, Abidin Kusno, and my colleagues of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the xvi Preface

VU University Amsterdam also gave useful comments on drafts of chapters. All the many hours that these persons spent reading my drafts pale, however, compared to the work by Peter J.M. Nas and Remco Raben, who painstakingly read the full text. I am very grateful to them all. I have taken all their sugges- tions seriously and many have found their way into the manuscript. Other comments, which sometimes pointed in opposite directions, I rejected, or while recognizing the wisdom of them was nevertheless unable to incorporate because they did not fit with the book as a whole. Needless to say, the usual caveat that I alone am responsible for the outcome applies. I also cordially thank Rita DeCoursey, Rosemary Robson, and Rivke Jaffe for the language corrections. Rosemary and Rivke corrected the articles and chapters that form the building blocks of this book and Rita edited the final version. As has been said, the Indonesia across Orders programme was coordinated by NIOD. Els Bogaerts, Marije Plomp, and Remco Raben staffed the programme bureau. Els Bogaerts, taking alternately a strict, critical or encouraging attitude as required, became the embodiment of the programme. The honorific title Madam NIOD (Ibu NIOD), given by our Indonesian colleagues, is aptly chosen. It is thanks to Els’s and Remco’s efforts that the completion of this book was not further delayed than it is. As a bonus came the stimulating and pleasant quarterly meetings with the fellow researchers in the programme: Robert Cribb, Erwiza Erman, Jacco van den Heuvel, Peter Keppy, Jasper van de Kerkhof, Margaret Leidelmeijer, J. Thomas Lindblad, Hans Meijer, Ratna Saptari, and, again, Martine, Els and Remco. Our progress reports and discussion of draft chapters always gave me a boost. When all others had finished their respective tasks, I was still struggling, together with Robert Cribb and Thomas Lindblad, to complete our respective manuscripts. I would like to say to them what the members of the string band of the Titanic reportedly said to each other shortly before the ship’s bow ducked: ‘Gentlemen, it is a privilege to have played with you’ (not that we have ultimately sunk, though). Finally, the Dutch academic climate stimulates the writing of articles but is not conducive to composing books. Several factors have prevented me from becoming overstrained. My colleagues at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the VU University Amsterdam encouraged me to go on with the book. My new running shoes and my old record albums and CDs took away much stress; I mention here as pars pro toto Iggy Pop’s Brick by brick, which would have been the book title, if it had not been snapped up by another author shortly before I completed the manuscript. However, more than anything or anybody else, my wife Gertrud and our children Jochem, Anne and Isabelle have kept me sane. Chapter i Introduction

The decolonization of Indonesia was a process that entailed far more than war, diplomacy, and the development of a new, independent administration. Decolonization also brought about profound social changes. For instance, indigenous people rose to the highest ranks in government. The Dutch colonial overlords were knocked off the pedestal on which they had placed themselves. The military, whether Republican, Dutch or Japanese, gained in prominence at the expense of civil administrators because of the unprecedented level of fighting in the Archipelago. Corporate enterprise came to be seen as an unwelcome, alien element in Indonesian society. Ordinary people identified increasingly with the newly independent, sovereign nation and as a consequence confidently demanded higher wages, more political rights, and, in general, better lives. Many of the social changes that took place during decolonization were particularly manifested in the cities. One reason everybody who lived in cities could not possibly fail to notice the social consequences of the decolonization process was the complexity of the urban social fabric. Many interest groups, whether defined by ethnicity, social class, or economic function, lived in close proximity to each other in the cities, and interacted on a daily basis, at least in passing. People experienced the changes more directly in the cities than in the countryside. Hence, the symbolic appearances of the change of regime could not be overlooked: parades, public performances, banners, statues. It was not only that socio-political changes in Indonesian society were so clearly visible in cities, the urban environment also exaggerated the conflicts and the general anxiety permeating society because of the dramatic consequences of the influx of settlers to the cities. The fighting in city and countryside had resulted in massive flows of refugees, sometimes from and sometimes to the cities. The direction of migration depended on which side the migrants had chosen, and which power was in control. The net result was a rapid increase in urban population. Between the censuses of 1930 and 1961, the annual population growth of some of the largest cities, Jakarta, Bandung, Medan, and Makassar, was between 5 and 6%. In peak years the increase was much larger. While the urban population swelled, the physical infrastructure 2 Under construction of cities rapidly deteriorated as the result of neglect and destruction. Both landlords and administrators often had more pressing matters on their minds than giving the buildings a lick of paint or filling potholes in the asphalt. Moreover, in some cities collateral damage caused by the Second World War and the scorched-earth tactics of the Indonesian revolutionaries worsened the condition of the built environment. The quick succession of administrations threw urban management further into disarray. The consequence of immigration and the deteriorating condition of houses was an urgent shortage of housing. For example, in Jakarta in 1948 a shortfall of 80,000 houses was estimated (Abeyasekere 1989:157), for a population of 1.2 million. The dire housing shortage resulted in intense competition for accommodation, both for existing dwellings and dwellings that had yet to be built. Depending on which element in this competition is under examination, the interest groups competing with each other could be identified as ethnic groups and social classes, or as one of either side of a dichotomy: military versus civil authorities; the government versus citizens; landowners versus squatters; or landlords versus tenants. These interest groups tested each other’s strength in the struggle for housing, which was one domain where the social and political changes during decolonization were acted out. Therefore, the study of housing, or more generally of urban space, provides an important window on the decolonization process and the shifting balance of power within society. In short, one major aim of this book is to shed new light on the social consequences of the decolonization process in Indonesia by looking at urban space and housing. This approach particularly improves our understanding of the way ordinary people experienced the transition from Dutch colonial rule to Indonesian sovereign rule in their daily lives.1 The story of Ibu (Mrs) Betty Latuheru shows how political events affected one person’s housing situation.2 She was born in a small but decent rental dwelling in an alley (gang) in Surabaya in 1934. Her father, who served in the colonial navy, was an Ambonese man who had been granted European status (gelijkgesteld). In 1942 the family moved to another rental dwelling nearby, also in an alley (Nieuw Hollandse Dwarsstraat), which was the place where she told her story to me. The opportunity to rent that other dwelling arose when her uncle and aunt vacated it. Most houses in the neighbourhood were owned by Arabs, but this house was the property of an indigenous cou-

1 The main theme of the book is the impact of decolonization on the city, and I will not go deeply into the reverse relationship, the impact the city made on the political process of decolonization. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the interaction between political and urban change was a two-way process. Abidin Kusno (2000) has argued that urban design and architecture contributed to Dutch colonial control, the social mobilization under Soekarno, and the renewed control of the masses during the Orde Baru. 2 All names of people without an official function are pseudonyms. I Introduction 3 ple from the Banda Archipelago, who also owned a boarding house. In the same alley lived one Javanese, two Chinese, one German, two Dutch, and six Eurasians, many of whom she remembered by name. During the war her father and a brother were arrested together with 45 Ambonese and Manadonese by the Japanese authorities, because they had let off fireworks at Christmas. These two ethnic groups were renowned for loyally serving in the Dutch colonial army, and the Japanese believed the fireworks were meant as signals to the enemy (that is, the Allied forces). All the men arrested were beheaded, except one who was rapidly released, because, Ibu Betty narrated, he was afflicted by a skin disease, which frightened the Japanese prison guards. Many people fled the neighbourhood during the war, but her widowed mother stayed because she had nowhere else to go. Two houses in the alley were bombed in the war, including one into which a Japanese civilian had moved. After the Japanese surrender, during the short-lived resumption of Dutch rule, it became difficult to find a house in Surabaya because many buildings had been destroyed in the early days of the Revolution and the rents of the remaining houses soared; Ibu Betty recalled that the government installed a system of residential permits in an effort to distribute the available living space. After the Revolution had ended, the housing situation changed again. Numerous people occupied dwellings in the alley without bothering to look for the owner; the doors of houses were usually unlocked, and anyone could occupy them. At first tenants did not pay rent.3 When rents were asked again, more middle-class Chinese people moved to the alley, because they could afford to pay more. Ibu Betty’s rent, however, was fixed by the government, and she has paid Rp 50 per month up to the present (an amount of money worth so little nowadays that it is difficult to find a coin that small). At the time of the interview, four families (of her sister, niece, nephew, and herself) lived in the house. They had added two rooms to the house without asking the owner’s permission. After the transfer of sovereignty, she had lost her European status, which had been granted to her father when he was gelijkgesteld. Ibu Betty is a typical ‘person of three eras’ (orang tiga zaman), who has experienced the Dutch and Japanese colonial periods and independence. The political transitions have caused some abrupt changes in her life (death of her father, loss of European status, sudden invasion of the alley by people seeking a dwelling after the Revolution). Her story also contains a number of long-term social changes, which are far less dramatic. For instance, under the

3 It is probable my interlocutor mixed up historical periods. Squatting became common after the transfer of sovereignty (although people usually illegally occupied land and not houses), but the payment of rents was frozen earlier, namely before the transfer of sovereignty (after the Dutch had regained control of the towns). 4 Under construction impact of political vicissitudes the meaning of ethnicity changed. Although ethnic labels remained the same under various political regimes, the value of these labels changed considerably. For instance, the meaning of being Ambonese was transformed from ally of the Dutch, to enemy of the Japanese, to low-profile indigenous group. Class conflicts, crosscutting ethnic boundaries, became visible after independence, when there was more tolerance of grassroots political activities and squatters could more easily trespass on rights of property owners than in colonial times. Declining respect for property affected the balance of power between landlords and renters too. A less visible class conflict occurred when middle-class people invaded the alley and crowded out people with less financial strength. Another important gradual process, not immediately apparent from Ibu Betty’s story, was the emergence of the state bureaucracy and the military as interest groups. The complex relationship between ethnic categories and social classes, and the rise or decline of the state bureaucracy, the military, landlords and tenants form the core themes of this book. With some notable exceptions (Cribb 1991; Frederick 1989; Smail 1964), the many studies of Indonesian decolonization so far have not paid much attention to urban society. Yet the study of cities provides important fresh insights into the decolonization process for five reasons.4 First, what was relevant at the local level was very different from the main issues at stake at the national level. Without much exaggeration, John Smail (1964:157) states that during the Revolution the Republic was little more than ‘the executive committee of the nationalist elite [... and] the Republican government [was just ...] an organ specialized for the conduct of foreign relations’. When it comes to understanding social history, ‘local history has something important to say’. Second, cities form a perfect place to study the changing government- citizens relationship during decolonization, because the administrators and the people had a more direct bearing on each other at the urban than at the national level. At this local level of administration, important changes were happening. A process of Indonesianization (Indonesianisasi) of the top ranks of the civil bureaucracy was begun by the Japanese and pursued after the Dutch resumed control; the composition of the municipal council also changed drastically, with indigenous people occupying the majority of seats. In and of itself, Indonesianization was a positive thing, because it resulted in a bureaucracy that better reflected the ethnic composition of the population. However, the sudden rise of Indonesian middle-rank staff to top positions, preceded by the replacement of Dutch heads of departments by Japanese without prior

4 I am aware that the urban-rural dichotomy is problematic, albeit perhaps less so in the colonized past than today. I also acknowledge that, although it was an urban elite that framed the nationalist rhetoric, this elite could not have done so without support from the countryside. I Introduction 5 detailed knowledge of Indonesia, entailed a loss of administrative experience and, consequently, a less rigid enforcement of administrative procedures. Administrative capacity was weakened even more by the destruction of the physical administrative infrastructure: buildings, files, and office equipment were damaged or destroyed, often wilfully. The task that new Indonesian urban administrators faced was far more daunting than that which had confronted the Dutch. The municipal administration was debilitated precisely at the moment that problems of mass migration and damage to the built environment were at a peak. In addition, it was not just the bureaucracy, but also the other side of the government-citizen relationship that had changed. During the war and revolution, city dwellers had grown more accustomed to risk, chaos, and a disregard for rules; moreover, it is plausible that many people expected urban administrations after independence to be more ame- nable to them than Dutch administrators had been. Topics of disagreement between municipality and citizens involved such matters as squatting, street trade, public housing, and urban symbols. Because of these issues, which were of direct relevance to the people, the urban administration formed a more important interface between government and citizens than did the ministries of the central government. For instance, citizens were far more likely to come up with local, pragmatic solutions to housing problems than the unrealistically idealistic national housing policies. Therefore, cities are ideal places to study government-citizen relationships. Third, the city was the stage for many important events during the Indo nesian Revolution. A distinction should be made between historical events that were history in the city, and other events that were history of the city. For example, the Proclamation of Independence took place in Jakarta, but it would not have made much difference to Jakarta if independence had been declared in, say, Rengasdengklok or Yogyakarta. The narrative of the Proclamation is history in the city; the city was merely the scene of the action. When, however, hundreds of buildings in Bandung went up in flames in an event known as Bandung Lautan Api (24 March 1946), this event immediately changed the situation of urban life itself: it is history of the city. This book is concerned with the history of Indonesian cities, including changes in the urban landscape. Fourth, arguably the most important social effect of decolonization was the changed meaning of ethnicity and ‘race’ and the shifting spatial distribution of ethnic groups and social class. As a rule, ethnicity is more readily observable in cities than in rural areas. Cities have a larger ethnic diversity,5

5 The more people there are, the bigger the random statistical chance of various ethnic groups. Moreover, a critical mass of people necessary to provide certain services (a specialized house of prayer, ethnic food, a supply of marital partners), will be more easily found in cities. Cities therefore attract ethnic minorities. See also Table 1. 6 Under construction and precisely because of the observable differences, people become aware of and accentuate their ethnic identity in an urban environment (Eriksen 1993:20-2; Hannerz 1980:119-62). In the words of Aristotle: ‘A city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence’ (quoted by Genberg 2002:93). Chinese, European, Arab, Tamil, and Japanese migrants in Indonesia were found predominantly in the cities. A case in point was the European community, which by and large had an urban culture. Their club (sociëteit) was the preferred meeting ground, the urban mansion the preferred dwelling, and the city offered the fashion and food that coloured the European lifestyle. As a corollary to the strong European presence in the cities, the Europeans’ departure from Indonesia was most visible in the cities. In the course of decolonization Europeans, including many Eurasians, were removed from the urban scene: interned during the Japanese occupation, held to ransom during the early days of the Revolution (bersiap time), and finally made redundant after the transfer of sovereignty and the nationalization of Dutch companies in 1957 and 1958. In short, the changing balance of power between ethnic groups and the shifting meaning of ‘race’ were both principally urban phenomena. Fifth, decolonization resulted in a net migration to the cities at an unprecedented rate. Some of the problems resulting from this hyper-urbanization have still not been adequately solved today. Shortage of housing, overdue maintenance on the sewerage systems, a failing flood control system, inadequate provision of clean drinking water, disregard for zoning plans, and a land registration system in disarray are contemporary urban problems with historical roots going back to decolonization. Therefore, a proper historical study is relevant to understanding today’s urban development. Most problems of Indonesian cities can be encountered in Third World cities that have not gone through a revolutionary process of decolonization and are not necessarily related to the decolonization process. From an urban studies perspective, squatting, public housing, land tenure policies, urban planning, kampong improvement, and rental policies are all worthwhile topics. Analysing urban development in Indonesia as a case of Third World urbanization from the 1930s to the 1950s is a subsidiary aim of this book.

Decolonization

The nationalist leaders Soekarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed Indonesia’s Independence on 17 August 1945, and the Dutch colonial overlords formally acknowledged Indonesia’s sovereignty on 27 December 1949. These two dates form the beginning and end of the decolonization in a strict sense, but the transfer of power must be seen in a longer time frame. The con- I Introduction 7 ventional textbook overview of the decolonization of Indonesia makes a sharp distinction between the late Dutch colonial period (up to 1942); the Japanese colonial period or occupation (1942-1945); the Indonesian Revolution (1945- 1949); the period of Parliamentary Democracy of the Old Order (1949-1959); the subsequent Guided Democracy of the Old Order (1959-1966); and the New Order (1966-1998). I consider decolonization an extended process, which includes periods both before and after the Indonesian Revolution. The late colonial period is important as the time during which Indonesian nationalism emerged; in the same period the state experimented with municipal administration, giving ordinary people a greater say in public housing and other urban issues. The Japanese period and Indonesian Revolution were decisive in breaking the Dutch colonial hegemony, but inadvertently also dislocated the workings of municipal administrations. The Indonesian Revolution ended neither with the Proclamation of Independence nor with the transfer of sovereignty. During the 1950s Indonesia was looking for ways to tear down the remnants of the colonial era, and to build a new society. Attempts to build an orderly society stranded in the late 1950s, when Indonesia was overwhelmed by its growing economic problems, the fall of parliamentary democracy, the rise of a populist dictator, and the sharpening conflict between the army and the communist party, which ended with the massacre of perhaps half a million communists in 1965 and 1966. I shall refer to this whole period roughly between 1930 and 1960 as the ‘long decolonization’ of Indonesia. In contrast to this ‘long decolonization’, a minimal definition of decolonization focuses on the formal, political process at the national level. For instance, Stein Tønnesson (2004:253) defines it as ‘the process by which a subordinated territory becomes a sovereign and independent state’; or, in the words of Prasenjit Duara (2004:2), decolonization ‘refers to the process whereby colonial powers transferred institutional and legal control over their territories and dependencies to indigenously based, formally sovereign, nation-states’. Many authors, however, go beyond a narrow, political definition and consider decolonization to be a multi-faceted process, which took place over a longer time than the transfer of sovereignty, and encompassed more than the negotiations or revolution. Western economic domination and cultural hegemony have continued after political dependence, in processes labelled variously neo-imperialism, dependencia, incorporation into the world system, Westernization, modernization, Orientalism, and development aid. The formation of a national imagined community started before independence, and nation-building continued long after independence. The emergence of new imagined communities was generated by, and was part of, a process of modernization. John Kelly and Martha Kaplan (2001), in contrast, argue that the focus on the rise of imagined communities, as a somewhat autonomous 8 Under construction process, obscures the role played by United States foreign policy in breaking up bilateral imperial preferences and creating a world of independent states connected by multilateral relationships. As Remco Raben (2007:15-6) remarks, the prefix de- in the term decolonization emphasizes the reversal or removal of colonial traits, so that studying decolonization automatically implies reflecting on what forms the essence of colonialism.6 Recognizing that all the above facets of decolonization may be important, I would like to highlight one other facet of the decolonization process that was important in Indonesia. Decolonization, understood in its narrow political meaning, could be a violent and revolutionary process intended to convince the colonizer to abandon its established position. When decolonization took the form of a violent revolution, this violence had major consequences for the way the process unfolded. Decolonization then involved the uprooting of the established colonial political system. This eradication of the political system is not a universal trait of decolonization – there are many examples of nonviolent roads to independence – but it certainly was in Indonesia. Under revolutionary circumstances, as found in Indonesia, the necessity to first unsettle the established system made decolonization fundamentally different from transfers of power that do not change the rules about who is entitled to govern. Unlike the change of power at decolonization, the succession to the throne in a monarchy and the change of office after election in a democracy, for instance, are regulated by norms within the existing political system.7 Revolutionary decolonization, in contrast, meant overturning the system. No sooner had the new powerholders taken office than they would usually do their utmost to ensure society settled down again. This is what Max Weber called the ‘routinization’ of legitimate power (Kelly and Kaplan 2001:424). In short, the perspective on decolonization most often taken in this book perceives the process as a plunge into chaos and an effort to scramble back to normality. The return to normality was usually a scramble, because once the genie of revolution had escaped the bottle of orderliness, it would not easily go back in it. A few caveats apply to the phase of chaos. First, the depth of the chaos, or the extent to which the colonial system had to be uprooted, was not the same in every decolonization process. Frantz Fanon has argued that anyone who

6 Of course, there are many views about colonialism. Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper (1997:4-5) have remarked that colonies can be interpreted as a domain of exploitation of land, labour, and produce; as a place free from the inhibitions of bourgeois cultures of Europe, in particular a place of sexual opportunity; as laboratories of modernity for missionaries, educa- tors, and doctors; and as the location of the Other, the mirror necessary to develop the European identity. 7 This is not to say that the rules cannot be broken, for example in regicide, and a parliamentary election can, of course, result in a major political change. I Introduction 9 wants to carry out a programme of decolonization must be prepared to use violence. ‘La décolonisation […] est […] un programme de désordre absolu’ (Fanon 1968:6). Indeed, arms and the knowledge of how to use them were important assets in the Indonesian Revolution; several actors who acquired this skill during the revolution were not willing to renounce violence after the transfer of sovereignty (Cribb 1991, 2007:46-8; Frederick 2002). The decolonization of such other colonies as India, Malaysia, Suriname, Hong Kong, and most parts of Africa required far less violence than occurred in Indonesia, or else chaos started only after independence, as in Somalia. A different level of violence resulted in a different balance sheet of the costs and gains of decolonization (Reid 2005). Second, much chaos did not serve a political purpose at all and had its own dynamic. In Indonesia, pemuda (young revolutionaries) experienced independence as personal freedom, and as a manifestation of this newly won freedom they rode on trains and trams without paying (Anderson 1972:185). Some scoundrels enjoyed violent behaviour seemingly for its own sake; violence during the Indonesian Revolution, especially during the bersiap time, took excessive, gruesome forms (Bussemaker 2005; Frederick 2002). Third, the fact that leading nationalist politicians wanted to restore order after they had seized power did not mean they merely wanted to occupy the white man’s position. Most of them had highly principled ideals aimed at a more just social order, such as democratic rule or a more egalitarian division of wealth, than had prevailed in colonial society.8 It is a tragedy that quite a few of the ideals of the nationalist champions have not materialized. Several authors have described how Indonesia passed from stability to turmoil, and back to stability. Harry Benda (1965:1061) is an early author who pointed out that the Japanese period was a catalyst, ‘unloosing the whirl- wind of a many-faceted revolution’, and recently Adrian Vickers (2005:85) has called the Japanese destruction of much of what the Dutch had built an essential ingredient of the Revolution. Benedict Anderson (1972) has argued

8 A fourth caveat is that my concern with the scramble to return to normality might be biased by the fact that I am highly appreciative of living myself in a peaceful country. A fifth caveat is that the analogy with chaos theory, which springs to mind at this point, is of limited use. In chaos theory, chaos and order are not exclusive terms, but ‘chaos is order without predictability’ (Cartwright 1991:44). According to chaos theory, systems that are determined by mathematical equations produce results that are unpredictable and look chaotic. Chaos theory helps to make understandable why even physical and social systems that are well understood can still look irregular and chaotic (Pool 1989). Notwithstanding interesting efforts to apply mathematical chaos theory to urban history and planning (Antrop 1998; Bintliff 1998; Cartwright 1991), I do not consider chaos theory useful, because it is premised on a closed system with the exclusion of extraneous noise or interference. The condition of a closed system is not met in the case of Indonesian cities. For my purposes, chaos theory is at best a reminder that temporary chaos is the normal condition of life. 10 Under construction that the Indonesian Revolution is exceptional (among other revolutions) because of the decisive role played by the pemuda in the early stages. The moderates on the nationalist side fought hard to wrest the initiative from the hands of the pemuda groups and their hero, Tan Malaka. The internationally acknowledged national independence was achieved at the expense of quell- ing the social revolution; the need to reach a diplomatic settlement pushed the nationalist government in the direction of ‘adherence to conservative domestic policies’.9 A point similar to Anderson’s has been made by John Smail (1964:109-10, 148-50) for Bandung, Anthony Reid (1979:238-45) for Medan, Susan Abeyasekere (1989:149-52) for Jakarta, and William Frederick (1989:237-43) for the events in Surabaya. In Surabaya, for instance, in October 1945, intellectual revolutionaries obeying orders from Jakarta, pemuda troops ignoring wishes of the central government, and – to complicate matters – a mob of kampong people who were even prepared to defy the wilful plans of the pemuda, contested control over both European and Japanese prisoners.10 In Bandung the rift between older leaders, pursuing a policy of diplomacy, and pemuda led to the burning of the city (the Bandung Lautan Api event, 24 March 1946) when the Indonesians had to abandon it in the face of superior Allied forces. The fact that the Indonesian Republican leaders managed to suppress the communist Madiun revolt (1948) – thus behaving as a ‘normal’, responsible government – was decisive in swinging the Americans from the Dutch to the Indonesian side; henceforth, from the American perspective, the nationalist Republican leaders were the only viable alternative to chaos (Frey 2003:99-100; Kratoska 2003:20). Contemporaries were well aware of the chaos-normality alternation. For the Dutch counter-revolutionary forces, the issue at stake in the years 1945- 1949 was first and foremost the choice between a restoration of ‘orderly government versus chaos and coercion’ (Lucas and Cribb 1997:71). Of course, with the wisdom of hindsight we all know the Dutch were fighting a rearguard action, but at the time they were a power to be reckoned with, especially in the cities. Soekarno himself summarized the Dutch and Indonesian standpoints on chaos and order like this: ‘the Dutch say that independence follows the establishment of order and peace. We say that order and peace follow independence’ (quoted by Frey 2003:93). Authors hold different views on how long the phase of turmoil lasted in Indonesia (Anderson 1990:112; Benda 1965; Mackie 1982; McVey 1982), but the disagreement can be traced back to the question of what exactly is being

9 The quote is from page 407; Anderson’s argument is actually made more pointedly by George Kahin (1972) in his foreword to Anderson’s book. 10 However, Frederick (1989:294) also argues that ‘at least as far as the launching of the revolution is concerned, the new [elite] and the pemuda operated more in concert than in conflict’. I Introduction 11 sought. In this book when I speak of a return to normality I mean that the housing situation was no longer largely determined by revolutionary conditions: government officials began to think again about public housing and agrarian policy; officials operated according to standard bureaucratic procedures; flows of refugees as a direct result of the Second World War and the Indonesian Revolution had come to a halt; and emergency measures to house the urban population gradually became obsolete. This understanding of normality, as applied to housing, does not imply, of course, that social change came to a halt. Social change never ends. The unsettling experience of the revolution, however, was gradually overcome. The return to normality was not an autonomous process, but a goal actively pursued by certain actors. Conversely, other actors had an interest in continuing to take advantage of the opportunities offered by political turmoil. Efforts to return to this kind of normality stem from the late 1940s and 1950s. The normality-chaos-normality cycle was important not only to leading politicians, it also affected the daily life of ordinary people. In the popular concept of tiga zaman (three eras), the Dutch period was referred to as zaman normal: the normal time of the rule of law, sufficient food, and protection against violence for ordinary citizens who complied with the rules.11 For many women, providing food and clothes for the family was their daily concern, and the political and military aspects of the revolution had little relevance (Bishop, Phillips and Yeo 2003:26; Dick 2002a:208; Lucas and Cribb 1997). Jamie Mackie (1982:125) has made the same point: ‘these dramatic changes have significance mainly at the apex of national political life [...] At lower levels of society […] in most respects life goes on there much as it did before, the continuities outweigh the discontinuities’. Eminent Indonesian historian Sartono Kartodirdjo (1997:56) recalls: ‘The myth of the revolution speaks of popular unrest [...] violence and turmoil. Personally, the author almost never came across these phenomena. Daily life in his hometown was normal, the market was busy as usual, shops were open.’ Although I do not wish to overstate this argument, that everything was business as usual, there was plenty of continuity during decolonization. This continuity is more readily visible locally than at the level of national politics and military strategy. Jakarta, for example, has occupied the same site under Dutch colonial rule (or even pre-colonial feudal times), Japanese military administration, and independence. Notwithstanding alterations in name, slowly evolving economic functions, transformations of cityscape,

11 Abidin Kusno (2005) gives a different interpretation of ‘the normality’ of Dutch times: it was a Dutch effort to normalize their hegemonic discourse of Dutch control; his interpretation of zaman normal is implausible, because the term only has meaning as part of the phrase tiga zaman, three eras, coined after Dutch domination was over. 12 Under construction and demographic change, the city remained sited at the mouth of the River Ciliwung and urban dwellers went on with their lives. People continuously felt the necessity to carry on with their daily lives, whoever ruled the city. In short, the decision to look at decolonization through the normality- chaos-normality lens, and the focus on the basic need of shelter, force us to acknowledge the importance of continuities even during a revolutionary decolonization process. Yet continuity should not be equated with invariabil- ity. The political turmoil indeed resulted in social changes that were reflected in urban space and housing. The normality-chaos-normality perspective on decolonization adopted here can also be interpreted in terms of risk and human security. Human security was introduced as a concept by the United Nations in 1994 to com- plement the older notion of the security concerns of states. Human security focuses on the needs of individuals, threatened by violence, war, economic hardship, and disease; these needs have been dubbed freedom from want and freedom from fear (Alkire 2004; MacFarlane 2004). Shelter (housing) is recognized as an essential element of human security, and the physical threats to human security, and housing in particular, listed by the UN were very real under Japanese rule and during the subsequent revolution in Indonesia. For instance, home ownership was a way to invest savings in order to acquire some degree of financial security. An anthropological interpretation of human security, however, goes further than the UN definition and includes existential security, in particular the notion of belonging to a group or having a social identity (Eriksen 2005; Winslow and Eriksen 2004). The interplay between existential and physical security was a driving force compelling similar groups to compete for urban space, or better, for urban places. These places – be they homes or neighbourhoods – were associated with strong emotions. Places formed the focal point of many social activities and, ideally, exuded a feeling of security. In the anthropological study of the social construction of place, attachment to certain places involves issues of power, and material, social and cognitive aspects, just as the study of space does.12 For instance, the appropriation of a neighbourhood by like-minded people provided those persons with a sense of security, in a material and social sense. Mounting feelings of fear were countered by erecting physical or symbolic boundaries behind which to withdraw (Eriksen 2005:10-1; Genberg 2002; Low 2001; Migdal 2004). The opposite of security is not insecurity but freedom (Eriksen 2005; Nooteboom 2003:221-45). As Anthony Giddens (2000:41) puts it: ‘acceptance of risk is also the condition of excitement and adventure’, or in the words of Zygmunt Bauman (2001:20): ‘Promoting security always calls for the sacrifice

12 Easthope 2004; Fortier 1999; Hidalgo and Hernández 2001; Reinders 2008; Rodman 1992. I Introduction 13 of freedom, while freedom can only be expanded at the expense of security’. Individual efforts to maintain a balance between a feeling of security and freedom were magnified at the societal level during decolonization. For instance, in early post-colonial days, the failing security of property owners gave squatters freedom. In practice, therefore, the fine slogan ‘security means nothing if it is built on others’ insecurity’,13 is exactly the opposite of what actually often occurred during the decolonization process.

Urban space and ethnicity

Part One deals with the way people create a sense of belonging by the spatial embodiment of social differences. Which groups lived together in which neighbourhoods and why? This part revolves around the changing meaning of ethnicity. A common idea in Indonesian historiography is that colonial society was divided by ethnic differences. Ethnic divisions were reflected in the residential pattern: indigenous people lived together in kampongs; Chinese and Arabs in the Chinese and Arab quarters; and Europeans in the elite neighbourhoods. After independence these ethnic-spatial divisions faded, while a new residential pattern based on social class was established: well-to-do lived with well-to-do and the poor with the poor. The three chapters of Part One ask whether historians and contemporaries have not made too much of the importance of ethnicity in colonial times, at the price of neglecting social class. I shall argue that, especially in housing, class (income) was the main criterion used to define social positions in Indonesian cities both before and after Independence.14 Chapter III assesses whether spatial segregation is better understood in terms of ethnicity (‘race’) or social class. Spatial segregation is analysed both quantitatively (plotting dwellers by ethnicity and by income) and qualitatively (telling individual stories of where people lived during their lifetime). Segregation by income turns out to be very important, even more important than ethnic segregation. Chapter IV scrutinizes the question to what extent the kampong can be considered an indigenous neighbourhood. I do this by approaching the social composition of the kampong quantitatively, and by unpacking the meaning of the terms chaos and order (in relation to kampongs), indigenous dwelling, European dwelling, and urban planning concepts. Chapter V focuses on the legal distinction between indigenous and European land tenure systems. It

13 Women’s International Peace Conference, Halifax, 1985, quoted by Hoogensen (2005:1). 14 The point argued here, that segregation by class already prevailed in late-colonial times, does not imply that the ethnic discourse was socially insignificant or that racial discrimination did not play a role in colonial times. Indeed the contrary was true. 14 Under construction also deals with the insecurity of land tenure during the years of chaos. One key concept underlying Part One is urban space. The three chapters are linked by the question of how social relations, whether defined in terms of ethnicity or of class, are embodied in urban space, in particular with regard to housing. These days a conventional way to view urban space is as a social product, produced by social relations and simultaneously producing social relations (Lefebvre 1986; Rapoport 1994; Soja 1985). In the words of Amos Rapoport (1994:477), the built environment is ‘the visible expression of the social mosaic [...] social structure and spatial structure are closely related’. A distinction is often made between space as a physical three-dimensional reality, the signification of that space, and the everyday use made of it. The physical space consists of the built environment and other material objects. When it comes to the signification of space, a further distinction is made between the meaning given by designers and the meaning given by ordinary users. ‘Designers’, including administrators and planners (and perhaps journalists and scholars too), create a representation of the city by employing categorizations of people and economic functions, statistics, master plans, maps, and regulations. This representation of the city may differ widely from the space as perceived and experienced by ordinary people, the people who use the urban space from day to day, imbue it with meaning and symbols, and have a strong sense of place.15 These ordinary people are naturally not identical. The perception of urban space, the symbolic meaning attached to urban space, and the concomitant daily use made of urban space will differ from one ethnic group to another, from class to class, age group to age group, and gender to gender (Bender 2002:S104-7; Gould and White 1992; Lynch 1960; Nas 1993b). The power of ‘designers’ and ordinary users of urban space to shape urban space is unequal. In other words, the differences in use, perception, and desired changes of urban space exist not only between different categories of people, but also between the rulers and the ruled. In her study of colonial Singapore, Brenda Yeoh argues that most existing studies of Asian colonial cities to date view the Asian city as the product of hegemonic Western forces. Colonial cities, however, were ‘also a terrain of discipline and resistance, [...] the contended object of everyday discourse in conflicts and negotiations involving both colonialists and colonized groups [...], each with their own versions of reality and practice’ (Yeoh 1996:10). Colonial power was to a considerable extent exercised through the definition of spatial relations. Groups that contested colonial power struggled with the colonial urban government

15 Bender 2002:S104; De Certeau 1984:xii-xxii, 91-110; Gottdiener and Feagin 1988; Harvey 1989:203-4; Kilian 1998; Klaufus 2006; Lefebvre 1986; Low 1996:861-3; Phillips 1996:416; Rapoport 1982:15-34, 1994: 473-4; Weiner 2002. I Introduction 15 over the appropriation of urban space. One example is the municipal perspective of overcrowded, unsanitary housing conditions, versus the people’s perspective of crowded, yet well-structured shophouses in Singapore.16 The statements that cities are sites of conflict and negotiation and that state power is exercised through the definition of the meaning of urban space can be applied to Indonesian cities during the long decolonization.

In the discussion of the relationship between urban space and ethnicity, words like indigenous, Chinese, Arab and Eurasian have so far been used without defining them. These words formed part of an elaborate racial terminology in Indonesia. Anthropologists have since long discarded the notion of ‘race’ as a genetically discrete population and see no objective explanatory value in the term.17 I shall use the term ‘race’ purely as an emic concept, only meaningful in the colonial and post-colonial discourse. In other words, although ‘race’ does not explain somebody’s behaviour in a biological sense, when a person was considered a member of a racial category, whether by self-designation or by ascription by others, this notion of belonging to a particular race was socially relevant. I shall use the term ethnicity for the institution by which people were socially positioned by alleged hereditary and cultural traits. The term ‘ethnic group’ denotes a ‘race’ (or a subgroup thereof) in a constructivist sense (explained below). The racial ideology of late-colonial times stratified society into Indigenous people, Vreemde Oosterlingen (Foreign Orientals, or non-Indigenous Asians), and Europeans.18 In the eyes of European colonial overlords, they themselves stood at the apex of the status hierarchy and Indigenous people at the bottom. It is a moot point to what extent other groups had internalized their inferior position. Michael Adas (2004) argues that Western hegemony was accepted by Asian and African colonized elites at least until the First World War, when the mechanized slaughter of European soldiers made a mockery of European moral and rational superiority.

16 AlSayyad 1992:4-5; Kong and Yeoh 2003; Abidin Kusno 2000; Raychaudhuri 2001; Yeoh 1996:1-27, 136-74. 17 Statement of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, URL http://ruls01.fsw.leidenuniv.nl/~nas/08-race.htm (accessed 7-11-2001). 18 English (native, indigenous), Malay (pribumi, bumiputra), and Dutch (inboorling, inlander, inheems, autochtoon) terms for indigenous people continue to have undesirable, insulting, or political connotations, which make them unsuitable for an academic text. For want of something better, I shall speak of indigenous persons as a generic ethnic category, realizing that the term has been claimed by today’s global movement of tribal minorities as a political statement, which – if I had adopted this use here – would mean that, say, Mentawaians were considered indigenous, but Javanese were not. I write Indigenous with a capital when I refer to the colonial racial and legal category (opposed to Foreign Orientals and Europeans). When using the term Indonesians I refer to citizens of the Republic of Indonesia, of whatever ethnic background. 16 Under construction

In practice, each racial category consisted of various ethnic groups. Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, and Minangkabau were just a few of the many ethnic groups constituting the Indigenous category, and each of these ethnic labels was a generic term for finer subdivisions. Chinese, Arabs, and Indians (Tamils) were reckoned among Foreign Orientals. Chinese could be further differentiated by language group (Hakkas, Hokkienese, Teochews). Dutchmen, Germans, Americans, and Japanese were just some of the nation- alities that made up the European category.19 People with a hybrid background further complicated the ethnic map. Eurasians (Indo-Europeanen, or Indos in contemporary parlance) form a good example of a hybrid category. Legally speaking, they fell into either the European or Indigenous category, depending on whether their European father had acknowledged the child or not. The social position of Eurasians was, however, much more subtle than that. The shares of European and indigenous ‘blood’ in a person’s pedigree and whether a person had one ‘full-blood’ European parent mattered for the degree to which he or she was socially regarded as European. The Japanese occupiers abolished the legal tripartite division and made mathematical ancestry decisive: Eurasians with at least 50% European blood were interned with Europeans, people with more Asian ‘blood’ stayed outside the camps (Van Schaik 1996:56). In Dutch colonial times, however, place of birth (and father’s place of birth) and the culture in which a person was raised were perhaps as important as descent. A ‘full-blood’ European child born in the colony and raised primarily by an indigenous nursemaid would grow up in a way ordinarily considered Eurasian. The IEV (Indo-Europeesch Verbond, Association of Eurasians) also counted full-blood Europeans married to Eurasians as Eurasian (Petrus Blumberger 1939:51; Wertheim 1956:138). Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben (2003:11, 213) remark that class, formal education, culture, and local circumstances could all be as important in defining a person’s social position as ‘racial’ features. One important dividing line ran between those Europeans who regularly had furlough to Europe – or at least were transferred from one Indonesian city to the other – and those who did not: those who moved frequently and those who stayed in one place (trekkers and blijvers). People who held lower and middle-ranking positions in government and private enterprise ‘were, if not in one locality, at least firmly rooted in the Indies at large’ (Bosma 2005:70). The importance of Asian-European mobility for social identity becomes clear from the memoirs of Jan Lechner, a boy born in Semarang to two European parents, who recalled that in his youth his peers were Eurasians and European boys who had lived in the Netherlands Indies

19 In Chapter III it is explained how this tripartite classification came into being, and why, for example, Japanese were part of the European category and not of Foreign Orientals. I Introduction 17 for a while; they swam together, visited each other’s homes, and jointly made fun of Dutch boys who had just arrived from Europe. Eventually, however, they accepted the newcomers when the latter had adjusted to tropical life. Lechner (2004:39, 45) also remembered how they fought with Ambonese hooligans. Similar hybrid ethnic identities as Eurasians were peranakan Chinese (Chinese who were culturally adjusted to the Indonesian situation, in contrast to singkeh, newly arrived, ‘full blood’ Chinese immigrants), and any other conceivable combination (Arab and Malay, Minangkabau and Javanese, and so on). Breaking down the legal tripartite racial categories into smaller ethnic groups and recognizing hybrid ethnic groups form only the first steps towards grasping the complexity of ethnicity in colonial times. Although the classification was further refined, the ethnic labels were still treated as fixed and self-explanatory. This immutable and taken-for-granted character of ethnicity was part of the racial discourse prevalent in colonial Indonesia. Such a ‘primordialist’ view of ethnicity treats such ethnic identity markers as descent, language, or religion as given, deeply rooted, and almost impervi- ous to change (Geertz 1973). Critics of the primordialist view have argued that ethnic sentiments are neither static nor traditional, but emerge as a result of state formation, modernization, or colonial subjugation.20 The constructivist view of ethnicity, now standard in anthropology, is ‘that there is no one-to-one relationship between culture and ethnicity [...], and that ethnicity is based on socially sanctioned notions of cultural differences, not “real” ones’ (Eriksen 2001:43). According to Fredrik Barth (1969), ethnic groups and identities are constructed by different groups at their mutual boundaries. A group identifies itself in contrast to other groups and needs the others to function as a mirror. The criteria used to distinguish the idiosyncratic features of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are not objective differences, but are criteria that the actors themselves at some point in time have begun to deem significant. The boundaries themselves are arbitrary, but the boundary markers may have substance. Groups choose those criteria that best serve as symbolic boundary markers, such as speech, vernacular architecture, custom, and skin colour. Often it is the political leaders who mobilize and even constitute groups by pointing out boundary markers, which consequently provide the leaders with a large following. The answer to the question of where the boundaries are drawn, hence which ethnic groups are distinguished, is context-dependent and changes over time. Different actors may draw different boundaries (so A may consider B an ethnic group, but B may think otherwise). Ethnic groups can overlap, and, at the personal level, an

20 Allen and Eade 2000:492-4; Appadurai 1996; Eriksen 2001: 44-6; Jenkins 1997:44-8; Verdery 1994:44-6. 18 Under construction individual always has multiple identities. Again, which identity takes precedence is context-dependent.21 In the case of colonial societies, Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper (1997:7-8) remark that the dichotomy between dominant colonizer and colonized subject had to be defined and maintained by great effort. The ‘othering’ of the subjugated, colonized peoples was both a political and a cultural affair. The effort made was only partially successful. Nevertheless, decolonization did not totally do away with the importance of ethnicity, and ethnic labels are commonly used in Indonesia up to this day. Ethnic identity and urban space constitute each other. Part One discusses to what extent ethnicity resulted in spatial segregation, but it is interesting to observe the reverse relationship: residential patterns helped to create, reinforce, or reveal ethnic boundaries. One wonders: did a person live in the Chinese quarter because he or she was Chinese, or did a person have a strong Chinese identity because he or she lived in the Chinese quarter? Or did it work both ways? Another example of the ethnicity-space nexus is the imprecise definition of Eurasians. It was said of Eurasian individuals who could not maintain a European lifestyle that they ‘are slipping down into the indigenous wards’ (afglijden naar de kampong), thus making a direct connection between place of residence and ethnic status. Did Chinese people keep a stronger ethnic identity after decolonization than Eurasians perhaps because more Chinese stayed together in the same neighbourhood? The single-minded focus on such cultural issues as European hegemony and ethnic or nationalist identity (Stoler and Cooper 1997:27) led to researchers’ neglect of class. Bosma and Raben (2003:11) have rightly reminded us that social class and formal education were at least as important in defining a person’s position in colonial Indonesia as racial category. Formal education not only opened up job opportunities, but also had an impact on lifestyle and taste. People try to make housing congruent with their lifestyle; in other words, people choose between different ‘habitation styles’ (Nas and Prins 1991:3; Rapoport 1989:xvi-xvii). The focus on residential patterns in Part One brings class, understood as income groups, and lifestyle back into the social analysis. Ethnicity, social class and lifestyle also play a role in Part Two, but there the main actors are not defined so much by social characteristics, as by their function: administrators, military, real-estate developers, landlords, and so on.

21 Barth 1969; Brass 1997; Eriksen 1993, 2001; Harrison 2003; Jenkins 1997; Schefold 1988; Smith 1994. I Introduction 19

Housing

Part Two deals with the production of housing and the allocation of dwellings. I use the term housing in the minimal definition of ‘the physical structures that shelter people in the pursuit of their “private” lives’ (Chambers and Low 1989:5). Although housing is measured in land area, the most important component of urban space, the study of housing is rooted in a different academic tradition. Scholarly contemplations on urban space can be fairly abstract, but analyses of housing are down-to-earth, concerned with the question how to house the poor in the Third World.22 Recurrent questions in this approach are: which actors are involved in the provision of housing; how to provide affordable housing for the poor; how do conflicts about land and dwellings evolve; can modernity be combined with self-help housing; can public housing accommodate the urban masses?23 A key concept by which to approach the issue of housing is that of the ‘housing delivery system’. Wil Prins (1994:39) defines a housing delivery system as ‘a social configuration relating to the production and distribution of housing, with more or less formalized relations between the actors per- forming the necessary functions in the housing process’. Important in this definition is that housing is not seen as a final state, but as a social process. Housing, or the provision of accommodation, is not merely the construction of new dwellings, but also the distribution of existing living space (Marcussen 1990:41-3). Sharing a house, renting a room, having a permanent corner in the market where a person can rest for the night are all forms of housing. When existing houses are subdivided, more dwelling units are provided without any substantial construction work. The production of housing requires the input of several resources, which Prins calls ‘process functions’. These process functions are: the initiation of the housing project; the provision of land; financing; planning and design- ing; authorization; construction; access mediation; rights of occupancy; and management. Ramirez et al. (1992) add technical assistance and neighbourhood development to this list of functions. These resources are provided by actors in the public domain, the commercial domain, or the subsistence domain. Different housing delivery systems usually exist side by side in one city, and a system often combines inputs provided by actors from all three domains (Prins 1994:39-43; Ramirez et al. 1992:104).

22 Other studies deal with housing in the West. Another tradition, not followed by me, is the study of houses as a social unit, or a symbolic microcosm, as embodied in vernacular architecture (see further Bourdieu 2003; for Southeast Asia see Schefold 2003; Sparkes and Howell 2003; Waterson 1990). 23 Choguill 1994; Drakakis-Smith 1987:85-109; Gilbert and Gugler 1983:81-115; Kleinpenning 1981; Marcussen 1990; McAdams 1980; Prins and Nas 1983. 20 Under construction

In theory, a very large combination of different actors, each contributing one resource to one housing delivery system, is conceivable. In practice, several resources or several housing delivery systems will be in the hands of one actor, in two ways. First, one actor may combine several resources in one housing delivery system, for instance, a real-estate developer who initiates, finances, plans, and constructs a new neighbourhood. Second, one actor may provide one resource for several housing delivery systems, for example, the Sultan of Yogyakarta, who controlled most of the land for all sorts of building activities in his city. Another example of an actor providing one input for several housing delivery systems was the Housing Allocation Bureau, which after the Japanese period issued residential permits for all sorts of dwellings (owned, rented, and shared). The strong points in the housing delivery system approach are the recognition of the variety of housing; the recognition that housing is a process and that construction is just one of the steps in this process; and the connection with power relations both in and beyond the city, drawing attention to the potential for conflict as well as strategic alliances between different actors. Part Two covers all major housing delivery systems in Indonesian cities between 1930 and 1960, paying attention to all process functions except the provision of land, which is treated in Chapter V. Chapter VI handles the tension between state and kampong residents, with regard to both kampong improvement in colonial times and squatting in independent times. Chapter VII deals with the housing crisis during the Indonesian Revolution, caused by the concurrent effects of destruction of houses and mass migration to the city. The enormous housing shortage sharply highlighted the competition over housing. The military, civil government, and private companies vied for the control of the available housing stock. This chapter also discusses the role played by the Housing Allocation Bureau (Kantor Urusan Perumahan, Huisvesting Organisatie) in granting residential permits. Meanwhile indigenous migrants had to help themselves by squatting, as discussed in Chapter VI. Chapter VIII treats state attempts at post-war reconstruction and the role of urban planning. Chapter IX compares the activities of several actors that initiated construction of new houses, before and after Independence: con- structors, real-estate developers, corporate enterprises, individual property owners, and the state. Most of the chapter is devoted to public housing by the state. In the course of time, the main target group for public housing shifted from lower-middle-class people, predominantly Eurasians, to the state bureaucracy itself. In other words, the chapter recounts the story of the rise of the ‘neo-patrimonial state’ (Crouch 1979) in terms of the provision of housing. Chapter X goes into the strained relationship between landlords and tenants, who each try to gain advantage at the expense of the other, but ultimately cannot do without each other. As the majority of urbanites lived in a rental dwelling, this is an important issue. I Introduction 21

Methodology

Part Two uses a different methodology than Part One, which is essentially an attempt to give a new interpretation of a familiar topic, residential segregation, about which many facts have previously been published by others. Part Two, however, is a historical narrative of housing, a story that has by and large been untold up till now. The difference is related to the fact that the emphasis in Part One is on the well-documented colonial period with an overabundant supply of sources, whereas in Part Two it shifts to the Japanese period, the Indonesian Revolution and the 1950s, all characterized by a dearth of readily available sources. Part One contains many references to scholarly publications; most of the references in Part Two are to primary sources. The quest for hitherto largely unknown material may be instructive for other researchers. We have tackled the Dutch period selectively.24 Specialized journals (Locale Belangen, Locale Techniek, Gemeenteblad Bandoeng, Gemeenteblad Medan) were combed more thoroughly than the well-known general academic journals. We have also checked local newspapers in three cities (Deli Courant, Soerabaiasch- Handelsblad, and Makassaarsche Courant), but since to have done this completely would have been a major undertaking, we restricted ourselves to the months January to March of three sample years (1930, 1935, 1940). Various depositories in the Netherlands contain useful archival material from the late colonial period and also for the years 1945-1949 (Nationaal Archief in The Hague, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde in Leiden, Nederlands Architectuur Instituut in Rotterdam, and Museum Bronbeek in Arnhem). The bias in colonial archives, and post-colonial archives for that matter, is too well known to need spelling out again here (Bosma and Raben 2003:10; Stoler and Cooper 1997:17). The Japanese period was the most difficult to study. The Japanese destroyed many records after their surrender in August 1945. The official newsletter Kan Poo published decisions and regulations, but probably not all; moreover it gives little information about the implementation of policies (Keppy 2006:16; Niessen 1995:115, 125). The daily Asia Raya gives an impression of what was going on in the cities, but this source was heavily cen- sored.25 For example, the collapse of the Third Reich was not even hinted at, and – more worrying for our purpose – the hardships endured in Indonesian cities were passed over. Nevertheless, this source at least shows that an urban administration continued to function. Unfortunately, almost all its items are

24 The narrator is in plural here, because my assistant, Martine Barwegen, played an important role in developing a strategy for data collection. 25 Proposal for the regulation of newspapers (Chūō shimbun ronseian), (1942) (Benda et al. 1965:69-71). 22 Under construction about Java and not the other islands. My illiteracy in Japanese and lack of knowledge of archives in Japan was an insurmountable problem. Dutch civil servants resumed their time-honoured custom of keeping records when they resumed control after August 1945. The files of the Algemene Secretarie, kept at the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia (ANRI, The Indonesian National Archive) in Jakarta, are a rich source for the final years of Dutch urban administration. The Algemene Secretarie was the office that supported the Governor-General administratively; papers on all major government decisions were collected in this office. The Indonesian National Archive also contains important collections from after 1949, but the density of information is undeniably less than in the Algemene Secretarie records before 1949. Perhaps, as David Hirschman (1987:469-70) observed for the post-colonial archive of Lesotho, the institution of keeping records smacked of colonialism, or perhaps the civil servants faced an explosion of paperwork and gave the management of closed files low priority. Another useful source, which commenced to flow in 1949, was formed by the press reports of the Indonesian news agency Antara.26 For the 1950s, we also made use of the files of Bank Indonesia. Very important local collections were discovered in Indonesia; they provide the kind of details necessary for an understanding of the local situation.27 In the cellars of the city hall of Medan I discovered an archive of outgoing letters, starting with the Dutch resumption of control in 1948. The archive is rich for the years 1948-1949, when many useful appendices were attached to the letters (sometimes including copies of correspondence from the 1930s), and continues for the 1950s (about 26 metres for the years 1948-1960). The archive is, however, in poor physical condition and more or less untended; several bound volumes of letters have been lost and a few more disappeared between my first and second visits. The municipal archive of Surabaya had come very close to being destroyed. All older letters had already been crammed into giant plastic bags (bags such as used for rice or fertilizer) to be thrown away, but fortunately an enlightened person had realized just in time that this destruction would have been disastrous for the urban memory and city identity. I found the archive shortly after the staff had begun to take the wrinkled papers out of the bags one by one, flatten them, and enter them into a card inventory. The excitement evinced by my colleagues from the Universitas Airlangga in Surabaya and myself formed an important stimulus for the archive staff to continue the rehabilitation of the archive. The oldest pieces date from the

26 I shall refer to this publication as Antara; it is actually not clear whether the name of the press agency really forms part of the title of this publication. 27 Colombijn 2007. Spread over various visits, Martine Barwegen spent twenty weeks in Indonesia and Freek Colombijn fifteen. I Introduction 23

Japanese period. Makassar has an exemplary city archive (for post-1945 material), which has been made accessible by an inventory. It gives any research on Makassar a head start over research in other cities. Unfortunately the Japanese destroyed the archive upon their defeat, so that almost no papers from before August 1945 have survived. The city archive of Bandung, in contrast, did not have an inventory and was not geared to receive visitors; it took Martine’s charm and persuasion to obtain access and then she had to pick boxes more or less at random and see what was in them. The Indonesian National Archive also functions as a city archive for Jakarta, because of the bias towards the national capital in many documents. Finally, I had the opportunity to visit the municipal archive of Padang, which yielded useful information about the Japanese period. In all cities except Jakarta and Padang, we checked various municipal departments for maps and other information.28 These local sources of information are best equipped to provide data about the 1950s.29 The records of local courts of justice (Pengadilan Negeri) form a very rich, almost unexplored, source of information, also for decisions of the Rent Tribunals. Every court case about a house or plot of land forms a micro-history of a social conflict. The two opposing litigants each present a story to under- pin their claim to a particular house or plot. These stories allow insight into how the use of a house or plot changed in the course of time, which conflicts simmered between owners and tenants, and how people acted to improve their situation. The files in Makassar were temporarily inaccessible and we did not discover pre-1960 files in Surabaya,30 but Medan and Bandung gave ample information, even though almost every individual file is incomplete. I have also gone through my old notes from the Padang court. As for visual material, the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde and the Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen are a wonderful source of photographs and maps. The film collections of the Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid (Hilversum) and the Filmmuseum (Amsterdam) are truly fascinating. More than any other source, the moving images give the (possibly deceptive) impression of having direct contact with the past. The films pose the problem of how to translate image into text. Although it is not useful to list every source here, I wish to mention the

28 For those who want to try their luck: Dinas Tata Bangunan, Dinas Pertanahan, Dinas Perumahan, Dinas Tata Kota, Badan Pusat Statistik, and Museum Daerah sometimes yielded useful data. There was no uniformity in the organization of urban administration and every time we had to find our way through the bureaucracy anew. 29 An inspection of potential archives in Yogyakarta was discouraging from our urban point of interest and we left this town out. I now regret this decision; Yogyakarta was the city that remained longest under Republican control during the Revolution, and perhaps the local administration did take a truly different path from that in the Dutch-controlled cities. 30 The Surabaya Court of Justice went up in flames after being strafed from the air by the RAF during the fighting of November 1945 (Bussemaker 2005:251). 24 Under construction local observations and interviews with older residents, both in Indonesia and the Netherlands. Older residents were tracked by chance (strolling through old neighbourhoods and asking around for the oldest people) and through networks, such as Lansia (an organization for elderly people in Makassar), Wet Uitkering Vervolgingsslachtoffers (the Dutch Law on Payment to Victims of Persecution), Halin (a Dutch NGO supporting needy Eurasians with Indonesian citizenship), the reunion of the HBS-5 secondary school in Bandung, the Bandung Heritage Trust and the Sumatra Heritage Trust in Medan. Since many of our sources may disappear in the near future (eyewitnesses die, buildings become dilapidated, neglected archives crumble or are eaten away) or at least cannot be easily retrieved by other scholars, I have decided to present an abundance of data in this book. Perhaps I am the last person who can report them.

Six portraits, one story

I have adopted a loose comparative perspective in this book. Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben (2003:11-2) rightly point out the variation between cities and hence the need to work in different places. This book draws most of its material from the cities of Medan, Bandung and Makassar; Padang, Jakarta, and Surabaya are also covered; moreover, I have not hesitated to include fascinating information about other cities. The choice of these six cities was determined most of all by the availability of a local archive. The unevenness of the material prohibits a formal comparison of cities, fleshing out similarities and differ ences in a systematic way. By pooling together data from different cities, I rather hope to be able to sketch underlying structural changes found throughout Indonesia, yet without losing sight of local variation. In this respect, William Frederick (1989:291) warns that the social characteristics of Surabaya during the revolution are so distinctive, that they may not warrant a wider application of his findings for Surabaya to Indonesia as a whole. Precisely because the six places studied in this book differ in location, population size, predominant economic function, and the amount of war damage suffered, I contend that together they provide a reasonable panorama of the development of urban space in the largest Indonesian cities during decolonization.31 Batavia/Jakarta was the main port of West Java, just as Semarang and

31 Several monographs give extensive information about these cities: Abeyasekere (1989), Abdurrachman Surjomihardjo (1999/2000), and Voskuil (1993) on Jakarta; Dick (2002a) and Broeshart et al. (1994) on Surabaya; Voskuil et al. (1996) and Barker (1999:79-105) on Bandung; Loderichs et al. (1997), Passchier (1995) and Buiskool (2005) on Medan; and Colombijn (1994) on Padang. Dias Pradadimara (2005) and Sutherland (1986) form useful introductions to the history of Makassar. I Introduction 25

Surabaya were the main ports of Central and East Java. The fact that its hinterland had more empty land in the late colonial period than either Semarang or Surabaya, permitted Jakarta to grow when the economic development of the two other port cities stagnated. A city the size of Jakarta had a varied economy, but the fact that it was the seat of the national government provided a great deal of extra employment. Jakarta had an ethnically mixed population with an unusually strong Chinese component, who had made a large contribution to the first three centuries of the city’s development (Table 1). After Independence, its favoured treatment by the national government resulted in Jakarta’s rapid development. Only then did the city leave other cities far behind in population size and modernity of the cityscape.

Table 1. Population and ethnic composition (in per cent) of major cities in 1930

Population indigenous chinese european other Asian

Jakarta 533,015 76.9 14.8 7.0 1.4 Surabaya 341,675 79.4 11.4 7.6 1.6 Bandung 166,815 77.9 10.0 11.8 0.3 Makassar 84,855 77.1 18.1 4.1 0.7 Medan 76,584 53.9 35.6 5.6 4.9 Padang 52,054 78.3 14.0 5.0 2.8 Indonesia 59,138,067 97.4 2.0 0.4 0.2

Figures for Jakarta include Batavia and Meester Cornelis (Jatinegara). Rounding off percentages may produce a column total that is slightly more or slightly less than 100%. Source: Volkstelling 1930 1936, VIII:2, 78-81.

Surabaya predates Batavia by centuries and for a long time it was a match for Batavia, but in the course of the twentieth century it began to fall behind in population and in economic prosperity. The collapse of the sugar industry in the Depression was a severe blow to the urban economy, and the city did not fully recover within the time span under consideration here. Surabaya was not only a commercial port but also a navy base; and it had an unusually strong industrial sector to supply the machines used in the sugar industry. Surabaya was home to one of the largest Arab communities in the Archipelago. Bandung was one of the few major urban centres in the interior. It was a centre for the surrounding plantations in West Java, providing various services (banks, administration). It also developed as a centre for the military, as the inland city was considered a base that was relatively safe from an over- seas invasion. In the 1910s, because of its pleasant climate and safe location, Bandung was proposed as the new seat of government. Although this plan was never fully executed, several departments did move from Batavia to 26 Under construction

Bandung. Bandung had an exceptionally large European population, partly because the city administration actively enticed retired Europeans to settle in its cool climate. Makassar, situated in the island of Sulawesi, did not have a large hinterland, but had a very important regional function for the many small islands of Eastern Indonesia. Although small compared to the major port cities in Java, Makassar was by far the largest city in a wide region. As a regional centre, the city was made the seat of the Japanese naval administration of Eastern Indonesia. After the Japanese period, Makassar became a focal point of Dutch efforts at urban restoration, because the Dutch retook the city before the nationalist movement had a chance to develop. Moreover, Makassar was bombed in the Second World War, so that there was a level playing field for Dutch urban planners. Medan is the youngest of the six cities, established in the late nineteenth century as a centre of the booming plantation economy of North Sumatra. It had an exceptionally large Chinese component (a third of the population in 1930), originating from migrants who had worked on the plantations. It also had a large Indian community and still has, as far as I know, the largest Hindu temple in Indonesia outside Bali. Two powerful actors in Medan were the Sultan of Deli and the Deli Maatschappij (Deli Tobacco Company), which together controlled much of the urban land; after the war their role diminished. Padang is located on the west coast of Sumatra. Just as Surabaya was overtaken by Batavia, Padang gradually fell behind its rival Medan. Its main function was as export centre of smallholder crops from its hinterland, but it also provided the usual regional services. Because of the stagnant economy, there were no large-scale housing projects for either the elite or for lower- class people. Both the peranakan Chinese and Eurasian population had lived for generations in Padang.

Conclusion

Housing is a mirror of society. In Indonesia, as in any other society, the size and building materials of a house betray the wealth of the occupant. The magnitude of social inequality in Indonesian cities in the mid-twentieth century became visible in the coexistence of modest houses with walls of bilik (plaited bamboo) and villas erected in brick. Residents used architectural details to communicate elements of their lifestyle and social identity to others. A separate dining room was a symbol of modernity and wealth, a letterbox in the door signified literacy, and a windowless dwelling indicated lower-class status. I Introduction 27

Housing and also urban space were a social matter, above the level of the individual household. People of similar social background tended to live together in the same neighbourhood: a brick house next to a brick house, and bilik next to bilik. Companies, government offices, and military units provided housing for their staff. Poor squatters massively invaded plots of urban land, because sheer numbers reduced the risk of being evicted. Gates, banners and other signs marked the boundaries of neighbourhoods and expressed the social identity of the residents. Given the importance of housing as a basic need and its economic function as a depository of savings, and the significance of urban space for constructing a social identity and a sense of belonging, major interests are involved in housing and urban space. Interest groups negotiate with each other in their attempts to appropriate the best possible housing. How power is distributed in a society has a large impact on the question of which interest group is the most successful in getting suitable housing and appropriating urban space. Housing and urban space are, in short, a highly political affair. Therefore, a major political change is likely to have consequences for urban space and housing, because the new rulers may use their newly acquired position to change something in the organization of urban space and the housing situation to the benefit of themselves or their followers. The theme of this book is how one such major political change, the decolonization of Indonesia, was reflected in a changed housing situation, with ramifica- tions for urban space. The central research question is then: How did urban space and housing change in Indonesian cities between 1930 and 1960, and to what extent can the socio-political transformations of this period of decolonization explain the changes in urban space and housing? Behind the focus on urban space and housing looms the larger aim of how insight into urban changes sheds new light on what happened to the social structure during the long decolonization of Indonesia. Housing delivery became particularly pressing during the Indonesian Revolution and the first years of sovereignty, when there was a dearth of dwellings, partly as a direct result of the decolonization process. Different interest groups competed intensely in order to crowd each other out of the most suitable housing. Part One questions whether decolonization really accelerated the transition of a residential segregation based on ethnicity (or ‘race’) to one based on social class (or income). Part Two focuses on the provision of new housing and the allocation of existing dwellings. Some of the problems of those years have still not been adequately solved today. Shortage of housing, squatting, neglect of zoning plans, and a land registration system in disarray are all contemporary urban problems having historical roots in the decolonization era. This historical study is therefore also relevant to today’s urban development.

Chapter ii A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities

The chronological narrative of this chapter, providing a minimum of historical background, is spun from three strands: the structure of local administration, the symbolic appropriation of urban space, and the urban landscape. The resulting cord is divided into the conventional historical periods of Dutch colonialism, Japanese occupation, Indonesian Revolution, and the period after the transfer of sovereignty. The demographic changes throughout these periods will be summarized at the end of the chapter. Local administration was arguably the single most important actor shap- ing urban space, and particularly housing, in the mid-twentieth century. The national government determined how much leeway was given to local administrations. The political winds of change at the national level – from Dutch, to Japanese, to Republican rule – influenced the shifting balance of power between local and national governments. While no specialized urban administration existed at the beginning of the twentieth century, by the time of the Japanese invasion a fully-fledged municipal bureaucratic machinery had evolved. During the Japanese period and Republican times, the national government reclaimed many of the competences transferred to the local level, reversing the Dutch colonial trend. The successive rulers communicated their power to the citizens by means of urban symbols. New power holders can create symbols to express their dominance in a city, attempt to give new meaning to existing symbols, or destroy their precursors’ symbols. Others attempt to subvert the hegemonic symbolism, for example by giving unauthorized, mocking interpretations of existing symbols (Colombijn 2006; Jeffrey 1980; Nas 1993a; Nas and Samuels 2006; Pieke 1993). Urban symbols not only reflect formal changes of rule, but also reveal much about the relative power of the state in its relationship to its citizens. Urban symbols are an important element in the urban landscape. The urban landscape forms the background of this whole book. That landscape consists of physical, built-up space and the use made of that space by the different groups in the city. Major changes in the urban landscape have 30 Under construction been modernization, crowding, and the de-greening of the city. Analysis of the landscape is, however, more than a sketch of the scenery. The urban landscape can tell something about the social fabric, especially the size of the gap between different social classes. Transportation, for instance, is a useful indicator of social inequality. Compliance with rules, for example with respect to traffic and street trade, gives additional insight into the power of the state over its citizens. Although the municipal administration was the predominant force in the city, it never monopolized the ‘social production’ (Lefebvre 1986) of urban space.

The Dutch colonial period

The Dutch began to build up a territorial presence in the Archipelago in the early seventeenth century. By the early twentieth century the colonial state had subjugated almost all the territory that is nowadays known as Indonesia. Political unification was accompanied by economic integration, both as a cause and a consequence. The island of Java formed the heart of this colonial state, having the largest population, the largest cities, the densest communication and transportation network, and most of the modern sectors of the economy (Dick 2002b). Queen Wilhelmina announced the Ethical Policy (Ethische Politiek) in 1901. This development policy avant-la-lettre was not so much a coherent programme as it was a state of mind; it was framed as a moral obligation incumbent on benevolent colonials towards colonized indigenous peoples. The Ethical Policy included the expansion of public works (mostly irriga- tion canals), education, health care, and a cautious move towards a more autonomous and democratic administration. Even the military campaigns of the early twentieth century to expand the reach of the Dutch empire in the Archipelago have been considered part of the Ethical Policy, regarded as a necessary step to be taken before the paternalistic colonial state could bring progress to the indigenous population (Houben 1996:59-65; Lindblad 2002:117-21, 146-8; Locher Scholten 1981:176-208). The Decentralization Act of 1903, which established municipal governments and indirectly opened the door for an urban housing policy, was part of this Ethical Policy (Niessen 1999:45). Much of the enthusiasm of the first quarter of the twentieth century – high ideals expressed by urban administrations, economic growth, the beginning of a transfer of competences to indigenous people – evaporated after 1926. One unforeseen outcome of the Ethical Policy was the emergence of a highly educated indigenous elite, which became the vanguard of the nationalist movement. The integration of the Archipelago (in terms of administration, II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 31 economy, communications, and the media) facilitated the dissemination of the idea of an independent nation. The initially sympathetic attitude adopted towards nationalist leaders by the colonial government turned into suppression after the abortive Communist uprising of 1926-1927. The state cracked down on the nationalist movement: it forbade all ‘radical’ political parties, and imprisoned or exiled the most outspoken leaders. Unsurprisingly, radical nationalist leaders became uncompromising in response. Moderate nationalists, in contrast, held a ‘constructive’ attitude towards the colonial state. The state bureaucracy also showed less tolerance for critical persons among its own ranks: overly critical officials were threatened with dismissal. Meanwhile, in addition to the increasingly grim atmosphere, budget cuts effectively ended the Ethical Policy.1 The economic Depression of the 1930s and concomitant hardships for the unemployed added to the dismal atmosphere of the closing decade of Dutch colonialism. Yet not everything about the Depression was bad. Those who remained employed as wageworkers enjoyed rising real wages, as food prices and other costs fell more than wages. Building costs of a brick house fell by 40 per cent between 1929 and 1932.2 The state adopted a retrenchment policy, but cuts in expenditures lagged behind the decrease in state revenue, so that despite retrenchment, the state deficit rose. After 1934 there was a rapid resurgence of economic growth. Several multinational companies, such as Goodyear, Unilever, and Bata, built industrial plants in Indonesia to evade new import restrictions (Booth 1998:40, 44, 111, 146; Dick 2002c:155-7; Hart 1936). In short, a number of economic changes coincided to give several different groups of customers the funds or reasons to build, precisely when building materials were cheap. The Decentralization Act of 1903 created room for a degree of autonomy for municipalities (gemeentes, later stadsgemeentes), as well as for regencies (regentschappen) and provinces. Each municipality was established by a separate ordinance; Batavia (Jakarta) was the first, in 1905. By 1942 there were 30 municipalities, including the large cities Medan, Padang, Palembang, Batavia, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya, Banjarmasin and Makassar, but not Yogyakarta (Milone 1966:35, 108-13; Niessen 1999:47-8). The structure of the municipal administration was developed gradually in several ordinances. A fully-fledged municipal administration consisted of a council (stadsgemeenteraad), and a Board of Mayor and Aldermen. The municipal council was a legislative body entitled to enact by-laws and to approve the budget. The Board of Mayor and Aldermen formed the executive, deal-

1 Anderson 1991; Houben 1996:80-105; Lindblad 2002:119-23; Ricklefs 2001:227, 231-6; Visman et al. 1941, I:88-90. 2 This figure is from Yogyakarta (Index 1934). 32 Under construction ing with daily affairs. The mayor (burgemeester) was appointed by the central government, but the Aldermen were elected by (and usually from among) the council. Councillors were chosen on the basis of quotas for Indigenous, Foreign Oriental, and European persons, each group only electing members from its own category. Europeans dominated the councils numerically, but over the years their share was reduced to, for example, half the seats on the Batavia council; in smaller councils outside Java Europeans sometimes formed a minority. The first Indigenous mayor was appointed in Madiun in 1938. The same year women received the right to be appointed or elected to local councils and in 1941 women (with the same property and education qualifications that were required of male voters) received the right to vote in municipal council elections.3 William Frederick and Susan Abeyasekere have little regard for these municipal governments. The municipality prioritized the interests of European residents; according to Frederick (1989:4-5), ‘Indonesians simply did not count’. In Batavia, ‘voting increasingly followed clear divisions between Indonesian and European members, with the Chinese almost invariably siding with the Europeans’. Consequently, every budget favoured European interests. For example, street lighting and road construction first and foremost served the Europeans, ‘since they were the ones who lived along and used roads most’; piped water was mainly restricted to European areas (Abeyasekere 1989:119). Moreover, the requirements to be eligible to vote (sex, age, income, literacy) restricted the Indigenous electorate to a tiny minority of the adult male population (Abeyasekere 1989:118; Frederick 1989:4, 29). This view of the municipal government as a vehicle for established European interests is, however, problematic for two reasons. First, Frederick and Abeyasekere confuse the composition of the council, in which Europeans indeed held a disproportionate number of seats, with the alleged existence of interest groups defined by the ‘racial’ division of society. As we shall see in the following chapters, the notion of racial segregation is problematic and one cannot maintain that it was only Europeans who lived along main roads and hence that municipal policy favoured one ethnic group. Abeyasekere’s argument that Europeans used the roads most is absurd; several films of street scenes testify to the opposite.4 The council of Padang provides examples of being split along class-based instead of ethnic lines.5 For instance, a conflagration in the business district

3 Abeyasekere 1989:118; Blackburn 2000:176-7; Indisch Verslag 1932, II:442; Niessen 1999:50-3; Stibbe 1939. 4 Great injustice lay, however, in the fact that Indigenous people bore the heaviest burden of road construction (Khusyairi 2008:8). 5 The same is true for Medan (Dirk Buiskool, personal communication). II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 33 in 1923 triggered a debate about the introduction of waterworks, to be used for drinking water and for extinguishing fires. Economically, waterworks were only feasible if there were many users, in other words if connection to the water mains was made obligatory. The issue was hotly debated in the council and in letters to the editor of the local daily newspaper. The criticism was that the waterworks would be in the interest of the rich Europeans and Chinese (who were paying high fire insurance premiums as long as there were no waterworks), but the majority of common Europeans, Eurasians, and Chinese would bear the brunt of the costs, as they formed the majority of the people to be connected. Time and again the issue reappeared on the political agenda, for the last time in 1941, but connection never became obligatory. Another example was the debate, in 1929, about a proposal by an indigenous councillor to replace the municipal income derived from the rodigelden (a tax collected from Indigenous residents only) by a general surtax on income. One vocal councillor who participated in the debate was Yap Gim Sek, a journalist who had beaten the Captain (head) of the Chinese in the council election. Yap voted for the indigenous councillor’s proposal. He stated explicitly that in previous debates about the surtax, only rich Chinese councillors had spoken (and objected to the surtax) – obviously Yap had the Captain in mind – but he spoke on behalf of the poor majority. Nevertheless, despite Yap’s support, the proposed surtax was voted down by the majority of European councillors. Eventually, in 1937, class interests finally prevailed over ethnic boundaries. The brilliant indigenous councillor Roestam gelar Soetan Palindih then forged a coalition between the indigenous, Chinese and lower-middle-class European councillors to accept a surtax on income, property, and the toll tax, with small incomes exempted.6 The second reason a solely negative view of the municipal government is unwarranted is the emancipatory role played by municipal councils. Between 40 per cent and 50 per cent of the persons eligible to vote actually did so in 1931, with a peak of 70 per cent of indigenous voters in Medan and Banjarmasin (Indisch Verslag 1932, II:442). This high voter turnout (of the adult minority that was enfranchised) indicates widespread interest in local democracy. The citizens on the council, whatever their ethnic background or income, seized the opportunity to democratize and to form a counterweight to the central government in Batavia (Nas 1990:148-9; Niessen 1999:53; Van der Zee 1928:136-8). This enthusiasm for emancipation was also true of

6 Colombijn 1994:94-103. The lower-middle-class Europeans were united in the IEV (Indo- Europeesch Verbond, Association of Eurasians). The same year in which the IEV councillors sided with the indigenous and Chinese councillors in Padang, the IEV ended its alliance with the Vaderlandsche Club, a conservative, Dutch nationalist party, at the national level (Drooglever 2006). 34 Under construction some indigenous councillors, such as Roestam glr. St. Palindih in Padang, G.S.S.J. Ratulangi in Bandung, and Husni Thamrin who in 1927 became the first Indigenous Alderman in Batavia (Abeyasekere 1989:126; Otto 1991). Although in the 1930s non-cooperative Indonesian nationalism was quelled at the national level, a less radical nationalism blossomed at the urban level. The IEV also developed a keen interest in municipal politics, albeit belat- edly. The IEV journal Onze Stem (5-5-1939), for instance, recommended the Explanatory Memorandum of the Bill on Town Planning as reading material for IEV councillors.

The colonial balance of power was made visible in urban symbols. Statues were the pre-eminent symbol carriers in colonial times, because they were the only objects of the built environment with a purely symbolic function. Moreover, statues were rooted in an old European tradition of images of per- sonages and imposing offices; statues as a genre, regardless of their message, thus already referred to European hegemony. The hard material concurred with an unshakeable Dutch belief that they would be rulers for a long time to come. Unsurprisingly, the largest statues expressed Dutch colonial might.7 These statues usually commemorated successfully completed military campaigns or slain officers; most of them were erected in the nineteenth century. The military monuments were hegemonic because of their size and central locations, but certainly did not monopolize the symbolic domain of the cities. Just as citizens seized the opportunity to express their wishes in the municipal council, they also enjoyed considerable freedom to collect funds and erect a statue for one of their own heroes. As a result of the room for private initiative, many monuments expressed non-military values. For instance, statues in Surabaya commemorated medical doctor G. von Bultzingslöwen and avia- tion pioneer Lieutenant A.E. Rambaldo, who crashed in his hot-air balloon. Bandung honoured a less audacious pioneer: C.J. de Groot, the first man to establish a radio connection between the colony and the motherland (Deli Courant 27-1-1930). In Padang a statue was constructed for engineer W.H. de Greve, discoverer of the Umbilin coal deposits in West Sumatra. Medan commemorated tobacco planter Jacob Nienhuys with a fountain and entrepreneur J.Th. Cremer with a statue. Monuments to non-Europeans further enriched the symbolic multiformity. In the middle-sized city of Padang at least three of these were found: for the

7 The information about urban symbols in this chapter is taken from various sources. Unless stated otherwise, see for Batavia/Jakarta: Nas (1993a); for Surabaya: Sarkawi B. Husain (2005a); for Medan: Loderichs et al. (1997:13, 16, 21, 33, 112); for Padang: Colombijn (1994:330-58). Colombijn (2006) discusses additional types of symbols. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 35

Sarekat Adat Alam Minangkabau (an organization of conservative traditional leaders), the Jong Sumatranen Bond (an association of moderate nationalists), and Soetan Masa Bumi (a local politician). In Medan, the Chinese tycoon Tjong A Fie donated the famous tower of the town hall. Tjong also funded the construction of the beautiful Virtuous Bridge (Jembatan Chen Tek) across the River Babura (1916); it was embellished with Chinese characters. The Husni monument in Surabaya commemorated a 13-year-old Turkish boy said to have died in an air crash; Dutch residents objected to having the little statue of a Turkish boy in their elite neighbourhood. Chinese, Arab, and Japanese communities also played a role when they built temporary gateways with Oriental ornamentation on the occasion of festivities related to the House of Orange. The gateways simultaneously conveyed multiculturalism and alle- giance to the colonial overlord. The best documented change in the urban landscape was, however, not the production of statues and gateways, but the proliferation of modern architecture. Many companies built new offices designed by professional Dutch architects. Also, many luxurious villas were built. The style of most buildings was hybrid: European building materials and insights were mixed with commonsense knowledge about the functional requirements of buildings in a tropical climate (Akihary 1990). New means of transportation formed another sign of modernity, being both cause and effect of modernization. Contemporary films provide the liveliest impression of traffic and the urban landscape.8 The choice of means of transportation very much reflected income disparity. Although comparatively many Europeans owned a car, income and not ethnicity was the main influence on the means of transportation. In a film commemorating its 25th anniversary the car company Fuchs and Rens stressed that indigenous women could buy a Chrysler (Autobedrijf Fuchs en Rens 1927), and other films show Europeans and Eurasians on foot and on bicycles.9 Progress claims victims. The transport revolution was gendered: the identity of drivers was sheltered from the public gaze and most cyclists were men; consequently the rise of the motorcar and the bicycle resulted in a partial disappearance of women from the street. Another martyr to modernization was the tree: city centres were markedly less green than in the early twentieth century. The elite suburbs, in contrast, which were bare when they were built, were now distinguished by their tall trees. A corollary of the de-greening was

8 Autotocht door Bandoeng 1913; Tocht per auto door Weltevreden 1913; Borneo 1919; Soerabaia 1929; Even naar Batavia 1938; Nederlands-Indië voor 1942 (10) 1939; Nederlands-Indië voor 1942 (14) 1939; NICA menghidangkan 1944. 9 For a quantitative indication of the growth of transportation: Gerla (1937:14-5) and Khusyairi (2008). 36 Under construction the loss of shade in cities (Barwegen 2006; Karsten 1939). Indigenous people figured in films mostly as ordinary participants, but the filmmakers (all European) also took close-ups of what they viewed as exotic indigenous behaviour. Squatting on the ground, vendors sold vegetables at the market. A merchant in medicines spread out his wares on a mat. Hairdressers ran an open-air business with no equipment other than a stool and a mirror hung on a nail in a tree. Bare-breasted women sitting on bamboo rafts washed clothes in the Molenvliet canal in Batavia. In the smaller streets, the ox-drawn carts with a pair of wheels the height of a man still set the pace and car drivers had to wait for a chance to overtake them.10 The Japanese invasion would end many aspects of the Dutch colonial world.

The Japanese period

Japan’s incursion into Southeast Asia was motivated by its need for Indonesian oil to sustain its war in China. About one month after the attack on Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941), Japanese forces invaded Netherlands Indies territory and on 8 March 1942 the Dutch capitulated. Many indigenous people welcomed the Japanese forces as liberators, but hardship quickly quelled their enthusiasm. By 1945 calorie intake was two-thirds of the pre-war level; starving people became a daily reality. The forced use of gunnysacks for clothes was widely considered a shame; by mid-1944 some peasants tilled their fields stark naked. There was even a shortage of white cloth in which to wrap the dead bodies of Muslims.11 Millions of indigenous persons were mobilized as romusha (forced labourers). According to one estimate, Gross Domestic Product in 1945 was 43 per cent of its 1941 level, but it should be noted that for the Japanese period such figures are extremely unreliable. According to another estimate 2,000,000 indigenous people (of a population of 70,000,000) died.12 Cities became places of refuge for those trying to escape these harsh conditions. The Japanese stored rice in the cities for themselves and for city dwellers, and the rationing guaranteed urban residents more food than the peasants in rice-growing regions. Nevertheless, by 1943 inhabitants in Surabaya began eating maize and cassava for want of the preferred staple food, rice,

10 Balikpapan 1924; Borneo 1919; Nederlands-Indië voor 1942 (10) 1939; Nederlands-Indië voor 1942 (14) 1939; NICA menghidangkan [1944]. 11 This shortage arose within months of the Japanese victory; some municipalities provided some relief by distributing cloth (Asia Raya 25-9-2602, 9-10-2602, 17-10-2602). 12 Abeyasekere 1989:141; Booth 1998:48-50, 117; Dick 2002c:163-6; Houben 1996:128; Sato 1994:76. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 37 and in Jakarta people queuing up at market stalls fought over what was available. Another advantage of the city was the relative anonymity in the masses, which reduced the risk of mobilization as romusha. Consequently, urban population figures swelled; between 1940 and 1945 Jakarta and Surabaya allegedly grew by half.13 An important social change, most noticeable in the cities, was the gradual internment of about 100,000 European civilians. The civilians were preceded by about 40,000 military, including Indonesians. Female civilians and children formed the last civilian category, interned 18 months after the invasion. The experiences of these Europeans varied considerably. A film shot in 1943 still shows Eurasian women and even a few white men in the shopping street Pasar Baroe, Jakarta. About one out of seven internees did not survive the harsh conditions in the camps.14 The internment of Europeans posed a dilemma for the Eurasian community, which was about 170,000 people strong at the time of the invasion. When given a choice, many were naturally happy to remain outside the camps, but on the other hand, if they wanted to uphold their European status, the logical corollary was internment. An important detail is that in Batavia Eurasians with a minimum income of ƒ 300 were interned and those with less income were not; this is one example of an apparent ‘racial’ distinction that was in reality at least partly a matter of income.15 The internment of Europeans meant most large companies and the civil service were bereft of their cadre and shoved the administrative responsibility onto Japanese shoulders.16 Japan, however, came to Indonesia without a well thought-out plan of how to administer the territory and, according to Shigeru Sato (1994), sheer misadministration and bureaucratic chaos, rather than brutal exploitation, were the main causes of the economic hardship.

13 Abeyasekere 1989:140; Dick 2002c:167; Frederick 1989:101-4; Sato 1994:117, 137. 14 Berita film no. 18, 2603; Brugmans et al. 1960:372; De Jong 1985, XIb:753-866; Ricklefs 2001:248; Touwen-Bouwsma 1991. 15 Ellemers and Vaillant 1985:29; Stevens 1991:34; Touwen-Bouwsma 1991:71-4. Another example of the way the Japanese distinguished between ethnic groups by income is that indigenous persons earning over ƒ 100 were grouped together with European and Chinese residents as to the requirement for registering births, marriages, and deaths at the town hall (Asia Raya 28-11-2602). This registration of the indigenous elite in the same category with Chinese and Europeans was presented as a new Japanese way of doing things, but in fact dated back to 1920 (Tesch 1948:69). 16 To indicate the magnitude of European dominance in the bureaucracy (and hence the impact of their removal): in 1938 Europeans filled 20% of civil service positions, but 92% of the highest ranks (with a university degree); indigenous people (78% of all civil servants) occupied only 6% of the highest ranks and 99% of the lowest ranks (Visman et al. 1941, I:55-6). To give an example: in 1931 126 Europeans were in permanent service of the municipality of Surabaya and 81 in temporary service (Indisch Verslag 1932, II:445). 38 Under construction

The 2,000 new Japanese civil servants were a trifling figure compared to the former 15,000 Dutch civil servants. The newcomers were ill prepared for dealing with Indonesians; they had been given little information in advance and were puzzled by seemingly incomprehensible habits such as letting oxen defecate on the street. Many top positions vacated by Dutchmen were filled by middle-rank indigenous civil servants. However, in at least one city, Surabaya, the Japanese did not promote many new indigenous peoples, but relied on better skilled Eurasians and Chinese, put experienced retired people back to work, or gave the best staff two jobs to do.17 Benedict Anderson (1990:99) sums up: ‘the abrupt removal of experienced Dutch officials, their replacement by relatively inexperienced Japanese and suddenly promoted Indonesians, and wartime dislocations and shortages drastically undermined the efficacy of the state machine’. Japanese rule was strongly hierarchical, with lines of command running from the centre down to the new neighbourhood associations (tonarigumi or rukun tetangga). Indonesia was divided into three military administrations: the 16th Army ruled Java; the 25th Army Sumatra; and the Navy the whole of Eastern Indonesia. Major policy decisions were taken in Tokyo and the Southern Forces Military Headquarters in Singapore, and – at a lower level – Bukittinggi, Jakarta, and Makassar. Despite the fact that lines of command commenced at one point, Tokyo, policies differed, including the important matter that the Japanese supported nationalism far more in Java than in Sumatra or Eastern Indonesia.18 At first the Japanese were content to continue the Dutch bureaucratic structure, but in August 1942, they introduced their own system. Municipalities were renamed Si with an appointed head, Sityoo (Mayor). More important than the name change, or even the fact that 15 Mayors in Java were recruited from the indigenous population (only in Jakarta, Surabaya and Semarang Japanese were appointed),19 was that the Mayor was also made responsible for implementation of central government policies. In Dutch times, the Mayor had been responsible for the autonomous, local administration and the execution of central government policy was in the hands of the Resident or Assistent-Resident of that area. In the Japanese system, the Mayor combined two functions: head of the local administration and representative of the central state. This dual function of the Mayor effectively curbed the autonomy of the city administration, because the vertical military line of command

17 Abeyasekere 1989:138; Dick 2002c:164; Frederick 1989:87-99; Sato 1994:22-5. 18 Niessen 1995:117, 1999:54-5; Okuma 1963:108; Reid 1979:140; Ricklefs 2001:247, 254-7. 19 Kan Pō 1(6) 2602; Daftar nama-nama Tokubetu-Sityoo/Sityoo seloeroeh Djawa, NA, NEFIS/ CMI 3152; N.E.F.I.S. C.A.I. Section. Geheim, Het bestuur van Java tijdens de Japansche bezetting, [n.d.], NA, NEFIS/CMI 1922. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 39 predominated. The regulation concerning urban administration specifically stated that provisions made by the military administration overruled any ordinances of the Si, if a legal contradiction emerged.20 The municipal council, which might have acted as a counterweight to the Mayor, was abolished in Java and Sumatra in 1943, and its competences were transferred to the Mayor.21 The text accompanying the ordinance abolishing the councils explained that the previous, liberal ideology of local autonomy and democracy was rejected; these democratic rules, which were ‘awkward and complex’ (‘jang kakoe dan soelit itu’), were annulled. The new-style municipalities were to become solid, strong, yet simple. Consequently, the Japanese military administration in Java and Sumatra abruptly ended the trend towards public participation in the municipal government (Niessen 1995:115, 119-21, 1999:57; Okuma 1963:140). In short, the political process at the local and national levels moved in opposite directions during the Japanese period. At the national level, there was suppression of nationalist politics in late Dutch colonial times and mass mobilization in the Japanese period; at the local level, the lively core of self-assured, politically conscious citizens that had grown in Dutch times was muzzled by the Japanese. The administration of Eastern Indonesia fared differently to that of Java and Sumatra. In contrast to the policy of the 16th Army and the 25th Army, the Navy decreed that municipal councils would remain active in Makassar, Manado, Banjarmasin, Pontianak, and Ambon, with at least half of the members elected in free elections.22 Another difference was the fact that the Navy intended to occupy Eastern Indonesia indefinitely and therefore employed several external, experienced civil administrators. It is ominous in the light of the tense military-civilian relationship on both the Republican and Dutch sides after 1945 that the relationship between Japanese civilians and military was also highly problematic. Okada Fumihide, the highest civilian in Eastern Indonesia, recalled later how a different corporate culture stood in the way of mutual understanding between the civilians and the military. The military

20 Items concerning regency and municipal ordinances (Ken-shi jōrei ni kansuru ken), Administrative Order of the Commander of the Japanese Army no. 13, 29-4-2603, article 2, 5 (Benda et al. 1965:84-5); see further Kan Pō 1(1-2) 2602; Sato 1994:26-7; Niessen 1995:119-21, 1999:56-7. 21 Provisional Order on the Regency and Municipality (Ken-shi zankōrei), Administrative Order of the Commander of the Japanese Army no. 12, 29-4-2603 (Benda et al. 1965:82-3). 22 Regulations Concerning the Establishment of Municipal Offices (Sjitjo settji kitei), Navy Civil Government Order no. 30, 1-12-2603; Provisional Order Concerning Municipal Councils (Zantei sjikai rei), Navy Civil Government Order no. 35, 8-12-2603 (Benda et al. 1965:219-20, 226- 9). In 1943, the ‘special municipality’ (Jakarta) was also accorded a council, which functioned as a consultative organ for the all-powerful military administration (Okuma 1963:361-2) and appears to have had far fewer competences than municipal councils in Eastern Indonesia. 40 Under construction provoked the civilians and adopted a high-handed attitude. Okada’s Chief Secretary therefore lamented that ‘the Japanese [military] were more difficult to control than the natives’ (Reid and Oki 1986:146-52; the quote is from p. 148). The Japanese not only changed the bureaucratic structure, but also tried to introduce a new bureaucratic spirit: civil servants ‘should serve the common cause without considering their self interest’. All Mayors and Regents of Java were called together in March 1943 to be indoctrinated with this new ideology. It is ironic that at the same time, declining living standards and many new wartime regulations contributed to exacerbating corruption in the civil service (Anderson 1990:99; Cribb and Brown 1995:14; Sato 1994:29- 33). Corruption was not entirely new. For instance, a commission to study kampong improvement in Dutch colonial times had recommended that the tariffs charged for building-permit applications be announced publicly, to prevent the collection of illicit tariffs by civil servants (Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:44). Where there is smoke there is fire, but it is plausible that the higher echelons of the Dutch civil service were more determined or better able to curb corruption than were Japanese civil servants.

The collapse of Dutch power quickly became visible in the ‘Japanization’ and Indonesianisasi of symbolic space. One lasting change was the name change of Batavia to Jakarta on the first anniversary of the assault on Pearl Harbor (Asia Raya 11-12-2602). The Dutch language and later the English language had to be removed from public life. Indonesian was of course common anyway, but the gradual ‘Japanization’, which affected many spheres of life, was never complete. Dutch names of streets and railway stations were gradually changed to Japanese and Indonesian names throughout the Japanese period.23 For instance, the Daendelsboulevard in Malang became Imamoera Doori and the Emmastraat Djalan Dr. Soetomo. However, the fact that public reminders of the new names were necessary shows that urbanites had not internalized them; the superficiality of the name changes is also apparent in the ease with which the Dutch after the war, erased the Japanese names. The Working Group for the Preparation of an Indonesian Cultural Centre (Badan Persiapan Poesat Kebudajaan Indonesia) invited departments to coin Indonesian equivalents for Dutch administrative phrases. New terms were also needed to spell the alphabet: A=Amat, B=Badroen, C=Charis and so on. A competition was held to find new names for cigarette brands; Mascot became Kooa (Asia stand up!), Davros Mizoeho (Rice) and Double Ace Seikidoo

23 Asia Raya 21-12-2602, 1-2-2603, 6-2-2603, 12-3-2603, 30-3-2603, 14-6-2603, 19-2-2605, 1-3-2605, 2-3-2605; Kan Pō 3(43-44, 56) 2604. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 41

(Equator) (Asia Raya 9-10-2602, 27-11-2602, 11-1-2603; Kan Pō 2(11) 2603, 3(37- 8) 2604). Japanese lessons in the newspaper, Japanese classes for Indonesian civil servants, and lists of terms in state publications introduced society to the new language. Operators held a contest for who was able to connect 50 telephone numbers in Japanese in one minute (Almanak Asia Raya 2603:69-78; Asia Raya 22-10-2602; Kan Pō 1(4) 2602). Signs and advertisements in Dutch and English were removed from the streets. Many Dutch monuments were demolished. The most prominent was the Jan Pieterszoon Coen monument. A Japanese propaganda film shows how the job was handled by a team of indigenous labourers, without any spectacular ceremonial display. No Japanese dignitary was present. The bronze statue was not knocked off its pedestal in a dramatic gesture, but carefully hauled down (Figure 1). Only when Coen was swaying halfway between heaven and earth did the labourers and a handful of school pupils cheer perfunctorily in front of the camera (Djawa baharoe (7) 2603; see also Asia Raya 9-3-2603). Children were allowed to knock down minor monuments (like flagpoles on a base), seemingly for the fun of it (Djawa baharoe (4) 2603). Few people know that the Japanese erected a considerable number of statues themselves, and shrines too. The most prominent statues, as far as I know, were found on the central square of Medan, in Surakarta, and Malang.24 It is remarkable, though, that in the case of many colonial statues only the texts were obliter- ated (Asia Raya 7-10-2602); even the impressive Van Heutsz monument in Jakarta was left untouched; it would even survive the Indonesian revolution, albeit daubed with revolutionary slogans.25 The most important symbolic expression of Japanese supremacy was formed by the countless parades, raising of the Japanese flag, solemn bows, and cheerful tunes and announcements broadcast by what were known as ‘singing towers’ (radios) placed along important roads. On this point, the Japanese did not tolerate rival messages. Whereas the Japanese had distributed Japanese and Indonesian flags when they entered Jakarta and Surabaya, only two weeks later flying the Indonesian flag was prohibited and the flag was not permitted to be raised again until September 1944. One of the first measures taken by the Japanese was to prohibit the flying of the Dutch flag and to give instructions on how to hoist the Rising Sun. On the occasion of the Emperor’s birthday, 29 April 1942, the army ordered that Dutch flags

24 Asia Raya 26-9-2602, 31-10-2602, 19-11-2602, 23-11-2602, 16-1-2603, 8-2-2603, 17-2-2603, 18-2- 2603, 1-3-2603, 5-3-2603, 6-3-2603, 9-3-2603, 24-3-2603, 10-4-2603, 27-4-2603, 13-6-2604; Djawa baharoe (4) 2603; Djawa Baroe 1-3-2603, 15-3-2603, 15-5-2603, 1-3-2604, 1-7-2604; Loderichs et al. 1997:61; Reid 1979:133. 25 Dinas Museum dan Sejarah 1980:5; Djawa Baroe 1-3-2605; Vickers 2005:97; Voskuil 1993:129. Figure 1. The removal of the Jan Pieterszoon Coen monument, Jakarta. Source: Asia Raya 9-3-2603. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 43 and other signs of Dutchness be burnt in public; the same year portraits of Chiang Kai-shek and other Chinese emblems also had to be burnt. At the beginning of every school day, the children were made to sing the Japanese national anthem and to watch while the Rising Sun was hoisted. Official meetings began with a solemn bow in the direction of the Japanese Emperor in Tokyo.26 Changes in the urban landscape went much deeper than the symbolic side of it. Films produced in the Japanese period allow a glimpse into these changes, although one must keep in mind that these films served a propaganda purpose even more than did Dutch films.27 One conspicuous change during the Japanese period was the altered composition of traffic. Private cars almost disappeared from the street, except when there were special events. A few confiscated cars, hilariously camouflaged with a few twigs, were paraded shortly after the invasion. Cars were liberally used to drive collaborating Indonesian leaders and Japanese officials around; visiting Prime Minister Tojo had no less than 14 cars in his entourage. The disappearance of the private car was balanced by the equally spectacular rise of the becak (pedicab), introduced at the end of the 1930s, and there were also more pedestrians. In late colonial times, a line of cars, parked bumper to bumper, could be seen waiting in the popular shopping street Pasar Baroe (Jakarta), now it was a line of becak.28 At the end of the war, people experimented with horse-drawn cars and bicycles made of teak (Asia Raya 20-5-2604, 24-4-2605). The becak provided transportation and urgently needed employment, was less vulnerable to lack of supplies than other vehicles, and was not targeted for military requisition (Figure 2). Although buses seemed more common than in Dutch colonial times, mass public transport capacity was insufficient to serve the swollen urban population. Consequently buses and trams were bursting with passengers (Figure 3).29 On the whole, the appearance of cities deteriorated rapidly with the onset of ‘urban blight’ (Jaffe 2006). Looking back on the Japanese years in Medan, the returning Dutch – not without self-interest – pointed out that from 1942

26 Abeyasekere 1989:135, 138; Brugmans et al. 1960:181-9; Frederick 1989:93; De Jong 1985, XIb:230-9; Raben 1999:12; Sato 1994:23, 58; Van Schaik 1996:48-50, 57; Voskuil et al. 1996:70-3; see also Japan verovert 2603; Perdjoempaan kaoem moeslim 2603. 27 To mention one point, houses in the background of the films and people’s clothes are too well maintained to be real. For example, men and women demonstrating how to sweep the street and the houses were wearing their best clothes, even socks and shoes (Kesehatan rakjat 2603). The magazine Djawa Baroe 2603-2605 [1943-1945] has a strikingly similar content as the films. 28 Berita film no. 7 2603; Berita film no. 14 2603; Chabar dai toa 2602; Djawa baharoe (7) 2603; Hiduplah Indonesia! 2605; Oebi djalar 2604; see also Djawa Baroe 15-7-2603, 15-10-2603. 29 For humorous literary descriptions of trams in those days, see Johan Fabricius (1947:21); Idrus (1948:78-83); and Brata (2002:284). Figure 2. Becak in Japanese times. Source: Djawa Baroe 1-2-2604, front cover.

Figure 3. Inside a tram in Japanese times. Source: Djawa Baroe 1(2) 15-1-2603. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 45 to 1945 the residents of Medan had learned not to comply with ordinances, the market and abattoirs lacked basic hygienic precautions, and the city as a whole had become filthy.30 This negative Dutch account is qualified by the memoirs of the Japanese soldier Takao Fusayama. Fusayama (1997:127) stated that social order was better than in Dutch times, noting that nobody stole bicycles placed outside houses anymore. Perhaps, but this was at the beginning of the Japanese occupation, when there was more order. According to accounts of two Eurasian eyewitnesses from other cities, streets were pock- marked with potholes that had to be circumvented by drivers, yards were overgrown with weeds, Chinese shop-owners had barred their windows, fruit was stolen from trees before it was ripe, and starving beggars lay in the street with swollen stomachs. Every morning a garbage truck went around to pick up dead bodies; a Japanese man kicked quiet beggars to see whether they would still move. The tale went around of how a dead man returned to his home weeping, because his corpse had been wrapped up in itchy woven palm leaves, instead of the appropriate, but unobtainable white cloth (Brugmans et al. 1960:146, 601-2). The provision of free water to public bathing facilities ended in Medan.31 In Jakarta the Japanese felt they could not spare many resources for urban development, but the Surabaya administration made efforts to expand and improve the supply of water and electricity and to upgrade the public tram (Abeyasekere 1989:136; Frederick 1989:98). The planting of food crops in front of houses was practical but an untidy sight (Djawa Baroe 1-5-2605; Oebi djalar 2604). An important change in the urban landscape, left out of the propaganda films (see however Djawa Baroe 1-3-2605), was the explosion in street trade. A growing number of people sought a living in the informal sector, for example repairing bicycles, selling second-hand clothes, making soap, cigarettes, soy sauce (kecap), or sweets (borstplaat was a Eurasian speciality), and selling food and coffee from stalls. The blossoming informal sector was no doubt connected to the closure of many shops. European shop-owners were interned and many Chinese owners put their activities on ice out of fear of looting. The dwindling of formal shops created a market for street trade and at the same time removed a lobby that in the 1930s had urged the state to take action against hawkers. Moreover, in the dire economic situation, there was a demand for goods sold in small quantities, which street traders are better able

30 Letter A.J. Paling, Gemeentesecretaris Medan, to Het Nieuwsblad, 1-9-1948, Arsip Medan. All documents from the municipal archive of Medan come from the file copyboek, unless stated otherwise. Copyboek numbers are only given when the document (for instance incoming letters) is hard to find without. 31 Letter F.M. Razoux Schultz, Hoofdingenieur Departement van Gezondheid, to Burgemeester Medan, Jakarta 5-6-1948, Arsip Medan, copyboek 24221, 12-6-1948. 46 Under construction to do; vendors began to sell cigarettes by the piece instead of by the package (Asia Raya 17-9-2602). Possibly the main factor that stimulated street trade was the high unemployment among migrants to the city who were looking for a way to earn an income. The municipal archives of Surabaya and Padang contain dozens of applications for selling rice or coffee at a food stall from people wishing to comply with the Nuisance Ordinance (Hinderordonnantie). The point here is not only the mushrooming informal sector, but also the evidence of a functioning municipal administration throughout the Japanese years.32 Nevertheless, the numerous applications give rise to the inescapable impression that the local administration was lagging behind in what was happening and gradually lost control of the city.

The Indonesian Revolution

Although Japanese rule was in itself perhaps not a great success, it was crucial in preparing Indonesia for independence. Dutch prestige had received an irreparable blow. Indonesians promoted to high administrative positions gained confidence in their ability to run the country. Nationalist leaders, notably Soekarno, could campaign to promote national independence. Youths were trained by the Japanese in the use of arms and – just as importantly – revolutionary zeal and a faith in spiritual power. Two days after the Japanese surrender in World War II, Indonesian leaders proclaimed independence (17 August 1945). The birth of the new nation overlapped with the winding up of the Japanese occupation. Allied forces had the task of disarming the Japanese forces, evacuating Allied prisoners of war and Dutch internees, and maintaining law and order in the main cities. The interlude between the Proclamation of Independence and the arrival of the Allied forces (British troops landed in Jakarta on 28 September 1945) allowed the Republic to set up a rudimen- tary administrative system. By the end of September 1945 most of Java and Sumatra had joined the Republic; nationalist sympathizers administered many towns and cities, and also ran the utilities and public works (Anderson 1972:129; Frey 2003:86, 88; L. de Jong 1986, XIc:581-609). The British quickly recognized de facto Republican rule, but secured the major cities: Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya, Medan, and Padang. In Surabaya the British only gained control after very heavy fighting with Republican troops, mili-

32 A remarkable detail in this respect is that the Japanization of the administration was not complete; Dutch-language forms, embossed with the Dutch lion (Je maintiendrai), continued to be used. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 47 tias, and gangs of revolutionary youth (pemuda), starting on 10 November 1945.33 In Semarang the Japanese fought hard against Indonesians to keep control of the city, until they could hand over the municipal administration to the British. Most Dutch politicians totally misjudged the situation and attempted to impose the restoration of colonial rule. Even before the Netherlands had amassed enough forces to relieve the British troops, the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration (NICA) assumed control of the major cities one after the other. Timing differed from place to place: NICA sometimes followed hard on the heels of the British forces; other cities it took over in the wake of the First Dutch Offensive (Agresi Pertama or Eerste Politionele Actie), which lasted from 21 July to 4 August 1947. Yogyakarta, the last Indonesian stronghold and seat of the Republican government, fell in the Second Dutch Offensive, from 19 December 1948 to 5 January 1949 (Table 2). The Dutch military successes were a pyrrhic victory: they caused US support to shift to the Republican side and incited full-scale guerrilla warfare in the countryside. The Dutch were forced to negotiate the transfer of sovereignty with Republican leaders. The outcome of the negotiations was a federal Republic of the United States of Indonesia. The federal state was a patchwork of territories, such as: the Republic of Indonesia (at the transfer of sovereignty consisting of most of Sumatra, a large area around Yogyakarta, and the western tip of Java); East Indonesia (capital: Makassar, created 24 December 1946); and East Sumatra (capital: Medan, created 25 December 1947). The federal scheme proved to be too much tainted by its Dutch origins. Within one year all parts quietly merged into a new unitary Republic of Indonesia, formally established on 17 August 1950; on the same occasion, Jakarta was declared the national capital (Cribb 2000:160). As a result of these events, the cities were effectively under Dutch rule again for most of 1945 to 1949. City by city, the pre-war administrative structure was restored as much as possible, but until the end of 1948 under the state of war and siege the local administrative heads wielded wide discre- tionary powers, for want of a functioning council.34 Municipal councils were gradually reinstalled, consisting of both elected and appointed members, with a growing proportion of indigenous councillors.35 Indigenous Mayors

33 An estimated 15,000 people lost their lives, including about 1,000 Chinese and 1,000 Dutchmen and Eurasians (Vickers 2005:98). 34 Schiller 1955:138-47, 200-4; see further Besluit Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal 9-10-1948, no. 18 (on Bandung, Cirebon and Buitenzorg [Bogor]), 10-11-1948, no. 8 (on Padang), and 26-1- 1949, no. 5 (on Palembang), Staatsblad van Indonesië 258/1948; 287/1948; and 37/1949. 35 For example, an advisory council, as precursor to an elected council, was installed in Medan on 26 January 1948 with four indigenous members, two Chinese, two Europeans, and one Indian. Letter Djaidin Poerba, Burgemeester Medan, 21-1-1948, no. 368, Arsip Medan. Indigenous councillors held the largest number of seats, but were still seriously underrepresented. The indige- Table 2. Dates of return of Dutch administration to major cities

City Allied dutch Comment occupation administration

Banjarmasin 17-9-1945 december 1945 Australian troops occupy eastern January 1946 indonesian cities in September and October 1945, before revolutionary governments were established; Dutchmen replace them within months Makassar 21-9-1945 december 1945 January 1946 see Banjarmasin Ambon 22-9-1945 december 1945 January 1946 see Banjarmasin Jakarta 30-9-1945 20 July 1947 First Dutch Offensive; until then joint administration by Republic and the Dutch colonial state Manado 8-10-1945 december 1945 January 1946 see Banjarmasin Medan 10-10-1945 6-9-1947 British troops arrive October 1945, Dutch take full control in First Dutch Offensive Padang 10-10-1945 July 1947 British troops arrive October 1945, Dutch take full control in First Dutch Offensive Bandung 17-10-1945 17 April 1946 Bandung split into an Allied and Republican zone in November 1945; return of Dutch preceded by Ban- dung Lautan Api on 24 March 1946 Semarang 20-10-1945 July 1947? First Dutch Offensive Palembang 22-10-1945 July 1947 British troops arrive October 1945, Dutch take full control in First Dutch Offensive Surabaya 25-10-1945 4-2-1946 Arrival first Dutch troops; last British forces leave on 8-5-1946 Yogyakarta 19-12-1948 until 6-7-1949 second Dutch Offensive; returned to the Republic as a result of peace talks

Sources: dates of Allied occupation: Cribb 2000:154 (L. de Jong 1986, XIc:513, 645, 593) mentions 28 September 1945 as the landing of the first British troops in Jakarta and 11 October for Medan (but 10 October for Belawan); data of Dutch administration: Eastern Indonesia (Banjarmasin, Makassar, Ambon, Manado): L. de Jong 1986, XIc:581-5; Ricklefs 2001:273; Jakarta: Abeyasekere 1989:157; Medan: Letter A.J. Paling to Het Nieuwsblad, Medan 1-9-1948, no. 3555, Arsip Medan; Padang, Palembang: Ricklefs 2001:265, 276; Bandung: Smail 1964:113; Surabaya: Bussemaker 2005:258; Yogyakarta: Ricklefs 2001:282, 284. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 49 became common, though Dutch civil servants pulled most of the strings. The Dutch energetically initiated a wide range of physical reconstruction and urban planning. The upshot of the brief but vigorous Dutch resumption of power was that urban policy in the 1950s was the legacy of the outgoing Dutch colonials, and not of the Japanese interregnum. The pace with which the Dutch assumed control of urban administration varied from city to city. Makassar, Banjarmasin, Manado, and Ambon were taken over by the Dutch shortly after the Japanese surrender, and much of the administrative enthusiasm for reconstruction focused on these cities. In other cities administrative power was shared for some time.36 Bandung was initially also jointly ruled by the Indonesians and British. Recurrent skirmishes between Republican and Allied soldiers led to a strict division of the city into two halves, separated by the railway line, in November 1945. The Indonesians held sway over the south and the British controlled a small European enclave in the north. Four months later the Republican administration evacuated the south in the face of mounting Dutch pressure. The retreating pemuda carried out a scorched-earth action known as Bandung Lautan Api (Bandung a sea of flames, 24 March 1946). The pemuda intended to destroy only important public buildings, but this proved more difficult than envisaged. In fact, it was mostly houses and other buildings made of light, combustible material that were set on fire. Hundreds of Chinese houses and shops were destroyed (Smail 1964:109-13, 151-3). Medan, like Makassar, was situated in a negara (constituent state of the federal Republic of the United States of Indonesia), which functioned fairly well, but this political structure resulted in other problems of power sharing. The negara government wielded the juridical competence to supervise municipalities (Niessen 1999:65-8; Schiller 1955:146) and from the perspective of the urban government the interference of Negara East Sumatra (Soematera Timoer) must have seemed irritating for several reasons. During the rebuilding of the administration in 1948-1949, the municipality and the negara competed to attract financial experts. Formally the negara should have inspected the urban budget, but at first did not have staff competent for this task, whereas the urban administration, the institute to be controlled, did have qualified personnel. The municipality did not yet have sufficient nous share was, however, already too much for the Eurasian party IEV, which feared indigenous councillors would take unfair advantage of their majority position (Onze Stem 15-12-1947). 36 The coexistence of political systems became manifest in the public holidays. Banks in Surabaya, for instance, were closed on no less than 25 days in 1949, including Muslim, Christian, and Chinese holidays, the Proclamation of Independence, Hari Pahlawan (10 November, the beginning of Indonesian-British fighting in 1945), the Proclamation of the Negara Djawa Timur (East Java as a constituent state of the federal United States of Indonesia), and the birthdays of four members of the House of Orange (Handelsvereeniging Soerabaia 1950:21). 50 Under construction income of its own and therefore the municipal budget was not autonomous, as it had been in pre-war years, but formed an item in the national budget.37 However, the negara had no say in the national budget, so it could not possibly fulfil its task of controlling the municipal accounts.38 The negara simply formed an extra station complicating municipal communication with the central government in Jakarta, and not only in financial matters. When the central government set the municipal administration of Sumatra on a new footing by ordinance, Medan was excluded, because the central government’s competence did not extend to the negara in this respect. Consequently the Mayor of Medan had to ask the Wali Negara (head of the negara) to promulgate a similar ordinance for Medan. In fact, the Mayor actually dictated to the higher-ranking Wali Negara what to do.39 Negara and municipality also bickered about which side could claim staff residences.40 Citizens exploited the situation. In 1950, a squatter built a house illegally and refused to accept orders from the kampong head, ‘because’, as he told the kampong head, ‘there are three governments here, and it is unclear which one must be obeyed’ (sebab disini ada 3 Pemerintah, tidak tentu jang diikut).41 Yogyakarta played a unique role in the early years of the Indonesian Republic. At the time the British took control of the large port cities of Java, Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX of Yogyakarta proclaimed his territory a special district of the Republic of Indonesia. After some fighting, the Japanese troops surrendered and on 7 October 1945 handed over their armaments to the Indonesians. The Republic moved its capital from Jakarta to Yogyakarta in January 1946. Except for the first half year of 1949, Yogyakarta remained free, and it was the only city that was not subjected to direct Dutch influence. In 1947, the Republic decided to make Yogyakarta an autonomous munici-

37 Financial management was hampered by the transfer of municipal funds to a Japanese bank during the war and, at least until 1950, the institute responsible for sorting out such claims (Directie Rechtsherstel) had not yet returned the funds to the municipality. Letter J.H.C.M. van Meerwijk, Directie van het Rechtsherstel, to Djaidin Poerba, Burgemeester Medan, Medan, 28-11-1949, no. 2558/R.H., appendix to letter Burgemeester Medan to Secretaris Departement van Financiën, Negara Sumatera Timoer, 7-12-1949, no. 5087/F.3, Arsip Medan. 38 Rondschrijven H. van der Wal, wd. Directeur Binnenlandsch Bestuur, to Batavia, Bandoeng, Buitenzorg, Semarang, Soerabaja, Malang, Medan, Palembang, Padang, Banjermasin, 27-1-1948, appendix to letter Burgemeester to Algemeen Secretaris Negara Soematera Timoer, 9-4-1948, no. 1573, Arsip Medan. 39 Letter Burgemeester Medan to Wali Negara Soematra Timoer, Medan, 15-1-1949, no. 151, Arsip Medan. 40 Letter Djaidin Poerba, Burgemeester Medan, to Wali Negara Soematera Timoer, 19-10-1948, no. 4130, Arsip Medan. 41 Letter Oedin, Wakil Kepala Medan Barat, Kampung Djati, to Walikota, 5-5-1950, attached to letter A.B. Schlette, Pengetua Usaha, to Pemimpin Usaha Pekerdjaan Kota Medan, 20-5-1950, no. 2319/KB-8, Arsip Medan. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 51 pality, pending a general law that would regulate local administration. For some time, however, the city probably continued to be administered by the sultanate or directly by the national Republican government.42 At least the city received special attention from the national government. For instance, in 1948 the Republican Ministry of Health allotted Rp 165,000 for the cleaning of the city, in preparation for a visit by a representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, who was apparently deemed important.43 Regardless of the political situation, administrators of all cities faced similar practical difficulties in getting the machinery running again. Medan illustrates this point well. The office opened half an hour later than before the war, because of the transportation difficulties experienced by civil servants.44 The minimal scale on which the municipal administration at first operated can be seen from the small orders placed: ten 60-watt bulbs and ten 40-watt bulbs.45 Letters used a makeshift letterhead (typed each time on the typewriter) until new writing paper was ordered. In 1949 the municipality started subscribing to Javasche Courant and Staatsblad (the statute book) again, but not before carefully checking the rates with the publisher.46 The Town Clerk kindly asked the Red Cross for some clothes so that a new teacher ‘can face the class properly dressed’ (zodat hij netjes voor de klas kan staan).47 The Court of Justice also had to make do with what was available: the court officials used ultra-thin paper, re-used carbon paper over and over again, and even used the writing paper of the hated Japanese court as scrap paper.

42 Rentjana Oendang-Oendang No… Tahoen 1947 tentang Pembentoekan Haminte Kota Jogjakarta; Keputusan Badan Bekerdja Komite Nasional Pusat 23-5-1947, no. 530/C/BP.III, NA, NEFIS/CMI 5613; Anderson 1972:145; Van Bruggen and Wassing 1998:72-96; Dinas Agraria DIY 1974, III:2-3; Ricklefs 2001:269-70. 43 Letter Firdaus, Kepala Bagian Perbendaharaan, Kementeriaan Kesehatan, to Kementerian Dalam Negeri di Jogjakarta, Jogjakarta, 6-12-1948, no. 958/30/II, ANRI, Kementerian Dalam Negeri 1945-1949 21. 44 Letter Regeringscommisaris voor Bestuursaangelegenheden voor Noord Sumatra to Burgemeester Medan, Medan, 16-4-1948, no. 2487/30/Re, Arsip Medan. 45 Letter A.J. Paling, Gemeentesecretaris Medan, to Ned. Ind. Gas Mij., 13-1-1948, no. 221, Arsip Medan. Another time a tender was invited for the following items: 50 receipt books; 10,000 labels for medicines; 50 copy books; 15 reams of typewriter paper; 15 reams of carbon paper; 1 dozen typewriter ribbon; 5 gross of dip pens; 30 boxes of paperclips; 10 small bottles of stamp- pad ink; 12 boxes of chalk; 6 inkpads; and 1 leather bag; this tender was more than an order for 20 bulbs, but unimpressive when taking into account that these supplies were explicitly for all municipal departments, including the hospital. Letter A.J. Paling, Gemeentesecretaris Medan, to N.V. Deli Courant, N.V. Varenkamp, N.V. Medansche Drukkerij, Sjarikat Tapanoeli, N.V. Perenpaditua, 20-5-1948, no. 2144, Arsip Medan. 46 Letter Gemeentesecretaris Medan to Administratie Landsdrukkerij, 16-11-1948, no. 4798, Arsip Medan. 47 Letter Gemeentesecretaris Medan to Rode Kruis, 11-10-1948, no. 4210, Arsip Medan. 52 Under construction

Underscoring the importance of urban symbols, the first clashes between Indonesian revolutionaries and returning Dutch internees were not over property but over a symbol of power: flying the Indonesian or Dutch flag. The most serious case took place in Surabaya in September 1945, when a group of released internees hoisted the Dutch flag over Hotel Yamoto, formerly Oranje Hotel. Their action provoked pemuda to climb up to the flag and tear off the blue strip (Frederick 1989:189, 195, 200-1). Graffiti, the poor man’s symbolism, played a role too. Immediately after the proclamation slogans like ‘We want freedom’ appeared on the walls of offices and trams. After the Republic retreated from Jakarta, the slogans were gradually washed off or painted over (Abeyasekere 1989:149, 154). Parades, flags, and ceremonial speeches were all part of the symbolic repertoire of the Republic of Indonesia. Cost-effectiveness and speed were no doubt considerations, but the Republican leaders also chose these symbols because they had matured politically during the Japanese occupation and had adopted the Japanese theatrical style. Nevertheless, various local Republican administrations made an effort to erect statues in the European tradition.48 The symbolic adjustments were, however, the least important in the trans- formation of urban space. Urban blight worsened during the early days of the Indonesian Revolution. Violence was added to the depredations of dilapidation and chaos in the cities in the Japanese period. The wanton killing of enemies of the Republic became common during November and December 1945 (known to the Dutch as the bersiap period). For instance, an estimated 250 Japanese civilians were murdered in Semarang in early October 1945; Japanese forces retaliated by killing perhaps 2,000 Indonesians. In Bandung an estimated 1,500 Dutchmen and Chinese, out of a total of 100,000 non- indigenous people, had been killed by March 1947; this figure excluded the killing of indigenous people who were considered NICA spies. A notoriously gruesome pogrom took place against the Chinese in Tangerang in June 1946. One effect of the violence was the emergence of a widespread, deeply felt longing for peace.49 In his novel Djalan tak ada udjung, Mochtar Lubis (1952) describes how all groups in Jakarta lived in fear in 1946-1947. Many people were visibly in poor physical condition, although probably better than they had been during the Japanese years. The Republican

48 Budiman 1979:59-60; Dinas Museum dan Pemugaran 1999/2000:11-2; Leclerc 1993:40-1; Van Schaik 1996:122. Where Dutch regained control of cities, they sometimes also erected statues, or began to lay out a war cemetery (Basundoro 2005a:24-5; Lapian 1999; Van Schaik 1996:80; Voskuil et al. 1996:157; besluit Burgemeester Djaidin Poerba 25/1948, 12-1-1948, Arsip Medan, Besluiten). 49 Anderson 1972:147-8, 367; Bussemaker 2005; Frederick 2003; J.J.P. de Jong 1991:91-8; Smail 1964:107-9. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 53 and Dutch-colonial governments installed mutual blockades. For instance, as a result of the blockades not enough rice could be transported to Jakarta; the Republican government estimated that 40 people starved every day; the Dutch government counted 20,000 beggars (Abeyasekere 1989:155). The Revolution brought more physical destruction, such as in Bandung Lautan Api, than the Second World War. Films shot by the Dutch immediately after their return to cities previously held by the Republic show much of the destruction. In Bandung and Palembang people search for valuables in the smoking or even still burning ruins of their houses. They carry away furniture. Curious young spectators from other neighbourhoods come by bike to have a look; to them the disaster is an interesting diversion. Surabaya seems totally abandoned in late 1945. A man and a woman drink water from a running tap, sticking out of the rubbish; perhaps it is the only food or drink they can find. Another man, naked, washes himself in the open air without embar- rassment (Verwoestingen in Soerabaja 1945; Bevrijding van Bandoeng 1946; Storm over Palembang 1948). These films showing the hardship of the revolutionary years were obviously made for propaganda purposes. For instance, very few Dutch soldiers are visible at all, and when they do appear on screen any capacity to use heavy military violence is hidden. Most soldiers are stripped to the waist and look harmless; their function seems to be to distribute relief goods or help to clean up the debris (Evacuees 1945; Storm over Palembang 1948; Eerste beelden uit Djokja 1948). Ironically, these films betray sometimes exactly the opposite of what they intend to tell: in Yogyakarta the popular response to the distribution of Dutch flyers is lukewarm at most (Zuiveringsactie Java- Sumatra 1949). The films, however, also allow a unique glimpse in everyday life, often in the background. A proud Dutch film shows how Soekarno, Mohammad Hatta, and Haji Agus Salim were carried off in Yogyakarta by jeep at the outbreak of the Second Dutch Offensive (December 1948). Pedestrians on the pavement had no idea which important persons were being raced off in this fashion. The houses in Yogyakarta could do with a lick of paint, but apart from that appeared fine. The roads were very dusty. The streets looked incredibly crowded with pedestrians, compared to cities under Dutch rule. Private cars were totally absent and even bikes were rare (Eerste beelden uit Djokja 1948). Indonesian historian Sartono Kartodirdjo (1997:62) also recalls that Yogyakarta had absorbed great numbers of refugees from Dutch-occupied territories, and yet there were no traffic jams, as most people went on foot.50 In the midst of the chaos, violence, and misery of the second half of the

50 See also Farid Ma’roef, Kepala Djawatan Sosial Daerah Istimewa Jogjakarta, Pedoman tentang Penerimaan Pengungsi di Daerah Istimewa Jogjakarta, Agustus 1947, ANRI, Kementerian Sosial & Perburuhan, 1946-1950 38. 54 Under construction

1940s, people tried to claw back to normality. The first thing the Japanese commander in Surabaya ordered after his surrender was the removal of the wartime camouflage paint from buildings, and the restoration of neon signs (Reid and Oki 1986:347). Likewise, the Dutch administration of Medan later attempted to enforce order in the city, although I doubt it was able to enforce all regulations. The use of the motor horn was prohibited in some streets. Flying kites was restricted to specifically designated areas. Street vending was prohibited and redirected to official markets. Car parking was prohibited in certain streets (and, judging by complaints of a shop-owner, at least this rule was strictly implemented). Wrecked cars, which had littered the city for years, were finally removed.51 The incidence of thefts perpetrated in the port area of Makassar declined from 500 per month in 1946 to 275 a year later.52 The protagonist in the short story Djalan Kurantil no. 28 (1950) by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who is released after a prison sentence imposed in Japanese times, sees to his surprise that Dutch goods and Dutch name cards have replaced Japanese brands in the shops. Private cars returned on the street, but becak did not give up the strong position they had recently acquired, (Dorp en stad 1949).

The postcolonial democratic experiment

In the first years after the transfer of sovereignty an orderly functioning state seemed to develop. The economy boomed thanks to international demand for Indonesian products during the Korean War. Parliamentary democracy began to unfold. Despite the rapid succession of cabinets, voted out by parliament one after the other, the large personal overlap between cabinet members ensured a fairly consistent state policy. In the course of the 1950s, however, party politics became increasingly a matter of opportunism, a struggle for the spoils of office. The state’s tax base was eroded because politicians wished to humour their constituents. Inflation and nonproductive spending on the army further decreased the funds available in the state budget for more productive investments in education, infrastructure, and housing. The young state struggled to find a workable political format. The

51 Besluit Burgemeester Medan 250/1948, 3-5-1948; letter Gemeentesecretaris Medan to Het Nieuwsblad, 8-2-1949; Notulen Adviesraad Medan 19-8-1949, appendix to letter Dt. Hafiz Haberman, Waarnemend Burgemeester Medan, to Adviesraad, 29-8-1949, no. 3266; letter Walikota Medan to Kepala Kepolisian Tjabang I di Medan, 13-3-1950, no. 1233/LA.8; letter Gemeentesecretaris Medan to Secretaris Departement van Bestuur Negara Soematera Timoer, 2-9-1948, no. 3599, Arsip Medan. 52 W.J. de Klein, Bestuursmemorie Onderafdeeling Makassar, KITLV H 902. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 55

Constitution of August 1945 granted to the President vast power; cabinet ministers were responsible to him. Pending parliamentary elections, President Soekarno appointed a quasi-parliament or KNIP (Komite Nasional Indonesia Pusat, Central Indonesian National Committee), a large body in which all major political parties and regions were represented. By November 1945 the Constitution had already been suspended and the cabinet was made accountable to a Working Committee drawn from the KNIP membership. In 1949 and 1950 new Constitutions were written, giving the president merely a ceremonial role. The legitimacy of the parliament was weakened by the fact that its members were appointed. Elections for national parliament (and the Constituent Assembly, which was supposed to draw up a new Constitution) were held for the first time in 1955, but in 1957 martial law was declared and democracy was moribund. The death knell to a free parliamentary democracy rang on 5 July 1959, when Soekarno proclaimed a return to the 1945 Constitution, which placed huge power in the hands of the President. The parliament henceforth did not consist of party politicians only, but also of appointed members, who represented various societal organizations (so-called functional groups). Soekarno who had fulfilled a ceremonial presidency since 1949, albeit in an commanding manner, carried out this de facto coup d’état with the backing of the army. The period from 1959 until the end of Soekarno’s rule in 1966 is known as Guided Democracy, in which parliament was muzzled. The transformations of municipal administration closely followed the course of national events. The 1945 Constitution envisaged a restoration of the autonomous municipality with an elected council. Law 22 of 1948 set the parameters for autonomous local administration, for provinces, regencies, municipalities, and small towns. Municipalities (now called kota besar) would consist of a Regional Council of Representatives of the People (DPRD, Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah), a Board for the Regional Government (DPD, Dewan Pemerintahan Daerah) and a Head of the Region (Kepala Daerah). The DPRD held legislative powers, while the DPD, which resembled a Board of Aldermen, was accorded executive powers (Figure 4). The Mayor (or Head of the Region) retained his dual function of Japanese times, as head of the local government and representative of the central government. He was entitled to supervise both DPRD and DPD, and had to counter-sign every by-law issued by the DPRD.53 For the time being, councillors representing various

53 Niessen 1999:60-4. A government instruction of 14-6-1947 reduced the role of Mayor to a subordinate to the regional head, and omitted other local administrative organs (Peratoeran Pemerintah no. 16/1947 tentang Instroeksi oentoek Wali-Kota, ANRI, Sekretariat Negara 1945- 1949 521). I presume this instruction was superseded by Law 22 of 1948 and remained de facto a dead letter. 56 Under construction interest groups and political parties were appointed, as were members of the national parliament. The Mayor was to be selected from a shortlist put forward by the municipal council, but the central government used the emergency of the revolution as a pretext to appoint Mayors directly.54 Although democracy was formally restored in Java and Sumatra, the Mayor enjoyed far more power than in Dutch colonial times.

Figure 4. Municipal council (DPRD) in Bandung under construction, 1955. Source: KITLV, Special Collections nr. 5173.

No election at the municipal level took place until 1957, and even then the elections outside Java were ‘postponed’ because of the state of emergency.55 The result of the 1955 election for national parliament was, however, used to

54 Cribb and Brown 1995:36-7; Frederick 1989:187-91; Niessen 1999:60-1; Smail 1964:154. 55 Letter Sanoesi Hardjadinata, Menteri Dalam Negeri, 9-5-1957, no. B.P.U.1/76, appendix to letter O.K. Nasruddin, Ass. Wedana Bagian Pemilihan, to Ketua DPRD Peralihan Kotapradja Medan, 22-5-1957, no. 6321/DA-7, Arsip Medan. However, in 1950 some sort of election had already taken place to form a council in Jakarta, in which the IEV and Arab and Chinese parties also participated (Daftar tjalon2 anggauta Madjelis Pemerintahan Kota Djakarta, ANRI, Kabinet Perdana Menteri RI Yogyakarta 1949-1950 59). Municipalities in different parts of the Archipelago were constituted under different laws in different years (Milone 1966:40-3). II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 57 adjust the allocation of seats in the Jakarta council in a democratic fashion, and presumably in other cities too. Law 1 of 1957 abolished the dual function of the Mayor; the Mayor became an elected official, responsible only for administration of the autonomous urban area (now called kotapradja). This new law hardly had time to become effective, because it was superseded by the introduction of Guided Democracy. Presidential Decree 6 of 1959 reintroduced the dual function of the Mayor, who would, as usual, be appointed. Presidential Decree 5 of 1960 reduced the competence of the municipal council to that of an advisory board with appointed members, called DPRD-Gotong Royong (DPRD of Mutual Help). Both decrees, one strengthening the Mayor, the other weakening the council, were formalized in a new law of 1965.56 In sum, between 1945 and 1957 the Mayor wielded extensive powers and the municipal council was quasi-democratic with appointed members. A fully democratic and autonomous municipal government functioned briefly between 1957 and 1959. The municipal council of Medan suddenly awoke from its lethargy in 1957; it began to ask the executive critical questions about agrarian conflicts between municipality and citizens and the Masjumi party proposed the creation of zones for street trade.57 In Surabaya, the Indonesian Communist Party, PKI, won 17 of the 35 seats in the council election of 1958 (Dick 2002a:99) and the rise of this party, which defended people’s interests, probably contributed to a more vocal legislature as well. Unfortunately, in 1959 and 1960 the democratic move of 1957 had already been shifted in the direction of a centralistic system: the Mayor dominated local decision making, but was himself under the command of the central government. The minutes of the Padang council meetings from 1953 provide a unique insight into how the councillors lacked the political skills necessary to face up to the executive. At the opening of one meeting, the Chairman explained the whole procedure: who would speak first and how a vote was taken. During the discussion the ‘fundamental’ issue was raised of whether councillors could condone (membenarkan) a decision with which they did not agree (setu djuh). In the opening address of another meeting, the Chairman expressed regret that no meeting had taken place for months. Worse, for this particular meeting it had been necessary to wait one hour before a quorum was reached; the last councillor to arrive had not been ready when the official car first came

56 Abeyasekere 1989:177; Hindley 1964:218, 287; Milone 1966:44; Niessen 1999:75-7; Ricklefs 2001:316, 322-3; Thaib et al.1959:161-77. 57 Letter Sutinah Kamdi, Ketua Seksi Agraria DPRD Peralihan, 18-9-1957, attached to letter Walikota Medan to Kepala Pedjabat Urusan Tanah, 1-10-1957, no. 15354/TA-1; letter H. Moeda Siregar, Walikota Kotapradja Medan, to Tagor Ginagan, Ketua DPRD Peralihan, 5-9-1957, no. 13202/TA-10; Mosi penjaluran kehendak rakjat untuk berniaga, Fraksi Masjumi DPRD Peralihan Kota Besar Medan, Medan, 13-4-1957, appendix to letter M. Tahir, Wakil Sekretaris, to DPRD Peralihan Kotapradja Medan, 20-6-1957, no. 7923/DA-7, Arsip Medan. 58 Under construction by to pick him up, and on his second trip the municipal driver had forgotten him. The Chairman stressed that everybody should realize the municipal council was a serious body. Pre-war councillors, so very politically conscious and familiar with sophisticated democratic tactics, would not have believed their ears! The feeling of uncertainty among councillors became apparent in their habit of emphasizing punctuality, while missing the essence of the issues at stake. I quote from the minutes: ‘Chairman: [...] do you agree to give the Foundation for Military Orphans a subsidy of Rp 77,314 ... Council: 45 cent! Chairman: True? 45 cent, pardon, I correct: Rp 77,314 and 45 cent’. Later, when the chairman had planned a ten-minute break after two hours of debate, but had used two hours and two minutes for the debate, he shortened the break to eight minutes.58 Who says Indonesians have an elastic view of time (jam karet)? Padang was no exception. That same year, the Makassar council bickered in the same way about procedures of the meetings rather than the content of policy. For instance, a person who felt insulted because he was denied the right to take the floor about the same subject twice walked out of the meeting. Nonetheless, the Makassar council also had some good discussions, in which decisions about real issues were taken after careful deliberation.59 The better quality of the post-war Makassar council may have been the result of the fact that the Japanese Navy had left the councils in Eastern Indonesia in office. A council was elected in Makassar as early as 1947 (Dias Pradadimara 2005:261). There were other adjustments in municipal administration than those resulting from changes in the political system. One profound change was the eradication of Dutch staff. After the transfer of sovereignty, 17,000 Dutch civil servants remained – not all in municipal service of course – but they were quickly relegated to insignificant positions (Meijer 1994:169). This Indonesianisasi (Lindblad 2003:39) of the civil service happened much faster than the replacement of Dutch staff in companies, because political motives were unchecked by company interests. The last senior Dutch civil servants were retired in 1952, although others continued to occupy specialist positions (Kritiek en Opbouw 1-5-1950; Dick 2002c:171-172; Meijer 1994:170). By then, the replacement of Dutchmen in the municipal administration had less impact than just after the Japanese invasion, because the Dutch did not leave as abruptly and the Indonesian substitutes were more experienced than in 1942. An example of a Dutch specialist who was eased out was engineer E.W.H. Clason, Head of the Regional Development Office Java and Sumatra of

58 Berita stenografis rapat pleno Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat Daerah Sementara Kota Padang, 12-1-1953, 19-10-1953, Arsip Padang, Box I. 59 Laporan rapat DPRD Makassar 24-6-1953, Laporan rapat DPRD Makassar 5-9-1956, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 155a. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 59 the Central Foundation for Reconstruction (Regionaal Opbouwbureau voor Java en Sumatra, Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw). On 1 June 1950 he was relieved of the responsibility to construct the new town Kebayoran Baru, south of Jakarta. Three months later he resigned completely, unable to adjust to the new situation, demoralized, and frustrated to the core. In his letter of resignation he explains the reasons for his decision:

I can no longer point out a direction and set a goal from a key position, with the result that I no longer feel responsible […] and sitting idly by, I watch the current state of affairs degenerate into destruction. Psychologically, I cannot possibly still find pleasure in my work in this climate, dominated by politico-organizational measures often completely incomprehensible. […] The destruction began after the transfer of sovereignty, made evident in wavering authority, suspicions, intimidation and threats, infiltrations and an as yet silent struggle between people of the same and different races, degeneration and far more frequent theft, enforced reduction in working hours, and because of all of this it was increasingly difficult to maintain team spirit.60 Was Clason’s profound frustration typical or exceptional? On the one hand, it is dangerous to generalize: Clason’s letter was not without financial self- interest;61 Kebayoran Baru was – so close to the seat of government – the plaything of political games; and perhaps the new town suffered under the unusually criminal climate. On the other hand, Hans Meijer (1994:169-72) argues that frustration among Dutch officials was widespread. The Medan archive provides further information about the way top bureaucratic posts were filled. In 1948 the Mayor of Medan was an Indonesian, the Leiden-trained lawyer Djaidin Poerba, but the important Town Clerk and the Director of Public Works were both Dutch. High-ranking Indonesians were the Director of the Abattoir, and the Director of the Municipal Hospital.62 The Dutch Town Clerk, A.J. Paling, had completed higher secondary education (HBS) and obtained his teaching certificate (Hoofdacte Onderwijs); he had

60 ‘[H]et is mij niet meer mogelijk in een sleutelpositie zelf richting en doel aan te geven met het gevolg, dat ik mij niet meer verantwoordelijk voel voor […] en werkeloos de gehele momentele gang van zaken zie ontaarden in afbraak. In deze door dikwijls onbegrijpelijke politiek-organisatorische maatregelen beheerste sfeer is in mijn positie het handhaven van arbeidsvreugde psychologisch onmogelijk. [...] Na de souvereiniteitsoverdracht begint de afbraak, zich uitende in gezagschemering, wantrouwen, intimidaties en bedreigingen, infiltraties en een nog stille strijd tussen personen van dezelfde en van verschillende landaard, ontaarding en sterk toenemende diefstallen, afgedwongen beperking van arbeidstijden en door dit alles een steeds moeilijker te handhaven teamgeest.’ Letter Ir. E.W.H. Clason to Voorzitter van de Garantiewet-Commissie, Djakarta, 1-9-1950, private collection R.J. Clason. 61 Dutch officials who resigned within two years without good reason would lose their entitle- ment to pension (Meijer 1994:169). 62 Roestam Thaib et al. (1959:93); Letter A.J. Paling, Gemeentesecretaris Medan, to Administratie Telefoondienst der N.V. Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij, Medan 15-4-1948, Arsip Medan. 60 Under construction been Town Clerk of Pematang Siantar before obtaining his job in Medan. In September 1950 Paling was replaced by the Indonesian K. Rangkuti. Rangkuti, born in 1918, had completed advanced elementary education (MULO) and Commercial College (Middelbare Handelsschool). He started to work as an ordinary clerk for the municipality in 1940, but apparently rose quickly in the ranks during the Japanese years. Rangkuti was first appointed temporary replacement for Paling, while the Head of the Secretariat (Ketua Tata Usaha), a Dutchman, did a great deal of work behind the scenes. Rangkuti was confirmed in the position of Town Clerk in 1952, when he also became Head of the Secretary.63 Next year, in 1953, an Indonesian, Arsil, was appointed Director of Public Works. He was in his fifties, had probably received some technical training when he was young, and had been inspector for the municipality from the 1920s until the First Dutch Offensive (1947), when he ran off. He then started a construction firm, but was willing to return to the civil service with the status of engineer on the basis of practical experience (insinjur praktek).64 Behind the scenes Arsil was assisted by the Dutch Technical Official (Technisch Ambtenaar) M.J.P. van Oyen, who remained in office until January 1958.65 So, these Indonesian replacements had less formal education than their Dutch predecessors, but they all did have wide-ranging experience and moreover could fall back on European old hands during the early years. It was common throughout the bureaucracy to relegate Dutch high-ranking officials to advisory posts (Meijer 1994:170), and not all of these posts were sinecures, I presume. One Dutchman who remained ‘in office’ a surprisingly long time was the hero of children’s imagination, Sinterklaas. Until at least 1956 he arrived each year in Jakarta – by plane! (Antara 29-11-1956). In a nutshell, it was not the capabilities of the Indonesian replacements that formed the bottleneck for adequate municipal administration. What did diminish bureaucratic efficiency was the growing strength of patronage networks within its own ranks, and the rise of a patrimonial state. Parliamentarians and councillors were either too weak or themselves too enmeshed in the patronage to act as counterweight. People who joined the civil service after independence were not imbued with the ethic to serve the public good in the way Max Weber had envisioned the ideal bureaucracy. Their loyalties did not lie with the state, but with their own ethnic group, political party, local community, or simply their own pocket. The scant atten-

63 Letter K. Rangkuti to Kantor Urusan Pegawai, 11-2-1952, no. 1581/PA-5; letter K. Rangkuti to Gubernur Propinsi Sumatera Utara, 6-8-1952, no. 8383/PA-2, Arsip Medan. 64 Letter A.M. Djalaloe’ddin to Menteri Dalam Negeri, 6-11-1953, no. 12951/PA-2, Arsip Medan. 65 Letter Mohamad Joenoes, Wakil Sekretaris Kotapradja Medan, to NV Stoomvaart Maatschappij Nederland, Agentschap Medan, 24-1-1958, no. 1702/PA-2, Arsip Medan. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 61 tion paid to public duty was manifest in absenteeism, such that officials were seldom to be found in their offices. Corruption, which had taken root during the Japanese period and – according to one anonymous source (Kritiek en Opbouw 1-3-1948) – persisted in the highest ranks of the returning Dutch, continued to flourish in the 1950s. The inflated number of civil servants exacerbated corruption. A politician in office appointed his followers to positions in the bureaucracy. In addition, the amalgamation of the Dutch colonial and Republican bureaucracies after 1949 resulted in redundant officials, who were not all laid off. As a result, the number of civil servants tripled between 1940 and 1950 and by 1960 it had quadrupled, although the exact numbers are unknown.66 The shrinking budget did not permit paying the overstaffed bureaucracy a decent salary. The upshot of increasing numbers of underpaid officials was protracted red tape, which was willingly bypassed by civil servants whose palms were adequately greased.67 Mochtar Lubis (1963) has captured the decay and loss of purpose after one decade of independence in Twilight in Jakarta (Senja di Jakarta). The recurrent themes in this famous novel, set in 1955, are: corruption, sexual unfaithful- ness, prostitution, criminal violence, enormous income discrepancies, false claims about heroic behaviour in the Revolution, and near accidents between cars and poor people on foot. Most depressing is that almost nobody can avoid the creeping moral degeneration. For instance, for some time one of the protagonists, Sugeng, tries honestly, but in vain, to find decent housing for his pregnant wife and three-year-old daughter. Only after being promoted to Head of the Import Sector at the Ministry of Economic Affairs does he succeed: he pays Rp 25,000 to an old Arab broker, who arranges for a large dwelling. One part of the money is used as key-money paid to the home-owner, another part to persuade the current tenant to leave, and a sweetener for the Housing Allocation Bureau in Jakarta (Kantor Urusan Perumahan Djakarta). The Arab is rewarded with an import licence. To end these pages on changes in administrative culture, it is worth noting that Indonesianisasi was also considered necessary in the bureaucratic vocabulary (Antara 19-1-1950/A-B). The process had already begun in Japanese times (Kan Pō 3(37-38) 2604), but was reversed after the Japanese capitulation. In early 1948 the Negara Soematera Timoer had asked the municipal government of Medan to use Indonesian in its correspondence, but did not object to Dutch, if this was necessary for the sake of clarity. Moreover, if the use of Indonesian was not feasible, because the official concerned did not know

66 Figures are from Evers and Schiel (1988:236-43) and Ricklefs (2001:291); not all civil servants were archetypical pen-pushers and the rise included the many new teachers in state service. 67 Abeyasekere 1989:185-6; Anderson 1990:103, 108; Dick 2002c:173; Lindblad 2008; McVey 1982; Oostingh 1970. 62 Under construction the language and no translator was available, Dutch was still permitted.68 Of course, after the transfer of sovereignty the pressure to use Indonesian increased. In 1953 a circular letter to provincial governors stated that the use of Dutch words in official documents was inappropriate and neologisms that were literal translations were often ugly. An appendix listed correct Indonesian alternatives for 60 Dutch words, such as tax assessment (belas tingaanslag in Dutch, ketetapan-padjak in Indonesian). Ironically, even the circular letter could not avoid the use of Dutch to convey the concept of ‘literal translation’: ‘we receive letters with words that are literal translations (“letterlijke vertaling”) consisting entirely of Dutch words, for example pemandjatan [climbing] for “appeal to a higher court”, which is, however, already custom- arily translated as banding [appeal]’.69 A similar instruction existed for traffic terms, such as coach (autobus became otobis) and truck (vrachtauto became mobil-gerobak or truck; vrachtwagen became gerobak pengangkut).70 Another instruction stipulated that the word Brother (Saudara) should be used in letters as the greeting between officials of all ranks; Brother President was allowed as an exception.71 Officials perhaps needed some time to internalize the new vocabulary. For instance, legal court orders were to be in Indonesian, but an examination of the drafts of judgements, and also the transcripts kept during hearings, reveals that legal experts in the early 1950s still did their legal thinking in Dutch.72

The symbolic domain of urban space also underwent a process of Indone sianisasi. The victorious independent Republic initially adopted inexpensive kinds of behavioural and discursive symbols, as the Japanese had done. The annual Proclamation Day became an occasion for public ceremonies drawing large crowds. Street names reveal which interest group held hegemonic power, and after the transfer of sovereignty many colonial street names were deemed inappropriate and were changed.73 As Joel Richman (quoted by Yeoh 1996:221) avows: ‘The power of “nomination” [...] is often the first step in tak-

68 Rondschrijven Directeur Departement van Bestuur Negara Soematera Timoer 30-3-1948, Arsip Medan. 69 ‘[T]erdjemahan kulit (“letterlijke vertaling”) belaka dari perkataan Belanda, misalnja: pemandjatan untuk perkataan “hoger beroep” jang telah lazim diterdjemahkan dengan banding.’ Surat edaran K. Poerbopranoto, Kepala Bagian Otonomi dan Desentralisasi, to Gubernur Kepala Daerah Propinsi di seluruh Indonesia, Djakarta 28-10-1953, no. 9/75/8, Arsip Padang, box I. 70 Surat edaran Koordinator Pemerintahan Sumatera Timur, 13-2-1951, Arsip Medan. The alleged difference between vrachtauto and vrachtwagen is not explained. 71 Note A.B. Schlette, 23-2-1951, Arsip Medan. 72 See, for instance, Njak Ben vs. Saring (PN Medan, Pdt. 394/1951). 73 Afdeling Voorlichting 1950; Djawatan Penerangan Medan 1954:216-8; R. Reza Hudiyanto 2005; Sarkawi B. Husain 2005b. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 63 ing possession [and street names are] among the first to undergo a refurbish- ing to commemorate new regimes.’ Despite the costs, in many cities an independence statue was erected, usually to a local hero in the struggle for independence. The most powerful was the Tugu Pahlawan (Heroes Monument) in Surabaya, commemorating the Indonesians who had fallen in the battle against the British (November 1945). When President Soekarno laid the first stone, he was displeased that the unimposing statue was ‘only’ 30 metres high. He demanded a height of 45 metres (referring to the year of the Proclamation of Independence), but the foundation would not permit such a weight of stone. In order to meet the honourable President halfway, the obelisk was extended to 45 yards (41 metres) (Sarkawi B. Husain 2005a:88-90). The Indonesian state did not claim an absolute monopoly in the realm of monuments. Foreigners were also commemorated in statues, such as the Yale Professor Raymond Kennedy (Antara 16-7-1953/A to 19-7-1953/A-B) and even Dutch Rear-Admiral Karel Doorman, killed in the Second World War (Antara 8-5-1954/A). Jakarta began to outstrip all the other cities in the 1950s, and not only at a symbolic level. The central state, and after 1959 President Soekarno in person, often intervened in the development of the national capital, in order to make it a landmark of modernity. The city received a disproportionate share of central government funds. For example, in one year, 1956, two-thirds of all government loans were invested in Jakarta, and all deficits on the city’s budget were cleared by the central government at the end of the fiscal year. Even more thrilling than the statues of gargantuan humans were the symbols of modernity: the tall National Monument (Figure 5), the department store Sarinah, the multi-storey Hotel Indonesia, and the Senayan sports stadium, which could hold 100,000 spectators. Soekarno banned the popular trams, because they looked outdated and damaged the image of modernity.74 On Soekarno’s list of priorities there was no room for housing projects. In his autobiography, Soekarno looked back on his achievements in Jakarta: ‘Man does not live by bread alone. Although Djakarta’s alleys are muddy and we lack roads, I have erected a brick-and-glass apartment building, a clover-leaf bridge [...] and I renamed the streets after our heroes [...] I consider money for material symbols well spent’ (quoted by Abeyasekere 1989:210). Meanwhile, ordinary citizens probably worried more about muddy alleys and a lack of roads. Ko Put On, protagonist of a cartoon, tried to take the daily nuisances, such as a flood and a leaking roof, light-heartedly (Myra Sidharta 2000:168, 171). Expatriate R.F.E.M. Romme (1962:4) recalled that in

74 Abeyasekere 1989:176, 178, 182, 207; Abidin Kusno 2000:49-70; Leclerc 1993:51-7; Nas and Malo 2000:232. Figure 5. National Monument in Jakarta under construction in the early 1960s. Source: Salam 1989:42. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 65

Medan it was necessary to wait months before a municipal sewerage cart emptied a cesspit, so that in despair he halted a passing cart and paid the men a large tip. In Medan, a refuse dump was closed, because the nuisance caused by flies was uncontrollable, despite spraying with DDT.75 In Jakarta and Medan, and possibly other cities too, every night a third of the city was disconnected from the electricity network as the capacity of the grid was insufficient because of broken machines.76 The Mayor of Palembang found the standard of living in his own city unbearably low and asked to be transferred to Java; there was no good school for his children and the last medical doctor had ended his practice (Antara 29-12-1950/A). The administration in Medan was swamped with individual requests from citizens and there appeared to be no time to develop a policy about anything. The first new by- law in years was promulgated in 1957 (about parking prices).77 While local governments seemed to lose control over urban development, city-dwellers shaped their environment in the way they thought best. One indicator of vigorous building activity is the 95% increase in cement production between 1940 and 1959 (Booth 1998:43).

Runaway urbanization

Political fortunes and concomitant social changes of the mid-twentieth century had a powerful impact on the rate of urbanization (Table 3; Figures 6 and 7). Cities grew rapidly in the 1920s. The flattening growth rate of the 1930s can be explained by the Depression. Cities offered fewer income opportunities and the net migration flow probably diminished. A lower natural increase may have played a role too. Economic hardship for jobless families may have increased the death rate and decreased the fertility rate. In the late 1930s, when the economy recovered, urban populations – as far as data are available – began to grow again (Appendix 1).78 Despite the low growth in the 1930s, there was pressure on the housing market, especially in the low-price segments. The 1930 census provides valuable details about underlying demographic dynamics. A striking feature was the large percentage of immigrants in the

75 Letter M. Tahir, Wakil Sekretaris Medan, to Pemimpin Usaha Pekerdjaan Kotapradja Medan, 2-7-1957, no. 6717/PE-5, Arsip Medan. 76 Nas and Malo (2000:231); Letter K. Rangkuti to local newspapers, 29-5-1957, Arsip Medan. 77 Letter T.M. Rafii Damanik, Wakil Sekeretaris II Medan, 23-9-1957, no. 14829/LA-5, Arsip Medan. 78 An interesting, but isolated, figure about the population of Bandung (Centraal Kantoor voor de Statistiek 1941:3) shows that in 1939 natural increase accounted for 26% and net migration for 74% of the total population increase. 66 Under construction

Table 3. Average annual rate of population growth of major cities, 1920-1960

1920-1930 1931-1940 1941-1945 1946-1950 1951-1955 1956-1960 1930-1961

Jakarta 5.7 0.3 9.4 11.3 5.3 7.9 5.9 Surabaya 5.9 1.7 9.2 15.8 5.6 3.0 5.7 Bandung 5.9 3.1 17.0 34.2 5.6 4.2 10.6 Semarang 3.3 1.3 2.9 2.6 3.0 5.1 2.7 Yogyakarta 2.8 0.8 2.5 4.2 5.9 2.3 2.7 Medan 5.4 3.3 1.6 18.8 4.5 6.7 6.5 Palembang 3.9 3.7 2.9 2.5 7.2 8.8 5.0 Makassar 4.1 0.5 10.5 9.4 7.5 2.9 5.1 Padang 3.2 1.4 6.0 4.6 3.4 3.2 3.4

Source: Appendix 1. urban population. Immigration can be expected for non-indigenous residents, but was also common in the Indigenous population: 46% of the Indigenous population of the large cities of Java were immigrants, often coming from far away. Outside Java, the share of immigrants in the Indigenous population was 0.60 in Medan, 0.55 in Makassar, 0.47 in Padang, and a low 0.28 in Palembang (Volkstelling 1930 1934, III:29, 1935, IV:38, 1936, V:50, 1936,VIII:19). Men were over-represented in the immigrants coming from outside Indonesia, so that the female-to-male ratio was distorted. In Surabaya, for instance, the ratio was 0.608 for Chinese, 0.766 for other Foreign Orientals, 0.951 for Europeans,

3,500,000

3,000,000

2,500,000

2,000,000 Jakarta Surabaya Bandung 1,500,000 population size

1,000,000

500,000

0 4 8 0 8 0 2 6 4 8 26 32 44 48 50 56 60 92 92 92 93 93 94 94 94 95 95 1 1922 1 19 1 1 19 1934 1936 1 1 1 19 1 19 19 1952 1 19 1 19 year

Figure 6. Population of major cities, 1920-1960. Source: Appendix 1. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 67

600,000

500,000

400,000 Semarang Yogyakarta Medan 300,000 Palemb ang Makassar Padang 200,000

10 0,000

y ear

Figure 7. Population of medium-sized cities, 1920-1960. Source: Appendix 1.

but 1.046 for Indigenous people.79 Another effect of immigration was the relatively small proportion of elderly and of young children in the indigenous urban population (Volkstelling 1930 1934, II:35, 1935, IV:47, 1936, V:56). The large number of adults without relatives, especially unmarried men, created a demand for housing for single-person households. The accepted wisdom that cities became places of refuge in the Japanese period is fully supported by the demographic figures for Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, and Makassar (Table 3). The population growth of Surabaya and Bandung was partly the result of the redrawing of municipal boundaries in 1942, and – for Bandung – again in 1945 (Asia Raya 6-10-2602, 26-10-2602, 11-4-2605). The lack of statistical evidence of population growth in the other cities can be explained away. Semarang, Yogyakarta, Palembang, and Padang lack population data from the beginning and end of the Japanese occupation

79 Volkstelling 1930 1934, III:131, 1936, VIII:2, 8. The census report explains the skewed female-to-male ratio by selective immigration. It is somewhat surprising that for the large cities (over 100,000 inhabitants) no fewer than half of Foreign Orientals and Europeans were born in Indonesia and had a father born in Indonesia, a quarter were born in Indonesia and had a father born elsewhere, and only a quarter were born outside Indonesia (Volkstelling 1930 1933, VI:23, 1935, VII:27, 30). Given that three-quarters of the non-indigenous population were born in Indonesia, selective immigration cannot fully explain the skewed sex ratio of Foreign Orientals; one possible additional explanation is selective infanticide of Chinese girls, and perhaps of Indian girls too. 68 Under construction

(or years close to the Japanese period), so that the growth rates reported in Table 3 are extrapolations from a period longer than the Japanese occupation; possible rapid fluctuations in the Japanese years are thus levelled out by the calculation over a much longer period than the Japanese occupation. The various territorial expansions (Asia Raya 26-11-2602, 27-11-2602, 26-12-2602, 17-8-2605) hamper a reliable diachronic analysis anyway. The low growth in Medan between 1943 and 1947 can be explained by the fact that many migrants squatted on plantations surrounding Medan. Although migrants contributed to urbanization on the fringe of the city, they were not included in the municipal statistics, until the expansion of municipal territory in 1950. Most puzzling for this period is the population decline in Jakarta during the last year of the Japanese period.80 The Indonesian Revolution shook city-dwellers. Urban population declined precipitously in Surabaya and Bandung in the wake of the battles (Figure 6). Notwithstanding the initial abandonment of these two cities, the years of the Indonesian Revolution were characterized by extremely rapid urbanization with double-digit annual growth rates in Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, and Medan. This resulted in an enormous housing crisis. Demographic figures do not show the full extent of the immense population pressure, because people lived concentrated in safe areas while other parts were largely uninhabited. For example, the division of Bandung, and ultimately Bandung Lautan Api, led to very crowded pockets in the city, with other parts being abandoned. Certain quarters of Surabaya were totally abandoned in late 1945 (Verwoestingen in Soerabaja 1945). Population figures are also simply unreliable. Yogyakarta lost thousands of its Chinese and Eurasian inhabitants at the start of the revolution, but this demographic loss was more than offset by the arrival of 50,000 civil servants and their families when the government seat was moved from Jakarta to Yogyakarta (Van Bruggen and Wassing 1998:83, 93). The city also accommodated thousands of Indonesian refugees, and eyewitnesses reported how overcrowded Yogyakarta was. The modest annual growth figure of 4.2% (Table 3) simply cannot be accepted as correct. Population grew steadily in the 1950s, but in most cities not to the same extreme degree as during the Revolution. The acute housing shortage during the struggle for independence turned into a chronic problem. Rural- urban migration was the major factor in this growth of the housing shortage. According to an analyst from the World Bank, from 1948 to 1952, after the fighting had ceased, people were drawn to Jakarta ‘by the excitement

80 The decline by 7,000 persons from 1944 to 1945 is small, but Asia Raya of 29-6-2605 gives the estimated 1944 population figure as 920,000; if this is correct, a decline of 70,000 in one year really begs an answer. I do not have one. II A political and spatial history of Indonesian cities 69 of, and expectations generated by independence’. The desire for freedom from traditional village life and educational opportunity may have been additional motives to migrate (Oliver 1971:13-4). H.J. Heeren (1955:700) has calculated that the migration surplus accounted for 85% of the growth of Jakarta between 1951 and 1953 and natural increase for the remaining 15%. According to another calculation, migration accounted for 55% of the population growth in Bandung from 1958 to 1961 (Eddy Harjady 1976:26).

Conclusion

The ‘grand history’ of the collapse of the Dutch colonial empire, Japanese occupation, Indonesian Revolution, and internationally recognized independence influenced local administrative and demographic changes. In their turn these changes had a bearing on the use of urban space in general, and housing in particular. Before the Second World War, there was a clear trend towards greater autonomy of the local administration in its relationship with the central government. Democratic participation by citizens increased at the same time. The Japanese period marked an abrupt reversal of both trends: the local administration became subservient to decisions taken at higher levels (Jakarta, Singapore, Tokyo) and democracy was quashed. The reversal was visible in the symbolic representation of power. Urban symbolism was remarkably pluriform during the Dutch colonial period, because of people’s initiatives to create statues and other urban symbols. The Japanese regime, in contrast, was more hegemonic in urban symbolism than any of the regimes preceding or succeeding it. It prohibited many rival symbols and staged many parades to convey its own presence in the city. After Independence, voting rights were extended to all adults, regardless of sex or income. Universal suffrage did not make a difference, however, because in practice the councillors were appointed and not elected, during almost the full period under consideration here. The Mayor acted as representative of the central state rather than as head of an autonomous local administration. In the absence of a municipal council, some groups, like home-owners as we shall see, had difficulty finding a representative who could defend their interests. Other groups, like squatters, were more successful in finding ways to making their wishes heard. The professionalism of the bureaucracy was damaged by the abrupt Japanese take-over of the existing Dutch-led administration. The second time the Dutch handed over municipal administration, on the occasion of the transfer of sovereignty, did not cause a reduction in the competence of civil servants. The Indonesianisasi of the bureaucracy merely implied that the 70 Under construction requirement of knowledge acquired by studying was replaced by knowledge from practical experience. Nevertheless, an important change in attitude took place. The Dutch and Japanese administrations were inclined to give precedence to economic and military interests respectively. After Independence, civil servants gradually began to serve their own interests. This new attitude was much more damaging to the effectiveness of municipal administration than the change in personnel. The slipping of professional standards and the proliferation of a self-serving attitude went unchecked by municipal councils, which after all were kalltgestellt. One manifestation of the new attitude, as we shall see, was the public housing enterprise, which mostly benefited the officials themselves. There were further reasons why urban administrations had difficulty fulfilling their task after the transfer of sovereignty. After Independence, the power of municipal administrations was weakened by physical damage in the wake of the Second World War and, more seriously, the Revolution. Damage had been done to both buildings and administrative materials (equipment, files, and furniture). Moreover, the national budget was burdened by the obligation to repay the state debt to the Netherlands, compounded by reduced tax revenues due to unsound tax policies. Finally, the problems of urban administration were aggravated by very rapid migration. Given these constraints, urban administrations could not possibly provide the necessary facilities (housing, piped water, sewerage, schools) to all city-dwellers. Not surprisingly, in response to these shortcomings, ordinary citizens took their lives in their own hands. For instance, street trade blossomed as a consequence of lack of income opportunities, dearth of market buildings, and slack enforcement of rules prohibiting street trade. Another consequence of the weak state was squatting. The political transition to independence not only affected the functioning of urban administrations, but also had a bearing on population size. The major political events resulted in flows of people seeking refuge in the city or fleeing from it, and in the long term drew migrants by the new income opportunities offered. Rapid population fluctuation and runaway urbanization complicated the provision of housing. Alternating abundance and shortage of housing contributed enormously to the orderliness or disorderliness of the urban landscape. These political changes formed the backdrop to the production of urban space during decolonization. PART ONE URBAN SPACE RACE AND SOCIAL CLASS

Chapter iii Race, class, and spatial segregation

Urban society in Indonesia was stratified along ethnic and class lines, with gender and age divisions criss-crossing the ethnic and class divisions. The ethnic and class stratification took on visible form in the residential pattern in cities.1 Part One of this book, and this chapter in particular, starts from the working hypothesis that under the impact of decolonization, changes in the social status system were reflected in a changing residential pattern. One commonly held view is that ethnic or ‘racial’ categories formed the main division in colonial urban society in Southeast Asia.2 T.G. McGee (1967:139) sums up this position: ‘The major element of the colonial city was the mosaic of ethnic quarters – the tightly packed shophouse areas of the Chinese, the spacious low-density “compounds” of the Europeans, and the rural-like villages of the indigenous population scattered around the fringes of the city’. McGee argues that the ethnic-based residential pattern persisted into the 1960s, but became blurred when multi-ethnic middle-class suburbs began to appear. Others assert more strongly that after independence class divisions began to predominate over ethnic differences. In 1973 Hans-Dieter Evers (1973:130) wrote: ‘The colonial “European city” and “native quarter” is frequently replaced by culturally and socially equally differentiated upper and lower class districts’. Abidin Kusno (2000:132-3, 152-3) has recently reiterated the same point, which I dub the ‘from-race-to-class-segregation’ thesis. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century (the late-colonial period in Indonesia), residential patterns based on ethnicity and class were interwo- ven with changes in the urban ecology. New kinds of neighbourhoods, among them suburbs and squatter settlements, were occupied by specific social groups. Modernization created new positions for an emergent, non-European middle class of civil servants, military, professionals, and businessmen. They

1 As a matter of course, age and gender divisions became visible in households, but not at the level of the city as a whole. 2 Ethnic differences were habitually perceived as racial, that is hereditary and phenotypic differences. I use ‘race’ here only to convey something inherent in the colonial discourse, not as an explanatory factor. 74 Under construction demanded new neighbourhoods, the Western-type suburbs. Indigenous neighbourhoods, called kampongs (or kampung in Indonesia), were built by rural immigrants without much of a formal education. Kampong residents occupied interstices in the city core and drove the old colonial elite and new middle class away from the centre into new Western-type suburbs. Suburbanization was triggered by an elite desire to be geographically separated from the masses (Evers 1973; McGee 1967:139-41; Wertheim 1956:140- 52). Although the stream of migrants and the concomitant suburbanization engendered a more complex residential pattern, Evers (1975:781) maintains that in colonial times ‘people of the same ethnic group but different socio- economic status tended to reside in close proximity’. The from-race-to-class-segregation thesis postulates that residential patterns were invariably strongly influenced by changes in the social status system. The shift from a segregation based on race to a segregation based on income had already begun before 1942, was reinforced during the Japanese occupation, and accelerated after independence by several simultaneous processes (Evers 1975:780). Firstly, the most prominent change was that many Europeans left the scene, and their houses were occupied by indigenous and Chinese people. Secondly, new elite and middle-class neighbourhoods were built in which different ethnic groups came together. The well-to-do residents of Chinese descent who settled in these new neighbourhoods left their own ethnic quarters, in which a more homogeneous poor and traditional Chinese population remained behind. Likewise, indigenous kampongs lost some of their higher-status residents to the new middle-class neighbourhoods. Thirdly, these elite neighbourhoods were economically homogeneous, because many domestic servants who initially had lived on the premises in villas chose to leave and set up independent households in kampongs. Fourthly, slums inhabited by squatters emerged, in which ethnic background was not really an issue (Evers 1975:780-3; Jackson 1975:48; McGee 1967:139- 41; Nas 1986a:7). This process of from-race-to-class-segregation, postulated by Evers and McGee for the whole of Southeast Asia, has been confirmed by local studies in Indonesia, for example for Palembang, Padang, and the Kotabaru neighbourhood in Yogyakarta (Colombijn 1994:219-20; Dedi Irwanto 2005:36; Farabi Fakih 2005:22-3). In contrast to this from-race-to-class-segregation thesis, Howard Dick (2002a:411) has raised the question of whether ethnicity really gave ‘rise to socioeconomic differentiation in the first place’, because the strict division between lower-class kampong residents and the middle class still (or again?) existed in the 1970s and thereafter, long after the colonial ethnic division between indigenous and European residents had become a distant memory (see also Abidin Kusno 2000:109-19). My supposition is that in colonial times social class (and more specifically income) was already a greater factor in resi- III Race, class, and spatial segregation 75 dential patterns than was racial category. The reason is simply that a person of, say, European ethnic background may have had plenty of pretensions, but if he did not have a substantial income, he could not have afforded a house in an elite neighbourhood. As we shall see in the next chapter, the first person to remark on the importance of a colonial urban stratification based on class differences was the town planner Thomas Karsten, who had designed class- based neighbourhoods since the 1910s (Flieringa 1930:165; Karsten 1936). If Karsten’s view that income had already had a big impact on residential choices in colonial times is correct, the transition from racial to class segregation after independence cannot have been at all pronounced. Although Karsten did not live to see Indonesian independence, his analysis of urban society supports the ‘class-segregation-throughout-decolonization’ thesis. In this analysis, decolonization is taken to be a process which had begun long before and continued after the actual Proclamation of Independence. A brief excursion to other countries casts further doubt on strict racial segregation in colonial times. Colonial ethnic segregation was certainly far from unique to Indonesia.3 In the Moroccan cities of Rabat and Casablanca, the Arab and French colonial quarters were separated by thoroughfares 250 metres wide. These boulevards had a dual function: as a cordon sanitaire, preventing the spread of disease from the medina to the European quarters, and to facilitate the rapid movement of French troops. French town planning envisaged modern European garden cities and the simultaneous protection of traditional Arab architecture in the medina. This radical system had Mediterranean roots stretching back to ancient Egyptian towns, but was also to be found in other parts of Africa – Madagascar and Dakar – and in Saigon as well.4 Also in British, Belgian, and Portuguese African colonial cities, the principle of ‘sanitary segregation’ separated European neighbourhoods with a high amenity level from poorly serviced indigenous quarters. To give one example, in Elisabethville (Lubumbashi) in the Belgian Congo, European and African neighbourhoods were planned separately from the beginning; even so, the whites apparently did not consider this segregation stringent enough and in 1921 an African neighbourhood was flattened to increase the distance for sanitary and safety reasons. The width of the cordon sanitaire was ideally the maximum range of the flight of a mosquito which could potentially transmit malaria.5 In nineteenth-century British India, Europeans lived in indigenous quarters until the white population retreated to large canton-

3 Nor was ethnic segregation unique to colonial and postcolonial cities; think of North American and European cities. 4 Wright 1997; see also Betts 1969; Coquery-Vidrovitch forthcoming; Rabinow 1986:259-61, 1992. 5 Lagae 2006; see further Coquery-Vidrovitch forthcoming; Fobanjong 2006; Freund 2007:78- 82; Harris 2009; Kimani 1972; Nwaka 1996:125. 76 Under construction ments after the Mutiny of 1857. In British India, where the colour barrier was possibly stricter than in the Netherlands Indies, Eurasians were placed in the Indigenous category (King 1985:22; Shaw 2006). These descriptions show that racial segregation in African colonial cities, and perhaps in India as well, was far stricter than in Indonesia. Nevertheless, in African colonial cities, ethnic mixing of people from a similar social class did occur. Arabs and Jews were permitted to live in the European districts of Rabat and Casablanca, provided they adopted modern, urban (that is, Western) culture. In Elisabethville (Congo), Portuguese and Greek traders who interacted with the black population were referred to as ‘blancs du second rang’; they lived in their own neighbourhood with Indians, Pakistanis, and Arabs, in close proximity to black neighbourhoods (Lagae 2006; Wright 1997:330). In other words, non-Europeans with a middle-class culture lived among Europeans, and lower-class Europeans with Africans and Asians. Adducing this evidence, I see a difference between a ‘from-race-to-class- segregation’ thesis and a ‘class-segregation-throughout-decolonization’ thesis.6 In studies on Indonesia, neither thesis has so far been thoroughly tested by empirical study, not even the from-race-to-class-segregation thesis, which is the predominant view in urban studies today. Racial or ethnic segregation in colonial times is usually accepted as received wisdom, on the assumption that it does not need to be scrutinized. Class segregation in post-independence cities is generally not given a second thought, until the emergence of new towns and gated communities in the course of the 1980s.7 My greatest concern in this discussion is the lack of empirical evidence for the colonial part of the from- race-to-class thesis, as I believe this is the most questionable part. In this chapter I begin to assess the validity of the from-race-to-class-segregation and the class-segregation-throughout-decolonization theses. When weighing up the evidence in support of ethnic or class segregation, I shall construct the argument step by step, making a detour into the meaning of ethnic boundaries, income figures by profession, and prices on the highly fragmented rental market, before reaching the core argument about race, class and spatial segregation. When I speak of segregation of classes, social class is not understood in a

6 It should be noted that the works from which I have distilled these two views are less oppositional than the terms ‘from-race-to-class-segregation’ and ‘class-segregation-throughout- decolonization’ suggest. Not only did McGee, Evers and Wertheim, as we have just seen, sketch a process subtler than a simple ‘from-race-to-class-segregation’ (and they refer directly or indirectly to Karsten’s work), but Karsten for his part did not perceive colonial society purely in class terms. The Explanatory Memorandum of the Town Planning Ordinance, of which Karsten is considered the principal author, speaks of a ‘struggle’ (strijdperk, emphasis in the original) between four fundamentally different groups: indigenous, Chinese, European, and Eurasian (Toelichting 1938:80-1). 7 Cowherd 2002; Leisch 2002; Silas 2002; Djoko Sujarto 2002. III Race, class, and spatial segregation 77

Marxist sense of a group with a specific relation to the means of production, but as a grouping of people with a similar income or wealth and a concomitant consumption pattern, lifestyle, or tastes. A social class can also be characterized by such distinctive values as, according to Weber, individualism, materialism, and rationalism in the case of the middle class. In the modernized sections of society, educational qualifications increasingly determine both income and lifestyle.8

Ethnic divisions in colonial times

One issue that permeated colonialism in Indonesia and elsewhere, leaving traces long after independence, was ethnicity. Ethnic distinctions in Indonesian cities, as in other Southeast Asian cities, predated the arrival of European merchant ships, but the rigid legal distinction between Indigenous people, Foreign Orientals, and Europeans was not developed until after the Dutch state assumed responsibility for the territorial possessions of the bankrupt Dutch East India Company in 1799. In the early nineteenth century, Governor-General H.W. Daendels and after him Lieutenant-Governor T.S. Raffles introduced the idea that it was fair to have separate law courts for indigenous and European people, so that each could be governed by their own legal principles. The dualism was formalized in 1848, when a new Civil Code and other laws came into force applicable to European citizens only. This Civil Code required a precise definition of who was considered European, hence subject to the Civil Code, and who was non-European. Article 109 of the Regeringsreglement of 1854, which served the colony as a constitution, provided this definition. Initially the non-European category included both indigenous and Chinese people. Gradually a finer distinction was drawn between Indigenous people (in the definition of a legal category), so-called Foreign Orientals (Vreemde Oosterlingen; Chinese, Arabs, and Indians) and Europeans.9 The apparently rigid juridical tripartite division was in fact permeable, for example for Indigenous individuals or Foreign Orientals who applied successfully for admission to the European category, illegitimate children by a non-European wife acknowledged by the European father, or a non-European woman who married a European man. In 1899 the whole group of Japanese residents was transferred from the category of

8 Bourdieu 1986; Chaney 1996:3-13, 56-70; Giddens 1992, 2002:80; Robison 1990; Robison and Goodman 1996; Tanter and Young 1990; for Indonesia: Mackie 1982:128. 9 A formal category of Foreign Orientals was not included in the Regeringsreglement until the revision of 1906, promulgated in 1920. In official publications the term landaard was preferred to ras. 78 Under construction

Foreign Orientals to that of European, followed by Turks in 1929 and Thais in 1938.10 The question of which group a person belonged to had formal consequences for which civil code was applied in legal affairs, the kinds of taxes levied, elections (seats were reserved for each of the three racial categories, with an over-representation of Europeans and Foreign Orientals), the kind of primary education a child was eligible for, and numerous other state policies.11 Heather Sutherland (2008) warns that the hardening of ethnic boundaries was not just a matter of European arrogance, but also sharper self-definition within the Chinese and indigenous communities. The legal differentiation was gradually cancelled again during the first half of the twentieth century. In practice many indigenous, Chinese, and Arab children were found in European primary schools. Criminal law was unified in 1918. The corvée labour imposed on Indigenous people was terminated in 1941 (Fasseur 1992:230). Under Japanese rule, the racial hierarchy was formally abolished, but de facto merely replaced by a racial ideology maintaining Japanese supremacy (Muhammad Abdul Aziz 1955:166-75; Brugmans et al. 1960:176-91); moreover, separate regulations continued to apply to Eurasians, Chinese and, of course, the interned Europeans.12 The abolition of legally imposed ‘racial’ categories was only fully achieved after independence, after the Japanese had left the scene. The tripartite legal division was discriminatory, but did not explicitly state that one racial category was superior to another. Nevertheless, in practice the hegemonic ideology put Europeans in a higher position, and Europeans occupied the top ranks in many multi-ethnic organizations. At the other end of the scale, the Indigenous group was the only category subject to corvée labour for public works. Two of the first indigenous intellectuals to contest the alleged European hegemony were R.M. Soewardi Soerjaningrat and Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo, who both wrote with biting sarcasm about the inappropriateness of the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Dutch independence in a subjugated colony (1913), castigating the Dutch paternalistic attitude towards their indigenous ‘children’.13 One serious problem that arises is that we know very little about the extent to which non-Europeans

10 Ironically, in 1899 there were fewer than 200 Japanese in Indonesia, almost all prostitutes or owners of brothels (Sato 1994:4). 11 Visman et al. 1942, II:42-56; Fasseur 1992:218-30; Gautama and Hornick 1972:3-25; Van der Wal 1966. 12 Announcement to Eurasians (In’ōjin ni tsugu), 12-1-2603 (1943); Policies governing the Chinese in Sumatra (Sumatora kakyō taisaku jisshi yōryō), 2602 (1942) (Benda et al. 1965:72, 182- 3); Peringatan kepada bangsa Belanda Indo, Kan Pō 2(11) 2603. 13 Anderson 1991:117; Douwes Dekker, Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo and R.M. Suardy Suryaningrat 1913; Gouda 1995:1-5, 160; Houben 1996:82-3, 110-2; R.M. Soewardi Soerjaningrat 1913; Wertheim 1956:136-7. III Race, class, and spatial segregation 79 ever accepted the hegemonic view that Europeans were at the top (Sutherland 1986). Unsurprisingly, we are much better informed about the thinking of Europeans. Abundant examples testify to the superior status which Europeans claimed in daily life. The distinction seemed so obvious that many people were not always conscious of it, or simply accepted it without overt resistance. When I once interviewed a former Dutch resident about social differences, she answered: ‘There were no differences; we all had servants’. Her unspoken understanding that the servant was an indigenous person – not a fact which needed to be explained to the interviewer – is as telling as her lack of aware- ness that the relationship between Dutch master and indigenous servant was actually not self-evident. One Dutchman recalled that in his youth, from the European perspective, indigenous people were merely part of the scenery (Lechner 2004:139). Even Westernized indigenous employees who had worked their way up in the colonial hierarchy could not shake off the habit of display- ing undue deference. For instance, an indigenous travelling inspector with his own car and driver described his cordial reception by a Dutch Assistant- Resident and his wife; the story seems to be about two equal colleagues in the civil service, until the inspector writes: ‘even Madam shook my hand’. At the theatre, Europeans occupied the boxes, Chinese members of the audience sat on long benches in front of the boxes, and indigenous spectators clustered in dark corners behind the Europeans. The Swiss engineer Hans Liniger (1943:26) attended a performance of The merchant of Venice in such a theatre in Palembang, in which Shylock was represented as a shrewd Chinese merchant, so that his character could be identified more easily. Audiences could also be segregated by different showing times. In Plaju (Palembang), the Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij (BPM, Batavian Oil Company) showed its indigenous employees films on Saturday night and to its European staff on Sunday evening (Idaliana Tanjung 2005:15). Despite all these forms of daily discrimination, the proverbial signboard ‘prohibited for Indigenous people and dogs’ in swimming pools and at sports grounds is nonetheless a popular trope in the collective memory, but one for which I have not found hard evidence. It is not difficult to find examples of warm inter-racial relationships, which serve as a counterbalance. Different racial categories met, but did not really intermix, at the racecourse and at football matches. Men established partnerships in business, science, politics, and crime.14 Much more common than the warm partnerships between adult men was the loving relationship between an indigenous nursemaid (babu) and the European children she cared for, or

14 Van den Berge 1998; Petrus Blumberger 1939:37-9; Bosma and Raben 2003:310-6; Van der Putten 2001; Van Till 2006:205-6. 80 Under construction between a babu and the lady of the house. Some caution should be exercised, as this well-known trope in white memory is contradicted by recollections of some nursemaids. Contradicting the image of European hegemony, a Dutch governess was sometimes employed in a Eurasian household (Nieuwenhuys 1982:113, 134-7, 140; Stoler 2002:162-203). Many were the liaisons, marital or extramarital, between an indigenous woman and a European man, and sometimes between a European woman and an indigenous man. By 1930 18% of the marriages involving a European were mixed (Bosma and Raben 2003:330). Nevertheless, these counter-examples do not detract from the fact that inter-racial relationships in colonial times were generally hierarchical and aloof. As we shall be dealing with urban space and residential segregation, special attention must be paid to the cohabitation of indigenous domestic ser vants and the Dutch elite. Manuals compiled for European women on how to run a household in the tropics recommended employing between seven and ten servants, or at the very least four. Traditionally the servants lived on the premises, often accompanied by their spouses and children. A certain distance was maintained: the domestics’ quarters were at the rear of the house, where the separate kitchen and washroom were also situated. Servants only entered the house to work; conversely, the lady of the house did not go to the servants’ quarters, unless a servant was ill. During the early twentieth century, the design of modern houses reduced both the need and the space for domestic servants. The houses were smaller, but had better sanitation, facilitated by tap water and electricity. Therefore servants could come in to work during the daytime, but reside in the kampong.15 The distance was increased in other ways too. For instance, the clothes of servants and their masters should not be washed together for fear of contamination (Locher-Scholten 1998). These examples are taken from European manuals, but the employment of servants was not an exclusively European prerogative; in other words, the master- servant divide was not identical with racial categorization.16 The above-mentioned everyday examples of a hierarchical relationship between different racial categories should not give the erroneous impression that the boundaries were watertight. Not only were the legal boundaries between racial categories formally changed now and then, the ethnic boundaries were also permeable in daily practice. Made anxious by these

15 I imagine that the changed design was as much the cause as the effect of a changed relationship between mistress and servant. In Kingston, Jamaica, the elite also moved its slaves and servants out of the house; here the process was explained by the emancipation of slaves and the need to erect another, alternative social barrier (Jaffe 2006:9). 16 The treatment of servants as described was not unique to colonial times either and has continued in Indonesia up to the present. III Race, class, and spatial segregation 81 uncertainties, some people made a strenuous effort to maintain the boundaries. Ann Laura Stoler and Frances Gouda (see also Heng and Devan 1995; Locher-Scholten 1997; Tan 1999) argue that women should be held especially responsible for upholding ethnic distinctions. Race was linked to gender. Maternal concerns about the dilemma of raising children in a European or an indigenous tradition and the virtue of women marrying men of their own ‘race’ were the cornerstones in the construction of ethnic boundaries. Anomalies and blurred cases of European or indigenous status became a growing source of worry to the superior European group.17 White women marrying indigenous men had ‘failed’ to maintain ethnic boundaries and were expelled from the white community, socially and legally. The thought of a white woman having a sexual relationship with a non-white man was horrendous to many conservative Europeans. In contrast, the racial categorization of European men was permanent; if they had a relationship with an indigenous wife or concubine, it did not threaten their white prestige. The progeny of mixed marriages also formed a potential crack in the wall of European hegemony. Eurasians who had a formal European status, but a hybrid culture – not speaking perfect Dutch, for instance – formed such an anomaly. Eurasians themselves clung to their European status, which placed them above indigenous people in the social pyramid. It appeared impossible to maintain the fiction that a European person was affluent ‘by right of birth’, as he or she ought to be in order to uphold European prestige (Gouda 1995:157-93; Stoler 1995:1-54, 1997, 2002:22-78). According to Stoler (1989), poor Europeans also threatened the boundaries of colonial categories. Therefore, during the Depression the sight of unemployed Europeans (often Eurasians) formed another anomaly, a potentially disruptive group in the eyes of employed, conservative Europeans. If possible, they were sent home to remove them from public view. Stoler’s point intrigues me, because it is pertinent to my effort to treat ethnicity and class as two separate variables. However, Stoler makes too much of the anomalous poor Europeans sent home during the Depression. Close reading of the source to which she refers (De Braconier 1919) shows that the unsightly Europeans she is talking about formed a particular group composed of not just any poor Europeans. They were soldiers who had been recruited in Europe, served their time, and were meant to be demobilized in their place of recruitment, Europe. Moreover, her use of a 1919 publication to say something about the Depression is not valid, and it is not exact to change the mention in the source

17 Gouda and Stoler do not spell out exactly who made up this white group and whether there were sizeable groups of Europeans who rejected the ideology of white supremacy. It is not clear from their writings to what extent indigenous people and Foreign Orientals shared the ideology of white supremacy. 82 Under construction of ‘over 9,300’ jobless Europeans living in kampongs (De Braconier 1919:367) into ‘tens of thousands’ of ‘dangerously impoverished’ Europeans (Stoler 1989:151). European leaders of public opinion were definitely worried about impoverished Europeans in the Depression, but for humanitarian reasons, not for the supposed threat they posed to colonial ethnic boundaries. My criticism of Stoler’s interpretation of poor Europeans, however, does not alter the fact that ethnic boundaries – racialized, legally changed, porous, crossed, and fiercely upheld – existed. They formed the precondition of a socio-spatial divide in colonial times based on ‘races’.

The case for racial segregation

Numerous other authors state with varying degrees of conviction and nuances that racial segregation was the rule in Indonesia.18 The notion of racial segregation is partly shaped by the historical practice of ethnically inspired topo- nyms. The municipality of Medan provides an example of this discourse. In an indigenous kampong that looked like one large orchard, the streets were named after indigenous fruit trees and here the word djalan (street) instead of the Dutch straat was used. Discussing some new streets, the administration remarked that a ‘European’ neighbourhood should bear European names, for example of local and regional (Dutch) administrators. In the Tamil ward, streets were named after Indian cities (Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Colombo) and Chinese shopping streets bore Chinese names: Pekingstraat, Shanghaistraat, Kapiteinsweg, and Luitenantsweg (the latter two referred to the ranks of formal Chinese leaders), and Hakkastraat (the name of a Chinese dialect).19 The claim of racial segregation has been repeated in recent studies of individual cities. For example, Surabaya was divided by the river Kali Mas; an ordinance of 1843 decreed that Europeans should live west of the Jembatan Merah Bridge and Chinese and Arabs east of it. Indigenous people lived clustered around the foreign neighbourhoods. Bandung was divided by the railway; Europeans lived in the modern suburbs north of the railway and indigenous residents lived south of it. In Cirebon, conduits from the waterworks were constructed mainly to houses of Europeans; only indigenous people living in or near the palace area (keraton) enjoyed piped water too. Europeans in Yogyakarta built the quarter Kotabaru (literally new town), which was like a fortress protected from indigenous visitors by a railway line and the River

18 Dutt and Song 1994:162; Frederick 1989:2-3; Gill 1995:81, 206-10; Nas 1986a:6-8; Van Roosmalen 2004:190-1; Rutz 1987:74-82; Van Niel 1960:23. 19 Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1931, no. 249; Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1938, no. 146; Hind 1051 Medan 1945. III Race, class, and spatial segregation 83

Code. The 1938 telephone directory lists only Europeans living in Kotabaru. Indigenous people from adjacent neighbourhoods came there just to work as domestic servants or gardeners.20 Segregation can be traced in part to the historical quarter system (wijkenstelsel). In pre-colonial times different ethnic groups were obliged to live in separate quarters of port cities. The Dutch East India Company, VOC, adopted the quarter system, which was formalized by the colonial state in the early nineteenth century. The quarter system obliged Chinese people to live in a Chinese quarter in places where such a quarter existed (and they did exist even in small towns), but, conversely, non-Chinese were not forbidden to live in the Chinese quarter. The Ordinance on Restrictive Choice of Residence for Foreign Orientals was repealed for Java in 1919 and the rest of the Archipelago in 1926. This abrogation did not, however, encourage Chinese

Figure 8. Chinese quarter of Batavia, circa 1930. Source: KITLV, Special Collections nr. 5246.

20 Eva Nur Arovah 2005:37; Barker 1999:98; Farabi Fakih 2005; Timoticin Kwanda 2005:448; Rita Padawangi 2006:32-3; Voskuil et al. 1996:47. 84 Under construction residents to abandon the Chinese quarter en masse.21 Probably because of the quarter system, Chinese quarters were ethnically the most homogeneous of all urban neighbourhoods (Figure 8). For instance, of the 124 plots with a known owner in the Chinese quarter of Makassar (in 1945), only two named owners (a Dutchman and a haji) did not bear a Chinese name.22 Given this evidence gleaned from historiography and contemporary works, the case for racial segregation in colonial Indonesian cities seems to have been conclusively made. Nevertheless, when the same works and other sources are scrutinized in greater detail, they reveal scattered but ample evidence to the contrary, in two ways: first, class differences within ethnic groups could be important and, second, ethnic groups lived in far more mixed communities than has hitherto been recognized. In other words, spatial segregation based on social class was indeed already very significant in colonial times. In the example of piped water in Cirebon just mentioned, a difference existed within the indigenous group between the well-to-do who could afford piped water and the others who could not. In the alleged white enclave Kotabaru in Yogyakarta, the presence of a Hollandsch-Inlandsche School (HIS, Dutch-language school for indigenous children) suggests the presence of an indigenous elite in the neighbourhood (Eva Nur Arovah 2005:38; Asti Kurniawati and Dwi Ratna Nurhajarini 2005:24). The Chinese neighbourhood in Makassar, despite the overwhelming Chinese ownership of land, also provided space for Indians. Houses at the beginning of Tempelstraat (Temple Street) were inhabited by well-to-do Chinese; hence the residence pattern was characterized as much by income as by ethnicity. In yet another neighbourhood (behind the Roembiaweg) both Chinese and indigenous traders lived mixed together.23 The quarter system (wijkenstelsel) for Foreign Orientals exempted appointed heads (with the rank of majoor, kapitein, or luitenant), members of the board in charge of orphans and property in trust (wees- en boedelkamer), members of the municipal council, former civil servants, and all others of good repute from the obligation to live in designated quarters (Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië 537/1910 and 538/1910). After the

21 Cator 1936:31-5; Furnivall 1944:241; Moerman 1932:53; Visman et al. 1942, II:53. 22 Opgave namen van de eigenaren van de perceelen gelegen aan de Tempelstraat, attached to letter Ketua and Wakil Ketua Persatuan Warga Cina Perantauan Cabang Makassar Hua Chiao Chung Hui to Wakil Burgemeester Makassar, 27-11-1945, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 50. 23 Teng Tjin Leng, Summier rapport omtrent den handel van Chineesche zijde en het Chineesche Kamp, 6-6-1946, Appendix 4 of Survey Stadsplan, attached to letter Ir. N.J. Meyer, Planologisch Bureau Makassar, to Ir. Kipperman, Directeur Gemeentewerken Makassar, 8-3- 1947, no. 1233/207, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 38; N.J. Meyer, Hoofd Planologisch Bureau Negara Indonesia Timoer, Rapport over de herziening van de voorlopige detailplannen voor de Chinese Kamp te Makassar, December 1948, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 41. III Race, class, and spatial segregation 85 elite had left, the population remaining in the Chinese quarter must have been drawn predominantly from middle- and lower-class backgrounds. W.J. Cator (1936:340) concluded that, because of the many exemptions and the large number of Chinese who lived clandestinely outside their designated quarter – in 1890 30,000 Javanese villages had Chinese inhabitants – the quarter system had failed to separate Chinese people from other groups. The hilly Tjandi area in Semarang attracted both Europeans and rich Chinese residents. In Surabaya many indigenous people lived in the neighbourhood designated for Chinese and Arabs; what characterized these areas was not ethnicity, but a professional specialization in earthenware and brass-work. In Bandung many indigenous and Chinese middle-class civil servants and well-to-do traders settled in the modern suburbs north of the railway. In a number of middle- sized Javanese cities the large Chinese quarters were split into a neighbourhood for the well-to-do and one for the poor.24 Even in the VOC era, despite strict regulations, control of settlement in Batavia and Makassar was an illu- sion, and the residential pattern was far more mixed than suggested by VOC regulations (Raben 1996; Sutherland 1986:47-8, 2008). Interviews with elderly residents in Medan, Bandung, Surabaya, and Makassar undertaken by Martine Barwegen and myself confirm that ethnic segregation was not as important in colonial times as is generally assumed. Many conversations took the following course. When asked about their former neighbourhood, respondents often remarked that they lived in a European street, a Chinese quarter, or an indigenous kampong. When urged to specify who their neighbours were, the picture greatly diversified. Perhaps a person allegedly living in a European neighbourhood did indeed state that the neighbour on the left was European, but the neighbour on the right was indigenous, and across the street lived two Chinese families. We shall shortly explore the idea of spatial segregation based on social class by analysing the composition of the housing market. Before we can do this, however, we shall first explore the meaning of social class, or class for short, in colonial and independent Indonesia.

Social class divisions

The study of the comparative influence of ‘race’ or social class on place of residence in colonial times is marred by the fact that both factors were strongly related to each other. The radical critic of colonialism Frantz Fanon (1977:31) even asserted that ‘[i]n the colonies, […] you are rich because you are white,

24 Claudius 1935:26; Gill 1995:207; Soerabaja 1921:33; Voskuil et al. 1996:47. 86 Under construction you are white because you are rich’. Although this is an overstatement, in practice it is indeed hard to distinguish between a social differentiation based on ethnicity and one based on income, because ethnicity and the opportunity to earn a certain income were strongly related to each other. Therefore, the deviant cases, the middle-class indigenous and the poor European, are especially enlightening. Recent studies of social class in Indonesia have focused on the emergent indigenous middle class, because of their potential of democratic resistance against the oppressive Dutch and New Order regimes. The earliest indigenous elite in urban centres consisted of bureaucrats, who were rooted in feudal society and held power by virtue of birth; in Java they were called priyayi. The next indigenous group that (metaphori- cally speaking) rose ‘above’ the urban poor were Muslim traders. Unlike the indigenous bureaucratic elite, who occupied a unique position in the social fabric, indigenous traders shared their position with Chinese, Arab, Eurasian and other businessmen. The social structure became more complex in the early twentieth century when a small group of Western-educated indigenous people began to gain prominence. For their employment these formally educated indigenous people were highly dependent on the state, but their pros- pects for moving up the ladder was hampered by European and Eurasian civil servants. Their frustration fed the nationalist movement. Nevertheless, the colour barrier should not be overstressed: during the Depression educated indigenous people outstripped uneducated Eurasians in taking middle- rank jobs.25 During the Japanese period, the racial hierarchy was reversed and a white skin, the former sign of superiority, became a symbol of the outcast. Highly educated Indonesians were promoted to middle and top ranks in the bureaucracy. During the Indonesian Revolution, the colonial prerogatives enjoyed by Chinese and Eurasian people, and indigenous feudal rulers – based on race or tradition – were swept away forever. The indigenous, professional middle class consolidated its leading position in the state apparatus, but the top ranks in Western companies remained an unassailable bastion until 1957. When firms had taken the trouble to prepare indigenous staff members for executive positions, their trainees often left to join government service upon the completion of their training.26 This sketch of the changing status system and the political potential of the emergent indigenous middle class, interesting as it is, does not tell us to what

25 Petrus Blumberger 1939:58; Dick 1985:71-2; Frederick 1989:20-8; Gouda 1995:172; Houben 1996:87-8, 116; Ingleson 1988:292-6; Lev 1990; Mackie 1990:115; Sutherland 1979; Wertheim 1956:135-52, 1978:135-8. 26 Dick 2002a:152-5; Kahin 1952:30; Van de Kerkhof 2005:196; Lev 1990:28; Mackie 1990:115; Meijer 1994:354; Robison 1996:79; Wertheim 1956:152-66, 1978:139-40. III Race, class, and spatial segregation 87 extent people from the same class lived together or were segregated by ethnic divisions. By and large the sketch ignores non-indigenous members of the middle class, although in an analysis of residential patterns the Chinese and Europeans are as important as indigenous people. Moreover, the extant literature tends to reify classes, while I attempt to disaggregate data and look at residential patterns at the level of individual households. In order to be able to analyse the link between social class and urban space, it is essential to steer away from an analysis of whole classes and to focus on incomes instead.27 In the following analysis of real incomes, upper class, middle class and lower class form points on a continuum of income distribution and should not be considered discrete categories. In government and business, Europeans took the lion’s share of the highest paid jobs. According to figures from major cities in Java from the mid-1920s, there was a huge income disparity: the average European salary was nine times indigenous income; Chinese also earned more, but less than double, what indigenous urban residents earned.28 The possibility that indigenous, Chinese and Europeans workers may have received different wages for the same work should not be ruled out,29 but discrimination weighed far more heavily on the unequal chances of entering the

27 Howard Dick, in contrast, argues that income (expressed as occupational category or household expenditure) is not a reliable indicator of middle-class membership. What char- acterizes the middle class is a certain mode of consumption: the ‘privatization of the means of consumption’; that is, middle-class people withdraw physically or socially from the obligation prevalent in kampongs to share personal property with others (Dick 1985:75-6, 2002a:155-7). The advantage of Dick’s approach is the proximity to the daily life experience, but the analysis of class and residence as two separate variables is precluded by his equation of suburbs with middle- class lifestyle (and kampongs with lower classes). 28 Booth 1988:326; Lindblad 2002:141-2. When we include rural areas, the income disparity is far larger, because indigenous people were heavily over-represented in the agricultural sector where low incomes were earned. On average (in urban and rural areas combined), a European earned 61 times what an Indonesian earned (in 1939) (Booth 1988:329). 29 In 1913 the State decided that civil servants from different ‘racial’ backgrounds would receive the same remuneration for the same job. At the same time, the State maintained three (later two) pay scales for different jobs. This meant that when the majority of employees in a certain job were indigenous, that job would be placed in the indigenous pay scale; all new civil servants employed in that job, regardless of their ‘racial’ background, would receive the salary indicated on the indigenous pay scale. Naturally the Association of Eurasians, IEV, strongly protested against placing a whole job category in the lower indigenous pay scale, as Eurasians were often hardest hit by such financial demotion (Fasseur 1992:230-1; Rijken Rapp 1930:30; Visman et al. 1942, II:54, 58; Wertheim 1956:47). It is conceivable that practice did not always follow the law, and that indigenous people in the higher pay scale received lower remuneration for the same work than their European colleagues did. I do not know of anti-discrimination rules for salaries in the private sector, but it is just as well to remember that few of the better educated indigenous people sought employment in the private sector. Differences between ‘racial’ categories certainly existed in army pay and widows’ pensions until the end of Dutch rule. 88 Under construction better-paid professions. Insofar as a tiny indigenous middle class had developed by the end of Dutch colonial times, its members were predominantly active as salaried employees, mostly as civil servants. Formal education was the variable explaining the relationship between ethnicity and income. The government’s professed hiring policy was that function depended on education, not ethnicity, but European children in the colony had a far better chance of completing their formal education than did their indigenous peers,30 not to mention the advantageous position of Dutch competitors on the labour market who had been to school in Europe (Kahin 1952:29-33; Visman et al. 1942, II:13). The worst discrimination was therefore related to enrolment in schools, less in regard to employment, and still less in terms of unequal remuneration for the same task. Educational levels, however, cannot fully explain the small window of opportunity open to indigenous people in colonial times to enter the higher echelons: Indonesians with the required education for government jobs felt that they were discriminated against during job interviews, because of their appearance, demeanour, mastery of Dutch, and height. Western companies were much more reluctant to employ indigenous people in higher ranks than was the state, and job advertisements openly asked for a ‘full-blood European’ (Bosma and Raben 2003:304; Kahin 1952:33; Visman et al. 1942, II:86-7, 91-5). The indigenization of the top ranks of the private sector had to wait until the late 1950s. The unequal chance of getting the better-paid jobs would not have made such an impact on ethnic income disparity if the difference in income between jobs had not been so very large. Real incomes, not average incomes per ethnic category, are important here for three reasons: First, to discover how large class (income) differences were; second, to analyse how income differences resulted in different prices on the housing market; and third, to map the spatial segregation of the different classes. It is therefore imperative to pay ample attention to wages. Unfortunately, very little has been published about real incomes in the urban economy. I therefore fully agree with the lament that theoretical discussions of the middle class lack solid, sociological statistics (Mackie 1990:96; Tanter and Young 1990:11). The few colonial studies on incomes which have been unearthed by historians are cited over and again; this parroting is of itself indicative of

30 In absolute figures, however, indigenous people dominated schools; the percentages of indigenous and European persons completing their education in 1939 were: primary European education 55% and 28% (the remaining 17% taken up by Foreign Orientals); lower secondary school (MULO and 3-year HBS) 47 and 34%; higher secondary school (HBS, AMS, lycea) 26 and 59%; tertiary education 49 and 25%. There were also more indigenous people who could read and write Dutch than Europeans with this skill (Visman et al. 1941, I:60-6). III Race, class, and spatial segregation 89 the dearth of reliable data. Meijer Ranneft and Huender (1926:2, 10, 196-7) published a survey of 405 indigenous households in urban Java in 1925, for which apparently only male breadwinners were interviewed. A civil servant earned on average 1.7 times more than a regular worker in a factory or other company, 2.5 times more than an artisan or independent small trader, and 6.5 times more than a daily coolie (kuli).31 These incomes stood in the same proportion at the end of the Depression (Booth 1988:334; Van Laanen 1979:135- 6; Wertheim 1956:111). Incomes even varied considerably between coolies. Research among coolies employed by the municipality of Batavia in 1937 found that unskilled coolies enjoyed a modal income of 30-35 cents per day, and skilled coolies more than 100 cents.32 At the end of Japanese rule, 1945, the maximum wage of an unskilled forced labourer (romusha) in Jakarta and Surabaya was set at 50 cents and the minimum wage of an experienced skilled forced labourer at 260 cents (Sato 1994:169). The point here is that the income differences within the indigenous category were as large as the differences between indigenous, Chinese, and European categories. In other words, the various ethnic groups were divided internally by class lines. Although the extant literature convincingly shows the huge differences in income, it is not fully adequate for my purposes. The first problem is that the data come from colonial times and are restricted to indigenous workers. The second, and more important, objection is that only data about lower and middle incomes are given, there are none about the upper end of the income scale. These gaps in knowledge are filled here by raw data collected in the municipal archive of Medan, summarized in Table 4. While these figures admittedly come from only one city and have minor methodological flaws (to be discussed shortly), I nevertheless think they are as reliable and as valid as the much quoted Meijer Ranneft-Huender survey of 1925, and the survey of Batavia coolies in 1937. The credibility of the Medan data is enhanced by other similar, but less comprehensive, datasets.33 The Medan data are also important because of the richness of detail: the figures are broken down by profession. Table 4 was compiled from different sources – at the risk of comparing

31 In Indonesia ‘coolie’ is not a derogatory term, as it is in the West Indies. 32 Living conditions 1958:93; Abeyasekere 1989:94; Bijlmer 1986:156-7; Van Laanen 1979:137-8; see also Dros 1992:128-9, 139-40. 33 These other sources are a report about day labourers in Jakarta (Stelp 1954:7-11), the State pay scales (Staatsblad van Indonesië 2/1949), an overview of ten civil servants’ salaries, from clerk to engineer, in 1936 (Hart 1936:59), and salaries for the lower echelons in Padang from 1930 to 1933 (various bezoldigingsbesluiten, Arsip Padang, Box I). These other incomes are less important (because of inflation) for their absolute values than for the relative differences between the jobs, mentioned in one source. Formal salaries of civil servants were much levelled down during the Japanese period (Kan Pō 2(28) 2603). Table 4. Gross monthly income of various occupations (unmarried workers) in guilders, 1942 and 1948

Occupation 1942 1948 decision 23/1948 apprentice craftsman 8.30 28.60 [unskilled] coolie; dog-catcher; assistant 13.00-16.00 laundryman; ironing woman; female domestic servant (baboe); assistant cook; repairman; servant (bediende); assistant doorkeeper; watcher laundryman; cook; clerk (completed 17.00-20.00 inlandsche school); assistant overseer (ondermandoer); assistant motor mechanic; broom-maker; white washer; apprentice draughtsman house-painter; assistant toekang (carpenter, 24.00-28.00 42.90 fitter, turner); bricklayer; assistant motor mechanic; debt collector (rekeningloper); laboratory assistant doorkeeper; steel-bender; overseer (mandoer); 29.00 –34.00 114.40 toekang; motor mechanic; driver chief overseer (hoofdmandoer); senior 37.50-46.80 148.72 toekang; senior motor mechanic; chief cook foreman (werkbaas) 56.00 stock clerk (magazijn klerk) 72.50 87.50 nurse; clerk (commies); controller by-laws 220-360 380 (verordening controleur) senior nurse; chief clerk (hoofdcommies); 380-400 380-415 kashouder office head (kantoorhoofd); market admini- 450-500 strator (administrateur pasarbedrijf) technical engineer; building inspector; 625-630 head of department (referendaris) Head Municipal Agrarian Office, Town 725-850 Clerk (gemeentesecretaris) Director Municipal Public Works; Mayor; 850-1100 825 Superintendent of Public Health (Directeur geneesheer)

Sources: Letter Djaidin Poerba to Hoofd Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst, 23-2-1948, no. 896; Ontwerpverordening aanneming en dienstvoorwaarden van werkkrachten op maand- of dagloon (including Besluit Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst 28-1-1948, no. 23, Loonregeling daglooners, Loonregeling maandlooners), appendix to letter Walikota 27-4-1948, no. 1854; Verklaring burgemeester Medan 8-5-1948, no. 2005; Letter Djaidin Poerba to Personeelscommissie Adviesraad Stadsgemeente Medan, 5-7-1948, no. 2830; Letter A.J. Paling, gemeentesecretaris, to Vertegenwoordiger Directie Indische Pensioenfondsen, Medan 7-10-1948, no. 2562; Letter K. Rangkuti to Kementerian Dalam Negeri, 26-2-1952, no. 2152/PA-2, Arsip Medan. III Race, class, and spatial segregation 91 apples with oranges, or better, of putting all the fruit together in one bowl. The data about the better-paid jobs (starting with stock clerk) are salaries paid out to real persons known by name. Remarkably, this dividing line almost coincides with the lower limit of earnings liable for paying income tax, set at ƒ 75 per month (Visman et al. 1941, I:45). The other wages, mostly for manual work, are taken from a list of standard daily wages. In 1948, the Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst at Medan set new wages for craftsmen (tukang), overseers (mandur), and drivers (Decision 23 of 28 January 1948). An undated list with standard wages for 33 daily labourers and nineteen jobs paid monthly salaries is attached to Decision 23/1948.34 I have multiplied the daily wages by 26 (working days per month) to obtain earnings per month.35 In this way I constructed a table of monthly earnings for 78 jobs in total; this information has been condensed in Table 4.36 The overwhelming conclusion to be drawn from Table 4 is the enormous

34 Besluit Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst Medan, 28-1-1948, no. 23 and Ontwerpverordening aanneming en dienstvoorwaarden van werkkrachten op maand- of dagloon, both attached to letter Walikota 27-4-1948, no. 1854, Arsip Medan. Note that the new wages for apprentices, assistants, full and senior craftsmen, overseers, and drivers mentioned in Decision 23/1948 are on average 2.7 times higher than the wages in the attached list (for comparable jobs). This is in line with national policy, by which low wages were tripled in 1949 (Staatsblad van Indonesië 2/1949). 35 It was customary to pay wages on holidays, but there was still a controversy about whether wages had to be paid out on Sundays too, especially if six days of wages was insufficient to cover a family’s expenses for a whole week. I have assumed Sundays were not paid. Letter Vertegenwoordiger Sociale Zaken bij Recomba voor Noord Sumatra to Burgemeester Medan, 22-1-1948, no. Md/6/148, appendix to letter Walikota 27-4-1948, no. 1854, Arsip Medan. 36 A flaw of Table 4 is that it mentions only basic wages, whereas in practice incomes were composed of different components. For example, low-income groups probably compensated their minimal earnings with urban subsistence activities, multiple wage earners per household, informal sector activities, or keeping one foot in a home village. Moreover, all wage earners received substantial allowances. For example, according to Decision 23/1948, an unskilled daily labourer would earn ƒ 1.37 a day. In addition, he received an allowance for food: ƒ 0.15 for himself, ƒ 0.10 for his wife, and ƒ 0.05 for each child under 16. He was paid only for the days he worked – six days a week – but received the allowance for all seven days of the week, because his income was not enough to maintain his family throughout the week. In contrast, workers who had a sufficient income would receive the food allowance only for the days they actually worked. Hence, the monthly income of a coolie with a wife and two children would amount to about ƒ 47, a quarter of which consisted of his food allowance. A skilled craftsman would receive ƒ 0.20 per day for every child from his third child upwards, over and above the food allowance. Note that the remuneration system did not take account of the possibility of a female daily worker (Besluit tijdelijke bestuursdienst Medan, 28-1-1948, no. 23, Appendix to Letter Walikota 27-4-1948, no. 1854, Arsip Medan). In January 1948, the principal clerk (hoofdcommies) at the municipal secretariat, A.B. Schlette, earned a basic salary of ƒ 380, supplemented by ƒ 59.15 transitional payment scheme, ƒ 52.79 child allowance, ƒ 210.00 family allowance, and ƒ 66.10 price compensation. After subtracting pension and taxes, his net income was ƒ 628.38 per month, more than half derived from allowances (Verklaring burgemeester Medan 8-5-1948, no. 2005, Arsip Medan.). The data about an unskilled coolie, a skilled craftsman, and the principal clerk suggest that the higher the rank, the larger the allowances. 92 Under construction income disparity. Before Decision 23/1948 came into force, top incomes were over 60 times higher than the lowest incomes; the more common office jobs (nurse, clerk) brought in ten times more than a skilled craftsman (tukang). Decision 23/1948 was followed by a national revision of pay scales37 which was meant to protect the lowest income groups against inflationary high prices, and it had an important levelling effect, even though income distribution remained heavily skewed. This inequality resulted in totally different housing for the various income classes.

The housing market

Income is so closely connected with the kind of house a person occupies that, conversely, the kind of house is an indicator of prosperity (Nolan 2002:137). Because of the extremely skewed income distribution, the rental market was also divided into several categories of houses (and rents). Each category had its own market of supply and demand. Shortage of houses in one category might coincide with abundant supply in another category. The finding that the housing market was fragmented into cheap and expensive houses is neither surprising nor is it unique to Indonesian cities. Yet the point is important, because here it is corroborated by hitherto unavailable historical evidence. Contemporary accounts break up rents into more or less discrete categories.38 Cheap houses without brick walls, sometimes referred to as ‘indigenous houses’, fetched rents up to ƒ 20-30 per month.39 Very cheap houses in Medan, Bandung, Semarang, Malang, and Surabaya went for between ƒ 1.00 and ƒ 6.00. Dwellings rented for ƒ 1.00-2.00 were usually meant for single coolies, but could be inhabited by couples.40 Rents implicitly or explicitly deemed suited for (European?) residents who were middle-class but not rich fell in the range of ƒ 20-80.41 Municipalities did not feel responsible for

37 On 1 January 1949, the lowest wages, up to ƒ 25, were tripled; a salary of ƒ 380 was raised to ƒ 590, ƒ 825 became ƒ 1075 (Staatsblad van Indonesië 2/1949). 38 Since contemporary accounts did not, of course, use the same figures consistently, the choice of where exactly to draw the boundaries between different categories of rents is somewhat arbitrary. Moreover, I have ignored the fact that costs of living vary from city to city and from time to time; in other words, converted into rice prices, a rent of, say, ƒ 10 in Medan in a certain year (and month) would not mean exactly the same thing as a rent of ƒ 10 in Surabaya. Roughly, however, the boundaries used in Table 5 give an accurate picture of how contemporaries perceived different categories of housing. 39 Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medann 1933, no. 72; Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1937, no. 186; Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 2-2-1935; Flieringa 1930:165. 40 Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1933, no. 72; Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1938, no. 163; Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 15-1-1930; Tillema 1913:52. 41 Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1937, no. 186; Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1938, no. 10; III Race, class, and spatial segregation 93

Table 5. Percentage distribution of rental values of houses in Malang (1937) and Medan (1948)

Monthly rent in guilders Malang Medan

<10 78 71 >10-30 12 20 >30-50 5 4 >50-80 3 3 >80 1 1 Total 100 100 n for Malang = 20,077; n for Medan = 525. Sources: Van Liempt 1939:48A-49A; Daftar roemah2 Gemeente jang dioeroes oleh Gemeente Woningbedrijf, Medan 18-3-1948, appendix to Penetapan 184/1948 Wali Kota Medan, Djaidin Poerba, 23-3-1948, Arsip Medan. Rounding off percentages may produce a column total that is slightly more or slightly less than 100%. providing housing for the upper class, that is, houses which rented for ƒ 80 or more. Real-estate developers built houses starting with a rent of ƒ 75; they made a distinction between houses for ordinary well-to-do (up to ƒ 120-125), and the truly rich for whom a rent of ƒ 150 presented no obstacle.42 In short, in the late colonial period, lower-class houses cost up to about ƒ 30 per month (the cheapest less than ƒ 10), middle-class houses ƒ 30-80, and upper-class houses ƒ 80 or more.43 A survey of houses in Malang (in 1937) gives the distribution of all houses over the various rental categories (Table 5). The percentage distribution is very similar for municipally owned houses in Medan in 1948. The municipality of Medan kept these houses for all its employees, from the lowest coolie to the mayor. So many people were employed in all ranks of the Medan civil service, that its social composition must have been roughly equal to the social composition of the urban society at large.44 By far the largest percentage of houses fell in the cheapest category. In Malang one third of all houses had rents of ƒ 2.00 or less, in Medan one third of all houses rented for ƒ 5.00 or less.

Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 14-1-1935, 8-2-1935. 42 Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1933, no. 72; Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1938, no. 10; Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 25-3-1930). 43 These categories can be recognized in the typical rents that H.M.J. Hart (1936:58) gives for four income categories: ƒ 6, ƒ 22.50, ƒ 60, and ƒ 150. The Burgerlijke Woningregeling 1934 (Staatsblad van Nederlands-Indië 147/1934), which set rents allowed for different levels of civil servants, also had similar categories. 44 Because of rent control, post-war inflation does not greatly disturb this comparison with the pre-war data from Malang. 94 Under construction

Table 6. Percentage distribution of monthly rents of houses, 1930-1940

Monthly rent in guilders Data set n 0-10 >10-30 >30-50 >50-80 >80-120 >120

Batavia, housing agency NIVA, 1934 127 - 7.1 29.9 40.2 20.5 2.4 Surabaya, housing agency Van Vloten, 1935 908 0.3 13.4 31.9 32.6 16.3 5.4 Surabaya, Soerabaiasch- Handelsblad, 1930-1940 91 - 3.3 9.9 16.5 17.6 52.7 Makassar, Makassaarsche Courant, 1930-1940 27 - 11.1 33.3 29.6 25.9 - Medan, Deli Courant, 1930-1940 31 - - 9.7 25.8 35.5 29.0 n = number of houses

Sources: NIVA 1934; Van Vloten 1935; Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad January-March 1930, 1935, 1940; Makassaarsche Courant January-March 1930, 1935, 1940; Deli Courant January-March 1930, 1935, 1940.

The fragmentation of the rental market was embodied in the various channels for marketing rented houses (Table 6). Houses for let that were advertised in newspapers (Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad, Deli Courant, and Makassaarsche Courant) were predominantly found in the most expensive categories.45 One article from the Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad (25-3-1930) refers to houses with rents of ƒ 80-125 as ‘cheap’, revealing that from the perspective of the reader- ship of this newspaper houses at the upper end of the range of rents were considered ‘normal’. The housing agencies Nederlandsch-Indisch Verhuur en Administratiekantoor (NIVA) in Batavia and Van Vloten in Surabaya published a catalogue of houses for rent once a fortnight or once a month. These housing agencies targeted a slightly cheaper section of the market, but the small difference in focus was not necessarily a difference in marketing strategy. The catalogues consulted stem from 1934 and 1935, right in the middle of the Depression, when rents were at a low point. Given the Dutch language used in the newspapers and the catalogues, both these media reached mainly literate people – not necessarily only Europeans – with middle-class and upper-class dwellings. The lower end of the housing market is conspicuously absent in these media, and the majority of urban residents had nothing to

45 Our sample of advertisements consisted of the months January, February and March in the years 1930, 1935 and 1940. III Race, class, and spatial segregation 95 look for in the newspapers or catalogues of housing agencies. NIVA and Van Vloten did not offer one single house with a rent of less than ƒ 7.50. The fragmentation of the housing market was thrown into sharp relief during the Depression of the 1930s, when various segments of the rental market responded quite differently to the downward pressure on prices. Yet, although the supply of houses could move in opposite directions for each category, the movements were not independent of each other. Changes in demand or supply in one category flowed over into the next. For instance, as the Depression deepened, more people who had suffered a loss of income abandoned their elite housing, moved in together, or searched for cheaper houses. Whereas 900 houses with high rents stood empty in Surabaya, there was a growing demand for houses in the lower-middle-class category (Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 14-1-1935, 2-2-1935, 8-2-1935). In Medan the vacancy rate of middle-class houses owned by the municipality rose from 10% in 1930 to 40% in 1934. The municipal housing corporation could not respond to the changed market conditions as flexibly as the private sector; renters of upper- class and middle-class municipal houses moved to cheaper private housing (Deli Courant 24-1-1935). By 1937, however, the housing crisis had passed its lowest point. Upper-class houses were in demand again, so that new villas were being built once more (Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1938, no. 10). In contrast to the houses at the top end of the market, cheap rental housing remained in high demand throughout the Depression, in response to the downward movement of tenants. Compared to prices in general and rents of large houses in particular, rents at the lower end of the market remained comparatively high (Deli Courant 18-2-1935; Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1933, no. 72, 1934, no. 92). People who were unable to build and were dependent on the lowest segment of the rental market often lived in squalid circumstances. In Padang, for example, a single unemployed Eurasian man lived alone in a shelter with a crack a hands-breadth wide in the roof. The inside of his house was papered over with old copies of the Sumatra Bode in an attempt to give it a decent appearance. He paid ƒ 3.50 per month. Another example was a shed which had been split into four rooms, which each fetched ƒ 2.00 per month; all in all five adults and eight children (all indigenous people) lived in the rooms, sharing a door 1.3 m high. The children played together on the 1.5 by 0.5 m veranda. A third building was split into eight windowless rooms separated by corrugated-iron walls, which did not reach the ceiling; the monthly rent was ƒ 2.00 per room. A middle-aged European woman was among the people living there (Sumatra Bode 23-11-1933). An annual rent (including costs of maintenance and municipal property tax) was considered ‘reasonable’ if it was a tenth of the value of the property. The buildings just described were estimated to have cost ƒ 100, so that the monthly rent should have been about ƒ 0.80 and not ƒ 2.00-3.50 (Sumatra Bode 1-12-1933). 96 Under construction

A very important detail in the above description of squalid living conditions is that indigenous, Eurasian, and European residents lived side by side. Class (or income), not ethnicity, determined residence. The same mixing of people of various ethnic backgrounds was encountered at the upper end of the market. For example, in the early 1930s, when not everybody was yet convinced of the severity of the Depression, a shortage existed for the cheaper elite houses (ƒ 80-120 per month) in Surabaya, because young, prosperous Chinese residents with a modern lifestyle had penetrated this segment of the market (Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 25-3-1930). After a particularly severe earthquake, Chinese residents of Padang left their shop-houses in the Chinese quarter and moved to middle-class villas built of wood (where many Europeans also lived); they feared their two-storey, brick shop-houses would prove a death trap in the next earthquake (Sumatra Bode 10-1-1929).

Race, social class and spatial segregation

The data on income of different professions and rents of houses, as presented in the preceding sections, make possible a quantitative analysis of residential patterns to answer the following question.46 Do people live together with people from the same ethnic background or the same income group, or neither? In order to compare ethnic and class segregation quantitatively, ideally we need a dataset of many houses containing information about the ethnic background and income of the occupants, and the location (neighbourhood), with data preferably on different cities and on before and after independence. Such a dataset does not exist. Working with Martine Barwegen, I have, however, made a tentative quantitative socio-spatial analysis based on whatever smaller datasets of concrete addresses we could lay our hands on. In the analysis, the occupant’s name was used as the indicator of ethnic background. The profession of the occupant or the amount of rent of the house was used as the indicator of the person’s income. Addresses were plotted on maps, which are as contemporaneous as possible with the other data used.47 The final step was to compile cross-tabulations of neighbourhood and the indicator of ethnicity or income. The most important outcomes of these cross-tabulations were: the association between income and neighbourhood was as strong as that between ethnicity and neighbourhood; ethnic segregation did not diminish between 1930 and 1960;

46 A longer version of this section has appeared in Urban Geography. I am grateful to three anonymous reviewers of Urban Geography who made very stimulating comments on a draft. 47 For Bandung: Bandoeng Guide Map 1946; Batavia: NIVA 1934: map after page 32; Surabaya: Gemeente Soerabaja 1940; Makassar: Kota Makassar 1950; Medan: Gemeente Medan 1933. III Race, class, and spatial segregation 97 income segregation did not increase between 1930 and 1960 (Colombijn and Barwegen 2009). In short, the class-segregation-throughout-decolonization thesis seems to describe the residential-spatial pattern in Indonesian cities at least as well as the from-race-to-class-segregation thesis, and perhaps better. Is, however, this weighing up of ethnic segregation against class segregation not merely splitting hairs? In the 1950s Eshref Shevky and Wendell Bell proposed a social area analysis in which they compared urban areas along three dimensions: economic status (or class), family structure, and ethnicity. In some cities the three dimensions varied independently of each other, but in other cities two or even all three dimensions came together as one factor (Abu-Lughod 1969; Berry and Rees 1968/1969; Shevky and Bell 1955). Applying this old idea, could it be said that class and ‘race’ essentially overlapped in Indonesia? The answer is no. The deviant cases – well-to-do indigenous and Chinese residents, and poor Europeans – show that ethnicity and class in Indonesia should be treated as different dimensions.

Live histories

The experience of individual persons sometimes differed markedly from the generalizations made on the basis of the quantitative, aggregate data presented above. Stories told to us by individuals and details on where they lived, or ‘live histories’ as I call them (rather than ‘life histories’), put flesh on the bones of the analysis.48 About 20 people were interviewed by Martine Barwegen and myself.49 The nature of this qualitative methodology rules out ‘hard’ data about the degree of segregation, but the personal narratives provide an understanding of what segregation meant to the persons concerned. One conclusion drawn from these live histories is that the composition of households was often more complex than a nuclear family, whose members would presumably have belonged to the same ethnic group and the same social

48 I prefer the term ‘live history’ to the more general term ‘life history’, because the interviews focused on the housing situation; the alternative habitation style lacks the diachronic aspect of a live history. 49 Interviewees were selected by the criterion that they were old enough to have known colonial times from personal experience. They were interviewed in Medan, Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, and Makassar. The elderly residents were tracked by chance (strolling in old neighbourhoods and asking around for the oldest people) and through such networks as Lansia (an organization for elderly people in Makassar) and a reunion of the HBS-5 secondary school in Bandung. We attempted to find people from various ethnic and class backgrounds, but, because of another research question, special attention was paid to Eurasians. The latter group was found with the help of Halin (a Dutch NGO supporting needy Eurasians with Indonesian citizenship) and the snowball technique. 98 Under construction class. The interviews therefore challenge the tacit assumption that single- ethnic, single-class nuclear families form the appropriate unit of analysis, an assumption that underlies much of the literature on residential segregation. People pass through a number of living arrangements in their lives, of which the nuclear or extended family is just one. Take the story of Charlotte Pieters,50 a widow in a brightly coloured dress, interviewed at the age of 73, who introduced herself with a coquettish twinkle in her eye as ‘a Eurasian girl’ (een Indisch meisje). She was born on a plantation to a Javanese mother and a Dutch father, the eldest of seven children. During the Japanese occupation her father was interned and her mother fled. Her Javanese grandmother took the abandoned children to her house in Medan. Initially the grandmother adopted the children and cared for them in her own home, but later she lodged them with the Salvation Army (Leger des Heils), where the elder girls, elder boys, and little ones were put in different groups. After the Japanese surrender, when her father came to the Salvation Army (her mother had died), Charlotte and her sisters felt alienated from him and persuaded him to leave them with the Salvation Army. At the age of 18 she had to leave; she took a job at a maternity clinic run by an Ambonese couple. The maternity clinic employed 30 young staff members, all lodged at the clinic; Charlotte shared a room with five other young women. At the age of 20, she married a Mandailing (Protestant) driver, and from then on for a long period she fitted into the model of the nuclear or extended family. At the time of the interview she still lived in her own house with one childless daughter and eight grandchildren of two deceased daughters. Other common arrangements mentioned during interviews were to live with one’s parents, to sublet rooms, or to become a boarder. The occupation of houses was often transient. Pak Paulus, a Roman Catholic man from Manado (North Sulawesi), who in the 1950s had lodged with his Muslim parents-in-law in Makassar, recalled that the number of residents fluctuated between ten and fifteen, because the house was ‘like the Makassar bus station’, with family members coming and going all the time. The other side to this fluidity was that people moved regularly. An extreme case, perhaps, is Ibu Lily, who moved eight times in a decade. She is a Chinese who migrated from Surabaya to Makassar in 1938, because she had married a man from there. After a year, the couple moved house to a street with only Chinese families. During the war, Lily and her husband moved to a road on the inland edge of the city, deemed safer than the seaward side. They subsequently moved temporarily to a large house, where many members of the extended family gathered because it seemed safer. After this house was bombed, the

50 Charlotte Pieters is not her real name, nor are those of the other persons presented in this section. III Race, class, and spatial segregation 99 extended family broke up again and Lily and her husband moved back to the road on the edge of Makassar. In 1947, they moved again, this time to a main road in Makassar. After a short while they swapped houses with their Dutch neighbour, because the neighbour had a larger family and a small house (but an attractive large garden), and Lily and her husband had a small family and a large house. Soon they moved for the last time, to a rental dwelling, which they were able to buy in 1971 and then continued to occupy for many years. People invariably knew the ethnic background of their neighbours, but as a rule used finer ethnic denominators than the colonial, juridical tripartite division Indigenous-Foreign Oriental (or Chinese)-European. Betty Latuheru from the Introduction is one example in this respect and Fanny another. Fanny remembered all the neighbours of her parents’ home by name. They were: a Eurasian policeman married to a Chinese girl, three indigenous men (Malay, Mandailing and Sundanese), a Eurasian man who later moved to the Netherlands, and Chinese families. Both her parents were Eurasian and her husband, who moved in with his parents-in-law for the first two years of the marriage, was Manadonese. Fanny has remained conscious of her European roots, which in her own eyes lent her some prestige over her equally penni- less, ‘indigenous’ neighbours, throughout her life. At the end of the interview, the impoverished widow put on a fine red dress for a photograph and to walk the European interviewer to the main street. On the wall of her living room hangs a tile bearing the Dutch text: ‘From both my parents I received a part, from my father the shoulders, from my mother the heart’. As a final example, Pak Paulus lived in a kampong where Buginese, Makassarese, Torajas, and Chinese had lived mixed since at least the 1950s. The fact that streets were ethnically mixed is a detail that recurred in almost every story.51 In contrast, the social standing of the residents of a neighbourhood was usually homogeneous and, when this was not the case, people sometimes considered the class differences unpleasant. Ibu Anny is a Chinese woman born into a well-to-do family in Makassar in 1934. She spent her youth in a house with a large garden in Tempelstraat (Temple Street). They were the only Chinese family in the street; two opposite neighbours whom she remembered were the Dutch police inspector and a Dutch lawyer. It was an elite neighbourhood; her grandmother’s sister had built a multi-storey house, something truly exceptional in those days, around the corner. With the immi- nent threat of war the location seemed unsafe because the house was situated only two blocks behind the harbour quay, the most likely site for an invasion. Therefore, in 1941 they built a brick house on the Bontoalaweg (Bontoala

51 The exception is the street with only Chinese families where Ibu Lily lived in 1939, but here the presence of ‘very small and cheap rental houses’ defined the street as much in class terms as in ethnic terms. 100 Under construction

Road), on the inland edge of Makassar. The family felt uncomfortable about the class differences there, because indigenous people lived down the road. The latter were perceived to be different, not because of ethnicity, but because of their ‘lack of education’. One example she gave was that the indigenous children walked around naked until the age of ten. Shortly before the Japanese advance into Southeast Asia began, the family fled again, this time to a borrowed house in a little town 15 km southeast of Makassar. However, Anny’s mother could not stand residing in what she considered poor conditions. To her mother’s horror, water had to be fetched from the river where buffaloes were also bathed. Even before the Japanese arrived in Makassar, the family was back on the Bontoalaweg as the lesser of two evils. Another factor that somewhat homogenized social class in a neighbourhood was company housing. Pak Sudharmo is a Javanese man, born in Malang. His father was employed by the State Railways (Staats Spoorwegen) and the family lived in a company house. His father was transferred several times, so that in his youth Pak Sudharmo always lived on the same street, Stationsstraat (Station Street), only in different cities and at different house numbers. During the Indonesian Revolution, young revolutionaries (pemuda) assumed from the address of his residence that Sudharmo’s family were Dutch or were collaborating with the Dutch. In 1945, their house in Surabaya was burnt down by pemuda, simply because his father worked for the (colonial) State Railways. Furniture, chickens, and dogs were lost. They fled to Malang, but sadly, the company house in Malang was also set alight by revolutionaries in retaliation for the First Dutch Offensive (Eerste Politionele Actie, Agresi Pertama). The house was targeted because it belonged to the State Railways, but perhaps also because Sudharmo’s parents sometimes played gramophone records of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach, which created a Dutch impression. A recurrent theme in the interviews is that people found accommodation through their social network, including their place of work, which is an important explanation of why similar people live in the same neighbourhood. The aforementioned Paulus, to cite one case, arrived at the police academy in Makassar from Manado in 1954, at the age of 21. He lived in a boarding- house with fellow students the first year, and then took free lodging with his commander, who was also Manadonese. Others found a house of their own via their network. III Race, class, and spatial segregation 101

Conclusion

In this chapter I have weighed up the evidence in support of the from-race- to-class-segregation thesis versus the class-segregation-throughout-decolonization thesis. Although both views find supporters among historians and urban sociologists, the predominant view sketches a picture of ethnic or racial segregation in colonial times; according to this view, after independence the city became ethnically desegregated and at the same time segregated by social class. The most problematic part of this from-race-to-class-segregation thesis is the idea of the racially segregated colonial city; therefore I have focused mainly on this. The anthropological notion that ethnic categories – race being one peculiar discourse of ethnic distinction – are constructed, context dependent, subject to change, and in perpetual need of reinforcement already qualifies the perception of colonial ethnic segregation. Even if we were to accept ethnic labels as given and immutable, a close reading of most historical analyses and contemporary accounts of ethnic neighbourhoods reveals that people from different ethnic backgrounds often lived side by side. The fact that most people lived in neighbourhoods defined by a certain income level or a certain quality (and price) of house rather than in ethnically homogeneous neighbourhoods was confirmed in some 20 interviews with elderly residents. Ethnic mixing was not present to the same degree in all neighbourhoods. Ethnically the most homogeneous neighbourhoods were the Chinese quarters. Nonetheless, even these quarters were also defined by class; well-to-do Chinese had usually moved out to more affluent neighbourhoods. The reason why social class and not ethnicity determined whether a person lived in a ‘European’ suburb or an indigenous kampong was simple: the huge income disparity. Until 1948 the income of the top jobs paid by the municipal administration was over 60 times that of the lowest jobs; a revision of pay scales in 1948 had a levelling effect, but if, on the other hand, we had also taken salaries paid by the private sector into account, the income disparity would have been even greater. Huge differences were also encountered in the rental market, where large houses fetched a rent 50 times that paid for the smallest dwellings. The effect of the large disparity in both income and rents was that houses in a given rent bracket catered to a narrow income group. Other class-related factors played a role in socio-spatial segregation too. Coolies in Medan, for instance, preferred to live in the urban periphery, where land was cheaper and plots larger than in the city centre. Coolie households could grow their own food on the large plots (Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1938, no. 163). Does this differentiation between ethnic and income categories matter? After all, the chance of being able to earn a high income was strongly associ- 102 Under construction ated with ethnic background, Europeans earning on average much higher incomes than indigenous people. The important question is: Where did discrimination reveal itself in colonial society? Racial discrimination was manifest in the education system, in the employment policies of both European firms and government, and in different remuneration for the same kind of work. These forms of discrimination resulted in different average incomes for the various ethnic categories. However, discrimination was not an important factor in making residential choices. Poor Indigenous, Foreign Oriental, and European people lived together in one neighbourhood, as did their well-to- do counterparts. The finding that segregation by income played a strong role in colonial times is important to a better understanding of the post-colonial city. From the viewpoint of spatial segregation, decolonization was characterized by continuity. Decolonization in itself was not enough to alter socio-spatial inequality in the Indonesian cities. After Independence it was a disappointment to some that decolonization did not make a difference in this respect. Brick houses continued to be adjacent to brick houses, and bamboo next to bamboo. There are several potential counter-arguments to challenge the idea that income structured urban space as much or more than ethnicity: the existence of the kampong as a typical indigenous environment, the distinction between what were referred to as ‘indigenous’ and ‘European’ styles of houses, and the formal legal distinction between Indigenous and European land tenure systems. These counter-arguments will be scrutinized in the following chapters. Chapter iv Life in the kampongs

Colonial European administrators and laymen considered kampongs ‘indigenous neighbourhoods’, which they contrasted to European streets and Chinese quarters. Many post-colonial urban experts have adopted this view.1 The equation of kampongs with indigenous neighbourhoods strongly helped to shape the hegemonic colonial idea that the urban population lived racially segregated. This equation certainly became obsolete after independence, when the indigenous share began to dominate the urban population so much that just about every neighbourhood had a predominantly indigenous population. But was the assumption that kampongs were inhabited exclusively by indigenous people a correct description of the situation in colonial times? Four arguments support the designation of colonial kampongs as indigenous neighbourhoods: the association of poor living conditions with indig- enousness; the actual ethnic composition of the kampongs; the equation of ‘indigenous dwelling’ with ‘kampong dwelling’; and town planning and zoning based on racial segregation. In this chapter I explore these four arguments one by one, looking at living conditions in kampongs, quantifying the social composition of kampongs, analysing the use of the terms ‘indigenous dwelling’ and ‘European dwelling’, and reviewing the use of racial categories in urban planning. As an alternative to viewing kampongs as indigenous neighbourhoods, I shall argue that even in colonial times it is more accurate

1 See, for example, Cobban 1993:874; Dorléans 2000:245; Frederick 1989:7, 12; Gill 1995:81, 208-10; Jackson 1975:47; McGee 1967:139; and the Beeld van een stad series of Broeshart et al. 1994; Loderichs et al. 1997; Van Schaik 1996; Voskuil 1993; Voskuil et al. 1996; contemporary voices are Kampoengrapport 1924:64-5; Nix 1949:213; and Wertheim 1956:171. The book by C. Swaan- Koopman (1932:11, 97) and the article of Radem (1933) in Onze Stem are examples of popular works where the difference between indigenous kampongs and European neighbourhoods is stated plainly; see also Sullivan (1992:31). People living in one kampong could have a much more narrowly circumscribed common origin than ‘being indigenous’: migrants coming from one village were inclined to live together in one kampong, or one alley in a kampong, and sometimes had a similar occupation (Abeyasekere 1989:92; Tinia Budiati 2000; Frederick 1989:13-4; Gill 1995:207; Jellinek 1991:27; Pelly 1983; Sullivan 1992:23; Tesch 1948:67; Volkstelling 1930 1933, I:29). 104 Under construction

Figure 9. Kampong in Surabaya, late 1910s. Source: Tillema 1920-21, III:58. to think of kampongs as lower-class neighbourhoods.2 Consequently, the analysis of kampong life elaborates on the ‘class-segregation-throughout- decolonization’ thesis presented in the previous chapter.

Kampongs: chaos or order

What did kampongs look like? The exact meaning of the term kampong is elusive, but the persistent use of the term in academic works suggests that kampongs had and continue to have something unique.3 I shall define a kam-

2 Jan Newberry (forthcoming) makes a similar argument, although on different grounds, for kampongs today. 3 In the same vein the words favela, bidonville, and bustee are used for lower-class neighbourhoods in Brazil, francophone North Africa, and India, respectively, highlighting their uniqueness, although the structural similarities may be more important than the differences (Drakakis-Smith 1987:93; Gilbert and Gugler 1983). Various authors have attempted to define or characterize kampongs, for instance as (urban) villages (Hasselgren 2000:359), or simply a ‘section of a village or city’ (Jellinek 1991:xiii). Gerald Krausse (1978:11) distinguishes three types of kampongs, but argues that no generic definition is acceptable. Nas, Boon, Hladká et al. (2008) IV Life in the kampongs 105

Figure 10. Map of kampongs in Semarang. Source: Tillema 1916, II: map facing page 51. pong as a neighbourhood that originated without an overall plan of streets and building plots. This definition, admittedly taking the perspective ‘from city hall’, has the advantage that it leaves the social composition of the kampong open to investigation and that it captures the element that did the most to trigger state action, namely its untidiness. Plots of land were of irregular shape and size, and paths zigzagged between the plots. Plots were often not fenced off. The houses were self-built or ordered by the individual owner, and made of whatever material was available. Consequently, no two houses looked alike and often the fronts of the houses did not line up with each other (Figure 9). The self-built houses added to the messy appearance of kampongs. Colonial administrators, ‘seeing like a state’ (Scott 1998), perceived a jumble, which they considered highly problematic. In contrast, kampong dwellers easily found their way around and, although the kampong lacked an overall plan, there certainly were structural elements. A mosque, a sacred grave, or small market might form a focal point of the kampong. Mosques were usually built facing kiblat or kiblah (Figure 10).4 Other rules sometimes applied to the orientation of houses; one such

define the kampong by a ‘configuration’ of six traits, which do not all have to be present. John Sullivan (1992:20) notes that Indonesians ascribe various meanings to the word kampong. Emic definitions vary from place to place, and time to time. 4 On the focal points of kampongs, see: Gill (1995:128-132, 208); Silas (1988a:223-5); Jac. P. Thijsse, Oriëntatie op Mekka in Indonesië [typescript], 14-4-1948, Rotterdam, Nederlands Architectuur Instituut (NAI), Archief Thijsse. 106 Under construction

Figure 11. Kampong in Semarang around 1930. Source: Gedenkboek 1931:174.

rule in West Java, for instance, albeit applied more frequently in villages than in cities, was that a house should not be built with its back facing the front of another house. Moreover, in the morning the shadow of a child’s house should not fall on their parents’ house. Houses in Java preferably had the front facing north or south. It was believed that a wrongly positioned house could cause bad luck (Barker 1999:100-1; Nas et al. 2006; Toelichting 1938:84). The absence of an overall plan of streets and building plots stemmed from the way kampongs had come into existence. Kampongs sometimes evolved in the urban centre, typically as squatter settlements on vacant land, but more often they began as a rural village that was absorbed into the expanding city. These villages were initially spaciously built with plenty of land around the houses for fruit trees, vegetable gardens, and small livestock, without the need for strict spatial order. Kampongs maintained their green appearance for a long time (Figure 11). With the lapse of time, the built-up area intensified, by three connected processes. The first was the conversion of agricultural land to residential land when cities expanded outward into rural areas. The second was the addition of more buildings to already built-up land; this process was more common than in European cities, because of the initially large plots of land. The third process was the demolition of previous buildings to replace them with new ones, usually of a more permanent nature; this process IV Life in the kampongs 107 was also more common in Indonesia than in Europe, because many original buildings were made of non-permanent materials.5 Lea Jellinek (1991:1-15) has described this process of intensification in the case of Kebun Kacang, a kampong in Jakarta, which changed from an area for growing cash crops in the late colonial period to a densely populated, lively neighbourhood of street vendors in Sukarno’s time; the urban decay of the late 1950s that haunted Jakarta – postal service in disarray, frequent electricity cuts, inadequate public transport, inflation – did not bother the kampong people, who did not use those services anyway, and whose selling prices kept pace with inflation. Intensification of the built environment went hand in hand with an increase in population density. This process of increasing population density took place in two ways. The first way was the increase in the average number of occupants per house. In the largest cities (Batavia, Bandung, Surabaya, and Medan), existing houses were subdivided or were replaced by buildings that were compartmentalized into many living units, called pondok and petak (Enquête bevolkingskampoengs 1935; Tillema 1922, V:903). Sometimes friends or relatives came to live in a house without a physical division of the dwelling being deemed necessary. At other times, friends, relatives or renters were put up in newly built annexes or pavilions on the same courtyard; many of the added rooms were ramshackle.6 The large number of occupants of a single building was most apparent in conflagrations. For instance, in 1942 one blaze, started by an oil lamp, devoured three houses (buildings), containing 20 housing units, providing room for 23 families. A large fire in kampong Krekot-Dalem (Jakarta) in 1955 destroyed 150 buildings, containing 500 dwellings, and made 700 families homeless (Antara 2-8-1956/A; Asia Raya 8-10-2602). The pondok and petak just mentioned are examples of intensification of the built environment. A pondok was a relatively large building, divided irregu- larly into a number of units. The rooms were occupied by individuals or families for sleeping, and the veranda or inside gallery was shared space for cooking (but usually each household used its own cooking stove). The outer walls were rarely made of brick, and the walls separating the rooms often did not reach the ceiling; few of the units had a window.7 In a sample of 16 pondok,

5 Dorléans 1976, 2000; Frederick 1989:8; Gill 1995:208; Ingleson 1988:306; Krausse 1978; Logemann 1936:21; Rutz 1987:76; Silas 1996:8. 6 Aanleg stedelijke bevolkingskampongs 1935:11; Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:40; Gerla 1935; Tillema 1922, V:882; Toelichting 1938:32. 7 Stelp 1954:38; Tesch 1948:88, 108-9; Tillema 1922, V:865. For the 1970s and 1980s, pondok have also been described as a communal lodging-house for temporary migrants who have the same job, for instance preparing and hawking sweets. They use the building as a work space and rent the equipment from the pondok owner (Jellinek 1991:32-3). I have not found evidence that pondok had this function between 1930 and 1960. 108 Under construction the pondok had on average 21 rooms and 77 inhabitants (Tesch 1948:109). A petak was a wide building regularly divided into compartments, all opening onto the street or a shared front gallery (Figure 12). Petak were sometimes of a better quality than pondok: they sometimes had two or three rooms per unit and were more likely to be built of brick; consequently rents could be higher.8 Observers lamented the poor hygienic conditions of the dwellings, the pursuit of profit by rack-renter landlords, and the high mortality rate.9 Nevertheless, these buildings with multiple units under one roof provided housing for the poor, for whom few alternatives were available. The other way population density increased was through the subdivision of large plots of land, followed by intensification of the built-up area. The story of the subdivision of plots was repeated over and over again. One example is a garden on the edge of Medan, acquired by Intjik Poetih in 1921. In 1936 she partitioned the garden into at least 17 lots and sold them one by one.10 Another example, as told to me by an elderly resident, concerned a plot of 20 by 100 m, situated in kampong Kota Matsum in Medan. In 1925 a Malay couple, distant relatives of the Sultan of Deli, received this plot by a sultan’s grant.11 At the time, most of the land in Kota Matsum was still unoccupied; only a few Malay and very few Minangkabau people were living there. The couple built a house on this plot of land, in which several children were born. The family stayed in the house throughout the Japanese occupation, but had to flee in the social revolution of 1946, when many of the sultan’s relatives were murdered. This family survived, but their sacred heirlooms were stolen and the house was burnt down by a mob. The family returned to the land after Dutch forces took control of the area, but the house was not rebuilt. The plot was divided into eight parts and all the children received a part. Nowadays Kota Matsum is so densely built that some paths are impassable for any vehicle larger than a bicycle. The last example, taken from a building permit in Padang, concerns a plot of lineage land of the Caniago clan. The lineage obtained the land in 1910 at the latest (the first title deed stems from 1874, but it is not known whether it was in the name of the lineage concerned). In 1955, the lineage, at the time consisting of five sub-lineages, split the plot into 25 lots, to be used by lineage members or to be sold.12 Subdivision of land and growing population density often increased the chaotic appearance of kampongs, but not necessarily. Subdivision sometimes resulted in a more orderly street plan, for instance when a certain Hadji Toneng

8 Kampoengrapport 1924:15, 28; Stelp 1954:37; Tesch 1948:87-8; Tillema 1922, V:238-40. 9 Kampoengrapport 1924:3, 29; Tesch 1948:89-92, 110-1; Tillema 1922, V:238-9. 10 Udo Semito and Sugi vs. Sartinem (PN Medan Pdt.172/1951). 11 For an explanation of sultan’s grant, see Chapter V on land tenure. For information about Kota Matsum, also called Kota Maksum, see Hasselgren (2000:56-9). 12 Eigendomsbewijs no. 113 of 26-1-1955, attached to Keputusan Dewan Pemerintah Sementara Kota Padang no. 531/386/B-55 of 7-10-1955, Arsip Padang, Bangunan, Box V. IV Life in the kampongs 109

Figure 12. Petak multi-family dwelling in kampong Malokoe, Makassar. Source: Tillema 1922, V:240. in Makassar subdivided his crooked plot of 23,681 sq m into no less than 135 regular plots, which almost all measured 135 sq m.13 By the intertwined processes of intensification of the built-up area and growing population density, the kampongs increasingly assumed an urban appearance. Despite this urban character, when municipalities were established in the twentieth century, or were expanded, the kampongs that fell wholly or partly within municipal boundaries remained outside municipal jurisdiction. The Regeringsreglement of 1854, which functioned as a constitution, had guaranteed the villages their autonomous administration and this autonomy was not abolished when the villages became surrounded by a municipality. By-laws dealing with building regulations and hygienic measures were not enforceable in these autonomous kampongs, or inlandse gemeen ten or desa as they were called. When municipalities began to take an interest in living conditions in the kampongs, the ‘kampong question’ (kampongkwestie) had two aspects: how to improve the kampongs physically and how to abolish

13 Gambar keadaan tanah Hadji Tjoneng pada Djl. Tjenderawasih (Kp. Balang Baru), 31-1- 1956, 1:500, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 365. 110 Under construction the autonomy of kampongs and obtain control of them (Cobban 1974). Kampong dwellers and urban administrators had different mental maps of the city and held different views about the kampong question (Jellinek 1991:xix). In the eyes of kampong dwellers, the kampongs formed their habit- ual living space, in which they found a home, pursued income-generating activities in the informal sector of the economy, and enjoyed the company of a close-knit social network. The poor quality of the houses was seen as a fact of life, although perhaps an unpleasant fact. Guardhouses at the entrances to the kampong symbolically marked the boundary of one such neighbourhood. Kampongs formed the building blocks of their mental map of the city at large, and the thoroughfares and government buildings tended to be rather ephemeral viewed from the perspective of kampong dwellers. By contrast, the mental maps of urban administrators were composed of the main streets, while the kampongs lying between these streets were blank spots: administratively the kampongs fell outside municipal jurisdiction and physically the kampong dwellings were hidden behind the larger houses on the main roads (Frederick 1983:360, 1989:11-2; Gill 1995:209; Wertheim 1956:171). For those administrators who ventured inside the kampongs, it was difficult to observe anything beyond the sometimes appalling hygienic conditions. A pertinent illustration of how alien administrators could feel in a kampong comes from an excursion by IEV councillors14 to the kampongs of Meester Cornelis (Jatinegara, Jakarta), led by the knowledgeable engineer A.L.H.R. Gerla. The accompanying journalist described the dirty, derelict little houses, dotted about higgledy-piggledy, and the ‘bridge’ over a ditch made of bamboo lashed together with discarded bicycle tires. He admitted that ‘up till now we gentlemen – administrators and the press as well – did not have the foggiest notion of “poverty”, but now we became acquainted with poverty in all its depressing hideousness’; he concluded that they left the kampong ‘upset by what they had seen’.15 Another illustration of the mental distance between the elite and kampong dwellers is the advice of European old-hands to the newly arrived Swiss engineer Hans Liniger, who was warned that the kampongs of Jambi were no-go zones for Europeans (Liniger 1943:241). The dismay of European administrators and councillors stemmed from the dissimilarity between kampongs and the middle-class neighbourhoods that were their own environment. Not only the built environment but also the use of public space was poles apart. For instance, a scene in a late-colonial film shows an inner-city kampong in Surabaya with all the houses built of brick,

14 Indo-Europeesch Verbond, Association of Eurasians. 15 Van H. 1933. ‘Tot dusver hadden wij – heeren bewindhebberen en “de pers” incluis – van “armoede” geen flauw begrip, maar nù leerden wij de armoede kennen in gansch hare beklemmende afzichtelijkheid [...] ontdaan over het geziene’ (Van H. 1933:1280). IV Life in the kampongs 111 and adjoining each other. The street is a hardened path with some gravel down the middle. The street scene is lively: hawkers offer baskets, a plate of rice, or bottles of kecap, and various other persons walk down the street; the women are dressed in sarongs. Some chickens scratch around. One man uses the public space to cut something, and another is airing a mattress. A scene from another film at the time shows life in a middle-class neighbourhood. The streets are calm and traffic is limited to just a few cars and cyclists. The only pedestrians are a European woman, wearing a white skirt and sunhat, and her child strolling on the pavement; the pavement is separated from the road by a strip of grass and a line of trees. All the villas have tidy yards and neat fences (but no sign of human activity). The houses do not form, as might have been expected, a gated community; all the gates are standing wide open (Nederlands-Indië voor 1942 (10), 1939; Nederlands-Indië voor 1942 (14) 1939). The story of the fairly happy existence in Kebun Kacang in Jakarta and the scene of the lively inner-city kampong in Surabaya and similar films suggest that kampong residents may have appreciated their environment, or at least viewed their neighbourhood far more positively than did the colonial elite. Colonial administrators, councillors, journalists, and other observers who lived in spacious, orderly, and sanitized middle-class neighbourhoods regarded kampongs with a mixture of amazement, aversion, and compassion. From the perspective of the municipal administration, kampongs posed problems of chaos, decay and dirt, all the more so because they were autonomous. Colonial administrators tried to appropriate the kampongs, first by defining their condition as unhygienic, poor, crowded, and chaotic, then by overcoming the autonomy of the kampong, and finally by trying to introduce physical changes under the heading of ‘kampong improvement’. This struggle between administrators and kampong dwellers became mixed up with the perceived ‘racial’ difference between them.

Living conditions in kampongs

The whole idea of European colonial administrators that kampongs were indigenous neighbourhoods was premised on the linking of ethnicity to place of residence, and, by extension, to living conditions. Being indigenous was associated with dwelling in poor living conditions. Seen from the elite perspective, it appeared natural that it was indigenous people who had to put up with the chaotic and insalubrious kampongs as their place of residence. Conversely, the presumed fact that it was indigenous people who inhabited kampongs seemed to European administrators at least partially to explain the filthy environment. For instance, the same IEV councillors who observed the kampongs of 112 Under construction

Meester Cornelis in 1933 again went on a field trip a year later. Comparing a muddy, dirty, stinking kampong with a better one where some order in the layout was visible, they concluded that Eurasians could find a decent place to live in the latter kampong (Van H. 1934). The tacit understanding implied by the comparison was the belief that in the first kampong dirt and indigenous- ness went hand-in-hand. Huge differences in morbidity and mortality rates between ethnic groups was also presented as evidence of the unhealthy situation in kampongs. For instance, the death rate in Surabaya in 1910 was 0.057 for Indigenous people, 0.052 for Chinese, and 0.031 for Europeans.16 The equation of residence in a kampong with indigenous ethnicity and hence a high mortality rate should, however, not be made too swiftly.17 Nevertheless, the mortality rate among indigenous people was without doubt also negatively affected by the unhealthy living conditions in kampongs, combined with the fact that a disproportionately large share of the indigenous population lived in kampongs. Three factors had a bearing on the poor living conditions in kampongs: municipal discrimination, high population density, and poorly constructed houses. None of these factors is intrinsically ‘indigenous’. These three factors can all be reduced to one root cause: the difference in power between kampong residents and the outside world. Municipal administrations discriminated against kampongs and favoured middle-class neighbourhoods in various ways. Most of the hydrants sup- plying clean water from the waterworks were found in middle-class neighbourhoods. Garbage was collected twice a day in middle-class neighbourhoods, compared to once a day, or once every three days, in kampongs. At night, middle-class neighbourhoods were well-lit by the municipality, but oil lamps left most of the kampongs in the dark, and while street lighting was a public service, kampong dwellers had to pay for the lamp oil themselves. Middle-class neighbourhoods were rarely flooded, but kampongs could be submerged for weeks during the wet monsoon, or at the very least they were muddy. Cities in hilly terrain suffered less from floods than cities in flat coastal plains.18 Fortunately, several state policies benefited kampongs even if they were not explicitly targeted at the poor but at the population at large;

16 Tillema 1916, II:10-1; for similar but later data from Batavia and Bandung, see Abeyasekere 1989:123; Brand 1940:395; Tesch 1948. 17 Ethnic diversity led to different behaviour with consequences for health, which were unrelated to the place of residence within a city. Traditions of perinatal care for mother and child, and the faith placed in an indigenous dukun, a Chinese herbal doctor, or a medical doctor dressed in a white coat differed from one ethnic group to another. Moreover, Europeans were more likely than indigenous and Chinese people to enjoy higher incomes, with a positive effect on food intake, a layperson’s medical knowledge, and the ability to pay a medical specialist before it was too late. 18 Commissie voor de kampongverbetering 1939:33-4, 37; Renvooi 1914; Tillema 1915-1916, I:126, 179, 181, 1916, II:38-9. IV Life in the kampongs 113 vaccination programmes, the construction of artesian wells, or the excavation of a flood channel are cases in point (Abeyasekere 1989:122). High population density, or lack of space, was the second cause of poor living conditions.19 High density had several negative effects. As a result of the cramped conditions, little fresh air and sunlight entered the houses. Cesspits were constructed near wells for want of space in the yards, so that faeces pol- luted drinking water. Sometimes there was no space left for drains or cesspits at all; wastewater flowed away over the ground and people relieved themselves in rivers, which were also used for washing. The proximity of houses constructed from combustible materials made conflagrations inevitable. Not enough open space or playgrounds were available. High population density in combination with irregular building lines (rooilijnen) hampered the construction of paths, roads, and sewerage gutters. The irregular alignment of houses was the result of the unplanned development of kampongs, and this story repeated itself when new kampongs were formed on the urban fringe.20 In the 1950s, a report on two kampongs in Makassar gave the same description of overcrowded conditions,21 as did the impressions of an American visitor (Larson 1958:49). Two reports do not form a basis for solid conclusions, but at least they suggest that with respect to the population density of kampongs little changed after independence. Overcrowding was not something voluntarily created by kampong residents, but was in a way inflicted upon them. Experts estimated that in the city of Bandung in the 1930s, 17 hectares of additional land every year were necessary to house the increase in kampong population, but the municipal government did not make sufficient new kampong land available (Verslag Planologische Dag 1939:26, 35). In the meantime, overcrowding was exacerbated by the loss of kampong land to other purposes, with the result that the kampong population was further compressed in a shrinking total area. Kampong people were on the losing end in this struggle for space. To take

19 Housing experts in colonial times found a density of 300 to 400 residents per hectare toler- able. At the urban fringe, population density in kampongs was below 100 persons per hectare in the 1930s and 1940s, but in the centre it could be as high as 800 to 1,000 (Commissie voor de kampongverbetering 1939:39-40; Flieringa 1930:169; Gerla 1935:26; Krausse 1978:15; Onderzoek uitbreidingsplan Bandoeng 1939:3; Tesch 1948:86-7). Even a density of 100 persons per hectare was well above the average population density of the whole municipality (including middle-class neighbourhoods, roads, green areas, and unused lands). The overall density in 1930 was: 29 persons per hectare in Batavia (including Meester Cornelis), 58 in Bandung, 65 in Yogyakarta, 42 in Surabaya, 48 in Medan, and 45 in Padang (Volkstelling 1930 1934, III:10, 1935, IV:11). 20 Kampoengrapport 1924:35-6, 61-2; Nix 1949:213-5; Rutz 1987:76; Tillema 1915-1916, I:178, 1922, V:663, 903; Toelichting 1938:31-2; see also Meeting Kyûkan Seido Tyôsa Linkai/Panitia Adat dan Tatanegara Dahoeloe, 5-10-2603 [1943], NA, NEFIS/CMI 2241. 21 Letter Sekretaris Kota Besar Makassar to Direktur Pekerdjaan Umum Makassar, 3-1-1953, no. 24/KP, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 279. 114 Under construction the example of Bandung again, 170 hectares of kampong land (6% of total municipal territory) disappeared between 1906 and 1939. In this particular case, the municipal development corporation, which bought up kampong land, was the main ‘culprit’. Private persons also purchased kampong land, for instance to build shops or office buildings. Large real-estate developers cut into kampong land when they bought up private estates (particuliere landerijen) in the environs of the cities on Java’s north coast. The kampongs on these estates were often demolished. People who were forced out of kampongs by one of these processes moved to other kampongs, where they raised the density of both people and dwellings. Displaced kampong dwellers also moved from inner city kampongs to new kampongs on the urban fringe. This last process was so common in Surabaya in the 1910s, when the development of particuliere landerijen was at its height, that the kampong population within the municipal boundary actually decreased. Much former kampong land was used to create middle-class and elite neighbourhoods with an abundance of space and urban green.22 Ironically, even well-intentioned state interventions to improve kampongs resulted in overcrowding of other kampongs. Where building regulations were strictly applied, many kampong houses were declared unfit for habitation and had to be demolished. When the municipal administration did not offer alternative land to build new houses, or when the administration obstructed new construction by making too high demands on new houses, the number of existing kampong dwellings declined and the new homeless persons had to move in with other families. Kampong improvement projects that left the houses untouched but focused on upgrading streets, sewerage gutters and public facilities could also be counter-productive. After improvement, rents often went up and the original dwellers were driven out to other kampongs where they exacerbated the overcrowded situation.23 The third cause of the poor living conditions in kampongs, allied with municipal discrimination against kampongs and high population density, was the low quality of the houses (Figure 13). The zealous building inspec- torate of Medan detected many faults. From 1912 to 1924, 520 houses were declared unfit for human habitation and torn down. In one case, a complete kampong was pulled down and rebuilt in a different place with cheap recycled timber from the pasar malam (fair) in Medan, which had just ended.24 In

22 Flieringa 1930:137-8, 169; Frumaeu 1927:67-8; Soetoto 1935:3-4; Toelichting 1938:32, 72; Verslag Planologische Dag 1939:26, 30, 35; see also Frederick 1989:3, 8; Wertheim 1956:176. 23 Abeyasekere 1989:122; Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:34; Tillema 1913:77; Toelichting 1938:33; Verslag van de 21e jaarvergadering 1933:8, 15, 17. 24 Flieringa 1930:216, 221; Tillema 1922, V:244, 464; Verslag Medan 1929:115-6; Concept Memorie van Overgave van de 1e Burgemeester van Medan, Daniël baron Mackay, 1931, KITLV H 946. IV Life in the kampongs 115

Figure 13. Subdivided kampong house. Source: Tillema 1920-21, III:90.

1924 a survey of 4,358 kampong houses found 35% in good order; 37% somewhat dilapidated but reparable without too much effort; and 28% in such a condition that they were not worth the cost of renovation, or should even be demolished forthwith (Kampoengrapport 1924:39). Several reasons explain why the houses were in a poor state. An important reason was lack of money on the part of the home-owner. Rack-renter landlords were unwilling to spend money on maintenance, even if they had it. Other home-owners stopped investing in maintenance after the administration designated their neighbourhood a future European or Chinese quarter. Many transient urbanites were not at all interested in a sustainable built environment. In Bandung the quality of non-permanent houses declined after the municipal administration forbade the construction of new bamboo houses; the house owners reverted to repairing old houses endlessly, which was still allowed, instead of building a new house.25 It is conceivable that owners and occupants did not consider the low quality problematic at all. Clerks, for instance, actu-

25 Aanleg stedelijke bevolkingskampongs 1935:10; Flieringa 1930:57, 168; Kampoengrapport 1924:41, 65. 116 Under construction ally favoured dilapidated houses in crowded inner-city kampongs in Medan, because the rents were lower (Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1938, no. 163). In short, living conditions in colonial kampongs tended to be bad, because of the combined and mutually reinforcing effects of municipal discrimination against kampongs, crowding, and the poor quality of houses. None of these factors is intrinsically related to the fact that the majority of kampong residents were indigenous people. The factors are all related to kampong residents’ lack of power in colonial times. Power was vested in financial capital, social capital, and political clout. First, kampong residents lacked capital to compete with real-estate developers when market forces determined who controlled land. Second, residents lacked easy access to the building inspec- torate to influence decisions on the quality of their houses, and, as William Frederick (1989:10) remarks, police surveillance prevented public expressions of protest. Third, kampong residents were barely represented in the municipal council, where strategic decisions were made about garbage collection, sewerage system, waterworks and building regulations. Only the last element of the lack of power was influenced by the fact that most kampong residents were from the Indigenous category. Indigenous, Foreign Oriental, and European councillors had each a reserved number of seats on municipal councils, with Indigenous councillors (and even Indigenous and Foreign Orientals combined) forming a minority. At the same time, class (or income) – not to mention gender! – determined who was represented on the council just as much as ethnicity did. Since 1925 active and passive voting rights had been given to literate men at least 21 years old who had a taxable annual income of at least ƒ 300. In 1938, between 2% and 4% of the inhabitants of Batavia, Surabaya, and Makassar had voting rights.26 The poor had neither active nor passive voting rights. Ultimately, the dire living conditions in the kampongs in colonial times can be traced back to lack of power, which was by and large itself the result of lack of income. An alternative yet untested explanation of the poor living conditions in kampongs is that kampong dwellers did not mind the unhygienic conditions, or accepted them as a fact of life. Little is known about how kampong residents experienced their environment. Wertheim (1956:180) has remarked that: ‘Untidiness and disorder remained even after the advent of urban planning. There was really no single group which was interested in the city for its own sake and which could assume responsibility for promoting a sense of local patriotism and a civic consciousness.’ This lack of responsibility may have been caused by a lack of sense of urgency: ordinary people did not perceive a problem at all. A rare piece of evidence that kampong residents were concerned about their proximity to a source of pollution comes from Medan

26 Visman et al. 1941, I:143-4. Women received voting rights in 1941. IV Life in the kampongs 117 in 1957. Residents of Kampong Durian asked the municipal administration to close or move pig sties in their kampong. Pig manure seeped into the kampong wells during heavy rains. More important than the health risk was the terrible stench; the Mayor was therefore advised to bring a handkerchief to cover his nose when visiting the kampong. The ritual defiling by pigs, rather than another animal, may have been a concern for Muslim residents too, although those who complained emphasized that they had nothing against the Chinese pig-owners.27 Another rare sign of concern about living conditions comes from a kampong in Makassar, where residents closed the thoroughfares leading through their quarter as a protest. They were angry because waste had not been collected for two months. They protested about the health risk, and also against the clogging of drainage canals by waste.28 It is telling that these expressions of concern about living conditions originated in the 1950s, when because of the changed political circumstances kampong residents had more political clout. The key to understanding living conditions, and improving them, is once again power. In colonial times the connection between kampong dwellers’ lack of power and poor living conditions was not often made. The common stereotype was that kampongs formed the unsavoury habitat of indigenous people with unhygienic habits.

Social composition of kampongs

In flat contradiction to the common perception of the kampong as an indigenous area, low-income Europeans and Eurasians lived in kampongs too, and in the course of the nineteenth century the colonial European elite began to worry about these European ‘paupers’. Most of these ostensible paupers had decent jobs, but did not meet the elite’s expectations of European prestige. From their elite perspective, Europeans who lived in kampongs, including European women married to indigenous men, were an anomaly, and this ‘improper’ way of living could be understood only by assuming that these Europeans had lost their European culture (Bosma and Raben 2003:215-31; Gouda 1995:168). The Dutch colloquial term for Europeans who did not keep up appearances was afglijden naar de kampong (slipping down into the kampong) and the Malay term was Belanda kesasar, ‘a Dutchman lost [in the

27 Letter Abdullah I, on behalf of the residents of Lorong 3-5 of Kampong Durian, to Walikota Kotapradja Medan, 21-5-1957, attached to letter Mohd. Joenoes to Ketua Panitia Chusus Peternakan/Hewan DPRD Peralihan Kotapradja Medan, 18-6-1957, no. 7623/KD-7, Arsip Medan. 28 Letter Ketua Tata Usaha to Kepala Djawatan Pekerdjaan Umum, Makassar 18-3-1954, no. 735/KP, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 378. 118 Under construction kampong]’ (Van Till 2006:183). The very few Europeans who deliberately applied for Indigenous status – far more Indigenous persons asked to be granted European status (gelijkgesteld) – were required, among other criteria, to live in a kampong for at least five years (Gautama and Hornick 1972:17). It is interesting that the causal relationship between ethnicity and residence is reversed in these cases. The common-sense reasoning would be that an indigenous person lived in a kampong because he was indigenous, but using the constructivist anthropological approach to ethnicity it appears that a person was considered indigenous because he or she lived in an indigenous neighbourhood. If Europeans who resided in a kampong were, in theory, seen as an anomaly (by the European elite), in practice so many Europeans lived in kampongs that they cannot be considered an irregularity: according to one estimate one out of nine Europeans in the 1910s lived in kampongs (De Braconier 1919:367). A large number of contemporaries with an observant eye remarked that lower-class indigenous, Chinese, Arab, Indian, and European persons lived together in kampongs. Kampongs also accommodated middle- class people from various ethnic backgrounds, who were compelled to live in kampongs because affordable better dwellings were in short supply. During the Depression even more middle-class people found shelter in kampongs. Unfortunately, the hygienic conditions they found there were at odds with their own upbringing.29 In the 1920s the indigenous councillors of Batavia also portrayed kampongs as multi-ethnic, lower-class neighbourhoods (Abeyasekere 1989:120). In spite of this abundance of contemporary reports that kampongs were characterized not so much by a certain ethnic composition as by a certain class, the overwhelming tendency of colonial laymen and many historians was to define kampongs as an indigenous environment. To what extent was the presence of Europeans and other non-indigenous residents in kampongs indeed an exception to the rule? Fortunately, colonial surveys from three different cities provide insights into the social composition of kampongs.30 To start, a survey in kampong Mlaten (Semarang) from 1932 found that 62% of the residents were indigenous, 27% Chinese, and 11% European (Radjimo Sastro Wijono 2005:144). This distribution follows the ethnic composition of Semarang as a whole. A caveat is that not all kampongs enjoyed the same physical conditions and Mlaten certainly belonged to the better kampongs in Semarang (Van Roosmalen 2008:80).

29 Abikoesno 1935:9; Flieringa 1930:36, 145, 170, 183; Frumeau 1927:67; Logemann 1936:11; Tillema 1920-21, III:90, 1922, V:245, 442-3, 464; Toelichting 1938:30-1; Verslag Planologische Dag 1939:30, 39; Wertheim 1956:178-9. 30 In Chapter III I presented data of sample populations scattered over the city; here I present data collected in one or a few kampongs. IV Life in the kampongs 119

A report about the kampongs of Medan gives the following data about landownership in about 1923 (Table 7). Of course, landownership is at best a rough indicator of the ethnicity of residents on the land, the more so because two-thirds of the land was used for horticulture and not for housing.31 Nevertheless, it is striking that, judging by landownership, 55% of kampong dwellers were non-indigenous (in one kampong adjacent to the Chinese quarter this was even 76%). This large share is even larger than could have been expected based on the ethnic composition of the whole city in 1920: 53% of the population was indigenous, 35% Chinese, 5% other Asians, and 7% Europeans (Volkstelling 1930 1935, IV:142). Table 7 does not present all of the kampongs in Medan. Not included, for instance, are Kota Matsum in the southeast of Medan and another kampong of 12.9 hectares in the northwest, both of which were inhabited almost exclusively by indigenous persons (Kampoengrapport 1924:17, 22). If the authors of the Kampoengrapport had included these other kampongs in Table 7, the ethnic distribution in kampongs would have been even closer to the ethnic distribution of the whole city. One significant detail is that the kampongs surveyed in Medan were predominantly, though not exclusively, inhabited by lower-class people. This is clear from the income distribution (Kampoengrapport 1924:45-6). 2,495 inhabitants reported their income to the surveyors (probably not with a very high degree of reliability): 4% were jobless or indigent, 46% earned between ƒ 8 and ƒ 20 per month, 31% earned between ƒ 20 and ƒ 40. So, four-fifths of the kampong population can be considered lower-class. 6% enjoyed incomes above ƒ 100 and belonged to the middle or upper-middle class; the remaining 14% can be counted as lower-middle class.32 J.W. Tesch (1939, 1948) conducted a survey that included a question about ethnic background, in kampong Tanah Tinggi in Jakarta between 1937 and 1941 (Table 8).33 The share of the non-indigenous population is not quite as

31 Landownership, measured by the name on the title deed or grant, is not a fully reliable indicator. Some plots were owned by a non-indigenous person, but the deed was still in the name of an indigenous straw man. Other plots were owned by an indigenous person, but the deed was registered in a non-indigenous name as collateral for a loan. For instance, Chinese, Indian, and European creditors did control grants in Kota Matsum as collateral, but did not reside there (Kampoengrapport 1924:18, 27-8). 32 Rents also give an indication of social class. Of 1,400 rental dwellings, 47% had rents below or equal to ƒ 5 per month; 32% had rents ƒ 5-10; 14% had rents ƒ 10-30; and only 7% above ƒ 30. The dwellings above ƒ 30 belonged administratively to the kampong territories surveyed, but were actually buildings in the marketplace and of a non-kampong type. Some 400 rental dwellings were occupied free of charge by relatives or employees of the owner (Kampoengrapport 1924:43-4). In other words, all houses fell into the lowest category of rents (compare Table 5). 33 The ward was selected using the following criteria: closeness to Tesch’s institute; many permanent residents who could be followed through time; and – most importantly for our purpose – average conditions for Jakarta (Tesch 1939:501). 120 Under construction

Table 7. Ethnic background of landowners in kampongs in Medan, 1923

West Medan east Medan Total hectares per cent hectares per cent hectares per cent

Indigenous 43.5 54 65.4 40 108.9 45 Non-Indigenous 37.6 46 97.3 60 134.9 55 Total 81.1 100 162.7 100 243.8 100

Source: Kampoengrapport 1924:18-21. large as might have been expected based on the total population of Jakarta in 1930 – 16% in Tanah Tinggi compared to 25% in Jakarta (Milone 1966:122) – but far too large to call the European, Chinese, and Arab residents exceptions. The distribution of rents indicates that the majority of residents were lower- class: 62% of the houses had rents no higher than ƒ 4. Some 18% brought in rents of over ƒ 10 and these houses, namely those built along roads, were occupied by lower-middle-class kampong dwellers. They were government officials and small businessmen of ‘all racial groups of the population’ (Tesch 1948:92). The 1930 census provides data about the extent to which people from the main ‘racial’ categories lived in houses made of a specific building material (Tables 9 and 10).34 Assuming that by and large the dwellings constructed from non-permanent and semi-permanent material were found in kampongs

Table 8. Ethnic composition of kampong Tanah Tinggi, Batavia, 1939

Absolute number Percentage

Indigenous 22,026 84 Chinese 2,654 10 European 1,059 4 Arabs and others 335 1 Total 26,074 100

Source: Tesch 1948:63. Rounding off shares may produce a column total that is slightly more or slightly less than 100.

34 The ‘occupant’ refers to the main breadwinner in a household. I have combined the data for Bandung, Semarang, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya in order to obtain an overview; the statistical differences between these four cities are much smaller than the difference between any of these four cities and Jakarta. IV Life in the kampongs 121

Table 9. Building material and ethnic background of occupants of houses in Jakarta, 1930 ethnicity of occupants (in per cent) Number of houses Indigenous Foreign europeans total Orientals Non-permanent 39,114 93 6 1 100 Semi-permanent 42,049 78 18 4 100 Permanent 15,459 15 42 42 100 Total 96,622 74 17 9 100

The figures include Batavia and Meester Cornelis. Sources: Volkstelling 1930 1933, I:216; 1933, VI:262; 1935, VII:284. Rounding off shares may produce a row total that is slightly more or slightly less than 100.

and that the permanent houses were villas or shophouses – even though this is an oversimplification – indigenous occupants formed a disproportionate share of the kampong population. The more striking point, however, is that all ethnic groups were found in all types of houses, albeit in varying degrees. Kampongs and middle-class neighbourhoods were both ethnically mixed. To sum up, these surveys all point in the direction of the conclusion that the social composition of kampongs can be more adequately described as ‘lower- class’ than as ‘indigenous’. However, the term ‘lower-class’ is essentializing just as much as the ethnic labels and it leaves out lifestyle.35 A 1954 survey of 461 families of unskilled labourers in Jakarta gives a glimpse of the lifestyle of kampong people with the lowest incomes. Only families consisting of husband and wife (together with any children) were included in this survey. The average number of children was merely 1.6 (even fewer, 1.4, lived in the parental home). The modal family income (salary of the male breadwinner, plus food ratios, income of the wife, and earnings from informal trade) was Rp 45 per week. Those who occupied a rental dwelling paid an average rent of Rp 2.6. Belongings were minimal: the men had on average three pairs of trousers or shorts, but only one third had underpants. The women had on average three pairs of sarong-kebaya. The households (of 3.4 persons on average) owned on average 1.5 chairs or stools, 0.5 cupboard, 1.5 bed or balai-balai (bamboo or

35 Chaney 1996. Moreover, the reduction of the lower class to an income bracket is an oversimplification. In today’s debates about how to measure poverty, developmental circles distinguish between individual and household measurements; private consumption and private consumption plus public expenditures; monetary and non-monetary income; snapshot and timeline; actual poverty and the vulnerability to economic shocks; income and assets; absolute and relative poverty; and objective standards and subjective perceptions of poverty (Thomas 2000a:13). 122 Under construction

Table 10. Building material and ethnic background of occupants of houses in Bandung, Semarang, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya, 1930 Ethnic background of occupants Construction number (in per cent) of house of houses Indigenous Foreign europeans total Orientals Non-permanent 12,020 99 1 0 100 Semi-permanent 97,863 90 8 2 100 Permanent 35,588 35 30 34 100 Total 145,471 78 13 9 100

The figures combine the data for the cities of Bandung, Semarang, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya. Sources: Volkstelling 1930 1933, I:216; 1934, II:207; 1934, III:177; 1933, VI:262; 1935, VII:284. Rounding off shares may produce a row total that is slightly more or slightly less than 100. wooden couch), 6 plates, 3 glasses, 1.5 cups, and 0.04 towel (Stelp 1954:4, 13, 25, 29-34). Of course, neither a 0.4 person nor a 0.5 bed can exist; behind the aver- ages are hidden some comfortable homes and some extremely primitive lives, but on the whole, material possessions of these families were very basic. People from the same class but different ethnic backgrounds could differ in lifestyle. This difference was probably most visible during religious celebrations and burials, but could play a role in housing too. H.M.J. Hart compared the expenditure patterns of indigenous and European civil servants in 1936. Expenditure for various items (food, water, electricity, clothing) was fairly similar for both groups, except for one remarkable dissimilarity. Of the civil servants with a lower-middle-class income (ƒ 75 per month), Europeans spent 17% of their income on rent, compared to 8% for indigenous civil servants; the difference diminished for higher incomes (Hart 1936:48-9). This finding suggests that more lower-class Europeans were more prepared to make a financial sacrifice to occupy a better dwelling (in the kampong), or perhaps to remain outside the kampong, than their indigenous colleagues were.36 Difference of lifestyle was visible in the interior of houses too, and some furniture shops employed European designers to design the most modern furniture (Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 6-2-1935).

36 It is unfortunate that Hart does not give data for Europeans with incomes below ƒ 75, who would have been more likely to live in kampongs. A minor yet telling difference in lifestyle between indigenous and European civil servants is that Europeans of almost all income groups spent more on domestic servants. IV Life in the kampongs 123

William Frederick (1989:17-25) makes the point most forcibly that difference in lifestyle, which could be reduced to ethnic differences, divided residents of the same kampong. Indigenous kampong dwellers considered non-indigenous persons a disturbing and alien element in their neighbourhood. They never included Chinese and European kampong dwellers in the sinoman (kampong-based organization for mutual help). Middle-class indigenous residents, in contrast, remained members of the sinoman. It is hard to reconcile Frederick’s emphasis on the rift between indigenous and non-indigenous kampong residents with my own findings. Frederick himself (1989:291) concludes that the social tensions in Surabaya before the Revolution were distinctive in many respects, and raises the question of whether the peculiar social world of the Surabayan kampongs rules out application of his findings to other Indonesian cities. Perhaps Surabaya was unique, as shown by the use of the celebrated idiosyncratic term ‘arek Surabaya’.37

Indigenous and European types of houses

If the designation of kampongs as indigenous obscured the class-based nature of these neighbourhoods, does this also apply to the ‘indigenous type of house’? Colonial sources regularly made a distinction between indigenous and European houses.38 The terms suggest that ethnicity was important in housing and the social construction of urban space. Unfortunately, there is no clarity about what the two terms, indigenous house and European house, meant. The type of urban house that was perhaps most typical of a whole ethnic category was neither indigenous nor European, but Chinese. Some features of the Chinese house were the roofless space in the centre of the house (t’iang- tjiang), the family altar in the inner gallery, the balustrade of the front gallery to ward off evil spirits, and the row of saucers under the eaves (Moerman 1932:186-92). The second type of Chinese house was the shophouse, with a shop on the ground floor, and living space on the first and second floors. Because the shophouses stood in a row, side by side, the projecting upper

37 The difference between Frederick’s analysis and mine may be influenced by the source of information. His sketch of the exclusion of non-indigenous kampong residents is by and large based on oral history. Looking back on the Revolution, those he interviewed may have emphasized indigenous solidarity across class lines. 38 For instance: Flieringa 1930:103, 143, 183-6; Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1937 no. 186; Kerchman 1930:360; Tillema 1911:15, 29, 32, 1913:47; Toelichting 1938:73; see also a 1928 Semarang newspaper quoted by Radjimo Sastro Wijono 2005:127; a note by Nosingo quoted by Tillema (1913:56); and a 1945 map of the company town Plaju (Palembang) presented by Idaliana Tanjung (2005:39). 124 Under construction floors together formed an arcade in front of the shophouses.39 A detailed map of the Chinese ward in Cirebon shows how shophouses could apparently have a t’iang-tjiang as well (Tillema 1922, V:867). Chinese living on rafts (rakit) on the water in the cities of Jambi and Palembang created a similar open space by lashing three rafts together, the side rafts built on and the middle one empty. Just like middle-class houses with annexes, the better rafts had a small extra raft used as a toilet. Living on rafts was not exclusively Chinese and was also popular with indigenous and European residents (Liniger 1943:68-9; Tillema 1922, V:612-8; Radjimo Sastro Wijono 2007:70-1). Other houses were typical of one indigenous ethnic group or one city. Balinese houses in Denpasar were characterized by their orientation towards the sacred mountain, Gunung Agung, and a walled area containing several buildings and the house temple (Nas 1995:174-6). Padang had its own style of wooden house, which stood on poles and had high-pitched, overhang- ing thatched roofs; such houses were probably used as much by Eurasian and European residents as by Minangkabau. In the course of the twentieth century these houses disappeared, but another characteristic form of house with gables on which a star is carved is still encountered today (Colombijn 1994:60-1, 222; Tillema 1922, V:557). Houses on poles, but with different walls and roofs, were found in Makassar. People applied for building permits for these houses on poles in Makassar until at least the 1950s40 and they were still common in the early twenty-first century.41 Characteristic houses are also found in Banda Aceh and Palembang up to today.42 It is perhaps no coincidence that these examples all come from areas outside Java, areas where each large city is associated with a single ethnic group. The famous Dutch architect Henri Maclaine Pont came closest to answering the question of what was typically Javanese architecture, but his findings were based on rural Java and had little relevance to urban housing.43 Thomas Nix (1949:234- 5) remarks that Javanese houses had a front space in which to receive guests and a back space for private life; in a palace the place to receive guests was a pendopo while in the smallest kampong houses it was merely a lean-to. However, in the hybrid Indische lifestyle, Europeans too used a front space (such as a veranda) to receive visitors, and this was not a distinctive architectural feature of Javanese houses. The local, vernacular styles do not help to

39 Gill 1995:207; Jackson 1975:52; Pratiwo 2007; Johannes Widodo 2007:71. 40 Surat Ketetapan Wali Kota Makassar 11-11-1954, no. 1217/I.M.; 16-11-1954, no. 1223/I.M.; 30-11-1954, no. 1410/I.M.; and 31-12-1954, no. 1429/I.M., Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 345. For images, see Tillema 1922, V:239. 41 Martine Barwegen, personal communication. 42 Peter Nas, personal communication; Taal 2003:248-69. 43 Van Leerdam 1995:82-104; see also Nix 1949:242-4; Van Roosmalen 2004:192; Tillema 1922, V:666-7; Wuisman 2007:36-7. IV Life in the kampongs 125 establish what was meant by the generic term ‘indigenous house’.44 No contemporary observers explained what they meant by ‘indigenous’ or ‘European’ house, but the meaning becomes clear from the common denominators in floor-plans and photographs.45 The most important source in this respect is H.F. Tillema’s magnum opus Kromoblanda. Significantly, he does not speak of indigenous houses or European houses, but designates houses by the profession of the occupant, or sometimes by the generic term kampong house. Consequently, he implicitly distinguishes between income groups (or social classes) instead of ethnic categories. In an older work he uses the category ‘houses for underprivileged people’ (huizen voor mingegoeden), making the importance of class over ethnic differences explicit (Tillema 1913:50). Tillema’s frequent mention of the construction costs or rents of houses rein- forces his emphasis on income. What I call lower-class or kampong houses had construction costs usually below ƒ 300 (sometimes as low as ƒ 100 or even ƒ 20), or rents below ƒ 5; they were occupied by such people as carpen- ters, tailors, drivers of a horse-drawn buggy, and lower-ranking policemen. I consider the other dwellings as ‘middle-class houses’, with construction costs starting at ƒ 10,000.46 Various differences can be discerned. Lower-class or kampong houses were usually built without any architectural design and no two were exactly the same (Figures 9, 11, 13). They had only a ground floor and usually consisted of only one multi-purpose room (or two rooms at most). The most important construction material was bamboo, which was used for uprights and beams, and for plaited walls (bilik). Doors were also made of woven bamboo with rope hinges. Some occupants stuck newspapers to the walls to plug the holes. Roofs were made of thatched leaves, flattened petroleum cans, or tiles; ceilings were just a little higher than the head height of an adult. The floor was merely stamped earth, which in the wet season became muddy. Houses could be just one room, but many houses were divided into two rooms. The most important piece of furniture was a bamboo platform (amben or balai-balai), which was used to sit on, eat,

44 Perhaps a Java bias is hidden in the term ‘indigenous house’, as European administrators and other observers who wrote about the ‘indigenous house’ lived in Javanese cities. On the other hand, many houses in Denpasar, Padang, Makassar, Banda Aceh, Palembang and other towns outside Java were not of the local type and resembled the common ‘indigenous type’. 45 Unfortunately I have not found any late-colonial reports about what kampong dwellers themselves considered to be the ideal house. A recent example is a study by Marijke Nas and Daniëlle Schenk (2000), analysing how kampong dwellers designed their own ideal house in the 1990s. In the 1990s, kampong dwellers dreamed of one multi-purpose room which could be subdivided, a kitchen and bathroom at the back of the house, a garden, and an alley at the back as a semi-public space. 46 Tillema 1922, V:439, 457-8, 647-8, 698-9, 766, 795, 888, 927; see also Flieringa 1930:56, 182-6, 214, 217-26. I shall not discuss elite houses, each of which had a unique design, because there were so few of them. 126 Under construction and sleep. Houses in Java stood on stone blocks, outside Java houses stood on poles. State classifications habitually called houses non-permanent when they were fully constructed of perishable material, or semi-permanent when roof tiles were used.47 The walls did not have window openings. There was no kitchen, bathroom, or toilet.48 The middle-class houses (as built in the early twentieth century) had a very different appearance (Figures 14, 15, 16, and 17). These houses were all designed by professional architects or engineers. They were characterized by a number of spaces with specialized functions, such as living room, bedroom, guest room, and an office. As a rule, the houses had a front gallery on which to receive guests, a back gallery for family life, and sometimes a third gallery to the side; front and back galleries often had a direct connection with each other and could take up more than half of the floor space of the house. The larger houses had a second floor and annexes at the back of the house: kitchen, bathroom, pantry, and quarters for domestic servants. According to Tillema, a ‘standard’ house for civil servants needed a floor area of at least 180 sq m plus 120 sq m for the annexes, but this was actually the maximum the state permitted (in 1934); in any case, middle-class houses were definitely larger than lower-class houses.49 Middle-class houses were built of wood or brick, were invariably roofed with tiles, and had a floor of tiles or concrete. Ceilings were high. There were windows on all sides, with either shutters or glass panes.50 Houses built in the last two decades of the colonial period looked increasingly like European suburban villas; the hybrid and spacious Indische archi-

47 The ‘non-permanent’ state of the materials was relative. Soesilo (1935:9) has remarked that well-treated walls of plaited bamboo could last for 25 years. The boundaries between a non-permanent, semi-permanent, and permanent dwelling were not standardized. Sometimes authors added the presence of wooden planks or a wall to half the height as a criterion of a semi- permanent house (for example Flieringa 1930:55, 183). 48 Flieringa 1930:103, 144, 183-6; De Huiseigenaar 2(5) 1941; Tillema 1921, IV:301-2, 448, 1922, V:239, 439, 619, 647-8, 888; see also Surat Ketetapan Wali Kota Makassar 23-9-1954, no. 955, and 6-12-1954, no. 1319/I.M., Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 345. 49 The average size of brick houses built in Semarang in 1911 and 1912 was 220 sq m, exactly four times the size of wooden and bamboo houses (Tillema 1913:74); an unknown percentage of wooden houses was probably middle-class too and raised the average size of houses built of non-permanent material. 50 Herziening van de Burgerlijke Woningregeling 1934, Besluit Luitenant Gouverneur- Generaal 29-10-1948, no. 5 (Staatsblad van Indonesië 274/1948); Karsten 1934, 1939:68-73; Lechner 2004:17; Nix 1949:197-210; Passchier 2007:103; Tillema 1922, V:243, 349-50, 457-61, 668, 764-9, 787, 792-4, 843, 854, 917; De Vos 1891:122-9; for pictorial evidence, see: Pasaribu et al. 1996; De Vletter 2007; Wils and Timmer 2000; and KITLV, Special Collections 11835, 11839, 11849, 13401-13404, 13440, 31165, 31166, 32999, 33057, 35668, 35669, 40452, 40453, 50711, 50714, 52130, 52139, 52144, 52183, 53916, 54121, 60058, 60121; for an analysis of the ‘bungalow’ type of house in India, see King 1984:41-64. IV Life in the kampongs 127

Figure 14. Middle-class house in Medan, circa 1930. Source: KITLV, Special Collections nr. 32999. tecture common in the nineteenth century had disappeared. Front and back galleries were closed in to create ordinary rooms. The new suburban houses were built on much smaller lots and many houses had two storeys to create a considerable floor area. There were no longer annexes for domestic servants, who now lived in their own dwellings.51 Well-known examples of new middle-class and upper-class neighbourhoods are Menteng and Nieuw Gondangdia in Batavia, Nieuw Tjandi in Semarang, and Darmo and Gubeng in Surabaya (Akihary 1990:65-7). Although the middle-class house was often called ‘European’, it was definitely not the exclusive domain of European architects or residents and could be designed or ordered by people from other ethnic groups too. The villas designed by Liem Bwan Tjie form an interesting hybrid case at the upper end of the housing market. Most of his villas were designed for

51 Abeyasekere 1989:115; Akihary 1990:16, 62-5, 1996: 101-4; Flieringa 1930:56; Jessup 1984; Passchier 2007:106-7; Voskuil 1993:116, 119, 134, 145. 128 Under construction

Figure 15. Middle-class house in Semarang, circa 1930. House built by NV Volkshuisvesting in Semarang in the Heuvelterrein area. Source: Gedenkboek 1931:160.

Chinese clients and were embellished with Chinese ornaments, but the layout resembled ‘European’ houses (Den Dikken 2002; Liem Bwan Tjie 1940; Kwee 2004:66). Liem’s work confirms that, except for details, what was known as the European house type was not so much typical of Europeans as of the middle and upper classes (Figure 18).52 During their short reign, the Japanese also built houses that were of the middle-class type (Figure 19), but they were small and intended as public housing. The middle-class type of houses continued to be built after independence.53 The middle-class or European style

52 The interior might perhaps have Chinese elements. In general, it is possible that the inte- riors of houses showed more cultural differences between ethnic groups (see Ido 1966:70-4; Nieuwenhuys 1981:76, 157, 1982:46, 117; Wils and Timmer 2000). 53 See designs in: Rentjana sebuah rumah kediaman untuk para perantjang Kota Pradja Makassar, n.d., Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 340; A.H. Kuyp, Voor-ontwerp voor bouw van kleine villa’s te Palembang in 1948, schaal 1:100, ANRI Algemene Secretarie 931; M.G. Fabrius, Hoofd Afdeling Landsgebouwen Departement Waterstaat en Wederopbouw, Nota van toelichting plan bouw woningen benoorden Laan Trivelli, 30-3-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 931; Bouwtekeningen Type A, B and C scale 1:100, attached to letter A.M. Semawi, Secretaris van Staat, Waterstaat en Wederopbouw, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon in Indonesië, 7-12- IV Life in the kampongs 129

Figure 16. Blueprint of a middle-class dwelling, 1912. A dwelling built by the Deli Spoorwegmaatschappij in Medan in 1912. Source: Tillema 1922, V:457. met the demand for houses from all people who endorsed or aspired to a ‘modern’ lifestyle, regardless of what their ethnic background was. The most clear-cut description of what constituted a middle-class house without any reference to ‘Europeanness’ comes from Indonesian nationalists in the Second World War. Kijai Hadji Mas Mansoer sketched the ideal house ‘in particular for the middle class’ (teroetama oentoek kaoem pertengahan). It had the lay-out of a European villa: a separate living room, dining room, bedrooms, veranda and storeroom, with a window in each room. However,

1948, no. G1/1/11, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 931; Regional Housing Centre, Detached House type A, scale 1:100, 3-8-1960 and Rowhouse type C1, scale 1:100, 9-7-1960, ANRI, Soetikno Lukito Disastro 1959-1960 51. See further Chapter IX. Figure 17. Blueprint of a small villa, 1948. Source: Voor-ontwerp voor bouw van kleine woningen, circa 1948, ANRI Algemene Secretarie 931, courtesy of Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia. Figure 18. House designed by Liem Bwan Tjie for Tan Hong Hie, Semarang, 1941. Courtesy of Nederlands Architectuur Instituut, Rotterdam.

Figure 19. Public housing built during Japanese times. Source: Djawa Baroe 1(17) (2603). 132 Under construction given the wartime conditions the building had to be built of non-permanent or semi-permanent material.54 This characterization of the typical lower-class house and middle-class house is by and large confirmed by the report submitted by Thomas Karsten to the Congress on Public Housing of 1922.55 Karsten wrote that until then the difference between indigenous, European and Chinese dwellings – to the last type he devoted merely five lines – was a matter of ethnic difference, in particular with regard to ‘habitation style’ (woonzede), standard of living, and the indigenous custom of building their houses themselves. However, ethnic differentiation was changing and shifting to class differences (Karsten 1922:1-3). Yet Karsten continued to use the terms ‘indigenous house’ and ‘European house’, which he saw as two ‘diametrically opposed building types’ (diametraal tegengestelde bouwtypen): European houses were brick houses, built at high cost but with low maintenance costs; indigenous houses were of semi- or non-permanent material, built at low cost but requiring high maintenance (Karsten 1922:6). Karsten’s analysis (1922:42-63) of indigenous and European floor-plans confirms that in the 1920s the distinction between supposed ethnic styles of housing was already really a matter of income. As Karsten (1922:54-5) remarks, the largest indigenous houses of the Javanese middle class approach the requirements of small European houses. In other words, lower-middle-class dwellings of Europeans and Javanese urbanites were similar. Perhaps I should stress that my aim is not to set up a strict dichotomy between lower-class houses on the one hand and middle-class houses on the other, but to understand what people meant when they spoke of indigenous houses or European houses. The distinction between lower-class houses and middle-class houses was in reality less absolute than it appears from the Idealtypen just given. For instance, companies and municipal governments made an effort to build houses for low-income groups (called ‘coolie houses’ by companies or ‘kampong houses’ by local governments), which shared some features with middle-class houses. These houses were designed by architects and had a more regular appearance than self-help kampong houses; moreover they had a (usually shared) kitchen, bathroom, and toilet, and at least one window opening (Tillema 1922, V:445-53, 703-4; Wiersma 1926). Another example of an intermediate position is the kampong house built in large numbers by the Javanese builder A. Anggabrata. Anggabrata had designed a house made of bilik, which effectively imitated a modest brick

54 Meeting Kyûkan Seido Tyôsa Linkai/Panitia Adat dan Tatanegara Dahoeloe, 5-10-2603 [1943], NA, NEFIS/CMI 2241. 55 I found Karsten’s analysis after I had constructed my own Idealtypen of lower-class house and middle-class house and use it here as a check on my own findings. IV Life in the kampongs 133 house; it had a separate living room and bedroom and an indoor kitchen and toilet. The house was rented for ƒ 25-30 to lower-middle-class Europeans and indigenous persons. The clear-cut analytical distinction between indigenous and European houses is further complicated by the fact that many kampong dwellers did not live in a detached dwelling, but in pondok and petak.

Urban planning

The ethnic or class-based nature of colonial social stratification was of great concern to town planners.56 An interest in systematic urban planning by experts (at first architects and later urban planners), recognition of urban planning as an activity in its own right, debate about planning principles and the need to analyse urban society did not emerge until after the establishment of municipal administrations in 1905.57 This debate was fed with input from various cities throughout the archipelago, although at first almost exclusively from Java. The primary forum for debate on Indonesian urban society was the Vereeniging voor Locale Belangen (Association for

56 Urban planning during the Japanese period and post-war reconstruction will be discussed in Chapter VIII. 57 Isolated measures for urban planning are much older, and predate the arrival of Europeans, for instance in Javanese kraton towns and riverine towns in Sumatra. In the early nineteenth century the centre of Batavia was moved for hygienic reasons, and the same happened with the little known case of Bengkulu. Regulations on building lines existed in Batavia, Semarang, and Surabaya in the nineteenth century; outside Java, the development of Padang, to give one example, followed a more or less regular grid pattern (Colombijn 1994:59, 2004; Gill 1995:177-9; Toelichting 1938:83; Yunus 1991). The rise of a technical approach to town planning in late colonial Indonesia has been extensively documented and hardly needs further discussion here; see Bogaers and De Ruijter 1986; Cobban 1994; Nas 1986b; Niessen 1999:218-33; Van Roosmalen 2004, 2005, 2008; Thijsse 1994. The following dates are arguably the defining moments of this rise. In 1907, W.T. Vogel, a physician and member of the municipal council of Semarang, asked an architect to sketch an expansion plan for the city. In 1909 the Surabaya administration acquired the private estate Goebeng to use as the site for a future European neighbourhood. In the 1910s several plans for new neighbourhoods were presented for Surabaya (Darmo, 1914), Batavia (Nieuw Gondangdia, 1911, and Menteng, 1917), Semarang (Nieuw Tjandi, or Heuvelterrein, 1916), Bandung (North Bandung, 1917), Medan (Polonia, 1919), and other towns. The first coherent statement about the need for town planning and the formulation of planning principles was Karsten’s paper Indiese stedebouw (‘Indies town planning’) presented at the Tenth Decentralization Congress of 1920 (Karsten 1920). In 1926, the national government granted municipalities priority rights to land sold by indigenous to non-indigenous persons, on the condition that the town government had drawn up a zoning plan. This priority right, merely stated in a circular letter, formed the first, albeit weak, legal basis for urban planning of the city as a whole and would continue to be so until the Second World War (Bogaers and De Ruijter 1986:74-8; Niessen 1999:220-3; Van Roosmalen 2004, 2005:76-83; Rondschrijven aan de gemeenteraden van de Gouvernements Secretaris, 27-4-1926 (Bijblad op het Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië no. 11272/1926). 134 Under construction

Local Interests). Urban administrators established this association in 1912 to discuss their common problems and jointly lobby the central government for financial and technical support. Urban planning was just one of the concerns of the Vereeniging voor Locale Belangen, which also dealt with issues like kampong improvement, housing, street lighting, waterworks, abattoirs and markets (pasar). The association journal, Locale Belangen, formed one medium through which to exchange knowledge and ideas, and the well- prepared annual Decentralization Congresses (Decentralisatiecongressen, or Congresses of Decentralized Administration) were another meeting place, suited to face-to-face discussion about urban society (Van Roosmalen 2004:184-6, 2005:76). The Vereeniging voor Locale Belangen was instrumental in finding similar solutions throughout Indonesia, and incidentally contributed to imagining Indonesia as a nation. The other important stimulus for standardization in urban management was the national government, through both the promulgation of national laws and the Adviseur voor Decentralisatie (Government Advisor on Decentralization Issues). The modest title of this functionary concealed a powerful official in the national government who had to approve municipal by-laws before they were passed and enacted. In the field of planning, standardization was increased by the fact that one single man, Thomas Karsten, worked as consultant in at least 16 cities in Java, Sumatra, and Kalimantan, and it was he who trained most of the town planners active in the 1930s and 1940s (Bogaers and De Ruijter 1986:75, 84). The standardization of planning practices attained was highest in Java and less in cities in the other islands; the four largest cities in Java dominated the debate in the Vereeniging voor Locale Belangen, and the landmark Town Planning Ordinance applied only to Java. The most comprehensive analysis of colonial urban society was the Town Planning Ordinance proposed in 1938, and the accompanying Explanatory Memorandum. The Ordinance and Memorandum were drafted by the Town Planning Commission, inaugurated four years earlier. Among its members were several architects, and administrators. Nationalist member of the Volksraad M.H. Thamrin was one of two indigenous members, but Karsten is generally held to be the principal author of the ordinance.58 Before several government departments and private persons had rounded off their discus-

58 Van Roosmalen 2005:81-3. Many of the ideas in this ordinance had already been outlined in Karsten’s paper Indiese stedebouw of 1920, but it is hard to believe that the other members of the Town Planning Commission, all heavyweights, did not have their say. The chairman, lawyer J.H.A. Logemann, for instance, who would later become a Minister in the Netherlands, held very similar views, which he expounded in his legal writings (see Chapter V). IV Life in the kampongs 135 sion of the ordinance, the Japanese invaded Indonesia.59 Nevertheless, the proposed Town Planning Ordinance and Explanatory Memorandum are important, as they are the expression of late-colonial thinking about urban planning. Moreover, Karsten had been applying the principles of the ordinance long before 1938 and popularized them in a short publication (Karsten 1940). A detailed plan of Matraman Blakang (a neighbourhood in Batavia) in 1940 is an example of a plan drawn bearing in mind the proposed law.60 The Explanatory Memorandum has been lauded as an early and brilliant example of applied sociology, taking practical problems as the point of departure for the analysis (Akihary 1990:64-5; Nas 1986b:96). It was premised on the idea that different groups compete with each other and that this conflict was sharper in Indonesia than in Europe, because of the partition of colonial society into three racial categories. The city, in short, was an arena of conflict. The method chosen to give all groups (and all activities) a place to live was zoning. With regard to housing, ethnic segregation was abandoned in favour of zones based on social class (Nas 1986b; Van Roosmalen 2004:195; Toelichting 1938). Although the Second World War prevented the Town Planning Ordinance coming into force, the idea of zoning based on social classes was kept alive during the Japanese period. The Japanese did nothing in the field of urban planning, but at least some Japanese authorities, presumably the city administration of Bandung, had an interest in urban development and sought Dutch expertise. Their interest is evident in a report written by Jac.P. Thijsse and two others during the Japanese period. In an estimate of the costs of town planning projects, the report distinguishes between neighbourhoods for different classes – not ethnic groups! – namely, kampongs, small houses (kleinwoningbouw), and villas.61 Another trace of Japanese urban planning is a reference to a map with an expansion plan for Makassar; the map itself is unfortunately missing and it is conceivable that the plan sketched a harbour or industrial area and not a residential area.62 Concern about the implementa-

59 Letter H. van der Wal, Algemene Regeringscommisaris voor Borneo en de Grote Oost, and Directeur van Binnenlands Bestuur, to Minister van Binnenlandse Zaken van Oost-Indonesië te Makassar, Batavia Centrum, 26-6-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 925. 60 Map Detailplan Matraman Blakang, 1:1,000, stadsgemeente Batavia, Dienst voor Publieke Werken, 1940, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1444. 61 Letter Jac.P. Thijsse and two others (indecipherable signatures) to J. Aneha, Bandoeng, Dzu- itigatsu 26** (paper torn off), NAI, Archief Thijsse. Other topics related to housing discussed in the report are: the need for new houses (estimated at 40,000 houses in all Indonesian towns); the rents for land to be paid by persons who build on leased land; the value of agricultural land; the interest rates for loans invested in building material; costs of town planning projects; and the size of plots of lands for various standard types of small houses. 62 N.J. Meyer, Survey Stadsplan Makassar, 7-3-1947, page 32, attached to letter Ir. N.J. Meyer, Planologisch Bureau Makassar, to Ir. Kipperman, Directeur Gemeentewerken Makassar, 8-3- 1947, no. 1233/207, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 38. 136 Under construction tion of urban planning can be seen in the rejection of a request for a building permit to close off an open corridor of a house in Surabaya. The request was refused because it exceeded the maximum built-up area allowed on a single plot and detracted from the architectural beauty of the street.63 Shortly after the Dutch retook the Indonesian cities, the Town Planning Ordinance (Stadsvormings Ordonnantie) and the accompanying Stads vormings Verordening (Town Planning Regulation), which provided practical guidelines explaining how to execute the Stadsvormings Ordonnantie, were finally passed in 13 cities. The cities were mentioned by name and included three cities outside Java: Padang, Palembang, and Banjarmasin. The same laws had been put into force for Makassar earlier by the Negara Indonesia Timoer.64 Residential zoning based on class could now finally be implemented at the local level. New building regulations were drafted for cities that had been badly damaged in the Second World War or the Revolution and were now back under Dutch control. A proposed building code for Makassar, Banjarmasin, Balikpapan, Kupang, and Bandung used size as the single criterion to distinguish between four or five different types of houses: large, medium, small, and minimum; ‘pavilion’ could be added as a size between medium and small houses.65 The new Building and Housing By-law for Makassar combined size with style to distinguish between seven types, and nine years later, in 1955, the same types were used in a revision of the Makassar zoning plan.66 The types were again used in the preparation of the

63 Keputusan Soerabaya Shityo 11-5-2603, no. 786, Arsip Surabaya, Box 111, no. 1704; see also Keputusan Soerabaya Shityo 21-5-2603, no. 880/b and 881/b, Arsip Surabaya, Box 111, no. 1704. 64 Stadsvormingsordonnantie (Staatsblad van Indonesië 168/1948); Stadsvormingsverordening (Staatsblad van Indonesië 7/1949); see further Besluit Luitenant Gouverneur Generaal 3-10-1948, no. 2 (Staatsblad van Indonesië 250/1948); Besluit Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon 1-11- 1948, no. 9 (Staatsblad van Indonesië 234/1949); for Makassar: Undang-undang 1947 tentang pem- bentukan kota, Stadsvormingswet Oost-Indonesië, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 17; see also the papers in ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 925. 65 Draft Modern Building Codes Makassar, Bandjermasin, Balikpapan, Kupang etc. Draft Bandung, Appendix III, Annex 6, NAI, Archief Thijsse; New Building By-laws Bandung (Draft), NAI, Archief Thijsse. The Town Planning Regulation (Stadsvormingsverordening) of 1949 used a finer categorization and distinguished between nine different types of houses (Stadsvormingsverordening, Besluit Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon 27-1-1949, no. 7, Staatsblad van Indonesië 40/1949). 66 The types are: villa; small detached house; detached kampong house; kampong house in a terrace; rural small house; rural kampong house; and vernacular type (villatype, open klein woningtype, open kampongtype, gesloten kampongtype, landelijke kleinwoningtype, landelijke kampongtype, adattype). Bouw- en Woningverordening Stadsgemeenteraad Makassar [1946], article 6, NAI, Collection Thijsse; Surat Keputusan Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah Makassar 22-8- 1955, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 321. The old habit of speaking of ethnic categories died hard, however, and as late as 1948 the commentary accompanying the Building By-law for Makassar IV Life in the kampongs 137

Jakarta outline plan of 1957.67 A plan for how to rebuild the heavily damaged small towns of Ambon and Manado placed the different types of houses in a spatial pattern.68 A new town plan for Surabaya, drawn up in 1949, also indicated the zones for different classes on a map by the use of colours to highlight the seven types of houses.69 The types were almost identical with the types mentioned in Makassar’s Building and Housing By-law: villa; detached small house; detached kampong house; kampong house in a terrace; small rural house; rural kampong house; and city type (Soeharjono et al. 1990).70 The transitional state of government was reflected in the bilingual Indonesian-Dutch legend to the map, and it is interesting that the Indonesian term rumah rakyat (house for commoners) for the Dutch phrase ‘kampong house’ reveals the class base of this categorization. The fact that the Town Planning Ordinance was drafted at the very end of the Dutch colonial period and implemented directly after the Second World War seems to support the idea that the transition from race to class segregation was part of the decolonization process. However, and this is an important point, there is ample evidence that planners thought in terms of class division long before the Japanese invasion. In that respect, the Town Planning Ordinance was not a revolutionary new vision, but the reflection of ideas that had been developed over several decades. Karsten (1936) himself, for instance, drew up a zoning plan for Malang in 1933, which distinguished between zones for villas and small houses on the one hand, and kampongs on the other. He stated that ‘a “European” neighbourhood [did exist], but the racial distinctions are not normative; the economic ones are’.71 In 1916 Karsten, in collaboration with the Semarang Director of Public Works, had already drawn up a plan for Nieuw Tjandi, which was based on explained that kampong houses with a closed building line (gesloten kampongtype) were the type of dwellings preferred by the Chinese (hence an ethnic category). Toelichting behorende bij de Ontwerp Bouw-Verordening van Makassar, attached to letter N.J. Meyer, Hoofd Planologisch Bureau Ministerie Verkeer en Waterstaat, to Burgemeester van Makassar, Makassar 28-10-1948, no. 11870/19, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 43. 67 L. O’Brien, Methods of preparing housing and community improvement [typescript, 1956], NAI, Archief Thijsse. 68 Report Technische Commissie ingesteld door Directeur van Verkeer en Waterstaat ten behoeve van de Wederopbouw in de Groote Oost en Borneo, January 1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 926; for Ambon see also Thijsse 1947. 69 The plan went back to an outline plan drawn in 1940 by A. Scheffer, which was never approved (Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 13-1-1940). 70 [B]entuk villa-villa type; bentuk rumah batu ketjil pakai pekarangan-open kleinwoningtype; bentuk rumah batu ketjil tidak pakai pekarangan-gesloten kleinwoningtype; rumah rakjat tidak pakai pekarangan- gesloten kampoengtype; rumah rakjat pakai pekarangan-open kampoengtype; rumah penduduk-landelijk kampoengtype; bentuk city-city type. 71 ‘[Er is een] “Europese” buurt – doch de raciale onderscheidingen zijn niet maatgevend, wel de ekono- mische’ (Karsten 1936:68). 138 Under construction segregation by class. Nieuw Tjandi formed the extension of Semarang in the hilly hinterland of that port city. The hills with sea views were designated for ‘European houses’ (villas) and the hollows between the hills for new kampongs, such as kampong Sompok, built in an orderly fashion.72 Karsten was ahead of his time and the question arises whether his plan for Nieuw Tjandi was a visionary strategy attempting to replace objectionable ethnic differences by more acceptable class differences in the future, or the reflection of an existing situation, which Karsten was the first to recognize. An expansion plan for Padang, drawn by the unknown engineer De Meijer in 1919, also very much reflected lines of class categories. Envisaging a garden city, he called the new neighbourhoods the ‘European’ quarter, and the kampongs were tacitly understood to be for indigenous residents. In this sense, racial discourse was dominant in his work. De Meijer envisioned the middle-class neighbourhoods, in contrast, as ethnically mixed, and although he did not abandon racial labels, he did plan areas defined by income: less well-to-do Europeans would live together with the more ‘ontwikkelden Oosterling’. The term ontwikkeld in this context meant developed, educated, or civilized, and Oosterling included both Indigenous persons and Foreign Orientals. De Meijer predicted that the best kampongs would be occupied by a mixed group of well-to-do Indigenous persons and Foreign Orientals (De Meijer 1919). This expansion plan is especially interesting, because De Meijer is by no means a prominent figure in historical overviews of urban planning in Indonesia, and yet he already had neighbourhoods segregated by class in mind. Moreover, his work predates the Depression, at which time no one could deny that there were many Europeans living in kampongs. If even the unknown engineer De Meijer saw class-based segregation as a reality, it is plausible that Karsten’s plan for Nieuw Tjandi was less a dream for the future than the result of keen observation of existing practice.

Conclusion

The colonial elite – the group of people we know the most about – thought of kampongs as an indigenous space, where non-indigenous inhabitants formed an exception and an anomaly. In elite eyes, the poor living conditions made kampongs obviously an indigenous space and kampong houses were synonymous with what was referred to as the indigenous type of house. If one accepts this colonial view, the Town Planning Ordinance, drafted in 1938 and effective from 1948, marked the transition from a social stratification based

72 Flieringa 1930:165; Kerchman 1930:278, 282-3; Pratiwo 2005:133-4; Tillema 1920-21, III:178, 1922,V:908-11. IV Life in the kampongs 139 on ‘race’ to a stratification based on class, because it used zoning of houses of different sizes and qualities (hence class differences), not zoning based on ethnic categories, as one of the main instruments of planning. On the ground, however, kampongs were definitely not exclusively indigenous neighbourhoods. Surveys in kampongs reveal that Chinese, Eurasian, and European people formed a substantial part of the kampong population and were by no means an exception. Many keen colonial observers, who were not taken in by the contemporary discourse and trusted their own empirical observations instead, had already reached the conclusion that the kampong population belonged to the lower class, but not necessarily to the indigenous ethnic category. One caveat should be borne in mind, the fact that kampongs were never exclusively lower class and considerable income differences existed within and between kampongs.73 Classifying a dwelling as the ‘indigenous’ type of house was not based on vernacular architecture or cultural preferences, but on the small size of the house, use of non-permanent or semi-permanent building material, and low construction cost. The low construction cost made the ‘indigenous’ house ideal for anybody from the lower class. The much larger ‘European’ house, in contrast, was associated with middle-class occupants of any ethnic background. Occupying a house built of brick was not only a matter of the owner’s financial resources, but also of a modern lifestyle. Consequently, the seminal Town Planning Ordinance and Explanatory Memorandum drafted in 1938 was not a trailblazer, but rather it formalized a zoning principle that followed practice that had developed over time. Town plans from the 1910s already envisaged ethnically hybrid but homogeneous class-based neighbourhoods. Why did the colonial overlords, who presumably developed this discourse of ‘indigenous kampong’ and ‘European house’, prefer a racial to a class discourse to describe existing social inequality? Equating middle- and upper- class neighbourhoods with Europeans shored up European prestige, and this higher prestige consequently facilitated the acceptance of European colonial rule. The use of a racial discourse to hide class differences would, however, sooner or later lead to dissatisfaction among two groups who did not fit this picture: lower-class Europeans who could not live up to expectations and had ‘slipped down’ into the kampong, and middle-class indigenous people who for whatever reason remained in kampongs. It was the latter category that led the resistance of the arek Surabaya, or ordinary folk, during the stubborn defence of the city during the Indonesian Revolution (Frederick 1989). The most extensive debate about the nature of kampong society took place

73 Frederick 1983:361-2, 1989:24-6. Strolling though kampongs today, I get the impression that they have become far more mixed as to income than they used to be. Nowadays, a two-storey house with carport and dish antenna can be found in the midst of a kampong. 140 Under construction in the Vereeniging voor Locale Belangen and among town planners. The more powerful group in society can use urban planning as a seemingly neutral, technocratic tool to dominate less powerful groups (Yeoh 1996:163; Yiftachel 1995). Abidin Kusno (2000:129-32) has asserted that when the spatial order is based on class, urban planning became a tool to avoid confrontation between and within different racial categories. He is right, but a class-based order had already become visible in the 1910s. Meanwhile, the ‘ordinary users’ (Lefebvre 1986) of urban space in the kampongs lacked agency in dealings with professional urban planners and real-estate developers. The poor living conditions in the kampongs were in no sense inherently indigenous, but were related to the generally low income of kampong residents and their concomitant lack of power. Kampong residents were short on capital, high connections, and political representation to protect and improve their environment. Chapter v Land tenure

Although the terms indigenous kampong, European neighbourhood, Chinese quarter, indigenous house, and European villa were common parlance in colonial times, it was ultimately a matter of free choice whether one used these terms or not. This freedom of idiom did not exist in the case of land tenure systems. The colonial state made a binding distinction between Indigenous and European land tenure systems and, even though this distinction could be overlaid by finer categorizations, every plot of urban land inescapably belonged to either the Indigenous or the European category. Kampong land was as a rule held by an Indigenous title, while ownership of plots along the main roads and in newly developed suburbs was regulated by a European title. Since Europeans and Foreign Orientals were in principle not allowed to purchase land with an Indigenous title, the division of urban space into Indigenous plots and European plots should in theory have kept non-indigenous people out of kampongs and concentrated them along the main roads. Such strict racial segregation, however, did not take place, as we have seen, and this raises the important question why not.1 The answer to this question is complicated by the peculiar nature of landownership. People cannot physically possess land in the same way that they possess movable property like clothes, food, vehicles, and jewellery; movable property can be picked up, carried, stored, and given away. In the case of land one merely has a right to use a plot, and this right is vested in the title. Land tenure systems, which grant people the right to use a specific plot, are ‘social conventions’, a matter of common understanding in society (Deiniger 2003:xxii). These conventions, both in the form of unwritten rules and codified laws, can change. Because of the interests involved in land, a major change of political regime is likely to be followed by some sort of change in regulations pertaining to landownership, to the advantage of the new power holders or

1 Part of the answer to this question is of course the fact that non-indigenous people could live in kampongs by renting a dwelling there. The discussion in this chapter, however, focuses on plots and houses occupied by the owner. Furthermore, this chapter focuses on urban land used for housing, not for other purposes. 142 Under construction groups they try to protect. Colonization is one such major regime change that usually has a profound impact on landownership, codifying tenure rules and commodifying land. It is not surprising that a new system of land tenure often meets with stiff opposition from people who feel disadvantaged by the new system.2 Decolonization is another change of political regime that has a potentially profound impact on land tenure systems, or ‘regimes of rights to land’ (Slaats and Portier 1990-91:56). How did Indonesian Independence affect land tenure? The young state experimented with socialist economic ideas, and the 1945 Constitution (Article 33) explicitly stated that land should serve the interest of the people (and not that of big companies). Work on the formulation of a new agrarian law began in 1948, when the War of Independence was not yet over, and a first draft was ready in 1952 (Gautama and Hornick 1972:91; Berita Indonesia 15-1-1952, 7-4-1952). The important Basic Agrarian Law (Undang-Undang 5 tentang Pokok Agraria) was promulgated in 1960. The two main objectives of the Basic Agrarian Law were, first, to abolish the colonial legacy of the racially inspired distinction between European and Indigenous land tenure, and, second, to enhance legal certainty. In speaking of legal certainty, the authors of Law 5/1960 had in mind the registration of all plots of land according to a standardized set of forms of tenure. By amalgamating the Indigenous and European tenure systems into one standardized system of tenure, the Basic Agrarian Law of 1960 indirectly tried to achieve another post-Independence policy goal, namely nation building and overcoming differences between the islands. Land tenure was the aspect of urban space that exhibited the greatest variation between cities. An agrarian law that united previously different tenure systems would overcome local differences and, consequently, strengthen national unity. Insight into local variation in land tenure is interesting in its own right, but is also a condition for understanding how decolonization negatively affected the security of land tenure in different Indonesian cities. The insecurity of land tenure during the War of Independence still existed after the transfer of sovereignty, and overshadowed the narrower issue of legal certainty addressed by the Basic Agrarian Law. Legal certainty and security of tenure overlap, but are not exactly the same. Legal certainty counted for little when owners lost some control over their property through state regulations that changed the tenure system. Security of tenure was also weakened when the rule of law was weak. For instance, owners lost their land through manipulation of the individual title by outsiders, including squatters. Squatters, conversely, may have felt pretty secure, not because of legal

2 Bernstein 2000:263; Berry 2003:641; Deiniger 2003:xviii; Kommers 1990. V Land tenures 143 certainty but because of political protection (Goldberg and Chinloy 1984:37-8, 222-3). Consequently, land tenure raises the following questions, addressed in the sections that follow. Why did the distinction between Indigenous and European land tenure systems not result in racial segregation in colonial times? What were the differences in land tenure systems from one city to the next? How was the security of land tenure reduced during the decolonization process, and how did this vary locally?

Formal and informal forms of ownership

In colonial times, the main distinction in landownership rules was between European law (Europees recht) and Indigenous law (inlands recht).3 The exact meaning of these terms will be explained shortly, but keep in mind that the terms are misleading, because they suggest a formal connection between the racial category of the landowner and the ownership system.4 There was no such formal connection. There was, however, a statistical overrepresentation of Europeans holding land with a European title and indigenous people holding land with an Indigenous title, for a reason that will be explained shortly. The misleading connection between forms of ownership and racial categories has prompted the legal experts Sudargo Gautama and Robert Hornick to come up with a form of landownership that fills the logically empty categories of Chinese or Foreign Oriental forms of ownership. They believe they have filled the logical void with the category of private estates (particuliere landerijen) located around the cities on the north coast of Java (Gautama and Hornick 1972:82). This idea is erroneous, for neither were the private estates owned exclusively by Chinese, nor was this form of ownership rooted in the Chinese legal tradition. The analysis of landownership would be greatly advanced if the terms ‘European ownership’ and ‘Indigenous ownership’ were replaced by the terms formal and informal systems of ownership, analogous to the concepts of formal and informal sectors of the economy. The distinction between the formal and informal sectors of the economy is one of degree, and is to a large extent a consciously constructed distinction. Actors each have a different interest in processes of formalization and informalization. The informal sec-

3 This section concentrates on ownership, because other rights (renting, pawning, and others) are derived from ownership. 4 The error is understandable, because in many topics in civil law, for example regarding marriage and inheritance, the racial category of the person involved determined which legal system was applied. 144 Under construction tor is not necessarily inferior and it can have distinctive advantages over the formal sector. A very large part of the economy in Third World cities can be labelled informal (Boer 1990; Hidayat 1978; De Soto 1989). All these features apply to the distinction between European and Indigenous landownership systems too. The World Bank (Deiniger 2003:xx, xxiii) uses the distinction between formal and informal property rights as an analytical tool. In the remainder of this chapter, the more familiar terms European and Indigenous ownership will be maintained, but the idea of formal and informal systems of ownership must not be lost sight of. Colonial agrarian policy was predominantly agricultural policy, which had the double aim of providing land for Western plantations while protecting indigenous smallholders from a condition of landlessness. The basis of late colonial agrarian policy was the Agrarian Law of 1870, which entitled the government to give land to Western companies in long lease (erfpacht).5 However, the state could only lease out land if it had the right to dispose of the land. The Agrarian Law was therefore accompanied by what is known as the Domain Declaration (Domeinverklaring, Staatsblad 118/1870), which in one stroke declared that all land not proven to be somebody’s property (eigendom) according to European law was considered the domain of the state. Formally, land held under Indigenous law was also state domain, but in practice the state neither intended nor ever actually tried to control indigenous plots. The state only issued new titles from the state domain that was not held by an Indigenous right, so-called free state domain (vrij landsdomein). According to the vervreemdingsverbod (Staatsblad 179/1875) people holding land with Indigenous rights (mainly indigenous smallholders) were forbidden to sell land to non-indigenous persons to prevent adding to the numbers of landless indigenous people.6 The most important categories of land were therefore: smallholdings with Indigenous rights (only de jure state property, of which the occupant enjoyed ‘hereditary individual usufruct’ or erfelijk individueel gebruiksrecht); state domain not claimed by smallholders (free state domain); state domain given to companies in long lease (only in rural areas); and land that had acquired a European title prior to the prohibition on selling Indigenous rights to non-indigenous people. The European land title, which was almost exclusively found in cities, had a fiscal origin. Non-indigenous urbanite owners had to pay a land tax (verponding), originally based on a crude measurement of their plot. A profession-

5 When the state promulgated ordinances to implement the new law, it made a distinction between directly and indirectly ruled territories, and between Java and Madura on the one hand and the other islands on the other hand. 6 Commissie voor het Grondbezit 1934a; Gautama and Hornick 1972:75-81; Logemann 1936:7-8; Toelichting 1938:64. V Land tenures 145 al cadastre was established during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.7 Many plots were measured precisely and then were labelled in three different registration systems: the measurements (meetbrief) of the plot, its entry in the files of the cadastre (kadastraal nummer), and its city tax number (verpondings- nummer). Usually a plot was referred to by the meetbrief and verpondingsnum- mer, for example in court cases. The first registration of a plot and every later transfer of rights involved administrative costs, especially if a new measurement by a surveyor was necessary.8 Urban plots with an Indigenous title to ownership differed from European plots in the tax levied and the procedure of registration, but not in substance (Jansen 1930:148); these Indigenous plots, which formally had a right of usufruct (erfelijk individueel gebruiksrecht), were often erroneously though tellingly referred to as having ‘hereditary individual property right’ (erfelijk individueel bezitsrecht). Colonial legal experts realized that if the prohibition on land sales to non- indigenous people in cities was applied strictly, urban development would be severely hampered. Europeans and Foreign Orientals made up a significant part of the urban population and many of them preferred to buy land with full ownership in the European sense (freely alienable). Although non-indigenous persons were allowed to rent small yards from indigenous landowners in which to erect a dwelling (Eisenberger 1939), the rental arrangement did not provide the legal certainty desirable for a permanent building. The stock of land in urban centres that had a European title (extant from before the 1870 ban on land transfers by Indigenous to non-indigenous people) would not be enough when cities grew and expanded into hitherto rural land. One solution to the shortage of urban land with a European title was offered by the Regeringsreglement of 1854 (Article 62), which stipulated that the state had the right to parcel free state domain and dispose of these new plots with property rights based on European law, but only for the purpose of urban expansion.9 Even this escape clause could not satisfy long-term demand for urban landholding under European law, because the supply of state domain in and around cities was limited, unless the stock was replenished. The stock of state domain in cities that could be divided up and sold to individuals as European property was replenished by two methods. First, the

7 An ordinance of 1834 (Staatsblad 27/1834) already required that land with a full title be registered at the Cadastre (Gautama and Hornick 1972:7, 82). Some cadastres were even older. 8 Nowadays a considerable part of these transfer costs is informal in the form of oiling the administrative machinery; I have not encountered evidence of corruption at the colonial cadastre. 9 Gautama and Hornick 1972:76; Jansen 1930:146; Logemann 1936:8. The state could also grant the right to erect buildings on state land (recht van opstal), but full property was clearly the preferred title. The possibility of granting the right to erect buildings refines the picture, but does not fundamentally alter the analysis. 146 Under construction state could pay an Indigenous landowner to give up his or her rights to land. This method was common in large urban development plans. The state par- celled the land, registered it at the cadastre, and sold it to individual owners. The second method was more cumbersome. An individual prospective buyer paid the Indigenous owner to persuade him (or her) to give up his rights, so that the land reverted to the state. The state then sold the plot to the prospective buyer, but not before measuring the plot and registering it at the cadastre, so that it was from that time considered European land. During this transfer, when the plot had temporarily reverted to being state land, the prospective buyer had no legal say about the land and it was a matter of trust that the state would sell the land to the prospective buyer and not to another person. The state never betrayed the trust of the prospective buyer, although quite regularly the state kept part or all of the land for its own needs (for instance to widen a road or to construct a public building).10 Whenever the state kept part, or all, of the plot, the prospective owner was fully compensated for the amount he or she had paid to the original Indigenous owner (Jansen 1930:146; Logemann 1936:9). Notwithstanding the fact that the terms ‘European land’ and ‘Indigenous land’ referred to the kind of law applicable to the plot and not to the owner, in practice most Indigenous land was owned by Indigenous people and most European land was owned by Europeans or Foreign Orientals. The disproportionate distribution of the two kinds of landownership over the different racial categories can be explained historically by the story of origin of the individual plots of land. Contemporary authors go to great lengths to eluci- date the exceptions to the tendency that indigenous people owned Indigenous land and Europeans owned European land.11 For example, an indigenous person who had been granted European status (gelijkgesteld) maintained his or her lands with an Indigenous title. Also, an indigenous wife who married a Dutchman and thereby obtained Dutch citizenship would keep her lands with an Indigenous title; their offspring belonging to the European category would

10 In 1926, the national government granted municipalities priority rights to lands sold by indigenous to non-indigenous persons via the intermediate status of state domain, on the condition that the town government had drawn up a town plan. This priority right, merely stated in a circular letter, formed the first (albeit weak) legal basis for urban planning of the city as a whole and would continue to be so until the Second World War. Rondschrijven aan de gemeenteraden van de Gouvernements Secretaris, 27-4-1926, Bijblad op het Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië no. 11272/1926. 11 See for example E.M. Stok, Controleur Binnenlands Bestuur voor Agrarische Zaken, Overgang van Inlandsche grondrechten in het gewest Jogjakarta, [Jogjakarta], 10-8-1936, Amsterdam: Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen [KIT]; Van der Heyden 1931; Logemann 1936:8; see also Gautama and Hornick 1972:83. V Land tenures 147 then inherit the plots under Indigenous title.12 The prohibition on the transfer of Indigenous land to Europeans did not apply in reverse, so that Indigenous people could freely obtain land with a European title. Concrete disputes over land tenure could become very complex when, for instance, landowner, house owner (renter of the land), and occupant (renter of the house) were three different persons, or when the birth of children, acknowledgment of extramarital children, concubinage or marriage, purchase of Indigenous land by the indigenous mother, and death of the father or mother occurred in different chronological order. The weekly of the IEV (Indo-Europees Verbond, Association of Eurasians) regularly answered questions from confused readers on this point (for instance Onze Stem 25-3-1932, 17-3-1933, 7-9-1934, 20-12-1935, 1-1-1937). The situation of a European holding land with an Indigenous title, or of an indigenous person holding land with a European title were actually quite common, but nevertheless both situations were considered an anomaly going against the logic of the indigenous-European divide and calling for explanation. In a brilliant analysis, legal expert J.H.A. Logemann takes a radically different perspective and argues that the distribution of European and Indigenous land in the cities must be explained by the ‘difference in social use’ (verschil in sociale functie, Logemann 1936:8) and not by the origin of the plot.13 Land with a European title was relatively expensive, because of the administrative costs of transferring the title at the cadastre at the time of acquisition and because of the annual tax (verponding). It also required a certain level of education to navigate a plot successfully through the administrative procedures for a European title. The costs and efforts were only warranted for certain specific purposes. Other people benefited more from the opportunity offered by plots with an Indigenous title: they could sell each other a plot, exchange plots, or shift a boundary between plots without any formalities or concomitant administrative costs. The difference in social use was related to the security and precision of tenure, ways of obtaining credit, and the freedom to alienate the plot. One advantage of a European title was the very high degree of security considered necessary before the owner was willing to start major construction

12 The consequences of mixed marriages for indigenous tenure remained in force after independence (letter Kepala Bagian Agraria to Gubernur Djawa Tengah, 17-6-1952, no. Agr. 40/12/34). 13 Logemann was chairman of the committee that prepared the 1938 Bill on Town Planning, of which Thomas Karsten was the principal author. Logemann and Karsten were both members of the progressive think-tank De Stuw and they no doubt influenced each other’s ideas. My thinking about European and Indigenous land as formal and informal tenure systems is strongly inspired by Logemann’s analysis. 148 Under construction work in brick or cement.14 It was also necessary in a shopping street, where shops were erected side by side in an unbroken line aligned with the precise boundary of the plot.15 Such high security or precision of boundaries was unnecessary when non-permanent or semi-permanent dwellings were built in the middle of a yard. Security was not only a matter of exact measurement and registration, it was also a matter of which law applied. A European title was based on the elaborate, fixed Civil Code, whereas Indigenous rights were based on the at best partially codified customary law (adat). As far as credit was concerned, banks would give a mortgage only on land with a European title. The European title was reserved for people with a considerable income and the knowledge necessary to handle the legal complexities and long-term planning incurred by a mortgage. People who lacked these resources did not make long-term investment plans. When they wanted cash, it was usually for an immediate need and contracting a mortgage was too cumbersome. In such a case, pawning the land was a quick and simple method.16 Another point was that alienation of indigenous ownership was sometimes constrained by local traditional law (adat); indigenous people who wanted to circumvent these restrictions could opt for a European title. Finally, regardless of the question of which social need the title fulfilled, the costs of a European title were simply prohibitive for people with a limited purse (Logemann 1936:8-11). More than 60 years after Logemann, development experts hold similar views. ‘With limited land values, low-cost mechanisms of identifying boundaries, such as [...] hedges, rivers, and trees that are recognized by the community, will generally suffice, while higher-value resources will require more precise and costly means of demarcation. [...] The key advantage of formal, as compared with informal, property rights is those holding formal rights can call on the power of the state [and state laws] to enforce their rights’ (Deiniger 2003:xxiii). Hernando de Soto (1989:247) argues that people in Peru resort to informal arrangements to avoid the Kafkaesque red tape of the state bureaucracy, but what Peruvians really want ‘first and foremost, is firm property rights, reliable transactions, and secure activities’. In other words, informality is a matter of convenience, a second-best choice for those who cannot obtain

14 For example, in a sample of 213 applications for a building permit in Bandung between 1930 and 1959, 89% were for plots with a European title. 15 Registration at the cadastre required the largest precision possible. Just the instruction on how to record the name of the owner required 16 articles (Kadastrale Dienst in Nederlandsch- Indië 1938:36-43). The examination for land surveyors included Dutch language skills, thorough knowledge of mathematics and natural science, drawing skills, the practical skills required to use the equipment, and knowledge of the Civil Code and registration ordinances (Jaarboekje voor de ambtenaren 1941:17-8). 16 Whereas the borrower under a mortgage retains use of the property, a person who pawns land to obtain a loan thereby loses access to it until the loan is repaid. V Land tenures 149 formal rights. Those persons who have their property properly and formally registered can use it as collateral for credit raised for an investment; formally registered land is a condition for capitalist development. Yet formalization of property titles of informal settlements can be detrimental for those who do not need the highest degree of security of tenure. Allocation of freehold titles can result in increased pressure from the formal property market and increased costs of services, both of which tend to exclude the poor (De Soto 2000; Gilbert 2002; Durand-Lasserve and Royston 2002:15). It is very important that Logemann explicitly rejects the idea that the social use of either Indigenous or European ownership is associated with Indigenous versus European (and Foreign Oriental) racial categories. Instead, he uses a discourse of social groups (sociale groepen), a term which can best be translated as a social class with a specific lifestyle (zede) or consumption pattern. Occasionally he uses the word class explicitly, as in ‘the housing need of the poor working classes’ (de woongelegenheid der arme volksklassen) and the need for mortgage credit of a societal class (maatschappelijke klasse) of traders and builders of a private house (Logemann 1936:9-10). Government efforts to keep poor Europeans off Indigenous land (and out of indigenous neighbourhoods) prevented ‘the symbiosis of less well-to-do classes of different ethnic groups’ (de symbiose der minder welgestelde volksklassen van verschillende landaard, Logemann 1936:11). Not everybody shared Logemann’s insights; it is telling that during a debate about his ideas, more conservative members of the colonial civil service did not speak in terms of class; instead, they maintained the old racial discourse of rich Europeans, Chinese, and Arabs buying up land from poor indigenous people (Verslag Planologische Dag 1939:42-3). The juridical distinction between a European and an Indigenous title was absolute, but the distinction in security, with the concomitant different social uses, was gradual (see also Durand-Lasserve and Royston 2002:6). Land with an Indigenous title was also registered, namely by the kampong or village administration (desabestuur). The register was based on the collection of land rent in the early nineteenth century and the tax receipt was the only written proof of ownership. The register itself consisted of a map (scale 1:5000) indicating the location and size of the plots. The plots had been measured by a plontang, not a very precise instrument as it was a bamboo stick, often warped, one roede (3.76 m) in length, until shortly before the Second World War, when a more convenient plontang of 5 m was introduced. Hedges, trees, and ditches served as boundary markers. Changes in ownership were reported to the kampong head and secretary, who were called as witnesses by the law court (landraad) when a dispute about ownership arose. As urbanization proceeded, this system of registration became unsatisfactory. The authority of traditional neighbourhood leadership, who knew personally all the inhabitants of the village, eroded in urban neighbourhoods 150 Under construction as the population became more transient. Plots changed hands more quickly, sometimes without formal notification to the neighbourhood administration. The owners of a growing number of plots were unknown.17 Moreover, neighbours sometimes borrowed land from each other when this suited their request for a building permit. Given the fluid situation, disputes inevitably became more frequent in the early twentieth century, especially because the stakes in land rose with the increase in urban land prices. In 1927 the Volksraad, the national advisory parliament, decided that a cadastre of Indigenous land should be formed. This decision was not carried out on a national scale, but individual cities did compile a cadastre of Indigenous plots. Medan had a long-standing Indigenous cadastre (of what were known as sultan’s grants), Yogyakarta introduced a registration of Indigenous plots in 1926, and the small town of Magelang followed suit in the late 1930s (Behandeling congres-ontwerp 1940; Van Lissa Nessel 1940). An example of the legal uncertainty of land with an Indigenous title is the following case in Bandung.18 In 1934, the merchant Hassan Wiratmana sold 35 looms to the owner of a weaving mill. The entrepreneur, lacking cash, paid with a plot of land in kampong Andir. Hassan was busy at the time and asked his trusted Arab assistant Achmad, who was married to Hassan’s sister Patmah, to register the plot at the kampong head’s office. Hassan wanted the plot registered in the name of his underage son Abdoelrachman. In the ensuing lawsuit, the kampong head would later testify that he knew Hassan, but not Hassan’s son nor the man who registered the plot, and had assumed that Abdoelrachman was the name of the man who registered the plot (in reality Achmad). Achmad often paid the land tax to the kampong head on behalf of Hassan, pretending he was the owner. In February 1940 Achmad, still acting as if he was Abdoelrachman, donated the plot to his wife Patmah, with the kampong head as witness. The same month, Achmad (signing the acknowl- edgement of debt with the name A. Rachman) and Patmah borrowed ƒ 750 from Lim Tjoen Tjoei, with the plot as collateral. The fraud was discovered when Achmad did not repay the loan, Lim asked the court to auction the plot to recover the debt, and Hassan intervened to prevent the sale. The case was as much to prove whether A. Rachman was the name of Achmad, as it was about who owned the land. The testimony of the entrepreneur, contradicting

17 Plots with an unknown owner were called tanah-ombekèn. The compound term consisting of the Malay tanah (land) and the Dutch onbekend (unknown [owner]) perhaps suggests which element was important to Malay occupants and which to the Dutch administration. For a slightly different explanation of the term, see Jansen (1930:148). 18 Hassan Wiratmana vs. Lim Tjoen Tjoei, Rachman, Patmah, Landraad Bandoeng 476/1940, found in Pengadilan Negeri (PN) Bandung, Landraad Bandoeng. I present only the essence of the case, leaving out details. V Land tenures 151 that of the kampong head, was crucial in the court’s decision that Hassan’s son was the rightful owner. As a consequence of the verdict, Lim was unable to recover his loan of ƒ 750. Interestingly, Hassan’s legally correct argument that Achmad, as an Arab, could not have bought a plot of Indigenous land, did not impress the court. The court must have realized that in practice, it was quite common for non-indigenous urbanites to own Indigenous land. Other court cases testify to the legal uncertainty that could arise when Indigenous land was pawned. For instance, debtor and creditor could sign an agreement for the purchase of a plot of land which would only take effect if the loan were not repaid in time. Sometimes the debtor failed to repay the loan, but refused to hand over the Indigenous title deed.19 In another case, which was ultimately taken to the Supreme Court, the creditor was allowed to use the pawned land for two decades (1928-1949), but did not manage to acquire ownership of the plot.20 The system of forced sale of land if a debt was not redeemed was vulnerable to fraud.21 The many non-indigenous residents who lived on Indigenous land were considered onwettige occupanten. The term can perhaps be translated as ‘unauthorized owners’. They were not squatters who occupied land to which they had no right at all; rather they occupied land that they had purchased (Durand-Lasserve and Royston 2002:4-5). Nevertheless, they were unauthorized, because they had infringed on the ban on the transfer of Indigenous land to non-indigenous people. Despite the threat of punishment (Staatsblad 177/1912), the number of unauthorized owners grew, which shows that the demand for Indigenous land by lower-class Europeans and Foreign Orientals was large. At the selling end of the market, some indigenous people had no desire to be protected by the ban and wanted freedom to sell land to non- indigenous buyers (Kampoengrapport 1924:12). In 1948 an expert remarked that the market for Indigenous land was livelier than that of land held with a European title.22 At some point even the state accepted the onwettige occupanten as a fact of life and recognized, albeit temporarily, the need for

19 Nai Anna Boru Mandjuntak vs. A. Sulaiman Nasution (PN Medan Pdt. 108/1959). 20 Tan Tjong Kee, Tan Tjong Ie vs. Sarifah Tjik, Sarifah Mahani (PN Medan Pdt. 557/1949), Tan Tjong Kee, Tan Tjong Ie vs. Sarifah Tjik, Sarifah Mahani (PT Medan Pdt. 65/1951), keputusan Mahkamah Agung 14K/Sip/1952, all found in Sech Mahmud Chayath, Intjik Thaibah vs. Tan Tjong Keo (alias Tan Tjiong Khaiy), Tan Tjong Ie (PN Medan Pdt. 221/1959). 21 Umar c.s. vs. Isteri Mohad. Nazir c.s. (PN Medan Pdt. 231/1950). 22 K. Mantel, Nota Departement van Binnenlandsche Zaken, 11-5-1948, attached to letter Voorzitter Financieel Economische Raad to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 22-6-1948, no. F.E.R./A 16, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 618. Mantel does not go into the question of how the Indonesian Revolution influenced the property market, but it is plausible that circumstances increased, rather than decreased, the number of transactions of land with a European title, because some Europeans fled the country. 152 Under construction land with Indigenous titles by non-indigenous ‘paupers’. In 1924 the central government allowed local governments to collect rent from unauthorized owners (pretending the state was landlord of this ‘state domain’); the prohibition on unlawful occupation and the threat of eviction according to Staatsblad 177/1912 remained in force to coerce illegal occupants to pay the rent (Flieringa 1930:29; Jansen 1930:149-50; Logemann 1936:9, 11). Logemann not only analysed the agrarian situation, but also proposed a number of policy changes. He was a strong proponent of legalizing the sale of land with an Indigenous title to non-indigenous persons, so that ethnically mixed, but socially homogeneous neighbourhoods could develop (as was already taking place illegally). He also proposed to make it easier for the more highly educated middle class and elite to obtain land with a European title. Finally, he wanted to protect some neighbourhoods against intrusion by non-indigenous people, in order to stop the process in which poor indigenous people, on the whole the weakest group in society, were driven from the centre to the urban fringe. He therefore approved of the selective use of the national policy (Bijblad 11272 of 1926) that allowed municipalities to prohibit all transfers of Indigenous land to state land (and then European land) in certain selected neighbourhoods (Logemann 1936:9). Logemann’s proposal to allow Indigenous plots to be sold to non-indigenous people would especially benefit the Foreign Oriental and Eurasian permanent residents of Indonesia. Logemann’s ideas found their way into the 1938 Bill on Town Planning in Java, which was drafted by a Commission led by Logemann himself (Toelichting 1938:65-7). Two years before Logemann, the Commission for Landownership of Eurasians (Commissie voor het Grondbezit van Indo-Europeanen), dubbed Commissie Spit after its chairman, had made a similar recommendation. The Commissie Spit had been installed after the IEV had proposed in the Volksraad to make it easier for impecunious Eurasians to purchase land for smallholder agriculture or the construction of a house. The IEV proposal was motivated by worries about loss of income during the Depression. The Commissie Spit noted that poor Eurasian residents found themselves in an awkward position: born in Indonesia and yet not allowed to buy land with an Indigenous title; juridically belonging to the European category, yet often without the financial means to purchase land with a European title. The Commission advised that an exception on the prohibition on selling Indigenous land to non-indigenous persons should be made for financially weak Europeans (not specifically Eurasians) who resided permanently in Indonesia. Indigenous reserves in the cities must assure that sufficient land would remain available for the indigenous population (Commissie voor het Grondbezit 1934b, II:14-6, 1934b, III:3-4). The recommendations of Logemann and the Commissie Spit resembled each other, not least in the sense that noth- V Land tenures 153 ing came of either proposal. Yet it is important to note the different rationale: the Commissie Spit was worried about poor Eurasians and put the emphasis on agricultural land. Logemann did not make restrictions on the racial category or income of prospective buyers of land with an Indigenous title; his goal was sound urban development. Not surprisingly, the IEV reacted very enthusiastically to the recommendations of the Commissie Spit (Onze Stem 15-3-1935). Indigenous councillors in the Volksraad had immediately opposed the idea of installing a Commission for Landownership of Eurasians; several indigenous organizations boycotted the hearings by the Commissie Spit (Commissie voor het Grondbezit 1934b, I:3- 6). The Eurasian response to Logemann’s proposal was mixed. J.H. Schijfsma applauded his ‘clear method’, which abstained from restrictions based on ethnicity. V.W.Ch. Ploegman, in contrast, judged Logemann’s plan did not go nearly far enough to appease the Eurasian desire for landownership. He called Logemann’s proposals, not very eloquently, a matter of ‘sickly compromising‘ (kwakkelend schipperen) (Onze Stem 12-1-1940). Meanwhile, non-indigenous urbanites – well-to-do or poor, Eurasian or not – continued to satisfy their hunger for land by illegally buying land with an Indigenous title.

Japanese rule, which ended the tripartite ‘racial’ categorization of persons in Indonesia, did not end the coexistence of Indigenous and European land titles. The Japanese did not spend much time or thought on land tenure systems, except that they condoned or actively encouraged squatting. During the final years of Dutch administration, legal expert H.W.J. Sonius, in an academic article, subscribed to Logemann’s view, without mentioning Logemann’s name: the European and Indigenous systems of land tenure served the various socio-economic needs of ‘different layers of the population’ (verscheidene bevolkingslagen), Sonius wrote. The dividing line between holders of Indigenous and European titles coincided less and less with ethnic groups. Sonius therefore argued for a continued coexistence of both systems, but predicted, correctly, that the new state would want to unify civil law for Indigenous, Foreign Oriental, and European citizens, in an attempt to leave behind its colonial past and to become a modern state (Sonius 1949). Unification of the agrarian law and elimination of the Indigenous-European distinction was indeed the first objective of the Agrarian Committee appointed by the Republic in 1948 to formulate a national policy (Pelzer 1982:21-2). After Independence, the Indonesian government declared that old laws would remain in force, unless a new regulation was introduced, or unless the old one conflicted with the Constitution. A new regulation that replaced the colonial landownership rules came in the form of the well-known Basic Agrarian Law of 1960. The distinction between Indigenous and European landownership, including the continued use of these labels, therefore 154 Under construction remained in force for more than a decade after the transfer of sovereignty, not only in substantive law, but also in its application in court.23 Even a ban on the issuing of new deeds with a European title was quickly repealed for six of the largest cities (in June 1950), in order not to discourage investors in urban development.24 Yet there were minor changes in the rules about the transfer of a title. Ironically, these changes introduced a semi-racial criterion in agrarian matters, precisely at the time that independent Indonesia ended the racial discrimination of colonial times in many other respects. As is now sufficiently clear, the colonial distinction between European and Indigenous plots was, despite its racial origin, irrespective of the question of which person owned that plot. The post-independence agrarian changes reintroduced a personal element that discriminated against Europeans and Chinese. One example of new racial discrimination concerned Eurasians who became Indonesian citizens, but were initially denied the right to purchase land with an Indigenous title (Antara 3-5-1950/A). The other example concerned non-indigenous residents who were hindered in their attempts to purchase land. Pending the new agrarian law, the Indonesian government feared that too many of the European title deeds sold by departing Dutchmen would fall into foreign hands. In Instruction Hb20/1/15 of 3 June 1947, the head of Agrarian Affairs decreed that a transfer of a European title required the approval of the Mayor (if the transaction took place between indigenous persons) and the Minister of Home Affairs (if a foreigner was involved). The decree remained by and large inconsequential: the only city where the decree applied at the time was Surakarta and three years later it was revoked because of its weak legal basis.25 Despite the formal abrogation of the decree, civil servants were expected to act according to its spirit.26 In 1952 the government issued Emergency Law 1/1952 (confirmed in Law 24/1954), stipulating that the transfer of any plot with a European title needed the approval of the Minister of Justice (Gautama and Harsono 1972:16). An explanatory circular letter left no doubt that Emergency Law 1/1952 applied to everybody,

23 See for instance: Rasman vs. Kotapradja Medan (PN Medan Pdt. 104/1959). 24 Instruksi Menteri Dalam Negeri to all Gubernur, 6-6-1950, no. 5.H.50, Arsip Makassar 1950- 1960 346; see also: Antara 30-4-1951/B, 23-6-1956/A; Djoemadjitin et al. 1977:47. 25 S. Reksodihardjo, Kepala bagian Agraria dan Transmigrasi, Pendjelasan ‘pemindahan barang tetap jang berupa tanah’, 24-4-1948, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 51; Surat edaran Kepala Bagian Agraria 25-7-1950, no. H2/5/3, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 359. The restriction to Surakarta was determined by the reach of Republican rule. 26 Examples of requests to transfer a European title to another owner are found in: letter Perdana Menteri Negara Indonesia Timur, 20-1-1950, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 357; letter Kantor Pendaftaran Tanah Makassar to Abbasbhay and Ahmadbhay, 12-10-1951 (the request is refused), Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 364. V Land tenures 155

Indonesian and non-Indonesian nationals,27 but an ensuing decision by the Minister stipulated that the purchase of land with a European title by a foreigner needed the written approval of the local administrator (in cities this was the Mayor). This decision meant that the execution of Emergency Law 1/1952 and Law 24/1954 discriminated mostly against Chinese nationals as the largest group of prospective foreign buyers (Europeans at the time were sellers, not buyers of land). Actual practice, however, was more lenient than the law: it turned out that the Ministry of Law approved many transfers of deeds to Chinese nationals against the advice of the Mayor concerned. For example, this is the way an abundance of land in Bandung and environs had fallen into the hands of foreigners, who outbid Indonesians (Antara 30-6-1954/ A, 12-1-1955/A, 2-2-1955/A). The Basic Agrarian Law of 1960 finally ruled out the possibility that people without Indonesian nationality could own land (Gautama and Harsono 1972:22). The development of land tenure practices after the promulgation of the Basic Agrarian Law of 1960 sheds more light on the situation prior to 1960. One of the stated aims of the Basic Agrarian Law of 1960 was to revoke the dualism of Indigenous and European titles, which smacked of colonialism. To this effect all existing titles were converted into a uniform system, consisting of 11 different rights to land. The three rights relevant to this chapter are the right of ownership (hak milik), the right to build (hak guna bangunan), and the right to use land for agriculture or buildings (hak pakai). Hak milik was the fullest recognized right; it meant full ownership, which could be freely sold, bequeathed or otherwise transferred. This freehold could be enjoyed only by Indonesian citizens, individually or collectively, and a number of specified legal bodies. Plots with an Indigenous or European title of ownership were automatically converted to the new right of hak milik; consequently both colonial kinds of ownership were unified under one term in the 1960 law.28 On paper the law looked fine, but, contrary to the intentions for which it had been promulgated, the Basic Agrarian Law did not end the legal dualism, and had consequences for legal certainty. If we think of the former distinction between European and Indigenous titles as a difference between formal and informal systems of ownership, not much changed, despite the unification of the terms used. The Basic Agrarian Law stipulated that all land had to be registered at the cadastre. Given the shortage of manpower with the necessary technical skills, compounded by the lack of financial means, registration was a daunting task. Many owners

27 Surat edaran Kementerian Kehakiman tentang pemindahan hak tanah (Lembaran Negara 1952, no. 1) 1-3-1952, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden RI 1950-1959 205. 28 Fitzpatrick 1997:183; Gautama and Harsono 1972:21-4, 31; Gautama and Hornick 1972:82, 86, 90-105; Leaf 1992:109-14. 156 Under construction made a conscious decision not to apply for a cadastral deed, because of the cumbersome procedure and high costs. The former European plots remained ‘islands in the middle of the sea of adat land’.29 The Basic Agrarian Law of 1960 therefore introduced a new dualism between plots that already fell under the new system (mostly former European plots) and plots that had not yet been brought into the system. Whether a plot was registered or not resulted in two very different forms of landownership, each with its own market and a 20-30% price difference for otherwise identical plots.30 This situation continues today. Unregistered land, being cheaper, was used by the public housing sector, whereas the real estate sector focused on registered lots. Sales of unregistered plots took the simple form of an unofficial letter of sale with the neighbourhood head as witness (Dorléans 2000:255-6; Leaf 1992:88, 114, 127-36, 145; Marcussen 1990:98-100). In short, formal and informal systems of ownership continued to serve distinct but complementary functions, as in colonial times.

Local diversity and spatial patterns of land tenure

Apart from the legal difference between Indigenous and European land tenure systems, which was applied throughout the whole Archipelago, systems of land tenure varied enormously from city to city. Tension between national unity and local diversity has haunted Indonesia from the time the Archipelago was first imagined as a whole. At the level of inter-urban comparison, land tenure systems were one of the most important modalities of local variation. Agrarian rules were, in the words of the Head of the Municipal Agrarian Office of Medan, of ‘a bewildering diversity’ (een verbijsterende veelvormigheid, Jansen 1930:145). The Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill on Town Planning speaks of an ‘unsurpassed variety’ (onovertroffen bontheid) (Toelichting 1938:64). Land tenure systems in individual cities must, of course, fit within the broad outlines of national laws presented above, but there was considerable variation in the way the national laws operated in practice in a particular city. The situation on the ground was therefore more complex than the already intri- cate, albeit much simplified, overview of national legislation given above.

29 Gautama and Harsono 1972:31; see also Colombijn 1994:178-9, 193; Slaats and Portier 1990-91:59. The metaphor of islands in a sea of adat land titles was used earlier by K. Mantel in his Nota Departement van Binnenlandsche Zaken, 11-5-1948, attached to letter Voorzitter Financieel Economische Raad to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 22-6-1948, no. F.E.R./A 16, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 618. 30 By 1988 still only about a third of all urban land was registered at the cadastre (Dorléans 2000:255). V Land tenures 157

In assessing the complexity of agrarian rules, the European-Indigenous dichotomy must be broken down into smaller categories of kinds of titles. The subtler categorization is not a clear-cut subdivision of the broad categories European/registered versus Indigenous/not-yet-registered. Several tenure systems did not fit the formal-informal dichotomy. Government land, for instance, was formally registered most of the time, but not always. Squatting, to give another example, was often an informal layer of tenure laid over registered land with a European title.31 Islamic law was an alternative system used to regulate landownership. Wakaf is the term for a donation of land (or other goods) to an Islamic institution for religious purposes (Flieringa 1930:30). Under Islamic law, the land becomes the property of God (Juynboll 1930:277), but in practice this concept of ownership was of course unworkable. In Medan, for instance, the fact that a particular plot was wakaf land was acknowledged, but the question of which mosque organization was in charge was contested. Another plot of wakaf land in Medan became the objective of Chinese squatters until the brief revival of local democracy in the late 1950s, when the Islamic Masjumi party successfully proposed in the municipal council that all illegal buildings on wakaf land be demolished.32 A more common alternative source of law, which was responsible for a great deal of local diversity, was customary (adat) law. The colonial legal expert Van Vollenhoven (1981:44) had distinguished – some people say ‘invented’ (Burns 2004:225) – 19 different adat law areas in the Archipelago. Adat law applied mainly in rural areas, but was also valid in cities with a clear ethnic majority that belonged to one of the 19 recognized adat law areas. The application of adat law of course became complicated in cases of mixed marriages.33 Ethnically speaking most of the larger cities, however, had a very mixed population, so that no specific adat law system was applied. In these cities, Indigenous plots were held by ‘hereditary individual property right’ (erfelijk individueel bezitsrecht). The Basic Agrarian Law of 1960 did not diminish local variation and, contrary to the intentions for which it was drafted, decreased the security of land tenure. Partly as a ‘post-colonial reaction’ and a denunciation of colonial law (Burns 2004:250; Fitzpatrick 1997:172), the Basic Agrarian Law gave adat law

31 For a more extensive overview of local variation of land tenure systems, see Colombijn (forthcoming). 32 Letter Tagor Ginagan, Ketua DPRD Peralihan Kotapradja Medan, to Ketua DPD Peralihan Kotapradja Medan, 4-5-1957, no. 5583/TA-5, Arsip Medan. 33 For instance between a Batak man from Sipirok and his Arab wife, living in Medan. Hadji Mohamad Arifin c.s. vs. Siti Chadidjhah (PN Medan Pdt. 346/1951). For conflicting rules of Minangkabau and Nias adat see Colombijn (1994:192). The coexistence of two or more legal systems gave litigants the chance to go ‘forum shopping’ (Von Benda-Beckmann 1984). 158 Under construction precedence over the Civil Code. The preamble to the law stated that, with reference to the national character of the agrarian law, it should be based on adat; therefore – which is how the legislator supposed adat to be – social functions take precedence over individual needs, even in the case of land held in full ownership (hak milik). Indonesian legal experts outside the state apparatus considered the term adat an empty phrase in this context, because it did not specify which adat law (one of the 19 law areas, or an allegedly common principle of an imaginary ‘national’ adat law?) was intended (Fitzpatrick 1997; Boedi Harsono 1994:141-2, 154-71). Moreover, most of the adat regulations were unwritten and the bar, placing more faith in written statutory law, was frequently at a loss which rule to apply (Gautama and Harsono 1972:24-9). Gautama and Hornick (1972:106) conclude that after 1960 ‘there [was] probably more legal uncertainty about agrarian law and rights in land than there was before enactment of the basic law’. Adat land assumes an extra dimension when it is communal property. One example is provided by the city of Padang (West Sumatra), where the Minangkabau ethnic group form the majority. According to Minangkabau adat, land is the communal property of the female members of a matrilineal (sub-)lineage. Every sale, division, donation, or inheritance of a plot ran the risk of being contested by a sub-lineage member who felt bypassed. Land disputes were often brought to court, and as long as a plot was sub judice neither the real nor the would-be owner could sell the plot or build on it. Many people preferred to purchase plots with European titles found along main roads in order to avoid the hassles. Land continued to be owned communally in Padang throughout the twentieth century (Colombijn 1994:182-202). The diffused competence to decide about communal land also caused problems in the second largest West Sumatran city, Bukittinggi.34 Another type of communal landownership, called kelakeran, was found in the city of Manado (North Sulawesi). Kelakeran land consisted of a whole kampong in the urban centre, owned communally by one of the districts in the hinterland of Manado, from where the first settlers established in the kampong originated (Nas 1985). Another type of land based on tradition is aristocratic land. For instance, two sultanates owned land in Cirebon, on which they prohibited kampong improvement in colonial times.35 Local aristocratic rulers claimed a considerable share of urban land in Yogyakarta and Medan. In these two cities, access to most land was mediated via the local ruling family, but this possibility was only open to the ruler’s subjects, who thus benefited from positive dis-

34 Laporan Harun Junus, Acting Walikota Bukittinggi, 2-4-1952 and 3-4-1952, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden RI 1950-1959 847. 35 Conferentie Kampongverbetering 11-2-1928, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1395. V Land tenures 159 crimination.36 Europeans and Chinese persons who used land falling under the Sultan of Yogyakarta were deemed unauthorized occupants.37 The Sultan of Deli in Medan was not as hegemonic as the Sultan of Yogyakarta, but he nominally claimed a considerable part of the city as his ancestral domain. Sultan’s grants were given to his Malay subjects, who had often already occupied a plot for considerable time. A sultan’s grant merely acknowledged an existing situation, and the Sultan, despite his claim to an ancestral domain, had no authority to dispose of the land. The grants were handwritten in Arabic script, and later printed on standard forms. After the system had been running for some time a registration of the grants was commenced, although not meticulously maintained. A sultan’s grant could only be transferred to another person with the permission of the Sultan; any sale or other form of transfer was written on the actual grant, and if necessary a second sheet of paper was glued to the original. If a plot was split, as often happened in the course of urbanization, the grant was not split and all the different parts were recorded on one single grant; only one of the owners kept the grant, with the names of the owners of all the other plots which had been split off. The situation in Medan was further complicated by so-called Deli Maatschappij grants and controleur’s grants, which were found in no city outside North Sumatra. The Deli Maatschappij was the most powerful tobacco company in North Sumatra and much of the urban land belonged to the concession that the Deli Maatschappij had obtained from the Sultan of Deli. A map dated 189538 shows that almost the whole urban centre (roughly the area between the racetrack and the Deli River) was under long lease to the Deli Maatschappij. In the 1880s the Deli Maatschappij had already begun to divide up its concession and give out parcels of land with a Deli Maatschappij grant (valid for as long as its own concession would last) to employees and others who wished to build a house. These two kinds of grants were at best difficult or impossible to obtain by those European, Chinese, Indian, and non-Malay indigenous residents who were neither subjects of the Sultan nor

36 In Yogyakarta, the Sultan claimed ownership of the land, but bestowed apanages on kin and servants. People could obtain a plot of urban land on the condition that they built a compound and provided services either to the Sultan or to the apanage holder. On 1 January 1925 the Sultan resumed possession of the urban apanages. All legal users of land (subjects of the sultan) received an indigenous title deed. The four kampongs that surrounded the royal palace (keraton) held a special position, in the sense that property was not freely alienable: a transfer of the title required royal approval. Schwencke 1932; Bousquet, Nota betreffende den rechtstoestand van den grond ter hoofdplaats Djokjakarta, Djokjakarta, April 1918, KIT; E.M. Stork, Overgang van Inlandsche grondrechten in het gewest Jogjakarta, 10-8-1936, KIT. 37 Daftar dari tanah-tanah Negeri Kasoeltanan Jogjakarta jang dipakai dengan pertjoema oleh orang-orang bangsa Europa; idem bangsa Tionghoa, 1931-1940, ANRI, Kementerian Dalam Negeri 1945-1949 122. 38 Wegennet der gemeente Medan 1895. 160 Under construction employed by the Deli Maatschappij. Even Tjong A Fie, a well-known property owner in colonial Medan, who allegedly owned half of the housing stock in the 1920s, did not own land in the city.39 Controleur’s grants were issued by the colonial state to this residual category of newcomers who had obtained a plot of land, but no concomitant grant from the Sultan. A central register of the controleur’s grants was kept, but confusion about names in this register compromised its reliability. One person could have grants with spelling variants, for example the dutchified Oei Tjoe Weh and anglicized Whee Chew Way referred to the same Chinese person. Another grant was in the name of a certain Ariam J. Jespi; it turned out it belonged to the Indian owner of a firm called R.M.A.S.P.40 The situation with three kinds of grants plus some lands with an ordinary European title under the Civil Code was unsatisfactory. After 13 years of deliberation between the national government, the autonomous state of Deli and Serdang, and the municipal administration of Medan a solution was reached: per 1 January 1919, the state of Deli and Serdang donated all the land within the municipal boundaries to the municipality. Excluded from the deal were: the Sultan’s kampong (Kota Matsum) and another kampong; the land already belonging to the national government; and the land of the Deli Spoorwegmaatschappiji (Deli Railway Company). One consequence of the donation was that all subjects of the autonomous state of Deli-Serdang became subjects of the colonial state, except in Kota Matsum and the other remaining Sultan’s kampong.41 The donation of about 1,000 hectares put Medan in the luxurious position (compared to other municipalities) of controlling most lands within its borders. This position improved even more propitiously in 1921, when the Deli Maatschappij gave two of its concessions to the municipality, one within the municipal boundaries, the other for the planned urban expansion of Polonia. The donations had the advantage that henceforth all Sultan’s, Deli Maatschappij and controleur’s grants were based on municipal property, which itself had a secure European title. It became possible to exchange an old grant for a European deed of building rights (recht van opstal), regulated by the Civil Code with the concomitant security of explicit, written rules

39 Dirk Buiskool and Tuanku Luckman Sinar, personal communication. 40 Jansen 1925:17-69, 99-103; Kampoengrapport 1924:6-7; Tengku Luckman Sinar 2000. Not only the confusion about the spelling of names, but also the English word ‘grant’ (also spelled geran) betrays the British influence in Medan, which in many respects felt closer to the Straits Settlements than to Java. 41 Kota Matsum and the other Sultan’s kampong were finally handed over to the municipality in 1952. Letter Kepala Bagian Agraria, Menteri Dalam Negeri to Gubernur Sumatera Utara, 15-4- 1952, no. Agr. 27/1/44, attached to letter A.B. Schlette to Pen. Usaha Pekerdjaan Kota, 25-4-1952, no. 4571/TA-10, Arsip Medan. See also Loderichs et al. 1997:25. V Land tenures 161 and a surveyor’s certificate (meetbrief). In practice, few people transferred the grants to a deed of building rights. Most people preferred the ease and informality of sales of grants to the convoluted and costly registration of recht van opstal at the cadastre. Even big companies invested in expensive buildings on land with only a grant.42 The complexities on the ground are shown on a map of Medan from 1919.43 The map presents different claims to land, including the requested expansion of the municipality (12% of the total of 1,583 hectares on this map). The main categories are: 16% Sultan’s neighbourhoods (sultanskampongs) including the premises of the Sultan himself; 7% land of the Deli Maatschappij; 4% government land in use by the Deli Railway Company; 3% government land; and 0.1% land owned by the Javasche Bank. The remaining 60% was bezwaarde gemeente-grond: the land the municipality had just received from the Sultan and also the land to which individuals could lay a claim based on a sultan’s, controleur’s, or Deli Maatschappij grant. Another form of tenure in which companies played a large role were the private estates with seigniorial rights (particuliere landerijen) found in the environs of Java’s port cities: Batavia (and, further inland, Buitenzorg [Bogor]), Semarang, and Surabaya, and also near Makassar. The estates were established in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, when the Dutch and English East India Companies granted and sold large tracts of land with seigniorial rights to retired Dutch officials and well-to-do Chinese. The labourers were tied to the estates, as serfs or as kampong residents, with limited freedom of movement. Colonial planners of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries deemed the large estates at the urban fringe ideal building land, because extensive tracts could be developed as one whole. An early example is the Kepoetran Development Corporation (NV Bouwmaatschappij Kepoetran), established in 1888, to develop the Kepoetran estate on the outskirts of Surabaya. The fly in the ointment was that a double layer of tenure rights formed a problem for the development of these estates: the owner was prohibited to sell his estate as building land as long as peasants held the right to cultivate the land (oesaharech- ten), whereas the peasants who tilled the soil, for their part, were not allowed to build a house on the plot without the consent of the owner of the estate.44

42 Security of the grants was somewhat enhanced by a central registration of the three kinds of grants at the municipal Department of Agrarian Affairs; the registration of European titles remained at the cadastre. Jansen 1925:70-94; Kampoengrapport 1924:8-11; Note W. van der Vegt, Kepala Urusan Tanah Kota Medan, 27-11-1950, no. 984/850, appendix to letter Djaidin Purba, Walikota Medan, to Gubernur Sumatera Utara, 23-10-1951, no. 5934/TA-, Arsip Medan. 43 Gemeente Medan 1919; also published in Jansen 1925: opposite page 112, and in Jansen 1930:151. For a similar map of Surabaya in 1920, see Van Roosmalen 2008:85. 44 Bosma and Raben 2003:99-103; Dick 2002a:355-6, 2002d:114-7; Heemstra 1940; Jansen 1930:152-4; Logemann 1936:20. 162 Under construction

In 1910, the central government adopted the policy of purchasing these estates, not only for the benefit of urban development, but also because the seigniorial rights had been considered outdated since the nineteenth century.45 About 540,000 hectares of land was bought up between 1912 and the Japanese invasion. The returning Dutch colonial government renewed the repurchase policy after the Second World War. In 1949 a commission with representatives of the state and 43 large estates in the environs of Jakarta, west of the River Cimanuk, negotiated a standard agreement. Most estates were limited liability companies run by Chinese directors. The state thereby acquired another 464,000 hectares. A few estates near Jakarta and Bogor were exempted from this agreement. The commission was also unable to strike a deal with the owners of estates east of the River Cimanuk, that is the estates near Semarang and Surabaya. All the latter estates were smaller, were dispersed, and held a variety of seigniorial rights, so that negotiations had to be undertaken on an individual basis. Another unresolved problem was a large number of small estates, within the municipal territories of Jakarta, Semarang and Surabaya, known as stadslanden.46 After the transfer of sovereignty, urban governments turned their attention to deciding the best way to acquire the remaining estates. At first the administration was optimistic the anachronistic institution would be abolished by mid-1952. The administrations of Jakarta, Bogor, Semarang, Surabaya, and Makassar obtained more estates piece by piece. On two occasions the national parliament also debated about the most desirable way to end this institution. Lack of state funds was one obstacle to the outright purchasing of estates; unwillingness to give up rights on the side of the landowners, and governmental indecisiveness about whether wholesale nationalization or negotiated acquisition would be the best solution delayed the matter. In 1956 213 estates (15,000 hectares in total) still remained in private hands.47 In 1958

45 Letter Secretaris van Staat, Binnenlandse Zaken, 9-7-1948, no. A.Z. 12/2/47, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 610; Kort verslag vergadering Voorlopige Federale Regering 16-2-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 610. See also Gautama and Harsono 1972:5-7; Leaf 1992:102, 104. 46 Ontwerp-besluit 8-4-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 610; letter H. van der Wal, Secretaris van Staat voor Binnenlandse Zaken to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 19-12-1949, no. A.Z. 12/5/12, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 610; letter C.M. Dieudonné, Waarnemend Voorzitter Aankoopcommissie, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 20-12-1949, no. APP/251/16922, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 610. As far as the different sizes are concerned, according to figures from January 1949, the average size of 54 estates near Jakarta (west of the River Cimanuk) was 7,527 hectares, but the average size of 14 estates east of the River Cimanuk was only 490 hectares, or 1/15 of the estates near Jakarta. The average size of the 109 stadslanden was 65 hectares (Antara 29-6-1950/B). 47 See for the most important steps in the protracted process: Antara 21-1-1951/A, 30-12- 1952/B, 15-1-1953/B, 13-2-1953/B, 14-2-1953/B, 18-2-1953/B, 6-5-1953/A, 30-4-1954/A, 14-1-1955/B, 24-6-1955/B, 12-2-1956/A-B, 23-11-1956/B. V Land tenures 163 the government of the Republic of Indonesia enacted a law concerning the liquidation of private estates; the remaining estates became state land and financial compensation was set unilaterally by the state. The Basic Agrarian Law of 1960 shut the door on the remaining estates by restricting the size of a landholding to a maximum (Dick 2002b:120; Gautama and Harsono 1972:5-6; Leaf 1992:104, 120). The last example of a form of tenure found only in some cities and not others was a form of Indigenous title with the highest security, called agrarisch eigendom. The title was acknowledged only in Java and Madura and was found there only occasionally (Toelichting 1938:64). Agrarisch eigendom (literally: agrarian property) was a deed obtained for a plot of Indigenous land already long in use by the owner, which judicially was state domain (but not free state domain). In the application procedure, the plot was first carefully surveyed and then the Court of Justice (Landraad) gave public notification of the intended registration of agrarisch eigendom. If nobody objected within a period of three months, the application was approved (Koninklijk Besluit 16-4-1872, Staatsblad voor Nederlandsch-Indië 117/1872). However, the application procedure could arouse dormant conflicts about ownership, because a would-be owner was alerted by the public notification.48 The Bandung Court of Justice abounds with applications in Bandung and smaller towns in West Java from 1921-1941, and from 1948-1959, which were all honoured. Deeds of agrarisch eigendom were sometimes used as collateral for a mortgage, and in this respect enjoyed a security equal to a European plot of land.49 The prohibition on selling Indigenous land to non-indigenous persons applied to agrarisch eigendom as usual. In a nutshell, the different forms of tenure resulted in a high degree of legal pluralism (Hooker 1975). Some tenure systems were unique to one place or to just a few cities. Not only the mere existence of a distinctive tenure system, but also spatial patterns of tenure systems caused differences between Indonesian cities. For instance, the large private estates with seigniorial rights, which were only found in the coastal cities of North Java and near Makassar, facilitated large-scale development at the urban fringe such that Javanese ports grew into the biggest cities in the country. Local variation was also found in the different proportion of forms of tenure; for example, just before the Japanese invasion, 42% of the land in Batavia had a European

48 For instance Raden Hadji Asikin vs. Raden Widjajaatmadja (PN Bandung, Landraad Bandoeng 4/1925) and Raden Hadji Asikin vs. Raden Widjajaatmadja (PN Bandung, Agrarisch Eigendom 2/1927). 49 See, for instance: Landraad Bandoeng 6/1924, appendix to Akte Eigendom Agraria 1/1958, Hypotheekakte 241/1940, Hypotheekakte 253/1941 (PN Bandung, Agrarisch Eigendom); Akta Hypotheek PN Bandung 1/1953 (PN Bandung, Acten Hypotheek). 164 Under construction title and 49% had an individually owned Indigenous title; in Semarang these shares were respectively 8% and 70% (Centraal Kantoor voor de Statistiek 1941:27). Local variation in tenure systems had consequences for the degree of insecurity that residents of the different cities experienced during the Japanese period and the Indonesian Revolution.

Insecurity of land tenure during decolonization

During decolonization, security of tenure of individual plots was imper- illed, because the rule of law was eroded. The conventional wisdom that land ‘has always been one of the safest forms of investment in politically unstable situations’ (Evers 1984:483) needs qualifying in the case of the Indonesian Revolution. The Japanese occupation and the change of regime in 1945 increased insecurity of land tenure. Some owners were interned or had to flee their property when the fortunes of war turned against them, and when they returned later, they often found that others had illegally occupied their land or house. The risk of illegal occupation was magnified by the temporary suspension of the registration of title deeds at the cadastre towards the end of the Japanese occupation and the beginning of the Revolution. Enforcement of legal protection of land tenure and private ownership of land decreased. When peace had more or less been restored, a score of court cases demonstrate that owners had to fight hard, and not always successfully, to regain control of their land. These court cases each form a micro-history of a plot of land; taken together the cases provide insight into changes in the use of urban space.50 A major cause of legal uncertainty that could be expected to be encountered soon after 1945, when corruption was proliferating rapidly in the civil service, was subversion in the law courts. Corruption in the courts has been a major cause of legal uncertainty in Indonesia for decades, but was it already prevalent in the 1940s and 1950s? The Dutch lawyer R.F.E.M. Romme, who worked in Medan until 1961, gives a rare glimpse (in Romme 1962) of a topic that is not often exposed to the light of day. He states adamantly that he had no personal experience of or had ever observed corruption in court; nor had any judge ever asked him for a bribe. Romme’s testimony can be deemed trustworthy, because as a lawyer he had frequent dealings with the court, spoke frankly about other abuses, and, having returned to the Netherlands permanently, could not have had any self-interest in protecting his relation-

50 Court cases form the primary, but not sole, source of information of this section. I collected 28 land disputes from the files of the Medan Court of Justice, covering the period 1951-1959, and a few cases from Bandung. The cases were not selected at random, but by a method called ‘theoretical sampling’, looking for interesting variations (Glaser and Strauss 1967). V Land tenures 165 ships with officials in the Medan court.51 He points out another weakness, namely that the majority of judges did not have a degree in law. This lack of expertise caused much delay, Romme (1962:9) maintains, because judges found it difficult to explain the reasoning upon which their decisions were taken. In the absence of other evidence of corruption and on the basis of Romme’s positive denial of corruption, the law courts of the 1950s deserve the benefit of the doubt.52 Nevertheless, there still remained many other causes of insecurity of land tenure. The Japanese period created insecurity of individual ownership (European eigendom, Indigenous ownership, and sultan’s grants) in five ways. First, overnight the Japanese prohibited the sale of land or houses. This prohibition was a sudden and severe restriction on property rights, which mostly affected land with a European title registered at the cadastre. A year later, the ban was lifted for transactions between indigenous persons.53 After transfers of land with a European title were forbidden, and the staff at the cadastre sat twiddling their thumbs, they began to register urban land with an Indigenous title (Asia Raya 12-6-2603). This experimental registration might have improved the security of Indigenous titles, but it was not pursued for long. A second, larger infringement on property rights occasionally occurred when the Japanese government took privately owned land (with an Indigenous or a European title) without payment or at a price below the market. Fear of the Japanese compelled the owners to sell. After the Japanese defeat, these plots, which had formally become state property, were returned to the original owner under the Ordinance on Legal Rehabilitation (Ordonnantie Herstel Rechtsverkeer, Staatsblad 70/1947). However, at least in Jakarta, the government gave low priority to carrying out the policy of returning land to the original owner.54 Even when the land was returned, not all the problems of the original owner were solved, as is exemplified by the following Kafkaesque experience from Makassar. In 1948 (or 1945, this is unclear) Tjoa Tjiong Koang received back a plot of land and a brick house that had been occupied by a Japanese official. In 1943 the Japanese official had permitted

51 Romme was talking about civil cases; criminal cases were usually bought off (afgekocht) before they were tried, but Romme does not make clear at what stage. 52 When I studied lawsuits about land in the 1980s (Colombijn 1994:191-202), many decisions were impossible to understand unless it was assumed that corruption interfered with the rule of law. I have not found similar blatant violations against juridical logic in the 1950s. 53 The ban on the sale of immovable property was first issued and then partly lifted town by town in Java (Asia Raya 12-11-2602, 19-1-2603, 14-5-2603, 9-6-2603), but it was probably implemented throughout the island. It is unclear whether the ban applied to Sumatra and Eastern Indonesia as well. 54 Antara 22-2-1951/B; Berita Indonesia 7-9-1951; Surat edaran Kementerian Dalam Negeri, Jogjakarta, 9-5-1950, no. H.20/5/7, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 346. 166 Under construction

Figure 20. A contested shop (kedai). Source: Wan Zainal vs. Fah Mie and Hap Ho (Pengadilan Tinggi Medan Pdt. 275/1954, in PN Medan Pdt. 395/1954). an Indonesian man, Rachman, to build a bamboo dwelling on the land, and Tjoa wanted to demolish this bamboo hut. In 1952 Tjoa filed a court case, demanding first that Rachman leave the bamboo house, and second that he, Tjoa, be allowed to buy the bamboo dwelling, as under the Board for Legal Rehabilitation (Raad Rechtsherstel) a landowner had the first right to buy buildings constructed by the Japanese on his property. The court of justice found in favour of Tjoa’s first demand, that Rachman had to leave, but not the second. In 1959 Tjoa Tjiiong Koang was still attempting to purchase the bamboo shed, which was very ramshackle by that time, and he experienced espe- cial difficulty in finding out which government department was responsible for the sale. At last he found out, but when he sent a letter to the commission concerned in the national capital, he received a reply that the commission had been terminated in April 1960.55

55 Tjoa Tjiong Koang vs. Rachman (PN Makassar Pdt. 922/1952) and various correspondence, all found in: Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 333. V Land tenures 167

The third reason why landownership did not come unscathed through the Japanese period was the loss of title deed. Deeds were also lost during the Indonesian Revolution. One person in Medan sadly lost written proof of his claimed land during the transfer of documents from the Japanese court of justice, Tiho Hoin, to the Dutch court.56 After the war, owners asked for an authenticated copy.57 Lists of lost deeds were regularly published in the local newspaper or municipal newsletter, presumably in an effort to retrace the deeds.58 If the records of the cadastre were still complete, the loss of a deed should not have posed an insurmountable problem, because a copy was kept at the cadastre. However, the loss of a deed in combination with other factors could make a conflict complicated. Factors that exacerbated matters when the deed was lost were, for example, the partition of houses while the land remained undivided (so that after a partition family members remained involved in each other’s property) or a rental relationship carried over to the next generation, when it could no longer be remembered whether the occupant rented or owned a building. Whatever the intricacies, the problem always came down to poorly registered ownership (Figure 20).59 Not only were individual landowners bereft of papers, the cadastre itself could also lose its archive of deeds. The archives of the cadastre in Semarang, Pekalongan, Ambon, and Tanjung Pinang were destroyed either completely or almost completely. People were temporarily denied access to the cadastral archive of Padang, because it had been moved to the interior of Sumatra during the Second World War, to a place that was beyond the control of the Dutch-dominated city administration during the Indonesian Revolution.60 The fourth problem that emerged during the Japanese period and continued for some time thereafter was the malfunctioning of the cadastre. The Japanese had replaced the Dutch cadastral system with an organization with ten offices in Java and a head cadastral bureau in Jakarta,61 but it is not clear whether this organization differed from its precursor only in name or also in how it functioned. In 1945 the normal transfer of titles at the cadastre was tem-

56 Letter Secretaris van Staat Departement van Justitie to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, Batavia, 16-11-1949, no. JN 4.3/3/21, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 609. 57 See, for example, the request of the NV Administratiekantoor Kamerlingh Onnes (PN Medan, Pdt. 139/1950, Pdt. 140/1950), or several specimens from 1948 in KITLV, H 11562. 58 For instance, Letter Setia Usaha to various newspapers, 3-2-1950; Maklumat 4, 30-4-1952, Arsip Medan; Madjalah Kota Medan 3(19) (1956):30-1. 59 Wan Zainal vs. Fah Mie, Hap Ho (PN Medan Pdt. 395/1954), Wan Zainal vs. Fah Mie, Hap Ho (Pengadilan Tinggi Medan Pdt. 275/1954, in PN Medan Pdt. 395/1954). 60 Rondschrijven H. van der Wal, Secretaris van Staat, Binnenlandse Zaken, 14-9-1948, no. A.Z.26/1/50, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 609. 61 Java Year Book 1944 [translated from the Japanese], The Judicature and the police, NA, NEFIS/CMI 3837. 168 Under construction porarily suspended (Staatsblad 139/1945); early in 1947 the suspension was revoked, but because of a lack of trained staff it would take some time before the cadastre functioned normally again.62 In 1941 the cadastre employed 297 persons and in April 1947 the number was down to 159 (although the number of high-ranking staff was almost the same: 46 and 45) (Jaarboekje voor de amtenaren 1941:40-57; Jaarboekje van het kadaster 1947:4-10). When new but inexperienced civil servants were employed, the uniformity of procedures (a vital goal of a reliable cadastre) was threatened.63 Some people tried to make use of the suspension of the registration of land transfers. For example, on 23 November 1945 a certain J.N. Souhouka sold a plot of land in Medan with a sultan’s grant to Mohamad Jahja Nasution. Nasution paid a sum of ƒ 5,000 using Japanese war money. At that time the cadastre had not yet begun to record land transactions again. When the cadastre was up and running again, Nasution repeatedly asked Souhouka to have the title deed transferred to his name. Souhouka refused. In court Souhouka first played delaying tactics. Then he recognized the receipt of ƒ 5,000, but claimed the money had been spent on a new tyre for his motorcycle. The court remarked that a payment of ƒ 5,000 for a tyre was ridiculous, ruled that the sale was legal, and ordered the title to be transferred to Nasution’s name. The Court of Appeal, however, reached the decision that it was unclear whether the ƒ 5,000 had been the full sum of the land transaction, and overturned the decision of the Court of First Instance.64 Nasution did not obtain the deed. The fifth source of legal uncertainty arose when the Japanese administration, and later the Indonesian Republic, allowed, indeed even encouraged, people to squat on private land.65 Landowners were faced with the problem of how to protect their property against intruders in a chaotic time. Sometimes landowners turned to the local administration for help (in Makassar).66 Sometimes a landowner commenced litigation against squatters (in Medan). When the landowner won his case, it was no guarantee that the squatters would comply with the verdict, or, if they did observe the

62 Rondschrijven Hoofdkantoor van het Kadaster 440/47, 18-3-1947, KITLV, H 11562. 63 Kennisgeving Hoofdkantoor van het Kadaster 3823/49, 21-10-1949, KITLV, H 11561. 64 Mohamad Jahja Nasution vs. J.N. Souhouka (PN Medan Pdt. 143/1950); Souhouka vs. Nasution (Pengadilan Tinggi Medan Pdt. 175/1951, in PN Medan Pdt. 143/1950). For another conflict that was partly triggered by the fact that the cadastre did not record changes of ownership, see Muhammad Jusuf vs. Tengku Harun, Intjik Harmah binti Harun (PN Medan Pdt. 104/1950). 65 Squatting is discussed extensively in Chapter VI taking the perspective of the squatters; here the focus is on the implications for the rightful landowners. 66 Letter I. M. Sidik to Walikota Makassar, 30-1-1953; letter A. Halim to DPRD Makssar, 6-2- 1953; letter Walikota to Direktur Pekerdjaan Umum Kota Pradja Makassar, 5-1-1954, no. DC/P/ No.1 GCP/Z; letter S. Daeng Ti’no to Walikota Makassar 11-2-1959; all in Arsip Makassar 1950- 1960 329. V Land tenures 169 court ruling, other squatters might quickly step in to take the vacated place (Madjalah Kota Medan 3(21) 1956:9). A remarkable number of Chinese and Indian persons were involved as plaintiffs or defendants in these court cases in Medan.67 The reason for this over-representation is unclear: had they been targeted by squatters more regularly, did they lack other, informal means to solve a land dispute, or did they lack the political connections to have squatters removed by the police? Some landowners used thugs, who might be dressed as soldiers, to chase squatters from their land.68 The loss of land and house looms large in the memory of Eurasians who were forced to leave Indonesia and move to the Netherlands. It is possible that the main victims of the squatting were Eurasians, Chinese, and Indians, who resided permanently in Indonesia and had invested in a house, if they could afford it. The property was a kind of insurance for old age. The European elite was often transferred from city to city, usually lived in rental dwellings, and was therefore less affected by squatting. If the assumption that Eurasians and Chinese were targeted because of their ethnicity is correct, indigenous house owners must have been spared, and also Arabs, because of their Muslim faith. Occupying the land of Eurasians and Chinese had a ring of revolutionary zeal. Nevertheless, I have found extremely sparse written evidence for the assumption that Eurasians, or Europeans for that matter, were particularly under attack. In one case, I found that a person with a European name, Hendrikus Gerrit, went to court to reclaim land that had been illegally taken by an Indonesian and then sold to a third party. However, the same Indonesian man, Satroamidjojo, had taken one or two adjacent plots not belonging to Europeans and there is no reason to believe that Hendrikus Gerrit’s land had been targeted because of his being European. Satroamidjojo had probably just profited from the legal uncertainty at that time.69 In another case of illegal occupation of Dutch-owned land it is equally unclear whether the owner had been targeted because of being European (Colombijn 1994:176). In a third

67 Ramasamy Pillay c.s. vs. Sutan Ahmad (PN Medan Pdt. 445/1952); Oen Soen Bie vs. Tan Hong Nga (PN Medan 576/1952); Sheik Said vs. Kotapradja Medan, Arsianus Hutadjulu (PN Medan Pdt. 164/1959); Tengku Agus Meymoon, Tengku Zamzam vs. Fawdja Singh (PN Medan 191/1959); Wong Tjin Ngian vs. seorang Tionghoa (PN Medan 205/1959); Wong Tjin Ngian vs. seorang India Sikh (PN Medan 206/1959). See also Harian Rakjat 17-12-1953. In another case a company of limited liability sued squatters, NV Inacco vs. Djojo (PN Medan Pdt. 618/1957). 68 Letter Karim to Kepala Perusahaan Tanah dan Rumah Kotapradja Surabaya, December 1959, Arsip Surabaya Box 2356, no. 752. 69 Hendrikus Gerrit vs. Satroamidjojo, Lai Lun (PN Medan Pdt. 165/1952) astray in PN Medan Pdt. 107/1952; see also Direkteur N.V. Administratiekantoor Kamerlingh Onnes vs. Satroamidjojo, Lai Lun (PN Medan Pdt. 165[sic]/1952); Arif Lubis vs. Satroamidjojo, Tambunan (PN Medan Pdt. 190/1952). 170 Under construction example, a Dutch woman who had moved to the Netherlands requested the mediation of the Lieutenant Governor-General in selling her two plots of land with brick houses and a swimming pool in Yogyakarta to the Indonesian army, TRI; she believed the TRI had occupied the houses.70 Pending more evidence, all in all, the robbery of immovable property from Europeans, which is an important historical trope in colonial memories, was perhaps in reality not very frequent. What is more, as the story of Carl Weisberg below will demonstrate, Europeans occasionally occupied land belonging to indigenous people. The fact that there is no abundant hard proof that Eurasians or Europeans were particular targets to be robbed of their land and house does not alter another fact: to those persons who did lose immovable property in the Japanese occupation and Indonesian Revolution, this loss – mingled with feelings of uncertainty, fear, physical suffering, and bereavement because of the loss of friends and relatives – could be very traumatic. Private persons were not the only culprits; the state also created uncertainty for landowners after the transfer of sovereignty.71 As already noted, the state issued new regulations that changed the relationship of owners to their property. After independence the sale of land with a European title to non- indigenous people was controlled. The state also caused unrest when it promulgated the Basic Agrarian Law of 1960. The precedence of Indonesian adat over statutory law of European origin produced legal uncertainty because adat law was only partly codified. Moreover, foreign owners of freehold (eigendom), mostly Chinese, saw the status of their title reduced to long lease by the Basic Agrarian Law. State interventions also impinged on individual plots. Private land was sometimes claimed by the state for the common good. The colonial administration usually offered fair compensation for such land.72 An extraordinarily

70 Letter A. Kingma to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, Den Burg, 12-5-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 609. 71 Moreover, the usual fights about land, fights unrelated to decolonization, continued to take place after 1949, for instance quarrels about an inheritance between the wife and siblings of a deceased man (Udo Semito, Sugi vs. Sartinem [PN Medan Pdt. 172/1951], Hadji Mohamad Arifin c.s. vs. Siti Chadidjhah [PN Medan Pdt. 346/1951]), between different branches of a family (Mohamad Saleh vs. Hadji Mohammas Jusuf [PN Medan Pdt. 51/1952]), between two adopted sons of a Chinese couple (Oen Tjin Goan alias Oen Tjeng Hai vs. Oen Tjeng Kang [PN Medan Pdt. 662/1957]), or between the sons of a Chinese testator on the one hand and the daughters on the other hand (Lien Eng Sieuw c.s. vs. Lie Seng Tjeng c.s. [PN Medan Pdt. 619/1957]). 72 In 1940, to give one illustration, the administration of Makassar attempted to expropriate houses near the seashore to prepare the coastal defence; the state offered fair compensation, but people were not forced to accept it (letter Walikota Makassar to Ketua Penguasa Perang Sulawesi Selatan/Tenggara, 5-7-1958, no. 1413/KP, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 381; Keterangan Dewan Pemerintah Kotabesar Makassar, [1958], Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 203); a former kampong head, however, gives a different version of the story (Surat Keterangan Dande Daeng Liong, Bekas Kepala Kampung Maloku Makassar, 28-6-1954, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 203). On com- V Land tenures 171 large amount of urban land was needed for the Senayan Stadium and additional facilities, constructed for the Asian Games of 1962. The first thousand people were moved in November 1959 with transportation offered by the government. Whereas it had been expected that one family would need one truck for its belongings, it appeared that some families needed up to 11 truck- loads simply to shift the building materials of the demolished dwelling.73 Buying out all the residents was clearly going to take too much time. The government promulgated a law for the acquisition of private land for a public purpose in 1961 (Law on Expropriation 20/1961). It was used immediately to displace some 47,000 residents, and this forced move was further legitimized by the proclamation of martial law (Leaf 1992:140). In sum, even European civil law did not provide full security of tenure during decolonization, but nonetheless plots with an Indigenous title were the most vulnerable property. Plots with Indigenous titles became easy prey for swindlers when the land was left unattended in the turmoil. For instance, in 1941 a certain Madkasim sold a plot of land of 3,600 sq m on the outskirts of Bandung to Raden Adikoesoemah. Adikoesoemah fled from his land when the Japanese came, but a guard kept an eye on the land during the Japanese period. The guard himself fled in 1945 when the Indonesian army (Badan Keamanan Rakjat) arrived. Adikoesoemah died in 1948 and when his widow returned to the land next year, she found it was occupied by a Dutchman, Carl Weisberg. According to a witness, Madkasim had sold the same plot to Weisberg earlier that year.74 In a sample of cases filed at the Court of Justice of Medan after 1945, there appears to be a disproportionate number of cases about land held with a sultan’s grant.75 This finding suggests that the titles with a sultan’s grant were on especially shaky ground after the political decolonization. The validity of the sultan’s grants rested in part on the authority of the Sultan. He was held in high esteem during Dutch colonial times and the respect felt for him remained intact during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia. After the proclamation of Independence, most royal families in Sumatra were discredited as colonial henchmen; many aristocrats were murdered. The social revolution in

pensation by the colonial state, see also Colombijn (1994:296-7) in Padang and the development of Kebayoran Baru, discussed in Chapter VIII. 73 Laporan bulanan Dewan Asian Games IV 1962, Bagian Urusan Tanah, November 1959, ANRI, Soetikno Lukito Disastro 1959-1960 8. 74 J.D. Raden Anon Saribanon Binti Raden Toha and children vs. Pemerintah Republik Indonesia [4 functionaries], Carl Weisberg, M. Marsidi (PN Bandung Pdt. 247/G/1989, stored at Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara Bandung). 75 Less than a quarter of the deeds in Medan were a sultan’s grant (in 1927) (Flieringa 1930:215), but more than half of the court cases about land dealt with a sultan’s grant. Note, though, that this was not a random sample, but one based on theoretical sampling. 172 Under construction

Sumatra weakened the status of the Sultan of Deli and may have eroded the value of a sultan’s grant. Many Minangkabau and Mandailing migrants came to Medan from outside the region and settled on the sultan’s land without his formal consent. These migrants from other parts of Sumatra did not have the same reverence for the Sultan as did the indigenous Malay population. The Sultan for his part no longer had the power to resist the newcomers and was happy enough that they acknowledged his status as landowner.76 Squatting always forms a second layer over another title, such as state land or private property. Squatting can also be interpreted as a form of tenure in its own right. The increase in squatting, detailed in the next chapter, can then be seen as the most important change in the tenure system during decolonization. The illegally occupied plots could subsequently be traded and the insecure title was a source of anxiety for people who obtained the plot from the first squatter.77 The private estates with seigniorial rights (particuliere landerijen) formed a system of land tenure that could not survive without the protection of the colonial state. The system was already outdated long before Independence, when the colonial government began to buy up estates. The Japanese army took control of the estates, starting from 1 July 1942, and distributed the land to people (Asia Raya 21-9-2602, 9-11-2602, 2-10-2602, 20-11-2602). After the war, the new occupants were with hindsight considered squatters. Although the estates were formally returned to the pre-war owner after the Japanese surrender, many squatters remained on the land uncertain about their legal rights. In the 1990s, these plots were the ones most easily manipulated by the Jakarta administration in its attempt to plan the city (Leaf 1992:106-7). Michael Leaf (1992:103) postulates that in the late 1940s and 1950s much of the private estate land ‘passed from foreign hands into the control of wealthy [...] Indonesians, [...] military officers or other well-connected individuals’. If Leaf is correct, it appears that many landlords were inveigled into giving up land to land robbers, small or large. The estate owners did not surrender without a fight. For example, seven estates in the hands of Chinese owners and the Javasche Bank battled with 30,000 squatters on their lands in the hinterland of Semarang. The estate tried to demolish 6,000 illegal houses. In a countermove, a People’s Committee (Komite Rakjat), accompanied by a Member of Parliament, discussed the problem with a Deputy Prime Minister in Jakarta. The representatives of the squatters proposed the state buy the land.78 The private estates were not only being encroached upon by squatters,

76 Tuanku Luckman Sinar, personal communication. 77 Bonaparte Hutagalung vs. Radja Casianus Nainggolan (PN Medan Pdt. 328/1958). 78 Antara 12-2-1955/B. The outcome of the conflict is not reported by Antara. V Land tenures 173 but were also threatened by the state. Ongoing political changes added to the risks of estate owners. After resuming control, the Dutch colonial government forbade the landlords (tuan tanah) to demand corvée labour in 1946, because of the sensitive political situation following the Proclamation of Independence. When the Dutch government negotiated the purchase of the estates, part of the deal was that lands not cultivated by tenants could be claimed by the former landlords in long lease for 75 years to continue their agricultural business. Giving out land in long lease, however, was the competence of the negara, the constituents of the new federal Republic of the United States of Indonesia. For the estates in the environs of Jakarta this was the negara of Pasundan. The government of Pasundan refused to give out the land in long lease; it wanted to get rid of the landlords completely and not just abolish seigniorial rights. In the end, the central government consented and no lands were given out in long lease.79 Hence, the as yet undetermined relationship between the federal and the negara governments in the late 1940s caused the estate owners anxiety during the negotiations, because they did not know exactly what they would receive in return for giving up the rights to their estates. One landowner that clearly lost power in the decolonization process was the Deli Maatschappij. The altered position of the Deli Maatschappij after the transfer of sovereignty was made apparent in the new discourse: in press reports it was suddenly referred to as a foreign company,80 which at that time had a negative connotation (foreigners should not control Indonesian land). In colonial times the tobacco company had still had a big say in municipal affairs.81 After the protection of the Dutch colonial state fell away, Deli Maatschappij lands became the target of squatters. The Japanese authorities allowed, or perhaps even encouraged, people to cultivate food crops on Deli Maatschappij lands and other plantations during the Second World War. The plantations were also occupied by people employed as dockworkers, clerks, and petty traders. After independence, the state first urged labourers to be

79 Letter J.E. Ysebaert, Voorzitter Particuliere Landerijen Commissie, to Voorlopige Federale Regering, n.d., ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 610; Kort verslag vergadering Voorlopige Federale Regering 16-2-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 610; Memorandum Algemene Secretaris to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 5-4-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 610. 80 See for example Antara 7-12-1950/B. 81 In 1930, for instance, the company asked the local government to adjust the street plan of a new suburb (Polonia) to suit its wishes and to swap a strip of land. The municipality complied with these requests, because in the past the Deli Maatschappij had often come to their assistance and in the future the municipality would undoubtedly have occasion to call upon the cooperation of the company again. The municipality stated that its compliant attitude towards the company should not be seen as a precedent for other, ordinary claimants who might want to change a street plan (Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1930, no. 42). 174 Under construction steadfast in their conflict with plantation owners and, after the transfer of sovereignty, even planned to distribute more plantation land among peasants. By the mid-1950s, the state changed its tune and began to view the occupants as common squatters, who had to be forcibly removed. In practice, it seemed impossible to stop the squatters, although martial law (proclaimed in 1956) gave the military a tool with which to take firm action. Squatters’ plots were later gradually absorbed into the expanding city.82 Division of the booty between squatters created its own conflicts. First settlers were thrown off the land by a second wave of occupants, claiming that the plantation land had been officially divided by the government;83 it was by no means certain that such official partitions had actually taken place. The military and thugs grabbed land, using an alleged partition as a pretext.84 After the nationalization of Dutch property throughout Indonesia in 1958, the state-run company Perseroan Terbatas Perkebunan Negara II took possession of the Deli Maatschappij, including plots of urban land. Soon, PTPN II began to cash in on this boon and silently sold off the land in small pieces. Only organized groups, such as members of powerful political parties (Partai Nasional Indonesia and Partai Komunis Indonesia), were able to buy up such land (Tuanku Luckman Sinar, personal communication).

Two cases capture much of the drama and tension of these years of turmoil. The first case demonstrates how people used political power to swindle others out of their property. Haji Saleh bought a plot of rural land of 90 by 51 m in kampong Glugur, on the fringe of Medan in 1904. Shortly thereafter he married Siti Ranam and together they had six children; she gave birth to the first, Bujung, when she was 15 years old. Haji Saleh died during the Japanese period. The plot was partitioned into five equal parts in 1946. Around that time kampong Glugur was attracting many migrants, so that land prices must have been rising rapidly. The widow, Siti Ranam, kept one part for herself and her children, one part was sold to the kampong head, Surhadji (who was a member of the political party Masjumi), and the remaining three-fifths was sold for Rp 5,000 to a man called Abdul Muin (on 21 December 1946); the profit was split between her and the children (all adults by then). However, Bujung did not share in the sale, because he was in hiding in the hills, having run from the violence in town. When Bujung returned to Medan after the First Dutch Offensive (Eerste Politionele Actie, Agresi Pertama), he asked Abdul Muin to pay him an extra Rp 500. Abdul Muin refused, and neither the

82 Van Langenberg 1980:42-3; Pelzer 1978:123, 1982:101-6, 147-50; Tengku Luckman Sinar 2000; Slaats and Portier 1990-91:58. 83 Sheik Said vs. Kotapradja Medan, Arsianus Hutadjulu (PN Medan Pdt. 164/1959). 84 Ngeradjai vs. Paimin, Paino (PN Medan Pdt. 786/1957). V Land tenures 175 district head of East Medan, the police, nor the military police succeeded in arranging a peaceful settlement. Hence, Bujung summoned Abdul Muin, Siti Ranam and his siblings to court. In court, Siti Ranam admitted that it had been wrong to sell ancestral property and explained that Surhadji

had said that [part of the money] was for the struggle (the social revolution), which was raging at that time (1946). Because the situation was then very precarious, any Indonesian citizen not prepared to make a sacrifice was considered a henchman of the Dutch. Therefore, we were forced to comply with the wishes of the aforementioned head Surhadji, whether we liked it or not.85

Siti Ranam added that according to Surhadji Rp 2,000 of the purchase price had been used for the independence struggle. Buyung stated that Abdul Muin had pushed the sale through, knowing that one of the heirs was absent, because Abdul Muin counted on protection by Surhadji. Abdul Muin denied Siti Ranam’s story and maintained that Siti Ranam had sold the land to him voluntarily. Unfortunately, there is no testimony from Suhardji in the file and the court decision is missing.86 The case provides insight into the chaos and fear often pervading everyday life. Surhadji exploited the chaos, extorting money from the widow and perhaps pressing her to sell land under the market price; the other buyer, Abdul Muis, also counted on the political situation, and Suhardji’s protection in particular, to back the transfer of land without the consent of one of the owners. The second case is very interesting, if only because of the rapid succession of transactions. A couple bought a plot of land on Djalan Berlian in Medan with a sultan’s grant S673 in 1936. After a few months they pawned the land to the municipal credit bank (Volkscredietbank). When two years later the term for redeeming the pawn expired without a payment having been made, the municipal credit bank sold the plot to a man bent on specu- lating on a quick profit. The same day, the speculator sold the plot to a man called Ismail. Two years later, in 1940, Ismail also pawned the land, this time to the Medansche Beleggingsmaatschappij (Medan Investment Company). When the Japanese invaded Sumatra, the management of the Medansche Beleggingsmaatschappij fled to Australia, taking along the original title deed. The Japanese-led municipality issued an authenticated copy of the title deed on 30 March 1944, and on the same day Ismail repaid his debt to the Japanese

85 [K]atanja untuk perdjuangan (repelusi sosiaal) jang pada waktu itu (1946) sedang bergolak. Bahwa karena keadaan pada waktu itu sangat genting, djika tiap Warga Negara Indonesia, tidak mau berkor- ban maka oleh mereka dianggap kaki tangan Nica. Oleh sebab itu mau tak mau terpaksalah kami turut kemauan penghulu Surhaji jang tersebut. 86 Bujung, Siti Arab vs. Abdul Muin, Siti Ranam c.s. (PN Medan Pdt. 757/1957). 176 Under construction

Teksiran Kanri Ka (Department for Administering Enemy [Dutch] Property). Later the same day, Ismail sold the land to a man and woman, perhaps husband and wife. Two months later the man and woman, who judging by the court files were involved in several land transactions in Medan, resold the land to a man called Hasan. Almost a year later, in June 1945, Hasan sold the plot to a certain Mahjoedin for Rp 60,000 (in Japanese currency). The sale was registered on title deed S673. Sometime during this history, two houses had been built on the land and Mahjoedin rented them out. During the Revolution Mahjoedin fled, to escape from the ‘ferocity’ (keganasan) of the Chinese militia Fo An Toei and the Dutch. When Mahjoedin returned to Medan, in 1948, he discovered that a Chinese man, Tan Tjoe Hoek, was collecting rent money for the houses. What had happened when Mahjoedin took refuge? After the Japanese surrender, the Dutch Board for Rehabilitation in Medan (Medan Rechtsherstel) annulled the authenticated copy of S673 of 30 March 1944 and all subsequent transactions. On 12 April 1948 the Medansche Beleggingsmaatschappij received the original grant in return; the same day Ismail repaid his debt and again on the same day he resold the land, this time to a woman. It is likely Ismail redeemed his debt using an advance payment by the purchaser. Ismail hence redeemed the same debt twice, but this is no reason to feel sorry for him: Ismail had actually sold the same plot profitably not once but twice. After a few months, the new owner pawned the land to the Medansche Beleggingsmaatschappij and after two years minus one day, just in the nick of time, repaid her debt. The same day, she sold the land to the aforementioned Tan Tjoe Hoek, the person who Mahjoedin found out was collecting the rents. Mahjoedin had Tan Tjoe Hoek summonsed to court, but lost.87 This long story is interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, it shows how politico-military events interfered in people’s lives, most of all that of Mahjoedin. It also gives insight into how the municipality functioned in Japanese times and how the Board for Rehabilitation operated, making new victims. Third, the story shows how a speculator made windfall profits, selling the plot he had just got hold of earlier that same day. Fourth, it is an example of local variation in land tenure systems. As a Chinese in Medan, Tan Tjoe Hoek should not have been allowed to buy land with a sultan’s grant. This was the main argument on which Mahjoedin contested the lawfulness of Tan Tjoe Hoek’s claim, putting even more faith in this than Mahjoedin’s positive evidence of his own purchase. However, the Sultan had just donated this part

87 Mahjoedin vs. Tan Tjoe Hoek (PN Medan Pdt. 150/1951). Contrary to most civil cases, the contestants did not disagree on the facts, but only gave different interpretations of them. It would not have mattered for the case if it had concerned a deed of European property (the title with the highest security). V Land tenures 177 of his land to the municipality. The transfer of land to Tan Tjoe Hoek used the legal construction by which Tan Tjoe Hoek paid the owner money so that she would give up her right to the land, which thereby became property of the municipality; the municipality subsequently granted Tan Tjoe Hoek a long lease. Although the construction is similar to the common way in which non- indigenous persons acquired a European title for Indigenous land in colonial Indonesia, the details make this story unique to Medan. The final reason the lawsuit is a worthwhile example is the revolutionary and anti-foreign discourse used in court by Mahjoedin, in an attempt to influence the judge. His language is testimony to the bitter feelings prevalent in at least some circles at the time. He boasted that he had ‘struggled for the Independence of the Indonesian people and defended it, to his last penny and risking his life’.88 He argued in scathing tones that a sultan’s grant existed ‘to prevent all land falling into the hands of shrewd foreigners who are lousy with money [...] so that real Indonesians are forced to take to the hills’.89 Mahjoedin also stated that ‘the cruel power of the Fo An Toei [...] trod on the rights of the people and killed ordinary Indonesians in an inhumane way’.90 Finally, he described the Board for Rehabilitation as ‘Dutch fascist dictators, who wished to destroy the property of the Indonesian people in order to hand it maliciously over to foreigners’.91 Mahjoedin’s unvarnished, venom- ous racism may make him an unsympathetic figure to the reader, but at the end of the day, he was the person who suffered most financially. All that the unfortunate Mahjoedin could try to do was to reclaim the purchase money from Hasan, or ultimately Ismail.

Conclusion

Colonial racial discourse reverberated in the two land tenure systems: Indigenous and European ownership. Despite the racial labels, the dual land tenure system did not result in racial segregation in the cities, because the labels referred to the legal system applied and not to the owner’s ethnic background. No legal barriers prevented non-European people from acquiring land with a European title and, conversely, Europeans and Foreign Orientals

88 [Me]mperdjoangkan dan mempertahankan ‘Kemerdekaan bangsanja Indonesia’ habis-habisan harta dan djiwa terantjam. 89 [S]upaja tidak semua tanah2 djatuh ketangan [sic] bangsa asing [...] jang tjerdik dan mempunjai uang. [...] dan bangsa Indonesia Asli terdesak lari kehutan. 90 [K]ekuasaan Fo An Toei kedjam [...] merampas hak2 Rakjat dan membunuhi Rakjat Indonesia dengan diluar perikemanusian. 91 [D]ictator2 facis Belanda hendak menumpas habiskan harta bangsa Indonesia untuk diserahkan dengan kedjam kepada bangsa asing. 178 Under construction bought and owned land with an Indigenous title, albeit usually as unauthorized owners (onwettige occupanten). The real social difference between landowners with an Indigenous title and landowners with a European title was social class and not ethnicity. The high degree of formality and concomitant security of tenure of plots with a European title made these plots attractive to upper- and middle-class people – Europeans and non-Europeans alike – with long-term investment plans. Low-income groups preferred plots with the cheaper, more informal Indigenous title. The existence of a dual system of land tenure was not unique to colonial Indonesia. For instance, the main distinction in English and French colonies in East and West Africa was between traditional communal ownership and colonial individual ownership. The term ‘traditional’, in contrast to the Indonesian term ‘Indigenous’, explicitly places the African and the European tenure systems in evolutionary order. The allegedly traditional rules were, however, not an unmodified legacy of the past, but invented or reinter- preted by colonial regimes. The convention that African land was communal land and consequently inalienable – it was said to belong as much to the ancestors as to kin yet unborn – made this system of tenure incompatible with the presumably more individual lifestyle in the cities. As a corollary, the tradition of communal land made Africans themselves unsuited to an urban life, that is, in the eyes of the colonial overlords. In practice, however, many Africans claimed an individual use, if not ownership, of urban land.92 Struggles over the legitimacy of competing systems of tenure have haunted post-colonial Africa up to today. In contrast to former colonies in Africa, most Indigenous systems of tenure in Indonesia allowed individual ownership. Perhaps because of this, in Indonesian cities Indigenous titles were also popular with non-indigenous residents. Therefore, a spatial pattern based on class instead of ethnicity may have more easily emerged in colonial Indonesia than in the colonial and post-colonial cities of East and West Africa, where the indigenous-European divide was more difficult to overcome. The broad Indigenous-European dichotomy is overlaid by a finer, bewildering variety of tenure systems. The numerous systems were found in various combinations in different cities. On the ground, the picture was further complicated because the different systems of tenure were not randomly distributed but formed a spatial pattern. Particuliere landerijen, found almost exclusively on the outskirts of the cities on the north coast of Java, in different sizes east and west of the River Cimanuk, forms a case in point. Most urban agrarian studies on Indonesia to date have concentrated on the idiosyncrasies

92 Berry 2003:640-5, 649; Chanock 1992:280-90; Lentz 2005; Nwaka 1996:125; Royston 2002:166; Sonius 1962:23. V Land tenures 179 of landownership in one particular city and miss the overall pattern, or focus on national rules and miss local variation. The overall pattern is indeed one of local variation. The thought that a major change of regime is likely to be followed by a major adjustment in land tenure regulations is correct for Indonesia only to a limited degree. Private estates were phased out – and their abolition somewhat reduced local variation between and within cities – but this process was started in the early twentieth century and cannot be ascribed solely to decolonization. The Basic Agrarian Law of 1960 ended the distinction between Indigenous and European tenure systems. When, on the other hand, this dichotomy is viewed as the difference between an informal and a formal system of land tenure, the Basic Agrarian Law is simply old wine in new bottles: difference in use that different social classes made of urban land with an informal title and land with a formal title have remained significant since Independence. This continuity with regard to different systems of land tenure supports the class-segregation-throughout-decolonization thesis. The most important impact of the decolonization process on landownership was the temporary reduction in security of tenure. Although it would be an oversimplification to say that Dutch colonial power protected only the interests of capitalists, the colonial state certainly guaranteed property owners a high degree of security. During the Japanese period and the Indonesian Revolution, enforcement of legal protection of the private ownership of land was temporarily reduced. Outsiders could wrongfully appropriate individual plots. The Japanese administration itself sometimes seized plots without offering sufficient financial compensation or even without any payment at all; the property of interned Europeans was particularly vulnerable, not least to attacks by private predators. During the Indonesian Revolution owners of various ethnic backgrounds, who fled their property when the fortunes of war turned against them, discovered later that others had occupied their land or house. The risk of illegal occupation was made even bigger by the temporary suspension of the registration of title deeds at the cadastre. When peace had more or less been restored, a score of court cases demonstrate that owners had to fight hard, and not always successfully, to regain control of their land. In these fights, corruption probably did not yet undermine the rule of law (as it would in the 1970s and later). State regulations affecting whole categories of property owners formed another source of insecurity of tenure, for instance for private estates with seigniorial rights and, in 1960, Chinese owners of freehold. The lack of security of land tenure during the decolonization process hampered a smoothly running urban development. Study of today’s Third World cities demonstrates that a feeling of secure tenure will encourage investments in urban land. Insecurity of land tenure, on the other hand, makes both land- 180 Under construction owners and the state hesitant to invest; it is an obstacle to the construction of new housing, undermines long-term planning, and hinders the provision of basic services (Durand-Lasserve and Royston 2002:7-8; Deiniger 2003:xix, xxv; Nwaka 1996:126). The UN Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) concludes that ‘Access to land and security of tenure are strategic prerequisites for the provision of adequate shelter for all’ (quoted by Durand-Lasserve and Royston 2002:2). Insecurity of tenure would be one of the major factors that aggravated the problem of how to provide enough suitable housing after the Proclamation of Independence. PART TWO HOUSING INSECURITY AND OPPORTUNITY

Chapter vi Housing in the kampong The contest between dwellers and the government

The gist of the argument made in Part One of this book is that the organization of urban space in terms of social classes remained remarkably stable throughout the decolonization process. Access to housing, in contrast, was much more dynamic. The Japanese occupation, the Indonesian Revolution, the resumption of Dutch rule, and the introduction of the Republic of Indonesia to sovereign rule in the 1950s all created insecurity for some occupants of houses and opened opportunities for others. Which groups obtained better access to housing and which groups had access denied to them depended on the changing balance of power during the long decolonization. The Explanatory Memorandum of the Town Planning Ordinance of 1938 acknowledged the power differences in cities and stated that Indonesian cities should not be construed as a place of peaceful coexistence, but as an arena (‘strijdperk’, emphasis in the original, Toelichting 1938:80) with indigenous, Chinese, Eurasian, and European forces competing. Competition over control of urban space for housing and other purposes is found in any city, but in a colonial society the struggle was more brutal, because it was ‘a battlefield between unequal powers with unequal wants’ (een slagveld van ongelijk sterken en ongelijk willenden; Toelichting 1938:82). After the Japanese invaded the Netherlands Indies the battle for housing hardened, because of the urgent housing shortage. When a rapid increase in urban population coincided with a decrease in housing stock, the mismatch between demand and supply turned into an acute crisis. The general insecurity, which was characteristic of the years of turmoil, emerged as a major cause in the shortage of housing: owners and developers hesitated to invest in housing since they doubted they would recover the costs. Both before and after Independence, the majority of people found shelter in kampongs. Two important actors who opposed each other in the kam- 184 Under construction pongs were the kampong dwellers and the local administration. Even when the city government took a benevolent attitude towards kampong dwellers and tried to act in their best interest, the two sides often clashed over state attempts to ameliorate living conditions. This clash forms one illustration of the competition for urban space between professionals (planners, architects, and administrators) on the one hand and ordinary people on the other, in what Setha Low (quoted by Klaufus 2006:288-9) calls the ‘contested city’. The struggle between professionals and ordinary people is waged for both the symbolic appropriation of space and the physical or ‘real’ use of urban space. The symbolic and physical uses of space are two sides of the same coin. In the colonial past, part of the struggle between professional administrators and ordinary people was centred on how to define the situation. When the colonial administrators successfully imposed their definition on the situation, that is, when they appropriated the space symbolically, they felt that practical intervention was legitimate, at least in their own eyes. Ordinary people resisted the administrators’ symbolic as well as physical appropriation of urban space. One example of this contest between colonial rulers and ordinary people was the official Singaporean view that unhygienic conditions prevailed in Asian quarters and that breakthroughs (called back lanes) were essential to allow fresh air and light to enter houses (Rabinow 1986:259-60; Yeoh 1996:149-56). In the Indonesian kampongs the contest between dwellers and administrators concentrated on kampong improvement programmes before Independence and squatting after Independence. The two issues were closely connected, indeed almost identical. Kampongs and squatter areas developed in a similar way without an overall town plan. The major difference was that before 1942 kampongs were, as a rule, built on land to which the occupants were entitled, whereas after 1942 kampongs were often started on illegally occupied land, because of the desperate need for housing, and, as a consequence, a great demand for land on which to build. The concern of the colonial state about untidy and insalubrious kampongs was not allayed after Independence, but was overshadowed by the more pressing problem of illegal occupation. The analysis of kampong improvement and squatting is interesting for what it tells us about the housing situation in the mid-twentieth century as much as for what it reveals of the changing balance of power during the long decolonization process.

Strategies of kampong improvement

The struggle for kampong improvement between dwellers and administrators was infused by moral concepts of filth, untidiness, and tradition versus VI Housing in the kampong 185 purity, order, and progress. These notions were, of course, culturally embedded and very much a matter of perception (Douglas 1966; Jaffe and Dürr 2010). The colonial debate about the need for the sanitization of kampongs therefore says as much about the views held by different social groups as about actual hygienic conditions. Abidin Kusno asserts that underlying the colonial state endeavour to transform the appearance of the kampong was the assumption that the social and economic conditions of the inhabitants would follow suit (Abidin Kusno 2000:125-7, 134-5). An important question is to what extent kampong dwellers consented to the administrators’ elite views on cleanliness and progress, and accepted the concomitant policy of kampong improvement. Urban administrators gradually acquired an interest in kampong living conditions, imbued with the general mood of the Ethical Policy. Several important events marked this growing concern. In 1913 the successful entrepreneur H.F. Tillema published Van wonen en bewonen, van bouwen, huis en erf, which addressed the poor living conditions in kampongs. The publication led to urban administrators taking a keen interest in public housing. Between 1915 and 1923 Tillema published at his own expense his magnum opus Kromoblanda, in which he fiercely criticizes living conditions in kampongs (Coté 2002; Nas and Theuns 2005). The next seminal moment was the congress on public housing organized by the Vereeniging voor Locale Belangen, and in particular its branch Sociaal-Technische Vereeniging (Social-Technical Association, established 1918), in 1922. The second congress on public housing was held in 1925 and concentrated on the housing of indigenous people. A third congress was scheduled for 1942, but did not take place because of the Japanese invasion (Akihary 1990:60-2). Partly as an outcome of the 1925 congress and partly in response to the lobbying of indigenous councillors in the Volksraad (national advisory parliament), the central government in 1927 began to subsidize kampong improvement programmes. The central government would pay 50% of total costs and from 1929 it reserved ƒ 500,000 annually for this purpose.1 In reality, central government subsidies peaked in 1931 at a mere ƒ 343,000 and then dwindled during the Depression, severely cut back by the need for retrenchment. In 1938, when the Depression was over, the central government again budgeted

1 Rondschrijven Eerste Gouvernements Secretaris to Gemeenteraden, 10-5-1927, no. 946a/ II, and Concept rondschrijven to gemeenten, Buitenzorg, 1928, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1683. The second circular prescribes that wide roads could have footpaths, which had ‘to be trodden pleasantly for bare feet’ (met bloote voeten aangenaam begaanbaar zyn). See also Conferentie Kampongverbetering 11-2-1928, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1395. Cobban (1974) and Van Roosmalen (2008:97-108) give overviews of the development of colonial kampong improvement. 186 Under construction

ƒ 500,000 each year for kampong improvement subsidies to municipalities. Another initiative taken by the central government was the installation of the Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering (Commission for the Kampong Improvement), which made fieldtrips to all the municipalities as well as some other towns in Java, and also sent two questionnaires to the local administrations, to collect material in order to compile its first (and, as it turned out, only) report.2 Efforts to improve kampongs were initially hindered by the fact that most kampongs within municipal boundaries had maintained a degree of autonomy. This autonomy sometimes lasted until well after Independence. In 1918 the central government opened the legal possibility of adding urban villages to the municipal jurisdiction, but in practice villages were only slowly incorporated into municipal territories, because urban administrators were reluctant to bear the financial costs of daily administration of the kampongs. Bandung, for instance, had 21 of these autonomous villages, which lay wholly or partly inside municipal territory. Batavia was the only city lucky enough not to have autonomous villages within its jurisdiction when it was founded, but when the city was expanded 96 surrounding villages fell within the municipal boundaries and had to be ‘citified’ (dikotapradjakan) in 1953. The next year, mayors of all provincial cities held a conference and lodged a joint request with the central government to put an end to the principle of village autonomy in cities. This principle was not abolished straightaway, however; in at least one city, Bandung, villages within the municipal area remained autonomous until 1964.3 Even without the formal abolition of village autonomy, however, municipal administrations – first Semarang, Surabaya, and Medan – began improvement works in kampongs even before central government funds began to flow in 1927. Legally, the municipal administrations hereby infringed on village autonomy. Surabaya started kampong improvement projects in 1923 or 1924. Medan decided to spend all rodigelden (a tax levied on Indigenous people for road maintenance) on kampong improvement in 1924. Two indigenous councillors pleaded in the Bandung council in 1923 for funds to be spent on kampong improvement, but in vain.4 The two main measures implemented to improve living conditions in kampongs were the construction of new houses and improvements to the

2 Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:8-20; Kampongverbetering 1929; Vragenlijst 1938. 3 Antara 18-2-1953/A, 4-11-1954/A; Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:16; Flieringa 1930:36-7; Otto 1991; Rückert 1930:170. 4 Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:16; Dick 2002a:185; Flieringa 1930:37, 227; Rückert 1925:15; Silas 1996:8-9. VI Housing in the kampong 187 infrastructure. These measures were meant to address the poor quality of housing and the high density of dwellings, respectively. Discrimination by the government, the third cause of poor living conditions as discussed in Chapter IV, was not widely recognized as a problem to be solved. Historically, the oldest measure to improve kampongs was to build new houses that met a certain standard. As early as 1913 Batavia experimented with this in the model kampong Tamansari. The design of four rooms with an annex for a bathroom and latrine for each house shows that Tamansari was too luxurious for most kampong people. Four years later, the Batavia administration held a competition for a design for cheap kampong houses, but the jury decided that all the designs were too large and not really eco- nomical. The houses had several rooms, including one for a domestic servant, which is conclusive evidence the houses had not been designed for the lowest income group (Prijsvraag goedkoope woningen 1918; Tillema 1922, V:871-4). In the 1920s many urban administrators still believed they could help people by providing a model of an ideal dwelling (Flieringa 1930:107). Another example of a wholly new kampong built by the local government was Kampong Sompok, developed in Semarang between 1919 and 1923. It was also known as the ‘municipal kampong’ (Gemeentekampong). The prime residential target of the Semarang municipality was lower-middle-class civil servants, but working-class houses were also built.5 Colonial administrators continued to overestimate their own skills as being far superior to indigenous knowledge until the outbreak of the war in the Pacific. In 1941 the municipality of Bandung completed the model kampong Tjihaoergeulis. The dwellings roofed with red tiles looked nice, but were too expensive as well as too small; most occupants had expanded their houses with additions of plaited bamboo and cloth, with the result that the model kampong looked more like a camp- site (De Huiseigenaar 2(5) 1941). This redesigning of culturally inappropriate houses by occupants has been observed outside Indonesia too. Design failures are the result of designers’ erroneous assumptions about the habitation style and spending power of the prospective occupants. Such failures are more likely when architects design for people of a different culture or social class.6 The colonial designers in Indonesia differed from kampong dwellers both in culture and in social class.

5 Kampoengrapport 1924:68; Radjimo Sastro Wijono 2005. Such a planned kampong seems to contradict the definition of kampong – a neighbourhood that originated without an overall plan – given in Chapter IV. On the other hand, I know from experience of state housing projects in the 1990s (PERUMNAS) that new residents begin to subvert the planned order the moment they move into their new houses. As time passes, the sterile new housing estates begin to resemble a lively kampong. 6 Chambers and Low 1989:4; Choguill 1994:938; Lang 1989:375-81; Nas and Prins 1991:14-5. 188 Under construction

The attempts to build houses affordable for the lowest income groups all fell short of the goals set. The Explanatory Memorandum of 1938 states that the lower class could not be helped by public housing, because such housing was always beyond their means. The lowest rents were achieved in Semarang at ƒ 3 per month in 1929, when the modal rents for the lower class (but not paupers) stood at ƒ 2.50. During the Depression, when it might have been possible to build more cheaply, the government stopped further investment in public housing (Toelichting 1938:34-5; see also Flieringa 1930:213; Stam 1930:133). Enlightened administrators – among them Jac. P. Thijsse, Thomas Karsten, and Soesilo – argued that it was impossible to provide building land or kampong dwellings for kampong people at a commercially profitable rent, and therefore municipal administrations should accept the conclusion that kampong land and kampong houses had to be subsidized. In practice, however, no public development corporation or public housing company was ready to take on such a structural deficit (Verslag Planologische Dag 1939:26, 34-5). The intended low-cost housing project most probably ended up as middle-income housing (Drakakis-Smith 1987:101). When the administration limited construction to what we call today sites- and-services, the sites could also end up in the hands of the middle class. From 1948 to 1950 the Medan city administration discussed the construction of a kampong on the Achterweg as a sites-and-services project. However, the building plans submitted were clearly intended for houses that were far above the usual standard of kampong dwellings. Moreover, as Ahmad Marzoeki, member of the advisory municipal council observed, the cost of preparing the land was too high, so that the rent would clearly be unafford- able for kampong dwellers no matter how simple the houses would be.7 In this case from Medan, one wonders whether the administration had really ever had anything else in mind other than the construction of middle-class dwellings. The common contemporary explanation of why government-built houses were inevitably too expensive was the excessively high standards set by local building regulations, prompted by notions of cleanliness and order. In several cities the administration banned the use of bamboo (because rats could nest in the hollow stems) and thatched roofs (atap). There was also a prohibition on building a house right to the edge of the plot, in order to prevent flames spreading to the next house in the event of a fire. The administrative costs

7 Letter Burgemeester to Huisvestingsorganisatie, 28-8-1948, no. 3452, Arsip Medan; Notulen Adviesraad voor de Stadsgemeente Medan, 9-9-1949, attached to letter Burgemeester to Adviesraad voor de Stadsgemeente Medan, 20-12-1949, no. 5458/G-8, Arsip Medan; letter Djaidin Poerba, Burgemeester, to Wali Negara Sumatera Timoer, 1-6-1950, no. 2587/TA-10, Arsip Medan. VI Housing in the kampong 189 of acquiring a building permit were prohibitive, or at least disproportionate to the actual building costs. Hygienic standards were set unreasonably high. Connection to mains water and to the sewerage system, obligatory in some places, was far too demanding.8 The American architect C. Theodore Larson (1958:51) later remarked that building regulations had been drawn up with an eye to meeting Dutch conditions: roofs had to be strong enough to support ten feet of snow.9 Building regulations did not hinder only government building projects, but exasperated private real estate developers too. The private builder C. van Oyen complained at the 25th Decentralization Congress about the building regulations. He said that his company had successfully exhibited a standard house design, which was offered at ƒ 150-200 at the annual fair in Bandung. However, of the initial 3,000 prospective buyers, only 200 persons had actually purchased a house, because municipal requirements drove up construction costs (Aanleg stedelijke bevolkingskampongs 1935:9). Moreover, additional costs were occasionally incurred in the form of illicit payments demanded by civil servants who handled applications for building permits (Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:44). The strict building regulations also put a brake on the construction of new houses by kampong people themselves, and hampered the provision of sites-and-services, through which the government prepared building land to let or for sale (Flieringa 1930:32; Soetoto 1935:6-8). Studies of today’s self-help housing suggest yet another reason over and above the overly strict building regulations, which kept all government housing projects out of reach of the poor. Self-built houses are easy to repair, upgrade, and expand. Moreover, the vernacular style is aesthetically pleasing to residents and helps them to show the world they are respectable persons. No architect is involved, but the whole community functions as a ‘generalized architect’ who knows how to adjust the building to cultural, social, and climate needs.10 In Indonesia, the mutual help of neighbours, each bringing their own tools, eliminated labour costs, with the exception of a small outlay for a shared ritual meal to initiate construction. The person who happened to have the most knowledge led the construction work. A non-permanent house was built in just one day, a day carefully chosen from the Javanese calendar

8 Aanleg stedelijke bevolkingskampongs 1935:10-2; Flieringa 1930:108; Stam 1930:132-3. 9 The application of metropolitan regulations in a colony was not unique to Indonesia. For instance, building codes in India dictated the location of plumbing in a way that was suitable for cities in England (Lang 1989:376). 10 Conway and Potter 1997; Eyre 1997; Gilbert and Gugler 1983; Klaufus 2006:294; Nas and Prins 1991:17-8. The term ‘generalized architect’ comes from M.D. Levin, cited by Nas and Prins (1991:17). Figure 21. Kampong in Batavia before and after improvements. Source: Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, 48302 and 48303. VI Housing in the kampong 191

(Radjimo Sastro Wijono 2005:191). When people built their own house, they almost automatically adjusted the size of construction to their purse and would perhaps be able to expand the dwelling later. The use of scrap materials further reduced construction costs. Unquestionably, self-built houses stimulated vernacular architectural forms and fulfilled the common wish to be the owner of one’s own house; hence it added to kampong people’s self- esteem (Flieringa 1930:111-2; Nix 1949:220). In short, the use of paid labourers instead of help from neighbours, the use of new building materials instead of scrap materials, the use of permanent materials required to meet building regulations instead of non-permanent materials, and the use of standard designs instead of a size cut to fit the occupant’s purse all meant that government efforts to build cheap houses could not compete with the low costs of self-help projects. Urban administrations failed to take into account the strength of the self-help sector, but the Commission for Kampong Improvement did see the potential in it; in this respect, however, the Commission was a voice crying in the wilderness (Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:42, 46-8). When it finally dawned on the colonial government that the construction of cheap new houses by the state was not economically feasible – the government continued to provide public housing for a higher segment of the market, however – attention shifted to improvement of infrastructure in an attempt to redress the historically chaotic development. Kampong improvement mainly took the form of metalling or asphalting streets, and the construction of cement sewers. Building lines (rooilijnen) were established to halt higgledy- piggledy growth and to try to straighten up the irregular alignment of plots and houses. The effects were shown on before-and-after photographs of the same street, one before, the other after state intervention (Figure 21). Dozens of such pairs of photographs exist.11 Predictably, these pictures, taken with propaganda in mind, disclose more than the proud administrators intended. Urban greenery disappeared. The use of public space for household activities and social interaction was diminished. Some buildings that had stood outside the building line were demolished. A map of building lines projected on a kampong (Figure 22) reveals just how much a kampong improvement project potentially intruded on local residents’ space. Fortunately, buildings were usually not forcibly adjusted to the building line. It was expected that house owners would improve their houses on their own initiative after the state had provided paved roads and cement sewers. This turned out to be a forlorn hope. What did happen was that, after the upgrading of streets, sewer pipes, and public facilities, the price of land

11 Flieringa 1930:172-8; Karsten 1939:78-87; Kerchman 1930:221-3, 268-74, 280-6, 302. Figure 22. Map of building lines in kampong Pandjoenan, Cirebon, 1938. Source: Kampong Complex Pandjoenan tussen de wegen Pekaroengan Karanggetas en Kolectoran, Detailplan 1:500, attached to letter H. Scheffer, wd. Burgemeester Cheribon, to Directeur Binnenlandsch Bestuur, December 1938, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1731. VI Housing in the kampong 193 and houses went up and the poorer original population was driven out. Landlords who rented out houses or land raised the rents, even before the actual improvements had taken place, without investing in the upgrading of their property. The upshot was that the persons with the lowest incomes left the improved kampong: tenants could no longer pay the higher rent and were forced to move, often to worse housing. Many property owners could not resist the temptation of a seemingly high bid; they at least earned cash if they sold and resettled on cheaper land at the fringe of the city. Consequently, the 1938 Explanatory Memorandum concluded that not the original, poor kampong population had been the main beneficiary of the improvements, but the middle class, which moved in and enjoyed a wider choice of housing. When this process of gentrification became clear, more enlightened administrators began to argue that kampong improvements should be kept to a minimum in order to protect the poor.12 With the wisdom of hindsight, we can conclude that kampong improvement efforts were remarkably ahead of their time, both in their underlying assumptions and the methods adopted, but they also had unforeseen consequences. They were a prime example of top-down modernization, which was still unquestioned in the 1950s and 1960s, when poor housing was seen as the problem – rather than the result of a deeper underlying cause, urban poverty. As a consequence of top-down planning and planners’ academic education, urban administrators were hostile to the idea of poor people constructing their own dwellings and deplored the low quality of self-help housing. Not until the late 1960s did self-help housing come to be valued as appropriate technology, which was labour intensive instead of capital intensive. However, common government responses as late as the 1970s and 1980s were still slum clearance, public housing estates, sites-and-services, and upgrading projects. All these methods had been attempted in colonial Indonesia. As in Third World cities of the second half of the twentieth century, the middle class profited most: they moved into the upgraded kampongs, and what was intended as low-cost housing ended up as middle-income housing. A mistake made both in colonial times and in independent Indonesia today is seeing upgrading as a finite process – so many hectares to go and the job is done13 – whereas in reality decay is an ongoing process too.14 Finally, the situation that devel-

12 Aanleg stedelijke bevolkingskampongs 1935:8-9; Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:27-8, 34; Tesch 1948:107; Toelichting 1938:33; Verslag van de 21e jaarvergadering 1933:8, 15, 17; Wertheim 1956:179. 13 Centraal Kantoor voor de Statistiek 1941:25; Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:22; letter Ir. F.B. van Asperen, Hoofd Gemeentewerken, to Burgemeester Soerabaja, 28-4- 1950, no. 0103/17, Arsip Surabaya, Box 865, no. 18074. 14 Drakakis-Smith 1987:101; Gilbert and Gugler 1983:100-8; Potter and Lloyd-Evans 1998:144-51. 194 Under construction opment agencies – in colonial Indonesia, the state – are not furnished with knowledge from below is reiterated today in the form of a call for new modes of knowledge improvement and empowerment of the urban poor (RAWOO 2005; Toelichting 1938:34).

Boon or burden of kampong improvement

What, then, is the view from the kampong? How did kampong dwellers receive kampong improvement efforts and to what extent can the colonial kampong improvement project be seen as a contest between the kampong and town hall? Were state efforts self-serving, thereby ignoring the real interests of the kampong people? Several historical studies have made the case that the allegedly benevolent kampong improvement programme was paternalistic, by no means free of the taint of colonial self-interest and therefore not beneficial to kampong people. Government intervention in kampongs was motivated by the health hazard kampongs posed to European residents. The removal of kampongs was unfeasible as a labour force was essential to cities, so the improvement of kampongs was the second-best solution to the health risk. Another motivation some historians have ascribed to the town hall experts was the colonial ‘project’ to achieve modernity. If this aim were to be accomplished, technical solutions would have to be applied to produce a disciplined, orderly looking landscape. Even when successful, the kampong improvement programme accentuated rather than minimized the dichotomy between the modern colonial sector and traditional kampong life (as perceived by European colonials). The policy was very much a top-down instrument, insensitive to the realities of kampong life and therefore disruptive. Not surprisingly, kampong dwellers were not at all pleased with the supposed improvement of their neighbourhoods. On a hidden agenda, colonial efforts to impose order on the chaotic layout of kampongs also served a political aim, and were effectively a form of subjugation; this is an example of what Foucault called ‘power through transparency’. The covert attempt to dominate indigenous people and reduce anti-colonial sentiments actually made residents more hostile to the authoritarian colonial rule.15 Are these fairly strong conclusions borne out by empirical evidence? Unfortunately, we have no knowledge of the arguments for and against kampong improvement voiced in offices and social clubs. In written state-

15 Barker 1999:105-6; Dick 2002a:189-92, 410-1; Frederick 1989:9; Abidin Kusno 2000:128-34; Yeoh 1996:149. VI Housing in the kampong 195 ments, references to the political importance of kampong improvement are rare. There are only a few texts hinting that improvement of the unhygienic conditions in kampongs would win people’s hearts and take the wind out of nationalists’ sails. The Explanatory Memorandum of the Town Planning Ordinance of 1938 contains a brief warning that if living conditions were not improved, ‘[t]hen a strong sense of being dissatisfied or socially inferior cannot be avoided, with all its – not least political – consequences, precisely because the house has an important meaning to the Indonesian’. Gellius Flieringa had drawn the same conclusion in more forceful terms eight years earlier: ‘The fact remains that this ‘dirty living’ of a large part of the urban population produces unhealthy thoughts and breeds rebelliousness’, but he too made the connection between kampong improvement and political tranquillity only in passing.16 The Banjarmasin municipal council warned the central government in 1927 that the disgruntled kampong population had complained about the very poor state of kampong roads, some of which had ceased to exist altogether. If improvements were not carried out, the people might resent the government (Van Roosmalen 2008:100-1). The council’s warning of political unrest, however, had to do with the condition of the roads, and not the general political situation. The only explicit statement of the argument that order facilitated surveillance that I have been able to find dates from before the term kampong improvement came into fashion. In 1914 a civil servant in Semarang noted that the most striking thing one observed when entering a kampong at night was the darkness. This difference between well-lit neighbourhoods and the pitch darkness of kampongs was unjust and, furthermore, policemen would find their way better in well-lit kampongs (Renvooi 1914). By far the most extensive explicit reference to the self-interest of the ruling class comes from J.J.G.E. Rückert, when he defended his motion on kampong improvement in the Volksraad in 1928. After having observed that both Europeans and indigenous people lived in kampongs, Rückert pointed out four advantages kampong improvement would offer the European elite: reduction in the risk of infection by contagious diseases; a lower level of absenteeism among strong and healthy labourers; increased tax revenues from the higher income of these healthy labourers; and lowered receptivity to anti-colonial nationalist propaganda. However, caution is advisable here; these arguments should be viewed in the context of the debate. At stake was

16 ‘Juist waar het huis voor den Indonesiër zoo’n groote beteekenis heeft, kan dan een sterk gevoel van onbevredigdheid, of van sociale minderwaardigheid, met alle ook politieke gevolgen van dien, niet uit blijven’ (Toelichting 1938:32). ‘Feit is, dat dit “vuil wonen” van een groot deel der stadsbevolking onreine gedachten doet rijpen en opstandigheid kweekt’ (Flieringa 1930:47; see also 171). See also Karsten 1930:159; Conferentie Kampongverbetering 11-2-1928, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1395. 196 Under construction not kampong improvement as such (the central government had already promised to pay half of the costs of improvements), but the question of who would bear the costs of maintenance after the improvement project had been completed – the central government or the local government. The motion put forward by Rückert and two others asked that the central government contribute half of the costs; to make his point, Rückert argued that a sanitized kampong was not in the local interest, but in the national interest. There is little hard evidence to bear out the supposition that kampong improvement was a shrewd policy to dominate the indigenous people. The fact that Rückert’s speech was intended only for the occasion was also felt by Volksraad members B. Roep and C.H.M.H. Kiès, who objected to Rückert’s argument that maintenance was in the national interest. Roep said in the debate: ‘You drag in points that have nothing to do [with kampong improvement]’.17 Surprisingly, there is even less written evidence that kampong improvement was motivated by the hygienic self-interest of the European elite than there is for political self-interest. Concern about unsanitary conditions resulting in poor health was definitely the primary motivation behind the colonial state’s efforts to do something about the kampongs.18 Furthermore, fear of contagious diseases certainly was an important element in the state’s concern about the insalubrious kampongs, but not necessarily the fear that contagious diseases would escape from kampongs to elite neighbourhoods. For example, a close reading of Joshua Barker’s analysis of the colonial state’s efforts to pen- etrate, sanitize, and survey kampongs in Bandung discloses that these efforts were designed to prevent diseases spreading from rats to humans, and subsequently between kampong folk (Barker 1999:106-20), but did not attempt to separate kampong dwellers from elite neighbourhoods. The godfather of kampong improvement, Tillema, was also concerned about contagious diseases, the cholera epidemic of Semarang in 1901-1903 in particular, but he was not especially afraid of the health risks kampongs posed to elite neighbourhoods. On the contrary; he mentioned the misery of cholera for people living in kampongs and European neighbourhoods in one breath (Tillema 1919:2). In his first pamphlet dealing with the issue of sanitation, Riooliana, he was already talking about the need to educate ‘all layers of society’ (alle lagen der maatschappij), without discriminating between dwellers of kampongs and elite neighbourhoods (Tillema 1911:1, 5). In sum, what

17 U brengt er dingen bij te pas, die er niets mee te maken hebben. Verslag vergadering Volksraad, 31-7-1928, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1395. 18 Therefore, the Department for Public Housing (Dienst der Volkshuisvesting), which had as one of its tasks the assessment of municipal proposals for kampong improvement, was placed under the Public Health Service (Dienst der Volksgezondheid), and not under the ostensibly more logical options of the Department of Public Works or the Department of Home Affairs. VI Housing in the kampong 197 remains of any evidence that colonial kampong improvement was motivated by the fear of contamination of elite neighbourhoods by kampongs is only the point made in Rückert’s speech of 1928. It is plausible that kampong dwellers held views on the need for kampong improvement that were rather different from the official standpoint. Probably they were little concerned about, or simply ignorant of, the health risks and took the poor quality of housing for granted. For instance, in 1923 the municipal administration of Medan moved a whole kampong to a new site called Sidodari; dwellers could choose between a concrete floor laid directly on the ground or a wooden floor elevated on posts; the concrete floor was offered by the administration for free, but the floor on posts had to be paid for by the owners themselves. Everybody opted for the wooden floor on posts.19 Apparently, the ‘modern’ and ‘improved’ type of house with a concrete floor did not meet dwellers’ needs. Complaints voiced by indigenous councillors in Batavia, presumably acting as spokesmen for kampong dwellers, focused on the rise in rents after improvement, which forced inhabitants to move, and on the strict building regulations, which forced owners to demolish their houses. The ‘voluntary’ free ceding of strips of land in order to widen roads was another detested measure. In 1933 a newspaper in Cirebon reported popular antipathy to the widening of roads and the forced demolition of derelict houses.20 In other words, precisely the administrators’ ‘solutions’ were seen by dwellers as problems. Former inhabitants of Kampong Sompok interviewed by Radjimo Sastro Wijono recall that the first inhabitants had to adjust to the discipline and modernity of the new kampong (which was built by the Semarang administration and not by the residents themselves). For instance, they were not used to electricity, piped water, and a (shared) sewage system, and preferred to use wells and rivers (for defecating). One reason for not using the private bathroom was appreciation for the socializing at public bathing places. Another reason for this preference was probably the cost of tap water; to save money, lower-income people had the habit of letting the tap drip, because in this way water use was not measured (and therefore not charged for). The obligation to pay a monthly rent forced them to adopt a new (Gregorian) calendar, alongside the familiar Javanese calendar. There is one respect in which inhabitants did not adjust to the modern lifestyle imposed on them by municipal planners. Namely, the occupants found the dwellings too close to each other, and the municipality was compelled to move every third house to a different

19 Concept Memorie van Overgave van de 1e Burgemeester van Medan, Daniël baron Mackay, 1931, KITLV H 946. 20 Abeyasekere 1989:122; Contact gemeentebestuur 1929:31; Puguh 2005:13; Toelichting 1938:94-5. 198 Under construction location and divide the plot vacated between the two adjacent houses.21 Kampong people did more than just grumble; they sometimes actively resisted projects. In 1920, after a decade in which about 20,000 people, one-tenth of the total indigenous population of Surabaya, had been forced to move to make way for office buildings and ‘European’ housing estates, 5,000 kampong dwellers in Surabaya went on strike to protest about the low compensation offered when their kampongs were cleared. As a symbol of resistance, they temporarily occupied a park in the centre of Surabaya, which was usually considered a space for the European upper class (Dick 2002a:357; Houben 1996:77). About the same time, construction of an entrance road to Kampong Sompok in Semarang was delayed because one single landowner stubbornly refused to sell his land for this purpose. The administration of Bandung stopped having public hearings in kampongs, because again and again there were a few persons who spoke up demanding free piped water, free burials, and the abolition of building regulations; and they stirred others up to make similar demands. In 1924 the Governor-General urged municipal councils to be lenient in their enforcement of building lines in order not to offend people (Contact gemeentebestuur 1929:417; Rückert 1925:22; Radjimo Sastro Wijono 2005:84). These examples of resistance all date from before the commencement of kampong improvement. Opposition was not overly motivated by anti-colonial political motives; the overriding consideration was self-interest. Unauthorized lawyers (pokrol bambu) could delay improvement projects and drive up costs by demanding financial compensation in return for strips of land (Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:30), but their resistance seems to have been spurred on by a financial motive rather than any principled consideration. Howard Dick (2002a:190) remarks that after the construction of drains, kampong dwellers were less inclined to collect waste, because it was easier to throw it in the drains, but this was less an act of resistance than a matter of convenience. Other signs of protest are letters complaining about the financial consequences of government decisions. For instance, three persons in Batavia objected to the requirement to pay ƒ 100 for a planned new road in order to obtain a building permit for a house worth ƒ 100.22 On the positive side, Dutch civil servants pointed out instances of appreciation of the

21 Radjimo Sastro Wijono 2005:14, 70-80, 136-41; see also Schaafsma 1940:6; Tillema 1922, V:914. 22 Letter Hadji Achmad to Gouverneur Generaal, 16-3-1939, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1905. Another example of people who took action concerns 155 owners and tenants of houses in Magelang who objected to the building line in the main street of the Chinese ward; letter Liem c.s. to Departement Binnenlandsch Bestuur, Magelang 16-9-1940, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1905. VI Housing in the kampong 199 projects; kampong dwellers sometimes even asked for improvement projects, for example because they liked having paved paths, which were handy for riding a bicycle.23 Divided opinions about kampong improvement, which were motivated by self-interest, became very apparent in Batavia where landowners were loath to accept it, probably because they had to cede strips of land for the widening of roads, but other dwellers were said to be enthusiastic (Ontwerp begrooting 1937). To sum up, it appears that most of the resistance to state interventions in kampongs predated kampong improvement projects. After 1927, when kampong improvement got under way, opposition dwindled to mere moans and formal appeals to administrators, but there was a degree of positive reception too. This change of heart could have been caused by two factors. Perhaps state intervention had grown more sensitive to the needs of kampong people; administrators did eventually gain insight and experience and, for instance, by 1927 the mass removal of whole kampongs seems to have become a thing of the past. Perhaps the national crackdown on communist and nationalist political parties by the colonial state in 1927 and thereafter made people afraid and, as a consequence, acquiescent. In other words, in colonial times kampong people lacked power.

The size of the investments

The impact of the kampong improvement programme depended in part simply on the size of the investments made. The total investments were considerably larger than the subsidies paid out by the central government during two brief periods (Table 11). The central government started financial support in 1927, and in 1929 it budgeted ƒ 500,000 to subsidize kampong improvement; the central government would finance half of the cost of each approved project on the condition that the municipality furnished the other half (Rückert 1930:171-2). In reality only about 70% of the sum of ƒ 500,000 reserved annually was actually paid out by the central government. After only three years, in 1932, the sum was reduced because of austerity measures and from 1933 to 1937 central government support was negligible. Kampong improvement was apparently low on the list of central government priorities during the Depression. In 1938, however, the government again budgeted ƒ 500,000 for kampong improvement in Java and sustained this effort, even during the emergency of the German occupation of the Netherlands.24 Dutch

23 Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:30-1; Flieringa 1930:171; Soerabaia 1926:594; Toelichting 1938:83. 24 Excerpt from note Generale Thesaurie, belonging to B.A.S. 14-6-1940, no. 1215, ANRI, 200 Under construction

Table 11. Government funds spent on kampong improvement, 1925-1940

Subsidies from central government expenses for Batavia Expenses for Buitenzorg 1925 0 30,090 0 1926 0 40,886 0 1927 14,500 103,365 3,000 1928 52,234 86,689 6,000 1929 374,495 73,785 12,000 1930 340,000 431,410 15,000 1931 343,035 193,658 20,000 1932 98,455 26,635 10,000 1933 5,850 45,987 7,000 1934 28,200 133,113 7,000 1935 0 29,920 7,000 1936 5,440 64,325 7,000 1937 0 14,976 5,000 1938 499,725 no data no data 1939 425,627 no data no data 1940 498,960 no data no data

Central government subsidies for 1927-1937 were probably for Java and other islands, subsidies of 1938-1940 were spent only in Java. Sources: subsidies 1927-1938: Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering 1939:13, 19; Subsidies on Java 1939-1940: Van de Wetering 1941:4; Batavia 1925-1937 compiled from: Stadsgemeente Batavia, Kampongverbetering vóór 1 januari 1938, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1732; Buitenzorg: Letter Burgemeester to Adviseur voor Decentralisatie, 10-3-1938, no. B.h.1/1/24, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1732. endeavours were, however, halted by the Japanese victory in 1942. Government efforts appear considerably larger when the expenses incurred by municipalities are added. Surabaya had already spent ƒ 145,000 of its own funds between 1923 and 1928, and again bore the full costs during the Depression years 1933-1935 (Heida 1939). Batavia did not receive any central government support before 1938,25 but had spent ƒ 1,300,000 on kampong improvement (Table 11). The Batavia administration had budg-

Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1732; letter Hoofd Dienst Volksgezondheid to Burgemeester Probolinggo, 8-4-1941, no. 11572/G, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1732. 25 The reason is probably that, unlike other towns, Batavia did not have autonomous villages (desa) within its borders and the central government usually gave a subsidy on the occasion of the rescinding of the autonomy of urban villages. Various sources, however, give contradictory information. According to Rückert (1930:173) no less than ƒ 122,066 of the central budget of ƒ 374,495 in 1929 was spent in Batavia. VI Housing in the kampong 201 eted even more, but was unable to spend the budgeted sums, when landowners obstructed the works (Ontwerp begrooting 1937). What is more, the municipality of Batavia continued to invest in kampong improvement during the Depression, as did, for instance Buitenzorg (Bogor). Buitenzorg, which received central government subsidies in the late 1920s, was prepared to bear the full costs during the Depression years. Because of deflation, the drop in investment in real terms was not very serious during the Depression, despite retrenchment by the central government. According to the Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering (1939:19), the total expenses paid out on kampong improvement from 1927 to 1937 were ƒ 3,200,000, of which ƒ 1,900,000 (60%) was paid by municipalities. According to figures reported by the municipalities (Table 12), they paid 68%, even 81%, if we include the data from Batavia. It is hard to explain the discrepancy between the self-reported figures and the figures from the Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering (the total amounts spent are almost the same). Table 12 also shows that the three largest cities in Java appropriated the lion’s share of central government subsidies.

Table 12. Central government share in kampong improvement in Java, 1925-1937 City Total expenses subsidy by central subsidy as (in guilders) government a percentage Bandung 310,500 129,000 42 Semarang 135,820 80,337 59 Surabaya 848,813 165,805 20 All municipalities on Java 1,898,524 599,090 32 except Batavia Batavia 1,274,839 0 0 All municipalities on Java 3,173,363 599,090 19

Sources: Batavia 1925-1937 compiled from: Stadsgemeente Batavia, Kampong verbetering vóór 1 januari 1938, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1732; other data: Overzicht van eenige antwoorden [1938], ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1732.

There is fragmentary yet ample evidence of substantial efforts made outside Java as well. Padang budgeted ƒ 4,500 for the first time in 1925 and continued to reserve small amounts during the Depression. After recurrent pleas by indigenous councillors, a surtax on the income and property tax, which predominantly affected the well-to-do, was imposed in 1937 in order to make more funds available for kampongs. In 1941 ƒ 30,000 was spent, half of it furnished by the central government (Colombijn 1994:103, 227-8). The town of Manado, North Sulawesi, spent ƒ 80,000 on kampong improvement between 1925 and 1929 from its own budget; it received its first central government 202 Under construction subsidy of ƒ 17,680 in 1930 and another ƒ 14,500 the year after.26 These subsidies were probably not included in the total of ƒ 3,200,000 mentioned by the Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering. New projects were initiated in Manado in 1940, but in reality these focused more on moving a kampong and paving a thoroughfare than on real kampong improvement.27 The town of Ambon continued kampong improvement during the Depression, spending a total of ƒ 41,500 from 1929 to 1936; half of the sum was covered by central government subsidies.28 The administration of Banjarmasin reported having spent ‘plenty’ of money on kampong improvement in the 1920s and hoped – in vain, as it turned out – for partial reimbursement by the central government.29 From 1938 until the Japanese invasion the central government had budgeted ƒ 45,000 for subsidies to municipalities outside Java.30 The last actor who invested in kampong improvement consisted of the owners of private estates (particuliere landerijen), who were expected to improve the kampongs on their own land. In Surabaya, for instance, 100 hectares had been improved by estates up to 1931 (Silas 1983:10). Naturally, landlords were loath to spend money on a welfare issue without assurance of a clear return on their investment. The owners of two private estates in Makassar refused the municipal order to improve drainage in kampongs on their land and also declined to compensate the costs if the municipality were to improve the kampongs. They successfully obstructed administrative action for years. On the whole, however, kampongs on private estates in Makassar, which formed the majority of the kampongs in that city, appeared more orderly than kampongs in Javanese cities.31

26 Letter Burgemeester Manado to Gouverneur-Generaal, Manado, 7-8-1929, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1728; letter Adviseur voor Decentralisatie to Burgemeester Manado, Weltevreden, 22-12-1930, no. 4924/Z-1930, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1728; Uittreksel beslui ten Gouverneur Generaal 26-6-1931, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1728. See, however, Rückert (1930:173), who mentions a subsidy of ƒ 13,050 in 1929. Van Roosmalen (2008:107-8) describes the unsuccessful attempts of Manado to obtain more subsidy. 27 Letter Burgemeester Manado to Directeur Binnenlandsch Bestuur, 13-4-1940, no. 1372/513, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1728; letter Burgemeester Manado to Directeur Binnenlandsch Bestuur, 25-10-1941, no. 381/513, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1728. 28 Letter H.D. von Meijenfeldt, Burgemeester Amboina, to Directeur Binnenlandsch Bestuur, 21-3-1940, no. 372/2/9, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1728. 29 Conferentie Kampongverbetering 11-2-1928, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1395. 30 Letter C.J. van Hasselt, Adviseur voor Decentralisatie to Gouverneur Groote Oost, 21-11- 1941, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1728. These subsidies are not mentioned in Table 11. 31 Letter Adviseur voor Decentralisatie to Gouverneur Generaal, juli 1936, no. Dec./1022/3/21-’35; letter NV Compagnie Commerciale Schmid & Jeandel to Burgemeester van Makassar, 3-11-1939; letter Dienst der Volksgezondheid to Burgemeester Makassar, Batavia-Centrum 13-4-1940, no. 13871/G, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1892; N.J. Meyer, Survey voor het stadsplan van Makassar, 7-3-1947, attached to letter Ir. N.J. Meyer, Planologisch Bureau Makassar, to Ir. Kipperman, Directeur Gemeentewerken Makassar, 8-3-1947, no. 1233/207, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 38. VI Housing in the kampong 203

Figure 23. Kampong Kjooëi Matji, Cirebon, 1943. Source: Djawa Baroe 1(17) 9-1-2603.

It is sometimes assumed that kampong improvement ended with the Japanese invasion and was not resumed in Jakarta and Surabaya until 1969 (with World Bank support from 1974). This assumption is not correct. The data about Japanese efforts to improve kampongs are far from comprehensive, but there is sufficient evidence to conclude that the Japanese continued the practice. They tried out the full range of Dutch colonial housing policies. The Japanese reminded the public that building permits were still required as before, and a few persons were fined for building a house without a permit.32 Assuming the same paternalistic attitude as their predecessors, the Japanese believed they knew what sort of housing was good for the colonized people. Dr Itjidji Foedjisjima and Dr Takasji Hirajama, affiliated with an academic institute in Tokyo, designed a model house for the tropics (Asia Raya 19-2-2603). Some funds were spent on improving houses, especially in cities were smallpox raged (Asia Raya 12-1-2603; 10-6-2603), and other houses were demolished or moved (Asia Raya 9-7-2603). The Japanese administration also undertook the building of public housing in, as far as I know, two cities. A new kampong was built in Bandung to provide living space for 70 households; it was meant to house new migrants to the city (Asia Raya 27-1- 2603, 9-9-2603; Djawa Baroe 1-9-2604). A kampong in Cirebon was moved to a new kampong called Kjooëi Matji (Joint Prosperity) (Figures 19 and 23). The municipal Public Works and Health Departments had built 57 simple houses in a regular square in Cirebon. Banyan (waringin) trees were planted at the corners of the square and a mosque was also provided. Although it was an

32 Asia Raya 23-9-2602, 2-10-2602, 28-10-2602, 15-12-2602. 204 Under construction urban neighbourhood, residents were expected to cultivate food crops (Asia Raya 22-6-2603; Djawa Baroe 9-1-2603). Most Japanese efforts focused on infrastructure, in particular the improvement of roads and drains. For instance, in 1943 Rp 250,000 was budgeted for kampong improvement in Jakarta and Rp 115,000 in Bandung; the same year an area of 12 hectares was improved in Semarang. The Japanese, after abolishing all private estates, were better able to start kampong improvement projects on the estates than the Dutch had been (Asia Raya 5-5-2603, 8-5-2603, 28-6-2603, 31-8-2603, 8-10-2603, 5-12-2603). Indonesian nationalists asked the Japanese to invest more in the improvement of towns, which the Dutch had neglected.33 Kampongs in smaller towns were indeed improved (Asia Raya 25-9-2602, 24-12-2602, 17-3-2603, 30-2-2603, 6-4-2603, 11-6-2603, 3-7-2603, 21-6-2604). The projects were meant to be a form of unemployment relief, and men who received social welfare from the Kantor Sosial Jakarta were obliged to work on them (Asia Raya 24-12-2602, 9-2-2603, 17-2-2603). We must take these newspaper reports about Japanese successes in improving kampong living conditions with a grain of salt, for two reasons. First, the funds were spent partly on works that would not have been considered kampong improvement proper in Dutch colonial times: the drainage of marshes; the digging of large drainage canals; and the improvement of houses. Second, the source of this information, Asia Raya, was a publication that served a propaganda purpose and may therefore have exaggerated Japanese efforts; it repeatedly stressed that the Dutch had done very little on kampong improvement in the three centuries of their rule, and what they had done, had been in order to protect Europeans against epidemic disease (Asia Raya 17-2-2603, 5-5-2603). Whatever did happen in this line was carried out early in Japanese rule; after 1943 kampong improvement appears to have ground to a halt. Nevertheless, it seems the Japanese successfully tackled a problem that had haunted the Dutch colonial administration. The Dutch repeatedly complained about the lack of inhabitants’ involvement in maintaining the kampongs in good shape, but the Japanese successfully mobilized inhabitants in neighbourhood associations (tonarigumi) to clean houses, yards, and streets. The space behind a cupboard should not be overlooked and furniture, mat- tresses, even cutlery should be spread out in the sun every month (Asia Raya 3-12-2602, 19-2-2603, 27-5-2603). The propaganda film Kesehatan rakjat (2603) shows how in a coordinated action people in a kampong sweep their houses and then the street. The rubbish is collected in a pushcart. Another shot shows people cleaning a middle-class neighbourhood.

33 Meeting Kyûkan Seido Tyôsa Linkai/Panitia Adat dan Tatanegara Dahoeloe, 5-10-2603, NA, NEFIS/CMI 2241. VI Housing in the kampong 205

After the Dutch resumed control, neither the central government nor the municipalities seem to have invested seriously in kampong improvement, but the municipalities did resume this activity after the transfer of sovereignty. Semarang budgeted Rp 500,000 for kampong improvement in 1950, or ƒ 41,000 in 1940 prices.34 Bandung planned to upgrade houses, to tear down a particularly insalubrious kampong and move its population to a new one, and to improve roads and drains; in 1952, the city budgeted Rp 1,500,000 (ƒ 70,000 in 1940 prices). Surabaya budgeted Rp 3,500,000 in 1954 (ƒ 148,000 in 1940 prices), and claimed to have improved three-quarters of all kampongs in the period 1949-1954 (Antara, 19-11-1950/A, 23-3-1951/B, 22-5-1954/A; Berita Indonesia 29-1-195). It is difficult to compare these post-colonial figures with data from colonial times, because these figures are neither comprehensive nor reliable. Jakarta, for instance, budgeted Rp 10,000,000-12,000,000 for kampong improvement for the year 1955, but actually paid out Rp 7,200,000 in that year; part of this money was spent on tasks not considered kampong improvement in colonial times, such as digging large drainage canals and expanding the electricity grid (Antara 2-4-1955/B, 8-7-1955/A, 4-11-1955/B). Although the exact amount spent on kampong improvement is therefore blurred, the point is that kampong improvement continued after independence and politicians kept it on the agenda. One of those politicians was S. Widjaja, member of the Jakarta municipal council (for the Partai Rakjat Indonesia), who called the erection of the National Monument an expression of bourgeois concerns and argued that the money could have been better used to improve kampong roads (Antara 18-1-1955/B). In contrast to late colonial times, kampong improvement was no longer an ideal pursued by all municipalities. Medan provides a negative case. The municipality reduced the 1949 budget for kampong improvement from ƒ 642,000 to ƒ 200,000, of which 70% was actually spent. The next year, the whole sum budgeted for kampong improvement – further reduced to ƒ 145,000 – was spent on a road; this road may have opened a new area for development, but served primarily to connect two new cemeteries.35 On the ground the project did not bear even a vague resemblance to kampong improvement. Overviews of municipal activities in Medan in 1954 and 1956 did not even pay lip service to kampong improvement (Djawatan Penerangan Medan 1954; Madjalah Kota Medan 3(17)-3(29) 1956). In contrast to Medan, the Surabaya administration enthusiastically undertook the improvement of one kampong after the other, tackling them in order of urgency. Surabaya continued working on

34 I have used figures from Pierre van der Eng (2002) as deflator. 35 Letter Djaidin Poerba, Burgemeester Medan, to Wali Negara Sumatera Timoer, 1-6-1950, no. 2587/TA-10, Arsip Medan. 206 Under construction kampongs until at least 1958.36 The goal was ultimately to improve all kampongs. On their side, kampong dwellers endorsed the programme and many kampongs took the initiative of requesting the municipality to be put on the list too. Along with the usual requests for paved roads and improved sewers, kampong organizations also asked for electric street lamps to keep thieves at bay, begged to change a kampong name that referred to a cemetery, inquired whether refuse collectors could enter the kampong after 4 a.m., so that the early morning would be quieter, and asked for the removal of iron bollards, which obstructed the flow of traffic where they should not have done, according to local residents. Sometimes kampongs protested about the misuse of kampong improvement funds for the widening of roads in other kampongs, while they had to wait for their turn for improvement.37 In short, kampong improvement was continued after 1949, but it was no longer a national policy in the 1950s. In Surabaya the programme was no longer contested between the administration and kampong dwellers, but supported by both sides. Such a unanimous stand was not possible in the case of squatting.

36 See, for instance, Letter Ir. F.B. van Asperen, Hoofd Gemeentewerken, to Burgemeester van Soerabaja, 28-4-1950, no. 0103/17, Arsip Surabaya, Box 865, no. 18074; letter Ir. F.B. van Asperen, Kepala Dinas Pekerdjaan Kota, to Kepala Daerah Kota Besar Surabaja, 23-2-1951, no. 0103/29, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1018, no. 20916; letter Doel Arnowo, Ketua Dewan Pemerintah Daerah Sementara KBS, to Ketua Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat Daerah Sementara KBS, 18-8-1951, no. 0103/75, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1940, no. 50405; letter Ir. Tan Giok Tjiauw, Kepala Dinas Pekerdjaan Kota, to Ketua DPDS Surabaja, 12-7-1952, no. 0103/44, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1018, no. 20916; Keputusan Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat Daerah Sementara Kota Besar Surabaja 27-8-1952, no. 88/DPRDS, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1018, no. 20916; Keputusan Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat Daerah Sementara Kota Besar Surabaja 29-5-1953, no. 47/DPRDS, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1018, no. 20916; Rentjana Beaja-beaja Perbaikan kampung Kembang-Djepun 1957, Arsip Surabaya, Box 408, no. 7340; letter R. Damanhoeri, Wakil Ketua Dewan Pemerintahan Daerah Peralihan Surabaja, to Ketua Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat Daerah Peralihan Surabaja, 28-9-1957, no. 01013/291, Arsip Surabaya, Box. 879, no. 18.482; Keputusan DPRD Peralihan Kotapradja Surabaya 4-2-1958, no. 9, Arsip Surabaya Box 97, no. 1432; Antara 17-1-1957/A. 37 Letter Ach. Moertado, Kepala Lingkungan Kampung Gunungsari, to Bapak Walikota Surabaia, 15-3-1952, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1606, no. 36.901; letter Imam Sutjahjo, Kepala Lingkungan Ampel, to Walikota Surabaja, 9-2-1953, no. 054/002/Amp/53, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1606, no. 36901; letter Djahurie, Ketua Rukun Kampung Kebangsren gang 1, 2, 8, 9, to Wali Kota Surabaja, 14-1-1953, no. 06/B/I/53, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1018, no. 20916; letter M.S, Joso, Ketua Rukun Kampung Oro-Oro, to Kepala Bagian Pekerdjaan Umum, Kota Besar Surabaja, 23-9-1953, no. 705/RK/53, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1606, no. 36.901; Keputusan Rukun Kampung Kalimas Baru, Surabaya, 4-3-1957, no. 023/UM/57, Arsip Surabaya, Box 408, no. 7330; letter Soedjono, Rukun Kampung Pulo Tegalsari, to Ketua DPD Surabaja, 10-4-1958, no. 451/R.K./D.2/58, Arsip Surabaya, Box. 358, no. 6746. VI Housing in the kampong 207

Squatting: the spread of mushrooms in the wet season

After Independence, squatting became the major issue over which the government clashed with kampong people. Analysis of today’s Third World cities sheds light on the social dynamics of squatting. Squatter settlements may come into existence as the result of an organized invasion, or gradual settlement by individual households. Access to a squatter area is rarely free; an entry fee must usually be paid to the actor who controls the area, for instance, a local leader or policeman. Protection from eviction by the state depends on: the duration of occupation; the size of the settlement; the cohesion of the community; and protection by or support from concerned outsiders.38 In short, squatting is a process in which various actors are involved, including individual squatters, squatter organizations, protectors, formal landowners, and the state. The same actors were found in Indonesia in the mid-twentieth century, but the balance of power between the various actors changed in the course of decolonization. Squatting already existed in colonial times, but in all likelihood on a small scale. For example, squatters were tolerated on the European cemetery of Padang in 1909 as long as there was some empty space left; evictions occurred in 1911 and 1926 when the squatting grew out of control (Sumatra Bode 14-4-1909, 13-5-1909, 26-7-1911, 16-12-1926). Tillema shows two pictures of wooden shelters built against the back of a brick building in Surabaya. What worried him was not the illegal occupation of the street, but the quality of the dwellings, which had a floor space of about 2 square metres, and in which children also lived (Tillema 1919:11-3). A former Chinese landowner, interviewed in Medan, believed that squatting did not occur at all in colonial times, but he tended to romanticize Dutch law and order and may have exaggerated his point. The years of armed conflict, 1942-1949, were unusual in the sense that the state sometimes sided with squatters against the formal owner. Squatting became more common after the Japanese broke the tight Dutch administrative control in 1942, and when at the same time flows of migrants to cities swelled. The Japanese government encouraged people to occupy land on North Sumatran plantations, but also encouraged them to take empty land in cities to use for agriculture (Asia Raya 26-9-2602, 19-11-2603, 30-12-2603, 27-3-2605, 2-5-2605). Many are the stories of kampong inhabitants who were encouraged by the Japanese to occupy urban land in Jakarta and Surabaya.39

38 Chatterjee 2004:53-5; De Soto 1989:17-33; Durand-Lasserve and Royston 2002:5-7; Gilbert 2002:7-8; Gilbert and Gugler 1983:89, 94. 39 Letter Population of Gubeng Sawah, to Walikota Surabaja, 4-12-1950, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1509, no. 33218; letter Perusahaan2 Kota Pradja, Pemilik, to Kepala Daerah Surabaia, 20-1-1951, 208 Under construction

The Japanese carried out a similar policy of land occupation throughout Southeast Asia (McGee 1967:158). During the Indonesian Revolution, when Jakarta was in Dutch hands, Republican leaders encouraged people to squat on European-owned plots, as a gesture of defiance to the resumption of colonial rule (Abeyasekere 1989:197). After the transfer of sovereignty, the state resumed the more usual position of defender of property rights, but by then the genie was not easily put back into the bottle. The custom of squatting was firmly established. A concrete case of how quickly urban administrators lost control comes from Medan. In 1948, the Medan administration gave 16 Chinese families permission to build pondok (dwellings or stalls) in Balistraat for six months; the permit was extended after six months. Two years later, when the administration sent the first warning to tear down the illegal buildings in Balistraat and two adjacent streets, it had to address not 16 but 84 households, Chinese, Batak and others.40 The phenomenon really became widespread in the 1950s, when the shortage of housing became a chronic problem owing to sustained rapid growth in urban population. The American architect Larson, who visited Indonesia in 1956, observed that squatter dwellings were built so close to each other that there was no space left between them where children could play. Illegal houses even spilled over from kampongs to the main streets (Larson 1958:49). The study of this important phenomenon is hampered by three problems: bias in the historical sources, varying contemporary definitions, and lack of reliable figures about squatting. The sources are biased towards the government: government publications (Djawatan Penerangan Semarang 1952); municipal archives (as used by Purnawan Basundoro 2005b and Sarkawi B. Husain 2005a); and the press reports of the Indonesian news agency Antara, which itself used statements by government officials as its most important source of information (Antara rarely sent out reporters to investigate in the field). Consequently, we are best informed about the state and less well informed about the squatters and their supporters, and we read more about government intentions than policies actually executed. Fortunately, as the state and squatters made move and counter-move, state policy changes give

no. 144/VI, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1509, no. 33218; letter F. Gultom and Tb. vA. Sutasungkawa, Panitya Ra’jat Kampung Baru V.I.J., to Walikota Kotapradja Djakarta-Raya, 4-2-1952, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden RI 1950-1959 692. 40 Letter A.J. Paling, Secretaris, to Tjoe Liang and 15 others, Medan 11-2-1948, no. 3510; letter Djaidin Poerba, Walikota Medan, to Tjoe Liong and 27 others, 17-12-1948, no. 5213; letter Djaidin Poerba, Walikota Medan, to 84 persons, 23-10-1951, no. 5938/KB-8, all Arsip Medan. For other examples in which the Medan administration temporarily permitted squatters to build dwellings: letter Djaidin Poerba to NV Handel Mij Seng Hap and Tan Tang Ho, 31-1-1951, no. 671/KB-8 and A.M. Djalaloe’ddin to Wedana Deli Hilir, 30-8-1952, no. 9423/TA-10, Arsip Medan. VI Housing in the kampong 209 some idea about the squatters’ actions to which the state reacted. Nevertheless, this exercise is like trying to read a chess match seeing the black pieces only. Letters sent to the Indonesian President to ask for mediation are a precious direct source about the squatters’ own views.41 The bias towards the government is manifested in contemporary terms for squatting. The most common terms were ‘illegal occupation’ – for which the Dutch term wilde occupatie was used in Indonesian – ‘unauthorized houses’ (roemah liar), and ‘houses without legal permit’ (roemah tanpa izin jang sjah).42 Strictly speaking, the latter two terms could refer to houses built without a building permit on land to which the builder had a legal claim. Although squatter houses were obviously built without a municipal building permit and as a rule violated municipal hygienic standards too, what really worried administrators about squatting was the unauthorized use of land.43 Whatever term was used, state discourse defined squatting as a problem of illegality. The squatters themselves may not have been aware that the occupation was illegal, as ‘the uninterrupted possession, sometimes for more than one generation, of abandoned or vacant land is a traditional means of founding adat rights to the land’ (Niessen 1999:269). For example, a group of squatters who fought against eviction referred to the ‘beads of sweat of our grandfathers and fathers who developed this land [...] from forest until it became a village’ as evidence of their rightful occupation of the land.44 Certainly, for the occupants, squatting was not a problem, it was the solution to a problem, namely the need for shelter. The magnitude of squatting is difficult to determine, but some estimates from Antara give the bottom line: 4,700 in Surabaya (in 1951); 10,000-20,000 in Jakarta (1951, 1953); 5,000-6,000 in Semarang (1954); 7,000 in Bandung (1957); and a wild guess of 10,000 in Banjarmasin (1956).45 All these figures are possibly too low, when the root cause is taken into account: urban population grew by tens of thousands per year in the largest cities (Appendix 1). Other sources mention far higher but equally unverifiable figures. Abdurrachman

41 These letters are found in ANRI, Kabinet Presiden RI 1950-1959. 42 Wilde occupanten should not be confused with onwettige occupanten (non-indigenous people who had purchased land with an indigenous title), which had formed a headache for the colonial administration (see Chapter V). In the light of the overwhelming numbers of squatters, the onwettige occupanten declined in relative importance as an administrative worry. 43 There are examples that the administration ordered a building to be demolished because it was built or extended without a permit, but the control of building regulations does not figure prominently in the sources. Squatting does. 44 Tetesan keringat kaka2, bapa2 kami jang menjuburkan tanah itu ...dari hutan sehingga mendjadi desa, letter Panitya Rakjat Peninggaran Tjipulir to Wedana Kebajuran Lama 4-12-1954, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden RI 1950-1959 202. 45 Antara 1-6-1951/A, 24-8-1951/B, 10-2-1953/B, 6-11-1953/B, 21-11-1954/A-B, 30-7-1956/B, 28-1- 1957/A. 210 Under construction

Surjomihardjo (1999-2000:62) estimates that in Jakarta in 1952 there were no less than 30,000 dwellings built on illegally occupied land. The public prosecutor (jaksa tinggi) of Jakarta estimated in 1955 that one-fifth of the land was occupied illegally. Another source spoke of 300,000 squatters at 35 different locations in Jakarta in 1957 (Pemerintah Djakarta Raja 1957:13). The communist party in Surabaya stated that 84,000 people lived on squatted land (Antara 11-7-1955/B, 4-1-1955/A). Qualitative information confirms the scale of the problem. For instance, the Mayor of Jakarta called squatting the biggest problem for the urban administration, and noted that the increase in unauthorized houses was like the spread of ‘mushrooms in the wet season’ (Antara 22-11-1954/B, 17-2-1956/B). Houses of squatters were not necessarily of poor quality. Some of the builder-occupants were well-to-do and constructed their house in brick; they must have felt pretty certain of their occupancy (Antara 22-10-1954/A). Of the 676 houses of squatters in Kampung Baru Petodjo (Jakarta), 53 were wholly or partially built in brick; 484 were made of wooden boards and tiles for the roofs, and only 129 of bamboo with thatched roofs. The inhabitants of Kampung Baru Petodjo intended to upgrade the dwellings, if their occupation of the land were legalized. Houses of squatters in Surabaya appear to have been of quite an acceptable quality for the time (Figure 24). Squatters were also concerned about their environment: they improved roads and sewers; agreed on social rules; and assigned names to roads and numbers to houses. Some squatter kampongs confidently requested the municipality to legalize their tenure and improve the infrastructure.46 On the basis of almost 80 reports from the Indonesian press agency Antara between November 1950 and February 1957 and additional sources of information, it is possible to discern three phases in the cat-and-mouse game between squatters and the state. In the first phase, from 1950 to 1954, both squatters and municipal authorities operated on an ad hoc basis. There is no evidence that squatters were organized or received protection from a powerful ally. Municipalities tried to evict squatters from specific plots, but did not yet define squatting as a major policy issue. During the second phase, from 1954 to 1956, both municipal administrations and squatters acted stubbornly. Squatters became well organized internally, and became linked to powerful

46 Letter Population of Gubeng Sawah, to Walikota Surabaja, 4-12-1950, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1509, no. 33218; letter F. Gultom and Tb. vA. Sutasungkawa, Panitya Ra’jat Kampung Baru V.I.J., to Walikota Kotapradja Djakarta-Raya, 4-2-1952, and letter Wali Kota Djakarta Raja to Panitia Rakjat Kampung Baru Petodjo, V.I.J. Gang I, 23-1-1952, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden RI 1950-1959 692; letter H. Soedarman, on behalf of the people of Kampung Ngaglik Baru, to Ketua Dewan Perwakilan Daerah Sementara Kota Besar Surabaja, 20-1-1955, and letter Panitya Perdjoangan Tanah/Rumah Ngaglik Baru to Kota Pradja, Bahagian Pendaftaran Rakjat Surabaya, 12-11-1955, no. 7/PPTR/44, Arsip Surabaya, Box 60, no. 843. VI Housing in the kampong 211

Figure 24. Kampong Ngaglik, Surabaya, 1955. Source: Letter Panitya Perdjoangan Tanah/Rumah Ngaglik Baru to Kota Pradja, Bahagian Pendaftaran Rakjat Surabaya, 12-11-1955, no. 7/PPTR/44, Arsip Surabaya, Box 60, no. 843. Courtesy of Arsip Surabaya. allies. Municipalities also organized themselves better and took a concerted national line of action. During the third phase, administrators realized they could not eliminate squatting entirely, and came up with more realistic and differentiated policies, which were more effective. At the same time, many squatters succeeded in obtaining more security of tenure. I shall use a mayors’ conference (1-3 November 1954) and a violent eviction in Surabaya (5 May 1956) as boundary markers between the phases, but looking at the praxis of squatting, the boundaries between the three phases are not clear-cut. Local variations in both squatters’ actions and government responses nuance the picture.

1950-1954: ad hoc moves against squatters

During the first phase, squatters occupied open space. For instance, squatters in Medan encroached on the airfield and came dangerously close to the runway.47 Other squatters in Medan occupied land immediately behind the

47 Letter Ali Soetopo, Perwira Urusan Lapangan Terbang K.D.U.I. Medan to Kepala Djawatan PU Pusat, 17-10-1951, no. 3622/IIIb/kdu/51, attached to letter A.B. Schlette, Pengetua Usaha, 212 Under construction provincial office building (Antara 27-3-1951/A). Squatting in Surabaya started on the empty space in front of the governor’s office (the site of the Raad van Justitie, destroyed in the battle of November 1945) and the practice spread to all vacant lots along main roads. People in Semarang squatted on 20 hectares of empty land around the football stadium. In Jakarta unauthorized sheds were built on the huge empty space of Lapangan Merdeka (nowadays Medan Merdeka). As long as squatters focused on open space, fencing in land was still an effective way to protect land.48 After the best open spots had been taken, squatters gradually looked for smaller patches: under bridges, on pavements, and along canals and railways (Antara 15-3-1951/B, 6-11-1953/B, 19-11-9151/B, 25-6-1954/A). There is no clear evidence that land that had belonged to the former colo- nizers was especially popular as a target of illegal occupation. Johan Silas (1988b:17) states that in the early 1950s squatters in Surabaya targeted land suspected of being Dutch-owned. In contrast, the Chinese former landowner in Medan (mentioned above) remarked that yards of Dutch-owned villas were usually ignored, because they were fenced in. In one case he was too late in enclosing his plot of land; after it was occupied, he sold it cheaply to rid himself of the problem. A Dutchman in Bandung discovered early one morning in 1955 that 30 Indonesians had invaded his backyard and set up houses; the culprit turned out to be not anti-Dutch feeling, but a Chinese trader who incited the squatters in the hope that the Dutchman would sell the land to him cheaply.49 According to one press report released by Antara, the majority of the occupied land was probably privately owned (Antara 6-11-1953/B). The administrations of Jakarta and Surabaya, and probably other cities too, only tried to evict squatters from municipal land. Private owners whose plots were occupied illegally were advised to seek justice in court (Djoemadjitin et al. 1977:43). The municipality of Surabaya offered private owners to evict squatters on condition that the owner paid for the eviction costs, immediately fenced the land cleared of squatters, and guaranteed the rent the evicted squatters were due for a couple of years;50 few private owners would have seriously considered accepting ‘help’ on these conditions. Municipalities responded by removing squatters selectively, namely from to Pemimpin Usaha Pekerdjaan Kota and Kepala Pedjabat Urusan Tanah, 6-11-1951, no. 6362/ TA-10, Arsip Medan. 48 The importance of fencing land was also mentioned by older interviewees. 49 The police, who were immediately called in, succeeded in sending away all but eight squatters. Letter Commissaris Bandung to Mustafa Pane, Kepala Polisian Keresidenan Priangan, 17-3- 1955, no. 4887, NA, Commissariaat Bandung 346. 50 [Mayor] R. Moestadjab Soemowidigdo, Het woningvraagstuk in de grote steden, [lecture] 24-8-1953, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1250, no. 26303. VI Housing in the kampong 213 state land that was needed for urban development projects, such as a new bridge, market, school, postal office, or public housing project. Even though the number of houses demolished after the transfer of sovereignty was considerable, it was but a drop in the ocean of unauthorized settlements: for instance 1,000 in Jakarta by 1953 and 3,000 in Surabaya (out of an estimated 7,000 illegal dwellings). Squatting was so widespread in Surabaya that authorities hardly knew where to begin to tackle the problem. The Surabaya administration claimed to have moved 1,106 illegal houses in 1951, but this action came too late for two private real-estate developers, who had cancelled their investment plans in 1950 because their land was occupied. The biggest operation of the early 1950s was the removal of squatters around Kebon Sirih, Laan Holle, and Oude Tamarindelaan in Jakarta, where they were blocking the construction of Thamrin Street, leading from the city centre to the new town of Kebayoran. The removal of the squatters delayed the completion of the road to Kebayoran by seven years.51 Eviction was undertaken considerately. Negotiations about land for reset- tlement and a fair compensation to squatters for demolished dwellings were expensive and time-consuming. The administration offered new land to which the squatters could move and provided temporary accommodation in barracks, where people could live while they were rebuilding their house. Sometimes financial compensation or transportation to the new site was also offered. Eviction was suspended during the Islamic fasting month.52 Despite municipal considerateness towards squatters, the evicted persons were often extremely unhappy with their situation. For example, when the mobile brigade and staff of the Jakarta urban administration demolished houses on the Oude Tamarindelaan and transported the evicted former residents to the envisaged new location by truck, 200 displaced persons demonstrated the next day (Antara 20-8-1951/B; Berita Indonesia 22-8-1951). The well-intended state policy of sites-and-services overlooked the point that the squatted plots were strategically located near income opportunities, especially when the dwelling was combined with a stall; the assigned new locations were often too far away from these income opportunities (Djawatan Penerangan Semarang 1952:57-8; Harian Rakjat 30-12-1953). Another strategy adopted by the government, which I have encountered only in Surabaya, was to take squatters to

51 Abeyasekere 1989:197-8; Purnawan Basundoro 2005:542, 546-9; Djoemadjitin et al 1977:39- 43; Dick 2002a:368-9; Antara 20-4-1951/B, 1-5-1951/B, 11-7-1951/B, 24-8-1951/B, 19-11-1951/B, 28-9-1952/A-B, 10-2-1953/B; Berita Indonesia 7-9-1951; Harian Rakjat 30-12-1953; see also letter Hadisoebroto, Kepala Perusahan Tanah Surabaia, to Ketua Dewan Pemerintah Daerah Surabaia, 23-5-1951, no. 906/1, Arsip Surabaya, Box. 1525, no. 33703. 52 Antara 30-5-1951/B, 2-6-1951/B, 9-8-1952/B; R. Moestadjab Soemowidigdo, Het woningvraagstuk in de grote steden, [lecture] 24-8-1953, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1250, no. 26303. 214 Under construction court. If convicted, squatters were fined Rp 75-250 and were ordered to move. A lawsuit gave squatters the chance to buy time, the more so if the case was protracted (Indonesia Raya 21-1-1954; Harian Rakjat 17-12-1953, 21-12-1953). The wish to be considerate, and revolutionary concern for the common people (rakjat), which was still prevalent in government circles shortly after the transfer of sovereignty, severely restricted municipal power and determination to act. As one official subtly ended his report on squatting: ‘We do not execute the old rules hundred per cent, nor do we disregard them’.53 When the Semarang municipal council decided to order the executive to evict squatters, the exceptionally firm decision was openly jeered as proof that the municipality ‘loves to squeeze the people, to act arbitrarily, and so forth’. When, on the other hand, the administration acted carefully and waited for the right psycho- logical moment, the result was a loss of authority, ‘what was popularly called a crisis of authority’.54 After the urban government warned people they should move voluntarily within 15 days or else it would demolish their houses, the ostensibly stern government officials did not return for a year. When an official finally came to give notice the house would be demolished, the occupant would pretend to be out, so that the official had to return several times. If the house was indeed eventually demolished, the angry occupant often dared to beard the town hall and in high dudgeon demand land and financial compensation (Djawatan Penerangan Semarang 1952:48-9, 57-9). In the case of Singapore, Alison Hay and Richard Harris (2006:13-4) argue that the colonial government in an era of decolonization was very careful with slum clearance and relocation to prevent disaffection. They quote a former British official who said that ‘once you have your own elected government, [... if the independent government] wanted to do something they just did it’. I believe the British colonial official, in an attempt to vindicate himself, missed the point that for an urban administration in a young independent and post-revolutionary state, it did not become easier but much harder to resist popular pressure, especially when the state was experimenting with democracy. During the first half of the 1950s, it was gradually discovered that not all squatters were individual migrants who built their own dwellings. According to one estimate, a quarter of the houses built on occupied land in Jakarta were rented; they were the property of landlords, who had built multiple houses on occupied land (Antara 10-2-1953/B). In Bandung and Makassar, a large rental market of squatter houses had come into being for thousands of

53 Kita tidak mengerdjakan 100% peraturan lama2 tetapi kita juga tidak mengabaikan peraturan2 lama. Letter Perusahaan2 Kota Pradja, Pemilik, to Kepala Daerah Surabaia, 20-1-1951, no. 144/VI, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1509, no. 33218. 54 [S]uka menindas rakjatnja, bertindak sewenang-wenang dan lain sebagainja’, ‘jang [...] telah popu- lair disebut krisisgezag (Djawatan Penerangan Semarang 1952:57). VI Housing in the kampong 215 refugees from the rural hinterland, whose houses had been destroyed in the Darul Islam rebellion (Antara 26-3-1954/A, 7-3-1956/A). State officials – civil servants, military and policemen – also occupied land illegally (Antara 22-10- 1954/A) and I suspect they received tacit consent, if not protection, from their superiors. The occupation of land could be a coordinated affair. For instance, in Medan, hundreds of shacks were built along the railway within the span of a week; the administration assumed that an organization or ‘dalang’ (pup- peteer pulling the strings behind the scenes) was behind this invasion (Antara 22-11-1954/B).55 In Jakarta, to give another example, a large plot that had just been prepared for building by the municipality was pegged out with 147 rods by a brazen, powerful squatter (Antara 23-10-1954/B). At a press conference, the public prosecutor in Jakarta acknowledged, with some degree of self-criticism, that the government had been far too lenient in dealing with squatters in the past (Antara 8-7-1955/A, 11-7-1955/B). Another administrator moaned that his staff had been overwhelmed by rapid urbanization; a feeling of helplessness in the face of large-scale squatting had given him ‘hoge bloed- druk’ (high blood pressure).56 If Indonesian municipalities wished to gain the upper hand over squatters, a firmer stand was clearly necessary.

1954-1956: concerted actions

In short, by 1954 municipal administrations grew alarmed at the problem of squatting, which appeared to be spinning out of control. The mayors of the 12 provincial capitals met in Jakarta from 1 to 3 November 1954 and decided to make a concerted effort to control the problem. At the same time, squatters had become much better organized and received help from powerful allies, who probably had an interest in mustering the squatters’ political support. During the second phase of squatting, which lasted until 1956, both urban administrators and squatters acted resolutely in a much more organized way. The result would be fatal. It is difficult to decide which came first: administrative determination to end squatting or organized resistance? The organized resistance must be seen against a backdrop of emerging popular participation in government, bur- geoning unionism, and the coming general election of 1955. Nevertheless, it is plausible that the squatters would not have acted in their new hard-line style

55 At that time, plantations around Medan were also subject to large-scale invasions by squatters, who were backed by leftist parties (Antara 21-5-1953/A to 24-5-1953/A-B, 26-4-1956/B, 12-12- 1956/A). 56 Petikan risalah Konperensi Walikota I, attached to letter R. Soepangkat, Head of the Sekretariat Permanen Konperensi Walikota to Menteri Agraria, 19-1-1955, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden RI 1950-1959 205. 216 Under construction if they had been left in peace. It was probably the stepped-up administrative efforts that triggered the spiral of harsh confrontations. At the momentous mayors’ conference in November 1954, various problems of urban management were discussed. The mayors decided to form a united front on a number of important issues: control of the Housing Allocation Bureaus (Kantor Urusan Perumahan); control of state land; rent policy; kampong improvement; the lingering problem of private estates (particuliere landerijen); and squatting (Antara 4-11-1954/A). They also decided to set up a permanent secretariat in Jakarta, and resurrected the colonial Vereeniging voor Locale Belangen in a new form.57 Several of their decisions came down to joint lobbying efforts with the national government, but squatting was an issue that urban administrators felt they could deal with themselves.58 The same month of the conference, November 1954, illegal houses were demolished in Semarang, Medan, and Bandung with the help of the police and the army. Even houses built in brick were destroyed. Makassar followed a little later; squatters in the Chinese graveyard were forcibly removed by the Mobile Brigade. During four months in the first half of 1955, no less than 657 houses were demolished in Bandung; some owners received a subpoena. Jakarta installed a Local Security Coordination Board (Koordinasi Keamanan Daerah, KKD), consisting of the Mayor, the public prosecutor, the head of police, and the military commander, who chaired the board. This KKD immediately began to make public announcements in speeches and newspaper advertisements stating that houses and fruit trees newly planted on illegally occupied land would be demolished.59 The Local Security Coordination

57 Following up on this mayors’ conference, a Decentralization Congress (Kongres Desentralisasi) was indeed held in March 1955. On that occasion Mayor Moestadjab of Surabaya addressed squatting in his paper on urban housing. Squatting could be quashed, he argued, by a national law that prohibited squatting and by the provision of state funds to continue local eviction policies, which had been discontinued because of shortage of municipal funds (Antara 9-3-1955/A). 58 However, a lobby for finding a solution to the problem of squatting was launched by the administration of Malang (not a provincial capital and hence not invited to the mayors’ conference of November 1954). The Malang municipal council accepted a resolution urging the national government to promulgate an agrarian law that would deal justly with the problem of squatting. The council also asked for financial support and the donation of national land to municipalities with which to compensate evicted squatters. This resolution received support from local governments throughout the Archipelago. Resolusi Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat Daerah Sementara Kota Besar Malang, 27-7-1955, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden RI 1950-1959 215; see also Antara 20-7-1955/A-B. 59 Interestingly, of all municipal administrators, the Jakartan KKD seemed to take the least action. In July 1955, the public prosecutor warned squatters who had ‘light-heartedly ignored’ previous warnings that firm action was about to be taken (Antara 11-7-1955/B). ‘Barking dogs do not bite’, the squatters must have concluded about the repeated threats of eviction. The slow- ness of action in Jakarta is demonstrated by the demolition of 11 houses near a post office, about which talks had started five years earlier (Antara 20-4-1951/B; Harian Rakjat 6-1-1956). VI Housing in the kampong 217

Board in Surabaya issued a similar statement. The official discourse also hardened, and spoke of membrantas (eradicating) illegal houses, as though they were a plague.60 The squatters for their part organized themselves into interest groups, which sometimes represented more than 1,000 occupants. An early example is the organization of inhabitants of the kampong Pulo Hawai, on the railway yard in Cirebon. The first permit to settle there had been issued in June 1942, and building permits were granted by the municipal administration in 1948. In 1953 the railway company claimed back the land. By then 2,500 people occupied 320 houses. In response to the railway company’s claim, the kampong dwellers were able to produce a list of residents complete with the status of their houses, and sent 23 copies of their correspondence (a letter with 17 enclosures) to lobby for support or mediation; the letter was sent to the Indonesian president, several ministries, national parliament, political parties, and various departments of the local administration.61 The squatters’ organizations were often simply called a ‘people’s committee’ (komite rakjat) (Antara 15-4-1955/A, 23-1-1956/B). Threatened kampongs in Surabaya formed Task Force Committees (Panitia Kesatuan Aksi), and a Central Committee (Panitia Pusat) did its best to coordinate their actions (Harian Rakjat 30-12-1953). One example is the committee of the inhabitants of kampong Ngaglik Baru (Surabaya), who asked the administration in 1955 to authorize their settlement, construct water mains, pave streets, and assign names to the streets (Figure 25). The urban administration took no action to fulfil any of the requests, but left the well-ordered kampong in peace (Purnawan Basundoro 2005b:545-6). The multifunctional ‘neighbourhood association’ (rukun kampung), founded in the Japanese period, could lobby on behalf of squatters too. The Federation of Neighbourhood Associations in Surabaya (Pusat Rukun Kampung-Kampung Surabaya, or Pusat RKKS) united 37 branches and 350 sub-branches of rukun kampung under its aegis (Indonesia Raya 21-1-1954). Setting up a squatters’ organization bore the inherent risk that a crook might misuse it. This may have happened for instance in Karanganjar, Jakarta. The administration promised that each of the 204 households would be given a new plot of land of 3x15 m in the new kampong Grogol, plus Rp 500. The financial compensation was not paid directly to the households, but would be paid to the People’s Committee of Karanganjar to buy building materials, and

60 Antara 21-11-1954/A-B, 22-11-1954/B, 2-12-1954/A, 11-1-1955/B, 2-6-1955/A, 9-6-1955/A, 22-6-1955/A, 18-4-1956/A. Banjarmasin demolished an impressive number of 212 houses and 108 stalls in 1956 (Antara 18-9-1956/B), but I doubt this was still a legacy of the mayors’ conference. 61 Letter M. Ibrahim Prawirodihardjo on behalf of Rajat Purwosari to Asisten Wedana Desa Pekalipan, Kota Besar Tjirebon, 7-1-1955, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden RI 1950-1959 731. 218 Under construction

Figure 25. Panitya Perdjuangan Tanah dan Rumah Ngaglik. Source: Letter Panitya Perdjoangan Tanah/Rumah Ngaglik Baru to Kota Pradja, Bahagian Pendaftaran Rakjat Surabaya, 12-11-1955, no. 7/PPTR/44, Arsip Surabaya, Box 60, no. 843. Courtesy of Arsip Surabaya. any surplus would be divided among the households (Antara 23-6-1956/B). It seems not unlikely that the head of the committee, Abdullah St. Madjo Enda, pocketed a large share of the compensation money. In Makassar, squatters around Djalan Penghibur appointed a certain Barug Daeng Njampa as their spokesman, because he seemed honest. However, appearances are deceiving. Barug Daeng Njampa used his position to occupy more land himself, and built three wooden houses with the backing of the military. The inhabitants could not remove him and so instead founded a new committee with another head.62 The fact that dissatisfied members simply walked out of Barug Daeng Njampa’s organization, and the custom of letters sent to authorities being signed by all members of a local committee, suggest that as a rule squatters’ organizations operated democratically. Squatters found powerful friends among entrepreneurs, communist organizations, and political parties. The head of the Association of National

62 Report Polisi Negara Kantor Kota Besar Makassar, 11-7-1958, no. 126/DL/DS/58/Rah, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 203. VI Housing in the kampong 219

Entrepreneurs (Pusat Perserikatan Pengusaha Nasional), Dr Mustopo, criticized persons who indiscriminately demolished buildings along roads; only those buildings that obstructed traffic should be torn down immediately. The Association of Small Entrepreneurs and Traders in Jakarta (Ikatan Pengusaha dan Pedagang Ketjil Djakarta) also pressed the urban administration to reconsider its eviction policy (Antara 19-1-1954/B, 28-2-1956/B). A speaker at a meeting of the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI) in Surabaya argued in front of an audience of 10,000 people that the administration could not solve the problem of squatting by ‘simply demolish- ing’ (main bongkar sadja) (Antara 4-1-1955/A). Communist opposition was also apparent in the rumour that government attempts were only meant to ‘help the capitalists’ (membantu kaum kapitalis). Evicted persons were now being called ‘victims’ (korban) (Antara 11-7-1955/B, 6-3-1956/A). The regained vitality of the municipal councils of the mid-1950s made political support a valuable asset that squatters had to offer. The PKI (supported by the parties Parindra, Buruh and the communist peasant front, BTI) and NU (Nahdlatul Ulama, Association of Muslim Leaders) tabled motions in the Jakarta council, and the PSII (Partai Serikat Islam Indonesia, Islamic Party of Indonesia) took a similar action in Makassar (Antara 17-2-1956/B, 27-2-1956/B, 7-3-1956/A). The Komite Rakjat Semarang had an effective link to national politicians. One member of parliament introduced a delegation of the committee to a Deputy Prime Minister so that they could plead their case face-to-face (Antara 12-2-1955/B). It is certainly no coincidence that political parties took up the squatters’ case in 1955 and 1956. National elections were held in 1955 and municipal elections were scheduled in Java and some other parts of Indonesia in 1957 and 1958. The squatter settlements were sources of votes that could be won over with party promises of protection or support. The Indonesian Communist Party, the staunchest supporter of squatters, won over 50% of the votes cast in the municipal elections of 1957 in Semarang, Surakarta and four smaller municipalities in Java, and 40-50% of the votes in Yogyakarta and Surabaya; however, it got many fewer votes in Jakarta and Bandung.63 When both the municipalities and the squatters’ organizations began to dig in their heels, a clash became inevitable. The hardened conflict between urban administrations and the organized resistance escalated fatally in Surabaya in May 1956. The event would have a large impact on state policy. The local military ordinance of 1 October 1954 had stated that persons who interfered with the property of others, including land, would be prosecuted.

63 Hindley 1964:221-6. From what I know of Kolkata today, politicians offer protection to squatters, but rarely legalize the settlements, because if they did, they would lose their grip on the squatters as an electorate. I do not know whether the same mechanism operated in Indonesia. 220 Under construction

The ordinance implied that squatters from before this date would be left in peace. The Regional Security Coordination Board, KKD, of Surabaya issued a reminder in December 1955, and when squatting continued unabated, the KKD announced a new policy decreeing that illegal houses could be demolished directly without resorting to judicial proceedings. During April 1956, 102 houses were demolished at ten locations. One location was the bank of the River Brantas in Kampong Ngagel, were over 300 houses were selected for demolition.64 After the first 12 houses in Ngagel were demolished without prior notification – incidentally, one child was wounded by a collapsing wall – 1,000 inhabitants marched to the governor’s office in protest. The dem- onstration was led by the Neighbourhood Association (Rukun Kampung) of Ngagel. Two weeks later the Federation of Neighbourhood Associations in Surabaya, Pusat RKKS, called all Neighbourhood Associations to an emergency meeting. The Pusat RKKS concluded that the Security Coordination Board, KKD, had so far acted arbitrarily. The Pusat RKKS demanded that any future eviction should be discussed beforehand with the occupants and that the municipality would give evicted families financial compensation and a new plot of land (Antara 18-4-1956/A, 2-5-1956/A; Surabaja Post 17-4-1956). In this heated atmosphere, the KKD ordered the eviction of new squatters in Kampong Pakis.65 On Thursday 3 May 1956, four houses were destroyed and the inhabitants unsuccessfully asked the Mayor to discuss his plans first before taking action. The eviction was continued the next day, but the kampong dwellers offered armed resistance and the demolition crew had to withdraw. On the third day of the attempted demolition, Saturday 5 May 1956, two trucks of labourers and one truck carrying a police guard returned to resume the demolition of a brick house (belonging to a merchant in building materials). As soon as they entered the neighbourhood, the kampong dwellers beat the wooden neighbourhood drum (kentongan). Immediately a crowd of 3,000 persons gathered and asked the demolition crew to halt, but the municipal supervisor, Munasri, felt that the government’s prestige was at stake and refused to give in. The crowd then pelted the labourers with stones and the police responded by firing warning shots, which failed to stop the crowd. When it became known that a sate seller and a two-and-a-half year old girl had been shot dead – she was hit in the head and one eyeball was hanging out of its socket – the crowd grew truly enraged. Yelling ‘forward’ and ‘ready’ (madju, siap), it attacked the two municipal trucks and set fire to them. The supervisor Munasri was able to reach the police truck, which was thereupon surrounded and also burnt. When the passengers fled the flaming

64 Not to be confused with the Kampong Ngaglik mentioned above. 65 Kampong Pakis and Kampong Ngagel were close to each other, but not adjacent; both kampongs were found at the southern end of the city, near the elite Darmo thoroughfare. VI Housing in the kampong 221 police truck, Munasri and a policeman were lynched by the crowd; another policeman was badly injured. A professional photographer trying to take pictures of the people running amok was also dealt his share of blows. The fire brigade and auxiliary military forces were driven off and only after fully armed commando troops arrived did the administration manage to pacify the situation again. The next day the kampong was calm, except for hundreds of spectators who came to have a look. Two days after the fights, a crowd of thousands of people buried the bodies in the Ngagel cemetery; the policeman, Tanu, was given a special burial in the war cemetery, Makam Pahlawan.66

After 1956: facing the facts

The failed eviction in Kampong Pakis forced urban administrators to reconsider their stance on squatting, and marked the beginning of the third phase in squatting. As an immediate consequence of the bloodshed in Kampong Pakis, allies of the squatters put pressure on the KKD Surabaya to suspend the use of evictions. The Indonesian Socialist Party (Partai Sosialis Indonesia, PSI) and Pusat RKKS urged the KKD Surabaya to act more sensibly (bidjak sana) and humanely and to prohibit the use of ‘headless force, which can lead to excesses’ (gezag zonder mening jang bisa menimbulkan ekses-ekses). Delegates from the labour union SOBSI (Sentral Organisasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia, All-Indonesia Federation of Labour Organizations) and the women’s organization Gerwani (Gerakan Wanita Indonesia, Indonesian Women’s Movement), both heavily influenced by the Indonesian Communist Party, pleaded with the army to negotiate with squatters instead of taking unilateral action. SOBSI also demanded that the officials responsible be prosecuted (Antara 8-5-1956/A, 27-5-1956/A-B; Surabaja Post 8-5-1956, 9-5-1956, 16-5-1956). A local section of the BTI (Barisan Tani Indonesia, Indonesian Peasants’ Front) sent a similar statement to many authorities, including the Mayor of Surabaya and the Indonesian President.67 However, when members of the Surabaya municipal council consulted

66 Antara 6-5-1956/A-B, 8-5-1956/A; Surabaja Post 7-5-1956. The authorities gave a different reading of the event than the story cited above based on field research by an Antara journalist. The KKD issued a press release stating that the policeman and the supervisor were killed by stones flung and stab wounds inflicted by the mob, and only thereafter were two ordinary people incidentally killed by stray bullets. The Dutch consul, in this respect a neutral observer, confirmed the order of events as reported by the press: the policeman and Munasri were killed after the police had fired into the crowd. Letter Nederlandse Commissaris Surabaya to Tijdelijke Zaakgelastigde at Djakarta, 7-5-1956, no. 6791/GS269/1861, NA, Commissariaat Soerabaja. 67 Pernjataan B.T.I. Rantang Gubeng Trowongan tentang masalah tanah dan perumahan2 rakjat, 13-7-1956, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden RI 1950-1959 202. 222 Under construction the Prime Minister and Army Command in Jakarta, the councillors were told to continue to pursue their hard line. The Army Commander hinted that certain organizations were orchestrating the resistance; he meant, of course, the communists (Antara 20-6-1956/A). After the return of the councillors from Jakarta, the municipal council held a closed meeting for three days and issued a statement along the lines advocated by the Army Command, justifying the authorities’ acts.68 Ignoring the slightly other-worldly recommendation of the national government hardliners and the council’s statement, Surabaya urban administrators, who were directly confronted by daily events, became more accommodating towards squatters. Squatters felt more secure of their tenure and dared to hold on to their land and snub the administrators. A tacit understanding emerged, delineating which areas in Surabaya were under municipal control – where police would act against squatters – and which areas were under popular control and would be left in peace by the authorities (Dick 2002a:370). The shift in the balance of power between the administration and squatters became clear two years later in a series of conflicts about Surabaya’s Chinese graveyards. People had been setting up dwellings between the graves since at least the 1920s. In 1951 squatters on one of the Chinese cemeteries had already disrupted a funeral, but at that time the police still forced the squatters to back down. In 1958 the competition for land between squatters and the next-of-kin of deceased persons intensified. The issue was especially sensitive for the Chinese community, because of the enormous importance attached to a quiet, symbolically appropriate resting place for ancestors. In March 1958, the police had to be present to guarantee the undisturbed burial of Liem Kim Nio. The head of the kampong protested to the urban administration that the grave was too close, 25 m, from dwellings and a well. Four months later, the police had to be called in for two burials, of Mrs Oei Hoay Giok and of Tan Ping Swat, but this time acted with less determination. With dusk falling rapidly, the relatives of the deceased saw no alternative than to hurriedly pick another site. Administrative circulars that prohibited squatting on Chinese graves were completely ineffectual. Graves were even destroyed, probably to make room for dwellings or because the brick was reused as building material.69 News of the tragedy in Surabaya spread to other cities and influenced eviction policies throughout the Archipelago. On the occasion of the first proposed eviction in Jakarta after 5 May 1956, the press immediately mentioned

68 Surabaja Post 24-5-1956. For this follow-up to the Pakis incident, see also: letter Nederlandse Commissaris Surabaya to Tijdelijke Zaakgelastigde at Djakarta, 23-5-1956, no. 7404/GS308/2046, and 29-5-1956, no. 12714/GS560/3869, NA, Commissariaat Soerabaja. 69 Purnawan Basundoro 2005b:550-3; Flieringa 1930:78; Sarkawi B. Husain 2005a:213-35; Tillema 1930:78. VI Housing in the kampong 223 the suspension of evictions in Surabaya. Even the Head of Police of Jakarta asked publicly why the government had spent millions of rupiahs on all sorts of projects, but could not put aside the small sum necessary to move some houses in kampong Karanganjar (Antara 17-5-1956/B, 18-5-1956/B). In fact, the Jakarta administration offered the inhabitants of Karanganjar a considerable amount in compensation. The agreement used up 70% of the 1956 Jakarta budget for relocations (Antara 8-6-1956/A, 23-6-1956/B, 29-6-1956/B). Another kampong to which the administration capitulated was Krekot Dalem. The administration agreed to postpone eviction until the apartment blocks, to which the squatters could move, were ready.70 In Bandung the municipal council did not want to provoke the public and discussed the issue of squatting behind closed doors; only the Indonesian Communist Party campaigned for an open meeting to demonstrate its support for the squatters publicly. The council decided that unauthorized occupants should leave their land, but this policy required patience and huge amounts of compensation money (Antara 9-12-1956/A-B, 14-12-1956/A, 28-1-1957/A). In Medan, engulfed by the large- scale occupations of plantations, the administration was no match for the squatters. The University of North Sumatra in Medan grudgingly observed how bold squatters were who invaded its building land. Even so powerful an organization as the Indonesian Air Force was troubled by over 300 squatters near the runway in Medan; they proved difficult to remove.71 Facing the facts, municipal administrators realized that it was absolutely impossible to eradicate squatting. Their last line of defence was to distinguish between various groups of squatters, condone or even legalize certain kinds of unauthorized land use, and concentrate eviction attempts on the most disruptive kinds of land occupation. Actually, the fatal attempt at demolition in Kampong Pakis in Surabaya was based on the similar idea that older illegal occupations could be left in peace, but this allegedly new occupation should be stopped at all costs. In Bandung, a clear distinction was made between refugees from the Darul Islam rebellion, who should be helped, and rich squatters exploiting many rental dwellings, who should be stopped (Antara 26-3-1954/A; 28-1-1957/A). In February 1956, the Jakarta administration introduced a distinction between four categories of squatters. First, illegal occupations dating from the Japanese period or the post-war Dutch period would

70 Letter Sudiro, Walikota Djakarta, 22-1-1955, no. 346/12/U.T.; letter Saleh Karjono, Sekretaris II Panitia Korban Kebakaran Krekot Dalem, to K.M.K.B.D.R., 18-3-1957, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden RI 1950-1959 205, 741; Antara 25-6-1956/B, 2-8-1956/A, 18-10-1956/B. 71 Letter Dekan Fakultas Hukum to Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat Daerah Peralihan Kota Besar Medan, 22-1-1957, attached to letter Walikota to Ketua DPRD Peralihan Kota Besar Medan and Ketua Seksi Agraria DPRD Peralihan Kota Besar Medan, 9-4-1957, no. 548/TA-10; letter H. Moeda Siregar, Walikota Kotapradja Medan, to Ketua DPRD Peralihan, 5-9-1957, no. 13202/TA-10, Arsip Medan. 224 Under construction be legalized. Second, squatters who occupied land between the transfer of sovereignty and 1 January 1955 would be moved to a new site, with transportation and building materials offered by the municipality. Third, people who had squatted since the first public warning issued by the KKD, that is after 1 January 1955, would be required to move to a location assigned by the administration, without any compensation. Fourth, kiosks must be demolished, but small stalls on the pavement could be condoned.72 By 1959, the Mayor of Jakarta claimed to have solved the problem of squatting. Several kampongs of squatters were legalized, while dwellings that truly intruded on public space had been demolished (Antara 8-1-1960/A). In the end, what should be emphasized is the local variation. For instance, the hardest confrontations took place in Surabaya.73 Two years before the fatal event in Kampong Pakis, at the mayors’ conference in 1954, the Mayor of Surabaya had told stories about violent confrontations with squatters. In Semarang, in contrast, squatters had always had a relatively strong position, because of the strong local civil society and the leftist reputation of the city administration (dating back to colonial times). As early as 1950, squatters on the land of the Javasche Bank in Semarang told civil servants that the Barisan Tani Indonesian (BTI) had prohibited them to leave. When the urban administration tried to reach an agreement with the BTI, the BTI demanded a very high financial compensation for houses demolished, and the administration felt obliged to offer considerable compensation (Radjimo Sastro Wijono 2005:115-8). The Semarang administration was also the first to reconsider the firm stand taken by the mayors’ conference of November 1954. Within one month, stepped-up efforts to evict squatters in Semarang stranded on the resistance of occupants, and the administration re-entered financial negotiations with the People’s Commitee (Komite Rakjat) about the relocation of illegal houses (Antara 15-12-1954/A, 15-4-1955/A). This local variation somewhat blurs the analytical boundaries between my suggested three phases of squatter-government interactions.

Conclusion

Lower-class people found the urban space needed for their houses in kampongs. They built their dwellings in kampongs without state planning and, after Independence, without state recognition of their land tenure. Local

72 Antara 17-2-1956/B. 27-2-1956/B; Djoemadjitin et al. 1977:139-42; see also Antara 6-11-1953/B. 73 Petikan risalah Konperensi Walikota I, attached to letter R. Soepangkat, Head of the Sekretariat Permanen Konperensi Walikota to Menteri Agraria, 19-1-1955, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden RI 1950-1959 205. VI Housing in the kampong 225 government contested the self-determination of kampongs both before and after Independence. The struggle between kampong dwellers and the government was as much about physical control of kampongs – the imposition of kampong improvement and the eviction of squatters from illegally occupied land – as it was about symbolic appropriation of kampongs, the question of which side was most successful in defining the situation. In addition, from the 1910s until, in some cases, the 1960s, municipalities fought to break the administrative autonomy of kampongs within their territory. The colonial state defined the kampong mostly in terms of its deficiencies: the lack of order and the lack of hygiene. Modernity was seen to have passed kampongs by. Kampong dwellers’ opinions about kampong improvement projects, in contrast, were informed not so much by notions of filth, puri- fication, and modernization, as by practical benefits and losses. The forced removal of kampongs and the demolition of derelict houses was highly contested and led to large demonstrations in the 1910s and the first half of the 1920s. Resistance to kampong improvement in its narrow sense (improving drains and metalling roads) was limited, perhaps because these projects intruded less on kampongs than the previous mass destruction of kampong houses, and perhaps because after 1927 people grew afraid of an increasingly repressive state. Kampong improvement elicited mixed feelings among the target groups and caused as many problems as it solved. The enforcement of overly strict building regulations hampered the self-help construction of affordable houses. The whole or partial demolition of houses that did not follow the official building line reduced the stock of dwellings. The rise in rents that followed on the improvement of infrastructure drove out the lowest-income persons. Nonetheless, some kampongs actually asked the local government to improve their neighbourhood, and this appreciation of kampong improvement was especially common in Surabaya in the 1950s. At the end of the day, it can be stated that, despite the understandable misgivings of a portion of the kampong population, kampong improvement helped to create living conditions in Indonesian cities that compare favourably with those in many other Third World cities. The evidence for the hypothesis that kampong improvement was predominantly a matter of European self-interest – to protect the colonial elite from contagious epidemics or to stem the tide of nationalism – is minimal. Administrative concern about living conditions in kampongs was not self- seeking, but genuine. The good intentions, however, were paternalistic, often ill-conceived, and based on European notions of order and cleanliness. After the transfer of sovereignty, the administration’s focus shifted to a more pressing issue: squatting. The position of the government in relation to squatters went through several phases: from encouragement in the Japanese 226 Under construction years, to piecemeal evictions and then large-scale confrontations, to a partial acceptance of the practice. After 1956, most urban administrators adopted the policy of legalization or tacit recognition of some settlements and the demolition of the most disruptive ones. At least four reasons explain why squatters were more successful in withstanding the government than the people who had resisted kampong improvement two to four decades earlier. First, the concept of social capital goes a long way towards explaining squatters’ strength. Alejandro Portes (1998:6) has defined social capital as ‘the ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks or other social structures’. Social capital manifests itself in trust, norms and networks that facilitate coordinated actions. There is a distinction between: bonding ties between similar groups; bridging ties with other, disparate groups; and linking ties with actors in positions of power (Jaffe 2006:211-7; Lin 1999; Portes 1998). The growing degree of internal organization, as exemplified by the many democratic ‘people’s committees’ formed in the squatter settlements, resulted in bonding. Squatters found ‘the moral attributes of a community’ (Chatterjee 2004:57) through a process of ‘place making’, for instance by giving names to streets and hanging up a neighbourhood signal drum (kentongan). Strong bridges were built, for example in the Federation of Neighbourhood Associations and the Central Committee in Surabaya and during large public meetings organized by communist grassroots organizations. Membership of these kinds of powerful organizations increasingly determined the social standing of individuals in the 1950s (Wertheim 1978:141). Links with political parties and with organizations of entrepreneurs provided squatters with political protection. Thanks to these multiple forms of social capital, most squatter settlements formed formidable opponents to municipal administrations during the second half of the 1950s. However, communist protection would quickly evaporate after the Indonesian Communist Party was crushed in 1965 and 1966. By the mid-1960s, eviction had become so easy that both civil and military officials and private persons began to evict people to their own advantage, so that the Governor of Jakarta issued an instruction in 1966, warning that local government officials should not assist in evictions without the consent of the Governor.74 Second, the balance of power between the state and kampong people changed after Independence, when universal suffrage was introduced and kampongs acquired leverage as sources of votes (Chatterjee 2004: 55; Yeoh Seng Guan 2001). After Independence, therefore, the political society ‘as a site of negotiation and contestation’ (Chatterjee 2004:74) opened up again to kam-

74 Abeyasekere 1989:197-8; Gautama and Harsono 1972:13-4. Nevertheless, even then three of the four known factors that protect squatters (Durand-Lasserve and Royston 2002:5-7) were often still found: duration of occupation; size of the settlement; and cohesion of the community. VI Housing in the kampong 227 pong people. Municipalities, however, differed considerably in the degree to which they were willing to meet squatters’ wishes; at one end of the spectrum Semarang was lenient, but at the other end Surabaya did not hesitate to use force to evict squatters. Third, the general chaos and insecurity of land tenure during Japanese rule, the Indonesian Revolution, and the first decade thereafter gave squatters the chance to defy state regulations in a way that had not been open to people resisting kampong improvement in colonial times. If a press report released by Antara is correct, the majority of the occupied land was probably privately owned (Antara 6-11-1953/B). The situation in Indonesia was the opposite to what was found in Lima in the 1960s-1980s, where squatters preferred to invade state land rather than private land, because ‘when no particular individual is affected, there is less incentive to react’ (De Soto 1989:20; see also Chatterjee 2004:54 on Calcutta). The insecurity of tenure felt by legal landowners was a window of opportunity for squatters, and many urban inhabitants experienced the early 1950s as a time of great freedom (Abeyasekere 1989:197). Finally, the sheer weight of numbers of new migrants to the city caused the pressure to occupy land by squatting to spin out of control and gave (illegal) kampong dwellers more power than they had enjoyed before the Second World War. The new urban administrators lacked experience and realized too late that the problem of squatting was worsening by leaps and bounds. Squatting formed part of a problem that involved an even larger number of people: the general housing crisis of the 1940s.

Chapter vii The housing crisis during the years of turmoil

Paradoxically, at the height of the decolonization process when the legal ‘racial’ distinction between Indigenous, Foreign Oriental, and European people was formally rescinded, ethnic boundaries suddenly assumed enormous importance. In colonial times class was the main determinant of where people lived, whereas during the Second World War and the War of Independence ethnic and national identities had a great impact on urban space and housing. German citizens in Indonesia were interned after Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, for no other reason than that they were German. Internment also affected Austrians, Czechs, and Poles, whose countries had recently been wholly or partly occupied by Nazi Germany. Two years later, Dutch people were driven from their homes by the Japanese and interned in camps. Eurasians shared the same fate if their outward appearance or income made them look sufficiently like ‘full-blood’ Dutchmen. During the early days of the Indonesian revolution, Chinese, Eurasians and other Europeans, and occasionally Ambonese and Manadonese, after being persecuted by young revolutionaries, fled to safe areas in town or formed vigilante groups to guard their neighbourhoods. Indigenous people sometimes fled from rural kampongs because their villages had been destroyed by the Dutch colonial army. After the Dutch government resumed control of the cities, it gave new Dutch arrivals who came to rebuild the country preferential treatment in the allocation of housing. In short, during the years of turmoil, 1942-1949, the stakes in belonging to one ethnic category or another were much higher than they had been before or were after: one’s ethnicity could be sufficient reason to be interned, driven out of house and home, murdered, or given preferential treatment. The victims of murder, displacement, and expropriation of houses were classified by their ethnic or national background, but the winners in the struggle over housing usually belonged to a more narrowly defined group. For instance, all Dutch people were in principle targeted by the Japanese for internment, but Dutch houses were occupied only by Japanese military 230 Under construction officers and government officials, and not, say, by Japanese hairdressers and prostitutes. The war years were blighted by the persecution of broad ethnic and national categories and the rise of narrowly defined interest groups. Precisely during these years of turmoil, the way interest groups operated on the housing market emerged very clearly, because the shortage of dwellings exacerbated the struggle for housing. An acute housing shortage developed because houses had been destroyed, just at the time new waves of migrants were pouring into the cities. Powerful groups used all their clout to maintain or enlarge their share of the diminishing housing cake. This competition for housing is all the more interesting because during the Second World War and the Indonesian Revolution, the balance of power between interest groups was shifting. Two main interest groups sharing an uneasy relationship of mutual dependence and competition were the civilian and the military authorities. In the Netherlands Indies the civil authority had been supreme in peacetime. The Regulation on the State of War and Siege (Regeling op den Staat van Oorlog en Beleg), revised in September 1939, stipulated that in time of war, military ordinances took precedence over all legislation. The Japanese introduced military rule (Gunseikanbu). After the Japanese surrender, wherever Allied forces took control, the administration was put in the hands of Allied military commanders. Administration of the civilian population was exercised by Dutchmen who were technically military commanders, but the majority of whom were recruited from the experienced pre-war civil service. These ‘militarized’ civil servants wielded extraordinary powers derived from the state of siege. During most of the time Allied forces were present, the military administration was called Netherlands Indies Civil Administration (NICA) in eastern Indonesia, and first NICA and later Allied Military Administration Civil Affairs Branch (AMACAB) in Sumatra and Java. The former position of Governor-General was now called Lieutenant Governor-General. After the Allied forces withdrew, AMACAB and NICA were renamed Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst (Temporary Administration), but without a change of personnel. After the First Dutch Offensive (Eerste Politionele Actie or Agresi Pertama, July-August 1947), the heads of the Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst were replaced by so-called Recomba (Regeringscommissaris voor Bestuursaangelegenheden, Central Government Commissioner for Administrative Affairs), of which there were five for Java and Sumatra. They were directly responsible to the Lieutenant Governor-General; although the Recombas were civilians, they were technically the top officials in the military administration, which was still in effect under the state of siege. Recombas carried out many of the functions of municipal administrations, being responsible for more than one city, until local governments were reinstalled in the course of 1948. When and where the state of siege was ended, ordinances issued by the military VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 231 government were often declared to remain in force.1 In 1954 the Indonesian parliament accepted a law under which all local military ordinances with regard to housing remained valid after the state of siege was ended (Indonesia Raya 7-4-1954). This brief overview of the administrative structure helps us to understand the references in the footnotes, but the main point is that military government remained in place, under different names, in most regions throughout the revolution. Therefore, the administration had the legal competence to tackle the housing problem in a top-down and heavy-handed way.2 Rights of private ownership, to give an example, were curbed by billeting orders. The Netherlands Indies central government carefully guarded its prerogatives in this respect when constituent states (negara) of the Federal Indonesian Republic were set up, and quickly claimed that housing was its own competence.3 A new organ in the administrative apparatus was the local Housing Allocation Bureau (Urusan Perumahan or Huisvesting Organisaties), which allocated the housing available. The Housing Allocation Bureau was both an important actor, and a prize contested by other actors. The Housing Allocation Bureaus, as were the other protagonists in this chapter, had dealings mainly with the middle class and the upper class. The lower class had to solve their own problems and found a solution, as we have seen, in squatting.

Housing shortages

There was not one housing shortage but many. Each city had its own story to tell. A city like Padang, from which Europeans were evacuated and which did not attract many refugees from the countryside, probably did not suffer from

1 Schiller 1955:65-79. The heads of departments of the central government also went through various name changes: Hoofd van het Departement, Directeur, and Secretaris van Staat. When Lieutenant Governor-General H.J. van Mook was replaced, in 1948, his successor received the title Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon (Supreme Representative of the Crown), in anticipation of an Indonesian-Dutch union. The Dutch even substituted the word Indonesië for Nederlands- Indië, but I shall continue to use the word Netherlands Indies for the sake of a clear distinction with its adversary, the Republic of Indonesia. For details, see De Graaff and Tempelaars (1990, I:7-32). 2 Unfortunately, I have very little insight into housing policy in the areas under control of the Republican government. After the Second Dutch Offensive, General Nasution placed Java under military rule, so that all civil servants had to comply with the decisions of army commanders (Van den Doel 2000:292). In practice, a local balance of power between the army, other armed groups, and the civil administration probably decided who determined policy. 3 Letter H. van der Wal, Secretaris van Staat Binnenlandse Zaken, 22-10-1948, no. B.Z. 17/7/13, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 232 Under construction a housing shortage at all, and perhaps even had many vacant houses. Streets in Padang were dead quiet in 1945 (Evacuees 1945). Where a housing shortage had arisen during the Japanese period and the Indonesian Revolution, there were two broad causes: houses had been destroyed and urban population increased too rapidly to keep pace with building new dwellings for them. Both causes will be discussed. In point of fact, the Japanese invasion caused little damage to the housing stock. The Japanese air force spared the cities, except port areas in Cilacap and Surabaya; heavy bombing was not deemed necessary to break the resistance of the Dutch colonial army and would have caused unnecessary damage to economic goods. The damage deliberately perpetrated by the Dutch defenders was greater; for example, many urban quarters that lay adjacent to the Balikpapan oil refinery went up in flames when the Dutch destroyed the refinery before the Japanese landed (L. de Jong 1984, XIa:824, 874, 952; Keppy 2006:44). Another form of wilful destruction that made more dwellings uninhabitable than Japanese force did was pillage (rampok). After the Netherlands Indies defence collapsed, houses of Chinese, Eurasian, and European residents were plundered. Some houses were totally stripped: doors, windows, switches, lavatory seats, and roof tiles were taken away, so that, for instance, the Chinese quarter in Tangerang, in the environs of Batavia, looked like an area through which a plague of locusts had cut a swathe (Chung Hua Tsung Hui 1947:4; L. de Jong 1984, XIa:1080-1; Keppy 2006:45-8). One person recalled that their family house was spared because pillagers feared a holy grave in the backyard. In the memories of survivors who were less fortunate, the loss of personal belongings charged with an emotional and sentimental value, not to mention the loss of lives, caused more pain than the plundered house (Kwee 2004:40; Lechner 2004:64). During the Japanese period, both the government and the occupants had more urgent priorities than the maintenance of houses. Housing was conspicuously absent from a list of tasks – commerce, industry, distribution of commodities, education, sanitation – for which the special municipality of Jakarta was responsible during the Japanese period.4 Housing was also missing from the administrative tasks to be carried out in the Japanese-occupied territories, on which army headquarters had already agreed before the attack on Pearl Harbor (Okuma 1963:119-21). Nevertheless, house owners and tenants experienced far-reaching Japanese interference in housing. Japanese rule had policies on rent control and the forced putting together of inhabitants in one house. These Japanese policies

4 Oendang-Oendang No. 2 tentang atoeran pemerintahan […] Tokubetu-Si (Tokubetsu-shi kitei), 7-8-2602, Kan Pō 1(1) 2602; also in Benda et al. 1965:67-8. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 233 would make it easier for the Netherlands Indies and Republican governments to adopt similar policies later, because people became accustomed to them. Rents of urban houses and land were lowered throughout Java by 25-50% (Asia Raya 11-9-2602, 27-11-2602; Kan Pō 1(1), 1(3), 1(5) 2602). Under Japanese rule, the Hoedoosan Kanrikoodan (Badan Pengawas Barang-Tetap, Organization to Take Care of Immovable Property) was established to administer enemy (that is, Dutch-owned) property. It was incorporated as a state company. According to its statutes, the Hoedoosan Kanrikoodan received capital from the military administration and it was also allowed to develop land and initiate building activities.5 Notably, the Jakarta office was set up on the premises of the former housing agency Klaasen & Co, Jalan Tjikini no. 3. Other offices were established in Surabaya, Bandung, Semarang, Malang, and Yogyakarta (Asia Raya 10-10-2602; Kan Pō 1(5), 1(9), 1(10) 2602). In Semarang and Solo (and probably in other cities too), people were required to register a dwelling built in brick or with wooden planking; otherwise such a European-style dwelling would be considered enemy property and confiscated. The municipal property company of Bandung (Bandung Sijakoesjo) expanded its activities from renting out municipally-owned houses to distributing all rental dwellings (Asia Raya 7-12-2602, 25-1-2603, 28-10-2603). It became common for more than one household to share one dwelling. Europeans living outside the urban internment camps were forcibly relocated into the designated areas. Two or more families – all broken up because adult men were separated from women and young children – shared a house. European (mostly Eurasian) families outside the camps lost income opportunities and gradually moved in with each other to save costs and for protection. Non-Dutch families that were unfortunately living within an area designated as a camp had to move out.6 Enterprising Eurasian youths began a business using wheelbarrows to meet the large demand for movers. Large villas were requisitioned by the Japanese. The Japanese administrator Okada Fumihide recalls how several Japanese employees in Makassar lived together in one house.7 Romusha who were set to work in such cities as Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Surabaya, Palembang, Pekanbaru, and Makassar usually slept in simple barracks. One barrack accommodated up to hundreds of labourers (Suwarno 1999:70-7).

5 It is not clear from the statutes that controlling Dutch real estate was its core task, and it is conceivable, though unlikely, that a local Hoedoosan Kanrikoodan evolved into a public housing corporation. 6 Oendang-Oendang no. 33 tentang pembatasan tempat diam bagi sebahagian bangsa moe- soeh dalam Tokobetu-Si ‘Batavia’, Article 2, Kan Pō 1(3) 2602. 7 Asia Raya 27-10-2602, 6-11-2602; Brugmans et al. 1960:287; Lechner 2004:70; Loderichs et al. 1997:60; Reid and Oki 1986:139; Van Schaik 1996:56, 59. 234 Under construction

As a consequence of intensive use combined with a lack of maintenance in Japanese times, compared to the pre-war situation, many houses looked dilapidated and could do with a fresh coat of paint (Fabricius 1947:22; Sillevis Smitt 1947:30, 37). Nonetheless, although a dilapidated house affected the quality of the housing stock, it did not create a shortage. Allied bombing destroyed far more houses than the Japanese attacks, especially in eastern Indonesia. When Mr Okada heard the warning siren during the first raids on Makassar, he ‘would take a chair into the garden, sip a glass of brandy and keep a look-out’. As the war intensified, however, he could no longer take the bombing with such admirable composure and ‘the see-saw game between construction and reconstruction began’ (Reid and Oki 1986:146, 150). Long-range American bombers attacked towns in the eastern half of the Archipelago to cut off the connections between Japanese strong- holds. Balikpapan, Kota Ambon, Manado, Kupang (Figure 26) and a few smaller towns were so heavily bombed by Allied planes that about 90% of the buildings lay in ruins. Makassar was also heavily damaged; the Chinese quarter, which was adjacent to the harbour facilities, was flattened, but other residential quarters received few hits. According to one survey 1,170 houses and shophouses (in an area of 17 hectares) were destroyed in the Chinese quarter, but only 25 villas in ‘European’ residential areas suffered the same fate. Pillars and brick walls that were still standing after the bombing of the Chinese quarter were carried away on trucks by looters. Furthermore, about 2,000 kampong dwellings were either pulled down by the Japanese army – perhaps they stood in the way of defence or harbour works – or were hit by Allied bombs.8 The cities of Java and Sumatra were left in peace. These places enjoyed a degree of protection because the Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service, NEFIS, asked aircrews to spare ancient sanctuaries. More important than the historical and cultural value of the buildings was ‘the veneration in which they are held by the people of Java, especially those objects of pilgrimage […]

8 Percentage of buildings destroyed in Kota Ambon: 93-94%; in Kupang 95%; in Manado 85-90%; Banjarmasin was ‘practically totally destroyed’; the total number of houses to be rebuilt in these four towns was estimated at 3,820 permanent or semi- permanent houses and 4,500 kampong dwellings; Report Technische Commissie ingesteld door Directeur van Verkeer en Waterstaat ten behoeve van de Wederopbouw in de Groote Oost en Borneo, January 1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 926. The number of houses destroyed in Makassar is mentioned in: N.J. Meyer, Survey Stadsplan Makassar, 7-3-1947, attached to letter Ir. N.J. Meyer, Planologisch Bureau Makassar, to Ir. Kipperman, Directeur Gemeentewerken Makassar, 8-3-1947, no. 1233/207, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 38. See further: Chung Hua Tsung Hui 1947:5; De Jong 1985, XIb:474, 1986, XIc:162, 296, 584, 592; Keppy 2006:91-3; Mawikere 2005:62-4; ‘Just to prevent ...’ untitled, undated note, NAI, Archief Thijsse. For images, see pictures at the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation: 49002-1, 52374-1, 52378 of Makassar, 56380-1, 56381-1, 56418-1 of Kupang; 52397- 1, 52398-1 of Manado; and Makassar als havenstad (1948). VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 235

Figure 26. Japanese soldiers search houses in Kupang destroyed by Allied bombing. Source: Netherlands Institute for War Documentation 56418-1.

and having other associations with Islam’. The NEFIS list contained 34 precious buildings, including the palaces (keraton) of Yogyakarta, Surakarta, and Cirebon; the mosque and grave of Sunun Ampel and the Kemayoran Mosque in Surabaya; the mosque of Demak; and the historical museum in Jakarta with the finest Hindu statues.9 The limited flying range of Allied bombers probably formed a more effective protection, though, than the cultural – or was it political? – sensitivity of Dutch leaders. In short, except for a few secondary population centres and Makassar, Indonesian cities came through the hostilities of the Second World War unscathed. The Revolution would do far more damage. The months September to December 1945 are known in Dutch collective memory as the bersiap period, in which revolutionaries murdered many

9 Letter S.H. Spoor, Director Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service, Brisbane, 17-7-1945, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 728. 236 Under construction people assumed to be against independence. Not only the sheer number of deaths, but also the randomness, unpredictability and brutality – victims were regularly getjintjangd (hacked in pieces) or burnt alive – were terrifying. H.Th. Bussemaker mentions 2,200 deaths in Jakarta alone (up to March 1946), and Lou de Jong estimates that 3,500 Europeans, Eurasians, and Ambonese, and a larger but unknown number of Chinese, were killed in the bersiap period.10 The terror of the bersiap, and the risk of murder, rape, kidnapping, and looting (rampok) at the hands of both revolutionary forces and British and Dutch troops had a negative effect on available housing in the following years. By January 1946, the outskirts of Jakarta had become a no-man’s-land; kampongs and other houses were abandoned and both Republican and Dutch forces burnt down houses to drive out the enemy. As late as 1948, middle-class suburbs in Malang were not considered safe. The administrative office Versluis, which acted as an agent renting out many houses on behalf of owners, offered houses for free in order to ensure they were occupied. In vain. Nobody in Malang dared to live in those streets. The situation was particularly precarious for those Europeans who lived in kampongs. In a retaliation of sustained violence, young Eurasian and Ambonese men attacked kampongs and burnt down houses in several places.11 The only city in which many houses were destroyed as collateral damage of the fighting was Surabaya. In the Indonesian-British battle of November 1945, British artillery shelled kampongs, which, being built of combustible material, quickly went up in flames. Brick houses in the Chinese and Arab neighbourhoods were damaged, when British-Indian sepoys cut their way through the walls in order to circumvent barricades in the street (Broeshart et al. 1994:50-6; Bussemaker 2005:252-4). More houses were made uninhabitable after they were plundered by British and Dutch troops and by civilians.12 Other places were heavily damaged by scorched-earth tactics employed by both sides. The southern part of Bandung was set on fire by retreating Republican forces on 24 March 1946; the Chinese quarter was almost totally destroyed, and half of the large buildings were heavily damaged too. According to a Red Cross report, 1,505 Chinese-occupied houses were burnt or otherwise ruined in and around Tangerang in June 1946 (when 653 Chinese were murdered and approximately 25,000 Chinese fled to Jakarta). The Chinese and Arab quarters of Palembang were plundered and burnt down shortly before

10 Bussemaker 2005:110; Chung Hua Tsung Hui 1947; Cribb 1991:64-5; L. de Jong 1986, XIc:598; Keppy 2006:156; Kwee 2004:59. 11 Bussemaker 2005:112; Cribb forthcoming; Fabricius 1947:96-9; Ministry Foreign Affairs 1946; Keppy 2006:50-1, 155-6; Vickers 2005:104. 12 Notulen vergadering huisvestingsaangelegenheden led by Minister Neher, Paleis Rijswijk, 23-1-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1060. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 237 and during the First Dutch Offensive. Many houses and public buildings were also destroyed in Malang by withdrawing Indonesian troops. The pattern was repeated in the Second Dutch Offensive. In the town of Jambi, 7,000 Chinese and 500 Indians lost their houses to fire. British and Dutch troops also had a hand in destroying houses. The municipality of Surakarta laid the blame for 700 destroyed houses at the door of the Netherlands Indies army. In the countryside, hundreds of dwellings were burnt down by Dutch forces. In one notorious case, British troops set 600 houses on fire in the vicinity of Bekasi, east of Jakarta, in retaliation for the murder of an aeroplane crew who had made an emergency landing there; the British spared the Chinese houses in the neighbourhood, which therefore became the target of even more brutal retaliation by pemuda after the British retreated.13 Estimates of the number of houses made uninhabitable by wilful destruction during the Revolution are available for only a few towns (Table 13). It is impossible to assess the reliability of these data. A striking point is that far more kampong houses were destroyed than permanent and semi-permanent houses, both in Surabaya and Bandung. The extensive damage in Semarang is hard to explain; perhaps the houses were destroyed in the wake of Japanese retaliation for the murder of 300 Japanese by Indonesians in October 1945. The novelist and reporter Johan Fabricius (1947:104) has depicted the deso- late scene of villas totally stripped and kampong dwellings burnt: ‘Between the skeletons of brick houses were the yawning gaps of burnt-down bamboo dwellings; on these spots the garden was snow-clad in black ash, [the] shade trees had lost their leaves in the blaze and now stood mutilated and purpose- less’.14 Despite the considerable destruction of houses during the Revolution, the effects of migration to and from the city increased demand for houses more than did the reduction in housing stock. Different ethnic groups, to whom their enemies ascribed particular political sympathies, often moved in opposite directions.15 One group that moved in and out of cities was

13 Anderson 1972:297; Chung Hua Tsung Hui 1947:6-8; Fabricius 1947:158-66; Keppy 2006:69- 75, 97; Ratnayu Sitaresmi et al. 2002:100-7; Voskuil et al. 1996:91; for images of the destruction: Bevrijding van Bandoeng 1946; Storm over Palembang 1948; Voskuil et al. 1996:93-4; Van Schaik 1996:74-9. 14 Tusschen de skeletten van steenen huizen waren de leege gapingen van platgebrande bamboewonin- gen; dáár was de tuin zwart besneeuwd met asch, [de] schaduwboomen hadden door den vuurgloed hun bladeren verloren en stonden daar nu verminkt en zinloos. 15 Alternatively, different causes could bring different groups together at the same place. The Republican government counted 6,995 indigenous people, 1,086 Chinese, and 38 Arab refugees in the small town of Wonosobo in November 1947. Laporan Perdjalanan Sukoso Wirjosaputro, Kementerian Sosial, Jogjakarta 12-12-1947, ANRI, Kementerian Sosial & Perburuhan 1946-1950 39. 238 Under construction

Table 13. Number of damaged houses, as reported in 1948

City semi-permanent and permanent houses Kampong houses non-repairable repairable non-repairable

Bandung 200 100 2,300 Surabaya 57 144 4,000 Semarang 1,828 unknown Malang 400 unknown Sukabumi 175 125 unknown Bogor 46 70 unknown

Source: letter Ir. C.J. Kramer, wd. Directeur Verkeer en Waterstaat, to Minister L. Neher in Paleis Rijswijk, Batavia, 21-1-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1060. the Europeans, who rode the roller-coaster of political events. During the Japanese occupation, Europeans were interned, leaving many middle-class houses vacant. In 1946 about 60,000 Dutch civilians left Indonesia, but as they had just emerged from internment camps they did not leave behind empty dwellings. A steady net outflow of Dutch people reached a new height in 1950, directly after the transfer of sovereignty, when 43,000 people returned to the Netherlands (Anderson 1972:127; Ellemers and Vaillant 1985:35). The net emigration should not obscure the fact that many Dutchmen still arrived from Europe and demanded accommodation. Ethnic Chinese more frequently fell victim to revolutionary violence than did Dutch people. Many Chinese fled from towns and villages to Dutch-occupied cities if they had the chance (Abeyasekere 1989:150; Wertheim 1956:160). Although flows of indigenous refugees have been less systematically recorded, they sometimes had to take to their heels in terror too (Idroes 1976). The net effect of the migration flows varied considerably from city to city. Jakarta was the city with the largest estimated housing shortage, 70,000 dwellings in 1949 (Antara 24-3-1950/B). Destruction of property was certainly not the main cause of the acute housing shortage. In November 1946 only 300 out of the 10,000 houses occupied by Europeans before the war were unfit for habitation.16 The crisis in Jakarta was the result of the convergence of various flows of migrants: Chinese refugees; European evacuees; Dutch military; indigenous people seeking food and work; and European newcomers from Europe. In the late 1940s and 1950s Jakarta outdistanced all other cities in population size, and the demand for housing was huge.

16 Letter Ir. C.J. Warners, fd. Directeur van Verkeer en Waterstaat, to Legercommandant, 11-11-1946, no. A/12403/VW/KAB/46, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 239

The dearth of houses in Jakarta was matched only by its rival capital, Yogyakarta. Indigenous supporters of the Republic, fleeing from Dutch army violence, flocked together in Yogyakarta. The upshot was that the city became very overcrowded. A Dutch propaganda film, shot immediately after the seizure of Yogyakarta in December 1948, shows how dozens of families had found accommodation in 12 old railway carriages. Holes in the roof had been covered with corrugated iron. Planks or tree trunks, in which steps had been chopped, gave access to the carriages. Women cooked rice on a stove placed on the platform at the end of the carriage. The benches and tables inside formed a convenient place to eat. The space between the carriages was used to dry clothes – often no more than rags – to grow some vegetables, and for the children to play (Eerste beelden uit Djokja 1948; see also Van Bruggen and Wassing 1998:83). To make ends meet some of the women prostituted themselves. The situation was aggravated by the need for accommodation of the new civil servants of the national Republican government. The ministries, which used houses for offices, added some pressure on the housing market, but this did not amount to much. In 1950 the ministries occupied 20 buildings, of which five were rented villas. The Ministry of Trade and Industry, for instance, had to make do with two rooms and a shed.17 The effect of the presence of the Republican government was balanced by the exodus of Chinese residents who had fled from the Republican capital. After the Revolution, 3,000 Chinese were waiting to return (Antara 24-1-1950, 24-3-1950). In contrast to Jakarta and Yogyakarta, Surabaya did not suffer from a housing shortage. The flight of almost the entire indigenous population, not to forget the estimated 16,000 Indonesians killed, more than offset the massive destruction of houses in the battle of Surabaya (Figure 6). Many Chinese and Arab residents stood guard against potential looters during the fighting, but left for Malang and other places after Surabaya was pacified by the British. Europeans who had returned to Surabaya from internment camps were evacuated by the British. After almost all groups had left town, those Eurasians who had not been in camps and therefore were not evacuated by the British lived for a while in an empty city. Tall grass (alang-alang) overran residential areas. Indigenous residents only began to return in droves after the First Dutch Offensive, in July 1947 (Bussemaker 2005:252-61).

17 Letter Sastrowidjojo, on behalf of Sekretaris Djenderal Kementerian Perdagangan/ Perindustrian to Kepala Djawatan Gedung2 in Jogjakarta, Jogjakarta, 19-4-1950, no. 118/PP/ Perbend/50; letter Ir. R. Oerip Iman Soedjono, on behalf of Kepala Djawatan Gedung2 Pusat, on behalf of Menteri Pekerdjaan Umum to Perdana Menteri, Jogjakarta, 1-3-1950, no. G.2/2/12; Map Kementerian Pekerdjaan Umum Jogjakarta, Djawatan Gedung2 Negeri, Rumah Pegawai Negeri di Sagan, Jogjakarta, 1: 500, n.y., ANRI, Kabinet Perdana Menteri RI Yogyakarta 1949-1950 245. 240 Under construction

Bandung has a similar story to tell. When many buildings went up in the ‘sea of flames’ (Bandung Lautan Api, 24 March 1946), indigenous residents abandoned the city, so that no serious shortage of housing came about. The Chinese residents, however, moved from the burnt southern part to the northern part under Allied control, where they added to the overcrowding of houses there (Ratnayu Sitaresmi et al. 2002:109-20, 147-51; Figure 6). The situation rapidly worsened, however, when the Darul Islam rebellion against the Republic broke out in 1948. According to one source, over 100,000 houses were destroyed by the Darul Islam rebellion in West Java; many victims sought refuge in Bandung and Jakarta (Fauzi 2005). In 1951, the city of Bandung was short of an estimated 40,000 houses to accommodate people whose houses had been incinerated by the rebels (Antara 21-10-1951/A-B). In other cities, too, the transfer of sovereignty did not bring an end to destruction of houses, or flows of refugees. 400 families lost their houses in battles in Makassar (Antara 2-6-1950/B), in which the rebel leader Kahar Muzakkar may have been involved. By 1956, Kahar Muzakkar’s uprising had set 400,000 refugees on the move in South Sulawesi (Antara 19-3-1956/A). The violence in and around other cities was less, but still substantial. In the 1950s violent gangs of robbers, made up of demobilized Indonesian soldiers, attacked the fringe areas of Jakarta (Pasar Minggu, Bekasi, Tangerang) and burnt dozens of houses. In Balikpapan, 130 houses were destroyed (and 24 persons killed) during fights between locals and migrants from eastern Indonesia in 1950 (Antara 21-1-1950/A). In addition, houses were regularly lost in ordinary fires; in one of the worst cases, 4,250 people in the kampong Karanganjar in Jakarta became homeless (Antara 17-3-1956/A). Looking back on the housing crisis of the years of turmoil, a recurrent theme in the memories of former Dutch colonials is the loss of their own house, because Japanese soldiers or Indonesian revolutionaries took it. This might have been the case, but it was not only Europeans who lost their houses; the houses of all those who were interned or who took flight were subject to being occupied by others. A Chinese man described the situation in Bandung after the Republican forces had withdrawn in 1946: ‘We entered the house because it was empty. This was very common at that time. People just went in, as long as it was empty.’ Indigenous inhabitants who later returned to their houses, if these still existed, often found to their surprise that they had been occupied by Chinese or others. An Indonesian who went back to his house found that in the meantime the new occupants had acquired a residential permit from the government: ‘From that day to this, I have never seen it again’ (Ratnayu Sitaresmi 2003:9, 12; see also Ratnayu Sitaresmi et al. 2002:109- 20, 147-51). Many Indonesian refugees who returned to Surabaya after the Revolution discovered that their houses were occupied by Dutchmen (Antara 7-6-1950/A). The municipal council of Surabaya stated in 1952 that Dutch- VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 241 owned houses taken by Japanese had usually been returned, but not the Indonesian-owned houses taken by ‘foreigners’ after the Battle of Surabaya. The council passed a motion that the latter category should be returned to the Indonesian owners as a principle of ‘rechtsherstel’ (rehabilitation) (De Vrije Pers 29-8-1952).

The crisis in Jakarta

The housing crisis in Jakarta was special, not only because of the dearth of houses, but also because the most powerful actors in the country, both public and private, were concentrated in the capital and experienced the problem personally. Probably for this reason, the crisis received ample attention from policy makers (and subsequently left many traces in the archives). In their analysis, the crisis was a problem at the upper end of the housing market.18 The Netherlands Indies government paid scant attention to the problems of lower-class people, least of all indigenous newcomers in Jakarta. A rare instance when ‘lower-class Indonesians’ (kleine Indonesiërs) captured government attention was when they occupied – and ruined – 200 European houses.19 As it turned out, Dutch policy measures aimed at solving the crisis not only ignored the majority of the population, but actually formed one of the reasons why the shortage of housing was so protracted for the middle class and the elite. The population of Jakarta had already grown under Japanese rule. The Dutch people who left Japanese camps and returned to Jakarta on their own initiative were probably the first to add pressure to the housing market after the end of World War II. The steady trickle of returning Dutch people soon became a gushing stream. Between January 1946 and May 1947 the Indonesian Republic evacuated an estimated 45,000 European prisoners of war and interned persons and 35,000 Japanese soldiers from Java (Van den Doel 2000:131). Other Dutch refugees came from Australia, Thailand, and Ceylon and went on to the Netherlands. Almost all these people used Jakarta as their point of embarkation, and were temporarily accommodated in ordi-

18 There was also a shortage of commercial outlets, warehouses, and offices, which is not discussed here, although these shortages also worsened the residential housing shortage. Villas and hotels were used as offices, and shops, garages, and warehouses were used as dwellings. Memorandum A.Th. Bogaardt, Hoofd Huisvesting Organisatie Batavia, attached to letter B. Krijger, Directeur Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 25-2-1947, no. 4166/AH 6; letter Ir. C.J. Warners to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 18-12-1947, no. A/22762/VW/47, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 19 Notulen vergadering huisvestingsaangelegenheden led by Minister Neher, Paleis Rijswijk, 23-1-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1060. 242 Under construction nary houses and hotels.20 Houses in RAPWI (Recovery of Allied Prisoners of War and Internees) quarters in Jakarta became so overcrowded that at a certain point RAPWI stopped reuniting families that had been split up during the war.21 However, as these evacuees were all in transit, they did not weigh too heavily on the upper end of the housing market. Another wave of migrants came from the hinterland to Jakarta, because relief shipments were delivered there (Oliver 1971:12-3). These people did not put much pressure on the upper end of the housing market either, but found accommodation by resorting to squatting. A third group of migrants were the Chinese refugees from the pogroms in Tangerang.22 Other Chinese from Central Java followed later. It is significant that the Netherlands Indies government could not produce even a rough estimate of the number of Chinese seeking a home, while it noted the exact number of Europeans in need of housing. These various groups of evacuees, refugees, and other migrants had to accept whatever accommodation was available. It were, however, more powerful actors who left the largest mark in the archives, those fighting for the upper end of the housing market. The first powerful newcomer to many houses, offices, and godowns was the British forces, which landed in Jakarta in September 1945. Sometimes the British formally requisitioned buildings, but other times they simply seized them without bothering about formalities. Somewhat later, the Dutch army and administration requisitioned buildings as well. Other buildings were occupied by such national and international organizations as the Red Cross, Dienst Volksgezondheid (Public Health Service), and Netherlands Indies Import and Export Organization (Nederlands-Indische Gouvernments Im- en Export Organisatie, NIGIEO). Quite a few villas were used as office space, and thus were withdrawn from the housing stock.23 As in other cities, the occupation of houses in Jakarta happened chaotically. In the ideal situation, a rental agreement was signed and requisitioning was unnecessary. Second best was when houses were formally requisitioned, with the financial compensation to be settled later. Often, however, the whereabouts of the owner were unknown, and the house was simply occupied, because

20 Letter J.E. Ysebaert, CO AMACAB, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, Batavia 6-7-1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1076. 21 Letter Kol. A. Pino, CO AMACAB, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 26-4-1946, no. 2080/42h, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 22 Letter J.E. Ysebaert, CO AMACAB, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, Batavia, 6-7-1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1076. 23 Letter J.E. Ysebaert, CO AMACAB, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, Batavia, 6-7-1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1076; letter A.H. van Ophuijsen, Centraal Bureau voor Requisitie- Vergoedingen, to all Secretarissen van Staat, Legercommandant, Commandant der Zeemacht et al., 21-12-1948, no. VIG-958/8, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1065. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 243 neither a formal rental agreement nor requisition was possible. A European or Chinese owner was usually glad to see his property requisitioned, because the British or Dutch troops then provided protection against plunder and arson. European owners who left Indonesia were usually willing to accept any decent occupant without payment. In practice, the legal differences between these various forms of occupation were not clear to the parties concerned.24 The Dutch administration tried retroactively to bring order to the chaos. Although the Regulation on the State of War and Siege permitted the Army to requisition buildings, a new Ordinance for the Requisitioning of Buildings was deemed necessary and was issued in 1946 (Verordening Inbezitneming Gebouwen, Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië 21/1946). This ordinance extended the purposes of lawful requisitioning to the housing of civil servants, and it regulated financial compensation for the occupied houses. The answer to questions of whether a financial compensation had to be paid in retrospect and the amount to be paid depended on the security situation at the place and time. Compensation was only considered necessary for the unpaid rent. In a very insecure situation, where no rent could have been collected anyway, no compensation was deemed necessary.25 Rents for requisitioned houses were paid in Jakarta and Bandung from 1 July 1946. Most houses were derequisi- tioned on 1 February 1947.26 Obviously, self-employed people and employees of private companies did not have the option of requisitioning a house and were dependent on rental accommodation, if they did not own a house. On the tight housing market, tenants were threatened by spiralling rents. In an attempt to protect tenants without unduly harming landlords, the government at first decided to defer the payment of rents, redemption of loans, and interest on these loans. In the course of 1946, rents could be collected again and raised to the level of 1 February 1942, the last ‘normal’ reference date before the Japanese lowered rents. Many occupants of houses not their own were confronted with a risk more damaging than a rent increase. They had occupied their dwelling during the years of turmoil without signing a formal rental agreement, because the owner

24 Letter Resident M.A.F. Zwager, H.T.B. [Hoofd Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst] Batavia, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 31-3-1948, no. 611/31; letter A. Oudt, Thesaurie-Generaal, Departement van Financiën to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 17-3-1949, no. 9099, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 25 Letter Resident M.A.F. Zwager, H.T.B. Batavia, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 31-3- 1948, no. 611/31, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064; letter A. Oudt, Secretaris van Staat Financiën, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 5-8-1949, no. 114712, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1065. 26 Letter Resident M.A.F. Zwager, H.T.B. Batavia, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 31-3- 1948, no. 611/31, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 244 Under construction was interned or had fled. The Dutch administration did not want to evict all these people, because eviction would lead to mass resistance and create extra demand for housing. The Rent Tribunal Ordinance of 1946 regulated what was to be done with people who had occupied houses since the Japanese invasion, February 1942.27 People who had occupied houses during the Second World War or the early months of the Revolution and who were willing to pay rent could ask the newly established Rent Tribunal (Huurcommissie) to set the ‘highest permissible rent’ (hoogst toelaatbare huurprijs). The standard phrasing of the request was misleading, because what the occupant really sought was not a high rent, but legal recognition of a rental relationship with the house owner, even when no contract had been signed (Article 14). An owner could only give the occupant notice to leave if the Rent Tribunal approved. Occupants enjoyed considerable legal protection under the Rent Tribunal Ordinance. Another policy adopted by the Netherlands Indies government to provide shelter to everybody was the establishment of Housing Allocation Bureaus in the most important cities. The Dutch name for the Housing Allocation Bureaus was Huisvesting Organisatie – often erroneously spelled Huisvestingsorganisatie – followed by the place name; in Indonesian the bureaus were called (Kantor) Urusan Perumahan. The Housing Allocation Bureaus distributed available housing among those who needed it. Soon it found itself putting two or more families together in one house, for want of empty dwellings. As was the case with the requisitioning of houses, activities of the Housing Allocation Bureaus were regulated in an ordinance, long after their activities had actually started.28 During the first months after the Proclamation of Independence, confusion reigned about the question of which Housing Allocation Bureau was responsible for which houses and which dwelling-seekers. The Japanese Hoedoosan Kanrikoodan, which managed Dutch property, was a precursor of the Housing Allocation Bureaus. After the Proclamation of Independence, the Indonesian Republic continued this organization under the name Badan Peroemahan. The British installed a Joint Housing Committee with an indigenous, a Chinese, and a Dutch member, which formed a platform where the Badan Peroemahan and Huisvesting Organisatie AMACAB Batavia (hence the Republican and Netherlands Indies Housing Allocation Bureaus) met. The Joint Housing Committee was responsible for Dutch houses taken by Chinese and indigenous people during the war. Republican officials also asked the Dutch Huisvesting Organisatie Batavia for accommodation, but

27 Huurcommissieverordening (Verordening XXII), Besluit C.C.O. AMACAB Java en Madoera, 20-9-1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 28 Woonverordening Batavia 1947, Besluit Hoofd Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst 8-2-1947, Verordening Militair gezag V, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 245 this body thought the Badan Peroemahan ought to help it, the more so as salaries of Republican officials were too low for the rents asked in Jakarta at the time and paid in the locally unmarketable Republican currency.29 Republican and Dutch authorities solved housing disputes amicably until mid-1947. Republican officials used 40 houses of the Netherlands Indies government and also privately owned dwellings. Republican civil servants refused to pay rent, for the reason that 13% of their salary had already been deducted for housing by the Republican government.30 The latter, however, failed to transfer the amount deducted to house owners. The house owners consequently asked the Dutch Rent Tribunal to evict the Republican civil servants. The house owners had a case, but the Netherlands Indies government did not wish to affront the Republican leadership. The Indonesian and Netherlands Indies governments agreed that the Netherlands Indies government would requisition the houses in use by Republican civil servants, according to a list produced by the Republic. The Netherlands Indies government guaranteed the owners of the requisitioned houses payment of rent; the Republican government was henceforth obliged to pay the Netherlands Indies government. The central government urged the Rent Tribunal no longer to evict Republican civil servants.31 The temptation for the Dutch Housing Allocation Bureau to seize Republican buildings increased when the pressure on the housing market mounted and at the same time diplomatic relations between the two governments deteriorated. The temptation grew even larger when the Dutch took more of the city administration into their hands and when the Republican government moved its seat to Yogyakarta, so that Republican buildings in Jakarta gradually lost their function and stood half-empty.32 Even before the end of the First Dutch Offensive (20 July-4 August 1947), private owners

29 Letter CO AMACAB Batavia to Directeur Binnenlandsche Zaken, Batavia 25-9-1946, no. 5636/42, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061; letter Mr.Ch.W.A. Abbenhuis, Gouverneur A.H.T.B.J., to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 31-12-1946, no. 9515/XIV, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 30 Letter Mr. Rd. Soediman Kartohadiprodjo to Huurcommissie (Tjikini 7, Djakarta), 22-4- 1947; letter Ch.W.A. Abbenhuis to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 6-5-1947, no. B.Z. 340/X 1022, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1068. 31 Memo Secretaris-Generaal van de Commissie-Generaal to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 17-5-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1068. Some Republican officials continued to be evicted, perhaps because they occupied houses that were not on the agreed list. One shameful example was the eviction order of Amir, member of KNIP (Komite Nasional Indonesia Pusat, the national provisional parliament); letter Amir to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 17-7-1947; letter wnd. Eerste Gouvernementssecretaris to Hr. Amir, 9-9-1947, no. 17382/AH6 [draft], ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1068. 32 Letter B. Krijger, Directeur van Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 25-2- 1947; Kort verslag vergadering Raad van Departementshoofden, 11-3-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 246 Under construction reclaimed their property from the Republic. The Housing Allocation Bureau did not waste time taking control of the Republican houses.33 Around that year, 1947, another factor contributed to the dearth of housing in Jakarta. Private companies moved from unsafe cities to the safe haven of Jakarta, for instance the Handels Vereeniging Amsterdam (which had its main office in Surabaya before the war) and the Semarangsche Administratie Maatschappij. Two shipping companies, Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij and Java-China-Japan Lijn, continued to operate in Surabaya, but moved the families of staff members to Jakarta.34 Pressure on the housing market was augmented by the arrival of new Dutch people, who, going against the flow of repatriating Dutch, came to Indonesia to help rebuild the colony. In 1947 they numbered 1,000, 9,000 more arrived in 1948 and another 7,000 in 1949 (Ellemers and Vaillant 1985:35). This group of arrivals consisted of new employees of private companies and of the government, families of these new employees, and families of the officers and lower-ranking soldiers who had been sent out earlier. A rigorous measure, which could have reduced the demand for housing, and which was proposed from early 1947, was to move people who did not have to be in Jakarta to other cities. At that time, the Housing Allocation Bureau of Jakarta was swamped by 1,600 requests for housing, but had only 400 vacant places available. Retired people and 1,000 people living off support from the Red Cross could and should move, it was argued, to Bandung and Surabaya. In Bandung 8,000 houses stood empty, and in Surabaya there was allegedly room for 18,000 persons (presumably in middle-class dwellings). Later in 1947, it was proposed to move headquarters of companies back to the Javanese cities they had come from, and to relocate sections of the Army and the government departments.35 The First Dutch Offensive gave rise to the expectation that more people would dare to move to other cities. This hope that the First Dutch Offensive would provide some breathing room was soon dashed. Because of the continuing insecurity in the interior, civilians still did not wish to move. Troops had left Jakarta, but the military

33 Letter Ir. C.J. Warners, wd. Directeur van Verkeer en Waterstaat, to Luitenant Gouverneur- Generaal, 5-8-1947, no. A/14294/VW/47, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1068. 34 Memorandum A.Th. Bogaardt, Hoofd van de Huisvesting Organisatie Batavia, attached to letter B. Krijger, Directeur Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 25-2-1947, no. 4166/ AH 6, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 35 Memorandum A.Th. Bogaardt, Hoofd Huisvesting Organisatie Batavia, attached to letter B. Krijger, Directeur Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 25-2-1947, no. 4166/ AH 6; Kort verslag vergadering Raad van Departementshoofden, 11-3-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061; letter Mr. M.A.F. Zwager, Resident HTB, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 10-9-1947, no. 3177/29, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1062; Notitie Algemene Secretarie for L. Neher, Minister van Wederopbouw, December 1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061; Report meeting on housing, Paleis Rijswijk, 22-12-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1060. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 247 retained the abandoned houses for possible future shipments of new troops. The more property and equipment was destroyed in the Revolution, the more technical staff was brought in from Europe to rebuild the country. The Housing Allocation Bureau feared the arrival of every mail boat from the Netherlands. At the end of July 1947, it had accommodation ready for 700 single men who were arriving on board the Kota Baroe and Johan van Oldenbarneveldt, plus another 1,100 passengers, women and children, who were to be reunited with their families. The bureau was at a loss about what to do with the 466 new staff members sought by the Department of Public Works (Departement van Verkeer en Waterstaat), 500 new staff recruited by the Department of Social Affairs, and 350 new personnel of Royal Dutch Airlines, KLM.36 More problems were to arise early in 1948, when 16,000 troops were demobilized; some of the men had found jobs in Batavia and intended to remain as civilians.37 In the course of 1948 and 1949, houses (and office space) were needed for the fledgeling federal government. The dearth of housing hampered the reunification of families. The new male workers from Europe expected to be followed in the foreseeable future by their wives and children. Formally, the Housing Allocation Bureau only approved of family reunification if the husband could prove he had appropriate accommodation in Jakarta. In practice, the Housing Allocation Bureau feigned ignorance when the men produced quite obviously fictitious addresses, as the bureau usually found real housing in the six to eight months between the approval of passage and the actual arrival of the wife and children. By the end of 1948 the Housing Allocation Bureau sighed that the ‘absolute limit of the capacity to absorb [more people] in Batavia had been reached’ (uiterste grenzen van de Bataviase opnemingselasticiteit […] zijn bereikt) and declined to take responsibility for the families. Yet separation from their families was considered bad for the men’s morale and zeal in their work, and reunification of families could not be halted (actually, extra steamers were put in service for this purpose). As a middle way, the sending of new staff should be postponed,38 but whether this unpopular measure was ever executed is highly doubtful.

36 Letter Mr. M.A.F. Zwager, Resident HTB, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 10-9-1947, no. 3177/29, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1062. 37 Notitie Algemene Secretarie for L. Neher, Minister van Wederopbouw, December 1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 38 Letter Mr. M.A.F. Zwager, Resident HTB, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 10-9-1947, no. 3177/29, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1062; letter J.W. van Hoogstraten, wd. Hoofd Dienst voor Algemene Personele Zaken, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 6-11-1948; Notes B.J. Lambers, Hoofd Afdeling Centrale Huisvesting Departement van Sociale Zaken, for the Memorandum of the Hoofd Dienst voor Algemene Personele Zaken for Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 6-11-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 929. 248 Under construction

At the end of 1948 the Head of the Housing Section (Centrale Huisvesting) of the Department of Social Affairs, B.J. Lambers, opened his report to the Governor-General with these words: ‘The housing shortage at present is so alarming that we cannot wait an instant with taking every conceivable measure’.39 Both the distribution of available housing in Jakarta, and plans – more often proposed than executed – to reduce the population size (by moving people out or by putting limits on migrants moving in) had not solved the housing crisis. A third strategy considered was the construction of emergency dwellings and the development of a new town, Kebayoran Baru, south of Jakarta. Emergency housing had the disadvantage of high costs, because of the short time in which the houses had to be written off. Moreover, both wages and prices of building materials had risen sky-high in the late 1940s. An alternative to emergency housing was the construction of small but permanent houses that could be temporarily used by families who were accustomed to villas. After the crisis was over, the small houses could be occupied by lower-middle-class people.40 The state public housing projects were a drop in the ocean and had a low priority. The sum budgeted for public housing in 1947, ƒ 900,000, was a trifle compared to the ƒ 20,100,000 reserved for Housing Allocation Bureaus.41 When it gradually dawned on everybody that the housing shortage was insoluble, the crisis predictably led to irritation, competition, and mutual allegations of maladministration between the major powers: the central state departments, the Army, and the Jakarta Housing Allocation Bureau. The civil authorities, especially the Department of Social Affairs, regularly voiced their exasperation about the comparatively commodious accommodation of the Army and Navy, in particular the lack of military cooperation in distributing the space available fairly. The Army attributed the crisis to civilians’ incompetence in handling the shortage.

39 ‘De woningnood in Batavia is thans dermate alarmerend, dat geen ogenblik langer mag worden gewacht met het nemen van elke mogelijke maatregel.’ Notes B.J. Lambers, Hoofd Afdeling Centrale Huisvesting Departement van Sociale Zaken, for the Memorandum of the Hoofd Dienst voor Algemene Personele Zaken for Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 6-11-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 929. 40 Letter D.R.K. Boer, lid Huisvestingsraad, to Voorzitter van de Huisvestingsraad, 30-3-1948, no. A/6702/VEM/Kab/48, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 931. 41 Begroting Afdeling V-A (Dienst der Volksgezondheid) […] voor 1947, Begroting Afdeling X (Departement van Sociale Zaken) […] voor 1947, Staatsblad van Indonesië 23/1949 and 36/1949. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 249

Tensions between the Army and the civil government

The relationship between Army and civilian authorities had been problematic since at least 1942. The housing situation in Jakarta threw this conflict into sharp relief because of the intensity of the crisis and the fact that people at the top of the respective hierarchies met face-to-face. Before the Second World War the Dutch colonial army had made little use of its right to requisition houses, but the Japanese army occupied quite a few houses, administered by the Hoedoosan Kanrikoodan. Japanese rule in Java and Sumatra was a military administration, and in eastern Indonesia, where a civil administration operated alongside the military, the army did not care a straw about civilian administrators. The British Allied forces that arrived after the Japanese surrender occupied many houses, offices, and warehouses in downtown Jakarta at a time when it was unclear which civilian authority was in charge of housing. When Dutch replacement troops arrived, the division of competences became clear, at least on paper. The Dutch Territorial Commander in Jakarta, Colonel Drost, and the Head of the Housing Allocation Bureau (Huisvesting Organisatie AMACAB Batavia) agreed that all houses vacated by the British army would be returned to the Housing Allocation Bureau, which would then decide which houses were to be passed on to the Dutch army and which houses would be allocated for other purposes. What actually happened was different. The haughty British army was the second armed force after the Japanese to show little respect for civilian authorities. For instance, it handed over two large buildings directly to two favoured British companies, Maclaine Watson and Pitcairn & Syme, instead of handing over the buildings to the Housing Allocation Bureau. In the course of 1946, departing British and British-Indian troops transferred vacated buildings directly to the Dutch army and navy.42 In this situation the Dutch army trespassed on the agreement between the Territorial Commander and the Housing Allocation Bureau. Nevertheless, the Housing Allocation Bureau condoned the practice, as long as the Dutch army passed on to the Bureau a considerable number of British buildings. The latent conflict between the Dutch army and the civilian Housing Allocation Bureau escalated on 10 September 1946, when the British commander of the Allied forces, General Mansergh, with one foot in the plane and one foot still on Indonesian soil, decided to hand over all remaining

42 Letter Kolonel A. Pino, CO AMACAB, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 26-4-1946, no. 2080/42h, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061; letter A.Th. Bogaardt, Hoofd Huisvesting Organisatie AMACAB Batavia, to Directeur Verkeer en Waterstaat, 15-8-1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1070. 250 Under construction buildings to the Dutch army. Although Mansergh probably had the formal competence to do so, his unilateral decision clearly thwarted the agreement between the Dutch Territorial Commander and the Head of the Housing Allocation Bureau. The Housing Allocation Bureau refused to admit defeat, and returned a vacated British army office to the owner, a private company. In his countermove, the Dutch army commander Major-General S.H. Spoor ordered the Territorial Commander, Colonel Drost, to take possession of all buildings vacated by the British. The Dutch Territorial Commander informed the Housing Allocation Bureau that by complying with Mansergh’s order, he retained more of the British buildings than he had initially envisaged. Moreover, the Army announced that officers of the rank of Colonel and higher would be allocated an entire house. The Head of the Department of Public Works, who at that time was still the superior of the Housing Allocation Bureau, responded to Dutch Army Commander Spoor in barely concealed anger. The civil authorities found the behaviour of the Army unreasonable, because if the Army were to have its way, officers would be accommodated much more spaciously than top civil servants of equal standing.43 After this incident, the Dutch army remained disdainful of the civilian Housing Allocation Bureau. Military units had the habit of passing on buildings they no longer needed to other military units, without returning them to the Housing Allocation Bureau, as they should.44 Soldiers obstructed the Housing Allocation Bureau’s investigation of the occupancy rate of Army houses by refusing civilian officials entry.45 At the time the Housing Allocation Bureau was discussing the need to slow down the arrival of families of employees of civilian authorities, the Army continued to reunite families and – without consultation – shifted the problem of where to house the families to the Housing Allocation Bureau.46 The local commander, Lieutenant-Colonel B.P. de Vries, dismissed the idea that ‘ignorant civilians’ would interfere in the Army’s housing requirements and argued that the Army had the duty ( plicht) to accommodate the troops as it saw fit. Actually, he wanted even more dwellings for the housing of soldiers’ families, to shore up the troops’

43 Letter Ir. C.J. Warners, fd. Directeur Verkeer en Waterstaat to Legercommandant, 11-11- 1946, no. A/12403/VW/KAB/46, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 44 Letter Reserve Kolonel der Infanterie, K. Drost, to Commandanten Batavia, Benedenstad, Meester Cornelis en Priok, 1-8-1947, no. 2182/D.I.02.06/176, attached to letter Luitenant-Generaal, Legercommandant, for him Luitenant-Kolonel Mr. J.Ph.H.E. van Lier, Hoofd van het Kantoor Politieke Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 27-10-1947, no. Kab/1555/11305/P.Z., ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 45 Letter Directeur Verkeer en Waterstaat, for him, Hoofd Ambtenaar H.A. Soetekouw, to Hoofd HOB, 5-4-1947, no. A/5011/VW/47, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 46 Letter J.E. Ysebaert, CO AMACAB, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 6-7-1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1076. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 251 morale. The Base Commander (Basiscommandant) Batavia, Reserve Colonel K. Drost, endorsed the view of his local commander that only the Army leadership was capable of assessing military housing needs. Drost grumbled that now that the situation was safer, civilians immediately deemed the Army a nuisance to be removed from town. He quoted in English:

God and the soldier we adore In time of danger, not before The danger passed and all things righted God is forgotten and the soldier slighted.47

Army officers actually had little reason to feel sorry for themselves. The Army was much better housed than other parties, especially after the First Dutch Offensive when troops had left Jakarta. Houses in which soldiers had been quartered were kept by the Army as housing for families of officers, for messes, or for office space. Many of the premises were in prime locations: Oranjeboulevard, Van Heutszboulevard, Laan Canne, Kebon Sirih, and Koningsplein Oost .48 The Army had taken possession of hundreds of houses and other buildings in the city (Table 14). Not all these buildings were requisitioned, as 4,000 rooms were rented by the military on the private market. To round off the picture, at the same time, only 50 military houses were being used by civilians. The row about housing took place against the background of a difference in corporate culture. This cultural difference also crept into the more serious disagreement about how to deal with the Indonesian Republic: cautious negotiations or a full frontal attack (Van den Doel 2000:216). From the point of view of Army leaders, civilian authorities demonstrated the same spineless attitude in dealing with the Republic as they did in finding solutions to the housing problem. The local commander of Batavia, De Vries, observed that the Army had already moved several units out of Batavia, and believed that the housing issue in Batavia could be solved if only the civilian authorities would take a firm hand in compelling private companies and unemployed

47 Letter Luitenant-Kolonel B.P. de Vries, Locale Commandant Batavia, 21-8-1947, no. 1959/2/ IIC, letter Reserve Kolonel der Infanterie K. Drost, Basiscommandant Batavia, 23-8-1947, both attached to letter Luitenant-Generaal, Legercommandant, for him Luitenant-Kolonel Mr. J.Ph.H.E. van Lier, Hoofd van het Kantoor Politieke Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 27-10-1947, no. Kab/1555/11305/P.Z., ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 48 Memorandum A.Th. Bogaardt, Hoofd Huisvesting Organisatie Batavia, attached to letter B. Krijger, Directeur Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 25-2-1947, no. 4166/AH 6; A.T. Baud, Nota Huisvestingsproblemen in verband met het ingrijpen van de Veiligheidsraad in de Indonesische kwestie [n.d.], attached to letter Eerste Gouvernements Secretaris to Legercommandant Batavia, 8-10-1947 [zeer veel spoed], ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 252 Under construction

Table 14. Private buildings in Jakarta occupied by military and other institutional users, December 1947

Army navy other institutions

Large houses 297 46 133 Small houses 204 27 48 Rooms 0 841 178 Rooms rented on the market 4,000 Hotels 16 2 3 Schools 27 1 9 Office buildings 49 0 13 Shops 91 2 52

The last column is for other institutional users, such as government departments, consulates, the Red Cross, police, and the Housing Allocation Bureau. Source: letter Ir. C.J. Kramer, wd. Directeur Verkeer en Waterstaat, to Minister L. Neher in Paleis Rijswijk, Batavia, 21-1-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1060. people to move out. Moreover, construction of public housing never really got started, while emergency schools, emergency cinemas, and emergency eating places mushroomed.49 In December 1947 the visiting Dutch Minister for Reconstruction (Minister van Wederopbouw), L. Neher, mediated in the quarrel. The Head of the Department of Social Affairs was made responsible for the distribution of housing. He would be advised by the Central Housing Council (Centrale Huisvestingsraad), on which various departments, the Army, and the Navy had a seat. Local Housing Councils (Locale Huisvestingsraden) were established at the urban level.50 Protests by the Army commander, the irascible Major-General Spoor, that the Head of the Department of Social Affairs hereby enjoyed ‘virtually dictatorial competence’ (schier dictatoriale bevoegd- heid) were to no avail.51 Nevertheless, the Army and the Navy persisted in

49 The Army Commander agreed with his subordinate. Letter B.P. de Vries, Plaatselijke Commandant, to Chef Kabinet Basis Commandant, 14-10-1947, no. 2735/2/IIC, and letter Luitenant-Generaal, Legercommandant, for him Luitenant-Kolonel Mr. J.Ph.H.E. van Lier, Hoofd van het Kantoor Politieke Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 27-10-1947, no. Kab/1555/11305/P.Z., ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 50 Report meeting on housing, Paleis Rijswijk, 22-12-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1060; Richtlijnen nopens de huisvesting en algemene beslissingen van de Centrale Huisvestingsraad, Departement Sociale Zaken, 31-5-1948, no. H 2-10-12, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1062; Visser 1948; Besluit Gouverneur-Generaal 24-1-1948, no. 1, Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië 33/1948. 51 Letter Luitenant-Generaal, Legercommandant, for him Luitenant-Kolonel J.Ph.H.E. van Lier, Hoofd Kantoor Politieke Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 16-1-1948, no. Kab./120/1000/P.Z. geheim/zeer veel spoed, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1062. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 253 their opinion that it was not right that a civilian should decide in military matters such as housing needs of troops. In his negotiations with the local Housing Allocation Bureau, one local commander maintained that the military strength was secret, so that the Bureau simply had to deliver the accommodation he asked for.52 In military contempt for civilians, the Dutch and Republican armies were brothers-in-arms. Just as the British army had transferred its premises to the Dutch army, the Dutch army transferred its claims on houses to the Indonesian army. Civilian property owners were warned not to retake possession of houses vacated by the Dutch army. This procedure was followed in Jakarta as elsewhere.53

Tensions between the civil government and private property owners

The housing issue caused the state headaches not only with the military, but also with its own citizens. The role of the state in the housing crisis was fraught, because the state had to solve the crisis for the general public and at the same time was worried about looking after its own civil servants. State efforts to bring its own employees relief clashed with the interest of private house owners. Conflicts of interest between the state and private property owners became evident in three state policies: the requisitioning of buildings; rent control; and the stimulation of building activity. In this clash between state and property owners the former had the upper hand, the more so because it was technically a military administration, which wielded extra power under the state of siege. Was it possible for citizens to oppose a requisition order? Nine Chinese families in a street in Surabaya (Djimertoweg 1-19; Number 13 did not exist) refused to leave when ordered to do so by the Dutch army (with three days’ notice). They argued that it was unjustified to requisition their houses in order to accommodate 22 military families (and not the soldiers themselves), and that more suitable houses were available in town. Moreover, they had worked hard to restore the damage done during the Japanese years and had expected that they, loyal subjects, would not be disturbed by the Dutch army. The group was not to be cajoled

52 Letter Vice-Admiraal A.S. Pinke, Commandant der Zeemacht in het Oosten, to Legercommandant, 16-5-1949, no. 19565-2846, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1065; letter P. de Bruin, Luitenant-Kolonel Infanterie KML, Djokjakarta, 31-1-1949, no. 247 geheim, Museum Bronbeek, box 0037-06167-1. 53 Antara 7-6-1950/B, 17-5-1953/A-B; Notitie G.J.A. Veling, Huisvestings-moeilijkheden te Medan [May 1950]; Letters Commissariaat Medan 27-6-1950, 30-6-1950, NA, Commissariaat Medan 71; Geheim rapport G.J.A. Veling, 5-7-1950, NA, Commissariaat Medan 182. 254 Under construction by talks with high-ranking Dutch civil servants and the Chinese consul, but the military was not minded to be flexible either. The outcome is not recorded, but it seems impossible the Chinese would have won the tussle.54 Two much more influential Chinese had to yield to unreasonable requisitioning orders. Tan Yoe Hok, a Chinese with European (gelijkgestelde) status, owned a villa (Defensielijn van den Bosch 54, Jakarta), which had been used successively by the Japanese, British, and Dutch armies. Tan agreed with the Dutch army and the Housing Allocation Bureau to cancel a bill of ƒ 40,000 for the costs of repairs (for damage incurred during army occupation), in exchange for the guarantee he would not be bothered at any time in the future. Meanwhile, 20 of his other houses were still requisitioned. After Tan had repaired the villa, which also provided office space for his four companies and a family altar to his wife’s ancestors, the Housing Allocation Bureau requisitioned the house again. Another Chinese, 86-year-old Lie Hin Lim, whose house (Kramat 57, Jakarta) was requisitioned, had already offered accommodation in his large home to 24 refugees. His house had been built in 1922 as a museum to house Lie’s collection of Chinese antiquities. The Federation of Chinese Associations, the Chung Hua Tsung Hui, pleaded in vain that the two houses not be requisitioned, but used to billet people on the owners, a solution which at least would allow Tan and Lie to continue to live in their houses.55 It is hard to substantiate, but it looks like the Netherlands Indies government demanded more from Chinese house owners than from either their indigenous or Dutch counterparts. Indigenous house owners needed to be appeased, and Dutch administrators may have felt some compassion for their fellow nationals. At least in one case, good connections with the Dutch political elite protected a Dutch inhabitant against an eviction order.56 The requisitioning of houses was not only a quick way to find a house in a tight market, but it was also cheap, if the government disregarded the costs to

54 Letter Tie Siauw An et al. to CO-AMACAB Soerabaja, 19-9-1946; cipher telegram Soerabaja to Nedinreg, 8-10-1946; Letter Liem Tiauw Sing to General Mansergh, Geallieerde Opperbevelhebber op Java en Sumatra, Soerabaja, 10-10-1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1077. Another example is of two Chinese families who refused to leave a house that was needed for the Negara Pasundan government, but were forced to move. Besluit Resident, Hoofd Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst van Priangan, 11-6-1948, no. 131, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 55 Letter Tan Yoe Hok to Resident HTB Batavia, 14-4-1948; letter Hioe Njan Yoeng and Chu Shu, Chairman and Secretary of Chung Hua Tsung Hui, to Directeur Sociale Zaken, 14-4-1948, no. 128/4/G; Notulen vergadering at Departement Sociale Zaken, 17-4-1948; letter Federation of Chinese Associations Chung Hua Tsung Hui to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 4-5-1948; Memorandum 12-5-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1073. 56 Letter Secretaris van Staat Sociale Zaken to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon in Indonesië, 14-12-1949; letter Eerste Regerings Secretaris to Secretaris van Staat Sociale Zaken, December 1949, no. 31207/49, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1070. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 255 society. Despite retroactive payments owing since 1 July 1946, requisitioned houses for civil servants (and soldiers) were relatively inexpensive. What is more, the owner did not receive his or her money immediately, only a bond, because the state was short of cash and was pursuing a tight money policy. When the government considered returning requisitioned buildings to owners on 1 February 1947, many civil servants felt very disheartened. If civil servants remained in the house – and there were practically no alternatives – they would henceforth have to pay the full rent and feared that this would be beyond their means. A supplementary housing allowance for civil servants would be a solution.57 The derequisitioning of most houses as of 1 February 1947 did not end tensions between the government and property owners, because rent control policy was still a sensitive point. The government had frozen rents at their pre-war level (1 February 1942). Organizations of landlords sent a letter of protest decrying these fixed rents in November 1947. Apparently, the government did not answer the letter. In September and October 1948, three landlords’ organizations in Jakarta and Bandung again sent letters of protest to the government. The very pro-active property management bureau Versluis from Surabaya likewise lobbied with the visiting Dutch Minister L. Neher.58 The landlords’ arguments can be distilled into the following points. The majority of house owners had not received rent between March 1942 (Japanese invasion) and February 1947. They did receive rent starting 1 February 1947, but at the 1942 level. All other costs related to house ownership had in the meantime risen steeply: labour costs and building materials necessary to do repairs were tenfold their 1942 levels, and property tax and insurance costs had risen in proportion to the approximately threefold increase in house values. The houses were dilapidated, because the Housing Allocation Bureau accommodated many families together and the houses were used very inten- sively. Moreover, owners were sometimes actually unable to look after their property, if the Housing Allocation Bureau denied them a room in their own

57 Letter J.E. van Hoogstraten, Directeur Economische Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur- Generaal, 27-12-1946, no. 23/68/Dir; letter Resident M.A.F. Zwager, H.T.B. Batavia, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 31-3-1948, no. 611/31, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 58 Letter Tan Eng Hoa (on behalf of Vereeniging van Grond- en Huiseigenaren) and L.M. Schoorel (on behalf of Algemeene Bond van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Goederen) to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 11-11-1947; letter A.Th. Bogaardt, fd. Secretaris van Staat, Hoofd Departement Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 14-6-1948, no. H 2-7-10; letter Tan Eng Hoa (on behalf of Vereeniging van Grond- en Huiseigenaren) and L.M. Schoorel (on behalf of Algemeene Bond van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Goederen) to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal 14-9-1948; letter W.H. Hoogland, Chairman, and M.A.J. Kelling, Secretary, Vereniging van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Zaken to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, Bandoeng, 20-10-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 256 Under construction house; to make matters worse, they could not even prevent the Housing Allocation Bureau putting undesirable occupants in their house. Given the costs of construction or maintenance, owners had no opportunity to repair existing houses, let alone build new houses. Reports in other sources confirm the dismal picture sketched by the landlords’ organizations. Tenants laid on electric sockets amateurishly. They cooked in living rooms or bedrooms, and consequently the stoves cracked tiled floors and blackened ceilings. Tenants sublet rooms on their own account, but sent bills for reparations to the home- owner. When they left the house, tenants cut and stole electricity cables, and did not pay the final months’ rent (De Vrije Pers 4-9-1952; Djawatan Penerangan Medan 1954:58). The main demands landlords’ organizations made of the state were: to increase rents by 100%; to increase rents even more for houses occupied by multiple households; and to reinstate their right to choose their tenants personally. At this point, landlords’ interests clashed with those of the civil servants who were their tenants. One of the three landlords’ organizations, the Vereniging van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Zaken (Association of People Concerned with Immovable Property), observed that requests that the rents be raised had so far been rebuffed with the argument that civil servants already could hardly make ends meet and were unable to bear the cost of a rent increase. This was a specious argument, the Association remarked, as it implied that rents were kept at an artificially low level, with the result that in practice private property owners were subsidizing the housing of civil servants. The obvious solution had to be that civil servants’ salaries should be raised.59 In response to these allegations, the knowledgeable M.A.F. Zwager, Head of the Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst in Batavia, wrote to the Lieutenant Governor- General that the house owners were a bunch of cavillers, who had incurred far smaller losses in the war than people without property. Nevertheless, he admitted fairly and squarely that they had a point in their assertion that a rent increase was necessary to restart construction work and repairs. The corollary would be that salaries of state officials had to be raised too.60 Remarkably, the connection between artificially low rents, the protection of civil servants’ income, and the lack of building activity was not a moot point at all in government circles and was indeed tacitly subscribed to. The only, but extensive,

59 Letter W.H. Hoogland, Chairman, and M.A.J. Kelling, Secretary, Vereniging van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Zaken to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, Bandoeng, 20-10- 1948; letter M.A.J. Kelling to Hoge Commissaris van de Kroon, Batavia 6-1-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 60 Letter Resident M.A.F. Zwager, H.T.B. Batavia, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 31-3- 1948, no. 611/31, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 257 debate was a technical question: the percentage of the rent increase (eventually 30%) and the best way to compensate civil servants for it.61 The third bone of contention between the state and property owners was construction work either to repair houses or build new ones. Soon after the Japanese surrender, the Netherlands Indies government decided that it was beyond its means to compensate in full the damage suffered by private persons (including losses incurred by theft and Japanese requisitions). Repair efforts would be aimed at reconstruction in general. The losses suffered by lower-class indigenous people were not taken into government consideration at all. As early as February 1946 the Lieutenant Governor-General installed a commission to advise the government about the damage done to property; several organizations and groups were represented on this commission, but not indigenous victims (Keppy 2006:53-4, 60). One problem that emerged more and more during the late 1940s was the absence of private building initiatives. Although the government spoke of the lack of private initiative in a condemnatory undertone, it realized that the high price of building materials formed a real obstacle. A regulation governing subsidies for possible losses on operational costs of new houses for let (taxes, insurance, maintenance, rates, and write-off) and to advance building credit, both for reconstruction and new houses, was approved in March 1948.62 The stipulations about permanent building materials and maximum floor space (180 sq m) indicate that the government had predominantly (upper) middle-class houses in mind, not kampong houses. After this regulation to subsidize reconstruction and construction had been promulgated, the state once again demonstrated its petit-bourgeois mentality. If it had to make up losses on operational costs, it would be better if the rent of this category of houses were raised by 40-60% (to increase profitability, hence decrease the subsidies to cover losses). This time there was no objection to such a rent increase, because, the Head of the Department of

61 Letter H. van der Wal, wd. Directeur van Binnenlandsche Zaken, to Directeur Financiën, 27-12-1947, no. V.W. 7-18-38; letter A. Luytjes, Directeur Economische Zaken, to Directeur Financiën, 13-1-1948, no. 608/H.A.D; letter W. Alons, Directeur Financiën, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 16-1-1948, no. GT15-10-40; letter W. Alons, Secretaris van Staat Financiën to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 18-8-1948, no. GT15-87-39; letter Van Hoogstraten, Voorzitter Financieel Economische Raad to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 23-10-1948, no. A40, Ag. No. 27195/AH5/AE17; letter H. van der Wal, Secretaris van Staat Binnenlandse Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 15-12-1948, no. B 6/24/7; Documenten ter behandeling in voorlopige federale regering Ag. No. 348/AH 5/AE 17, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 62 Letter C.J. Warners, wd. Directeur van Verkeer en Waterstaat, to Luitenant Gouverneur- Generaal, Batavia, 9-2-1948, no. A/2662/VW/48; Bespreking principe van financiering voor de herbouw en nieuwbouw van woningen, 6-1-1948; Besluit Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal no. 9, 11-3-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 920. 258 Under construction

Social Affairs reasoned, the majority of renters were not civil servants.63 Rent control was not the only factor dampening private building activity, the local Housing Allocation Bureau, which had the power to decide who would occupy a building, was also far more a hindrance than a help. The Housing Allocation Bureaus issued vestigingsbewijzen (residential permits, the abbreviation VB continued to be used after 1949). Right into the 1950s private owners had no guarantee they could live in their own house. In 1950, the head of the Jakarta Housing Allocation Bureau (Urusan Perumahan Djakarta Raya) reminded the public that the purchase of a house formed no guarantee the buyer would be given a residential permit (VB) for the house (Antara 7-6-1950/A). The reminder was confirmed by Emergency Law no. 8/1953 (Undang-Undang Darurat no. 8/1953). Prospective house owners often chose to build a new house, which they were always allowed to occupy, instead of buying an existing house. At least, this method to avoid interference by the Housing Allocation Bureaus had been confirmed for Surabaya and Bandung. Nevertheless, as late as 1954, the Vereniging van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Zaken (Association of People Concerned with Immovable Property), now renamed Peruba, urged the Bandung Housing Allocation Bureau not to do business with newly built houses and, furthermore, suggested that rents for new houses be brought into line with the general price increase.64 The first place where the state tried to stimulate private construction initiatives by giving a waiver to occupancy norms was in the new town Kebayoran Baru, south of Jakarta, in 1949.65

Tensions between corporate enterprise, the military, and the state

To what extent were corporate companies able to find adequate housing during the housing crisis and insulate themselves from demands made by the Army and the state? On the whole, large companies looked after their staff well, because they had more to spend than the government. For instance, unlike the colonial state, such private companies as the oil company Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij (BPM) promised their employees who had been interned by the Japanese to pay their missed salaries in full (Meijer

63 Letter J.E. van Hoogstraten, Voorzitter Financieel-Economische Raad, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 24-6-1948, no. FER/A-17, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 931. 64 Antara 2-10-1953/A; letter Commissariaat Surabaia to Hoge Commissaris der Nederlanden in Indonesië, 8-2-1954, no. 2921/GS198/686; idem, 17-5-1954, no. 9824/GS540/2648, NA, Commissariaat Surabaya 1545; letter Hoge Commissaris to Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken in ‘s-Gravenhage, 6-3-1954, no. 20032/1014, NA, Commissariaat Bandung 446. 65 Letter Drs. A.Th. Bogaardt, Secretaris van Staat Sociale Zaken, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 9-12-1949, no. H 2-21-13, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 259

2005:45-6). During the housing crisis, BPM was able to house most of its staff in Jakarta in company houses. Another oil company, Stanvac, quickly arranged housing for a new employee, a demobilized sergeant and his wife, who had lived separated during the two years of his military service. Private companies spent whatever money it took, if need be exorbitant amounts, to provide their employees decent housing.66 Companies often had sufficient clout to get things done. In March 1947 Royal Dutch Airlines, KLM, stated publicly it might cancel its flights to Jakarta because there was no accommodation for its pilots. Initially the pilots were housed in the top-class Hotel Des Indes, for which KLM paid ƒ 23,000 per month in cash. The company justified the luxury on the grounds that crews needed a good night’s rest and could not sleep in a camp bed on a veranda. Problems emerged because some crew members did not have the same social standing as other guests. In January 1947, a drunken mechanic hassled other guests, and the same day, when a departing crew vacated nine rooms, the hotel manager immediately withdrew them from KLM. The government mediated in finding a solution. KLM swapped its remaining 20 rooms in Des Indes for the whole Hotel Des Galeries (32 rooms) with the Army. The deal was cancelled, however, when the Arab owner of Hotel Des Galeries asked a price KLM was unwilling to pay. Later KLM concentrated its crews in Hotel Daendels.67 In return for a good relationship with the government, companies were prepared to be cooperative. For instance, the Deli Spoorwegmaatschappij (Deli Railway Company) accepted that the government and the Dutch army occupied 56 of its 102 company houses in Medan. In addition it rented out 140 labourers’ houses to families of Dutch soldiers. The Deli Maatschappij gave up 24 of its 34 houses.68 Another example of how corporate enterprises helped the state out without losing sight of their own interests comes from Palembang. A local report stated that ‘the entire housing situation is dominated by the large demand for housing by military units’ (de gehele huisves tingssituatie [wordt] beheerst door de grote behoefte der militaire onderdelen). The BPM and Stanvac oil companies each gave up between 50 and 60 houses to

66 Bespreking principe van financiering voor de herbouw en nieuwbouw van wonigen, 6-1-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 920; Memorandum A.Th. Bogaardt, Hoofd Huisvesting Organisatie Batavia, attached to letter B. Krijger, Directeur Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 25-2-1947, no. 4166/AH 6, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061; Notitie W.H. Coert to Directeur-Kabinet, Batavia 29-7-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1076. 67 Kort verslag vergadering Raad van Departementshoofden, 11-3-1947; letter KLM to A.Th. Bogaardt, Hoofd Huisvestings Organisatie Batavia, Batavia 7-3-1947, no. vOvD/1095/RC, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 68 Notitie G.J.A. Velling, Huisvestings-moeilijkheden te Medan [May 1950], NA, Commissariaat Medan 71. 260 Under construction the Dutch army. Nevertheless, money and good connections did blunt the companies’ problems. BPM built 14 permanent, European-style houses, 16 non-permanent houses, two apartment blocks for 40 bachelors, and 27 hotel rooms. Stanvac planned to bring 100 pre-fabricated houses from the USA in 1949. Both companies warned – or should we say threatened? – the government that they would no longer invest in the oil industry if nothing was done about the housing shortage. In response, the central government set aside ƒ 1,750,000 to build 50 houses in the elite neighbourhood Talang Semut in Palembang.69 After the transfer of sovereignty, European companies were less able to protect themselves. The Deli Spoorwegmaatschappij and Deli Maatschappij, which had amicably helped the government and the Army, grew worried when the Dutch army withdrew and the houses were not returned but taken over by the Indonesian forces. When the companies brought the topic up at the Medan Housing Allocation Bureau, the head of the bureau responded that Army demands took precedence over the well-grounded wishes of the companies; and ‘that is the way it is’ (zo ligt de zaak nu eenmaal).70 The companies were apprehensive not only about the Indonesian military refusing to return company buildings, they also had to accept with gnashing teeth that more company buildings would be taken (Antara 15-9-1950/A). Another example from Medan was the trading company Jacobsen van den Berg, which had put the families of seven European staff members, 24 people altogether, in one large house, Sulthansweg 14. The military governor of North Sumatra requisitioned the house in 1950 and the families were moved to three other houses, which were inferior both in comfort and location; two of the families were forced to take lodgings in a hotel.71 The Stoomvaart Maatschappij Nederland (Shipping Company ‘Nederland’) could not prevent the Army requisitioning its company house in Medan (Djalan Djocja 36), in which the company had heavily invested. The company agent grumbled that the Army requisitioned the house not because it needed more housing – the Army offered a larger house in return – but merely because the Adjutant of the Chief of Staff fancied the house.72 Companies in Surabaya had to hand over

69 Letter Mr. H.J. Wijnmaalen, Recomba Zuid-Sumatra, to Hoofd Departement Sociale Zaken, Palembang 12-4-1948, no. 4346/5; letter Ir. A.M. Semawi, Hoofd Departement Waterstaat en Wederopbouw, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 26-5-1948, no. A/3076/WW/LG/48; Omslagvel 10-7-1948, no. 16817/AWW/AH7, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 931. 70 Letter Deli Maatschappij 30-6-1950; Notitie G.J.A. Veling, Huisvestings-moeilijkheden te Medan [May 1950], NA, Commissariaat Medan 71; Geheim verslag G.J.A. Veling, 5-7-1950, NA, Commissariaat Medan 182. The quote comes from Veling’s note. 71 Letter Commissariaat Medan to Hoge Commissaris van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in Indonesië, Medan, 8-8-1950, no. A/AJZ/1214, NA, Commissariaat Medan 71. 72 Letter C.H. van Tienhoven, Agent der N.V. Stoomvaart Mij ‘Nederland’, to Kolonel M. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 261 rented company houses to the Housing Allocation Bureau whenever staff went on furlough or were replaced; the substitute was not allowed to occupy the company house. In the same city the Koninklijke Paketvaartmaatschappij and ANIEM hesitated to build new houses for fear of nationalization (Nieuwe Courant 26-8-1952; Nieuw Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 29-8-1952). A large but unspecified number of houses must have fallen into Army hands when Dutch companies were formally nationalized in the course of 1958 (Lindblad 2008). For instance, in Makassar 11 houses belonging to the Nillmij, Koninklijke Paketvaartmaatschappij, Borsumij and three other Dutch companies were managed by the Badan Pengawasan Perusahaan Milik Belanda (BPPMB, Board for the Control of Dutch-owned Companies). All these houses had already been requisitioned in the first half of the 1950s, and after the nationalization of the companies it was decided to give the houses to the current occupants. Four Army officers hereby obtained a Dutch house.73 Hotels – from the elite Hotel des Indes to small family-run pensions – formed a special category of companies in the housing crisis, for two reasons. First, the Dutch army, the Netherlands Indies government, and Housing Allocation Bureaus liked to requisition complete hotels, where they could put up many persons at one stroke. The Housing Allocation Bureau of Batavia at one point managed 25 hotels. Hotel proprietors were usually loath to relin- quish control of their hotels. The former manager of Hotel Royal in Jakarta, Zwijnsen, watched with sorrowful eyes as Dutch soldiers moved beds, tables, cupboards, and mirrors from his requisitioned hotel to other Army houses; he found some of the furniture for sale at the market. In vain he asked to be installed as hotel-administrator in Army service.74 Second, hotels provided permanent accommodation for many civil servants and for the staff of large enterprises. It had not been exceptional to take board and lodging in a hotel before the Japanese invasion, but it became far more common in the late 1940s (Figure 27). In a medium-sized city like Medan there were at least 38 pensions – not counting real hotels – in 1950.75

Simbolon Gouverneur Militair Sumatera Utara, Medan, 15-8-1951, no. VT/AS4012/4217; letter Van Tienhoven to Plaatsvervangend Hoge Commissaris van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in Indonesië, 22-8-1951, no. HM/2033/657; Code telegram Hoge Commissariaat to Commissariaat Medan, 5-9-1951, Ref. nr. 5248, NA, Commissariaat Medan 155. 73 Surat Keputusan Badan Pengawasan Perusahaan Milik Belanda 1-7-1958, no. 09/Kpts/ BPPMS/58, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 208. I noted down a similar story in an oral history interview in Medan. 74 Letter Voorzitter A.B.H.I.N.I. [Algemene Bond van Hoteleigenaren in Nederlands-Indië] to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 19-5-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1072. 75 Letter Djaidin Poerba, Walikota, to Kepala Djawatan Penghubung Medan, Medan, 28-6- 1950, no. 3066/KB-5, Arsip Medan. 262 Under construction

Figure 27. Lodgings in Hotel des Indes, Jakarta. Source: Tillema 1922, V:885.

The government put up many middle- and higher-ranking civil servants in hotels until the mid-1950s, for which it deducted a maximum of 60% from their salary. Despite the salary deduction, the regulation proved expensive to the government. An exceptional example is provided by a certain Pelaupessy. He earned ƒ 1,000 per month and lodged with his family in the luxurious Hotel des Indes for ƒ 77.50 per day. After subtracting ƒ 600 from his salary for accommodation, the government still had to make up ƒ 1,725 to cover the hotel costs. To cut its expenses, the government decided in March 1948 that civil servants with families had to hand over not 60%, but 70 to 80% of their salary.76 One lasting solution for lowering the state’s hotel bill was to build more houses for civil servants. The 887 houses built in Grogol (Jakarta) were intended for civil servants who still lived in hotels (Indonesia Raya 29-4- 1954).

76 Richtlijnen nopens de huisvesting en algemene beslissingen van de Centrale Huisvestings raad, Departement Sociale Zaken, 31-5-1948, no. H 2-10-12, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1062; note to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 24-5-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1072; Rondschrijven Hoofd Departement Sociale Zaken, Batavia 31-3-1948, no. P.1, Arsip Medan, copy book 3995. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 263

The Housing Allocation Bureaus

The Housing Allocation Bureaus, which have already figured on many pages in this chapter, provide interesting insight into the society at large. The Housing Allocation Bureaus were responsible for distributing the housing available as efficiently as possible among the people who needed a dwelling. A Housing Allocation Bureau was installed in Jakarta on 13 April 1946, and by mid-1948 similar bureaus had been established in Surabaya, Semarang, Bogor and Sukabumi, Cirebon, Malang, and Bondowoso, and outside Java in Medan, Palembang, Padang, Banjarmasin, and Makassar.77 The Residence Regulation for Batavia (Woonverordening Batavia) of February 1947 put the bureau on a comprehensive legal footing, but other regulations had already spelled out the bureau’s competence at an earlier stage. The Regulation on the Requisitioning of Buildings (Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië 21/1946) allowed the Housing Allocation Bureau to seques- ter houses of private owners. In August 1946, the Ordinance on Billeting in Jakarta was issued, which allowed the Housing Allocation Bureau to command anybody who occupied a dwelling (as owner or tenant) to admit other residents to the house, in return for a financial compensation. A person could only legally live in a house if she or he had a residential permit, or VB. The Housing Allocation Bureau staff had the right to enter all houses in order to inspect them. People who refused to comply with the bureau’s orders to share their accommodation with others could be removed from their house by force and could face a sentence of two years in jail. Although the first occupant could lodge a protest against a decision of the Housing Allocation Bureau, the billeting order was not postponed pending the hearing of the protest.78 The Housing Allocation Bureau, in short, had wide-ranging powers. The Housing Allocation Bureau also played a role in implementing decisions to close cities to migrants. Jakarta was declared a closed city on 15 August 1946, Bandung and Surabaya followed suit in 1947, and Medan in 1949.79 Henceforth, the Housing Allocation Bureau decided unilaterally who

77 Javasche Courant 28-6-1946, no. 7; Dienstnota Departement Sociale Zaken 7-6-1948, no. Ag. 12984 t/m 12994/48, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061; Huisvestingsverordening Makassar 1948, Verordening 32a Resident Zuid-Celebes, 19-7-1948, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 18. 78 Letter Kolonel A. Pino, CO AMACAB, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 26-4-1946, no. 2080/42h; Inkwartierings Verordening Batavia 1946, Besluit Ysebaert, CO AMACAB Batavia, 27-8-1946, no. 3888; Woonverordening Batavia 1947, Besluit Hoofd Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst 8-2- 1947, Verordening Militair gezag V, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 79 Memorandum A.Th. Bogaardt, Hoofd Huisvesting Organisatie Batavia, attached to letter B. Krijger, Directeur Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 25-2-1947, no. 4166/AH 6; Verordening militair gezag, Besluit 43/V of 5-11-1947, S. van der Harst, Resident Hoofd Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst Priangan, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061; Notulen Adviesraad Stadsgemeente Medan, 29-11-1949, attached to letter Gemeentesecretaris to Aham Marzoeki et al., 29-12-1949, no. 5544/A-12, Arsip Medan; Antara 10-12-1953/A, 18-3-1954/A, 4-2-1955/A. 264 Under construction was allowed to live in these places, even for temporary visits to, say, business partners or hospitalized family members. The Housing Allocation Bureau of Bandung brought dozens of people without residential permits to the court of justice in 1953 and 1954. Suspects were fined, evicted from the house, or ordered to leave the city (Antara 12-5-1953/A, 3-6-1953/A, 10-12-1953/A, 14-4- 1954/A). Despite this zeal in Bandung, which I found only there,80 it is hard to believe the bureaus were able to enforce the travel restrictions strictly. The modus operandi of the bureau is shown in the information film, Toch nog geboft (1948), or ‘Good luck after all’. The dramatized documentary relates how a certain Jan Jansen finds accommodation for his family. The opening shot shows Jansen in a small, filthy hotel room – open tin cans, bicycle stored next to a bed – which he shares with two other European men. He sighs over a letter from his beloved wife who has remained behind in the Netherlands – romantic music in the background. A voice-over explains that the root of the housing problems lay in Japanese policies. The Head of the Housing Allocation Bureau then delivers a radio speech stating that everybody is entitled to have 10 sq m of living space (not counting the bathroom and kitchen); those persons who have more room can expect to have others billeted on them. In the next shot, a European official from the Housing Allocation Bureau roams the streets by bicycle. When he spots a villa with a garage, the angry-looking occupant is ordered to park the car in the open air. The next shot shows a Dutch newspaper headline: ‘264 houses checked’ and an article about abuses like a seven-year-old lad who had a large bedroom to himself. Jansen subsequently gets a VB for the garage and is a happy man. The last scene shows Mrs Jansen and their child and domestic servant arriving by taxi. A lamp hanging from the ceiling, a table with a vase with flowers, and two small armchairs give the garage a comfortable air. Mrs Jansen first looks around critically and then beams. The voice-over comments: ‘She is a good sport and the joy of our friend is indescribable’ (ze is uit het goede hout gesneden en de vreugde van onze vriend is onbeschrijfelijk). In an unintentionally hilarious way, the second-rate actor who plays Jansen does not look at all overjoyed, but other details of the documentary are more significant. First, the housing crisis is represented as an exclusively European problem. Second, the Japanese are blamed for the shortage, the Dutch administration credited with finding the solution, and not a word is said about the Indonesian Revolution. Third, rare views are given of living conditions in a crowded hotel room and garage. Fourth, even in this propaganda film, the friction with the original user of the garage is undisguised. A former billeting official (inkwartieringsambtenaar), interviewed at the

80 Squatters in other cities were sometimes tried, but on different legal grounds. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 265 age of 87, explained that she actually rarely spotted any empty space in her neighbourhood. Usually people in need of housing took the initiative to go around in the neighbourhood and report houses that were relatively empty to her. She would then go to that specific house to assess the situation and decide whether or not the others had to move up a bit to clear a room for house-seekers. The work required a wealth of social skills and knowledge of how to handle people from different ethnic backgrounds: when to address an Ambonese man as Om, for instance; or where to find a room for a single mother who received men because she needed the money. In the latter instance, the billeting official had to find neighbours who would tolerate prostitution, because where the single mother had first lived, less sympathetic Manadonese neighbours had drenched her with water laced with chilli peppers. The billeting official, who was open-minded for her time, also found a safe place for a homosexual man. She usually convinced incumbent residents to crowd together a bit, by pointing out that the newcomers had fled from gruesome revolutionary violence. Another practical problem was how to persuade people to pay, when rents began to be collected again. Putting various families together in one house unsurprisingly led to fric- tions. M.A.J. Kelling, the agitated secretary of Vereniging van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Zaken, describes the situation in shared houses as follows.

Since Noah’s family left the ark – where humanity for the first time experienced enforced accommodation!; fortunately for Shem, Ham, and Japheth still without a Housing Allocation Bureau official – everybody has sought a dwelling of their own, where they could be themselves, free and undisturbed. [People who are forced to live together become like] a band of savages, or more aptly, true cannibals who, before they annihilate and swallow each other completely, find no greater satanic pleasure than to plague, torment, and torture each other day in and day out in the most ingenious ways. Compared to this, the methods of the Kempeitai, Gestapo and Soviet security police are just child’s play.81 Good advice abounded. Article 2.2 of the billeting ordinance for Java stated that the ethnicity and social position of the main occupant and the billeted

81 ‘Sedert het gezin van NOACH de ark verliet, – waarin het mensdom voor het eerst kennismaakte met een dwang-accommodatie! – gelukkig voor Sem, Cham en Jafeth nog zonder huisvestingsambtenaar –, heeft iedereen gezocht naar een eigen woning, waarin hij vrij en ongestoord zichzelf kon zijn. […] een troep wilden, neen: rasechte menseneters, die, voordat zij elkaar helemaal vernietigen en verzwel- gen, geen ander satanisch genoegen kennen, dan elkaar dag-in, dag-uit te kwellen op de meest geraff- ineerde manier, te treiteren en te martelen, waarbij vergeleken de methoden van Kempeitai, Gestapo en G.P.O. [Gossudarstwennoje Polititsjeskoje Oeprawlenije] soms nog maar kinderspel zijn!’ Note M.A.J. Kelling, Huurverhoging: Een economische en sociale noodzakelijkheid, [1948], ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 266 Under construction occupant should be matched as far as possible.82 The Bandung association of housewives issued the ‘Ten commandments for forced sharing of accommodation’ (Tien geboden 1948). For instance, respect the private rooms of other residents; keep a mutual distance; make a timetable for the times everybody is allowed to use the bathroom; leave the house to the other family occasionally; cheerfully accept unexpected disturbances; and, the last command, never lose your sense of humour! Alas, these ten commandments often went by the board. About ten elderly interviewees in Medan, Surabaya, and Jakarta all experienced the housing crisis in similar, negative ways. The fact that one was no longer free to move to a new house formed the least of the problems. One Eurasian man recalled how an Indonesian doctor occupied the main part of the house, while he and his family lived in a servant’s room at the back. The doctor built a chicken coop in the adjacent servant’s room in order to drive the Eurasian family out. Successfully. The stench and dust of the chicken dung became unbearable. A Eurasian woman recalled how villas where lower-class people were put up degenerated into pigsties, because the new residents were used to throwing rubbish on the ground in kampongs. A Chinese couple relinquished one of their two rooms to a Eurasian woman. She was friendly and polite and yet it was unpleasant, because she had to pass through their room to reach her own, and they had to walk around the house to reach the bathroom. Another couple invited friends to stay with them, in order to forestall the billeting of unknown people by the Housing Allocation Bureau. A Malay man was given a room by the Housing Allocation Bureau, after he had acquired a doctor’s certificate stating that his wife had a lung disease and needed adequate housing. People who were ill were not very welcome, though, as others feared contracting a contagious disease. Similar stories can be found in archives.83 People frequently entered a house by force, or coerced a co-resident out of a house with the help of intimidation by thugs in military uniforms. They all ultimately referred to the Housing Allocation Bureau to

82 Inkwartieringsverordening Java 1947, XLIX, Besluit Algemeen Hoofd Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst Java, no. J.Z. 75/47, 25-4-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. The same text was used in Padang, and perhaps other places too; Inkwartieringsverordening Padang, Besluit Hoofd Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst Padang, 5/1949, 22-8-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 83 Letter Liek Em To, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 25-4-1949; letter A.Th. Bogaardt, Hoofd Departement Sociale Zaken, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 31-5- 1959, no. HI-6-26; letter F.P.G. de Seriere to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 15-12-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1070; see also Mochtar Lubis (1963:30). Another writer, poet Ayip Rosidi, who arrived in Jakarta as a boy in 1951, later wrote: ‘“It was entirely beyond anything I had imagined before actually coming to Djakarta, and I felt nauseated. I had never, never thought I could live in such squalor. Yet little by little […] I grew familiar with Djakarta housing”’ (Rosidi quoted in Abeyasekere 1989:174). VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 267 legitimize their aggressive behaviour.84 A Housing Allocation Bureau official was also reported to have threatened an occupant saying that he would use his military connections if he were not obeyed.85 Minor conflicts sometimes escalated, as in the following war of nerves. A woman, L.A. Parera, was compelled to accept Mrs Wilhelmina Bollegraf and her 24-year-old son Johan as co-residents. On one occasion Johan was found guilty in court of the minor maltreatment and verbal abuse of Mrs Parera, but remained in the house. Parera did not dare to go to the bathroom or kitchen when Johan was in the corridor. A Housing Allocation Bureau official who came to investigate the situation shirked his responsibility to mediate and advised Parera to go round the house to the kitchen, ask her maid to scout out before she left her room, or delay urination. Parera countered: as soon as she saw her chance, she had the water pipe to the Bollegrafs’ quarters removed by a plumber. Later Parera put a padlock on the kitchen door to deny the Bollegrafs access.86 The wide formal competences of the Housing Allocation Bureau and the dependence of people on the bureau in such an important matter as housing had almost inevitably to lead to abuses. Given the abuse of power, the practical and emotional importance of shelter to people, and the fact that Housing Allocation Bureaus could not deliver what they had been created to do, complaints about the bureaus were bound to emerge. Staff members were frequently described as rude and impolite.87 The Indo-Europeesch Verbond (Association of Eurasians) in Semarang carped that the Housing Allocation Bureau shielded the well-to-do from the obligation to accept more people in their large, half-empty villas (Huisvesting 1949). A recurrent grievance aired by house owners was that the Housing Allocation Bureau appointed a new occupant before the house owner had been notified of the vacant rooms by either the departing resident or the bureau; the owner hence missed the opportunity to reclaim his property or to place somebody of her or his own choosing.88 People who lodged in hotels permanently, and hence were

84 Letter W. Leleuly, to Ketua Perwakilan Rakjat Republik Indonesia, Djakarta, September 1952; letter Liem Kiem Soan, to Dewan Urusan Perumahan, 20-8-1953; letter R.Wisnoe Sriwidjaja to President Republik Indonesia, Djakarta, 17-3-1957, ANRI, Kabinet President 1950-1959 202. 85 Letter J. de Leeuw, Consul der Nederlanden, to Kepala Kantor Urusan Perumahan Surabaja, 3-9-1956, no. 12060, NA, Commissariaat Surabaya 1545. 86 Vonnis Landrechter Batavia 2501/1948, 3-7-1948; letter [L.A. Parera to Hoge Vertegenwoor diger van de Kroon, end of March 1949], ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1070. 87 Letter M.H.J. Welborn to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 12-10-1949; letter Fritz Weyrich to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 14-11-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1070. 88 Letter G. Hillebrandt et al., to Staatsecretaris Sociale Zaken, 21-8-1949; letter M.H.J. Welbron to Huisvesting Organisatie Batavia, 11-10-1949; letter M.H.J. Welborn to Hoge Vertegenwoor diger van de Kroon, 12-10-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1070. 268 Under construction required to apply for a residential permit, were sometimes willing to pay the hotel management 25% extra for a registration as a temporary visitor in order to avoid the hassles of applying to the local Housing Allocation Bureau for a residential permit (Antara 18-1-1955/B). An embarrassing incident occurred when the wife of the deputy head of the Housing Allocation Bureau in Jakarta, in the company of an unnamed family member of the Lieutenant Governor-General, possibly his wife, investigated houses pretending to be acting on behalf of the Housing Allocation Bureau. Because of the dearth of qualified staff, the deputy head was not fired and merely reprimanded.89 A police officer in Mochtar Lubis’s novel Twilight in Jakarta, who was called to enforce a decision of the Housing Allocation Bureau and expel somebody from his home, sighed: ‘I’m sorry, but this is the responsibility of the Housing Bureau. Why don’t they just abolish it?’ (Lubis 1963:182-3). Housing Allocation Bureaus continued to operate in the 1950s, and remained controversial. In some places, Housing Allocation Bureaus were accused of being the political tool of people who were opposed to the Indonesian Republic. Some 170 persons who had fled Medan during the Revolution found their house or shop occupied by people who supported either the colonial state or the federal state. The protection that the new occupants received from the Housing Allocation Bureau was interpreted as a political move. Similar complaints were voiced in Bandung and Surabaya. Another (unverifiable) figure from Bandung states that 70% of the houses distributed by the Housing Allocation Bureau of Bandung were occupied by foreigners, mostly Chinese. In 1952 the Housing Allocation Bureau of Jakarta announced that it would give priority to three categories of people, but for the time being only had accommodation available to serve the first group: civil servants (Antara 13-6- 1950/B, 11-7-1952/A, 3-6-1953/A, 26-10-1956/A; Berita Indonesia 23-5-1952). In the end, corruption became the most serious weakness plaguing Housing Allocation Bureaus. The earliest sign is from August 1947. The Head of the Department of Public Works remarked that ideally Housing Allocation Bureaus should be led by people who stand out for their ‘probity’ (rechtschapenheid) and organizational skills. To halt the continuous departure of staff, civil servants should be offered tenure or a salary that was equal to salaries paid in the private sector.90 A complaint from 1949 that staff were ‘immoral’ hints at bribery.91 Corruption certainly became widespread in the

89 Memorandum B. Krijger, Directeur Sociale Zaken, 19-11-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 90 Letter Ir. C.J. Warners, wd Directeur van Verkeer en Waterstaat, to Luitenant Gouverneur- Generaal, 1-8-1947, no. A/14135/VW/Kab/47, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. 91 Letter Fritz Weyrich to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 14-11-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1070. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 269

1950s. The stakes for both those who already occupied a house and wished to keep others out and those who did not have accommodation and desperately needed a dwelling were simply too high not to try bribery. On the other hand, for civil servants, whose salaries were falling behind general price increases, extras were hard to resist. Moreover, as we have seen in Chapter II, professional standards that had militated against corruption had eroded from the Japanese period onwards. The billeting official who at the age of 87 looked back on her work told me that corruption existed on a limited scale before the transfer of sovereignty and grew much worse after. People usually paid the billeting officials, but sometimes money changed hands with the chiefs of the officials too. She could excuse the corruption to a certain extent, as salaries were too low to live on. The usual illicit ‘fare’ for a residential permit was – if the memory of my interlocutor did not fail her at this point – Rp 1,000, which would be more than a month’s official salary. She had a reputation for being incorruptible. Nevertheless, once she was tempted to accept Rp 2,000 for two rooms. The rooms were being contested by two parties, one able to pay ‘key-money’, the other a family that lived dispersed over different locations in Jakarta. She lay awake the whole night and then her conscience triumphed over Mammon. Her honesty may not have earned her money, but she did build up a network of connections. Highly-placed Indonesians warned her to leave the country just before the take-over of Dutch property in 1957. Corruption did not flourish unchecked. In March 1952 the criminal investigation department of the police unexpectedly sealed the Housing Allocation Bureau of Jakarta and took all the books. The police vigorously launched an enquiry into corrupt practices and the very first day checked the books with the actual occupation of 450 houses in situ. Several forged residential permits were immediately detected. Every day, some 40-50 people reported to the police, either as witnesses or as victims of fraud. Nevertheless, after a week police zeal ebbed away – cynics may ponder why – and the head of the criminal investigation department declared he lacked the manpower to check all the houses. It would be better if he were to use his resources for other crimes, but persons who had a counterfeit residential permit could report to the police. Of course, nobody did. Meanwhile the Housing Allocation Bureau resumed its activities, but with new books (Antara 10-3-1952/B, 13-3- 1952/B, 8-5-1952/B; Berita Indonesia 20-3-1952). One month later all heads of departments in the Housing Allocation Bureau of Jakarta were replaced by Dutchmen (Antara 17-4-1952/B). No reason was given for this remarkable change of personnel, but I interpret the use of former colonials as an attempt to employ people who, despite obvious post-colonial misgivings, had at least a name for maintaining high professional standards. In Surabaya the problems were as bad as in Jakarta. The Housing Allocation 270 Under construction

Bureau of Surabaya was temporarily closed for investigation in 1955. The next year the bureau was still paralysed, because half of the 80 staff members had left, had fallen ill, or were in custody accused of corruption. In 1956 the Local Security Coordination Board (Koordinasi Keamanan Daerah, KKD), which also played a role in attempts to suppress squatting, decided to moni- tor the gross corruption and incompetence of the Housing Allocation Bureau. Henceforth residential permits would be issued by a commission, appointed by the Local Security Coordination Board; the Housing Allocation Bureau would merely execute the decision. Soon it emerged that this commission allowed itself to be spoon-fed by the Housing Allocation Bureau, which now could hide behind the commission in public.92 Corruption was also rife in other Housing Allocation Bureaus. There were persistent rumours about Bandung, Bogor and other cities insinuating that people with money easily found a dwelling, whereas people with a low income repeatedly asked for a dwelling in vain. Three officials in Medan accepted Rp 25,000 from one man to issue a residential permit. When the bribe was discovered, the three were sentenced to prison, but the person who had bribed them got off scot-free (Antara 14-5-1952/A, 19-7-1952/A). A well- to-do man in Medan told me that in 1952 he paid one-third of the purchase price of a house to the Housing Allocation Bureau of Medan for the Bureau’s ‘service’ in notifying the occupants of the house officially to leave.93 The head of the Housing Allocation Bureau in Sukabumi was sent to jail for eight months for accepting bribes (Antara 6-3-1957/A). The widespread allegations attracted the attention of the national Parliament. Parliamentarian Sutardjo tabled a motion calling for the investigation into the many cases of chaos and dishonesty and a purge of all Housing Allocation Bureaus.94 Sutardjo gave several examples of deceit, but feared it would take three days to read out all the evidence he had collected. In the debate, Member of Parliament Werdojo (SOBSI, Sentral Organisasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia, All-Indonesia Workers’ Central Organization) remarked that people who received a residential permit were: first, people with power; second, people with money; and third, people with the right connections (Antara 4-3-1953/A, 27-5-1953/A). The Parliament decided to install a

92 Letter J. de Leeuw, Waarnemend Consul-Generaal, to Tijdelijke Zaakgelastigde in Djakarta, Soerabaja, 5-9-1956, no. 12085/GS528/3499, NA, Commissariaat Soerabaja 1841; Antara 28-10- 1955/A-B, 24-3-1956/A, 29-8-1956/A, 30-8-1956/B. 93 It would be a coincidence if his story is the same as that reported by Antara, but he may have confused the Housing Allocation Bureau with the Rent Tribunal in his story. In addition, my interlocutor paid small sums to the occupants themselves to persuade them to leave. 94 The person who tabled this motion was the same politician who had put forward the much better known Sutardjo Petition to the Volksraad in 1936, calling for Indonesian autonomy in ten years’ time. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 271

Housing Research Committee (Panitia Pemeriksa Perumahan), which visited Surabaya, Semarang, Medan, Makassar and other cities. It published a 554- page report in 1955, in which corruption was just one of the many problems besetting the offices. Another conclusion was that policy makers had no field experience and lacked knowledge of the subject matter. The staff that carried out the allocation policy were also rather ignorant, especially pertaining legal aspects. Considerable variation in practice existed between cities. Because of the lack of supervision, abuse of power went virtually unchecked (Antara 4-2-1954/A, 17-1-1955/B, 18-1-1955/A, 18-1-1955/B). I have not found evidence that the recommendations made in the report were implemented. One point bypassed by the parliamentary committee was the struggle for power to supervise the Housing Allocation Bureaus. At first these fell under the responsibility of the Department of Social Affairs. In the course of time, local governments tried to take charge of the bureaus, because they claimed they possessed the requisite local knowledge necessary to solve the housing shortage. The municipal efforts formed part of a larger, concerted struggle waged by municipal governments since the Japanese invasion to reverse the trend towards centralization. In 1953, the Minister of Social Affairs entrusted the Mayor of Jakarta with the supervision of the Housing Allocation Bureau of Jakarta. The Mayor immediately moved the Bureau from an independent location to the town hall. Henceforward all residential permits issued by the head of the Housing Allocation Bureau needed to be approved by the Housing Council (Dewan Perumahan) of Jakarta, and thereby indirectly by the Mayor. During inspection tours officials of the Bureau would be accompanied by a policeman and a municipal civil servant. In 1954 the full competence to regulate the bureau was transferred by the Minister of Social Affairs to the Mayor of Jakarta (Antara 20-3-1952/B, 17-4-1952/B, 9-5-1953/B, 15-5-1953/B, 5-6-1953/B, 23-2- 1954/B, 6-4-1954/B, 9-1-1955/A-B). The municipal government of Surabaya also tried to gain control of the local Housing Allocation Bureau. It fulminated especially against the Bureau’s practice of resuming all (rented) company houses when a staff member of that particular company was replaced.95 The aim of the Surabaya Housing Allocation Bureau was to force companies to build a new house for incoming staff, thereby stimulating building activity. The Bureau filled each vacated villa with several low-income families (where they felt ill at ease). According to the municipal administrators’ analysis, however, there were already plenty of middle- and upper-class houses in Surabaya, but a dearth of

95 The VB was written in the name of the individual occupant, and not of the company, and was therefore not automatically passed on to the new employee replacing the departing company staff member. 272 Under construction houses for labourers. They desired a change of policy: the VB for a particular company house would be passed on from the old to the new staff member, on condition the company spent a third or half of the construction costs for a villa on houses for labourers. The company would be free for a set period to reserve the lower-class houses for its own labour force.96 The administration of Surabaya had a clear idea of how to improve the efficiency of the Housing Allocation Bureau, but the unprofessed aim of many municipal bureaucracies was probably to control the housing stock for their own benefit. The municipal administration of Medan, for example, was annoyed to discover the Medan Housing Allocation Bureau had disposed of the large number of municipal houses and schools. In 1950 the Mayor of Medan had already tried to withdraw certain categories of houses from the competence of the Housing Allocation Bureau, especially because the bureau appeared to be serving military interests at the expense of civilians who were looking for a house.97 A probable secret aim of gaining municipal regulatory control over the bureaus was the opportunity to tap into the continuous flow of bribes. The opportunity to receive kickbacks fuelled competition between the civil and the military Housing Allocation Bureaus. Persistent rumours about tensions between the civil and the military Housing Allocation Bureaus circulated in Jakarta (Antara 8-7-1955/A). The non-corrupt billeting official, already mentioned several times, had the habit of filling out forms immediately a client came to her office and said that the Army was after the same dwelling and was about to issue a residential permit to another person. She therefore often snapped up houses before the military had a chance to do so. Eventually a soldier from the Military Housing Allocation Bureau became so angry that he entered her office and put his gun on the table in front of her. She got rid of him by offering him a look at her administration to see whether she had received bribes, and asking if she in return was permitted to check his administration. The soldier took his gun and left without a word.

96 Mosi Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat Daerah Sementara Kota Besar Surabaja 7-5-1953, no. 42/D.P.D.R.S.; letter Soeroso, Menteri Sosial, to Ketua Dewan Perwakilan Rakjat Daerah Sementara Kota Besar Surabaja, 26-6-1953, no. Huk. 2-1-2; R. Moestadjab Soemowidigdo, Het woningvraagstuk in de grote steden, [lecture] 24-8-1953; announcement Urusan Perumahan Surabaja 23, 24-10-1953, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1250 no. 26303; Nieuwe Courant 26-8-1952; De Vrije Pers 28-8- 1952, 30-6-1953. Actually, at the Indonesian-Dutch peace negotiations the Dutch companies had accepted the obligation, stipulated in the so-called Financieel-Economische Overeenkomst, to improve the housing of their labourers. 97 Letter Djaidin Poerba, Burgemeester, to Hoofd Departement van Culturele Zaken Negara Sumatera Timur, Medan 12-10-1948, no. 4177; letter Djaidin Poerba to Hoofd Huisvestings-Organisatie Medan, Medan 23-12-1948, no. 5380; letter Burgemeester to Hoofd Huisvestingsorganisatie, 18-1-1949, no. 74; letter Walikota to Huisvestingsorganisatie Medan, 17-1-1950, no. 293/RA-3; letter Djaidin Poerba, Walikota Medan, to Kepala Kantor Urusan Perumahan, Medan, 23-6-1950, no. 2967/RA.1b, Arsip Medan. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 273

Although the Housing Allocation Bureaus continued to issue VBs to legalize the occupation of dwellings, their role in finding a place for persons who did not succeed in finding one themselves became negligible in the 1950s. The head of the Jakarta Bureau stated that every month 30 houses were vacated, of which only three were reported to the Housing Allocation Bureau, which had a list of 1,000 families waiting for a house. Every month five to ten houses became available in Surabaya for a waiting list of 5,000 to 10,000 applicants. Half of the 50 daily applicants in Bandung had to be turned down. In Palembang, only one-ninth of over 900 applicants found a house through the local bureau (Antara 3-6-1953/A, 9-1-1955/A-B, 14-1-1955/A, 8-7-1955/A, 24-3-1956/A, 30-8- 1956/B). The fate of a certain Kiagus Hadji Husin is illustrative in this respect. He filled in a form and paid stamp duty no less than 35 times, but never received a VB from the Jakarta Housing Allocation Bureau.98 These distress- ing figures did not mean the housing market was clogged. Kampong houses remained beyond the scope of Housing Allocation Bureaus. People built new houses. People sublet rooms. According to one estimate, in Jakarta nine out of ten dwellings were passed on to new residents on the market without notifying the Housing Allocation Bureau (Antara 9-1-1955/A-B). The Housing Allocation Bureaus gradually became obsolete, probably partly because their main original customers, middle-class Dutchmen, were leaving Indonesia.

Conclusion

After the Japanese invasion several cities suffered from a growing shortage of housing. The shortage matured into an utter unmitigated crisis in a few cities while the Indonesian Republic and the Netherlands Indies fought out their struggle for hegemonic power between 1945 and 1949. Although many houses in Surabaya, Bandung, and secondary cities in eastern Indonesia were destroyed by hostilities, the biggest cause of the dearth of housing was massive migration to the city. The crisis varied considerably from one city to the other and was at its height in the two capitals Jakarta and Yogyakarta, the cities that drew both the largest streams of refugees and had the largest numbers of new civil servants. The state of siege gave the Netherlands Indies administration the legal loophole to tackle the housing problem in a resolute way. The government employed three strategies to solve or at least relieve the crisis: the requisitioning of houses and other buildings used for housing; the billeting of people

98 Letter Kiagus Hadji Husin to Kepala Urusan Perumahan Djakarta Raja, 14-10-1957, ANRI, Kabinet President 1950-1959 202. 274 Under construction on others; and rent control. In the short term, these measures allocated living space to many people, but in the long term, the measures were counterproductive, because they hampered private investment in the repair of run-down houses and the construction of new houses. Private house owners lobbied with little success for a liberalization of the rental market and the restoration of full ownership of their property. The reason the government did not want to return to a liberal housing market was the fear that civil servants would not be able to find decent housing with their current wages. Liberalization would compel the government to raise wages of civil servants across the board. Moreover, if construction was stimulated by subsidies, the alternative to liberalization, the government could retain some control over what was built. In other words, the state policy gave precedence to the private interests of civil servants over the public interest of house owners. The Army also used its leverage to acquire a strong position on the housing market. The subsequent armies – Japanese, British, Dutch, Indonesian – regarded civilian needs with contempt and took the best housing for themselves. A local commander in Padangsidempuan encapsulated the military disdain in one expressive gesture. A home owner came to the commander’s office to claim back his house and to demand 36 months’ overdue rent. The commander first had the man thrown out. When the house owner turn round and held up the Penal Code (Article 429-I), the commander took the Code and flung it at the former’s head. He could not have illustrated his disrespect for the rule of law more literally.99 Scholars have argued that a number of less pleasant traits of the New Order regime (1966-1998), such as state use of violence against its citizens, or a military that commands rather than obeys state political leaders, had their roots in the Indonesian Revolution or even earlier, in the colonial state.100 One problem with such conjectures is that kinship, although plausible, is assumed only on the evidence of outward similarities, and there are missing links in the genealogy. In the case of housing, in contrast, we can literally see how one army transferred buildings to the other, so that the relationship is firmly established. Besides the protected position of civil servants and soldiers, another problem in housing that made life difficult for ordinary citizens was the spread of corruption. Corruption was rampant in the Housing Allocation Bureaus (Huisvesting Organisatie, Kantor Urusan Perumahan), which distributed available dwelling space. The bureaus put several families together in one house, and this situation inevitably led to arguments and fights. Incidentally,

99 Letter Sobolaon, Staf Umum Angkatan Darat di Djakarta, to Kepala Staf Angkatan Darat Bagian IV, 31-12-1954, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden Republik Indonesia 1950-1959 730. 100 Anderson 1990; Cribb 2002; McVey 1982; Schulte Nordholt 2002. VII The housing crisis during the years of turmoil 275 the actions of the Housing Allocation Bureau caused a remarkable reversal in the usual choice of housing. Middle- and lower-middle-class people were suddenly able to live in large villas, because they paid the rent jointly, whereas well-to-do families, who were unable to find a villa to their liking, settled for a smaller house.101 Consequently, the three main problems in housing were: a self-serving administration that mismanaged the housing shortage; a self-absorbed Army that neglected the interests of civilians; and corruption. These problems represent the opposite of what the World Bank and other development organizations have dubbed ‘good governance’. ‘Bad’ governance has often been associated with new, post-colonial governments, but the interesting point here is that all three problems demonstrably began in the last phase of Dutch colonial rule. The mismanagement of housing was therefore not, or not predominantly, due to the imperfection of the Indonesian independent government, but was rather a colonial heritage. The poor management was directly related to the chaos created by a revolutionary situation and by rapid migration to the cities, which was itself a consequence of the revolution. Private actors coped with the crisis in various ways. Middle-class people increasingly circumvented the Housing Allocation Bureau and arranged housing themselves; although these bureaus existed until at least the second half of the 1950s, fewer and fewer houses passed through their hands. Dutch corporate enterprises faced growing problems in housing, as in all their affairs (Lindblad 2008). Nevertheless, the financial strength of companies and the ownership of company houses insulated companies to some extent from housing problems. The needs of lower-class people were ignored by the colonial state much more blatantly than they had been before 1942. From the information film Toch nog geboft to the exact recording of the number of passengers arriving with each liner from Europe, the Housing Allocation Bureau was clearly focused on middle-class and elite Dutch people. A year after the Housing Ordinance of Batavia was issued, an amendment formally excluded kampong houses from the responsibility of the Housing Allocation Bureau. The Mayor of Surabaya, R. Moestadjab Soemowidigdo, noted the negative psy- chological effect of the discriminatory attitude displayed by the government, which ‘increases the hatred between rich and poor’ (vergroot de haat tussen rijk en arm).102 The Indonesian Parliament later debated the desirability of mak-

101 Letter H. van der Wal, Secretaris van Staat Binnenlandse Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur- Generaal, 15-12-1948, no. B 6/24/7, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 102 Besluit Resident Hoofd Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst, 17-7-1948, Verordening Militair Gezag XLIV, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061; R. Moestadjab Soemowidigdo, Het woningvraagstuk in de grote steden, [lecture] 24-8-1953, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1250 no 26303. 276 Under construction ing the Bureaus also responsible for semi-permanent and non-permanent dwellings (Antara 27-5-1953/A, 3-6-1953/A), but given the malfunctioning of the Bureaus, it was fortunate this proposal never assumed concrete form. Lower-class people had to solve their own problems and so they did. One of their solutions, as we have seen, was squatting. A large number of people did not have a dwelling at all, whether out of necessity or free choice. Homeless people were not a new phenomenon. In colonial times, Madurese migrants in Surabaya, for instance, slept in porches and were sometimes even paid for their ‘surveillance’ of the building. Other people slept in make-shift shelters put up against a wall, or in their pushcart (Flieringa 1930:105; Frumeau 1927:69; Tillema 1916, II:59, 1921, IV:302). After the Japanese invasion the numbers rose steeply. About 40 people slept at the Medan marketplace, every night a different group; every month at least one person failed to wake up in the morning.103 In Semarang 3,000 homeless people were rounded up, including cooks, maids, and dockworkers. By 1955 in Jakarta, an estimated 200,000 homeless persons slept in front of shops and on river banks (Antara 19-3-1950/A-B, 21-7-1950/B, 6-10-1951/A, 29-6-1955/B). The housing crisis that emerged as a consequence of the struggle for independence developed into a permanent crisis after 1949. According to admittedly unconfirmed sources, Bandung had a shortage of 40,000 houses in 1950, and Jakarta 80,000 houses in 1951 (Antara 21-7-1950/B, 6-10-1951/A). Dutch diplomats in Makassar reported that the need for housing in that city was as pressing as everywhere else in Indonesia.104 Jakarta Mayor Sudiro remarked at a press conference in 1955 that the housing shortage was the most serious problem he faced. The only enduring solution would be the construction of more houses.

103 Letter Moelia Nasoetion, Pemimpin Peroesahan Pasar Kota Medan, to Wali Kota Medan, 19-5-1948, no. 332; letter Burgemeester Medan to Vertegenwoordiger Departement Sociale Zaken in Medan, 25-5-1948, no. 2200, Arsip Medan. 104 Antara 9-1-1955/A-B; Letter Commissariaat Makassar, 15-2-1957, no. 692/240, NA, Commissariaat Makassar 00046. Chapter viii Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning

Putting families together in one house, rent control, and the requisitioning of buildings during the housing crisis did not solve the fundamental problem: the large shortage of houses in cities. The construction of new houses is, of course, always an important way to provide shelter, but during the housing crisis of the late 1940s the need for new houses was more pressing than ever. The government of the Indonesian Republic recognized the importance of developing its capital city, and a town plan for Yogyakarta had already been drawn up during the struggle for independence. The Minister of Public Works, engineer Putuhena, was the principal author of this plan, building on a plan conceived by Karsten from 1936. The development of a second centre in the north of city, around the newly established Gadjah Mada University, as counterweight to the Sultan’s palace in the south, was the most important element in this plan. Other features were a ring road and a large sports stadium (Van Bruggen and Wassing 1998:96; Yunus 1991:5-8). Supporters of the revolution throughout Indonesia sent remittances to Yogyakarta to help build the Republican capital.1 There is no evidence that urban administrators knew how to allocate these funds. At the end of the War of Independence Rp 300,000 was still unspent; this sum was used to start a foundation, Jajasan Pantjasila, to give scholarships and pay for textbooks (Stichting voor de Opbouw 1949). The Netherlands Indies government put an enormous effort into reconstruction and development. Reconstruction work started in eastern Indonesia immediately following on the Japanese surrender. The cities of eastern Indonesia had suffered the most damage from Allied bombing and were the first places where the Dutch resumed administration (December 1945-January 1946). The Dutch were initially optimistic about their work in

1 Letter Zaäfril Iljas, Ketua Panitia Hari 17 Agustus 1949 Bangkalan, 25-8-1949; letter Masrin to A.M. Amirullah, Ketua Panitya Perajaan Hari Nasional 17 Agustus di Sengkang, ANRI, Sekretariat Negara 1945-1949 759; Antara 28-10-1949/A, 4-11-1949/B, 14-2-1950/A. 278 Under construction eastern Indonesia, because their presence there had not yet been called into question by the Indonesian Revolution and a noble task seemed to lie ahead. Cities like Kupang and Ambon and the Chinese quarter of Makassar needed to be rebuilt from scratch and urban planning was imperative. The pre-war debate about the direction urban planning should take was resumed after the Japanese surrender. The ultimate challenge for town planners was the development of a new town, Kebayoran Baru, south of Jakarta. As a new town, Kebayoran Baru was strictly speaking not a case of reconstruction, but the administrative methods applied to realize the project and the aim of lessening the acute housing shortage in Jakarta places this topic firmly in the years of post-war reconstruction. The frantic activity of Dutch engineers turned out to be the final convul- sions of colonialism and yet it illustrates some interesting social dynamics. One thread that connects the three topics of this chapter – reconstruction, urban planning, and Kebayoran Baru – is the state’s efforts to keep the emergent chaos of the built environment after 1945 under control. Although not everybody agrees that planners generally do a good job (Lefebvre 1986), city administrators and planners in Indonesia perceived themselves to be the ‘directors of urban change’ (Nas 2005), who had a crucial role to play. Yet reconstruction work slipped into chaos and seemed to be developing without any regard for planning, and the question is why. A second recurrent theme is the tension between the federal government in Jakarta, the government of the constituent state (negara), and the local government.2 Reconstruction and urban planning show the difficulties the central government had in carrying out its own intentions as a federal state. When it began to think about reconstruction, the central government concluded immediately that it had to take the leading role, not only in providing funds, but also in distributing building materials, which were in short supply, and skilled workers. Standard phrases that were repeated in the plans like a mantra were: ‘to use local material as much as possible’, ‘to keep the buildings as austere as possible’, and to refrain from ‘perfectionism’.3 The need to distribute scarce resources as efficiently as possible was a sensible argument

2 From the moment the Dutch conceived the idea of a federal state, I use the terms central and federal government interchangeably. 3 See for instance, Memo Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal,18-1-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 920; letter C.J. Warners, fd. Directeur van Verkeer en Waterstaat, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 27-1-1947, no. A/1518/VW/Kab/47, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 920; Rapport Technische Commissie ingesteld door Directeur van Verkeer en Waterstaat ten behoeve van de Wederopbouw in de Groote Oost en Borneo, January 1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 926; letter F.M. Razoux Schultz to Minister van Overzeese Gebiedsdelen, ’s-Gravenhage, 7-2-1946, attached to letter Minister van Overzeesche Gebiedsdeelen to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, ’s-Gravenhage 22-3-1946, no. 5/191, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 923. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 279 for according the state a central role, but in the shadows loomed the selfish motives of the central state bureaucracy. It wished to give itself a prominent place in its relationship to the negara governments and not find itself superfluous in the federal structure. Whether or not the federal government protecting its interests in this way was a conscious strategy, the upshot was that the negara and the urban administrations all relied on federal support and simultaneously suffered misgivings about the dominance of the central government. A third theme, already touched upon in the preceding chapter, is the self-seeking behaviour of the bureaucracy. Acquiring control of all building materials was quite a handy strategy by which the government could have the building materials required for its own construction projects. One point that should not be overlooked: in Japanese times the government also talked about the question of what to do about the housing situation. Although the Japanese brought very few construction plans to the stage of execution, their ideas are interesting because they were based on input from leading Indonesian nationalists.

A Japanese-Indonesian think-tank

In November 1942 the 16th Army set up a think-tank with the somewhat misleading name Kyûkan Seido Tyôsa Linkai or Panitia Adat dan Tatanegara Dahoeloe (Committee for Tradition and the Organization of Government). It brought together the crème de la crème of Indonesian nationalists (Soekarno, Mohammad Hatta, Ki Hadjar Dewantara (Soewardi Soerjaningrat), Oto Iskandar Dinata, and others) and top Japanese soldiers. The Committee talked about such issues as unemployment, education, public health, food, and clothing. Housing, a topic accorded less priority, was addressed in the Committee’s last meeting in October 1943.4 Reconstruction was mentioned only once, when Chairman Saito remarked it was practical to build using cheap, non- permanent materials at a time in which houses ran the risk of being destroyed in air raids. However, the whole brainstorming session took place against the background of the economic hardship engendered by the war situation. Kijai Hadji Mas Mansoer opened the debate by drawing attention to the dire housing situation of indigenous people. The solution to the problem of how to build many houses cheaply was standardization of design and the mass production of building elements at central places. Mansoer sketched the

4 Meeting Kyûkan Seido Tyôsa Linkai/Panitia Adat dan Tatanegara Dahoeloe, 5-10-2603, NA, NEFIS/CMI 2241. I am very grateful to Shigeru Sato for pointing out the existence of this document, and to Margaret Leidelmeijer for locating it in the NA. See also Kan Pō 1(7) 2602. 280 Under construction outlines of a ‘house that is cheap and healthy’ (roemah jang moerah dan sehat). The floor plan (10x14 m) was based on a colonial middle-class dwelling (different rooms for different functions, a veranda) for a family of five persons. The houses would be built from cheap and easily available materials (under war conditions), in other words from non-permanent materials. In contrast to colonial villas, walls would be made of plaited bamboo or of recycled paper. The use of cement and nails would be avoided. Soekarno, the second speaker, elaborated on Mansoer’s ideas. Hatta offered two other ideas. The first was to found associations that would sell dwellings to ordinary people using a hire-purchase system; these associations could be modelled on similar associations in Dutch times, which however had only served the middle class. The second proposition was to establish an association of engineers and other technical experts with a formal education, in imitation of the recently founded association of medical doctors. Hatta, not very familiar with Japanese, suggested: ‘Association of bla-bla … in Java (I do not know the word)’ (perkoempoelan Djawa ... Kai (saja tidak tahoe namanja)). Oto Iskandar Dinata analysed the poor sanitary conditions of urban kampongs, which he attributed to discriminatory colonial policies. Kampong improvement was one solution and if need be, kampongs would be demolished first to allow for more spacious rebuilding. The Japanese members of the Committee had the final word and led the discussion in a different direction. Matuura said that Indonesian students who went to Japan were surprised that there were no kampongs. The reason was, he explained, there was no colonial power that pushed the indigenous people out to the urban fringe. Nowadays the Dutch villas in Indonesia were standing empty, but if Indonesians were to occupy them, they would worry about how to pay the electricity, gas, and water bills. So, the first requirement for improving living conditions was to instil a sense of thrift among Indonesians. As it was, when Indonesians earned a higher hourly pay, they tended to become lazier instead of saving money. Kitazima took Matuura’s criticism one step further and lashed out at Indonesians, who he claimed were deficient in skills, knowledge (especially in mathematics), and frugality. The aspiration of Indonesians was to become civil servants, not traders. Therefore, no indigenous middle class had developed, whereas it is the strength of the middle class that determines the strength of a nation. We could blame the Dutch or the war situation for the poverty, Kitazima argued, but ‘the biggest blame could be attributed to the Indonesians themselves’ (kesalahan jang ter- besar itoe didjatoehkan kepada pihak Indonésia sendiri). The Indonesian nationalists shared with the Dutch – not to mention such Japanese as Matuura and Kitazima! – a paternalistic attitude towards lower- class people. They believed they knew what was best for the masses. Mansoer, VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 281

Soekarno, and Hatta all remarked that craftsmen needed to attend training courses because they lacked expertise, especially in the design of healthy housing (to control pests, malaria, and tuberculosis) and vernacular architecture. Oto Iskandar Dinata recommended an extension strategy via newspapers, radio, and face-to-face propaganda to provide kampong inhabitants with building plans for acceptable dwellings. There was, however, also a major contrast with the former colonial overlords. The focus of the entire debate was on low-income groups, or ‘rakjat djelata’ (proletariat). The difference of focus is especially striking compared to the Dutch record in post-war reconstruction.

Reconstruction of eastern Indonesia

The state bureaucracy responsible for reconstruction of course did not operate as a uniform whole, but consisted of many different competing parts. The responsibility for direct reconstruction work became a bone of contention between several sections of the bureaucracy. In normal times, the Departement van Verkeer en Waterstaat (Department of Public Works) would have been in charge of physical construction projects, but the central government soon realized that at this juncture a special organization was called for. The head of the Department therefore proposed establishing a Stichting Wederopbouw Borneo en de Groote Oost (Foundation for the Reconstruction of Borneo and Eastern Indonesia). This foundation was modelled on a foundation, Stichting Heropbouw Walcheren, set up in 1945 to rebuild the Dutch island of Walcheren, which had been bombed and inundated in the last phase of the war in Europe.5 Eventually, two separate foundations were established, one for Borneo and one for eastern Indonesia. When destruction of infrastructure and premises later extended to Java and Sumatra in the course of the Indonesian Revolution, a further reorganization became necessary. The Centrale Stichting voor Wederopbouw (Central Foundation for Reconstruction) was established in March 1948. This foundation channelled state funds to repair damaged houses and construct new houses throughout Indonesia.6 If the Central Foundation for Reconstruction kept the Department of Public Works somewhat at a distance from the action, the Department strengthened its grip on reconstruction by the establishment of the Planologisch Bureau (later renamed Centraal Planologisch Bureau, Central Planning Bureau)

5 Letter D.R.K. de Boer, Directeur Verkeer en Waterstaat, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 9-8-1946, no. A/7058/VW/KAB/46, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 926. 6 W.F. Eysvogel, Hoofd Afdeling Waterstaat, Eenige beschouwingen over de Stichting Wederopbouw in Borneo en de Groote Oost, 15-7-1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 926. 282 Under construction on 1 May 1946. The Planning Bureau did not undertake actual construction work, but it planned the long-term development of the cities and tried at least to prevent a scenario in which time-pressured and therefore ill- conceived reconstruction work would hamper future growth of the cities. The Department’s pivotal role in reconstruction was confirmed when it was renamed Departement voor Waterstaat en Wederopbouw (Department of Public Works and Reconstruction) around February 1948. The Dutch Minister for Reconstruction did not occupy a formal position in the colonial organizational structure, but nevertheless completes the picture. When Minister L. Neher visited Indonesia in December 1947 and January 1948, and again in May and June 1948, he was able to push through some joint decisions taken by heads of departments in Jakarta. Letters from heads of departments to Neher are extremely deferential. Before this machinery was fully in place, reconstruction had already started. After their return, the Dutch did not waste much time. An inventory of the needs of Ambon, Kupang, Manado, Makassar, Balikpapan, and Banjarmasin was ready in January 1946. Ambon serves as an example of the content of these reconstruction plans. Under this plan, Ambon would be rebuilt much more spaciously than the city had been before it was bombed to the ground. Upper-class houses would be moved to the hills. The area thus cleared of houses would be used for offices, industry, and markets. Streets were rede- signed as broad avenues. The plan also went into the practical problem of the lack of labourers and building materials necessary to execute this design. Few Ambonese were willing or indeed able to do construction work. Butonese craftsmen, who had played a prominent role before the war, had fled because they feared reprisals for their cooperation with the Japanese. Javanese romusha who had been left behind on the island were too exhausted to work. Therefore, Dutch administrators deemed the thousands of Japanese prisoners of war the best labour force locally available. There was neither bamboo nor timber on the island, so that the possibility of building non-permanent houses, usually a cheap alternative, was ruled out. Even the local production of thatched roofs was difficult, because most of the sago palms had been cut down during the war. Sand for mortar, gravel, lime, and clay for bricks were fortunately all to be found on the island, but their production had to be started up again. Timber and shingles had to be brought from the islands of Seram, New Guinea, and Borneo. Hinges, locks, and cement had to be imported from Java or from abroad, but foreign currency to pay for them was in short supply. The city also lacked equipment; an estimated 200 trucks were required, but of the 60 trucks on the island, only 15 were operational. Other machines were so few that they were counted singly: one milling cutter, two circular saws, one VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 283 electric drill, and so on.7 Two striking points that emerge from the Ambon plan are the huge practical difficulties faced by the government, and the social bias. The plan paid full attention to the needs of the upper class, and far less to those of kampong dwellers, just as was the case with the Housing Allocation Bureaus in Java and elsewhere. The same criticism can be directed at a financing scheme set up by the Central Foundation for Reconstruction (Centrale Stichting voor Wederopbouw). The Foundation’s core task was to finance reconstruction work, and for this purpose it set up a scheme to provide credit to citizens throughout the Netherlands Indies. The credit covered the costs of repairs and of new buildings and of making up losses on the exploitation of new houses. The conditions required to be considered for financial support (a title deed to the land, an approved building plan, a guarantee that the loan would be repaid) and the size of the house (50-180 sq m as the ‘normal’ size) all indicate that the Central Foundation for Reconstruction only served the formal building sector.8 Lower- class people had nothing to gain from this financing scheme, which, however, was annulled by May 1949 because of financial constraints.9 The way the class bias of the Central Foundation for Reconstruction worked out in practice was shown in Medan. In 1949 140 houses were constructed on the Achterweg. The Central Foundation for Reconstruction donated 75% of the building costs and the municipality would furnish the remaining 25%. The 75% subsidy offered by the Central Foundation for Reconstruction was meant to assist prospective buyers. The Foundation stipulated that only people who would have been able to have a house built before the war, but who by 1948-1949 were unable to do so because of the prevailing high prices, qualified as potential beneficiaries. The Foundation explicitly excluded people who owned nothing and who had been unable to buy or build a house before the war. The Advisory Municipal Council (Dewan Penasihat Kota Medan) protested that a small group of people would benefit disproportionately if a 75% subsidy were given to them. The municipal council decided to rent out the houses to people who at a later date would be able to buy the houses at a 25% discount.10

7 Rapport Technische Commissie ingesteld door Directeur van Verkeer en Waterstaat ten behoeve van de Wederopbouw in de Groote Oost en Borneo, January 1946, pp. 10-16, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 926. Pauline van Roosmalen (2008:185-8, 200-7) discusses extensively the content of the reconstruction plans of Balikpapan and Samarinda, which were completed in 1949. 8 Besluit Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal no. 9, 11-3-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 920; see also Keiser 1994:80. 9 Besluit Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon no. 20, 5-5-1949, Staatsblad van Indonesië 114/1949. 10 Ir. G.E. Bekkering, Aantekeningen vergadering met Ir. Hens, Hoofd Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw in Batavia, 30-11-1948, appendix to letter A.J. Paling, Gemeentesecretaris, to 284 Under construction

The preferential treatment shown to middle- and upper-class people – and civil servants from these income groups in particular – was also present in the reconstruction work in Makassar. In March 1946, the municipality had already asked the central government for financial support for the construction of 200 small villas. In the municipality’s analysis, the housing shortage could be attributed to three factors: the bombing of the Chinese quarter; the expansion of both the military and civil office space; and the rise of indigenous officials in the ranks of the civil service. The proposed solution did not explicitly target one particular group, but since the work was not undertaken in the Chinese quarter, the project must by default have been aimed at civil servants, or, in broader terms, salaried middle-class people. Both the proposed monthly rent of ƒ 30, and the design of the small, semi-detached villas – one living room (3.75 x 7.35 m), three bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a veranda – clearly indicate that it was not lower-ranking civil servants but people belonging to the middle class that were the intended beneficiaries. The steeply rising costs of scarce building materials and of craftsmen’s wages meant that the construction project was not economically feasible. The local administration asked for a central state subsidy of 37% of the total building costs of ƒ 1,500,000. Private builders had no such escape route.11 There is no evidence of whether the central government approved of the project.12

Burgemeester, Medan 28-12-1948, 8775/TZ/48; letter Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw to Plaatselijke vertegenwoordiger Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw Medan, Batavia, 20-9-1949 no. WO/2578/49, appendix to Letter A.J. Paling, Gemeentesecretaris, to Hoofd Departement van Financiën Negara Sumatera Timur, Medan 16-12-1949, 5404/W.6; letter Directeur Gemeentewerken Medan, S.Ch. Kragt, 26-8-1949, appendix to letter Vervangend burgemeester to Vertegenwoordiger Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw at Medan, 30-8-1949, 3293; Notulen vergadering Technisch-Financiële Commissie Dewan Penasihat Kota Medan, 24-1-1950, appendix to letter A.J. Paling, Setia Usaha, to Setia Usaha Umum Negara Sumatera Timoer, 25-1-1950, 428/RA-1, Arsip Medan. The council’s decision probably came down to the fact that the municipality pocketed two-thirds (50% of total costs) of the subsidy from the Central Foundation for Reconstruction. 11 Letter J.H. van Witzenburg, Inspecteur Verkeer en Waterstaat, on behalf of Chief CONICA (Commanding Officer NICA), to Directeur van Verkeer en Waterstaat at Batavia, Makassar, 29-3-1946, no. 9/757; letter waarnemend Burgemeester Makassar to C.O.N.I.C.A., Makassar, 25-3-1946, no. 842/LL4; letter J.H. Schijfsma, Directeur Gemeentewerken en Bedrijven Makassar, to Hoofdingenieur Verkeer en Waterstaat Makassar, 27-3-1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 927. 12 In 1948 the municipality of Makassar was building 48 houses of 80-100 sq m floor area, but whether this was part of the March 1946 plan is unknown. Letter Abdoel Hamid Daeng Magassing, Burgemeester Makassar, to Hoofd Plaatselijke Opbouwdienst, 20-10-1947, no. 2378/ LL.4; letter Ir. J.L. Barkey, Hoofd Plaatselijke Opbouwdienst, to Hoofd Centraal Kantoor voor de Wederopbouw, Makassar, 22-10-1947, no. 2513/305, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 931. In December 1947 the central government approved the construction of another 220 semi-detached houses for 1,300 Ambonese evacuees, perhaps former soldiers, for which the central state furnished two-thirds of the construction costs, about ƒ 1,000,000, in unsecured loans. Letter A. Oudt, waarnemend Thesaurier-Generaal, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 10-12-1947, no. GT 7-40- 21, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 927. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 285

The same category of people (salaried middle-class) was favoured in a project that was carried out in Makassar. In 1947 the central government approved the construction of a temporary hotel with 144 rooms, providing accommodation for a maximum of 500 people. The central government pledged ƒ 1,400,000, not on the basis of a budget or a building plan, but merely on the basis of a locally current construction price of ƒ 75/sq m.13 In other words, the central government wrote out what amounted to a blank cheque to Makassar to construct a building that would clearly only benefit middle- and upper-class residents. Where the interests of the social class to which the urban administrators themselves belonged were not at stake, the Makassar administration acted less vigorously. The worst damaged part of Makassar, the Chinese neighbourhood, was a neighbourhood in which civil servants did not usually live. In January 1946, the municipal administration prepared a budget to purchase the land and rebuild roads and the sewerage system.14 As for the houses, the central government decided that reconstruction was best done by private, that is Chinese, initiative. The owners reused rubble to rebuild the shophouses. The state feared that this recycled building material was of dubious quality and therefore desired to expropriate the ruins.15 What the Chinese home-owners made of this is unknown, but they must have thought the state policy preventing the use of rubble was obstructive rather than supportive of their efforts to rebuild the Chinese quarter. Chinese private reconstruction work was also severely frustrated by over- zealous state attempts to draw up a town plan and the unforeseen deadlock between local and central governments. A plan for the Chinese quarter with new building lines (rooilijnen) was speedily drafted (presumably by experts locally available) and had already been approved by the Makassar administration in December 1945. In February 1946, however, an engineer from the Department of Public Works arrived from Jakarta and rejected the proposed plan. Consequently, the municipal administration no longer had an approved map of building lines that could be used for assessing citizens’ applications for building permits. Henceforth, each application to build or rebuild a house or shophouse in the Chinese quarter (or elsewhere in Makassar) was passed on by the municipal administration to the urban planning section of the

13 Letter C.J. Warners, Directeur Verkeer en Waterstaat, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 2-5-1947; letter W. Alons, Thesaurier-Generaal, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 2-6-1947, no. GT15-35-12, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 927; Wansink 1948. 14 Begrooting Wederopbouw Chineesche Woonwijk Makassar, 14-1-1946, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 32; letter Burgemeester Makassar to CONICA, 15-1-1946, no. 206/AA, attached to letter J.C. Lindeboom, Gemeentesecretaris, 20-10-1948, no. 1336/7/00, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 36. 15 W.F. Eysvogel, Hoofd van de Afdeling Waterstaat, Eenige beschouwingen over de Stichting Wederopbouw in Borneo en de Groote Oost, 15-7-1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 926. 286 Under construction

Plaatselijke Opbouwdienst (Local Building Office).16 This procedure in itself already caused delay, but the hold-up was aggravated by the irresolution that held sway in the Local Building Office, which could not decide on the best plan. It was unable to avoid the perfectionism against which the central government had warned! Pending approval of a plan, it was forbidden to build using permanent materials, so that house owners were obliged to use cheap, non-permanent materials or to cancel their building plans completely. Municipal bureaucrats grumbled that it was the competence of the municipality, not the Local Building Office, to approve a plan of building lines.17 Again, what the opinion of the Chinese house owners was is unknown, but they must have been infuriated by the wavering attitude of the local administration. The impasse was broken when the building plan for the Chinese quarter was finally approved in August 1947.18 One recurrent problem with reconstruction was the dearth of building land in many cities. The Department of Home Affairs in Jakarta sent a circular letter to all Recombas in Indonesia specifying guidelines for regional administrators. In this letter, the central government stipulated that what was designated free state domain (vrij landsdomein) was to be the primary source of new, privately owned building land.19 From this state land policy, we can infer that the central government had in mind only formal ownership of land suited for more expensive, ‘European-style’ types of houses. No steps were undertaken to help low-income people. Interestingly, in a draft of the circular letter just mentioned, the Head of the Department of Home Affairs touched briefly on the need to allow the free transfer of Indigenous titles to lower-class, non- indigenous persons in the city. This recommendation, however, was the only one excluded from state policy as formulated later in the circular letter.20

16 Plaatselijke Opbouwdiensten (Local Building Offices) were the local counterparts of the Central Foundation for Reconstruction. They coordinated construction work and tried to solve the shortages of craftsmen and construction materials locally. A potential conflict of competences existed between the Local Building Offices, which were deconcentrated offices of the Department of Public Works and hence accountable to the Head of Department in Jakarta, and the autonomous municipal administrations in the same city. 17 Beschouwingen betreffende den Wederopbouw en het Rooilijnenplan Stadsgemeente Makassar 1946, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 30. 18 Letter Minister Verkeer en Waterstaat Negara Indonesia Timoer, 20-8-1947, no. 4666 XIX, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 36; N.J. Meyer, Hoofd Planologisch Bureau Negara Indonesia Timoer, Rapport over de herziening van de voorlopige detailplannen voor de Chinese Kamp te Makassar, December 1948, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 41. A remark by the head of the Planning Bureau, Thijsse, that planning should not, and did not, delay reconstruction work is untenable in the case of Makassar. Jac.P. Thijsse, Werkzaamheden van het Planologisch Bureau van het Departement van Verkeer en Waterstaat over het eerste jaar van zijn bestaan [typescript 1946], NAI, Archief Thijsse. 19 Rondschrijven H. van der Wal, Secretaris van Staat Binnenlandse Zaken, to Recomba Zuid- Sumatra, West-Java, etcetera, 14-9-1948, no. A.Z.26/1/50, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 609. 20 Letter H. van der Wal, Secretaris van Staat Binnenlandsche Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur- VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 287

Had it so wished, the state could have offered private plots cheaply out of its free state domain to stimulate building activity. As a rule, however, it chose not to issue new titles at a low price as a safeguard against land speculation. The land price asked by the state kept pace with the general price increase (about two-and-a-half times the pre-war land price).21 Meanwhile, land speculation actually flourished. In the Chinese quarter of Makassar, pending the decision on building lines, private construction activity remained dead, but land speculation boomed.22 Throughout Indonesia, when an entrepreneur applied for building land, it was the duty of the urban administration to verify the entrepreneur’s real intentions, but under the strained political circumstances that prevailed during the Revolution, it is not realistic to suppose that a Dutch-controlled urban administration would bother to weigh up the credentials of Indonesian applicants for building land. The administration feared it would be accused of discriminating against Indonesians!23 The central government recommended that municipalities solve the problem by issuing a local ordinance. It proposed that new deeds be issued on condition the land be built on in three years; if this were not done, the state had the right to repurchase the land at the original price. Moreover, a private builder on state land had to pay a deposit as guarantee he or she would really start to build.24 Medan was one of the municipalities that tried to implement this policy on conditional sale of state land. More than once, the administration claimed plots back, if necessary by taking people to court.25 Another municipal policy in Medan was to talk to owners of vacant land and ask them to build on it.26 Building land, or rather the lack of it, was not the only obstacle to be overcome. Technical expertise, especially outside Java, was an enormous hurdle.

Generaal, 17-4-1948, no. A.Z. 26/1/11, attached to: Letter Voorzitter Financieel Economische Raad to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 22-6-1948, no. F.E.R./A 16, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 618. 21 Rondschrijven H. van der Wal, Secretaris van Staat voor Binnenlandse Zaken, to Recomba Zuid-Sumatra, West-Java, etcetera, 14-9-1948, no. A.Z.26/1/50, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 609. 22 Letter C.J. Warners, fd. Directeur van Verkeer en Waterstaat, to Luitenant Gouverneur- Generaal, 27-1-1947, no. A/1518/VW/Kab/47, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 920. 23 Rondschrijven H. van der Wal, Secretaris van Staat voor Binnenlandse Zaken, 14-9-1948, no. A.Z.26/1/50, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 609. 24 Letter Voorzitter Financieel Economische Raad to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 22-6- 1948, no. F.E.R./A 16, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 618; Rondschrijven H. van der Wal, Secretaris van Staat Binnenlandse Zaken, 14-9-1948, no. A.Z.26/1/50, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 609; letter S. Reksodihardjo, Kepala Bagian Agraria, Menteri Dalam Negeri to Menteri Kehakiman, Djakarta 6-11-1951, no. Agr.40/22/26, Arsip Padang [no box number]. 25 Letter Djaidin Poerba, Walikota Medan, 2-2-1950, no. 577/TA-15; letter Gubernur Sumatera Utara to Kepala Kantor Urusan Perumahan in Medan, 14-2-1951, no. 1065/1/PSU, attached to letter A.B. Schlette, Pengetua Umum to Kepala Urusan Tanah and Pemimpin Pekerdjaan Kota, 15-2- 1951, no. 948/TA-1, Arsip Medan; Rasman vs. Kotapradja Medan (PN Medan Pdt.104/1959). 26 Letter T. Daudsjah, Residen (a.n. Gubernur Sumatera Utara), 14-2-1951, no. 1065/1/PSU, Arsip Medan. 288 Under construction

The absence of qualified professionals ruled out the possibility that the municipality of Makassar could instigate any major reconstruction work, and made the local administration dependent on help offered by the central government.27 Because of the shortage of architects in Makassar, ‘new’ designs for buildings were merely variations on existing drawings.28 The repercussions of the death of one single engineer, Thiele, meant that Medan and the whole of North Sumatra was deprived of the expertise necessary to build more sophisticated edifices in concrete.29 Even in Kebayoran, right under the nose of the central government, only one experienced engineer was appointed, assisted by two recently graduated staff members (Clason 1950:26). In a nutshell, the Netherlands Indies government enthusiastically undertook reconstruction work in eastern Indonesia, the only part of the country where reconstruction was not discouraged by strong Republican sentiments and the new wave of destruction of houses during the War of Independence. Reconstruction was hampered by a lack of building materials, land, labourers, and technical expertise. In the case of the Chinese quarter in Makassar, reconstruction was also slowed down by conflicts of competences between various government bureaus. Some of these problems returned in urban planning as long-term issues.

Post-war urban planning

Urban planning had advanced to a pretty sophisticated level before the war. The draft Town Planning Ordinance for Java (1938) had not yet become law, but in practice administrators, also those outside Java, already complied with the ordinance. Most large cities had town plans and building regulations. Some cities had a development corporation, which tried to regulate the provision of building land. Zoning was the accepted method of distributing available land over different functions with the purpose of ideally giving all urbanites a place to live and to work. The Japanese period formed a severe setback for urban planning. The passing of the Town Planning Ordinance was postponed, probably because it was simply no longer on the agenda. A few plans, focusing on harbours or industrial capacity, were drawn up and partially implemented by the

27 Laporan rapat Pemerintah Kotamadya Makassar, 26-10-1946 Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 33; see also Beschouwingen betreffende den wederopbouw en het Rooilijnenplan Stadsgemeente Makassar 1946, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 30. 28 Laporan rapat Pemerintah Kotamadya Makassar, 18-12-1946 Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 34. 29 Letter G.E. Bekkering, Coördinator OTD/Hoofdingenieur Verkeer en Waterstaat, to Recomba and others, Medan 17-3-1948, no. 1467/TZ/48, Arsip Medan. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 289

Japanese. Next to nothing was done in housing: a widely publicized new quarter was built in Cirebon, and Dutch experts in Bandung were asked to write a report on housing needs.30 On the whole the Japanese gave the impression that town planning and urban development were low on their list of priorities. A great loss was the death in a Japanese internment camp of Thomas Karsten, the driving force behind pre-war planning. After Dutch administrators retook control of Indonesian cities, they soon resumed town planning. Initially, planning was wholly focused on reconstruction of the damaged cities in eastern Indonesia, but before long they expanded their focus to the long-term development of cities that had come through the war relatively unscathed. All experienced staff were concentrated at the Central Planning Bureau of the Department of Public Works. The team included Soesilo and J.H. Schijfsma, who had both worked with Karsten, two other Dutch city development experts, an architect, a sociologist, and a legal expert. Soesilo was the only Indonesian expert at the Planning Bureau. The head of the bureau was Jac.P. Thijsse, who had been employed by the Bandung Public Works Department before the war (Van Roosmalen 2004:196- 7, 2005:102; Thijsse 1994:24-6). Thijsse, the second son of a popular Dutch author of books on natural history, was an archetypal technocrat. He was enthralled by modernity, exemplified by his love for flying. As one former colleague recalled, commuting between Bandung and Jakarta by Dakota was such a run-of-the-mill matter to Thijsse, that he sometimes hopped on the aircraft without emptying his fountain pen; high in the air the forgotten pen leaked an ink spot on Thijsse’s breast pocket. Thijsse was confident about the importance of his team’s work. He was convinced that although the new plans were provisional, it was important to prevent mistakes that might hamper future development (Keiser 1994:66-8; Thijsse 1947:218). When the Town Planning Ordinance was finally promulgated for 15 cities in 1948 and 1949, it gave urban development a solid legal-administrative footing. Minor changes were made in the 1938 Bill to adjust it to the post-war situation; the 1948 Ordinance explicitly referred to restoration work as one of its aims, and it simplified planning procedures because not all pre-war municipal bodies still existed. These changes reduced the power of the Ordinance once the restoration years were over. The Town Planning Ordinance did not come into force for the whole of Indonesia until 1954 at least; in practice, however, all urban administrations went about their business as if the Ordinance was already in effect. Another cornerstone for planning was provided by Thomas Nix’s dissertation, published in 1949, which served planners and administra-

30 See Chapter IV. 290 Under construction tors as a textbook for planning and urban design.31 The first large city for which a town plan was prepared was Makassar. The Planning Bureau of the Department of Public Works sent Miss W. van de Broek d’Obrenan, who may have been the first female engineer working in Indonesia, to Makassar for this purpose in January 1946. Her first act was to reject the first plan of building lines for the Chinese quarter, mentioned above. In the background Thijsse, who visited Makassar at least once, in December 1946, helped her to prepare the Makassar town plan. Unfortunately, the pre- war town plan drawn up by Thomas Karsten had been lost and Karsten’s ideas were only known from hearsay, so that Van de Broek more or less had to start anew. Van de Broek’s town plan was officially presented in January 1947 and discussed by the leaders of the municipal administration the following month. She returned to Jakarta after this meeting, and N.J. Meyer, head of the Planning Bureau of Negara Indonesia Timoer (East Indonesia), was placed in charge of the town plan. Hence responsibility was shifted from the federal to the negara government. As usual, the plan was based on zoning, and this principle was applied rig- orously without overmuch regard for the existing situation. For instance, the Chinese quarter was designated a commercial area and the Chinese alderman Teng Tjing Leng enquired where Chinese residents were actually supposed to live. The plan also envisaged the construction of a boulevard along the shore and a fashionable square in front of the Javasche Bank, which would each cost ƒ 1,000,000, a sum that was simply not available. Nevertheless, the municipal administration and Department of Public Works approved the plan in October 1948.32 Perhaps the incongruity between the contemporary situation and the plan was not deemed problematic, as such a plan had a long-term perspective and short-term discrepancies were considered inevitable. One remarkable and positive point was that the plan paid ample attention to kampongs and the Chinese quarter, at least on paper. In a preliminary discussion of the plan with Makassar’s municipal leaders, Thijsse had

31 Niessen 1999:223-8; Van Roosmalen 2004:198, 2008:179-82; Thijsse 1994:24-6. A copy of the 1938 Bill with scribbled editorial comments, attributed to Thijsse, shows how the original bill provided the basis for the 1948 ordinance. Private collection S. Karsten. 32 Laporan rapat Pemerintah Kotamadya Makassar, 18-12-1946, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 34; Notulen vergadering ter bespreking van het stadsplan, 25-2-1947, Arsip Makassar 1945- 1950 37; letter J.C. Lindeboom, Gemeentesecretaris, 20-10-1948, no. 1336/7/00, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 36; Rapport N.J. Meyer, Survey Stadsplan Makassar, 7-3-1947, attached to letter Ir. N.J. Meyer, Planologisch Bureau [Plaatselijke Opbouw Dienst] Makassar, to Ir. Kipperman, Directeur Gemeentewerken Makassar, 8-3-1947, no. 1233/207, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 38. An interesting detail is that the Makassar administration received a list of planning terms in Dutch and Indonesian in 1947; letter Ir. J.J. Bellingwout, Secretaris-Generaal Ministerie Verkeer en Waterstaat Negara Indonesia Timoer to Burgemeester Makassar, Directeur Gemeentewerken Makassar, 20-11-1947, no. 9133/VII, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 39. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 291 stressed the need to take a population census of the kampongs and to pay attention to the location of a mosque. Meyer estimated the housing shortage in kampongs (at 15% of the extant stock of kampong houses), observed the self-help housing, and proposed ways to find building land for kampongs. He also remarked that the first step should be to make detailed plans for the Chinese quarter and the kampongs, which were the most heavily damaged parts of the city.33 To what extent this municipal concern for kampong dwellers and Chinese residents on paper was actually put into practice in physical terms is unknown. One cannot be too optimistic after reading that Meyer, after remarking that kampong dwellers and proprietors in the Chinese quarter could be trusted to build their own houses, concluded: ‘Besides private construction, it is precisely in these areas [of detached houses and villas] that the state authorities will also build, in order to accommodate the numerous families of civil servants.’34 The concentration of the most experienced planners at the Central Planning Bureau in Jakarta, from where they were sent on missions to Makassar and other cities, was an efficient way to use the available expertise. The Central Planning Bureau took upon itself tasks for which local administrations were not yet equipped. The blueprints for various cities throughout the Archipelago were composed on Jakartan drawing-boards and were later assessed and approved in the same office (Van Roosmalen 2005:94). Thijsse justified the need for centralization by emphasizing not only the lack of qualified personnel, but also the divergent experience with urban planning of the various urban administrations before the war. Some urban administrations had shown little interest in the matter before the Japanese invasion and, according to Thijsse, could not be entrusted with this important task.35 However, this strong emphasis on centralization was a total reversal of the decentralization policy of the Dutch colonial period and it contradicted federal policy of the late 1940s. The mode of operation pursued by the Central

33 Laporan rapat Pemerintah Kotamadya Makassar, 18-12-1946, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 34; N.J. Meyer, Opmerkingen over een programma voor Stadsontwikkeling, March 1947, attached to letter Ir. N.J. Meyer, Planologisch Bureau Makassar, to Ir. Kipperman, Directeur Gemeentewerken Makassar, 8-3-1947, no. 1233/207, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 38; Rapport N.J. Meyer, Survey Stadsplan Makassar, 7-3-1947, attached to letter Ir. N.J. Meyer, Planologisch Bureau Makassar, to Ir. Kipperman, Directeur Gemeentewerken Makassar, 8-3-1947, no. 1233/207, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 38. 34 ‘Naast particuliere bouw zal juist in deze kringen ook door openbare instantie’s gebouwd worden om de talrijke ambtenaarsgezinnen onder te kunnen brengen.’ N.J. Meyer, Opmerkingen over een programma voor Stadsontwikkeling, March 1947, attached to letter Ir. N.J. Meyer, Planologisch Bureau Makassar, to Ir. Kipperman, Directeur Gemeentewerken Makassar, 8-3-1947, no. 1233/207, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 38. 35 Jac.P. Thijsse, Werkzaamheden van het Planologisch Bureau Departement Verkeer en Waterstaat over het eerste jaar van zijn bestaan [typescript 1946], NAI, Archief Thijsse. 292 Under construction

Planning Bureau inevitably led to tensions between the central government and local administrators. Medan provides an excellent example of this tension. Thijsse visited Medan for the first time in July 1948. The desire to lay out a military cemetery, which was planned outside the municipal boundaries on land held in long lease by the Deli Maatschappij, provided the occasion for which the municipal administrators had invited him. Thijsse was accompanied by Lieutenant- Colonel H.A. van Oerle, who was advisor on military cemeteries. Thijsse’s most vocal interlocutor in Medan was engineer G.E. Bekkering, from the local office of the Department of Public Works and Reconstruction. Thijsse’s expertise was unquestionably acknowledged and the urban administrators also sought his advice on the location of the airfield, the need to transfer lands of the Deli Sultanate within the urban boundary to the municipality, and a project to build 200 houses (on the Achterweg). Thijsse used the entire second day of the meeting to explain the rationale behind a town plan, the need to collect data on social and economic background and maps on which to base such a plan, and the question of who would be available to collect these data. Thijsse stated that the Central Planning Bureau could not spare a person to send to Medan, and advised employing a private architect with planning experience or seconding a talented local civil servant to his bureau for half a year to receive the requisite training.36 Four months later Thijsse, Bekkering, and Van Oerle met again in Jakarta and discussed who could work on an urban plan for Medan. Bekkering and Van Oerle enthusiastically agreed in principle that the latter should prepare a background study of the city. Van Oerle was an engineer and had participated in town planning in Leiden (the Netherlands) before he did his military service. The price of ƒ 2,000 was set, and Bekkering and Van Oerle agreed that the latter should go to Medan very soon, now that technically trained persons who could assist him were still available in town.37 The municipal administration, however, baulked at the high costs, and the Mayor hesitated to incur such expenses before a municipal council was reinstalled and had consented to such a decision.38

36 Minutes of meeting in Medan, 13 and 14 July 1948, attached to letter A.J. Paling, Gemeentesecretaris Medan, to Wali Negara Soematera Timoer and others, 21-7-1948, no. 3059, Arsip Medan. 37 Verslag vergadering Prof. Jac.P. Thijsse, Luitenant-Kolonel Ir. H.A. van Oerle, and Ir. G.E. Bekkering, Jakarta, 30 November 1948, attached to letter A.J. Paling, Gemeentesecretaris Medan, to Burgemeester, 28-12-1948, no. 8774/TZ/48; Verslag bespreking Bekkering and Van Oerle, 6-12- 1948, attached to letter A.J. Paling to S.Ch. Kragt, Directeur Gemeente-Werken and W. van der Vegt, Hoofd Gemeentelijk Bureau Grondzaken, 11-1-1949, no. 42, Arsip Medan. 38 Letter Djaidin Poerba, Burgemeester Medan, to Hoofdingenieur Verkeer en Waterstaat Negara Soematera Timoer, 12-2-1949, no. 322, Arsip Medan. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 293

In the following months, the legal requirements, the need to employ competent staff, and the costs incurred became the topic of an exchange of letters between the Central Planning Bureau, various departments of the municipal administration, and the negara government, which assumed a larger role after the Town Planning Ordinance was issued for East Sumatra. The hopes of the enthusiasts were bogged down in the attempts of the sceptics to shove the bill off onto somebody else’s desk. In August 1949 the Mayor wrote to the Department of Public Works of negara East Sumatra stating that although he subscribed to the need for a town plan, he deemed urban planning work feasible only if the Central Planning Bureau were willing to second staff to Medan (costs borne by the central government). Meanwhile, Van Oerle, who had contemplated beginning a private consultancy after his demobilization, felt depressed because of the Medan administration’s unwillingness to sanc- tion the deal struck between him and Bekkering. After he left the army in October 1949, Van Oerle returned to the Netherlands disheartened. Thijsse responded with barely concealed anger that the Medan municipality had let this opportunity slip away and feared that no other expert would easily become interested in Medan. He reiterated his offer to train a local Indonesian civil servant with technical qualifications at the Central Planning Bureau, so that this person could at least assure the implementation of a town plan. Thijsse commented on the miserly municipal short-sightedness:

Neglecting Spatial Planning in cities must […] inevitably lead to a highly uneco- nomical urban development, which can only be combated in the future at the cost of very large financial sacrifices, at least if one does not gradually want to end up in a state of chaos. Cities of the size and with the population increase of Medan, and even Pematang Siantar, will not be able to afford the luxury of not launching Spatial Planning.39

In a rearguard action, Bekkering attempted to create a planning department for the whole of negara East Sumatra, but with the uncertainty of the coming transfer of sovereignty looming, the Mayor of Medan was even less prepared to take the risk of establishing a permanent planning department. Without

39 ‘Het achterwege laten van de Ruimtelijke Ordening in de steden moet […] noodzakelijk leiden tot een zeer oneconomsiche stadsvorming, die in de toekomst slechts met zeer grote financiële offers kan worden bestreden, indien men tenminste niet langzamerhand tot chaotische toestanden wil geraken. De steden ter grootte van en met een accres als van Medan en zelfs ook van Pematang Siantar zullen zich de luxe van het niet-entameren van de stedelijke Ruimtelijke Ordening niet kunnen permiteren.’ Letter Jac.P. Thijsse to Wali Negara Soematera Timoer, 4-10-1949, no. B/XXIX/8c/871/CPB/49, see also Letter Datuk Hafiz Haberman, Vervangend Burgemeester Medan, to Hoofd Departement Verkeer en Waterstaat Negara Soematera Timoer, 16-8-1949, no. 2857, both attached to letter Burgemeester Medan to Directeur Gemeentewerken and Hoofd Gemeentelijk Bureau voor Grondzaken Medan, 17-11-1949, no. 4778, Arsip Medan. 294 Under construction the support of Medan, by far the largest target for the negara planning department, the whole plan was called off.40 Medan would enter the years of rapid urbanization without a town plan. It was unique in this, because other cities that did not make a new urban plan usually had at least a colonial plan to fall back on. After the transfer of sovereignty, Dutch staff members left the Central Planning Bureau. Thijsse took the honourable way out and resigned as head of the Central Planning Bureau just a fortnight before the transfer of sovereignty in 1949. He recommended Soesilo as successor, but Soesilo was bypassed in favour of another Indonesian, who in his turn was soon replaced by another man, Engineer Hadinoto. Consequently, in April 1950, Soesilo too offered his resignation. Hence the Central Planning Bureau lost two of its most capable staff members in four months (Van Roosmalen 2005:98-9). The concentration of experts at the Central Planning Bureau made town planning in Indonesia vulnerable to the political whims of one minister.41 The bureau, renamed Djawatan Tata Ruangan Negara (State Agency for Spatial Planning), seems to have been far less energetic in the 1950s than in the late 1940s. Moreover, the Department of Home Affairs and the Department of Public Works both issued regulations that effectively undermined the legal framework of the Town Planning Ordinance, even though formally departmental regulations ranked below ordinances (Niessen 1999:229-30). Some urban planning work was nevertheless undertaken. A number of local administrators tried to implement plans, as is evidenced by the refusal of permits for buildings that contravened the local building ordinance, and the outrage of the Surabaya town hall when other state bodies ignored the town plan.42 Further evidence of continued planning activity is the 1955

40 Letter G.E. Bekkering, Plaatsvervangend Hoofd Departement Verkeer en Waterstaat Negara Soematera Timoer, to Wali Negara Soematera Timoer, 14-12-1949, no. 3752/6/P, Letter Bekkering to Secretaris van Staat Waterstaat en Wederopbouw/ Kementerian Perhubungan, Tenaga dan Pekerdjaan Umum in Djakarta, Medan 18-1-1950, both attached to letter A.B. Schlette, Pengetua Usaha, to Pemimpin Usaha Pekerdjaan Kota and Kepala Pedjabat Ursuan Tanah Kota Medan, 26-1-1950, no. 438/TA-10, Arsip Medan. 41 Dutch experts – and Soesilo – continued to exert influence through the Technological Institute of Bandung (Institut Teknologi Bandung), where they took up teaching positions. In 1954 three lecturers returned to the Netherlands and in 1957 the last Dutchmen were forced to leave. The void at the Bandung Technological Institute was quickly filled by experts from Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and the USA (Kwee 2004:74-5, 86, 98-9; Van Roosmalen 2008:209-10). 42 Letters Mohamad Joenoes, Wakil sekretaris Medan, 24-1-1958, no. 1676/KS-2 to 1699/KS-2, Arsip Medan; letter Walikota/Kepala Daerah Padang to Baharuddin gelar Sutan Mudo, 12-8- 1952, no. 426/PPB, Arsip Padang box V; letter Dewan Pemerintah Daerah Kotapradja Surabaja to Menteri Dalam Negeri, 15-5-1959, no. 7800/65; Keputusan Menteri Agraria 27-6-1959, no. SK 174/ Ka; letter Kepala Pekerdjaan Umum to Ketua DPD Kotapradja Surabaja, 14-10-1959, no. 7800/113, Arsip Surabaya Box 1016, no. 20878. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 295 revision of the town plan for Makassar and the revision of the outline plan for Padang by a team from the Department of Public Works in 1959.43 The Department of Public Works also promoted the principle of urban planning; with this purpose in mind, the Department in 1954 sent an explanatory letter about the importance of urban planning and the Town Planning Ordinance in particular to Makassar, and presumably other municipalities as well.44 The largest and fastest growing city in Indonesia, Jakarta, had no outline plan, let alone a zoning plan, until 1957. Although the departure of Thijsse and Soesilo from the Central Planning Bureau was definitely a loss, it was also a first step in the decolonization of Indonesian urban planning. Thijsse and Soesilo had themselves initiated this reorientation away from the Dutch model when they visited the congress of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning in Hastings, England, in 1948. At the congress they exchanged ideas with colleagues from India, South Africa, Algeria, and Morocco.45 The international orientation received a new twist when three experts from John W. Harris Associates were sent to Jakarta in 1952. The firm had been selected by the then Indonesian ambassador in Washington, Ali Sastroamidjojo, because of its work in Latin America and its design of the Rockefeller Center. The consultancy was co- financed by the United Nations. The three men drew up plans for an airport, ministries, and a hotel, and dreamed of an eight-storey skyscraper in Jakarta, costing several million rupiah.46 Their plans were, I believe, out of touch with the current needs and possibilities in Indonesia. Almost simultaneously, Professor Holliday of Manchester University designed a provisional town plan for Jakarta. It was intended to be worked out in more detail by the engineer L. O’Brien, who was sent to England for a five-month training.47 The next stage in the international exchange was the drafting of the

43 Surat Keputusan Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah Makassar 22-8-1955, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 321; Colombijn 1994:265. 44 Letter Kepala Bagian Pemerintahan Umum, 6-10-1954, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 322. 45 Van Roosmalen 2008:178. In 1951 Thijsse sent a letter to President Soekarno, trying to persuade him to host the next congress of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning. The government’s initial response was positive, but I do not know whether they really organized this event. Letter R.M. Koesoemaningrat, Menteri Pekerdjaan Umum dan Tenaga, to Menteri Luar Negeri, 19-10-1951, no. Kab. 1/17/8, ANRI, Kabinet President 1950-1959 688. 46 Letter Ali Sastroamidjojo, Kedutaan Besar Indonesia to Direktur Kabinet Presiden, Washington 6-5-1952, no. 49/K/52; letter Sjamsuridjal, Walikota Djakarta Raja, to Direktur Kabinet Presiden, 13-10-1952, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden Republik Indonesia 1950-1959 832; Antara 25-9-1952/B. 47 Petikan Risalah Konperensi Walikota I, November 1954, ANRI, Kabinet President 1950- 1959 205. The fact that O’Brien was in the service of the Indonesian government and was sent to England suggest that, despite his name, he was Indonesian, probably with Eurasian roots. Indonesians pronounced his name ‘Obreen’. 296 Under construction

1957 Outline Plan for Jakarta. The authors of the Outline Plan were: R.S. Danunagoro, Director of the Department of Public Works of Jakarta, who was sent on a preparatory, six-month study tour of the USA and Europe; Kenneth Watts, an expert sent by the United Nations; and O’Brien, then Head of the Urban Development Section of Jakarta. The four main problems identified in Jakarta were: lack of employment; lack of housing; serious traffic congestion; and lack of social facilities. The need for new houses was estimated at 10,000 per year, but the annual number of houses built declined from 1,700 to 1,300 between 1953 and 1956. The empirical basis of this calculation of the need for new housing was weak; the planning team itself admitted that the officially registered number of new houses was far too low, and failed to include 2,000- 3,000 illegal houses on squatted land.48 Three details of the Jakarta Outline Plan are worth noting. First, the Outline Plan was meant to be a model for other Indonesian cities. Abidin Kusno, however, observes that this aim was frustrated by no less a person than President Soekarno, who believed that Jakarta ought not to be used as a model, as the capital should be unique (Abidin Kusno 2000:54). Moreover, it was misleading – or rather, a matter of deliberate representation – to call Jakarta the pioneer, as several other cities had already developed an outline plan after the Japanese surrender. Second, the Jakarta Outline Plan was a landmark in decolonization, because neither a Dutch planner nor an Indonesian planner trained in colonial times was involved. However, two of the three principal authors were expatriates and other foreigners were involved too, so that decolonization in the case of urban planning was not yet synonymous with Indonesianization. One of the foreigners, the Englishman George Franklin, was struck by the lack of staff: there were only eight trained planners in the whole of Indonesia (Abeyasekere 1989:200). O’Brien believed the lack of skilled personnel to be the main explanation of why no plan had been made earlier.49 Third, the plan was approved by the municipality in 1960, but never executed, and was subsequently made obsolete by the plans for the Asian Games (Abeyasekere 1989:201; Abidin Kusno 2000:54; Larson 1958:50). The Jakarta Outline Plan is indicative of an administration that ruled formally, but in reality lost control. In conclusion, urban planning in Indonesia after the Second World War hardly fitted a view of planning as ‘a pattern of relationships between […] states and subject populations. It involves an exercise of power and it ultimately depends on the compliance of ordinary people’ (Robertson 1984:86). In a similar vein Thomas Karsten (1935:112-4) had argued that in Europe the

48 Pemerintah Daerah Chusus 1957; see also Djoemadjitin et al. 1977:115-22; Oliver 1971:21-3. 49 L. O’Brien, Methods of preparing housing and community improvement [typescript, 1956], NAI, Archief Thijsse. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 297 political emancipation of citizens and the spread of individual freeholds after the Middle Ages had not been conducive to urban development. A powerful government was necessary to make conflicting individual interests subservient to a common good. The prescription of a strong planning authority, as favoured by Thomas Karsten, was realized in French colonies, where, according to Gwendolyn Wright (1997:326), ‘the political system provided policy makers with a degree of authority for carrying out their plans that simply did not exist in Paris, Marseille, or Lille’. In contrast, Brenda Yeoh (1996) and Siddharta Raychaudhuri (2001) have stressed that colonial subjects had the power to negotiate with urban administrators about the use of urban space. This debate on the degree to which ordinary subjects, colonial or independent, had bargaining power appears largely irrelevant in the face of the practical problems in Indonesia. There were so few planners in 1945 and there were still so few in 1957, when the Jakarta Outline Plan was constituted, that little was actually done. Where plans were prepared, they were out of touch with the situation on the ground, as in Makassar, or made obsolete by the rapid urbanization and illegal development of large parts of the city, as in Jakarta. In Medan, the largest city in Sumatra, the plan did not even make it to the drawing board, let alone get off it, because the urban administration had no conception of the urgency of having a plan. The point that a plan is a symbolic system – not reality itself, but a metaphor of it – has never been truer than in the case of post-war Indonesia. As do other symbolic systems, a plan helps to make society intelligible (Robertson 1984:106). Consequently, what we learn from this analysis of urban planning is not so much what happened to urban space, as what administrators deemed important. One plan, however, was realized with incredible speed, and therefore warrants special attention. This is the case of Kebayoran.

Kebayoran Baru

The idea to build a satellite town, Kebayoran Baru (New Kebayoran), to accommodate the growing population of Jakarta was launched in 1948. The government had already approved the plan by September 1948, just two months after it was first presented. Immediately thereafter the government began to purchase the land; by 17 January 1949 the whole area had been purchased. The next month Soesilo completed the first draft of the town plan and a month later construction work started (Van Roosmalen 2005:104-9). The astonishing speed of the execution of the idea – from its conception, to the purchase of the requisite land, to the mass construction of houses – raises the question of why Kebayoran Baru could be developed so quickly, especially in comparison with the slow, vexatious building process experienced elsewhere 298 Under construction in Indonesia. Kebayoran Baru also has a story to tell about the atmosphere prevailing at the time, in particular about the Indonesianization of the top of the state bureaucracy, the growing insecurity at the building site, and the social composition of the new town. The speed with which the decision-making process was carried out can be attributed to the urgency of the housing crisis, the existence of older, albeit vague, ideas about a new town, and the resolve of the visiting Dutch Minister for Reconstruction, L. Neher, who awed the top officials in Jakarta. In a letter dated 7 June 1948 Minister Neher asked the Central Housing Council to develop with due expedience a plan on a grand scale, which would really make a dent in Jakarta’s housing shortage. A.M. Semawi, Head of the Department of Public Works and Reconstruction, responded to Neher’s order and came up with the solution of a new town of 600 hectares, which would provide space for 12,500 houses. The credit for taking the initiative for this plan must be awarded to the engineers E.W.H. Clason and J.C.L. Bet (both attached to the Central Foundation for Reconstruction) and Jac.P. Thijsse. According to Soesilo, the demand for new houses in Jakarta was on the order of 40,000 to 85,000, so even though the new town would not solve the shortage, it promised to have at least a palpable effect on the housing market. The plan was to build 1,000 villas, 1,500 more modest bungalows (kleinwoningbouw), and 10,000 small houses in the public housing sector (volkswoningbouw), with a size of 150, 80, and 50 sq m (on plots of 600, 300, and 200 sq m) respectively. The private sector was counted on to build the units in the larger two categories and the state was responsible for the small houses.50 The state would furnish 75% of the total construction costs of the houses, either as a subsidy to the private builders of the larger houses, or as a subsidy to the occupants of the small houses. The state would make an additional advance payment of 25% of construction costs plus the acquisition of land, but these sums were to be repaid by private builders and private occupants of houses. The state incurred additional costs in the provision of infrastructure, and the total budget (figures vary slightly from source to source) amounted to ƒ 102,000,000, spread out over the years 1948 to 1952 (Table 15). The political will to invest so much money in Kebayoran is an important explanation for the speed of execution. With so much determination to build, suitable building land formed the limiting factor. The sums allotted in the 1948 budget could not be spent for want of land on which to commence construction. For the same reason, the

50 Ir. E.E. Hens, Directeur Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, Nota betreffende het plan tot stichting van een satellietstad nabij Kebajoran [1948], attached to letter A.Th. Bogaardt, Voorzitter Centrale Huisvestingsraad, fd. Secretaris van Staat Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur- Generaal, 5-8-1948, no. Hx 2-1-16/Geheim, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 929; Clason 1950:13-6. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 299

Table 15. Budget for Kebayoran Baru, 1948 (in guilders)

Purpose Recoverable expenses nonrecoverable expenses

Expropriation 10,000,000 Access roads 1,500,000 Preparation for building, 6,400,000 roads, waterworks 1,000 villas 6,000,000 27,000,000 1,500 small villas 3,500,000 17,500,000 10,000 small houses 20,000,000 50,000,000 Public buildings 6,000,000 Total 45,900,000 102,000,000

Source: Ir. E.E. Hens, Directeur Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, Nota betreffende het plan tot stichting van een satellietstad nabij Kebajoran [1948], attached to letter A.Th. Bogaardt, Voorzitter Centrale Huisvestingsraad, fd. Secretaris van Staat, Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 5-8-1948, no. Hx 2-1-16/Geheim, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 929. state broke off negotiations with the private builder Van Oyen for the construction of 1,000 prefabricated houses.51 In this instance, the land needed was found in Kebayoran, a village only 8 km from the city centre as the crow flies. The location had actually been one of the options for a new town in exploratory plans dating from before 1942. According to contemporary planning theory, a new town should be at a minimum distance of 15 km to become a viable centre, for instance at Depok, but the Dutch army was unable to guarantee security at such a distance from Jakarta (Van Roosmalen 2008:183). In an attempt to forestall land speculation, the Central Planning Bureau did not survey the land at Kebayoran in detail. Once the decision to develop Kebayoran Baru was taken, the state hurried to acquire the full 600 hectares of land for the project.52 Most of the land was owned by smallholders. If need be, the government could expropriate the land, but this would cast a heavy burden on the law courts, and worse still, the procedure would be very time consuming. Expropriation on military orders on the basis of the state of siege was legally possible, but would cause massive social unrest. Consequently,

51 Letter A.Th. Bogaardt,Voorzitter Centrale Huisvestingsraad, fd. Secretaris van Staat Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 5-8-1948, no. Hx 2-1-16/Geheim; letter Ir. E.E. Hens, Directeur Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, Nota betreffende het plan tot stichting van een satel lietstad nabij Kebajoran [1948], attached to the letter of Bogaardt, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 929. 52 Ir. E.E. Hens, Directeur Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, Nota betreffende het plan tot stichting van een satellietstad nabij Kebajoran [1948], attached to letter A.Th. Bogaardt, Voorzitter Centrale Huisvestingsraad, fd. Secretaris van Staat Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur- Generaal, 5-8-1948, no. Hx 2-1-16/Geheim, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 929. 300 Under construction the government preferred to purchase all lots with the consent of the owners.53 This path, it turned out, was overgrown with thorny bushes. The owners asked excessive prices for their land (up to 20 times current prices) and were loath to enter into serious negotiations. At first the government assumed that speculation was the reason for the owners’ reluctance, but later it believed that supporters of the Indonesian Republic had incited owners to remain steadfast, in order to thwart the plan. By mid-November 1948, after more than a month of fruitless talks, the government gave up and decided to start procedures to expropriate the land. However, on 15 November the newly appointed governor of the district (not the city) of Batavia, Raden A. Hilman Djajadiningrat, asked that he be allowed a chance to persuade the people to give up the land voluntarily. Two days later, he held a preliminary talk with the subdistrict chief (wedana), Haji Mas’oed, who formed the core of the resistance. On 20 November Djajadiningrat held an open-air meeting, at which hundreds of local residents gathered. Djajadiningrat explained the purpose of the plan, and without further ado the landowners and the governor agreed on a price. Djajadiningrat offered slightly more than had been offered before, so owners could concede without losing face. The governor also promised that owners could take the scrap material of their houses with them, and would be allowed to sell the fruit of the felled trees. Moreover, he promised a new kampong would be built for them with houses offered below cost price. One week after Djajadiningrat’s preliminary talk, the first lots were purchased and by mid-January the acquisition of the land was complete. A resounding success for the Javanese administrator! The government willingly accepted the fact that the costs were ƒ 4,000,000 more than expected.54 There were still a few snags in the land acquisition. Many original inhabitants of Kebayoran were fruit-growers and wished to continue their work. The government had to find a new location for them, and for this purpose bought the former estate Tjilandak, 3 km south of Kebayoran.55 In addition to financial compensation and the offer of new land, the former residents were helped with moving their belongings to their new location and transporting the parts of their houses that could be reused. Problems emerged in the case of original

53 Aide-memoire meeting 15-11-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 929; letter A.M. Semawi, Secretaris van Staat Waterstaat en Wederopbouw, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 10-12-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 930. 54 Letter A.M. Semawi, Secretaris van Staat Waterstaat en Wederopbouw, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 8-1-1949, no. A/17/1/2, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 930; Zwier 1950/1951:423-4; Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad 24-11-1948. 55 Letter R.A.A. Hilman Djajadiningrat, Gouverneur Batavia, to Secretaris van Staat Binnenlandse Zaken, 11-3-1949 no. 39/Kebajoran-Cie; letter D.A. Scheerboom, for Secretaris van Staat Binnenlandse Zaken, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 18-3-1949 no. A.Z. 8/2/3, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 930. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 301 residents of Kebayoran who spent their compensation money before they had invested it in a new dwelling or fruit garden. Sellers of bicycles were queuing up wherever and whenever former residents received compensation money and enticed them to squander immediately the small capital just acquired. 1,000 of these landowners signed up to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. After the money was spent, these residents found themselves short of funds to finance their move. Other persons lived on very small plots or rented land, and therefore received little or no money. They stayed and refused to move.56 Yet others refused to move because the new kampong houses promised by Djajadiningrat in the open-air meeting of 20 November 1948 had either not yet materialized or were too expensive. After the transfer of sovereignty, some residents claimed that agreements made in colonial times were simply null and void. On top of all these setbacks, another problem emerged when latent conflicts about the ownership of particular plots came to light and the state had to decide to which individual the compensation money should be paid. In short, by April 1950, only 600 of the 1,600 original residents of Kebayoran had actually moved. Two months later, the Dutch administrator Controleur J. Zwier proposed spending another ƒ 6,000,000 to mollify the owners of the expropriated plots, but other administrators strongly disapproved of this plan. What the outcome of Zwier’s proposal was is not known, but for whatever reason, the original residents began to move out again by July 1950.57 Lack of building materials and skilled craftsmen formed two other serious obstacles in the execution of the plan. When the government invited tenders in January 1949, no building contractor submitted a tender in an acceptable price range. Builders were daunted by the task of procuring scarce building materials and recruiting skilled labourers, worried about transport to the building site, and had serious doubts about whether the whole plan was feasible at all. The administration therefore decided to take the work into its own hands. It created a central depot for bricks, tiles, and sewage pipes, which were acquired long before actual construction started, as a precaution against steeply rising prices. A central joinery workshop produced doors, window frames, and roof trusses in standard sizes. The state then employed 40 small subcontractors to put the houses together (see cover photo of this book). For this mass production at the joinery works and for assembling the parts on the building site, labourers needed less skill than a carpenter working on the

56 Notulen vergadering Raad van Beheer Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw 10-6-1950, private collection R.J. Clason; Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad 2-3-1949. 57 Letter Ir. E.W.H. Clason, Hoofd Regionaal Opbouwbureau Java en Sumatra, to Directeur Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, Kebajoran, 17-3-1950, no. 1136/ROB/50, private collection R.J. Clason; Nieuwsblad voor Indonesië 21-4-1950; Notulen vergadering Raad van Beheer Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw 30-6-1950 and 28-7-1950, private collection R.J. Clason. 302 Under construction spot. Moreover, the state provided training, extra pay, and food rations in an effort to upgrade the quality of the labour force. Nevertheless, labour productivity lagged far behind pre-war levels.58 According to the responsible, and perhaps self-congratulating, civil servants, the fact that the administration had assumed responsibility for the provision of most building materials and for supervising much of the actual construction work was decisive in ensur- ing the rapid completion of the plan. The execution of the whole plan ran far more smoothly than the execution of ordinary town plans, because the management of the whole project was strongly centralized. The allocation of building materials, building subsidies, and building land was entrusted to the Central Foundation for Reconstruction. A Kebajoran-Commissie (Kebayoran Committee), which had been installed ad hoc, was made responsible for the coordination of daily activities. Although this Kebayoran Committee had few official competences, it was actually in charge of the construction work, because it effectively brokered between the various civil servants involved (Clason 1950:26). The Committee was made up of Clason (one of the initiators of Kebayoran Baru), the town planner Soesilo, two administrators, and Haji Mas’oed, the wedana of Kebayoran.59 It is unlikely that Haji Mas’oed had a large say in the work itself; possibly he had been invited with an eye to mediating with local people, or to persuade him to shrug off his initial resistance to the project. The Indonesianization of the top of the organization commenced soon after the transfer of sovereignty. Clason was replaced as head of the Kebayoran Committee by the young engineer Srigati Santoso. The Central Foundation for Reconstruction, still dominated by Dutchmen and chaired by the Dutch engineer A.M.J. van der Most, found Santoso unusually young for the position, but nonetheless commendable given the current political climate. The appointment of an even younger and less experienced man as deputy head, however, was disapproved of by the Central Foundation for Reconstruction. The Foundation’s leaders deemed the new deputy unqualified, and felt that his appointment ruled out the chance that more experienced engineers would be willing to work as his subordinates. Moreover, the Central Foundation for Reconstruction felt bypassed by the new Minister for Public Works, who had not consulted the Foundation about the deputy’s appointment.60

58 E.W.H. Clason, Nota inzake de aanbesteding van grote aantallen woningen in de satelliet stad nabij Kebajoran op 18 januari 1949, 23-1-1949, private collection R.J. Clason; Clason 1950:21- 3; Nieuwsblad voor Indonesië 29-3-1950; Snel groeiend Kebajoran 1949. Not all work was carried out according to the system described here; some was assigned to actual contractors. 59 Besluit Gouverneur Batavia, 7-1-1949, no. GR/1/A.Z.; Besluit Secretaris van Staat Binnenlandse Zaken, 22-1-1949, no. A.Z.26/1/10, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 930. 60 Notulen vergadering Raad van Beheer Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw 10-6-1950, private collection R.J. Clason. On how Clason experienced his removal from office, see Chapter II. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 303

Meanwhile, the situation on the building site threatened the smooth execution of the project even more than the bureaucratic quarrels. Construction work was increasingly impeded by the lack of security. The central joinery and stockpile of building materials drew thieves as honey attracts bees. In January 1950 the Kebayoran Committee employed seven guards to protect its building site. Road blocks were erected at night to prevent goods being carried away on trucks. Trucks bringing goods from the Tanjung Priok port to Kebayoran were subjected to surprise checks, and policemen in plain clothes drove trucks to set up a trap for stock managers who were stealing goods from their own stores. Warehousemen who had finished their shift were body searched.61 All to no avail. Robbers became bolder and bolder. Early in January 1950, a whole truckload of planks from Tanjung Priok was stolen, but found later. In the last week of January 1950, 30 bags of cement, 700 floor tiles, 5 door locks, and 45 bolts for windows and doors were stolen from the construction site. In February and March, policemen on guard spirited away dozens of planks ‘without permission’. A civil servant from the Central Foundation for Reconstruction later identified the two policemen who were responsible for the theft. The policemen had launched a home industry making furniture from stolen wood. The police commander Klocke begged Clason not to report the event, promising to be vigilant in the pre- vention of further thefts. Even so, next day several police and the Indonesian army (TNI) guard posts harassed Clason’s staff in retaliation; the official who had identified the two policemen was beaten up. As a result of complaints lodged by Clason, the Army promised to withdraw guards from Kebayoran Baru. By the second half of March 1950, the Army had already been invited in again to hold nocturnal patrols, because civil servants no longer dared to stay on guard at night. The gangs of robbers swelled in size and were now armed with machetes. Still the same month, two men wearing army boots and armed with an Enfield rifle and a carbine assaulted the storage shed of the Priangan Building Company. Two men employed by the building company were attacked; four guards dared not make a move as they were not carrying firearms. In May, in one night building contractor Santa lost 191 planks (worth ƒ 500), plus all six terror-stricken guards who resigned on the spot. In June 1950, six guards working for building contractor Sippel were outgunned by 20 men, armed with rifles and revolvers, who loaded 390 bars of iron, worth ƒ 4,800, onto three trucks and drove off early in the evening. In June the Central Foundation for Reconstruction lost six jeeps. In this climate

61 Letter E.W.H. Clason, Hoofd Regionaal Opbouwbureau Java en Sumatra, to Directeur Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, 10-1-1950, no. 1/geheim/ROB/50, private collection R.J. Clason. 304 Under construction dominated by fear, lawlessness, and moral decay, labour productivity inevitably slumped.62 The mayhem intimidated honest workers. The technical expert employed by the contractor Santa, Van Galen, was one such disheartened person. When Van Galen told a mandur (foreman) that the work of his crew had to be rejected because it was slipshod, Van Galen was threatened at his home two days later by a gang of 20 men. Van Galen’s wife pretended he was not in, and the terrified technical expert resigned the same day. When the Santa directors tried to hire another crew the next day to continue construction, its members were intimidated not to take on the job. The leader of the thugs was a certain Hassan, who was described as a man with a long scar on his left cheek, armed with a revolver. He was also known to steal building materials by force. Another mugger was a certain Sita, who was employed by Santa as a guard. He no longer bothered to do any work, but nobody dared to fire him, so that he still took home ƒ 50 per month. The only reason Sita ever visited the construction site was to take away building materials to build a house for himself.63 Given these dire circumstances, it is a wonder that any houses were built at all. Nonetheless, this was certainly the case. On 18 March 1949, the first stone was laid, and one year later over 1,000 houses were ready. By October 1951, 3,000 houses had been built, and by 1954 this had risen to 4,700 houses.64 Who was intended to occupy all these houses? The initial idea had been to make Kebayoran Baru predominantly a neighbourhood for lower-income groups who could not hold their ground in Jakarta’s tight housing market. Therefore 80% of the houses were meant to be small houses for the public housing sector. In contrast to pre-war administrators who recognized that Chinese, European and other non-indigenous people might also have low incomes, the planners of Kebayoran simply equated kampong housing with indigenous people, Indigenous land rights, and low incomes. Semawi, Head of the Department of Public Works and Reconstruction, believed that the plots intended for the construction of kampong houses would be granted

62 Letter E.W.H. Clason, Hoofd Regionaal Opbouwbureau Java en Sumatra, to Directeur Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, 10-1-1950, no. 1/geheim/ROB/50; letter Clason to Detachements- Commandant Algemene Politie, Kebajoran, 1-2-1950, no. 490/ROB/50; letter Clason to Detachements-Commandant Algemene Politie, Kebajoran, 17-2-1950, no. 720/ROB/50; letter Clason to Directeur Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, Kebajoran, 9-3-1950, no. 1031/ROB/50; letter Clason to Directeur Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, Kebajoran, 17-3-1950, no. 1138/ ROB/50; letter Clason to Commandant Veldpolitie, Kebajoran 24-3-1950, no. 1254/ROB/50; letter W.L. Kwint, Hoofd Planbureau, Regionaal Opbouwbureau Java en Sumatra, to Commandant der Politie, Kebajoran Baru 11-5-1950, no. 1865/ROB/50; letter Kwint to Commandant der Politie, Kebajoran Baru 2-6-1950, no. 2157/ROB/50; Notulen vergadering Raad van Beheer Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, 10-6-1950 and 28-7-1950, private collection R.J. Clason. 63 Verslag P. van Rossum, M.T.A. 1e klasse, [1950], private collection R.J. Clason. 64 Nieuwsblad voor Indonesië 29-3-1950; Antara 6-10-1951/A; Van Roosmalen 2005:109. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 305

Figure 28. Design for a kampong house in Kebayoran Baru, circa 1949. Source: ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 930; courtesy of Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta. almost exclusively to indigenous people with a title deed based on adat law. The issuing of land titles based on Western statutory law, Semawi stated, involved too many formalities, which experience had shown were alien to indigenous people. The original idea to issue deeds based on Western law throughout the whole of Kebayoran Baru was thus abandoned.65 One consequence of the state decision to take charge of most of the construction work and to construct the majority of houses in a kampong style was that the state had to design and build kampong houses (Figure 28). This goal was easier to set than to achieve. A bad omen in this respect was that the first kampong houses, built to accommodate the original residents of Kebayoran, who had been moved to Tjilandak, did not appeal to the villagers at all. The Central Foundation for Reconstruction held a competition among students of the Technological Institute in Bandung for a design for small dwellings suitable to Kebayoran Baru, but none of the drawings submitted was satisfactory. Study of the work of the Singapore Improvement Trust also yielded few useful insights.66

65 Letter A.M. Semawi, Secretaris van Staat Waterstaat en Wederopbouw, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 10-12-1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 930; see also Besluit Secretaris van Staat Binnenlandse Zaken, 22-1-1949, no. A.Z.26/1/10, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 930. 66 Notulen vergadering Raad van Beheer Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw 10-6-1950, private collection R.J. Clason; Snel groeiend Kebajoran 1949. 306 Under construction

Very soon, by mid-1950, it transpired that the small houses were not popular and consequently proved difficult to sell. People spoke scornfully of ‘revolutionary building’ (revolutiebouw; Nieuwsblad voor Indonesië 29-3-1950). For instance, locating the kitchen inside the house aroused a great deal of antipathy; indigenous people preferred their kitchen to be in a small, separate building, just as they preferred the toilet and bathing place to be. The Minister of Social Affairs stated wishfully that: ‘from now on, the population will see that everything that is being built, is being constructed for the indigenous people’. For this reason, the design of houses with indoor kitchens was changed and the idea of building apartment blocks was put on ice.67 A more substantial policy change of the Central Foundation for Reconstruction was the decision henceforward to build predominantly what were known as small villas (kleinwoningbouw), which were slightly larger than the small houses in the public housing sector (volkswoningbouw). These houses needed to have at least four rooms, because ‘an Indonesian household always resembles an orphanage’ (een Indonesische woning is steeds een soort weeshuis).68 A better explanation for the demand for larger houses than the derogatory reference to orphanage-like houses was the discovery that low-income people had no interest whatsoever in Kebayoran Baru. Middle-income and better educated Indonesians liked the area, however, and it was easier for them to travel the distance to work in Jakarta daily (Clason 1950:17). The trend for middle- and upper-income groups to settle in Kebayoran Baru was reinforced by the growing role of private builders, who shunned the cheapest dwellings with the smallest profit margins. A builder who as a young man had worked in Kebayoran told me that all non-permanent volkswoningbouw was soon demolished and replaced by larger permanent and semi-permanent houses. The target population of Kebayoran Baru was also redefined using a criterion other than income group. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of the United States of Indonesia stipulated that civil servants who moved from the old to the new capital, from Yogyakarta to Jakarta, should be given accommodation. The Housing Allocation Bureau therefore prioritized civil servants in the distribution of houses in Kebayoran Baru. For the same reason, in 1950 the state decided to build another 1,000 houses (80 sq m in size, with detached kitchens) for civil servants, over and above the construction planned and

67 ‘[D]e bevolking bij alles wat thans gebouwd wordt, het idee zal krijgen, dat voor de Indonesiërs gebouwd wordt.’ Notulen vergadering Raad van Beheer Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, 28-7- 1950, private collection R.J. Clason. 68 Notulen vergadering Raad van Beheer Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, 28-7-1950, private collection R.J. Clason. The term Indonesiërs in this context should not be translated as citizens of the Indonesian Republic; it is a new term for indigenous people that does not smack of colonialism. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 307 funded by the Central Foundation for Reconstruction.69 Government institutes sent the Housing Allocation Bureau lists of houses needed.70 In conclusion, I believe it is the decision to house civil servants in Kebayoran – taken in 1949, but already foreseeable in 1948 – that explains the extraordinarily strong political will to accomplish the construction of this new town, despite the huge lack of capital, building land, skilled staff, and security.

Conclusion

Dutch reconstruction work started almost immediately after the Dutch returned to Indonesia. The liquidation of the Central Foundation for Reconstruction on 25 April 1951 by presidential order (Van Roosmalen 2005:108) marked the end of the reconstruction phase. Dutch efforts to reconstruct Indonesian cities served as a tool in their struggle to combat the independence movement. The refinement of pre-war town-planning legislation and the conception of long- term town plans is understandable only against the backdrop of the Dutch determination to stay in Indonesia. Conflicts between the government bodies involved in reconstruction highlight some of the tensions inherent in the Dutch creation of a federal United States of Indonesia. The pivotal role given to the Central Foundation for Reconstruction and the Central Planning Bureau set limits on the proclaimed policy of federalism. The use of the word ‘central’, not ‘federal’, in the name of both institutions is a significant indicator of Dutch sincerity about how far federalism should go. Nevertheless, there were limits to the power of the central institutions at the local level. So, whereas people in Makassar were forced to accept that the rebuilding of the Chinese quarter had to be delayed pending approval of a plan prepared by staff of the Central Planning Bureau, Medan refused to prepare a town plan at all. Reconstruction work was hampered by the scarcity of building land, skilled labourers and engineers, and building materials. The prices of all three inputs rose rapidly after 1945, so that reconstruction was ultimately slowed down by lack of capital to finance the costly inputs of land, labour, and building materials. Conflicts of competences between the national, regional, and municipal levels of government could unfortunately impede construction work. Well- intentioned government regulations were sometimes counterproductive and

69 Letter A.Th. Bogaardt, Secretaris van Staat Sociale Zaken, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 9-12-1949, no. H 2-21-13, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061; Notulen vergadering Raad van Beheer Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, 28-7-1950, private collection R.J. Clason. 70 For example, letter Kepala Tata Usaha Kabinet Presiden to Kepala Urusan Perumahan Djakarta-Raya Bagian Kebajoran, 15-2-1951, no. 514/51-P, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden Republik Indonesia 1950-1959 2457. 308 Under construction obstructed building activity. One such example is the prohibition on recycling rubble in Makassar’s Chinese quarter. It is unclear how much was actually built in the war-torn cities of Ambon, Kupang, Manado, Makassar, Surabaya, Bandung and others. The only place where the government initiated construction work on a large scale was the new town Kebayoran Baru. Precisely those factors that explain the swift construction of Kebayoran Baru could not possibly have been duplicated elsewhere. The laborious consultation between the central, negara, and local levels of administration was avoided by placing the project directly under the aegis of the Central Foundation for Reconstruction. Large plots of building land for a new town could only be found outside the urban limits of the built environment. The pooling of labour, building materials and land was made possible by extraordinary investments, which the central government was only willing to make in its own backyard. The government even abrogated one regulation that proved a nuisance, in particular the usual norm of how much floor space an individual was entitled to. In other words, owner-builders did not need to fear that the Housing Allocation Bureau would place other families in their new, spacious houses.71 Nevertheless, one important input in construction that is usually taken for granted was precarious in Kebayoran Baru: security. Theft of building materials and intimidation of workers undermined workers’ productivity and morale. Chaos on the building site increased rapidly in 1950. In sum, town planners claimed a large role for themselves during the reconstruction years, but could not stem the tide of a growing chaos, not least because of the rapid migration to cities. Planners’ grip slackened after the transfer of sovereignty, when such experienced staff members as Thijsse and Soesilo resigned and the urban population continued to grow. In that respect Indonesian cities were similar to other Third World cities, where ‘because of staff shortages, a handful of planners are struggling to cope with an array of urban problems that would drive the average British planner to an early grave’ (Choguill 1994:943). One final question is whose interests the town planners were pursuing. A.F. Robertson has argued that professional planners, although never politically neutral, usually serve neither their own interests nor those of a specific social class. They are ‘essentially concerned with serving the interests of the state’ (Robertson 1984:94-5). Robertson’s conclusion is arguably an adequate description of pre-war planning, but in the closing years of Dutch colonial rule, planners did favour the interests of a specific group. They prepared

71 Only the usual rent control would apply. Letter A.Th. Bogaardt, Secretaris van Staat Sociale Zaken, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 9-12-1949, no. H 2-21-13, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061. VIII Post-war reconstruction and the recommencement of urban planning 309 new, permanent houses for middle-class people – middle-class civil servants in particular – and ignored kampong dwellers. This attitude compares particularly unfavourably with the undivided attention paid to kampong people shown by the Indonesian nationalist leaders whom the Japanese consulted in the Committee for Tradition and the Organization of Government. Dutch planners’ preference for their own class or group of civil servants can be attributed to a considerable extent to the heightened social tensions of the years of turmoil (1942-1949).

Chapter ix Construction Public housing and the private sector

Post-war state housing policies – rent control, allocation of existing housing, reconstruction of damaged urban quarters, Kebayoran Baru – were all emergency measures to tackle the housing crisis of the second half of the 1940s. The principal urban housing policy over a longer period, in ‘normal’ years, was public housing: the state provision of housing to people either by constructing new houses or indirectly by preparing building land and offering loans. Many municipalities established an NV Volkshuisvesting (Public Housing Corporation Ltd) for this purpose in the 1920s. Their activities petered out during the war and the Revolution, but after 1949 public housing was resumed in many cities by what were called Jajasan Kas Pembangunan. A Jajasan Kas Pembangunan (literally, Construction Fund Foundation) can best be described as a Cooperative Housing Association. The Indonesian Republic also launched other forms of public housing. There are grounds for hypothesizing a difference in public housing policy before and after Independence. Public housing was to some extent an alien concept in colonial Indonesia. The economy of the Netherlands Indies was essentially a liberal one and most construction work was undertaken by the private sector. Why should the government bother to provide public housing at all? The Explanatory Memorandum of the 1938 Town Planning Ordinance concluded that public housing corporations catered mainly to the middle classes, and the building volume was large enough to have an impact on the local housing market only in Semarang (Toelichting 1938:34). If we assume, for the sake of argument, that public housing was meant primarily to serve the lower classes, why did it not make an impact on the local housing market, except in Semarang? And which groups appropriated the public housing, perhaps to the detriment of others who were more entitled to it? After Independence, the economy continued to be run on capitalist principles, but the government took a socialist turn and adopted a broader welfare policy (Booth 1998:162). Current thinking was that the benefits of the 312 Under construction

Revolution ought to reach all Indonesians. If this ideal were to be achieved in the area of housing, public housing should be undertaken on a much more ambitious scale than had hitherto been the case. Decent housing also became a matter of national pride. For instance, in 1952 Vice-President Mohammad Hatta (quoted by Soerjono Herlambang 2004:37) remarked that most houses resembled cowsheds and were inappropriate to an independent, self-confident nation. Likewise, India embarked on a major construction programme after Independence, with designs influenced by the Modern Movement in architecture (Lang 1989:387). Public housing was indeed restarted on a large scale in Indonesia in the early 1950s, but the building volume soon fell off. This brief outline of public housing raises several questions. What happened to public housing during decolonization? Which groups were reached? What was the size of the public housing sector? And why did public housing fail to live up to the high expectations of political leaders after Independence? It is axiomatic that public housing cannot be analysed in isolation from private-sector housing. The public sector was relatively small and did not weigh heavily on the housing market. Public housing occupied one segment in the fragmented rental market, and, unlike rent control and Housing Allocation Bureaus of the late 1940s, did not affect the housing market across the board. The role of public housing only becomes entirely clear when it is examined in the context of the overall situation in construction, including the private sector. Various actors operated in the private sector. Some actors, such as landlords who steadily expanded their property portfolios, merely exploited purchased houses. Other actors, such as architects and building contractors, were only in the business of construction, and were not involved in how the houses were exploited after they had finished building them. However, the distinction between the construction of new houses and the exploitation of existing houses cannot be used to draw an absolute boundary between two different kinds of actors, because several actors on the housing market combined both activities in varying proportions. Examples of actors who combined construction and exploitation are individuals who built a house for themselves, real- estate developers who kept rental dwellings, and the NV Volkshuisvesting corporations. The scale of the activities does not serve to draw sharp boundaries between different categories of actors either. A small real-estate developer who built houses in the hope of selling or renting them for a profit was not very different from the owner of just one large plot who subdivided his land and built a few houses adjacent to his own dwelling. One clear difference between various actors who constructed and exploited houses lay in the demand for their type of houses. Each actor occupied a niche in the whole market. Real-estate developers found houses with rents below ƒ 30 not profitable and were most interested in houses that yielded IX Construction 313 monthly rents of ƒ 80 or more, but these were only 1% of the whole market (Table 5)! Real-estate developers were not interested in houses with a rental value below ƒ 30, because the profit margin was relatively small, and the trouble it took to collect the rent was not worth the effort. Public housing focused as a rule on middle-income groups, who could afford rents between ƒ 10 and ƒ 80 (about a fifth of all houses). Real-estate developers also ventured into this middle segment of the market, but the lower the price, the more difficult it became for developers operating in the formal sector of the economy to compete with dwellings built in the informal sector. Only urban administrators who were prepared to subsidize houses permanently were able to build houses with rents below ƒ 30. At the bottom end of the housing market, many dwellings with a rent below ƒ 10 were built by the occupants themselves. However, certainly not all houses with rental values below ƒ 10 were self- constructed. Many of them were built by small landlords who rented out one or at most a few houses. The remainder of this chapter is structured around the various actors who constructed houses.

The building sector

Building companies, contractors, and architects obviously played an important role in the construction of houses, but their role was merely to carry out housing initiatives of others. They occasionally played a role beyond the physical construction of houses, if they could successfully lobby the government to direct more state funds to housing; in addition, the designs and the new building techniques they introduced influenced the kinds of dwellings that were erected. Important changes in the post-war business climate were the Indonesianization of staff and the challenges posed by the general chaos and uncertainty. The Associatie NV provides an example of a Dutch-owned contractor who tried to survive in independent Indonesia. In 1949 the Associatie adopted the legal form of a limited liability company to attract more capital. The company continued to work profitably until 1957, but was hampered by several problems symptomatic of the times. In 1949, for instance, theft of equipment and building materials amounted to 10% of the contracted sum of some projects. The branch office in Makassar was closed in 1952, because of the continuing violence and unrest generated by the Darul Islam uprising. Ironically, the company found it increasingly difficult to house its own staff, so that from 1952 it chose to purchase or build more company houses; the problems of finding housing for staff negatively affected the company’s financial results. Compared to pre-war standards, labour productivity was low and in decline. It became increasingly difficult to employ highly educated technical staff 314 Under construction

Figure 29. Nirof apartment building built by Associatie NV. Courtesy of E.C. Dolk.

from abroad, so that the company felt compelled to accept more Indonesians and train them on the work floor. This investment in human capital began to bear fruit in 1956. Another source of trouble, noticeable from 1954, was increasingly stiff competition from Indonesian companies, to which the state IX Construction 315 preferred to award large contracts. The company enjoyed political protection, however, in the form of the ‘technical consultant’, Professor R. Roosseno Soeriohadikoesoemo, who was Minister of Economic Affairs from 1953 to 1955. Roosseno resigned from his function in Associatie NV as long as he was minister, but its relationship to this well-connected Indonesian must have shielded the company from the worst political hassles until its nationalization in 1957 or 1958.1 In short, this Dutch construction company barely managed to hold its ground in an increasingly hostile environment, and it was certainly not part of a powerful lobby. Besides, it was not very active in building large numbers of houses. Perhaps its major contribution to housing was the construction of one of the first apartment buildings in Jakarta (Figure 29). A contractor from a Chinese family, in contrast, sketched for me a picture of a less strenuous business climate during the 1950s. He received his higher technical training in the Netherlands after independence and started as a private builder in the second half of the 1950s. Corruption among civil servants who decided on contracts was moderate in scale at that time, extending to the gift of a ‘duty bicycle’, and according to him ‘nothing compared to present times’. Civil servants who were responsible for building permits were taken out for dinner or were lent a car for a day trip. When he once offered a packet of cigarettes to a municipal servant, the man did not want to accept it, albeit more out of fear than of principle. Cement and reinforcing girders were in abundant supply, because they were smuggled in by official importers. Bricks were locally produced and also plentiful; the unequal size of bricks was accepted as a fact of life. His firm built many single houses; on larger projects, up to a dozen contractors worked alongside each other. His professional pride, however, was the construction of three low-cost houses that replaced the non-permanent sheds of the people from whom he used to buy his meals in Tanjung Priok (where he was carrying out a large assignment). Usually, for the actual construction an overseer (mandur) was hired, who brought his own crew of labourers. The building of a large house of, say, 200 sq m took six months of work by 20 labourers. He claimed that contractors negotiated directly with clients and there was no opportunity to make tacit price agreements with fellow contractors. Tenders of the large projects in the 1950s were contested by Dutch building companies, which, he imagined, possibly did have prearranged agreements about bids submitted. I found very little hard evidence that building companies formed a lobby

1 Verslag over het [eerste …achtste] boekjaar [1949 …1956] van de Associatie NV gevestigd te Djakarta Djalan Nusantara 39, Telefoon Gambir 31 en 51; Notulen Algemene Vergadering van Aandeelhouders, 11-7-1955 and 10-12-1957; Exploitatie eigen huizen per 30 juni 1957, bijlage X bij Toelichting op de proef- en saldibalans per 30-10-1957, all private collection E.C. Dolk. 316 Under construction during the years of reconstruction. As early as October 1945, a group of building companies jointly established ComTech (Combinatie van Technische Diensten, Combination of Technical Services). ComTech was founded in close cooperation with the Department of Public Works and only accepted orders from this Department. It focused on improving the housing situation. Although ComTech stated it welcomed other building companies and contractors who wished to join it, it closely resembled a cartel. The chairman of ComTech was Major J.J. Jiskoot, who was a civilian fulfilling a role in the military administration at the time; under normal circumstances, he was a partner in the Associatie construction company. Another hint of a builders’ lobby is the joint trip made by seven building contractors and eight civil servants from the Department of Public Works, including the engineer Van den Broeke. They flew together to Makassar on a Catalina for a three-day visit to list the required reconstruction works and in the plane they presumably talked about more than the blueness of the Java Sea.2 Architects played an important role in the formation of the cityscape and the development of a modern lifestyle, but had no impact on the volume of building. Architects merely reacted to the initiatives of others and all they could do was to hunt for commissions. The architects’ lack of power is exemplified by a private competition organized by a medical specialist. The doctor invited two renowned architectural firms, Fermont Cuypers and Job & Sprey, to draw blueprints for a large house in Kebayoran Baru and picked the best design, leaving the loser standing with empty hands. One way to gain new contracts was through advertising, but building a reputation by word of mouth was probably more effective. For example, the architect Kwee Hin Goan worked for various architectural bureaus after independence and built up his career by drawing blueprints on his own account after office hours. He gradually built up a network of clients, which reached to the cabinet and the presidential family. Every piece of work for one client was a potential break- through to that client’s friends and relatives (Kwee 2004:102-3, 111-25). To cut a long story short, the initiative to build did not usually lie with building companies, contractors, or architects, but with clients who commis- sioned houses. Lobbying helped to snatch away jobs from rivals, but not to increase total building activity.

2 Rondschrijven Hoofdingenieur Luitenant-Kolonel Ir. J.W.R. Thomson, for Directeur Verkeer en Waterstaat, 30-10-1945, no. 34/V&W, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 927; N.J. Meyer, Survey Stadsplan Makassar, 7-3-1947, attached to letter Ir. N.J. Meyer, Planologisch Bureau Makassar, to Ir. Kipperman, Directeur Gemeentewerken Makassar, 8-3-1947, no. 1233/207, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 38. IX Construction 317

Real-estate developers

The role of real-estate developers varied from place to place. In Padang, for instance, such businessmen did not figure prominently, because the market for middle-class dwellings was small and not dynamic; moreover, the idiosyncratic Minangkabau system of landownership inhibited the purchase of large tracts of vacant land, which could be developed in one full sweep (Colombijn 1994). Economic opportunities open to real-estate developers were far better in the coastal cities of Java, where the number of families with middle and high incomes and a preference for a suburban, ‘European-style’ dwelling was higher than in Padang. Just as important, the private estates (particuliere landerijen) around Javanese coastal cities were large landholdings, which could be developed as a whole. Private estates offered great opportunities to the real-estate sector. The Dutch-owned building company Bouwmaatschappij Kepoetran was the first to purchase an estate in Surabaya in 1888. Kepoetran subdivided 91 hectares, built on it, and sold the houses individually. Between 1888 and 1916 over 1,500 hectares of former private estates was developed in this fashion (Dick 2002a:340-8). The disadvantages of this private building activity were that the streets on such a former estate were not logically connected to the overall street plan of the city, and that the housing needs of the middle and upper-middle classes were much better taken care of than those of lower-income groups, because middle-class houses were more marketable (Frumeau 1927:65-6). Large real-estate developers had a profound impact on cities. City administrators in Malang had a bad day when they realized that a real-estate developer, NV Villapark, had bought rice-fields and the racecourse, together over 70 hectares, and planned to build large houses there. The administration swung into action and negotiated a deal with NV Villapark, which dispelled its fears that the land would be used only for speculation or expensive villas. NV Villapark sold the land to the municipality, which was to sell it back in large chunks, as long as NV Villapark really did build houses on the land within a set term of five years. Moreover, the municipal administration was given the right to demand that every two years NV Villapark built houses with low rental values, worth ƒ 120,000 in construction costs; the municipality, in return, stood surety for 75% of the rents of these cheap houses. This solution worked well in Malang’s urban development. As a side-effect of the NV Villapark initiative, the Malang administration drew up its first zoning plan almost overnight, in order to lay claim to the rice-fields bought by NV Villapark.3

3 Karsten 1936; Van Liempt 1939:xci-xcv, 173A. NV Villapark was in liquidation in 1939, for reasons unknown to me. Had it gone bankrupt, or had its shareholders reached their goals? (Van Liempt 1939:xcii, 37A-40A). 318 Under construction

Other real-estate developers worked on a much smaller scale. For instance, the Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Onroerende Goederen Celebes owned eight houses in Makassar with rents ranging from ƒ 80 to ƒ 110 (Tillema 1922, V:245). Another example is the Surabaya-based building company NV Bouwmij Zürich. It bought two plots from the municipality of Bandung on the understanding that it would subdivide the two plots into 32 parcels and build a small house on each parcel within two years. The building company fulfilled its obligation for 28 parcels and kept the last four for speculative purposes. After about ten years, the municipality reclaimed the four unbuilt blocks and sold them, much to the annoyance of the director of NV Bouwmij Zürich, to a third party (Gemeenteblad van Bandoeng 1935:38). According to Farabi Fakih (2007), 80 such real-estate developers were registered in the Handboek voor Cultuur- en Handelsondernemingen in Nederlandsch- Indië in colonial Surabaya in 1929. The majority of the firms were owned by Europeans, but most of the largest firms, those with a capital of over ƒ 500,000, were owned by Chinese and Arab entrepreneurs. The European firms were probably 100% real-estate developers, whereas the large Chinese and Arab companies combined several economic activities, including real estate, in one conglomerate. Several firms were established for one project, to build, say, five to ten houses in one street. The putative smallness of such firms can be deceptive, as several firms were owned by one mother company. Indigenous builders were conspicuously absent in the Handboek, probably because they preferred to operate in the informal sector of the economy. The real-estate developer who arguably came closest to reaching the lower-income groups was NV Volker Kleinwoningbouw. The company built a complex of houses in Bandung in ampasit-beton, a mixture of cement and the pulp of pressed sugarcane. Ampasit-beton was easier to work than concrete, and much lighter too; the material was resistant to white ants and was fire- proof. Standardization of room sizes, doors, and windows all helped reduce construction costs. All elements were prefabricated and only needed to be assembled. The smallest house, consisting of a living room, bedroom, indoor kitchen, and toilet, cost ƒ 1,400, including the land. Houses were not only sold, some could be rented for prices varying between ƒ 12.50 and ƒ 27.50. The municipality of Bandung bought 82 of the large types to rent them out to unemployed Europeans. The IEV journal described the neighbourhood in lyrical terms: ‘Houses appear in an unbelievably short time as if made by the wave of a magic word; small, cosy houses – neat and solid –, which are offered for sale to buyers with very modest purses for minimal prices and sell like hot cakes.’4 Over the years, the company adjusted the design to the needs of fami-

4 ‘Huizen verrijzen daar in ongelooflijk korten tijd als met een tooverstaf uit den grond, kleine lieve huisjes, keurig en soliede, welke tegen minimale prijzen aan liefhebbers met minimale beurzen worden te IX Construction 319 lies with children.5 This project was the bottom line of what could be offered on a commercial base. One juicy detail is that one of the two directors of NV Volker Kleinwoningbouw, A. Poldervaart, was also Director of the Department of Land and Housing (Grond- en Woningzaken) of the Bandung municipality, so that the company must have had easy access to land. It is conceivable that the main reason NV Volker Kleinwoningbouw was able to build houses at such low cost was the windfall profit reaped on cheaply acquired land.6 Another low-cost method of building was the so-called Burckhardt system; its defining features were a roof of concrete plates, and walls of bricks laid on their side and pressed between two basketworks of iron wire; hence the construction method economized on the number of bricks required. The company that held the monopoly on this technique, NV Algemeene Bouw- en Aannemingmij (ABAM), did only the building of the houses; unlike Volker, ABAM, did not rent them out. The municipality of Surabaya bought large numbers of houses constructed using the Burckhardt system. A house of 39 sq m cost ƒ 1,500 and brought in a rent of ƒ 15; the smallest detached house was a mere 20 sq m (Kienecker 1930). These houses, however, were not popular, because the concrete roof made them too hot; in order to make these houses marketable, the municipality feigned ignorance of tenants who added illegal sheds and lean-tos (Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 11-2-1935). No new private real-estate projects are known from the Japanese period, but this is not to say nothing was built. The production of bricks and tiles continued (Asia Raya 25-11-2602, 2-12-2602), but these were perhaps only used for the piecemeal construction of houses. Real-estate companies, however, did continue the exploitation of their property. For example, a 1943 list of taxpay- ers in Surabaya mentions at least 21 real-estate companies (bouwmaatschappij, bouwen handelmaatschappij, perseroan peroesoehan tanah dan roemah) exploiting more than one house. The largest developers were Perseroan Peroesoehan Tanah dan Roemah Koepang, Bouwmij Pie Oen Kie, Bouw- en Handelmij The Giok Nio, and Perseroan Peroesoehan Tanah dan Roemah Kepoetran, with 76, 38, 20, and 18 houses respectively. Ten other building companies with only one house were mentioned.7 After 1949, real-estate developers at first had little interest in building, because of the rent control policy and their fear that the local Housing

koop aangeboden en grif van de hand gaan’ (FLHD 1933:980). 5 A 1939; FLHD 1933; Poldervaart 1932; Rombongan roemah gedong-ketjil 1932. 6 Cooperation between real-estate developers and urban administrations sometimes went beyond the municipal provision of land. For instance, the family firm of Lie Boen Yat built a housing complex in Manado in cooperation with the municipal administration (Mawikere 2005:59). 7 Keputusan Soerabaja Sityo 787/B, 11-4-2603; 797/B, 11-4-2603; 853/B, 17-5-2603; 854/B, 19-5- 2603; 884/B, 27-5-2603; 935/B, May 2603; 937/B, 31-5-2603, Arsip Surabaya, no inventory number. 320 Under construction

Allocation Bureau would put unwanted families in the new houses. Other problems too thwarted private initiative. The Bouwkundig Bureau en Bouwmaterialen Handel Djawa-Timoer and the timber company Sing Liem in Surabaya planned to build houses in the Tambakrejo area of the city in 1950. They pulled out, because the municipality did not provide a secure title deed and did not build an access road. While the companies waited for municipal action, squatters invaded the land and sex workers began to operate there, tarnishing the area’s reputation. The rising costs of building materials dealt the final blow to the plan (Purnawan Basundoro 2005b:546-7). Nevertheless, there were still entrepreneurs who ventured into new real-estate projects. In January 1953 the firm Oei Tiong Ham began construction of 200 houses in Semarang with a total projected cost of Rp 1,000,000. The houses were for sale (Antara 21-1-1953/A). They formed an exception. It is indicative of the mediocre business climate in the 1950s that the largest private project at the time, the construction of 887 houses in Grogol (Jakarta), was an investment by the state bank, Bank Industri Negara, and not by a private entrepreneur (Antara 28-4-1954/B). Although the construction work was financed by a state bank, it would be better to consider the project an investment opportunity for the bank rather than as public housing. The need of all real-estate developers, both before and after Independence, to receive a net return on their investment made it unattractive for them to build for the lowest incomes.

Company housing

Along with real-estate developers, private companies that owned company housing were large private players in the housing market. According to Howard Dick (2002a:217), company-provided houses were not only a form of remuneration, but also a tool to exercise control over the staff. Some companies built their own housing complexes, among them the Dordtsche Petroleum Maatschappij, which built Woningpark Tjepoe in Surabaya, and the State Railways (Staats Spoorwegmaatschappij), which also built a housing complex in Surabaya (Tillema 1922,V:698-702, 784-8). Other companies merely purchased houses. The Medan branch of the Handels Vereeniging Amsterdam, for instance, owned 19 houses in 1939, which lay scattered around town. Only in the Manggalaan did the company own five houses in a row, which may have been built as a minor construction project. In late 1957, on the eve of its nationalization, the company still owned at least ten houses in Medan.8

8 Ledger with receipts and expenditures HVA, 1939, private collection Badan Warisan Sumatera; Penundjuk telepon Medan 1958:95. IX Construction 321

When the housing crisis of the late 1940s developed into a chronic housing shortage, many private companies decided that building their own houses was the best way to guarantee their staff accommodation. Royal Dutch Airlines, KLM, for instance, built houses in Jakarta in 1952 (Den Dikken 2002:38, 101- 2). The government more or less expected companies to assume responsibility in this respect. In 1956 the Minister of Social Affairs called together representatives of Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij, Caltex, Stanvac, Unilever, Internatio, Lindeteves, Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij, and ten other companies to talk about housing. At the local level, the administration of Surabaya also urged foreign companies to build, as their contribution to helping to solve the housing shortage (Antara 23-2-1956/B, 17-1-1957/A). Government offices also used part of their budgets to build housing complexes. The complex of 85 houses built at a cost of Rp 2,400,000 by the State Railway Company (Djawatan Kereta Api) in Semarang, the reservation of Rp 5,000,000 for houses in the budget of the Customs Department (Djawatan Bea dan Tjukai), and housing complexes for the Army and Air Force in Semarang and Surabaya are just a few examples (Antara 25-7-1952/A, 9-12-1953/A, 25-2- 1954/B, 22-3-1956/A). Company houses of the Handels Vereeniging Amsterdam, Dordtsche Petroleum Maatschappij, and Staats Spoorwegmaatschappij were intended for people with white-collar jobs. Other companies built for their labourers. Four united shipping companies, for instance, built what was known as the Uniekampong (Union Kampong) in the port of Batavia, Tanjung Priok. The first year of its operations, 1916, the Uniekampong offered accommodation in barracks for 600 dock workers. In about 1919 the four shipping lines decided to jointly establish the NV Uniekampong, a limited liability company that provided housing, food from a central kitchen, medical care, and recreational facilities for a labour force of 4,000 dock workers. The company would handle all the stevedoring of the four participating companies. The main motive was to keep labourers satisfied and control wages, but, Arjan Veering maintains, ethical motives also inspired the Uniekampong. In the course of time, some dock workers brought their families and they jointly erected a mosque, so that the neighbourhood acquired features of a real kampong, with a population fluctuating between 1,000 and 2,600. In the 1920s a similar Uniekampong was built in Belawan, the port of Medan, and perhaps in others ports too (Van Dulm et al. 2000:34-5, 87; Veering 2001; see also Dorp en stad 1949). Despite all this activity, company housing did not make up the bulk of urban dwellings. 322 Under construction

Figure 30. Advertisement for Darmo Boulevard, Surabaya. Source: Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 21-3-1930.

Private house owners

Individual city dwellers produced a continuous stream of new houses built piecemeal, both before and after Independence (but the process has been best documented for colonial times). Almost all kampong houses were built this way, and a large number of houses along main streets. The building of new houses was often preceded by the subdivision of a large plot. To give just one case, a landowner in Medan who had already built five brick houses on a single plot sold the land to another man, who split up the plot into 14 parcels and added nine brick houses.9 The size of individually held plots was often considerable in colonial times and permitted the practice of subdividing. For

9 Letter Walikota Kota Besar Medan to Kepala Kedjaksaan Pengadilan Negeri Medan, 20-6- 1953, no. 8535/TA-1, Arsip Medan. IX Construction 323 instance, a sample of 559 plots of land registered at the cadastre in Batavia in 1938 had an average size of 2,564 sq m, about 50 x 50 m (Verslag Planologische Dag 1939:32-3). The 326 plots of land offered in a prospectus of the Bandung Development Corporation (Prospectus uitgifte gronden 1931: supplement 2-11) had an average size of 980 sq m (30 x 30 m). This building activity on subdivided plots of land was repeated in numerous places. Housing agencies and architects offered building land to private persons and sometimes also supplied designs (Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 18-1-1930, 5-3- 1930, 21-3-1930, 14-1-1935, 8-2-1935, 2-3-1935). The housing agency Versluis, for instance, offered 17 plots of land in Surabaya plus designs produced by the construction bureau H.H. Lobry. Versluis also advertised and marketed municipal land in Malang. Versluis received 2.5% commission on every plot it sold, and 1.5% or 2% commission on plots sold by others, as remuneration for its advertising campaign (Van Liempt 1939:167A). The advertisement of housing agency Van Vloten offering six plots on the prestigious Darmo Boulevard in Surabaya is remarkably similar to today’s real-estate promo- tional images: large house with a car in front, and a family of husband and wife with two kids (Figure 30). Quite a few people bought a house as an investment. The housing agency Versluis targeted such purchasers when it offered houses under the rent- purchase system, with the slogan: ‘Saving brings owning houses within your grasp’ (Door sparen krijgt men huizen in eigendom; Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 2-3-1935). The plural in the slogan is significant. It was common for people who owned a house to build an annex (paviljoen), a house, or a few houses in their yard and rent out these extra dwellings. There was always a demand for rental accommodation, because officials of the state, the Army, and large companies were regularly moved to a new post. The practice of being transferred was fully institutionalized, for instance in the form of an auction (vendutie) of personal belongings before the employee departed, or an almanac listing all the practicalities about garrison towns to which Army officers could be posted (Gegevens garnizoenen 1927). People invested in houses not only for the immediate return on the venture, but also as a kind of security for old age. Europeans who owned such a house intended to provide a solid pension felt doubly traumatized when the house was seized by the Japanese army, or wilfully destroyed by revolutionaries during the years of turmoil. People who were unable to build a house of their own had the option of pooling resources (initiative, land, capital) in a housing association. Although quite a few of these housing associations were established, often with support from the local administration, only a few of them reached the stage at which they actually built houses, and never in large numbers. For instance, four housing associations operated in Medan in colonial times, led by a European civil servant, an indigenous Christian clergyman, another indigenous person, 324 Under construction and a European lawyer, respectively. None of the building plans of the four associations came to fruition. Similar associations existed elsewhere, usually with meagre practical results. A positive exception was the housing association De Goede Woning (The Good Dwelling) in Semarang, which built 16 houses with rents of ƒ 125 to ƒ 175. When these high rents became common knowledge, the central government withdrew its loan for the project and the municipality decided to buy the houses and disband the association.10 On balance, housing associations seem to have built almost nothing for low- income people. Nevertheless, in a few cases the system was revived again after independence (Antara 24-5-1953/A-B, 26-7-1953/A-B). The availability of vacant land with a European title was arguably the most important limiting factor in building activity by individuals in colonial times. One imaginative proposal to overcome the shortage of land came from a real- estate developer in Surabaya, who suggested filling in a section of a river to acquire 4 hectares of land. The Surabaya administration disapproved of the plan (Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 4-1-1935, 7-3-1935). The municipal administration usually tried to stimulate private building activity by providing land. Municipalities gazed with hungry eyes at the state domain within their borders, but the central government refused to give its domain to municipalities free of charge. Local governments therefore had no other way to acquire land than to become active in the land market. Several colonial municipalities created grondbedrijven (public development corporations) as part of a wider urban development strategy. These development corporations functioned as land banks, buying large tracts of rural land on the urban fringe for future development. This stock of land on the fringe could also be used to swap for privately owned plots in the city centre that the administration needed. Development corporations usually also prepared a site for building: levelling the ground and constructing paths, roads and drainage canals. An important aim of development corporations was to make inroads into speculation; the municipality moderated rising market prices when it had ample land for sale at a low price (Prospectus uitgifte gronden 1931:17; Jansen 1930:149). The share of municipal land in total land sales became so large that the administration actually often set, rather than followed, the market price. In colonial Bandung, for example, land speculation did indeed disappear in the areas where the development corporation operated, but remained common where the corporation was inactive (Verslag van de 21e jaarvergadering 1933:16). However, the distinction between a public development corporation (or municipality) that reduced speculation and an

10 Concept Memorie van Overgave Daniël baron Mackay, Burgemeester van Medan, 1931, pp. 95-96, KITLV, H 946; Flieringa 1930:186-9; Rückert 1930:165; Tillema 1922, V:914-23. IX Construction 325 institute that speculated itself is a thin line; and as is the case with all speculation, land banking was not without risk.11 The question of how the government could provide building land in order to stimulate private building activity did not disappear after Independence. The question was addressed at the seminal conference of mayors in 195412 and again at the 1955 Decentralization Congress. In 1955 Mayor Moestadjab of Surabaya formulated several considerations in his paper on urban housing, which echoed conclusions drawn at the 1954 mayors’ conference, and which were not free of municipal self-interest. Land speculation could be curbed when the social function of land, as laid down in the Constitution, was emphasized publicly, when the state transferred its own urban lands to the municipality, and when municipal administrations were given wider competences to control land use according to a zoning plan (Antara 9-3-1955/A).

Public housing in colonial times

The provision of building land did not greatly assist those people who lacked the financial means or the initiative to build a house. Therefore, municipal administrations in Java and elsewhere also embarked on a public housing policy and took construction into their own hands. Several municipalities established gemeentelijke woningbedrijven (housing authorities) under various formal names, with the aim of reducing the housing shortage (Dick 2002a:199). By 1929 over 3,000 houses had been built or were under construction under this scheme (Table 16). Batavia took the lead in 1913, when it built Kampong

Table 16. Number of houses built for municipal housing authorities (gemeentelijke woningbedrijven) by the end of 1929 City Number of houses Batavia 0 Surabaya 521 Bandung 580 Semarang 1,782 Bogor 49 Medan 431 Makassar 0

Source: Rückert 1930:167-70.

11 Jansen 1930:157; Nas 1990:106; Otto 1991:209; Sumatra Bode 9-5-1930, 20-1-1932, 29-4-1932; Verslag Planologische Dag 1939:30. 12 Antara 4-11-1954; see further Chapter VI. 326 Under construction

Tamansari, but later it sold off all 54 houses, which were too expensive to be exploited profitably. In 1916 Semarang was the first municipality to embark on a massive building programme. Until the end of 1929, the municipal housing authority of Semarang claimed to have operated profitably, and what is more, the lowest rents were a mere ƒ 3 per month. The housing authority of Surabaya also reached low-income groups; at least 164 of its units were kampong houses, used to relocate forcibly moved kampong dwellers. Medan owned 417 houses, plus 14 official residences. By 1948 the number was up to 452, of which two-thirds had rents below ƒ 10. Bandung, which exploited most of its houses by the hire-purchase system, was the only city that owned a large number of houses, and yet had little to offer the lowest income groups.13 In the light of later public housing efforts, the building activities of municipalities were considerable in volume and included a remarkably large number of dwellings for low-income occupants.

Figure 31. Public housing at the Sekip project, Medan. Source: Hogervorst 1925.

Nonetheless, it gradually dawned on municipal administrations that not enough houses were being built for the lowest income groups. The Medan administration acquired a good insight into the matter, but was nevertheless unable to solve the dilemmas of public housing. Its first project consisted of eight wooden houses on the Skipweg (Sekip Road), built in 1918. Three years later 36 ‘indigenous’ semi-permanent houses (Types E, F, and G; Figure 31) and four ‘European’ brick houses were added. The administration discovered that even the cheapest houses in Kampong Sekip (rents at ƒ 5.50) were already too expensive for the lowest income groups. Moreover, semi-perma-

13 Rückert 1930:167-9; for many details, see Flieringa 1930:180-6, 200-5; for figures from Medan in 1948, see Daftar roemah2 Gemeente jang dioeroes oleh Gemeente Woningbedrijf, Medan 18-3-1948, appendix to Penetapan 184/1948 Wali Kota Medan, 23-3-1948, Arsip Medan. IX Construction 327

Figure 32. Public housing at the Djati Oeloe project, Medan. Source: Hogervorst 1925. nent houses, while cheap in the construction phase, required considerable maintenance. On top of that, the shared kitchen blunted people’s appetite for the houses. In the next project in Medan, Kampong Djati Oeloe, every house had its own kitchen, and was connected to the electricity grid and to mains water (Figure 32). Bathing places and privies were shared facilities; tipping cisterns, which were filled by a dripping tap every hour, flushed the privies. Nine different varieties were designed for both ‘indigenous’ and ‘European’ houses. The houses at Djati Oeloe were very popular with both indigenous and European tenants. Despite the success of Djati Oeloe, the municipality realized it was not going to meet the total demand for cheap houses in this way. It was unable to build all the houses in town and the municipal houses were meant as a pilot project, which private builders should imitate. The administration admitted, however, that private investors were even less able to build cost-effectively for the poor than the municipality itself.14 The unspoken conclusion in Medan and elsewhere was that the municipality should accept the obligation to provide cheap housing below cost price if it wanted to serve the lower classes. Government funds, however, were insufficient to build for all the poor. More needed to be done through other channels. A section of the Vereeniging voor Locale Belangen (Association for Local Interests) held two congresses to debate the issue of public housing in 1922 and 1925; the second congress confined itself to kampong houses. The upshot

14 Flieringa 1930:216-20; Volkshuisvesting Medan 1924:4-5, 40-1; Hogervorst 1925; Tillema 1922, V:465; Concept Memorie van Overgave Daniël baron Mackay, Burgemeester van Medan, 1931, KITLV, H 946. 328 Under construction

Table 17. Capital and stock of houses of NV Volkshuisvesting corporations, 1930/1932 City Year of Paid-up capital Loans number of formation dwellings Semarang 1926 200,000 799,000 672 Cirebon 1926 67,000 325,000 102 Batavia 1926 100,000 1,530,000 425 Surabaya 1927 100,000 2,328,000 1,257 Makassar 1927 100,000 676,600 187 Buitenzorg (Bogor) 1928 67,000 70,000 28 Sukabumi 1928 24,000 39 Palembang 1928 36,000 32 Pekalongan 1928 24,000 0 Tegal 1929 24,000 0 Mojokerto 1929 24,000 0 Madiun 1929 40,000 140,000 22 Manado 1930 20,000 0 Pasuruan 1930 24,000 0 Padang 1930 24,000 0 Probolinggo 1930 24,000 0 Total 898,000 5,868,600 2,764

Paid-up capital and loans are expressed in guilders. Data on paid-up capital and loans are from the end of 1930; the number of dwellings is from the end of 1932; the number of dwellings for Batavia includes 126 single-room dwellings and 115 units in petak. Source: year of formation, paid-up capital, and loan: Indisch Verslag 1931, II:182; number of houses and rooms: Indisch Verslag 1933, I:333-5. of these conferences was that the state accepted its responsibility to take a leading role in public housing for low-income groups. As of 1925 the central government supported municipal administrations that established a NV Volkshuisvesting, or Public Housing Corporation Ltd. Public Housing Corporations opened up a new way by which local governments could both acquire land and attract capital for housing (Karsten 1930; Van Roosmalen 2004:191-3). Public Housing Corporations with a limited liability bore the standard name NV Volkshuisvesting followed by the place name.15 The central government provided 75% of the capital and the municipality 25%. The board of commissioners had an uneven number of seats with a majority of its members

15 The work of the colonial NV Volkshuisvesting (Public Housing Corporation with limited liability) is well known from both contemporary publications (Flieringa 1930; Rückert 1930; Stam 1930; Volkshuisvesting 1932) and historical studies (Cobban 1993; Van Roosmalen 2004:191-3). IX Construction 329 appointed by the central government. The central government also appointed a commissioner for the state (Regeringscommissaris) to sit on each board of commissioners. His function was advisory. The fact that the central government held majority shares and that a single representative of the central government advised all public housing corporations resulted in a considerable uniformity of practice (Flieringa 1930:140-3, 150-3; Rückert 1930:169; Volkshuisvesting 1932). By 1932 16 cities had established an NV Volkshuisvesting, but not all corporations got the houses beyond the drawing board (Table 17). Central and local governments never intended to bear the brunt of the costs of housing and as a rule did not pay up the capital stock in full. Consequently, the capital stock was insufficient for the purpose for which the corporations were established. Therefore additional funds had to be found. The form for a company with limited liability was chosen to enable each NV Volkshuisvesting to borrow money on the capital market. It could negotiate low interest rates, because the central government guaranteed repayment of the loan. Using state funds to guarantee repayment of loans on the capital market seemed a more efficient use of scarce state funds than to pay the full costs of construction work (Flieringa 1930:139, 142; Gerritsen 1924). Over 2,500 houses were built by the joint NV Volkshuisvesting corporations up to 1932 (Table 17). The Depression halted further construction work. The overall impact of public housing is very small when the total number of houses of municipal housing authorities (gemeentelijke woningbedrijven) and NV Volkshuisvesting corporations is compared to the total number of houses (Tables 18 and 19). Even if we assume that all public housing was built in brick – which it was not – , and we compare public housing to the total of brick houses, its share would have been less than one-tenth of the number

Table 18. Number of houses and their building material in major Javanese cities, 1930 City Brick with tile non-brick with tile non-permanent total floor floor Batavia 15,459 42,049 41,530 99,038 Surabaya 18,387 32,971 10,566 61,924 Semarang 6,519 28,126 5,991 40,636 Bandung 6,647 16,255 875 23,777

The number of ‘non-permanent’ houses includes houses built with unknown materials. Sources: Volkstelling 1933, I:216; 1934, II:207, 1934, III:177, 1933, VI:262, 1935, VII:284. 330 Under construction

Table 19. Share of public housing in the total housing stock of Javanese cities, 1930s City Public housing as percentage Public housing as percentage of all brick houses of all houses Batavia 2.7 0.4 Surabaya 9.7 2.9 Semarang 37.6 6 Bandung 8.7 2.4

Public housing includes houses of municipal housing authorities (gemeentelijke woningbedrijven) and NV Volkshuisvesting corporations. Sources: Tables 16, 17, and 18. of brick houses in the major cities of Java, with the exception of Semarang.16 When we compare public housing with the total housing stock, its share was only 6% in the most favourable case, Semarang, and negligible in Batavia. Public housing efforts in colonial Indonesia are also unimpressive compared to the British achievements in India and Singapore. The British started later than the Dutch, but, acting to placate rising nationalism, eventually built considerably more than the Dutch (Harris 2009). If building volumes in colonial Indonesia were unsatisfactory, the extent to which the lowest income groups were reached was even more disappointing. Kampong Sekip and Kampong Djati Oeloe in Medan reveal the discrepancy between the ideal and the reality of building for the poor. Nonetheless, the municipal housing authorities established in the 1910s had at least the advantage that they could cross-subsidize houses with low and high rents. Moreover, a possible deficit could be made up from the total municipal budget. Neither of these options was open to an NV Volkshuisvesting, which was managed as an independent company, accountable to its shareholders. The requirement that projects be profitable severely restricted the potential target group of an NV Volkshuisvesting. After all, it was almost impossible to build houses for the lowest income groups that could compete on the rental market with houses in the informal sector. Public housing was only cost-effective beginning at the income bracket above the lowest income groups. As a rule therefore, the NV Volkshuisvesting corporations offered fewer houses with the lowest rents than did the municipal housing authorities (Table 20).17

16 Semarang, however, is precisely the city where most public housing was not built in brick, so that the ratio of the number of public-housing units to the total number of brick houses is very deceptive. 17 The raw data for the NV Volkshuisvesting corporations of Cirebon, Surabaya, Makassar, and Bogor did not concur with the values given in this table. A figure in the source that falls into several columns has been arbitrarily divided over multiple cells in this table. For instance, of the IX Construction 331

Table 20. Percentage distribution of monthly rents of public housing, 1929, 1932 Owner n 0-10 >10-30 >30-80 >80 total gemeentelijk woningbedrijf (municipal housing authority) Semarang 1,555 58 42 0 0 100 Bandung 570 35 52 11 4 100 Surabaya 414 39 23 33 5 100 Medan 417 65 20 12 2 100 Malang 98 65 16 11 7 100

NV Volkshuisvesting Soerabaja 1,257 58 19 22 2 100 Semarang 672 93 1 2 4 100 Batavia 425 50 18 17 15 100 Cheribon 102 57 9 24 11 100 Buitenzorg 28 21 21 57 0 100 Sukabumi 39 0 56 44 0 100 Madioen 22 0 0 96 5 100 Makassar 187 43 41 16 1 100 Palembang 32 0 0 0 100 100

Rents (top row) are given in guilders per month. Sources: gemeentelijk woningbedrijf Semarang, Bandung, Surabaya, Medan: Flieringa 1930:180-4, 204-7, 210-4, 226; Malang: Van Liempt 1939: lxxvi; NV Volkshuisvesting: Indisch Verslag 1933, I: 333-5. Rounding off percentages may produce a row total that is slightly more or slightly less than 100%.

The requirement that NV Volkshuisvesting corporations had to run at a profit came under attack from some urban administrators, who felt that this requirement conflicted with the stated aim of the corporations (Cobban 1993:894). These misgivings, however, did not result in a policy change. The NV Volkshuisvesting Cheribon provides an extreme example of the priority given to high returns. The company surveyed housing needs in Cirebon and found that 2,400 ‘indigenous’ dwellings needed to be replaced because of substandard hygiene, ‘morality’, and comfort, and 30 ‘European’ houses were necessary. As the NV Volkshuisvesting Cheribon expected the least problems with the exploitation of European houses at the upper end of the market, it first built 12 houses with rents between ƒ 60 and ƒ 90, and shelved

27 houses in Makassar with rents from ƒ 30 to ƒ 100, 9 have been put in the column >10-30, 9 in >30-80, and 9 in >80. 332 Under construction the problem of 2,400 indigenous dwellings (Flieringa 1930:143-6). To use the term ‘public housing’ in this case was a travesty. There were two important exceptions to the rule that NV Volkshuisvesting corporations built few houses for the lowest incomes. First, the NV Volkshuisvesting Soerabaja built hundreds of unprofitable dwellings with financial support from the central government, in particular 332 one-room coolie huts (Dijkerman 1929; Flieringa 1930:143, 147; Rückert 1930:169). Nevertheless, the aim to build for the poor in Surabaya was not realized. Howard Dick (2002a:199) observes that the rate of construction was too low to make a noticeable impact on overcrowding in kampongs. Moreover, many occupants of the cheapest houses did not belong to the target group of single coolies, but were married couples or prostitutes receiving clients (Soerabaiasch- Handelsblad 15-1-1930). The second exception is Semarang, which lived up to its colonial reputation of a progressive city; with the help of state subsidies, the NV Volkshuisvesting Semarang managed to build houses with low rents. It asked rents as low as ƒ 3, it wrote off the construction costs of these houses, and the deficit was financed as a lump sum by the local and central governments. Even the NV Volkshuisvesting Semarang, however, built 20 houses on the hills south of the city with rents between ƒ 110 and 140 (Gedenkboek Semarang 1931:180). The cases of Surabaya and Semarang show that political will could partly overcome the financial straitjacket. Two political parties raised the issue of public housing. The Partij Insulinde, a political party for middle-class indigenous and European permanent residents in Indonesia, argued in municipal councils for public housing corporations (Bosma and Raben 2003:320-1). Because of the party’s politically sensitive call for more autonomy from The Hague, it was not well received in established government circles. The other champion of public housing, the Association of Eurasians, IEV, was more influential. The IEV was important to public housing, but to be fair, public housing was not very important to the IEV, having a lower priority than loss of jobs, access to land, and education (Petrus Blumberger 1939:56-60). Despite this, the IEV promoted public housing more than other political parties. The IEV magazine Onze Stem regularly featured news on housing.18 Onze Stem also made the point that IEV councillors were not well informed about urban development; it recommended purchasing the Toelichting op de ‘Stadsvormingsordonnantie stadsgemeenten Java’ and the Eerste verslag van de Kampongverbeteringscommissie (Stadsvorming 1939). It is probably no coincidence that two prominent IEV members, both sitting on the IEV executive

18 For instance: Onze Stem 14(6) 1933, 14(9) 1933, 14(33) 1933, 15(44) 1934, 16(4) 1935, 16 (38) 1935, 18(53) 1937, 20(20) 1939, 21(11) 1940. IX Construction 333 board (Hoofdbestuur), were important state policy makers in the area of housing. F.M. Razoux Schultz was head of the Section of Drainage and Public Housing (Afdeling Gezondheidsmakingswerken en Volkshuisvesting) of the Department of Public Health both before and after the Japanese interlude, and in that capacity he also served as state commissioner on the board of commissioners of every NV Volkshuisvesting.19 A.Th. Bogaardt was acting mayor of Batavia, both shortly before and after the Japanese period; in 1947 he was appointed adjunct-director at the Department of Social Affairs, which played a pivotal role in post-war housing (L. de Jong 1984, XIa:1033; Onze Stem 30-6-1947, 31-7-1947). Local IEV branches lobbied for public housing in several cities, for instance Surabaya, Padang, Malang, and Cirebon, most of the time successfully.20 House designs provide further evidence that colonial public housing was not seriously aimed at kampong people, or at least not of indigenous people. In a paper presented at the 1922 Congress on Public Housing, Thomas Karsten lamented the ‘unindigenous’ (oninlandse) designs of what were described as indigenous types of public housing (Karsten 1922:36). He admonished European architects that the ‘standard designs were thought out on the drawing board, without looking around in the kampong’.21 The designs provided for a front gallery, wide corridor, and rooms of equal size, whereas what was really needed for indigenous people was one large room. If the family could afford more space, a small room (or merely a lean-to) to receive visitors was the first priority, plus a small bedroom for the children. Karsten wrote this before the NV Volkshuisvesting corporations had been launched, but H.E. Boissevain reached a similar conclusion in retrospect: the NV Volkshuisvesting corporations did not have any real insight into the housing needs of their target group. At a practical level, providing a supply of semi-permanent houses required a great deal of hard work (Boissevain 1935:6). Summing up, public housing in colonial times was too expensive for the lower incomes and too small to have much impact.

The end of the NV Volkshuisvesting corporations

Despite the fact that the NV Volkshuisvesting gave preference to economic

19 Letter O. Veenbaas, on behalf of Secretaris van Staat Departement van Gezondheid, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 1-9-1948, no. 20597/G, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 928. 20 Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 17-2-1930, 21-3-1930; Colombijn 1994:223; Van Liempt 1939:ciii; Flieringa 1930:143-6. 21 ‘[D]e typeplannen teveel aan de tekentafel worden uitgeknobbeld, zonder rondkijken in de kampoeng’ (Karsten 1922:54). 334 Under construction over social considerations, the corporations as well as the housing authorities experienced serious financial problems in the 1930s. The Malang housing authority, for instance, worked profitably between 1926 and 1929 and at a loss from 1930 to 1938 (Van Liempt 1939:205A). Public housing corporations had higher vacancy rates than private landlords during the Depression, because they acted more slowly in lowering rents, and tenants therefore abandoned the overpriced public housing (Deli Courant 24-1-1935, 25-2-1935; Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 14-1-1935, 2-2-1935, 26-3-1935, 29-3-1935). What is more, in 1932 the central government decided it would no longer stand surety for new loans, and this decision effectively ended the opportunity for an NV Volkshuisvesting to attract more funds on the capital market and to initiate new building projects. Only in Batavia could a substantial number of new houses be completed. The housing corporations ran into trouble because their income declined (rents decreased and houses stood empty), while the costs of interest payments invariably remained high. The central government purged debts in 1936. The NV Volkshuisvesting Palembang was the only company to build a few houses in 1937, and it is perhaps attributable to this new financial obligation that Palembang was one of the two NV Volkshuisvesting corporations that were discontinued before 1945.22 In 1939 the Commissie voor de Kampongverbetering (1939:50) summed up the situation. The NV Volkshuisvesting had come to a dead end. The exploitation of rental houses had proven risky during the Depression, and state funds were locked up in the assets. It would be better to sell off the houses and use the money raised for new construction work. The risk that houses would end up in the claws of unscrupulous landlords when sold had to be accepted. This plan made sense, but before decision makers could take it into consideration, the Second World War put a spoke in the wheel. The Japanese did not invest much time and effort in public housing. One approved loan, of ƒ 500,000 to NV Volkshuisvesting Buitenzorg, was not invested, because of the Japanese invasion.23 A widely publicized shifting of a kampong in Cirebon (Figure 23) had the character of public housing (Asia Raya 22-6-2603; Djawa Baroe 9-1-2603). Another kampong was built near the Bandung bus station to absorb new migrants to the city (Asia Raya 9-9-2603). Public housing was also provided for beggars in Jakarta, Semarang, Bandung,

22 Indisch Verslag 1933, I:333; 1935, I:288; 1936, I:316; 1937, I: 317; 1938, I:353; letter O. Veenbaas, Departement van Gezondheid, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 1-9-1948, no. 20595/G, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 928. 23 Letter F.M. Razoux Schultz, Hoofd Afdeling Gezondheidsmakingswerken en Volkshuisvesting, Departement van Gezondheid, to Burgemeester Buitenzorg, 28-7-1948, no. 17170/G; letter M. Wisaksono Wirjodiharjo, Burgemeester Buitenzorg, to Hoofd Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst Buitenzorg, 17-11-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 928. IX Construction 335

Kudus, and Salatiga, and possibly other cities as well. The policy aimed to clear the streets of the eyesore created by beggars and simultaneously put the beggars to work (Asia Raya 2-1-2602, 11-12-2602, 14-12-2602, 17-12-2602, 23-4-2603, 26-8-2604). The Forestry Department (Pusat Djawatan Kehutanan) planned to build 300 houses for its staff when it moved from Bogor to Jakarta (Asia Raya 11-9-2603). All in all, public housing was negligible during the Japanese period. In 1948 F.M. Razoux Schultz was reinstalled as state commissioner (Regeringscommissaris) on the boards of commissioners of the NV Volkshuisvesting corporations, and this signalled hopes of breathing new life into these corporations. The problems were huge. Many local directors and members of the boards of commissioners had died or left. The books of most corporations had been wholly or partially lost during the war, but fortunately the state commissioner’s central archive, which had copies of the most important paperwork of every NV Volkshuisvesting, survived the war intact. After the Japanese period, all the corporations were again in financial trouble. As had private landlords, the corporations missed out on most of the rent during the Japanese years. After 1945 they collected rents at the pre-war level, while they had to make urgent repairs at prices that had more than doubled since 1942. Meanwhile, the debts to their creditors, foremost the pension funds and the life insurance company Nillmij, had steadily mounted. Although the financial risk was ultimately borne by the central government, which stood surety for every NV Volkshuisvesting, it was unlikely that any NV Volkshuisvesting would ever play a significant role again.24 One by one, the corporations were liquidated. The NV Volkshuisvesting Buitenzorg sold its vacant land in 1949; the sale helped to reduce its debt but also ruled out the possibility of future new buildings.25 In Surabaya the municipal housing office (Dinas Rumah) took over the stock of the NV Volkshuisvesting (Dick 2002a:213). However, as late as 1960 the NV Volkshuisvesting Surabaya published an annual report, which gives the impression of an inactive company, with an income covering barely half the expenditures.26 The NV Volkshuisvesting Semarang had plans to resume work in 1950, but before long the whole stock was handed over to the Municipal

24 Letter Dr. J.E. Karamoy, Hoofd Departement van Gezondheid, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 2-12-1948, no. 31590/G, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 933; letter O. Veenbaas, on behalf of Secretaris van Staat Departement van Gezondheid, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 1-9-1948, no. 20597/G, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 928. 25 Letter F.M. Razoux Schultz, Regeringscommissaris voor Volkshuisvesting, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon in Indonesië, 18-3-1949, no. V 7/2; and Notitie A. Oudt, Thesaurier-Generaal, 7-6-1949, no. 69525, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 933. 26 N.V. Volkshuisvesting [Surabaya], Laporan tahunan 1960, Arsip Surabaya Box 299, no. 4932. 336 Under construction

Housing Corporation (Perusahaan Rumah Semarang) (Antara 18-2-1950/A; Djawatan Penerangan Semarang 1952:122). The NV Volkshuisvesting in Jakarta sold houses in 1951 and planned to use the proceeds for new building activity. In 1955 the company decided to sell all remaining houses and reinvest the profit (Antara 18-10-1951/B, 10-2-1955/B, 9-11-1956/A); the sale no doubt took place, but there is no evidence the profit was reinvested and it is more than likely the sale heralded the end of the company. The NV Volkshuisvesting Makassar survived for another 15 years, but was liquidated in 1960 or 1961. At that time the records were in a jumble; the director knew neither the number of houses the corporation still owned nor the identity of all the occupants. The directorate wanted to sell off the houses and to invest the profit in the Jajasan Kas Pembangunan (a new development fund). In principle, the legal occupants were given priority for purchasing a house, but some legal occupants had been chased away and their houses had been taken – ‘requisitioned’ – by others.27 Probably the other NV Volkshuisvesting corporations were terminated in a similar way, or simply faded away. The last phase of Dutch colonialism, 1945-1949, saw new initiatives in public housing. In December 1948 the federal government of Indonesia decided to build 780 semi-permanent houses (for a sum of ƒ 5,000,000) at various locations in Jakarta, in anticipation of the larger project in Kebayoran Baru, and this decision can be taken as the restarting of post-war public housing.28 In several ways Kebayoran Baru marked the transition from colonialism to independence: envisaged in the late colonial period as part of the work of reconstruction, but carried out largely after independence as part of the development of the national capital of a new nation. Completely new plans were drawn up after 1949 in the spirit of the newly won independence.

Public housing in independent times

The seminal Congress on Healthy Public Housing (Kongres Perumahan Rakjat Sehat), held in Bandung from 25 to 31 August 1950, both in a symbolic and a practical sense marked the start of public housing in independent Indonesia (Figure 33). Administrators from all provinces, cities, and towns congregated with technical experts to discuss the housing needs of the young

27 Rapat Dewan Komisaris NV Volkshuisvesting Makassar, 22-10-1960; letter Tan Siong Lien, Direktur NV Volkshuisvesting Makassar, to Walikota, Kepala Daerah Djakarta Raya, Makassar, 7-3-1961, no. 11/NV/61, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 79. 28 Letter A.M. Semawi, Secretaris van Staat Waterstaat en Wederopbouw, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon in Indonesië, 7-12-1948, no. G1/1/11, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 931. Figure 33. Poster for Congress on Healthy Public Housing (Kongres Perumahan Rakjat Sehat), 25 August 1950. Source: Tjatatan Laporan Konggres Perumahan Rakjat Sehat, Bandung 25 Agustus 1950, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden Republik Indonesia 1950- 1959 1268; courtesy of Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, Jakarta. 338 Under construction republic. Six papers (referred to by the old Dutch name of prae-adviezen) were presented, five by Indonesian experts and only one by a Dutchman. Participants also made field trips in Bandung and they could study an exhibition of photographs.29 The spirit at the congress was that the housing situation of the less-well- to-do masses could finally be improved now that colonial interests no longer predominated. In a paper by Soeandi and Soekander, the minimal standards for a house were sketched, taking constructional, economic, social, hygienic, and pedagogic factors into account. This imagined minimal house was made up of a main building of 36 sq m and an annex of 17.5 sq m. The main building consisted of a living room, a dining room, and two bedrooms, and the annex contained a kitchen, bathroom, and a toilet. This house, Soeandi and Soekander emphasized, was a dwelling quite distinct from the house with a floor space of 15 sq m designed by Thomas Karsten for Mlaten (Semarang). The Dutch had only looked at public housing from an economic perspective. A person who spends childhood living in a house that is too small and unhealthy ‘will have a sense of inferiority (minderwaardigheidscomplex [in Dutch]). It was apparently this characteristic the colonizer wished to inculcate in the spirit of the colonized people’.30 Fortunately, Indonesians were now independent and had to shake off this feeling of inferiority as quickly as possible.31 Size was not the only aspect that mattered, houses also had to promote health. A healthy house needed sufficient openings for air circulation and allowed some sunlight to enter. The second requirement for a healthy house was a floor made of tiles or concrete, which could be swabbed down every day (Antara 13-11-1952/A). The Congress on Healthy Public Housing drew three conclusions. First, technical standards following the ideal sketched by Soeandi and Soekander were set with the aim of constructing houses that were healthy in both a physical and a social sense. Second, the local government should take the lead in the construction of large numbers of houses meeting these minimal standards. There was a sense of urgency in this respect, because, while the state sat idly by, squatters built new insalubrious houses. Pictures of unhygienic living conditions in kampongs demonstrated this deplorable fact. Besides, if new houses were not built rapidly, people would become dissatisfied with

29 Tjatatan Laporan Konggres Perumahan Rakjat Sehat, Bandung 25 Agustus 1950, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden Republik Indonesia 1950-1959 1268. 30 [A]kan mempunjai rasa kurang harga diri (minderwaardigheids-complex). Sifat inilah jang rupanja oleh sipendjadjah dikehendaki pada djiwa rakjat jang didjadjahnja. 31 Djawatan Penerangan Semarang 1952:125. Another indication the Indonesians wanted to shed the Dutch connection was an exhibition of American housing, displayed in the prestigious Hotel des Indes preceding the congress (Antara 26-6-1950/B). IX Construction 339 the government. (The latter point is reminiscent of the political argument for kampong improvement in colonial times.) Third, seemingly in contradiction to the second point, local housing policy should be executed by a cooperative housing association (bouwkassysteem), which would act more decisively than the official bureaucracy with its hands tied by red tape. The central government should provide financial support to kick-start these associations, and deposits by potential clients would subsequently enlarge the local funds. One week after the congress a delegation of participants presented the conclusions to President Soekarno, and a few months later a follow-up letter recapitulated the main recommendations.32 The enthusiasm of the time and the rapid acceptance of the new discourse on healthy houses (rumah sehat) was reflected in the plan of the city of Medan to sell 106 hectares of land to citizens who wanted to build ‘healthy houses’, and the optimistic statement by the Mayor of Surabaya that he would make his city a model city with good housing by building 10,000 healthy houses. In October 1950 the Department of Public Works and the Indonesian Parliament pledged support.33 The rapidly embraced concept of rumah sehat did not appear entirely out of thin air. It had been named and discussed by the leading Indonesian nationalists sitting on the Japanese-Indonesian Joint Committee for Tradition and the Organization of Government. The floor-plan of this healthy house had actually been proposed in the Committee’s meeting of 5 October 1943, but in less detail.34 In many ways the congress was right, of course, but economic constraints dampened the enthusiasm and brought lofty ideals back to reality with a bump. For instance, the city of Semarang built 55 houses according to the guidelines laid down by the congress with the assistance of a central state subsidy, but had to admit that the rents were affordable for ‘only middle-class people’ (lapisan menengah sadjalah). Therefore, the municipality drew on its own budget to build another 54 cheaper houses for the lowest income groups, but lamented that lack of funds prohibited the construction of more houses

32 Antara 2-3-1950/A, 2-8-1950/A, 24-8-1950/B, 5-9-1950/B; Djawatan Penerangan Semarang 1952:125; Herlambang 2004:31; letter R.M. Soetarjo and R. Soendjoto, Ketua and Panitera Konggres Perumahan Rakjat Sehat, to President Republik Indonesia, 12-2-1951; Tjatatan Laporan Konggres Perumahan Rakjat Sehat, Bandung 25 Agustus 1950, both attached to the aforementioned letter, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden Republik Indonesia 1950-1959 1268. A second Congress on Healthy People’s Housing, held in 1952, was far less consequential (Antara 21-8-1952/B; Berita Indonesia 13-10-1951). 33 Antara 6-9-1950/A, 24-11-1950/B; letter R.M. Soetarjo en R. Soendjoto atas nama Konggres Perumahan Rakjat Sehat kepada Presiden Republik Indonesia, 12-2-1951, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden Republik Indonesia 1950-1959 1268. 34 Meeting Kyûkan Seido Tyôsa Linkai/Panitia Adat dan Tatanegara Dahoeloe, 5-10-2603, NA, NEFIS/CMI 2241. 340 Under construction needed for hundreds of other low-income people (Djawatan Penerangan Semarang 1952:125). At the same time, Palembang sold off its first ‘people’s housing’, because at a price of Rp 57,000 they were too expensive for public housing (Antara 8-9-1952/A). Likewise, the first houses built in Surabaya with central state support were criticized as being ‘mini villas’, beyond the means of the poor (Dick 2002a:214). The design of the postcolonial villa type of house was an ironic comment on colonial society. The ideal house according to the guidelines of the Congress on Healthy Public Housing, the house that adorns the congress proceedings (Figure 33), and the first houses actually built according to the guidelines would have been considered a ‘European type’ of house in colonial times. This fact once more confirms that the designation ‘European’ and ‘indigenous’ house types refers to costs and quality and not to a design cor- responding to a particular ethnic group.35 The question of how to finance the fine, but frightfully expensive, villa- like healthy houses preoccupied the Indonesian government from the outset. An innovative way of financing and allocating houses was by local lotteries. The revenue from a lottery was used to finance construction costs, houses were given as prizes in a lottery, or – when many people wished to buy a house built by the state – the prize in a lottery was the right to buy a house.36 Although the method of financing construction through a lottery perhaps fit in well with local customs, it could not raise the necessary funds on a massive scale. The concept of the Cooperative Housing Association, or Jajasan Kas Pembangunan, formed the answer sought by government policy makers to the shortage of funds. The concept was first launched at the Congress on Healthy Public Housing of August 1950, probably by the financial genius Soemitro Djojohadikoesoemo, who had written a paper dealing with the question of how to finance housing.37 The concept was made official state policy by a decree promulgated in 1952. People who wished to set aside money for a house could deposit their savings in such an association. The central government provided the starting capital for a Jajasan Kas Pembangunan to build the first houses, and members’ savings ensured that the cashbox was replenished. Ideally, the financing and construction cycle would be

35 See further Chapter IV. 36 Antara 11-4-1951/A; 24-12-1952/A, 13-8-1953/B; Dick 2002a:214; Djawatan Penerangan Semarang 1952:49-50. 37 Tjatatan Laporan Konggres Perumahan Rakjat Sehat, Bandung 25 Agustus 1950, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden Republik Indonesia 1950-1959 1268. At the time of the congress Soemitro Djojohadikoesoemo was poised to become Minister for Trade and Industry in the Natsir cabinet (September 1950-March 1951); he would also serve as Minister for Finance in other cabinets (Feith 1962:150). IX Construction 341 repeated endlessly (Dick 2002a:215; Herlambang 2004:31). The Jajasan Kas Pembangunan replaced the NV Volkshuisvesting, but was financed in a different way. The capital came from the central government and from members. The houses were to be sold, and the money from the sales was to be reinvested. In theory the profit from the sales together with members’ deposits guaranteed that far more houses could be built than had been done by the colonial NV Volkshuisvesting. The NV Volkshuisvesting, after all, had rented out its houses and used the rents mostly for the upkeep of the houses and not to invest in new construction work.38 An important step was the establishment of the national Djawatan Peroemahan Rakjat (soon spelled Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat, People’s Housing Department) in 1951. It replaced the Central Foundation for Reconstruction (Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw), which had been liquidated three months before the Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat was founded. The Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat allocated state funds, where possible through the local Jajasan Kas Pembangunan. From the outset the Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat was also charged with the tasks of collecting data about the need for housing, setting building prescriptions, solving technical problems, drawing standard designs, launching new ideas about general housing policy, and finding answers to the question of how to finance construction.39 In short, it also acted as a think-tank. The Jajasan Kas Pembangunan fared differently in various cities. Jakarta had a Jajasan Kas Pembangunan as early as 1952 (Antara 17-3-1952/B; Berita Indonesia 12-3-1952). The Jajasan Kas Pembangunan Bandung was founded in 1953, with considerable financial support from the municipality; the Mayor became – ex-officio? – head of the foundation (Antara 31-12-1953/A). The active Jajasan Kas Pembangunan Surakarta built 300 houses, with prices varying from Rp 13,000 to Rp 20,000; it experimented with alternative building materials in an effort to bring the cost price down (Antara 20-1-1957/B). No fewer than ten Jajasan Kas Pembangunan had been founded in East Java by 1954, but only the one in Jember had actually built any houses at that time. The Jajasan Kas Pembangunan Surabaya was the last to be founded in East Java, but a year after its creation it already had 500 members and had built 30 houses selling for Rp 30,000 each. The next year, 1956, the number of houses built at least doubled. The decision of the Jajasan Kas Pembangunan Surabaya to increase the price of the remaining building sum by 20% ‘to cover administrative costs’ predictably roused a storm of protest from its members

38 The idea to build houses for rent was mentioned as an alternative to Jajasan Kas Pembangunan (Berita Indonesia 12-3-1952), but this idea was not pursued. 39 Notulen vergadering Raad van Beheer Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, 30-6-1950, private collection R.J. Clason; Antara 21-8-1952/B; Berita Indonesia 23-1-1952; Herlambang 2004:31. 342 Under construction

Table 21. Number of houses financed by Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat, 1951-1954 Province 1951 1952 1953 1954 West Java and Jakarta 244 402 333 245 Central Java 281 444 225 258 Yogyakarta 62 73 65 0 Eastern Java 430 507 289 216 North Sumatra 62 10 35 40 Central Sumatra 25 176 12 20 South Sumatra 6 80 80 25 Kalimantan 63 413 90 50 Sulawesi 24 69 0 25 Eastern Indonesia 20 60 130 30 Total 1,217 2,234 1,259 909

Sources: Indonesia Raya 23-2-1954; Antara 27-1-1955/B.

who were still waiting for a house (Antara 4-8-1954/A, 26-9-1954/A-B, 25-12- 1955/A-B, 27-7-1956/A). The Jajasan Kas Pembangunan Palembang was almost wholly financed by the Standard Vacuum Oil Company (Stanvac). The company donated Rp 500,000, and stood surety for a bank loan. Moreover, the oil company lent Rp 1,200,000 interest free, but this amount was earmarked for the construction of houses for its own personnel. Later the company donated another Rp 400,000. Not surprisingly, the Jajasan Kas Pembangunan in Palembang was accused of building only for Stanvac. Presumably for this reason, the Jajasan Kas Pembangunan Palembang was established anew in 1956, this time without the close tie to Stanvac (Antara 19-12-1952/A, 19-12-1953/A, 19-4-1956/A; Berita Indonesia 22-3-1954). The administration of Makassar was lukewarm about the scheme for a Jajasan Kas Pembangunan. In 1953, when the central Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat offered a loan of Rp 600,000 to build 40 houses in Makassar, one councillor called the loan a ‘Sinterklaas present to us from a central government body’. The municipal administration received 1,076 requests for just one of the houses. The municipal council, however, concluded that the financial conditions of the loan put the houses beyond reach of low-income people and it was therefore unacceptable. The council ordered the municipal government to renegotiate the terms of the Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat loan, or else reject the offer.40 In 1955 the council decided to establish a Jajasan Kas

40 ‘[H]adiah Sinterklaas [a Dutch Father Christmas-like character] dari suatu Instansi Pusat IX Construction 343

Pembangunan after all.41 In sum, the Jajasan Kas Pembangunan evoked varying responses. The city of Makassar and several cities in East Java seemed to establish one only under pressure from the central Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat; in some places the founding was no more than a symbolic gesture. According to Johan Silas (2005:12), 200 Jajasan Kas Pembangunan were established in the space of two years, and it is unthinkable that they all actually built houses. In other places, however, specific parties recognized the potential of the Jajasan Kas Pembangunan to help solve their own housing problems and were eager to control the associations; for instance, Stanvac in Palembang and the local administration, via the Mayor, in Bandung.

The balance sheet of public housing in the 1950s

How many houses were actually built by the state after the transfer of sovereignty? The houses financed by the Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat formed no more relief for the overstrained housing market than one biscuit for a raft full of shipwrecked persons. Most, if not all, of these houses must have been built in towns and cities (Table 21).42 After a flying start in 1951, the year of the Department’s inception, the number almost doubled; it peaked the next year, 1952, but thereafter sank to a mere 900 houses in 1954. This number was very small compared to the number of houses built by the private sector. For instance, the year the Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat financed 900 houses, 1954, the private sector applied for 5,400 building permits in Surabaya alone (Antara 15-2-1955/A). The obvious explanation for the declining building volume despite all good intentions is the quick reduction in the central government’s contribu-

Table 22. Investments made by Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat, 1951-1954 1951 1952 1953 1954 Total investments 20.3 25.5 20.4 15.0 Total investments in 1951 prices 20.3 24.0 18.4 12.8

Investments in millions of rupiahs. The deflator used to calculate investments in 1951 prices is the general deflator calculated by Van der Eng (2002). Source: Antara 27-1-1955/B. kepada kita.’ Rapat pleno DPRD Kota Besar Makassar, 24-6-1953, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 155a. It is not clear from the minutes whether such renegotiation took place or whether the council discussed the offer before or after actual construction. 41 Rapat Seksi Teknik DPRD Makassar, 7-3-1955, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 157. 42 The 1952 and 1953 figures for West Java include 60 and 44 houses in Jakarta respectively. 344 Under construction tion to the Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat (Table 22). Even in the top year, 1952, actual expenditure fell short of the Rp 30,000,000 budgeted, and in 1953 actual spending was even Rp 7,000,000 less than what was budgeted.43 The reduction in state expenditures on housing was even larger when inflation is taken into account. The Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat complained that 0.1% of the Indonesian state budget was spent on housing, compared to, for instance, 2% of the Netherlands budget (Indonesia Raya 23-2-1954). To put these housing investments into perspective, the construction of the Jalan Thamrin, the 4-km stretch of road that connected the centre with Kebayoran, cost Rp 15,000,000 between 1952 and 1955; the total 1953 budget of the Department for Public Works was Rp 688,000,000 (Antara 22-12-1953/B, 16-2-1955/B). At the end of the day, housing was not a top priority of the central government. The picture of government investment in housing was a little rosier, however, as scattered evidence shows that the Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat was not the only state institution that financed public housing. One major builder was the Ministry for Labour (Departemen Keburuhan), which in one project reserved Rp 1,760,000 to build 68 houses in Semarang. The Ministry built another 110 houses (at Rp 5,400,000) to be inhabited by 1,000 bachelor dock workers in Tanjung Priok, the port of Jakarta. By 1955 it claimed it had invested Rp 11,000,000 in houses in Tanjung Priok, Surabaya, Semarang, Bandung, and Cirebon.44 Other state institutions that built houses were the local administrations of Bandung and Padang, which built 70 and 20 houses respectively from their own budgets (Antara 7-1-1952/A-B, 26-8-1952/A). None of these other government institutions built enough to substantially alleviate the shortage.45 Construction was hampered by relentless inflation. The Ministry for Labour increased the initial budget for the 110 houses in Tanjung Priok from Rp 3,300,000 to Rp 5,400,000 to fill holes in the budget produced by rising prices. When the budget for a project was fixed, the number of houses built was lowered to balance the budget. For instance, when Rp 1,800,000 proved

43 Antara 16-10-1951/B, 16-7-1953/A. Other sources mention a budget of even Rp 40,000,000 or Rp 43,000,000 for public housing in 1953 (Antara 26-5-1953/B, 7-11-1952/B), so that the discrepancy between budgeted and realized sum must have been even larger. 44 Antara 17-12-1951/B, 6-7-1952/A-B, 1-8-1952/A, 23-9-1952/B, 15-1-1955/B; Berita Indonesia 26-9-1951, 5-6-1952. 45 Antara announced the most important building projects, planned, under construction, and completed. It is impossible to draw a solid conclusion from these reports, as an unknown number of the projects announced were never built, and those which were built often did not have the same number of units as had been planned. The risk of counting houses twice is considerable. Nevertheless, it is clear that the number of houses built with state funds (other than from the Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat) cannot have been more than 500 in any of the years 1950- 1955. IX Construction 345 insufficient to build 100 houses in the port of Surabaya, the plan was first scaled down to 58 houses, and eventually probably no more than 48 were actually built. By the time the building programme in the port of Surabaya was terminated, in 1953, a mere 113 of the envisaged 450 workers’ houses had been built (Antara 17-12-1951/B, 1-4-1952/A, 27-7-1952/A-B, 5-5-1953/A). Eventually, rapid inflation eroded the funds available and brought public housing to a standstill. Inflation was especially ruinous for the local Jajasan Kas Pembangunan, because members noticed to their horror that their savings evaporated without returning any concrete result; shocked, they no longer deposited savings in it (Keijser 1994:80; Silas 2005:12). The more inescapable became the conclusion that it was impossible for the state to build houses for everybody, the more the state retreated into a policy of serving only its own employees. The state move to reserve public housing predominantly for civil servants had already begun shortly before the transfer of sovereignty. In 1949, the government decided to let the Housing Allocation Bureau distribute 1,400 houses in Kebayoran to civil servants and the most urgent cases of house-seekers.46 The changed focus in public housing was accompanied by an almost imperceptible shift in the way the state presented the housing crisis: from estimates of the total housing shortage to estimates of the number of new dwellings needed for civil servants. For instance, in 1950 the Housing Allocation Bureau Jakarta reported that 4,800 out of 6,000 planned new houses were required for civil servants (here they still mentioned the total number of new houses needed). Two years later, the Surabaya administration merely counted the number of houses needed for civil servants: 2,500. By 1953 and 1954, the housing problem was being debated exclusively in terms of the shortage of houses for civil servants in Medan, Palembang, Makassar and Manado (Antara 26-9-1950/A, 11-12-1952/A, 13-3-1953/B, 13-2-1954/A). Some officials served their own interests quite blatantly. The first four houses built by the Public Works Department of Makassar were meant for the four urban planners.47 The construction of ten military officers’ houses in Semarang was financed by the sale of 6,000 ‘mutual assistance letters’ (surat gotong rojong) to soldiers of the garrison (Antara 19-10-1955/A). The privates were given this unique opportunity to show their solidarity with their commanders starting from 5 October 1955, the tenth anniversary of the army. By the time people were moved to make room for the Asian Games in Jakarta, in 1962, it seemed

46 Letter A.Th. Bogaardt, Secretaris van Staat Sociale Zaken, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 9-12-1949, no. H 2-21-13, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1061; Notulen vergadering Raad van Beheer Centrale Stichting Wederopbouw, 28-7-1950, private collection R.J. Clason. 47 Letter J.Th. Droop, Direktur Pekerjaan Umum, to Acting Walikota Makassar, 19-11-1951, no. 1396-79-00, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 340. 346 Under construction quite natural that the state built houses only for relocated civil servants (at Kampong Slipi) and not for other displaced residents.48 Nevertheless, it is too easy to depict the prioritizing of civil servants as sheer selfishness. Many civil servants had to lodge in hotels for want of a private dwelling, and the costs to the state were substantial. According to one estimate, the state annually spent Rp 12,000,000 on hotel costs in Jakarta alone, and Rp 35,000,000 in the whole of Indonesia (Antara 13-2-1954/A , 28-4-1954/B). This was more than double the total budget of the Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat for that year. At least as late as 1959, civil servants occupied 302 rooms in two hotels in Jakarta (Perkampungan Asian Games 1959). In Medan, 600 civil servants lived in 200 hotel rooms and 400 rooms in guesthouses, which cost Rp 15-20 per official per day. This came down to almost Rp 4,000,000 for the year 1953. Three years later the same number of civil servants still lived in hotels and guesthouses; annual hotel costs equalled the construction cost of over 200 modest houses (Antara 13-3-1953/B, 15-3-1956/A, 29-8-1956/A). In other words, the expenditures on hotels of those three years would have been enough to build houses for all the civil servants who lived in hotels in Medan. The investment in the construction of houses for civil servants could easily have been recovered. Arguably the first major building project after Kebayoran Baru was Kampong Grogol in West Jakarta. Grogol was built to house civil servants who moved in the wake of the shift of the seat of the central government from Yogyakarta back to Jakarta. The Jajasan Kas Pembangunan Kotapradja Djakarta Raya began by building 60 houses as substitute for rented hotel rooms, but it lacked sufficient funds for a building programme on a larger scale. The project really got under way when the Bank Industri Negara (State Bank for Industry) financed the construction of 887 houses on 37 hectares in Grogol. Some of the houses were destined for the bank’s staff, but most of the houses would be sold to the state, which would resell or rent the houses to civil servants. The actual construction was undertaken by contractors.49 The fact that the head of the Djawatan Tata Ruangan Negara (State Agency for Spatial Planning, the successor of the Central Planning Board), Hadinoto, was one of the two main architects indicates the importance the central government ascribed to the project. Grogol was important not only for practical reasons, it was also imbued with a high symbolic value, as the first major project initiated after Independence; Kebayoran Baru was a legacy from the

48 Keputusan Let.Kol. Soetikno Loekito Disastro, Ketua Penguasa Perang Daerah SW I Djakarta Raya, Panitia Ad Hoc Pembangunan, 8-9-1961, no. 001/PAP/VIII/1961, ANRI, Soetikno Lukito Disastro 1959-1960 16. 49 Antara 16-7-1953/A, 18-7-1953/B, 1-2-1954/B, 28-4-1954/B, 22-5-1954/B; Indonesia Raya 17-6- 1954. IX Construction 347 final stage of colonialism.50 The argument that building houses for civil servants was necessary to reduce hotel costs could not be applied to another state policy that favoured civil servants. This other policy accorded civil servants preferential treatment when the state began to sell off its housing stock in 1955; this involved 4,800 houses in Java and Madura.51 In Jakarta, the occupants (all civil servants) had the first pick of the government houses for sale. Other civil servants who did not occupy a house belonging to the state had second choice, taking precedence over occupants who were not civil servants. Presumably, occupants of the latter category were required to leave if a civil servant wanted their house. Civil servants could acquire the houses by a rental-purchase system, and the professed aim was to raise funds for new construction activities and to cut down on the maintenance costs of rental dwellings. A national regulation pertaining to this was issued in 1955; only civil servants who had been employed for at least ten years were eligible. What is more, if civil servants paid in instalments over 20 years, inflation made their monthly repayments trifling when compared to the value of the house.52 Incidentally, selling municipal houses to non-civil servants, although illegal, did occur. The head of the housing authority in Bandung (Bagian Perusahaan Perumahan Kotabesar Bandung) and an accomplice were arrested for accepting bribes of between Rp 1,000 and Rp 3,000 for the sale of 14 municipal houses to non-civil servants (Antara 28-12-1956/A). Whatever the professed aim may have been, the reality was that civil servants were given the chance to purchase houses at a low price. Retired officials in Medan recall how they obtained their house in this way. One woman told me that she got a job at the municipality (haminte) in 1954, because her father, who was a teacher, knew the Mayor. Another contact, a former pupil of her

50 Herlambang 2004. The buying out of landowners in Grogol was prepared in 1948, hence still in colonial times, but without definite plans of what to do with the land. Besluit Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal 30-8-1948, no. 6 (Staatsblad van Indonesië 205/1948); Besluit Resident, Hoofd Tijdelijk Bestuur Batavia, 21-9-1948, no. A.Z. /309, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 929. 51 The timing is conspicuous; were political parties in government trying to buy civil servants’ votes in the 1955 elections? 52 Antara 9-9-1955/B, 28-9-1955/A; Djoemadjitin et al. 1977:123; Mackie 1967:87; Madjalah Kota Medan 3/19 1956:28-9; Undang-undang darurat 1955/19 tentang pendjualan rumah2 Negeri kepada pegawai negeri. The municipal policy of Semarang was an exception in this respect. The municipality sold 2,000 houses from before the war with rents below Rp 30, a rent that was insufficient to cover maintenance costs. Occupants would have the first choice, and tenants who could not afford to buy would be left in peace (Antara 4-7-1955/A). The municipal government of Surabaya, in contrast, considered selling its houses to well-to-do private tenants (but whether this proposal was carried out is unclear). Letter R. Soejitno Sosrodidjojo, Kepala Dinas Perkembangan Kota, to Ketua DPRDS Kota Besar Surabaja, 30-4-1953, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1940, no. 50399. 348 Under construction father, who was head of the municipal housing department and a member of the municipal council, helped her to rent one of the municipal dwellings built in Kampung Djati Oeloe in colonial times. In 1958 the municipality sold the houses and land. The houses were sold exclusively to civil servants, but some new owners soon resold their dwellings to private persons and reaped a windfall profit. My informant was allowed to pay the purchase sum over 20 years, but she had paid all instalments in five years. Another informant, who lost his parents in the social revolution in North Sumatra, obtained a civil service job via his uncle, the Head (Wali) of Negara Sumatera Timoer, around 1949. He moved into a municipal dwelling, which (according to the contract) he bought on 15 December 1958 for Rp 4,972. He paid cash for the house, but did not have the money to buy the land. He was never asked, however, to pay rent for the land. Both the female and male informants upgraded and expanded their houses, because there was ample land around the main dwelling. Two striking elements in both stories are, first, they considered the purchase a good deal, and, second, they obtained the job and the house via social networks and not because of their formal qualifications. Howard Dick (2002a:215) has remarked of the public housing initiatives in Surabaya: ‘the rate of construction hardly made a dent in the overall housing shortage, but it eased the housing crisis for an expanding government bureaucracy and the armed forces’. On balance, this assertion applied to post-Independence public housing in other cities as well.

The rise of the concept of self-help housing

While public housing policy shrank to the question of how the bureaucracy could house itself, some people continued to worry about how the government could help the masses. The government gradually found a solution, at least on paper, for the lack of state funds for construction: it laid increasingly more stress on the responsibility of the people at large to help resolve the housing shortage. In the eyes of policy makers, the Jajasan Kas Pembangunan (Cooperative Housing Associations) therefore had the task of mobilizing the ‘oto-aktiviteit’ (self-help) of the people (Antara 21-8-1952/B, 7-11-1952/B, 8-1-1954/A, 4-8-1954/A). The call for self-help came first and foremost from the growing recognition that the state was failing to provide housing for everybody. Fortuitously, the appeal to the people was in tune with the then prevalent post-revolutionary discourse on cooperatives and mutual assistance (gotong royong) as defining features of the Indonesian nation. A key advocate of the concept of self-help housing was the engineer Hadinoto, who held a great deal of power by combining several functions. Hadinoto had replaced Thijsse as head of the Central Planning Bureau, and, IX Construction 349 if I am not mistaken, subsequently became head of the Djawatan Perumahan Rakjat as well. He also headed the Lembaga Penjelidikan Masalah-Masalah Bangunan (Research Institute for Building Issues), which was established by the Department for Public Works and Labour in 1953 (Silas 2005:13) and became a professor at the Universitas Indonesia. In his inaugural lecture at the Universitas Indonesia, given in 1955, Hadinoto argued that the only viable strategy to provide shelter on a large scale was to encourage self-help housing. Owner-builders should work on the basis of mutual help with other owner-builders. The government’s task was to provide assistance in the form of research, demonstrations of new building techniques, models, and direc- tives (Hadinoto 1955). When Hadinoto gave his lecture, the concept of aided self-help housing had already been around for some time. Aided self-help housing had its roots in Europe after the First World War, and was implemented on a larger scale in British colonies and former colonies in the Caribbean and in India. The concept was endorsed by many Third World countries and the World Bank in the 1960s and 1970s (Harris 1998, 1999, 2008). Hence, the embedding of self-help housing into the idiosyncratic Indonesian discourse on gotong royong was a localized form of a global idea. A striking element in the rise of self-help housing in Indonesia was the strong international orientation of policy makers at the time. The concept was on the agenda of the ECAFE (UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East) conference on housing, held in New Delhi in January 1954. Hadinoto had been one of the two Indonesian delegates; the other was Soepangkat.53 The same year, the Indonesian Ministry for Public Works and Labour invited experts from the American Foreign Operations Administration (FOA) to give advice. In 1954, the FOA experts Virgil L. Bankson, economist, Charles Fuller, architect and urban planner, Keith Hinchcliff, an expert in aided self- help housing, and an unidentified fourth authority arrived in Jakarta. Two of them visited Palembang to advise the American oil company Stanvac. The fact that half of the FOA team helped their compatriots in Stanvac was not an auspicious sign for the intended ordinary Indonesian recipients of this aid. A project more helpful than aiding Stanvac was the construction of ten experimental houses in Kebayoran, which simultaneously formed a training ground for Indonesian extension officers. At Kebayoran Baru, the FOA engineers experimented in particular with techniques to preserve the wooden parts of a house, techniques that had already been applied in India, the Philippines, and South Vietnam. The experimental houses cost Rp 27,000

53 Excerpt Risalah Konperensi Walikota I, November 1954, ANRI, Kabinet President 1950- 1959 205; Antara 6-2-1954/B; Nieuw Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 30-12-1953, 23-1-1954. 350 Under construction each, but the costs were reduced to Rp 8,000 with the help of mutual cooperation (gotong royong) at a pilot project in eastern Jakarta. In the next phase, a team of Indonesian experts, trained at the Kebayoran Baru project site, toured the country to explain to local people how houses could be improved.54 The FOA project seems to have been a classic case of the then current benevolent, donor-led development assistance that upheld ‘modernization’ as its greatest goal. The outcome of this particular project is unknown to me, but we can safely assume that such a top-down extension service failed to respond to the real needs of the intended beneficiaries. Moreover, the proposed solutions were probably poorly adjusted to local circumstances and too expensive.55 As development experts have learnt from over half a century of post-war aid, any development intervention can have a lasting effect only if members of the target group participate in the decision-making process. When projects are introduced from the outside, particularly if they come from donors with a different cultural background, and when local stakehold- ers do not have a degree of control over the execution of the development projects, ‘the potential for disappointment and disaster is high’. ‘Only when the supposed beneficiaries of development interventions participate in the planning and implementation of the projects […] will they have any real interest in making development projects succeed’.56 A new international impetus to the Indonesian debate on housing came from a housing conference held in Bandung from 20 to 29 June 1955, in the same building where just weeks before the large Asia-Africa Conference had been held. It was a follow-up to the ECAFE Conference held in New Delhi the previous year. The 14 countries present in Bandung were all members of ECAFE: India, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, South Vietnam, Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia, Ceylon, Taiwan, and Indonesia itself. The Indonesian delegation was led by Hadinoto.57 One

54 Antara 9-4-1954/A, 22-4-1954/A, 15-1-1955/B, 7-10-1956/A-B. Another project of the Indonesian-FOA development cooperation was the sending of five Indonesian civil servants to study public housing at American universities for one year. Nine Indonesian experts went on a study tour to London (Antara 4-1-1955/A, 30-12-1955/A, 17-7-1955/A-B). 55 Probably more successful was a small, long-standing project in Bandung, where two experimental buildings used 30% less bamboo than ordinary bamboo dwellings (Antara 21-10- 1951/A-B). These buildings may have fulfilled a need felt by the local people themselves, namely to economize on the use of bamboo. 56 The quotes are from Nolan (2002:21) and Gardner and Lewis (1996:112) respectively; see also Adams 1982:97, 100; Nolan 2002:21, 160-7; Schech and Haggis 2000:51, 97; Schrijvers 1997; Thomas 2000b:35; Gardner and Lewis 1996:94-101, 110-3; Hewitt 2000:293-6. 57 Among the delegation in Bandung was a certain engineer Susilo, then head of the Forestry Department. I was unable to identify this person with certainty, but probably he was the same person as the well-known former collaborator of Karsten and Thijsse (Van Roosmalen, personal communication). IX Construction 351 upshot of the conference was the establishment of a UN Regional Housing Centre in Bandung, which was built on the Lembaga Penjelidikan Masalah- Masalah Bangunan (Research Institute for Building Issues), founded two years earlier. The new UN Regional Housing Centre would document housing in Asian tropical countries, search for local alternatives for imported building materials, conduct research (especially on the preservation of wood, bamboo, lime, and clay), educate people, and disseminate new insights. The FOA and International Labour Organization provided this research institute with assistance.58 Given all the functions that were united in Hadinoto, it is no surprise that the tasks of the Regional Housing Centre were identical with the tasks of the state as summed up by Hadinoto in his inaugural lecture at the Universitas Indonesia. Parallel to the work of the UN Regional Housing Centre, research by Indonesian engineers was stimulated by a competition held by the Indonesian Association of Engineers (Persatuan Insinjur Indonesia). Architects were invited to submit designs for public housing. The contributions were to be evalu- ated on: health; the use of cheap, locally available building materials; facilities in the house; satisfaction of users; and building costs. The prizes were five foreign study tours lasting from two to six months (Antara 19-1-1956/B). The cynical aspect of these initiatives is the large amount of funds that went into policy making compared to the funds set aside for actual construction, at a time when building capital was so desperately needed. The Ministry for Public Works budgeted Rp 32,000,000 for public housing in 1956, of which no less than Rp 7,000,000 went to Hadinoto’s new Lembaga Penjelidikan Masalah-Masalah Bangunan and only Rp 20,000,000 to actual construction work (Antara 2-2-1956/A). What is even more outrageous is that the FOA, now renamed International Cooperation Administration, budgeted Rp 30,000,000 to construct houses for 150 American expatriates in Semarang and Yogyakarta (Antara 24-11-1955/A), a sum that was 50% higher than the total Indonesian state budget for construction of public housing in the whole of the country. Worst of all was the failure of the research to produce tangible improvements. At the founding of the Lembaga Penjelidikan Masalah- Masalah Bangunan the Minister for Public Works and Labour stated that the aim was to develop construction methods that would lower building costs and were easily learned by self-help builders. Johan Silas (2005:13) has concluded that the Lembaga Penjelidikan Masalah-Masalah Bangunan, the Regional Housing Centre, and their present successor, PUSLITBANGKIM,

58 Antara 11-6-1955/A, 19-6-1955/A, 21-6-1955/A, 23-6-1955/A, 30-6-1955/A; Silas 2005:13. Another foreign counterpart was the Lembaga Pendidikan Masalah Bangunan-Bangunan of the UN (Antara 27-1-1955/B); I do not know which UN department was meant, but in English the name would translate into something like UN Institute for Instruction in Building Problems. 352 Under construction have never achieved this ideal. In a way, therefore, there was a gap between policy aims and practice: the policy of self-help housing was not properly implemented. It was not the recipients, the kampong residents, that were to blame for this ‘failure’, but the inappropriate donor-driven ideas, disseminated top-down. David Mosse, however, has argued that such a verdict – critical as it may sound – still erroneously suggests that development policy has the general aim of solving a problem. In contrast to this ‘instrumental’ approach to policy, Mosse argues that development policies are driven by the exigencies of development organizations and the need to maintain relationships between the various organizations. Development chains from donors to counterparts in Third World countries strive hard to keep up the appearance of a coherent policy (Mosse 2005:1-20, 230-2). In the case of self-help housing, the Indonesian Lembaga Penjelidikan Masalah-Masalah Bangunan, American Foreign Operations Administration, and perhaps the International Labour Organization and Indonesian Ministry for Public Works all cooperated, or conspired, to maintain the façade of the concept of self-help housing. The mutually reinforced credibility of this development concept helped the institutes to perpetuate their own existence and to generate a stream of development funds. In that sense, the concept of self-help housing was successful. And, lest we forget, urban kampong residents continued to build their houses without ever having heard of the concept of ‘self-help housing’.

Conclusion

The impact of decolonization on public housing was small, partly because the role of public housing itself in the provision of housing was marginal, both before and after Independence. Public housing even played a minor role in the market segment in which it was strongest: lower-middle-class housing. It left the lion’s share of construction to real-estate developers, companies housing their own staff, and individuals building one or a few houses. Financial constraints put severe limits on what was achieved, for various reasons, by whichever of the three state-run financing systems was tried out: gemeentelijke woningbedrijf; NV Volkshuisvesting; and Jajasan Kas Pembangunan. Financial constraints ruled out the possibility that public housing could reach all classes of society. Ann Stoler has argued that the colonial venture was a middle-class affair; the elite flocked to the support of those Europeans who failed to keep up middle-class appearances and thereby damaged the prestige of the colonial overlords (Stoler 1989:149-53). She could have included public housing in building up her case. However, to state now that the example of colonial IX Construction 353 public housing fully supports her argument would do less than justice to the efforts of Surabaya, Semarang, and, to a lesser extent, several other municipalities to build dwellings for coolies and other low-income indigenous people. Nevertheless, looking at the record of the gemeentelijke woningbe drijven and NV Volkshuisvesting corporations, Stoler has a point. The target group of both institutions usually consisted of people with a middle-class lifestyle and formal education, who lacked the income to rent a middle-class house on the free market. In most municipalities people who, according to the municipal administration, by income and lifestyle ‘belonged’ to the kampong were not eligible for public housing; their housing situation was expected to be upgraded by kampong improvement. In practice, a disproportionate number of beneficiaries were lower-ranking civil servants, often, but certainly not exclusively, of European, and more particularly Eurasian, background. The IEV was a staunch supporter of public housing, believing that although kampong houses may have suited the purse of these civil servants, it was not appropriate to their social standing. After Independence, logically two options about what should be done with this institute, which favoured lower-middle-class Europeans, seemed open to the Republican government: either to abolish public housing or to broaden its target group. I do not know whether the government ever formulated the question of what to do with public housing in this way. What is certain is that, at the seminal Congress on Healthy Public Housing of 1950, the professed target group was broadened to include the whole urban population of Indonesia, and the ideal standard for public housing was raised to the middle-class type of dwelling, in contrast to the degradingly small houses from colonial times. However, reality soon diverted attention from these initial revolutionary ideals. The limited state funds, gradually eroded by inflation, called for austerity measures, and public housing construction declined again in the mid-1950s. The more it dawned on administrators that they were unable to build for the masses, the more they restricted public housing to a policy of housing civil servants. This favouritism was both tacit and overt. Up to a certain point the preferential treatment of civil servants was sound financial policy, because costs of the hundreds of civil servants who lived permanently in hotels were a serious drain on the state budget. However, when the state sold its houses (almost) exclusively to civil servants with huge subsidies, civil servants were favoured in an unjustifiable manner. At the end of the day, while the professed target group was broadened after the transfer of sovereignty, the target group reached was narrowed down even more exclusively to civil servants. Hard economic reality overruled the initially optimistic political ideals immediately after Independence. In hindsight, the post-colonial turn of events puts the colonial public 354 Under construction housing in a different light. As to the main colonial beneficiaries, described as lower-middle-class European (or Eurasian) civil servants, the emphasis should be on civil servants, and not, as Stoler asserts, on lower-middle-class Europeans. The shift from Eurasian to indigenous occupants during decolonization was not the result of a change in housing policy, it was a new state employment policy. The more public housing policy was confined to housing civil servants, the more the masses were left in the cold. When the government realized it was not going to solve the overall shortage of dwellings by public housing, it evoked another concept: aided self-help housing. International contacts assured the right phraseology was used in policy statements on self-help housing. However, national research on self-help housing and international development aid did not produce tangible results in terms of cheaper or easier construction methods. The policy of aided self-help housing came down to leaving people solve their own problems. And so they did. Nonetheless, despite the empty rhetoric of the concepts of a ‘rumah sehat (healthy house) for everybody’ and ‘self-help housing’, one difference with colonial times was the fact that post-independence municipalities at least professed a responsibility to house the whole population. Chapter x Strategies of landlords and tenants

Being a tenant or a small landlord with one or two dwellings did not dominate a person’s life and identity as much as being, say, a nurse, a civil servant, or a real-estate developer. Nevertheless, the majority of urban residents probably found themselves on one side or the other of a landlord-tenant relationship. Perhaps more than half of urbanites depended on a rental dwelling for shelter, and a substantial number of people lived partly or wholly from rental income. Rental relationships were important in the lives of many people, although they were usually not reminded of this relationship on a daily basis. Probably because of its commonplace character, the rental relationship has by and large escaped historical enquiry. Moreover, both tenants and landlords were more amorphous groups and had a lower profile than well-organized collective actors such as squatter organizations, which more often grabbed the headlines. The relationship between landlord and tenant is paradoxical, because on the one hand both sides cannot do without the other, while on the other hand the rental price is a zero-sum game: the gain of one side is the loss of the other. Landlords and tenants therefore form a peculiar pair of interest groups, holding each other in a tight grip. The central question addressed in this chapter is how the balance of power between landlord and tenant shifted under the impact of the long decolonization. Historical events created both challenges and opportunities for both sides. For instance, during the Depression of the 1930s owners of large houses had difficulty finding tenants, even at much reduced rents, but owners of cheap rental accommodation could overcharge, because the masses eagerly sought inexpensive dwellings. Rapid urbanization and the concomitant housing crisis of the Revolution years and the 1950s would have tipped the balance in favour of landlords, if at the same time the state had not thrown in its weight on the side of tenants by drafting policies on billeting, rent control, and Housing Allocation Bureaus. In this chapter, I analyse the way that historical trends in the rental market influenced the landlord-tenant relationship, and elaborate on the insecurity of property ownership and occupancy emanating from the chaos of the Japanese period and the Indonesian Revolution, which 356 Under construction carried over into the 1950s. The court files of the Landgerecht or Pengadilan Negeri (court of first instance) in Medan are an important source of documents for understanding these rental conflicts and the strategies employed by both sides to get the best deal.1 First, however, a baseline is given of the size and structure of the rental sector, and the role of housing agencies.

The composition of the rental sector

Scattered evidence from colonial times suggests that a sizeable part of the urban population, perhaps the majority, lived in rental dwellings and that better-off people were more likely to rent a dwelling than low-income people.2 In a large sample of houses in Semarang, made in 1929, the majority of people living in houses with a monthly rental value of ƒ 10 or less owned their house, but the majority of people occupying more expensive houses rented them (Table 23). In a sample taken in the same city four years later, 60% of the 26,617 houses with rents below ƒ 10 were occupied by the owner, and 38% by a tenant; 2% were uninhabited (Gerla 1935:27). In an older survey in Medan (Kampoengrapport 1924:38) even the majority of kampong houses (n = 2,616) were rental dwellings: 54%. It is unclear whether renting increased or decreased in importance after independence. It is possible that during the Japanese occupation, and in the housing crisis of the Revolution and thereafter, the share of tenants increased as more families were forced to live together. It is equally feasible that the share of owner-occupants increased because more people built their own houses on squatted land. Surely, however, a large number of people continued to be involved in a rental relationship. The tendency in which the higher the value of houses the larger the share of tenants in the total number of occupants was the outcome of the behaviour of both landlords and tenants, the supply and demand side on the rental mar-

1 Europeans rarely figure in these cases, and their absence cannot be explained by the fact that Europeans usually did not go to the Landgerecht. The Rent Tribunal Ordinance decreed that people from every ethnic background were to seek redress against a decision of the Rent Tribunal at the Landgerecht. A rare rental disagreement involving one or two Europeans was about payment of the water bill. D.R. Giroth vs. L.H. Bakker (PN Medan Pdt. 182/1952). 2 According to data collected by Pierre van der Eng (2002), the share of housing in the GNP was about 7% between 1930 and 1935, then declined to 6% in 1941, was up to 7% again in 1949, and steadily declined to just over 5% in 1960 (compare Neumark 1954:354; and Muljatno 1960:192). Naturally, the reliability of such aggregate figures over a prolonged period in an economy that was not fully monetarized is problematic. Whatever the accuracy of Van der Eng’s figures, I am interested in the number of houses and occupants, and not so much in the monetary exchange value of the rental dwellings. X Strategies of landlords and tenants 357

Table 23. Owner-occupied houses vs. tenant-occupied houses, Semarang, 1929 Rental value Absolute number Percentage owned Percentage rented 0-5 13,851 70 30 >5-10 9,762 55 45 >10-20 5,414 43 57 >20-30 1,626 28 72 >30-40 835 17 83 >40-50 536 18 82 >50-60 359 16 84 >60-75 368 9 91 >75-90 352 12 88 >90-105 300 17 83 >105-125 135 4 96 >125-150 161 12 88 >150-200 176 7 93 >200 145 17 83 Total 34,020 54 46

Rental value is expressed in guilders per month. Source: Flieringa 1930:167. ket respectively. On the demand side, the higher a person’s socio-economic status, the more mobile he or she was, because of frequent transfers to new posts. Most middle- and upper-class people did not bother to buy or build a house, because they moved to a different city every few years (Bosma and Raben 2003:13). G.J. van Lonkhuyzen, a member of the Volksraad, put it even more strongly when he stated that Europeans with higher incomes positively rejected ownership of a house: ‘Almost no European […] desires to own immovable property when there is the slightest chance not to have to’.3 European families who could barely afford to live in a villa, but still liked the large houses with spacious gardens where children could play, sublet rooms in the house or the pavilion in order to make ends meet. This practice, born of dire economic necessity, was sometimes called the ‘paying-guest system’, in English, to imbue it with a certain chic (Onze Stem 17/35 1936:847; Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 25-3-1930); it increased the share of tenants in the upper segment of the rental market. Lower-class people, in contrast, tended not to hop from city to city for their jobs and usually remained longer in one place. Under these circumstances purchasing or building a house was an attractive option for them.

3 ‘Bijna geen enkele Europeaan […] wenscht hier vaste goederen te bezitten als hij er eenigszins buiten kan.’ Notulen Commissievergadering Volksraad, 31-7-1928, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1395. 358 Under construction

Most kampong people preferred to own their own house, even on rented land if need be.4 In Semarang it was found that private ownership of houses was as high as 99% in the rural kampongs at the municipal fringe. In the inner-city kampongs, 49% of the occupants owned their house.5 On the supply side, property owners and real-estate developers constructed houses for the middle- and upper-income market, but were as a rule reluctant to serve low-income groups (Flieringa 1930:167; Rückert 1930:166). The lower segment was uninteresting to the private sector, because the profit margin on low rents was small, especially when, as in the late 1940s and early 1950s, construction costs were high. Another reason the private sector eschewed the bottom end of the rental market was that tremendous time and effort had to be poured into the collection of the numerous small rents. Poor people who were in arrears, as was common during the Depression, were a nightmare to landlords. It was no feasible option to sue the tenant, since the lawsuit would be impractical, protracted, and expensive. As long as a case was sub judice an occupant could not be evicted, so that in reality a lawsuit was more a threat to the creditor/landlord than to the debtor/tenant.6 Landlords who did offer cheap rental accommodation economized on maintenance costs. Dutch colonial newspapers and officials wrote in dis- paraging terms about these allegedly sleazy rack-renters, who made huge profits by cutting back on repairs. In Medan, 56% of kampong houses were considered overpriced (Kampoengrapport 1924:43-4, 49; Tillema 1916, II:444). Whatever the truth of these indictments of their business methods by the colonial elite, if landlords had not found ways to make the dwellings profitable, the poor would have been denied rental accommodation altogether. Of course, not all higher-income people preferred to live in a rental house. The most stable urban inhabitants were, as a rule, former migrants who had fully integrated in Indonesia and who had gone into business: peranakan (assimilated) Chinese, settled Arabs and Indians, and Eurasians. Unlike indigenous urbanites, they did not have close ties with villages in the hinterland to which they could return, and unlike professionals they were not

4 Toelichting 1938:34. Owning a house on rented land was common; this was the case for 57% of kampong houses in Medan (Kampoengrapport 1924:38). 5 Rückert 1930:166-7. This spatial distribution of owner-occupants explains why, in the category of houses with a real or hypothetical rental value below ƒ 10, 64% of indigenous people owned the house in contrast to only 16% of Chinese and 8% of European families (Gerla 1935:27). The indigenous share was pushed up in the rural fringe of Semarang, where home ownership was the rule and the population existed almost exclusively of indigenous people. 6 De Huiseigenaar 1(6) 1940; Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 23-3-1935. For exceptional cases of tenants who were sued, see: S. Moehamad B. Ali Alketirie vs. G. Gabeler (Residentiegerecht Bandoeng Pdt. 96/1934, PN Bandung); and Lindeman & Co vs. L. Pichel (Residentiegerecht Bandoeng Pdt. 1250/1938, PN Bandung) for houses with a rent of ƒ 40 and 30. X Strategies of landlords and tenants 359 transferred to other cities. To cite one example, in Padang the people most renowned for owning large houses were the families of Lie Saay and Haacke (an Eurasian family), who had lived in the town for generations and had built up an extensive local business empire (Colombijn 1994:64, 110-1). Many landlords came from among this category of people. Landlords were, of course, large and small. One large landlord, for example, was Lie Pie Soe, who left Medan for Amoy in 1938. Lie retained, and perhaps even expanded, his assets in North Sumatra after he went to China. At his death in 1947, Lie’s property consisted of 40 houses in Medan, 35 in Pematang Siantar, 29 in Tebing Tinggi, and 20 in Lubuk Pakam. In 1957, when Lie’s four daughters took his five sons to court over the division of the inheritance, the property was calculated to be worth Rp 14,100,000. From the addresses of his houses, it is possible to compose a picture of how Lie had built up his assets. Four pairs of houses had consecutive house numbers; in all likelihood a pavilion had been added to an older house, or an old house had been demolished and the land used for two new houses.7 In one street, Lie owned a large house, of which it was estimated that after demolition, the plot would provide room for six houses. In other streets Lie owned rows of three, four, four, six, and eight houses, some of them shophouses in the Chinese ward.8 Perhaps the largest property owner in colonial Indonesia was the entrepreneur Tjong A Fie in Medan. Tjong was a member of the council (negorijraad) of Deli and used his inside information of development plans to purchase large tracts of land and develop it.9 Estimates of his wealth by knowledgeable people are in the range of hundreds to thousands of houses. He was also active in economic sectors other than real estate. Tjong A Fie was a philanthropist, who bore part of the construction costs of the Mesjid Raya (Great Mosque) and town hall in Medan. The Indian entrepreneurs Gurdit Singh and the Hakkam or Hakamsingh brothers also had large holdings in Medan (Buiskool 2005:286-90). A contemporary of Hakamsingh recalled how this extremely wealthy man rode a bicycle and looked as if he owned no more than ƒ 10. Tjong A Fie provided accommodation to most of his fellow Chinese in Medan (Tillema 1922, V:464), but if he really had owned thousands of houses he must have provided accommodation for many people of other ethnic groups as

7 A paviljoen (pavilion) was a second dwelling standing in the same yard as the main building. It was a self-contained dwelling in its own right, including annexes for kitchen, bathing place, and rooms for domestic servants (Nix 1949:211-2; see also the definition in the Bouw- en Woningverordening Stadsgemeenteraad Makassar (n.d.), NAI, Collection Thijsse; NIVA 1934:25). 8 Lie Eng Sieuw cs vs. Lie Seng Tjeng (PN Medan, Pdt. 619/1957). After three years of court battles, the children decided to split the inheritance into nine equal parts. 9 Dirk Buiskool, personal communication. 360 Under construction well. Gurdit Singh and the Hakamsingh brothers housed many Indians, but these were people whom they had just brought over from South Asia. On the whole, there is no reason to believe that landlords with a migrant background had a strong preference for tenants from their own ethnic group.10 A 1943 list of landlords in Surabaya provides a glimpse of the distribution of house ownership. The list was appended to a series of municipal decisions pertaining to the landlords’ request to reduce the so-called street tax, because their rental income had declined by at least a quarter (because of a Japanese decree on lowering rents). The list of addresses contains unique information from the Japanese period, but its reliability as a source of the distribution of house ownership is problematic. In all, the decisions dealt with 954 houses, a fraction of the total number of houses to let in Surabaya. It is quite possible that the landlords mentioned in the decision owned additional houses in town for which they did not ask a reduction of street tax, or that there were other, larger landlords who did not ask for a tax reduction at all.11 With these caveats in mind, several conclusions can still be drawn (Table 24). About three-quarters of landlords owned just one or two houses. Earnings from the rents cannot have been enough to live on, and the house or houses

10 A sample of almost 300 residential permits (vestigingsbewijzen) from Bandung after independence provides quantitative evidence for the lack of a preference for their own ethnic group. Although an association between the ethnic background of owner and occupant was found (Cramer’s V = 0.23), this association must have largely been caused by owners who occupied their own house. The table shows how many houses were rented out to people from other ethnic groups. Occupant Indigenous chinese other Asian european total Owner Indigenous 80 21 1 22 124 Chinese 21 24 3 23 71 Other Asian 0 2 0 0 2 European 60 3 4 33 100 Total 161 50 8 78 297 Source: Dinas Perumahan, Arsip Bandung. 11 Spelling variants in the list create an additional problem. For instance, were Joesoef bin Salim Baswedan and Yoesoef bin Salim bin Alie Baswedan the same man, Siti Marijam and Marijam binti Said Aloei bin Salim bin Agil bin Salim the same woman, and J. Kruysse and M.J. Kruysse the same person? Of Joesoef I presume it was the same person, of the others I think not, but I am not sure. In Table 24 I have not joined the property of owners who were obviously related: W. van Ingen and E.H. van Ingen-Reynaert, husband and wife; Tio Tjwan Hong, Tio Tjwan Wan, Tio Tjwan Hok, and perhaps Tjoa Tjwan Bo, siblings; Bouwmaatschappij Kapoeasstraat I and Bouwmaatschappij Kapoeasstraat V, building companies of one mother company; Maatschappij tot Voortzetting van de Zaken van F.W.A.K.H.L. Römer and W.T. Römer, a company administering a legacy and a family member who had split off. If I had taken a less conservative approach to the data, home ownership would be seen to have been concentrated in fewer hands than indicated in Table 24. X Strategies of landlords and tenants 361

Table 24. Number of houses owned per landlord, Surabaya, 1943 Number of houses owned Number of owners 1 139 2 54 3-5 35 6-10 17 11-20 9 21-50 4 51-100 2

Total number of rental houses: 954 houses; total number of landlords who rent out houses (second column): 260. Source: Decision Soerabaja Sityo 11-5-2603, no. 787/B, 17-5-2603, no. 884/B, 17-5-2603, no. 851/B, 17-5-2603, no. 852/B, 17-5-2603, no. 853/B, 19-5-2603, no. 854/B, 31-5-2603, no. 935/B, 31-5-2603, no. 936/B, 31-5-2603, no. 937/B, Arsip Surabaya, no number. probably served as a safe investment and a source of additional income. Many of these small landlords had probably built a second dwelling in their own yard, and in the process increased the density of the built environment. Together, this large group of small landlords provided just a quarter of all rental dwellings. A fifth of landlords owned between three and ten houses. These people must have drawn a substantial income from their property and it is likely that they regularly expanded their holdings, when they were in a financial position to do so. Together, they offered another quarter of all houses for rent. A select group of 15 landlords owned more than ten houses each, and were really into the housing business; together they held in their hands almost half of all rental houses. Half of all tenants rented from one of these professional landlords. The largest landlord was the Gemeente Spaarbank (Municipal Savings Bank) of Surabaya, with 93 houses. Perhaps the bank had become a landlord inadvertently when people defaulted on their mortgage. The property of the Javasche Hypotheekbank (15 houses) must have had the same origin. The second largest landlord was the real-estate developer Koepang (Perseroan Peroesoehan Tanah dan Roemah Koepang), with 76 houses to let. It is possible that its large number of holdings was a temporary state of affairs and that the developer intended to sell the houses. This may also have been the case for the developer Perseroan Peroesoehan Tanah dan Roemah Kepoetran (18 houses). The individuals with the largest holdings were: Tajib Napis (46 houses); Pie Oen Kie (38); Tjoa Tjwan Bo (33); Han Thwan Hwie (32); The Giok Nio (20); and Alsaid bin Awat Martak (17). The largest house owner of whom it is certain she was a woman was Marijam binti Said Aloe (12 houses), and the largest landlord with a European name was M.C.H.P. Lindhout (10 362 Under construction houses). The modest size of Lindhout’s property compared to the possessions of the indigenous landlord Tajib Napis, the Chinese Pie Oen Kie, or the Arab Alsaid is remarkable. In a nutshell, about half of urban residents lived in a rental dwelling, the better-off more frequently than people with a small income. The sector consisted of a few very large landlords, a small group of small landlords, and a very large group renting out only one or two houses. Tenants were less organized than landlords as an interest group, but other parties defended their cause. Presumably some political parties spoke out on behalf of tenants in municipal councils and the Volksraad. A more powerful patron was unquestionably the state, which looked after its civil servants, many of whom were tenants, and in the process helped tenants in general. Pre-war public housing and post-war rent control offered the state important opportunities to intervene in the rental market. A third guardian of tenants’ interests was the press. Journalists mixed fact with opinion and did not shy away from rousing public sentiment. Landlords were regularly portrayed as rack-renters, and since the newspapers not only parroted public opinion but also acted as opinion leaders, tenants certainly profited from the press. Landlords acted as an interest group in various ways. First and foremost, as did tenants, landlords found supporters in the councils and the Volksraad, who spoke out on their behalf.12 Unlike tenants, landlords were united in associations that championed their cause. Examples were the Vereeniging van Grond- en Huiseigenaren, Vereniging van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Zaken, and Algemeene Bond van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Goederen (Chapter VII). The oldest traces of these associations in archives stem from 1947, when the associations were either established or became more vocal. Whatever the reason for their enhanced visibility, the timing shows that landlords felt cornered in unprecedented fashion at that time. The associations remained active for some time afterwards. As late as 1954, the Vereniging van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Zaken, then renamed Peruba, found it pertinent to urge the Housing Allocation Bureau Bandung not to meddle in newly built houses, and furthermore urged that rents be brought into line with the general price increase.13 Housing agencies formed a special category, which brokered between landlord and tenant, but at the end of the day they defended the interests of landlords.

12 See, for instance, the just quoted Van Lonkhuyzen, Commissievergadering Volksraad, 31-7- 1928, ANRI, Binnenlandsch Bestuur 1395. 13 Letter Hoge Commissaris to Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken in ‘s Gravenhage, 6-3-1954, no. 20032/1014, NA, Commissariaat Bandung 446. X Strategies of landlords and tenants 363

Housing agencies

Housing agencies (administratiekantoren) offered landlords a great deal of help, but did so on a commercial basis. In return for a certain commission, agencies collected rents from tenants, looked for new tenants when a house was vacant, and performed various other small services. Examples of these housing agencies are: Nederlandsch-Indisch Verhuur en Administratiekantoor (NIVA) in Batavia, which published a directory of vacant houses (Figure 34); Administratiekantoor Kamerlingh Onnes, the largest housing agency in Medan, which managed many houses for Tjong A Fie and also represented landowners; and Van Vloten and Versluis in Surabaya. An example of a large and active housing agency was Woning- en Administratiekantoor Van Vloten in Surabaya. Van Vloten was established in the Simpang Pharmacy, an architectural landmark of the city (Figure 35). The firm published a directory, which offered plenty of useful information, apart from the address list of houses to let: a list of ten steps to be taken by new residents – a visit to Van Vloten to begin with! – information about the hot- test entertainment places in town, a list of recommended bakeries, butchers, dairy farms, and grocery shops, and current prices at the vegetable market. The housing directory was also crammed with advertisements of real-estate

Figure 34. Advertisement for the housing agency Nederlandsch-Indisch Verhuur en Administratiekantoor. Source: NIVA 1934:23. Figure 35. Front cover of Van Vloten’s Woninggids voor Soerabaia. Source: Van Vloten 1935. X Strategies of landlords and tenants 365 developers, painters, decorators, a garage, a private security service, a remov- als firm, and other companies that helped the middle and upper classes to lead a comfortable life. Van Vloten also mediated in recruiting domestic servants. Another service offered by the housing agency, this time for landlords, was a repair section that helped to improve the attractiveness of houses on the housing market (Van Vloten 7(1) 1935). The owner of this housing agency, C.F. van Vloten Augustijn, also ran several building companies, all bearing the name ‘Plancius’ plus a number. Plancius XXI, for instance, built over 100 houses in the mountain resort Tretes (Farabi Fakih 2007:39-40). I do not know whether building was the outcome of the housing agency, or vice versa. The Hoedoosan Kanrikoodan, which managed Dutch property during the Japanese occupation, was also a housing agency in a way. Perhaps it was made responsible for continuing the Dutch-owned housing agencies. Certainly, several of these agencies were still, or were again, active after the Second World War. Administratiekantoor Kamerlingh Onnes, for instance, operated at least until 1952, when it urged the municipality to pay rents retroactively to some of its landowning clients.14 Woningbureau Versluis NV was a housing agency that was very concerned about the problems the long decolonization caused for its clients. Willem Versluis came to Indonesia in 1898 at an unknown age. He started his firm in Surabaya in about 1926, and by 1951 he had opened offices in Jakarta, Bogor, Bandung, Semarang, Yogyakarta, and 13 other places in Java. In 1940 Versluis managed about 5,000 houses (Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 29-10-1941). After the transfer of sovereignty he adopted the Indonesian nationality. The latest year in which Versluis’s activities are documented is 1955, when he rented out the house Pergolan Bunder 23 to the Dutch consulate (commissariaat) in Surabaya.15 Whereas the other large housing agency in Surabaya, Van Vloten, clearly served the well-to-do with a modern lifestyle, Versluis aimed rather at small home-owners. Versluis presented itself as a champion of the small pro- prietor at least since 1940, when it started to publish a monthly news bulletin, De Huiseigenaar (The home-owner).16 The explicit aim of De Huiseigenaar was to represent house owners from all ethnic groups. It was published in Dutch and Malay, and had, or planned to have, a correspondent for indigenous, Chinese, and Arab proprietors; the first correspondent employed was M.B.A. Alamoedie for Arabs. The editorial of the first issue bore the bilingual cap-

14 Letter Administratiekantoor Kamerlingh Onnes, 14-5-1952, attached to letter K. Rangkuti to Kepala Djawatan Urusan Perumahan Medan, 23-5-1952, no. 5623/TA-1, Arsip Medan. 15 Letter Administratiekantoor Versluis to Moh. Nasrun, Minister van Justitie, 23-12-1951, ANRI, Kabinet President 1950-1959 209; Perdjandjian Sewa-Menjewa Pergolan Bunder 23, 14-7- 1955, berdasar Surat Penghubung UPS 28-3-1955, NA, Commissariaat Surabaya 1545. 16 The editor-in-chief was not Willem Versluis, but a man called C.L. Jacobs. 366 Under construction tion: ‘Union is strength’ (Eendracht maakt macht / Persatoean itoe menimboelkan kekoeasaan); although the Malay caption was a somewhat clumsy translation of the Dutch maxim, the resolve to lobby for all home-owners was clear. In the first issue of De Huiseigenaar (1(1), 1940), the Versluis housing agency immediately raised several topics. One article struck back at daily newspapers, which ‘always’ stir up tenants’ indignation about allegedly greedy landlords. Another article discussed the land-use policy of the municipality of Surabaya, which only served well-to-do builders and ignored the interests of people with middle and small incomes. In a third article, the editors argued that home-owners were taxed disproportionately, compared to people who invested in shares; the fact that home-owners who placed their property in a limited liability company (Naamloze Vennootschap) were taxed less than people who owned their houses as private property was also argued to be unfair. Finally, the same article reminded readers of a request that Versluis had sent to the Ministry of Economic Affairs to raise rents by 20%. Willem Versluis did more than simply offering De Huiseigenaar as a platform for airing discontent. He regularly sent requests directly to the central government. In one letter to the Minister of Economic Affairs, referring to the fact that driving up rents was a penal act, Versluis demanded that not paying rent also be made a punishable offence. A civil court case against a tenant in arrears dragged on for months, and it would be fair, Versluis argued, if tenants who were in arrears were evicted within one or two days, if necessary using strong-arm tactics. In another letter to the Ministry, Versluis reacted to the draft Rental Ordinance, submitted to the Volksraad in 1940. In the Explanatory Memorandum to the bill, the custom of asking for key- money and the forced purchase of left-behind furniture are attributed to landlords, whereas in reality, Versluis stated, this undesirable conduct was usually a mean streak of departing tenants who dealt directly with the new occupants, and not tyranny by landlords; Versluis reclaimed the right to decide who would occupy the house after a tenant left (De Huiseigenaar 1(3) 1940). Perhaps the Versluis protests struck a chord with Volksraad members; whatever the case may be, the bill was rejected. A third request, filed in 1937, certainly did result in a new state policy, namely that civil servants who were unexpectedly transferred to a new post, and hence had to pay double rent in two different places for one month, would receive a subsidy from the state (De Huiseigenaar 1(5) 1940). The same year Versluis had sent another request to the Governor-General protesting about the ‘street tax’ in Surabaya, but this letter remained unanswered for three years (Onze Stem 18/44 1937: 1245; De Huiseigenaar 1(2) 1940). After the Japanese period the indefatigable Willem Versluis resumed his habit of sending requests. In 1947 his housing agency sent repeated requests asking that the restrictions on the housing market be lifted and rents be paid X Strategies of landlords and tenants 367 retroactively from August 1945.17 He lobbied in newspapers for the abolition of the Rent Tribunal and the Housing Allocation Bureaus (Nieuwe Courant 10-3-1952). He also took up specific grievances of individual landlords. In 1951 he sent a letter, in both Indonesian and Dutch, to the Minister of Justice, pleading on behalf of people who had built middle-class houses on land owned by the port of Surabaya, Tanjung Perak. The home-owners had acquired the land on a 40-year lease in 1934, but in 1950 the port authorities raised the lease by 250%, at which time home-owners were only allowed to increase rent by 30%. Versluis’s plea went unheeded. In 1953 the port authorities forced home-owners to acquiesce in the higher rent for the land, by threatening to confiscate their houses if they did not sign a revised land-lease contract. Versluis subsequently requested the intervention of the President of Indonesia, the protector of the nation, Soekarno.18 Versluis was no coward. In 1951 he even upbraided the Indonesian army, for behaving as a highly irresponsible occupant of private houses. In his letter to the President, this time addressed to him in his capacity of Supreme Commander, Versluis first placated Soekarno: ‘the gentlemen of AMACAB used houses as if those houses did not belong to anybody. […] it was in those days [from August 1945 to February 1947] that chaos spread, along with the idea that rent can be paid if and when one pleases’.19 He then went on to say that new problems had arisen after the transfer of sovereignty, and calculated that various sections of the Indonesian army still owed Rp 166,000 to the Versluis housing agency. Versluis reminded the President of the fact that the home-owners whom Versluis represented did not have enormous financial resources and were heavily dependent on rental money to get by. Versluis used the opportunity to point out other abuses perpetrated by the army: deductions from soldiers’ pay earmarked for housing were not paid to landlords but allocated to the army unit’s coffer; soldiers requisitioned private homes without their commander knowing about it; and officers gave houses, which were requisitioned under the pretext that housing was needed for soldiers, to thugs (preman) who were their confederates. In response to this indictment, the Supreme Command ordered the accounts to be settled,

17 Letter A.Th. Bogaardt, Hoofd Departement Sociale Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur- Generaal, 14-6-1948, no. H 2-7-10, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 18 Letter Administratiekantoor Versluis to Moh. Nasrun, Minister van Justitie, 23-12-1951; letter Willem Versluis, Directeur Administratiekantoor Versluis to President Republik Indonesia, 26-1-1953, no. V/CF-1Dir.294, ANRI, Kabinet President 1950-1959 209. The outcome is unknown, but it seems unlikely Versluis’s appeal to Soekarno bore any fruit. 19 [T]uan-tuan dari A.M.A.C.A.B. memakai rumah-rumah seakan-akan rumah-rumah tersebut tidak ada jang mempunjai […]dalam masa itu timbullah kekatjauan serta suatu pikiran bahwa uang sewa dapat dibajar dengan sesuka hati. 368 Under construction but ignored the other accusations.20 All in all, the Versluis housing agency is arguably the best example of an organization that brokered between landlords and tenants, but ultimately defended the interests of landlords. In letters to authorities and through his magazine De Huiseigenaar, Versluis lobbied for solutions to landlords’ problems that emerged from the hurly-burly of those times.

How landlords and tenants reacted to fluctuations on the rental market

Even in peaceful times, let alone during the housing crisis of the 1940s, fluctuations in the rental market continually influenced the balance of power between landlords and tenants. Supply and demand were rarely in equilibrium, and cyclical problems were inherent in the rental market. Generally speaking, supply of rental houses is inelastic, and Indonesia between 1930 and 1960 was no exception to this rule. Houses could not be built overnight. Even when demand was large, as in the late 1940s and early 1950s, landlords were hesitant to build, because of the substantial capital investment required and the considerable time lapse before the investment could be expected to pay off. Demand, in contrast, was on the whole elastic. Depending on the economic opportunities available and the security situation in town or hinterland, lower-class indigenous people poured into the cities or returned to their villages. Salaried persons employed in the higher echelons of government, the army, or trading companies, who perforce had to move from city to city and occasionally went on furlough, added to the elasticity in the demand for housing. The combination of inelastic supply and hesitant investors on the one hand and a very elastic demand of highly mobile dwellers on the other hand generated a chronic shortage of rental housing, alternated by brief periods when many houses stood vacant. Bearing in mind these features of the rental market, the basic strategies of landlord and tenant can be easily understood. In times when there was a shortage of rental dwellings, landlords manoeuvred to acquire flexibility in evicting persons at short notice; concomitantly, tenants sought protection. In times of abundance, landlords sought continuity and tenants wanted freedom. As happened during the housing crisis of the late 1940s, such ad hoc measures as subletting, using quarters intended for domestic servants for principal occupants, lodging in pensions and hotels, and the sharing of one dwelling by more than one family, introduced some elasticity into the market.

20 Letter Administratiekantoor Willem Versluis to Presiden RI, as Panglima Tertinggi dari Angkatan Darat, Laut dan Udara dan Sipil, Surabaia, 20-10-1951; letter Hardjadiwirja, Perwira Keuangan S.CA.L., Kepala Staf Chusus Angkatan Laut, to Kom. K.D.M.S./PINTS in Surabaja, Djakarta 30-7-1952, no. B2/18/22, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden Republik Indonesia 1950-1959 701. X Strategies of landlords and tenants 369

Occasionally the state intervened directly by imposing rent control measures. The first time rent control was introduced in Indonesia was during the First World War, when trade with Europe came to a standstill, imported construction materials shot up in price, and construction of houses stagnated. The upshot was that rents inflated, and house owners gave tenants notice to leave as soon as they heard of somebody else willing to pay a higher rent. In 1918 the central government in Batavia intervened and issued the Rent Tribunal Ordinance (Huurcommissie-ordonnantie, Staatsblad van Nederlands- Indië 288/1918). The ordinance fixed rents of all houses (from kampong dwellings to elite houses) retroactively at the level of 1 January 1916. The ordinance overruled any tenancy agreement for a higher rent, unless the newly installed local Rent Tribunals (Huurcommissies) approved. Moreover, no rental agreement could now be terminated without the approval of the Rent Tribunal. The Rent Tribunal Ordinance was only in force in cities where the municipal council had decided to set up a Rent Tribunal (Enthoven 1918:5-14). The council of Padang was among the many that seized the opportunity to set up a tribunal. During just the last five months of 1918, the Tribunal met no less than 49 times, when 109 decisions were taken about increasing the rent and five decisions about giving notice. The commendably swift action of the council in installing the Rent Tribunal was not without self-interest. All five members of the Tribunal were councillors (carefully including an indigenous, a Chinese, and a Eurasian councillor) and the members received ƒ 10 for each meeting they attended (Schuijleman 1919:154-5). The considerable fees the members collected prompted a response from a landlord who complained about the costs of a Rent Tribunal which, seen from his perspective, caused nothing but trouble. Rent Tribunal members may have profited in another way too. One substitute member appealed to the Rent Tribunal to increase his tenants’ rent. The outcome of this particular case is unknown, but it is feasible that the substitute member had considerable clout in the Rent Tribunal (Sumatra Bode 4-9-1918, 30-9-1918). The Rent Tribunal Ordinance was repealed in 1927, and soon after that landlords raised rents considerably. In an extreme case in a kampong in Medan it was found that a house constructed for ƒ 60 brought in a monthly rent of ƒ 5; in one year the developer had already earned back his investment. The principal cause of the pressure on the rental market was immigration, which had outpaced construction during the prosperous 1920s. In Batavia, for example, one house to every 16 newcomers was built in 1930; an escala- tion of the housing shortage was the inevitable result.21

21 Deli Courant 19-2-1930, 25-3-1930; Gemeenteblad 2 Gemeente Medan 1931, no. 107; Van Liempt 1939:xx; Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 26-2-1930, 1-3-1930, 4-3-1930. 370 Under construction

The pressure on the upper end of the market was relieved in the 1930s, not because of action by either landlords or tenants, but because of the macroeconomic situation. During the Depression incomes were reduced, but prices declined faster; people who kept their jobs enjoyed increased purchasing power (Booth 1998:111). Rents of houses also fell: on average by 34% in 22 cities and towns all over the country between 1 January 1929 and 1 January 1934 (with considerable variation between cities). In large cities, the rents of middle- and upper-class houses decreased faster than average, because salaried people who lost their jobs dropped out of the demand side for expensive houses: they moved to more basic accommodation, took lodgings in a cheap pension, left the city, or moved in with others. In Medan, to cite one case, the vacancy rate of middle-class houses rose to 40% in 1934. Especially those houses exploited by the municipality stood vacant, because the administration responded to the changing market more slowly than private landlords.22 Rents at the lower end of the market decreased far less than the average rent decrease in large cities, as a result of the downward movement of tenants who lost real income during the Depression and subsequently joined the group with a demand for cheap houses. In this literally and figuratively overcrowded segment of the rental market, people were compelled to accept sordid living conditions. One positive outcome was that the price for construction materials was very low. Under these conditions of high rent and low construction costs, many tenants chose to build modest dwellings and became home-owners (Centraal Kantoor voor de Statistiek 1935; Deli Courant 18-2-1935). By the end of the 1930s the economy recovered, and so did the housing market. The vacancy rate of middle-class and upper-class houses declined, and rents asked in this segment of the market increased once again

Table 25. Average rent of upper-class houses advertised in Surabaya, Makassar and Medan (in guilders) Newspaper n 1930 1935 1940 Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 90 132 55 73 Makassaarsche Courant 27 84 47 54 Deli Courant 31 114 48 91

Note that n is the combined total number of cases during the months January, February and March of the years 1930, 1935 and 1940; the number of cases is not equally divided over those years.

22 Centraal Kantoor voor de Statistiek 1935; Deli Courant 24-1-1935, 25-2-1935; Soerabaiasch- Handelsblad 14-1-1935, 2-2-1935, 26-3-1935, 29-3-1935. X Strategies of landlords and tenants 371 after the nadir of the mid-1930s (Table 25). At the same time, the pressure on the lower end of the market was probably somewhat alleviated. The outbreak of the Second World War in Europe caused a sudden upsurge in demand at the upper end of the rental market, even before Germany invaded the Netherlands. Repatriation of Europeans came to an abrupt halt, even though there were still newcomers on their way to the colony from Europe. As during the First World War, the situation was aggravated because the price of imported building materials rose; cement was a highly sought-after commodity (Deli Courant 4-1-1940, 24-1-1940, Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 16-2-1940). This time rents were controlled by the Ordinance Against the Pushing Up of Prices, Rents, and Services (Ordonnantie Tegen het Opdrijven van Prijzen, Huren en Diensten) effective 1 September 1939.23 In a few cases landlords in Bandung and Surabaya were tried and convicted of raising rents. Tenants in Batavia could file anonymous complaints against landlords protesting about exorbitant rents or the practice of demanding key-money.24 In 1940 the government drew up the Rental Ordinance that would control the increase of rents more strictly than the Ordinance Against the Pushing Up of Prices, Rents, and Services. The publication of the bill for this new ordinance had an adverse impact, as some landlords hurriedly gave tenants notice, before the Rental Ordinance was promulgated. As it transpired, the bill was rejected in the Volksraad (De Huiseigenaar 1(5) 1940). The Japanese intervened in the housing market on an unprecedented scale. For instance, they collected rents from female Dutch internees and assessed how much of this amount was ‘actually payable to the landlord […] and, after their negotiation with respective landlords, the Authorities will have them consent’.25 The final clause indicates that in the ‘negotiations’ the amount paid to landlords was set unilaterally. A decision that affected all landlords and tenants was a progressive rent reduction (Table 26). The somewhat peculiar combination of a percentage reduction and a maximum rent meant that rents of houses just below a certain threshold were reduced by more than the decreed percentage. The ordinances to reduce rents were promulgated locally, city after city, but the percentages and maximum rents

23 Letter W.H. Hoogland, Chairman, and M.A.J. Kelling, Secretary, Vereniging van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Zaken to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, Bandoeng, 20-10- 1948, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 24 De Huiseigenaar 1(3) and 1(5) 1940; Soerabaiasch-Handelsblad 19-1-1940, 6-3-1940, 19-3-1940, 29-10-1941. 25 Notice re Dealing with the rent from the Dutch females in the specified living quarters, from Director of the Department of General Affairs of the Civil Administration to Major [sic] of Djakarta Special Municipality, Governors of Priangan, Semarang, Soerabaja, Malang and Kediri Provinces, [1-3-1943, translated from the Japanese by G.J. Dissevelt, Head of the Japanese Affairs Section of Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service], NA, NEFIS/CMI 3908. 372 Under construction

Table 26. Rent reduction in Javanese cities in Japanese times Rent before reduction Reduction Maximum rent 0-20 25 % ƒ 14 >20-50 30 % ƒ 30 >50-100 40 % ƒ 50 >100 50 %

Source: Asia Raya 11-9-2602. were the same throughout Java (Asia Raya 11-9-2602, 15-9-2602, 19-9-2602, 23-9-26023, 9-1-2603, 13-5-2603). In all likelihood the 16th Army Command had instructed all local administrators to lower and then freeze rents. I do not know whether similar rent reductions were ordered outside Java as well. Landlords tried to make up for their loss of income by inventing additional charges. A resurrected strategy was to ask for key-money. Some landlords started asking for a deposit, or for several months of rent paid in advance (Asia Raya 23-11-2602). Of course, these three forms of extra income were in principle only a temporary compensation for the loss of income; when tenants left and accounts had to be settled, the landlord was expected to repay the key-money, deposits, and rents paid in advance. However, landlords probably bet on sudden departures of tenants, and concocted reasons why the advance payments did not need to be repaid. For their part, some tenants tried to avoid or resist the extra payments, and they were supported in their recalcitrance by local administrators who forbade the extra payments (Asia Raya 23-11-2602, 28-11-2603; Kan Pō 1(6) 2602, 1(8) 2602). Some tenants antici- pated trouble in getting the advance payment refunded and stopped paying the rent two months before they left the house.26 Another adjustment to rent reduction was to rebuild a rental dwelling in more expensive fashion (and ask higher rents) after a fire had destroyed the building. One observer hinted that owners put a match to their houses for this very purpose. The method had ostensibly been in use since the Dutch installed rent control in 1918.27 Regardless of any possible schemes to counter landlords’ demand for advance payment of rent, tenants showed diminishing discipline in paying or indeed in their ability to pay the rent on time. At least, this is what can be read between the lines of a curious propagandistic press release in Semarang. The local administration boasted that a tenant in arrears had immediately

26 Rahim vs. Habib (PN Medan Pdt. 29/1950). 27 Meeting Kyûkan Seido Tyôsa Linkai/Panitia Adat dan Tatanegara Dahoeloe, 5-10-2603, NA, NEFIS/CMI 2241. X Strategies of landlords and tenants 373 been evicted from a municipal dwelling in Dutch times, but nowadays the compassionate Japanese government allowed tenants to remain even when they were seven or eight months behind, as long as they paid the current month (Asia Raya 15-2-2603). On balance, tenants seemed to have profited from the Japanese administration at the expense of landlords. Landlords’ lives were also made difficult in other ways. For instance, the Municipal Housing Authority in Bandung (Bandoeng Sijakoesjo) claimed the right to distribute all rental dwellings, even those owned by private persons. Landlords in Jakarta could no longer deal with Japanese occupants directly, but had to collect rents at the Hoedoosan Kanrikoodan, the body that administered enemy property (Asia Raya 7-12- 2602, 31-7-2603). Besides being thwarted by these various official measures, it is probable that landlords who had fled or were interned could kiss goodbye to rents owed to them.

The rental market after 1945

The situation for landlords did not show any sign of improvement after the Japanese were defeated and the Indonesian Revolution broke out. Home- owners counted themselves lucky if they could find a reliable person willing to live in their house, someone who provided some protection against pillaging by pemuda or appropriation by British and British-Indian soldiers. Landlords often showed no desire to collect the rent. A civil servant, for example, recalled how he was given a large furnished house for free by a Dutch evacuee who left for Australia in January 1946. Returning Dutch administrators publicly urged landlords and tenants to sign a rental contract, but many home-owners simply fled without formalizing an agreement with their tenants.28 The uncertainty about who actually looked after the property when people were on the run is exemplified by the story of a certain Arief, who owned a house in Medan. Arief built a house on land owned by another man in 1928. During the War of Independence Arief fled from Medan and returned early in 1950. Meanwhile, in 1947, a man called Muda had occupied the house (which at the time was severely damaged) with the consent of the landowner’s brother, who collected the rent for the land and the house. Arief’s brother sanctioned Muda’s occupation post-facto, on the condition that Muda would vacate the house when Arief returned. In early 1950 all parties

28 Letter Resident M.A.F. Zwager, H.T.B. Batavia, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 31-3- 1948, no. 611/31; letter A. Oudt, Thesaurier-Generaal Departement van Financiën, to Hoge Vertegenwoordiger van de Kroon, 17-3-1949, no. 9099, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 374 Under construction concerned began to shed the cloak of civility. In an initial step, the landowner raised the rent for the land, which Muda, however, refused to pay. The landowner thereupon refused to accept payment of the old rent as a pretext to throw Muda out shortly afterwards. As a countermove, Muda deposited the monthly rent with the kampong head. Next, Arief returned to Medan and reclaimed his house, but Muda failed to live up to his promise, made to Arief’s brother, to leave, partly because he had invested a considerable amount in repairs to the house: a sum of ƒ 500, or 20 times the monthly rent. Arief subsequently visited Muda in the company of a policeman, who was a friend of his, in order to scare Muda away. Muda was not intimidated, and Arief then resorted to legal means; on 8 May 1950 he requested permission from the Rent Tribunal to give Muda notice. In response to Arief’s request to the Rent Tribunal, Muda asked the Medan Housing Allocation Bureau for a residential permit, and received it surprisingly quickly. Nevertheless, ignoring the Housing Allocation Bureau’s decision, the Rent Tribunal ruled that Muda should leave, because in 1947 Arief’s brother had not been entitled to allow Muda to stay in the house. Tragically, on the day the Rent Tribunal found in favour of Arief, he died.29 The insecurity that pervaded the first year of the Revolution touched more than landlords. Tenants also felt vulnerable about their position. One tenant who ran away from the rampant violence in Medan in August 1946 discovered upon his return that his dwelling was occupied by another man and his belongings had been sold.30 Tenants, as Muda experienced, were sometimes threatened by landlords, who used policemen, soldiers, or a gang of thugs to intimidate them.31 After the Dutch had taken firm control of the cities again, landlords still found themselves in dire straits. During the housing crisis of the Revolution years, three state policies devised to guarantee all urban residents a place to stay were framed at the expense of landlords (Chapter VII). Both the billeting ordinances and the installation of Housing Allocation Bureaus were detrimental to everybody who already occupied a dwelling (landlord, tenant, owner- occupant), but property owners were doubly harmed: not only did they have to share their living space with others, but they were simultaneously deprived of control over their property and had to stand sorrowfully by as their houses were ruined by others. The third state policy to assuage the housing crisis was unfavourable only to landlords: the continuation of rent control.

29 Muda appealed to the Landgerecht to have the Rent Tribunal’s ruling changed, but unfortunately, the decision of the Landgerecht is missing from the file. Muda, alias Dahlan, vs. M. Arief (PN Medan Pdt. 49/1950). 30 B.S. Muhamad Salem vs. S. Umar Bahadjadj, Madji Silam (PN Medan Pdt. 208/1952). 31 Lim Sim Lim vs. Kuan A Piauw (PN Medan Pdt. 111/1950). X Strategies of landlords and tenants 375

On top of the troubles created by the state, landlords were beset by other problems. The most serious was the increased cost of repairs and maintenance, at a time when their rental income was fixed. Ironically, even the dou- bling or tripling of the value of the house compared to the pre-war level was a nuisance to house owners who did not desire to cash in: insurance premiums doubled or even tripled. Moreover, many houses that were below the threshold at which property tax (verponding) was required before the Japanese took over the Archipelago, now fell within the taxable limit because of the increase in value.32 In addition to all these problems, the Vereniging van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Zaken (Association of People Concerned with Immovable Property) alleged that the rent of February 1942, the last month before the Japanese invasion, which formed the maximum rent in 1947-1948, had already been below cost-effective level at the time it was fixed; in 1942 rents had been frozen since September 1939, the outbreak of war in Europe, when rents had not yet fully recovered from the slump of the Depression. The long and short of it was that landlords felt that the state policies placed them with their backs to the wall. Their feelings of frustration were expressed in an internal memorandum, not for publication, by the secretary of the Vereniging van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Zaken, M.A.J. Kelling. Kelling raged about state officials holding dictatorial power in a country that was no longer a constitutional state (rechtsstaat). Kelling asserted that landlords were victims of:

pillage […and] ideological banditry’ [and the state housing policy induced the] ‘exhaustion of our societal wealth’. [It was a] shameful situation – unbefitting for us –, which has only been made possible and can only persist because of the total lack of understanding of our state of emergency and ignorance of the above-mentioned absurd conditions, in which the house owner in this country has found himself during the past few years.33

32 Letter Tan Eng Hoa (on behalf of Vereeniging van Grond- en Huiseigenaren) and L.M. Schoorel (on behalf of Algemeene Bond van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Goederen) to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal 14-9-1948; letter W.H. Hoogland, Chairman, and M.A.J. Kelling, Secretary, Vereniging van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Zaken to Luitenant Gouverneur- Generaal, Bandoeng, 20-10-1948; letter H. van der Wal, Secretaris van Staat Binnenlandse Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 15-12-1948, no. B 6/24/7, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 33 [B]randschatting […] ideologisch banditisme [...] ‘roofbouw op onze maatschappelijke rijk- dom’ […] beschamende toestand – ons onwaardig –, die alleen mogelijk is en bestendigd kan worden uit absoluut gebrek aan inzicht in onze noodtoestand en onkunde van bovenstaande absurde omstandig heden, waarin de huiseigenaar in deze gewesten verkeert gedurende de laatste jaren. Notitie M.A.J. Kelling, Huurverhoging: Een economische en sociale noodzakelijkheid, [1948], ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 376 Under construction

A private landlord stigmatized the state housing policies in Indonesia as being worse than communism in Russia, and asserted that house owners were ‘cheated, wronged, and discriminated against’.34 The overriding tenor of these quotes is urgency, indignation, and desperation. Although these landlords overreacted – after all, they could count themselves lucky that most of their capital had come through the Second World War and Revolution – they certainly had a point. Not all landlords were put in an awkward position to the same degree. Persons who used to rent out only a pavilion or a room in their own house had to find an additional source of income anyway and were not devastated by the governmental housing policy. The big real-estate developers had larger financial reserves and as a rule undertook other activities – construction, trade – as well. The landlords most badly hit were persons with a small number of dwellings, who were almost totally dependent on the rents for their living. For instance, the landlord just quoted who compared Indonesia unfavourably with communist Russia was a widow who owned four houses in Bandung and stated explicitly – but that was perhaps for rhetorical effect – that she did not have any other source of income. The various organizations that defended the interests of landlords described their constituency using the term ‘owners of houses’ (huiseigenaren), as if owning immovable property was the be-all and end-all of their members. These organizations claimed that their members were not ‘capitalists’ but elderly or retired people who had bought houses with their hard-earned savings as a guarantee of income for their old age. This group of landlords was financially fully dependent on rents.35 There was relief, small and as yet insufficient, in 1949 when the government at long last decided to permit a rent increase of 30%.36 Despite all the landlords’ moaning, landlords were not the only victims of these regulations; indirectly, they also adversely affected people who sought a house. Overall landlords offered fewer houses for rent than they would

34 ‘[O]pgelicht, verongelijkt en achteruitgesteld’, Letter E.C. Couvreur to Hoge Commissaris van de Kroon, Bandoeng 26-1-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 35 Letter Tan Eng Hoa (on behalf of Vereeniging van Grond- en Huiseigenaren) and L.M. Schoorel (on behalf of Algemeene Bond van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Goederen) to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal 14-9-1948; letter W.H. Hoogland, Chairman, and M.A.J. Kelling, Secretary, Vereniging van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Zaken to Luitenant Gouverneur- Generaal, Bandoeng, 20-10-1948; letter M.A.J. Kelling to Hoge Commissaris van de Kroon, Batavia 6-1-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064; see also Letter H. van der Wal, Secretaris van Staat Binnenlandse Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 15-12-1948, no. B 6/24/7, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064; Confidential Letter Ir. Visser to Versluis, not dated, attached to letter Administratiekantoor Versluis to Moh. Nasrun, Minister van Justitie, 23-12-1951, ANRI, Kabinet President 1950-1959 209. 36 Verordening Militair Gezag 555, Besluit Adjudant-Generaal P. Alons, waarnemend Legercommandant, 30-5-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. X Strategies of landlords and tenants 377 have done if they had not been subjected to the various constraints. In response to the stifling state regulations, landlords and tenants substituted informal rules for the formal ones, thereby somewhat ironing out the wrinkles in the rental market. Asking and offering key-money became standard practice, not only between owner and occupant, but also between two consecutive tenants. For instance, one lady I interviewed told me how a person offered her family Rp 450 to vacate their pleasant rented house in the Prins Hendrikstraat in Medan; her family accepted, and used part of the sum to persuade another family to leave their house in turn; hence her family reaped a nice windfall. Another departing tenant, who had lived in a dwelling for four years, received key-money from the incoming occupant equivalent to the amount of the full rent paid over the past four years plus a small profit (De Vrije Pers 4-9-1952). Landlords sometimes offered their own tenants a fee to leave a house.37 Extra money was asked from new subtenants, because they were relieved of the hassle of acquiring a residential permit; their right to occupy a room was derived from the main occupant and this derived right became a commodity in itself.38 Housing Allocation Bureaus had almost no houses to distribute, because most residential units were passed on infor- mally in a system oiled by key-money. Another informal settlement was made when landlords or departing tenants forced the new occupant to buy furniture left behind at excessive prices. Setting rents above the legal maximum became very common, with the consent of landlords and tenants alike. Tenants rarely reported the high rent to the Rent Tribunal, because they were happy to have found accommodation and feared being thrown out by the house owner should they make a fuss about the overpricing. If they refused to pay, the landlord had dozens of other potential tenants to choose from. As Roosseno, Minister of Economics, explained when answering a question in Parliament: when officials actually surveyed the rents, both landlord and tenant reported a fictitious rent.39 Of the informal arrangements, key-money could make up a substantial part of a person’s income. With a sound sense of the reality of the situation, the tax collector routinely asked how much key-money a person had received in a fiscal year. Key-money was also included in calculating gross national income (Muljatno 1960:182; Nieuwe Courant 10-3-1952). The informal rules, which came into being to adjust the market to the real demand for housing, did not apply to all dwellings. After all, rent control

37 The offer was, for example, Rp 5,000, plus the pick of three alternative rental dwellings. Alimusa Siregar vs. Baginda Soripada (PN Medan Pdt. 1/1955). 38 Letter Hoge Commissaris to Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken in ‘s-Gravenhage, 6-3-1954, no. 20032/1014, NA, Commissariaat Bandung 446. 39 Antara 9-11-1954/A, 30-11-1954/A, 9-1-1955/A-B; De Vrije Pers 2-9-1952; Huisvrouw 1950. 378 Under construction

(and the 30% rent increase of 1949) did not apply to houses with a pre-war rent below ƒ 30 per month.40 Rents of houses that had once cost less than ƒ 30 rose steeply, sometimes above the price of large urban houses on main streets (Antara 13-8-1954/B, 9-11-1954/A; DeVrije Pers 28-1-1953). Rents of kampong houses in Surabaya, for example, rose by 250-300% between 1945 and 1953, many times more than the 30% increase permitted for more expensive dwellings.41 Rent control seems also not to have been enforced in the large rental market for newly built squatter houses in Bandung and Makassar. These squatter houses had been constructed for thousands of refugees from the rural hinterland whose houses had been destroyed in the Darul Islam rebel- lions (Antara 1-4-1954/A-B, 26-3-1954/A, 7-3-1956/A). If all sides observed the rules, tenants in large cities definitely had the upper hand over landlords for most of the 1950s. Rents were fixed and became less and less costly in real terms. Renting houses was no longer a profitable business. Several older informants in Bandung (Kwee 2004:63), Makassar, and Medan recalled how their parents or they personally diverted capital from real estate to other investments. A former large property owner in Medan told me how he sold off his property consisting of some 30 houses in the 1950s and invested the earnings in his other business, a trading company. Two large property owners in Makassar, the Chinese Thoeng and the Swiss Weber, gave houses to families who urgently needed accommodation during or after the Revolution, without signing formal rental agreements. In the course of time, the children of the original occupants assumed erroneously that they owned the houses. Having neither formal papers of ownership nor rental agreements, Thoeng and Weber found it difficult to prove their ownership and in the 1970s sold their property while they still could get a price for it. As one informant said, not all owners sold off their houses in time. The organizations (kongsi) of the Nio and Tan families in Makassar rented out many houses to poor family members at a modest rent. When the original family members who had entered into the rental agreement died, the family ties dissolved and, as the rent became negligible in the course of years, there was no incentive for the kongsi to reclaim the houses. As a result, the houses gradually became the de facto property of the tenants. Another mechanism through which houses passed slowly into the hands of tenants was the refusal of landlords to pay for repairs. During the first half of the 1950s, landlords left the maintenance of rental dwellings to their tenants, because had they not done so they would have operated at a loss (Muljatno

40 Verordening Militair Gezag 555, Besluit Adjudant-Generaal P. Alons, waarnemend Legercommandant, 30-5-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 41 R. Moestadjab Soemowidigdo, Het woningvraagstuk in de grote steden, [lecture] 24-8-1953, Arsip Surabaya, Box 1250 no 26303. X Strategies of landlords and tenants 379

1960:181). The position of landlords was even weaker when they had to deal with a state body as tenant.42 In sum, after 1945 in theory the housing crisis favoured landlords. Rents of kampong houses did indeed double or triple within a few years, but official rents of middle-class dwellings were controlled by the state and rose by a comparatively modest 30%. Informal arrangements between landlord and tenant, foremost among them the practice of key-money, somewhat restored the balance between landlord and tenant, although outgoing tenants often took the key-money before the landlord had the opportunity to do so. A formal way to keep the rental business profitable in the 1950s was to shift from a rental agreement for an indefinite term to a contract for a fixed term. These contracted houses (rumah kontrak) were considered to fall outside the scope of regulations for rented houses (rumah sewa) – whether this was legally the case or not I cannot say – so that far higher rents could be asked. Before the landlord could rent out a property on a contract for a fixed term, the challenge was to first end the current rental agreement. In conclusion, the goal of landlords in the late 1940s and 1950s was to make rental agreements flexible so as to cash in on key-money and perhaps shift from rent for an indefinite term to rent for a fixed term. Tenants, in contrast, wanted to ensure that the agreements were as solid as possible. Both sides used the Rent Tribunal to try to turn the rental relationship in their favour.

The Rent Tribunals

Dutch administrators who returned to cities after the Japanese defeat established Rent Tribunals, which were faced with the task of solving the inex- tricable problem of what to do with people who had occupied houses since the Japanese invasion of February 1942. Should control over the houses be returned to the rightful owners? Should the occupants, who had perhaps paid rent to a caretaker in good faith for years, be allowed to stay? Should the law be maintained and illegal occupants evicted on a large scale, even though the very tight situation on the housing market made such a formal stand socially unacceptable? In answering these questions, the general shortage on the market and also the position of the many civil servants in rental dwellings weighed down heavily on the tenants’ end of the balance of power. The Rent Tribunal Ordinance of September 1946, which the state eventu-

42 See for instance: NV Exploitatie My en Bouwonderneming Makassar vs. Kementerian Kesehatan RI, Decision Komisi Penjewaan 30-4-1954, no. 16/TA/54, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 202; Peraturan Pemerintah 33 (1950), 14-8-1950, ANRI, Kabinet perdana menteri RI Yogyakarta 1949-1950 245. 380 Under construction ally produced as an answer, took the protection of tenants as its point of departure.43 Rent Tribunals continued to operate until at least 1957.44 At first sight Article 4.2, which stipulated that the highest permissible rent (hoogst toelaatbare huurprijs) should be at the level of February 1942, unless the Rent Tribunal decided otherwise, was the most important of its stipulations.45 Other articles, however, had far more bearing on the relationship between landlord and tenant. The Rent Tribunals decided who was allowed to rent a dwelling. The Ordinance gave tenants the right to ask the Rent Tribunal to decide on the highest permissible rent; the significance of such a request was formal recognition of a rental relationship. The Ordinance assumed that a rental agreement existed, even when no written rental agreement had been signed in the past (Article 14). An occupant’s request to acknowledge a rental relationship was as a rule granted, unless one of four specified situations applied: the owner proved he or she needed the building for his or her own use; the occupant used the dwelling in an improper way thereby causing a nuisance to fellow users; the occupant took possession of the dwelling after the Rent Tribunal Ordinance was decreed; or the owner wanted to return the building to the person who had rented it in February 1942 (Article 12). The last situation clearly favoured people, most likely Dutchmen, who had fled from or had been captured by the Japanese. Once a tenant’s right to occupy a house had been acknowledged, it was hard for the home-owner to get the person out again. A landlord could only give notice with approval of the Rent Tribunal. Reasons for the Rent Tribunal to annul tenancy were either misuse of the building (causing nuisance to other users) or being seriously behind in paying the rent (Article 15). The

43 Huurcommissieverordening (Verordening XXII), Decision C.C.O. AMACAB J.Z.77 for Java and Madoera, 20-9-1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 181 and 1064. Similar ordinances were promulgated for cities in Sumatra, for Makassar, and perhaps for cities on other islands too. Huurcommissieverordening Sumatra (Verordening 20) Besluit CCO AMACAB for Sumatra, 18-10-1946, changed by Verordening 26 Hoofd Tijdelijke Bestuursdienst at Medan, 27-12-1946, and again by Verordening Militair Gezag 556, Besluit, Adjudant-Generaal P. Alons, Waarnemend Legercommandant, 30-5-1949, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064; Huurcommissieverordening Makassar 1948, Verordening Resident Zuid-Celebes 30, 6-4-1948, Arsip Makassar 1945-1950 18. 44 Letter Ketua Komisi Sewa Kota Besar Padang, Zaidir Glr. St. Madjo Lelo, to Ketua Daerah Propinsi Sumatera Tengah, 1-2-1957, no. 60/Ag, Arsip Padang, Box I. It is unclear when Rent Tribunals were disbanded; probably the Rent Tribunal Ordinance was revoked city by city, as the same way it had been introduced. In 1966 what would seem to have been a typical case for the Rent Tribunal in Makassar was handled by the Housing Allocation Bureau, so perhaps the Rent Tribunal no longer existed by then. Request Tjoa Tjiong Lok to Kantor Urusan Perumahan Makassar, 21-4-1966, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 202. 45 The Rent Tribunal could increase the rent if it had been unusually low in 1942, because of a special relationship between landlord and tenant (for instance kinship) at that time. The Rent Tribunal lowered the rent when the quality of the house had significantly decreased during the war. X Strategies of landlords and tenants 381

Rent Tribunal Ordinance, in short, gave occupants considerable protection, and landlords had to convince the Rent Tribunal why the occupant should leave their property.46 The court case between Yie Long Hin and Hakamsingh demonstrates how a landlord tried in vain to end a rental agreement because the tenant was allegedly in arrears. The conflict is also an example of how the landlord tried to collect key-money and of how the tenant on his own initiative passed the dwelling on to another person, bypassing the landlord. Yie Long Hin and his family rented a modest house (ƒ 20 per month) from the heirs of one of the Hakamsingh brothers. Yie left the house in April 1946 for a somewhat safer address in Medan and invited his wife’s uncle, Bong Djoe Soei, to occupy the vacant house. In January 1948 Yie also allowed another Chinese family to live in the house with the consent of the Hakamsingh heirs. This other family, that of Lho Thian Lie, had fled from Pangkalan Brandan. At that time 18 people were living together in the two-room house. Bong and Lho jointly paid the rent, in Yie’s name. In November 1948, the Hakamsingh heirs proposed to Lho that they transfer the rental agreement to his (Lho’s) name, if he would pay them ƒ 1,500 (75 times the formal rent!). Lho refused, probably because he simply did not have the money. From then on, the Hakamsingh heirs refused to accept the money orders that Lho still sent every month in Yie’s name.47 In March 1950 the Hakamsingh heirs asked the Rent Tribunal to end the contract with Yie, because, they argued, Yie was 15 months in arrears and also because one of Hakamsingh’s coworkers had just arrived in Medan and desperately needed a dwelling. The first point made by the landlord was obviously a lie, but the second was bogus too, because in the meantime the Hakamsingh heirs had rented out five other houses of theirs. The Rent Tribunal ruled that Lho was the rightful tenant, but had to pay the unsettled bill of, by that time, 17 months.48 Appealing a decision about whether a rental agreement existed or could be ended was possible; the court of first instance (Landraad or Landgerecht, later the Pengadilan Negeri) functioned as the court of appeal for the Rent Tribunal.49 If the court of first instance quashed a decision of the Rent Tribunal,

46 As has been explained extensively (Chapter VII), Article 4.2, which made the rent of February 1942 the standard, also favoured tenants, as the real costs of housing had risen considerably since 1942. 47 This strategy was frequently resorted to. See: Abdul Hamid Raes vs. Jong Soei In (PN Medan Pdt. 131/1950). 48 For some reason Bong, who lived in the house at least until February 1950, did not play any role in the dispute. Hakamsingh appealed to the Landraad, in all likelihood in vain (the court decision is missing). Stichting Erven B. Hakamsingh Bath vs. Yie Long Hin, Lho Tian Lie (PN Medan Pdt. 15/1950). 49 An appeal against a decision about the amount of the rent was not allowed (Article 29). 382 Under construction the judge was to deliver his own judgement, against which no further appeal was possible (Article 37, 40). The next case, which also concerns a landlord who tried to make extra money over and above the formal rent, shows how the Court of Justice corrected a Rent Tribunal decision. In 1947 Khoo Teik Soon and his wife rented out one room of a four-room house to Chang Eng Lan. Khoo asked ƒ 500 key-money (wang tjak kopi). Moreover, over and above the formal rent of ƒ 20 he asked an excessive monthly payment of ƒ 50 for water and electricity, bringing the total monthly charge to ƒ 70. Chang, her husband, and three children were refugees and, fearing they would be unable to find another place to stay, paid the charge asked. In 1950 Chang applied for a residential permit from the Housing Allocation Bureau, probably in an attempt to gain more security of tenure. Khoo denied Chang this security, all the more eager to do so because he had found a new candidate willing to pay key-money. Chang’s application for a residential permit triggered a response from Khoo, who asked the Rent Tribunal to declare Chang’s occupation of the house illegal. In a curious move, Khoo had his wife, Eng Pek In, go to the Rent Tribunal with the convoluted argument that Chang had signed the rental agreement with Khoo, to whom she, Eng, was not legally married; therefore Khoo had not had the right to allow Chang into the house in 1947. Moreover, Eng (that is, Khoo standing in the wings) argued that Chang did not have receipts as evidence of rent paid (Khoo had always refused to give a receipt since the two families were ‘friends’), and Chang’s husband had put the room to improper use by parking a three-wheeled vehicle (amko) on the grounds, thereby causing damage to the house. Finally, Eng claimed she needed the house for ten of her children and grandchildren. After an inspection on site the Rent Tribunal found out that two of the four rooms were still empty, but Khoo quickly countered this by directing one child’s family to these rooms, demonstrating just how ‘overcrowded’ the house was. The Rent Tribunal ruled that Chang and his dependents had to leave the house, but the Landgerecht, seeing through Khoo’s machinations, reversed the decision on appeal.50 Tenants who lost a case before the Rent Tribunal but were reluctant to leave also had the option of appeal. Even if the tenants ultimately did not win the case, at least they had gained time. It was not uncommon for a tenant to buy years of time by appealing to a higher court. For example, a certain Kwan Siu Wing gained at least seven years in a fairly standard case, from the time of the Rent Tribunal’s decision (in November 1950) to the time the matter was heard by the court of appeal (Pengadilan Tinggi).51

50 Chang Eng Lan vs. Eng Pek In (PN Medan Pdt. 61/1950). 51 Kwan Siu Wing vs. Tjia A Kauw, Wong Tjit Yun (PN Medan Pdt. 214/1951); Kwan Siu Wing vs. Tjia A Kauw, Wong Tjit Yun (PT Medan Bandingan Pdt. 301/1957, found in PN Medan Pdt. 214/1951). X Strategies of landlords and tenants 383

Another form of appeal was to bring a case before the Rent Tribunal again, adducing new arguments. A minimum time lapse of six months was required between the first and second case, probably to give tenants in arrears time to settle their accounts (Rent Tribunal Ordinance, Article 31).52 Some landlords used this opening simply to try their luck again using the same old arguments. Tjong A Soen was a landlord who made extensive use of this opportunity. Tjong A Soen rented out a house to Wong Tjun Yen in 1949 or 1950. Wong never used the house, but sublet it immediately to his daughter and her recently wed husband, Tjung Ik Hian. Tjong tried to get Tjung Ik Hian and Wong’s daughter removed by lodging a request with the Rent Tribunal in 1950, 1953 and 1954. He based his request on the arguments that Wong was in the wrong to sublet the house and Tjong needed the house in Medan now that his three children were going to school in town; moreover, Tjong wanted to use the premises to produce syrup. As well as putting forward his arguments, Tjong made another nice house available to Tjung Ik Hian’s family. Tjong lost all his cases before the Rent Tribunal and also the appeal of the 1953 case. Finally, however, when he took the 1954 case against Wong to the court of appeal, Tjong won. Tjong’s joy about his hard-won victory was premature, however. The story took a maddeningly unexpected turn for him when not Wong as renter, but Tjung Ik Hian as occupant, went to the Rent Tribunal and asked for ‘the highest possible rent’, that is, acknowledge- ment of a rental agreement. The Rent Tribunal ruled that Tjung Ik Hian was allowed to stay, and this decision was upheld by the court of appeal. The case also demonstrates the far-reaching protection that tenants enjoyed. The protection the Rent Tribunal Ordinance offered to tenants extended to subtenants. Subtenancy complicated matters in two ways. The first problem emerged when the tenant was given notice, and the subtenant, being dependent on the tenant, automatically had to vacate the house too. Some subtenants did not accept their bitter fate without a fight, if only to buy time, as in the above example of Tjung Ik Hian.53 The second problem emerged when the tenant was allowed to stay, but wanted to get rid of the subtenant. For example, it took Pe Benk Bok, who rented a house in Medan, and sublet the front room to Tio Kik Beng, one and a half years (one case before the Rent Tribunal, two before the Landgerecht, and one before the court of appeal, Pengadilan Tinggi) to give the latter notice.54

52 Huurcommissieverordening (Verordening XXII), Decision C.C.O. AMACAB J.Z.77 for Java and Madoera, 20-9-1946, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 53 See also Kwan Siu Wing vs. Tjia A Kauw, Wong Tjit Yun (PT Medan Bandingan Pdt. 301/1957, found in PN Medan Pdt. 214/1951). 54 Tio Kik Beng vs. Pe Penk Bok (Landgerecht Pdt. 150/1950); Tio Kik Beng vs. Pe Penk Bok (PT Medan Bandingan Pdt. 60/1951/PT, both found in PN Medan Pdt. 150/1950). 384 Under construction

In short, then, the Rent Tribunal Ordinance gave tenants considerable protection. The downside of the ordinance, as of other government measures that protected tenants, was that it discouraged people from investing in houses. The ordinance sometimes proved a direct obstacle to urban renewal. A man named Tagor, for instance, owned 15 derelict houses in Kampong Sukaramai, Medan, and wished to replace them all. In his words, the walls were ‘like “PRAWN CRACKERS” and ready to collapse or fall to pieces when touched […] and most of the roofs were rotten and leaking’.55 He offered the tenants other accommodation for three months for free. Nevertheless, the Rent Tribunal refused to end the rental agreements in most cases, because the houses were still habitable.56

Forum shopping

A strategy used by both tenants and landlords was forum shopping. Some landlords, exasperated by the legal protection offered to tenants, tried out forums not envisaged by the Rent Tribunal Ordinance – usually with little success. In the late 1940s a number of landlords asked the Gedelegeerde voor Rechtsherstel (Agent for Rehabilitation) to terminate a rental agreement in cases where the judge had previously refused such a request (Keppy 2006:177, 180). Two landlords in Makassar asked the police to solve a dispute and literally to take the key from the occupant and return it to them.57 In another case, from Cirebon in 1955, a certain Rochim tried to regain control of a house he had rented out in 1947, when he joined the armed struggle against the Dutch. The Rent Tribunal in Cirebon concluded that Rochim did not really need the house, and decided that the tenant could stay. Rochim angrily wrote back to the Rent Tribunal that: ‘I cannot accept Your Honours’ decision and the matter is not Your Honours’ competence, because it is not a rental dwelling, but is instead a private house; so Your Honours should take cognizance of this fact’. When the Court of Justice confirmed the Rent Tribunal’s decision, Rochim first appealed to the police in Cirebon, then to his former commander in the armed struggle against the Dutch, and finally to the Indonesian President. All in vain.58

55 ‘[S]ebagai “KERUPUK UDANG” dengan mudahnja rontok of [sic] hantjur, bila disintuh […] dan atapnja pun kebanjakan sudah lapuk dan botjor.’ Tagor vs. Mohamad Ali (PN Medan, Pdt. 13/1955). 56 Tagor vs. Mohamad Ali (PN Medan, Pdt. 13/1955); Tagor vs. Phoa Tjeng Guan (PN Medan Pdt. 14/1955); Tagor vs. Ng Phwee (PN Medan Pdt. 15/1955); Tagor vs. Pang A Nam (PN Medan Pdt. 25/1955). 57 Letter Ong Hoei Hae to Lie Bang Kieng and Tan Han Siong, 3-6-1957, no. z19/57; letter Lie Ban Kieng and Tan Han Siong to Kepala Polisi Seksi II Kotabesar Makassar, 20-6-1957, Arsip Makassar 1950-1960 201. 58 ‘[K]eputusan tuan tidak bisa saja terima dan urusan ini bukan termasuk competensi tuan, karena X Strategies of landlords and tenants 385

The Rent Tribunal Ordinance itself offered ample room for forum shopping. Appealing against a Rent Tribunal’s decision, or opening a new case (about the same dwelling) after six months were just two of the options. There were other options as well. If the Rent Tribunal had decided a person had to vacate a house, the Housing Allocation Bureau could still dictate that the person be allowed to stay as long as no alternative dwelling was available.59 After a Rent Tribunal decided a tenant was not entitled to the dwelling and had to leave (and the Housing Allocation Bureau did not object), the owner was still not ensured of his property. Suppose the tenant refused to leave the house, the home-owner had to start another legal procedure to evict the tenant. In normal times it was the Landgerecht that would issue the eviction order, but because of the extraordinary times, the Rent Tribunal was given the authority to issue an eviction order, after having heard both sides again. Should the tenant refuse to obey the eviction order even of the Rent Tribunal, the house owner still had the option of asking the Landgerecht for an eviction order. The Landgerecht judge would then allow execution of the eviction order, after a cursory check of the Rent Tribunal’s eviction order.60 The following story of a bitter fight demonstrates the full range of legal forum shopping. The case also reveals how the practice of subletting and sub- subletting a dwelling complicated the situation. The merchant Abdul Kadir rented the house at Colombostraat 22 in Medan from an absentee landlord. Abdul Kadir sublet the house to the tailor Gulam Nabi, but in November 1948 he asked the Rent Tribunal to end the rental agreement with Gulam Nabi, because the latter had moved out and no longer used the building. Gulam Nabi confirmed he had left, but claimed his mother and two brothers who were not yet of age were still using the building. A member of the Rent Tribunal, J.F. Enkorama Coffie, investigated the situation on the spot and found that the house was empty, except for an unknown man, appar-

bukan rumah sewa, melainkan rumah prive, agar tuan mengetahui hal tersebut diatas’, letter Datuk A.M.Abd. Rochim to Panitya Sewa Kota Besar Cirebon, n.d.; see further Keputusan Panitya Sewa Bangunan Tjirebon no 5/2/55/P.S.B., 7-3-1956; letter Abd. Rochim to Pengadilan Negeri Cirebon, 11-6-1956; letter Kapitan Rachmat, on behalf of Panglima K.S.U.4 to K.M.K. Tjirebon, Bandung 13-2-1957, no. B/5/9/A/1957; letter Rochim to Kepala Negara RI, 23-9-1957, ANRI, Kabinet Presiden Republik Indonesia 1950-1959 723. 59 Francis, Nota inzake de huurcommissies in het ambtsgebied van Resident H.T.B. at Batavia, 30-9-1947, attached to letter J.E. van Hoogstraten, Directeur Economische Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 27-12-1946, no.23/68/Dir.; letter Tan Eng Hoa (on behalf of Vereeniging van Grond- en Huiseigenaren) and L.M. Schoorel (on behalf of Algemeene Bond van Belanghebbenden bij Onroerende Goederen) to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 11-11-1947, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 60 Francis, Nota inzake de huurcommissies in het ambtsgebied van den Resident H.T.B. te Batavia, 30-9-1947, attached to letter J.E. van Hoogstraten, Directeur Economische Zaken, to Luitenant Gouverneur-Generaal, 27-12-1946, no. 23/68/Dir., ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 1064. 386 Under construction ently allowed in by Gulam Nabi. On the basis of this investigation, the Rent Tribunal concluded that Gulam Nabi had made improper use of the building and that Abdul Kadir was in the right in ending the subtenancy arrangement. In February 1949 the Landgerecht confirmed the decision of the Rent Tribunal. In court, Gulam Nabi had attempted character assassination by asserting that Abdul Kadir often employed the strategy to force out his subtenants – in this case Gulam Nabi himself, in order to be able to demand key-money from a new subtenant. This procedure was exactly the course of action that Abdul Kadir had just pursued with another of his houses down the street. Whatever the truth of this allegation, the same could be said of Gulam Nabi, who had admitted the unknown man to the house, in all likelihood in return for key-money. This unknown occupant of Colombostraat 22 turned out to be a certain Harumall Thawardas, an Indian, who had just returned to Medan after having lived in India and Java for 14 years. Harumall refused to comply with the court decision that he was not permitted to occupy Colombostraat 22. A new decision of the Rent Tribunal was necessary to evict him. In March 1949, the Rent Tribunal issued an order stating that Harumall had to leave, and in April the Landgerecht took the decision that the order of the Rent Tribunal could be enforced. Even then Harumall refused, and took the Rent Tribunal’s order to the Landgerecht. In this court case, the absentee home-owner joined Harumall as appellant.61 Harumall rejected the order to vacate the house on both (shrewd) procedural and (false) substantive grounds. The Rent Tribunal had made a procedural error, Harumall argued, by omitting the opening words ‘In naam der Koningin’ (‘In the name of the Queen’). Moreover, the Landgerecht had made an error in declaring in a separate decision (beschikking) that the Rent Tribunal’s order could be enforced, instead of adding this judgement to the order of the Rent Tribunal, as the law stipulated; the Landgerecht itself did not have the competence to order somebody to leave a house and could only confirm the Rent Tribunal’s decision. The substantive error concerned the ownership of the house; Harumall stated he rented the house directly from the absentee owner as of 1 April 1949 and was no longer a subtenant of Abdul Kadir. The latter had allegedly merely collected the rent on behalf of the absentee landlord.

61 The ownership of the house was complex too. The original owner, Loebis, had mortgaged the house before the war and paid off his debt during the Japanese period. He then sold the house to Mohamad Garang. After the Japanese defeat, the Directie Rechtsherstel (Rehabilitation) nullified the redemption of Loebis’s debt and returned the property to the mortgagee, the NV Beleggingsmaatschappij te Medan. Subsequently Loebis again paid off his debt and for the second time sold the house to Mohamad Garang. Abdul Kadir declared that he rented the house from Loebis and Harumall stated he rented it from Mohamad Garang; the latter joined forces with Harumall in taking the matter to court. X Strategies of landlords and tenants 387

The Landgerecht was not amused by Harumall’s criticism of its lax application of procedures and waived the procedural flaws: the words ‘In naam der Koningin’ had indeed been used, albeit not in the opening words of the order; and the Landgerecht had given a separate decision simply because there was no space left on the paper on which the Rent Tribunal had written the order to leave the house. Referring to the main issue, the court stated clearly that Abdul Kadir was still the principal tenant. In conclusion, the Landgerecht confirmed its own decision that the Rent Tribunal’s order to leave could be enforced. Harumall did not give up. He took the decision of the Landgerecht to a higher court, which took the procedural flaws more seriously. It is ironic that the exact position of the words ‘In the name of the Queen’ played a crucial role just months before the Netherlands finally transferred sovereignty to the Indonesian Republic. The higher court ruled that the Landgerecht had investigated Harumall’s claim to be principal tenant insufficiently and on both these grounds threw out the decision of the Landgerecht. The effect of this ruling was that the Rent Tribunal’s eviction order was not confirmed by the Landgerecht, hence could not be enforced as long as Harumall refused to comply willingly (but nor was the eviction order declared null and void). In August 1950, in response to a request by Abdul Kadir to that effect, the Rent Tribunal sent Gulam Nabi a judicial reminder of the order to leave dating from March 1949. The reminder was of course totally irrelevant to Gulam Nabi, who had left long before, but was a bitter blow to Harumall, who was, in the view of the Rent Tribunal, the subtenant of Gulam Nabi. Harumall took this reminder to the Landgerecht. The discussion of the case focused on the question of whether Harumall was subtenant or principal tenant; in other words, whether the order to leave directed to Gulam Nabi did or did not include Harumall.62 In October 1950 the Landgerecht again ruled in favour of Abdul Kadir. In a final move, Harumall appealed to the higher court, which in January 1956 definitely confirmed that Harumall had to leave the house at Colombostraat 22.63 In conclusion, Harumall occupied the house in or shortly after November

62 Once again a secondary theme was the question of who owned the house: Loebis or Mohamad Garang. 63 Beschikking Huurcommissie Medan 216, 30-11-1948; Gulam Mohammad vs. A.S. Abdul Kadir (Landgerecht Medan Pdt. 65/1948); Harumall Thawardas, Mohammad Garang vs. Abdul Kadir, Gulam Nabi (Landgerecht Medan Pdt. 197/1949); Harumall Thawardas, Mohammad Garang vs. Abdul Kadir, Gulam Nabi (Madjelis Appèl Sumatra/Appelraad Sumatra HB 79/1949); Harumall Thawardas vs. A.O. Abdul (Landgerecht Medan Pdt. 35/1950); Harumall Thawardas vs. A.O. Abdul (Pengadilan Tinggi Medan 38/1952); all decisions are found in the judgement Landgerecht Medan Pdt. 35/1950 (PN Medan Pdt. 35/1950). Note that the obscurity of the case is compounded even more by the various names used by the same person. 388 Under construction

1948, exactly at the time the person who admitted him to the house, Gulam Nabi, was given notice. It is plausible that Gulam Nabi looked for an occupant (with a view to obtaining key-money) precisely because he had been told to leave and could not have cared less about the situation he left behind in the house. Gulam Nabi’s avaricious attitude in hoping to reap a large profit and leave the mess for others to clean up is a highly probable explanation of the whole sorry affair, because the first time he was heard by the Rent Tribunal, he merely spoke of his mother and younger brothers, and the first time he mentioned the presence of a sub-subtenant, he was unable to mention the person’s name. The most likely order of events is therefore that Gulam Nabi looked for a sub-subtenant after he was told to leave. The point is: the greedy behaviour of Gulam Nabi, which caused Abdul Kadir so many problems (and financial loss), was only possible because of the chaotic times. The exceptional complexity of the case is the second point to be drawn from it. The system of sub-subletting epitomizes the dynamic situation that prevailed during decolonization, when many people were desperately searching for a place to stay in cities. The third point is the far-reaching protection tenants enjoyed because of the many and complicated legal procedures. Harumall, who had no right to live in the house at Colombostraat 22, held out from November 1948 until at least January 1956, and he may have stayed longer, since we do not know how soon, if at all, he complied with the final court decision of January 1956. A significant detail of the case, finally, is the personal interest of one of the members of the Rent Tribunal. J.F. Enkorama Coffie, who investigated the situation on the spot, was a former tax collector, and, like all members, was entitled to financial compensation for his efforts. What is more, he cashed in on his inside information by serving as lawyer for one of the parties in other disputes before the Rent Tribunal.64

Conclusion

Landlords and tenants were bound to each other in an eternal, inescapable grip throughout the long process of decolonization. Both sides needed each other and at the same time each tried to improve their own situation at the expense of the other. When many houses stood vacant, landlords offered good conditions. This situation prevailed in late 1945 and early 1946, when some landlords even offered a middle-class dwelling for free, if only a reliable person

64 Romme 1962:11; Huurcommissieverordening 1946 Java en Madoera, 20-9-1946, Besluit CCO AMACAB J.Z.77, Article 8, ANRI, Algemene Secretarie 181; Kwan Siu Wing vs. Tjia A Kauw, Wong Tjit Yun (PN Medan Pdt. 214/1951). X Strategies of landlords and tenants 389 was willing to occupy their property in those uncertain months. Middle-class tenants had also moved easily from one house to another, in search of a better bargain, during the Depression. The opposite situation prevailed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when vacant houses in cities were few and far between, and the pressure on the rental market was enormous. Under those circumstances, tenants strove to establish a secure relationship, but, conversely, landlords did their best to make the tenancy agreement as flexible as possible and to oust old tenants in favour of new ones. A new tenant offered the opportunity to obtain a substantial sum in key-money and perhaps a higher rent. In the period under scrutiny, the balance of power between landlord and tenant was fully regulated by the invisible hand of the market only during the 1930s. From September 1939, some measure of state intervention was detectable. Rent control existed until 1927 and again from 1939; its most extreme form was during the Japanese period, when rents were ordered to be decreased by up to 50%. After the Dutch resumed the reins of government, the rents of middle-class and elite houses were first restored to, and then frozen at, the pre-Japanese invasion level. The Dutch government, however, soon washed its hands of trying to control the rents of lower-class houses (with pre-war rents below ƒ 30), perhaps out of sheer lack of concern or because it lacked the manpower to enforce rent control for the enormous number of cheaper dwellings. As a result of this selective rent control, market principles again prevailed at the lower end of the housing market. Rents of cheaper dwellings rose rapidly, and the market responded by vigorously building such houses (often on squatted land). In 1946 rent control was linked to another important state policy, namely the installation of a Rent Tribunal (Huurcommissie, or Komisi Sewa) in the cities of Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and perhaps other islands too. The combination of rent control and Rent Tribunals offered tenants very strong legal protection, allowing them to occupy a middle-class house permanently at a rent close to or below cost price. Under the existing regulations landlords could no longer make a proper living. Lobbying by landlords’ organizations and housing agencies to have some of the regulations undone were ineffectual (except for a very modest 30% rent increase in 1949). Illicit ways by which landlords tried to make their business profitable were to demand key-money, to ask more rent than was allowed (either openly or in the form of an inflated charge for water and electricity), or to sell furniture at inflated prices. New tenants were quite willing to accept these terms, driven to near desperation by the dearth of urban housing. The situation was different for tenants who had occupied dwellings during the Japanese period or in the first months of the Revolution. They appealed to the Rent Tribunal to acknowledge their rental agreement and were, if successful, shielded from key-money, high 390 Under construction rents, and orders to vacate the house. Landlords responded by trying to get rid of these old tenants, because they could only make a profit – key-money being the most common practice – from new occupants. Tenants with formal rental contracts dating from before the Japanese invasion stayed clear of all these hassles, and because of the combination of rent control and inflation in real terms, they paid declining rents. Both tenants and landlords used the Rent Tribunal and, if necessary, appealed to the Court of Justice, to defend their position. Strategies employed in these disputes were forum shopping, appealing to a higher court to win time, concocted stories, and a blunt refusal to comply with court decisions. Judging by the files of the Pengadilan Negeri of Medan, the number of rental disputes dropped in 1951 and 1952, for two reasons. First, the most complex situations that had arisen during the years of turmoil had been sorted out or were still sub judice. Second, indefinite rental agreements began to be replaced by one- year contracts; by employing these fixed-term contracts landlords had more control over their property and no longer sought a court decision to remove a tenant or raise the rent. In addition, the pressure on the rental market may have eased. In contrast to the fierce, complex fights of the early 1950s, rental disputes taken to the Court of Justice in the mid-1950s were straightforward matters pertaining to tenants being in arrears.65 Finally, it should be noted that the Rent Tribunal Ordinance of 1946, of which the principal aim was to regulate the economic relationship between landlords and tenants, was not free of political bias. In practice the Ordinance favoured two groups that were on the side of the reinstalled Dutch government. First, the Rent Tribunal Ordinance backed Dutchmen who had been interned by the Japanese and wished to return to their pre-war rental dwellings.66 Second, the Rent Tribunal Ordinance supported people who had remained loyal to the Dutch during the Revolution and who had taken over houses of Indonesian revolutionaries fleeing Dutch forces. One adherent of the Republic of Indonesia who had lost his rental dwelling in this way fulminated in court that the Rent Tribunal was a ‘tool of the Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service’ (alat alat nevis-nja) and the cunning Chinese militia Fo An Toei.67 The decolonization process also created an undercurrent of insecurity and violence, in which some people grew accustomed to disrespecting both

65 Kho Tong Yan vs. Oei Lian Tin (PN Medan Pdt. 14/1955) [sic, the same number as the case between Tagor vs. Phoa Tjeng Guan); Gulam Rasul vs. Abdul Djalil (PN Medan Pdt. 27/1955); Ali, Awab, Abdullah vs. Achmad Putih (PN Medan Pdt. 28/1955). 66 However, the files of the Pengadilan Negeri Medan contain no evidence that Dutchmen ever used the Rent Tribunals for this purpose. 67 Letter Tie A Lang to Gubernur Sumatera Utara, 6-7-1955, encountered in the file of Sivalingam Chettiar vs. Entjik Zahara Adil and Chan Chie (PN Medan Pdt. 32/1955). X Strategies of landlords and tenants 391 tenancy agreements and Rent Tribunal rulings. Consequently, decolonization had a considerable bearing on the rental relationship. The two parties in the tenancy relationship, landlords and tenants, were completely different from the usual protagonists in decolonization histories: pemuda, nationalists, soldiers, Dutch colonials and so on. For many urban residents during decolonization, the daily worry of finding a house overrode any lofty political ideals.

Chapter xi Conclusion

Allied planes bombed Makassar heavily in the Second World War, and air raids destroyed 90% of the buildings in Kota Ambon and Manado. British forces demolished many of Surabaya’s kampongs in November 1945 in their attempt to subdue that revolutionary city. The next year, Indonesian forces set fire to many buildings in Bandung and Malang when they were forced to retreat from these cities. The population of Yogyakarta, the last standing major Republican city in Java, was swollen by refugees. Some of the refugees found a home in, under, or between railway carriages. Villas in Jakarta and other cities gradually fell into decay in the 1940s and 1950s, because of over- intense habitation by families who were crammed into these houses by the Housing Allocation Bureaus. New public housing projects were carried out in Medan, Semarang and other cities in the 1950s, emulating similar plans of the 1930s, despite anti-colonial rhetoric. In the 1950s squatter settlements mushroomed in every city, because lower-class people, migrating to cities in great numbers in search of work, had to find a solution to their housing problem.

A landscape of chaos

An urban landscape is the accumulated sediment of historical processes, or, in the words of Barbara Bender (2002:S103), ‘time materializing’. One such historical process that is visible in the urban landscape is the decolonization of Indonesia. Careful analysis of urban space in Indonesia gives insight into the social dynamics of decolonization. The focus in this book has been on urban space, and housing in particular, but behind the housing issue invariably looms the larger question of the social changes taking place during the decolonization process in Indonesia. Many decolonization studies to date have focused on the grand events of war, diplomacy, and revolutionary violence on the national level. I have tried to add a new perspective on the decolonization of Indonesia by focusing on housing at the local level. By employing this micro-level perspective, other important issues come to the fore such as the devaluation of real estate, while 394 Under construction already familiar scenes, like the arrogance of the military, are painted in fresh colours. Perhaps most importantly, the local study of urban space and housing, sometimes literally looking at what happened behind the front door, enables us to gain a better understanding of what decolonization meant to the everyday lives of ordinary individuals. During the ‘long decolonization’ of Indonesia (1930-1960), the lives of ordinary people oscillated between chaos and normality. In the Introduction I treated chaos and normality as two aims striven for by various political actors, including: Japanese military rulers, nationalist leaders, young revolutionaries, various armies, and Dutch administrators. They all manipulated the balance between administrative chaos and order as it suited them best, during the Japanese occupation (1942-1945) and the Indonesian Revolution (1945-1949). In the course of this book, however, chaos and normality have turned out to be central themes in the lives of almost everybody, and to encompass more than the political manipulation of the rule of law. Some actors, wishing to fish in troubled waters, profited from the chaos and at times intentionally stimulated or allowed a chaotic state of affairs to continue to prevail. For instance, revolutionaries subverted colonial rule by applying scorched-earth tactics. People occupied vacant houses whose owners were interned or taking refuge elsewhere. Soldiers of successive armies requisitioned houses with an arrogance unthinkable in peacetime. Other actors, in contrast, tried to quell the chaos and fought to restore what they deemed a ‘normal’ state of affairs. Urban planners designed orderly neighbourhoods. Home-owners lobbied for the restoration of full control over their property. Long-time squatters asked the municipal government to legalize their kampongs and provide basic utilities. Hence the generalized battle between chaos and order during the decolonization of Indonesia became manifest in the struggle for housing and the control of urban space. Chaos and order are familiar concepts in the analysis of urban space. While urban administrators and town planners desire to bring more order to urban space, such practitioners of a critical urban sociology as Jane Jacobs (1964) and Henri Lefebvre (1986) value a certain degree of chaos and disap- prove of state attempts to establish order. In Indonesia, conflicting views on disorder and the need to take measures to rectify it existed for kampongs, both before and after Independence. More recently, James Scott (1998) has broadened Jacobs and Lefebvre’s critique to embrace all state attempts to make society ‘legible’ for the purposes of taxation, control, and exploitation. A similar critique of the imposition of state order is voiced by Zygmunt Bauman (1999) in his article ‘Urban space wars: On destructive order and creative XI Conclusion 395 chaos’.1 Although my analysis of the decolonization of the Indonesian city is inspired by these critical social scientists, a morally laden, simple equation of the imposition of order by a malign state is not helpful to my purposes. Actors who aimed to create chaos or restore order were found both among ordinary people and among civilian and military state actors. Normality and chaos are etic constructs, but ones that are very much rooted in the experience of the people concerned. Normality is derived directly from the emic depiction of the pre-war years as zaman normal (normal times). This, by the way, is the main reason I prefer the term normality to order, although I admit to being guilty of an occasional slip of the pen. What constituted ‘normality’ and what ‘chaos’ was, of course, very much a matter of perception, but most contemporaries would agree that the runaway rate of urbanization, violent destruction of houses, home-owners’ loss of control of their own property, and a weakening of the rule of law all contributed to a prevailing sense of chaos during the 1940s (not to mention gruesome killings, rapes and kidnappings, which were not directly issues of urban space and housing). By the mid-1950s the pendulum had swung back to a more regular daily life, but in the meantime important social changes had occurred. At the risk of forcing an open door, I should perhaps stress that this return to a more regular life did not mean stability. Social change never ends. Probably nobody actually aimed to create turmoil or achieve stability as a goal in its own right, but struggled to achieve concrete objectives. The opponents in these concrete struggles cannot all be captured under the heading of one encompassing classification, but belonged to several oppositions. The civil administration quarrelled with the military, the administration also confronted corporate enterprise and individual home-owners, landlords clashed with tenants, and squatters quarrelled with landowners. All these confrontations took place against the backdrop of a soaring shortage of urban housing, which started with the Japanese invasion, peaked around 1950, and remained a chronic problem in the 1950s. With the exception of a few cities, the Second World War did not do much damage to housing, but dwellings began to be neglected after the Japanese froze rents and interned European owners. During the Indonesian Revolution, in some cities many houses were deliberately destroyed. Other houses were spared, but became temporarily unfit for habitation, because they were situated in unsafe areas. Overdue maintenance and occupation by more inhabitants than houses were designed for added to the reduction in quality and size of the existing housing stock. This dilapidation of houses went hand in hand with a rapidly

1 It is noteworthy, by the way, that the execution of projects to establish order often passed through a chaotic phase; Baron Haussmann’s redesigning of Paris, for example, uprooted tens of thousands of Parisians (Scott 1998:59). 396 Under construction swelling urban population, which grew by about 10% per year in most large cities between 1940 and 1950. Indigenous people migrated to cities from rural areas in search of work or food. Chinese and European refugees, fleeing from violence in the countryside and small towns, poured into the cities. The housing crisis was worst in Jakarta, because Dutchmen, wishing to leave Indonesia and waiting for passage, and other Dutchmen, who had just arrived with the aim – as they saw it – of rebuilding the colony, all passed through the capital. The stark imbalance of supply and demand in housing threw simmering social tensions into sharp relief. Housing therefore forms an excellent entry into an analysis of social dynamics. Social conflicts were intensified by the overall insecurity of the years of turmoil and the general thuggish and violent ways resorted to to solve disputes. The housing shortage of the war years emerged in conjunction with other problems that have continued to haunt cities to some extent up to the present: shortage of building land; lack of urban planning; weak enforcement of planning regulations; and an expansion of public utilities (water, sewage works, electricity), which always lag behind population growth. In hindsight, urban development spun out of control during the war years, and the government did not regain command of it for many years to come. Although the Japanese occupation and subsequent Indonesian Revolution undoubtedly worsened the housing crisis in Indonesia, Third World cities do not need a war or revolution to suffer from a housing shortage. After listing a range of urban problems in less developed countries, C.L. Choguill (1994:936) asserts that ‘[t]he prime cause of these problems is one simple variable: the rate of urban growth’. My analysis of urban space and housing is therefore relevant not only to understanding the decolonization of Indonesia, but also adds to our understanding of urban development in other cities in the South.

‘Race’ and class

One domain in which chaos reigned during decolonization is the meaning of ethnicity. The abolition of the juridical, colonial differentiation between Indigenous, Foreign Oriental, and European ‘races’ is arguably the most radical social change of decolonization.2 The paradox is that this abolition was accompanied by a brief period during which a person’s ‘racial’ classification and ethnicity became of prime importance, even a matter of life and death. The Japanese, who deserve the credit for ending the tripartite ‘racial’ classifi-

2 As Ann Stoler and others have argued, colonial racism was, of course, not only rooted in a law, but also in daily interaction, especially between the sexes, and between employers and servants (Gouda 1995; Locher-Scholten 1997; Nieuwenhuys 1982; Stoler 1995, 1997, 2002). XI Conclusion 397 cation of colonial times, interned Dutchmen for no other reason than that they were Dutch. Whether Eurasians in Java shared this fate with other Dutchmen depended on their percentage of Dutch ‘blood’ (and their own choice). These same groups, as well as people of Chinese descent, were identified as targets of terror during the bersiap months. The persecution of Dutchmen speeded up the process of indonesianisasi, which had started before the Japanese invasion and continued after the Dutch acknowledged the sovereignty of the Indonesian Republic. Indonesianisasi meant the assumption of high-level political, economic, and administrative positions by Indonesians, replacing former Dutch managers and officials (Lindblad 2008). Administrative vocabulary was also Indonesianized, although Dutch phrases remained common in the 1950s. In the cities, the indonesianisasi of top positions became manifest in the invasion of houses, formerly inhabited by Dutchmen, by Indonesians (of whatever ethnic background). Most laymen, quite a few historians, and leading urban sociologists have postulated that the take-over of European-occupied villas by members of the Indonesian middle class and elite resulted in a transition from residential segregation along ethnic lines to segregation along class lines.3 It is correct that after Independence different social classes (in the sense of income groups) lived apart from each other, but the assumption that in late-colonial times people were residentially segregated on the basis of ethnicity is questionable. In the late-colonial discourse ethnicity, or ‘race’, was overemphasized at the expense of class differences. On the ground, however, class differences were already very important before Independence. The often assumed ‘from-race- to-class-segregation’ process cannot have taken place during the long decolonization, for the simple reason that in reality class differences were already predominant in the socio-spatial divide of colonial times. It is therefore more accurate to speak of ‘class-segregation-throughout-decolonization’. The difference between the ‘from-race-to-class-segregation’ and ‘class- segregation-throughout-decolonization’ propositions hinges on the question of whether urban residents in late-colonial times lived separated by ethnicity or by class (income). The comparative analysis of ethnicity and class is, of course, marred by the fact that ethnic and income divisions in colonial times overlapped to a considerable degree. Therefore, apparently anomalous cases are especially important to the analysis: where did well-to-do indigenous people live and where did poor Europeans live? A tentative quantitative analysis of addresses taken from various datasets shows an association between ethnicity and place of residence, and between

3 Evers 1973; McGee 1967:139-41; Abidin Kusno 2000:132-3, 152-3. Evers, McGee, and Kusno’s argument is much subtler than stated here (see further Chapter III). 398 Under construction income and place of residence, but not a discernible trend of the association between income and location becoming stronger after 1945, nor a trend of the association between ethnicity and location becoming weaker. Unlike the inconclusive quantitative analysis, recent interviews with people about the houses where they had lived during their lives yielded clearer answers. Interviewees sketched an image of neighbourhoods that were ethnically mixed, but fairly homogeneous with regard to occupation or income group. Counterevidence against the notion of class-based neighbourhoods and in support of ethnically defined neighbourhoods in late-colonial times seems to come from such concepts as the ‘indigenous kampong’ and the ‘European villa’, ethnic zoning in town plans, and the distinction between Indigenous and European land tenure systems. When the counterarguments are scrutinized, however, they all turn out to support the proposition that colonial cities were essentially segregated along income lines. The number of non-indigenous people living in kampongs was, although not in exact proportion to their share in the total urban population, much too large to say that Europeans and Chinese living in kampongs were an exception. Characteristic features of kampongs, such as low sanitary standards and poor quality of dwellings, were caused by the poverty of kampong residents, and not by a presumed indigenous lifestyle. Poverty, and concomitant lack of power, inhibited kampong inhabitants from attempting to change their living conditions and to lobby the local administration. Likewise, kampong dwellings were characterized by cheap building materials and low quality, rather than by an idiosyncratic ‘indigenous’ design. In other words, the adjective ‘indigenous’ was used to typify kampong houses and neighbourhoods, but behind this ethnic denominator hid class differences: what was really meant by an ‘indigenous house’ or ‘indigenous kampong’ was actually a lower-class house or neighbourhood.4 Likewise, ‘European villas’ were inhabited by middle-class people, of a variety of ethnic backgrounds, who all aspired to a modern lifestyle. This lifestyle included an architect-designed, middle-class, single-family dwelling built in brick with a pitched roof, glass windows, and special rooms for living, dining, and sleeping. Town planning, which was based on the principle of zoning, introduced class-based terms like ‘villa’, ‘small detached house’, and ‘terraced kampong houses’. These planning principles were given a legal footing at the national level in the Town Planning Ordinance drafted in 1938, which came into effect in 1948. The fact that only by then were class-based planning zones formalized in law suggests that it was just before the change of rule that

4 Sometimes indigenous houses were built in vernacular architecture, but this idiosyncrasy contrasted, say, Makassarese houses in Makassar with Acehnese houses in Banda Aceh, rather than with European, Chinese, or Arab houses in Makassar. XI Conclusion 399 colonial designers took the first steps towards attempting to structure cities by income. However, concrete town plans from the 1910s, thus long before Independence, already planned for ethnically mixed neighbourhoods, each neighbourhood designed for a specific social class. The legal distinction between European and Indigenous land tenure systems, which remained valid until 1960, is not proof of ethnic segregation either. The distinction was tied to the plot of land and not to the juridical status of the owner. Despite some legal obstacles, in practice, Europeans and Foreign Orientals purchased land with an Indigenous title as easily as indigenous people bought European land. The difference that really mattered was not the ethnicity of the occupant, but the security of the title. A European title gave more security but at a higher cost, which was only affordable for middle-class and elite people (of whatever ethnic background) who wished to invest heavily in the land or who could raise a mortgage. People with lesser financial means, whatever the ethnic group, preferred the simpler Indigenous title. A final argument in support of the ‘from-race-to-class-segregation’ proposition is the irrefutable fact that Indonesians took over middle-class and elite dwellings from Europeans after 1942. This fact can be explained, however, by the gradually shrinking proportion of Europeans in all urban quarters, because Europeans left Indonesian cities in several waves. The European share in kampongs dwindled simultaneously, but it is the indigenous invasion of middle-class neighbourhoods that is most vividly remembered by Europeans who lived there. The loss of a nice middle-class home was under- standably more traumatic than the loss of a kampong dwelling, the more so as – from the Dutch perspective – the villas were emblematic of the whole ‘tempo doeloe’ (good old times) lifestyle of white dominance. The departure of Europeans from kampongs was overshadowed – hence less noticed by Europeans and indigenous people alike – by another process: the mass arrival of many indigenous migrants from rural areas. In short, the evidence in support of the proposition of class-based residential segregation in colonial times is considerable. Therefore, it is plausible that with regard to the use of urban space, the social structure was characterized by continuity in the mid-twentieth century: urban space was structured by class differences throughout the long decolonization. This statement raises six issues. The first issue is a caveat. Whereas it is erroneous to think of colonial cities as essentially racially segregated, it would be equally mistaken to depict them as inhabited by fully homogeneous income groups. Some income differences existed within a middle-class neighbourhood or within a lower-class kampong.5

5 Nevertheless, I have the strong impression that it is more common for a well-to-do person 400 Under construction

Second, another caveat must be made. Class entails more than just income; it also includes lifestyle: a certain behaviour or consumption pattern. Differences in lifestyle distinguished people from different ethnic backgrounds who lived together in one neighbourhood. For instance, in a middle-class neighbourhood ethnic differences may have been evident in architectural details or decoration of the interior. An indigenous home-owner, for example, may have appreciated a small, quasi-vernacular embellishment of the roof beam. A Chinese might place a screen behind the front door to ward off evil spirits, and erect a family altar in the living room.6 In kampongs such lifestyle differences were probably negligible, although I recall interviewing a Eurasian resident who had hung a tile with a Dutch proverb on the wall of her room. It is significant that ethnic groups were strongly clustered only in a place where worldly goods no longer mattered: in cemeteries (Toelichting 1938:53-5). Third, while colonial urban space was principally segregated based on income differences, Europeans were undeniably over-represented in middle- class and elite neighbourhoods. The point is that Indigenous people and Foreign Orientals were discriminated against not so much in their residential choices, but in their access to formal education. As Ann Booth (1998:328) asserts: ‘[t]he failure to accelerate access to education was probably the greatest of the sins of omission of Dutch colonialism’. Formal education enhanced a person’s opportunity to earn a higher income, and, consequently, to live in a middle-class or elite neighbourhood. In addition, racial discrimination was operative in the employment policy and, sometimes, the remuneration policy of both European firms and the state bureaucracy. Does it matter whether colonial racial discrimination operated in the domain of housing, or whether it was primarily in schooling and employment? Whether Indonesians were slapped from the left or the right? Yes, it does matter for a proper understanding of the functioning of urban space. The fact that urban space was already organized around class differences in colonial times goes some way towards explaining why the government after Independence did not succeed in restructuring housing in a more equitable way. Fourth, we need to understand why people lived segregated by income group. One factor is that different qualities of houses were not distributed at random, but clustered. The unhygienic and crowded living conditions in kampongs were one reason for people who could afford it to stay away from kampongs. The emerging middle-class preferred to live in modern suburbs.

to live in the midst of a kampong nowadays than it used to be in the mid-twentieth century. The sanitary conditions of kampongs have been much improved and no longer form a reason to avoid kampongs. 6 The examples of roof beam, protective screen, and altar I know from recent fieldwork, but I have not actually encountered evidence that they existed in colonial times. XI Conclusion 401

The patterned distribution of Indigenous and European land titles, combined with the preference of well-to-do people for a European land title, also contributed to segregation by income group. The huge income disparity and the enormous differences in rents prohibited the occupation of a house even slightly above a person’s financial standing. Finally, as became apparent in interviews, networking was a major mechanism for finding a home, with the result that people found accommodation close to similar people. Fifth, although my aim was to find out what happened on the ground rather than to make a discourse analysis, a final question with regard to the relationship between urban space and social structure is why the discourse of ‘racial’ segregation prevailed among both colonial urban residents and many later historians. I have not probed into the matter deeply, but presume that contemporaries were misled by the fact that in other aspects of life, such as education and legal rights and obligations, ‘racial’ categories did matter, with Europeans usually claiming what was favoured or most modernized. A ‘racial’ discourse proclaiming that indigenous meant inferior and European meant superior was easily extended to housing types. Kampong houses were cheaper and of a lower standard than brick houses, and therefore seemed to befit indigenous people. If kampongs were insalubrious, European hegemony required that kampongs were ‘thus’ deemed inappropriate for Europeans, even though this was in flat contradiction to actual residential patterns. In other words, racial discourse at large spilled over into discourse on urban space. Later historians allowed themselves to be misled by colonial discourse. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, historians’ inclination to look for ethnic differences was reinforced by the growing importance of ethnic identity in the era of globalization and the overwhelming attention paid to ethnicity in social sciences. Sixth, the question arises whether the Indonesian findings can be generalized to other colonial societies (and perhaps all societies where a discourse of ethnic segregation prevails). Further study is necessary, but a preliminary answer is a qualified yes. For instance, in India the British lived mixed with Indians until the Mutiny of 1857, after which they retreated to cantonments; it seems unlikely, however, that all Europeans withdrew to cantonments, and a certain ethnic mixing may have persisted. In Casablanca and Elisabethville (Lubumbashi, Congo), indigenous and European neighbourhoods were separated by a cordon sanitaire hundreds of metres wide. In Elisabethville the African quarter was even demolished and rebuilt to achieve this purpose. However, non-Europeans with a middle-class lifestyle lived among Europeans, and lower-class Europeans lived close to or among Africans (Lagae 2006; Shaw 2006; Wright 1997). A dual land tenure system existed in English and French African cities but, just as in Indonesia, did not separate actual ownership completely. Africans acquired urban land with an individ- 402 Under construction ual title, defying the convention that African land was communally owned. Conversely, the construction that African land was communally owned made these plots less accessible to Europeans than Indigenous plots in Indonesia. In short, in colonial India and colonial Africa, just as in colonial Indonesia, class differences were hidden behind a hegemonic discourse of ethnicity, and ‘racial’ segregation was stronger in discourse than in actual practice. The qualification applies that ethnic residential mixing seems to have been stronger in Indonesia than elsewhere.

Becoming a developing state

As soon as the war with the Dutch had ended, the Indonesian Republic attempted to reinstate normal administration. The urban housing situation was one area that required the urgent attention of the new rulers. It is hard to tell whether the leadership of the Indonesian Republic at the time believed that urban space was organized along ethnic or along class lines. In its analysis of the situation, the national government emphasized the ‘racial’ discrimination of colonial times, but target groups of public housing projects were usually identified by an indicator of class (for instance ‘low-income groups’ or ‘coolies’) and not by ethnicity (‘indigenous people’). In any case, confronted head-on by the urban housing shortage, the government of the young republic valiantly tried to tackle the housing problem with the enthusiasm and optimism typical of a newly independent nation. Within months of the transfer of sovereignty, the state had set up the influential Congress on Healthy Public Housing (Kongres Perumahan Rakjat Sehat) in Bandung. Discourse on healthy housing was embedded in anti- colonial rhetoric: the colonial overlord had deliberately housed the indigenous masses in poor conditions, in order to imbue them with a feeling of powerlessness. The planned construction of roomy and hygienic houses for the masses would not only provide adequate public housing and end forever the inequitable housing situation that had prevailed in Dutch times, but also liberate Indonesians from a sense of inferiority. The design for the ideal healthy house proposed at this congress was essentially the architecture of the colonial ‘European’ villa. Ironically, then, despite the anti-Dutch rhetoric, the ideal design was a ‘European’ single-family dwelling. This choice of design confirms once again that the differences in housing conditions in colonial times, which were couched in ethnic or ‘racial’ terms, actually expressed a class difference. The ideal of the Congress on Healthy Public Housing, which was embraced by the Indonesian government, was in fact to house all lower-class people in middle-class houses. However, decolonization, while ending juridical ethnic dividing lines, XI Conclusion 403 could not surmount class differences so easily, and therefore the programme for healthy public housing for everybody was bound to fail. The failure was all the more inevitable because of the magnitude of the housing shortage in the first years of Independence: an unprecedented shortage of urban dwellings and an enormous lack of funds (further eroded by inflation) at a time that the government had so many other pressing problems to solve. The colonial state had never had to face such a daunting housing crisis. Nonetheless, for a few years after the transfer of sovereignty the Indonesian government managed to build large numbers of houses. Yet they formed only a drop in the ocean. When it gradually dawned on the Indonesian government that it was an impossible task to provide public housing on a sufficiently large scale, it changed tactics and began to call on the people to assume responsibility for themselves. Individual home-owners, real-estate developers, and large companies housing their own employees were asked to do their bit to help solve the national housing crisis. This shift in state policy can be sneered at as a state attempt to mask its own failure and to shift the blame for the housing shortage to the private sector, which was accused of not rising to the occasion. However, the plea to people to take private initiative was not merely a cover- up of a public housing policy that had fallen short of its proclaimed goal, it was also a sincere strategy in the face of an overwhelming problem. Self-help housing was the new buzzword in the mid-1950s.7 The term went the rounds at international congresses and was very much in vogue with American development consultants arriving in Indonesia in 1954. The popularity of the term in Indonesia reveals that the young nation was involved in a global exchange of ‘development’ concepts. In this context, Indonesia hosted an international congress on the topic in the same building in Bandung where just weeks earlier the famous Asia-Africa Conference of 1955 had taken place. The same year a Regional Housing Centre was established in Bandung, co-financed by the International Labour Organization and American development funds. The enthusiastic yet not very successful adoption of new public housing policies concurs with Remco Raben’s contention that Indonesian decolonization can be interpreted as an uneasy process of modernization. Modernization was not confined to the rapidly changing cityscape, but was also visible in the aspirations of the nationalists to create a national state that could take its place as a proud member of the family of nations. The post-independent debate on the best way to go about organizing Indonesian society at large, or

7 Hence the term was used more than a decade before the ‘discovery’ in the late 1960s that poor people could build their own houses efficiently (Choguill 1994:938). 404 Under construction more particularly, how to provide healthy housing for all, can then be interpreted as an adaptation to modernity (Raben 2007:17-20). Looking back to the efforts of the 1950s armed with the insights acquired by half a century of critical studies of development cooperation, it is easy to point out past mistakes. The policy of self-help housing was implemented in a top-down fashion, did not attempt to encourage community participation and local ownership of the project, and did not take locally perceived needs as its starting point. It is small wonder therefore that the proposed models of cheap housing were not accepted by the population at large. The solutions proposed by foreign experts and Indonesian engineers were reminiscent of the paternalistic attitude of Dutch and Japanese housing experts in drawing up plans for how to improve kampongs (which, by the way, were also a manifestation of modernization). Proponents of the post-development school go one step further in their criticism of development. They have condemned Western leaders, beginning with President Truman, for having coined the terms ‘underdevelopment’ and ‘developing states’ as a discursive strategy to keep Third World countries in a state of submission (Escobar 1995:3-17; Esteva 1992). From a post-development-school point of view, the young Indonesian government was deceived by this hegemonic Western discourse of underdevelopment. By endorsing development as a primary goal and admitting American housing ‘experts’, the Indonesian government placed itself in a subordinate position. However, leaving aside the fact that the post-development school does not provide a solution to the genuine problems of misery and social inequality (Ferguson 1999:245-54; Thomas 2000b:19-21), such a critical point of view overlooks one important point. Acceptance of the development discourse, solidarity displayed with other less-developed countries, and involvement of non-Dutch experts all helped Indonesian leaders to distance themselves from the former colonial overlord. The same can be said of the town plans drawn up in the 1950s with the support of American and European (but not Dutch) experts. These town plans arguably made as little impact, as self-help housing schemes and the recruitment of expatriates slowed down the indonesianisasi of government planning sections. However, the planning process did help to emancipate Indonesian administrators from the mould of their Dutch precursors. In this respect, being labelled a developing state does not necessarily indicate something was amiss. Rather, it can be seen as recognition that Indonesia was looking to the future and had joined a group of fellow young nations. Becoming a developing state speeded up the decolonization of Indonesia. XI Conclusion 405

Three ugly legacies of the housing crisis

The preceding critical evaluation of post-Independence public housing, self- help housing, and urban planning policies is premised on the instrumental- ity of development policies. That is to say, policies are designed on a central, perhaps international, level, implemented on a local level, and somewhere down the line the policy goals are transformed, if not mismanaged. David Mosse (2005), in contrast, has argued that practice is not the result of poorly implemented policy, but rather, policy is the result of practice. Policy goals are formulated with the aim of lending existing alliances of development agents the appearance of being coherent networks, with the hidden aim to ensure the survival of those agents, and more particularly the continued flow of donor money. Mosse’s pereception of development agents thinking principally of their own benefit is reminiscent of the older concept of the neo- patrimonial state in Indonesia. Harold Crouch (1979), who first applied this concept to Indonesia, believes that neo-patrimonialism originated in Guided Democracy (1959-1965) and matured during the New Order, as of 1965. Other scholars have followed Crouch’s idea of a strong New Order state, which was relatively shielded from societal demands and ran the state in its own interest (Schulte Nordholt and Van Klinken 2007:3-6; Van Klinken 2009). Nevertheless, an examination of the political economy of housing shows that the starting point of the self-seeking behaviour of the state bureaucracy and the military must be sought further back in time. It is a legacy of the final phase of Dutch colonialism and the preceding period of Japanese rule. One of the domains in which a self-seeking bureaucracy became manifest was in public housing. When the hope that healthy houses could be provided to everybody faded, newly built public housing was soon explicitly reserved for civil servants. This commenced with the Dutch-initiated mega-project Kebayoran Baru, a new town, which was partly built to house civil servants of the national government. Patrimonial behaviour became especially apparent in the occupation of existing houses during the post-war housing crisis, even more than in the distribution of newly constructed houses. Whatever the speed of construction had been after the Japanese surrender, it could not possibly have kept pace with the need to accommodate the explosively growing urban population. The immediate solution to an acute problem was to put more people together in one house. Sometimes people chose this solution voluntarily, but local governments also implemented a billeting policy for civilians, first tried out in Japanese times.8 The returning Dutch administration – which thanks to the state of siege had the form, and

8 Billeting of soldiers had begun before the Japanese invasion. 406 Under construction thereby the legal power, of a military administration – could force people to accept more families in their home. Although the billeting policy did provide homeless people with shelter, it had the undesirable consequences of buildings becoming dilapidated and endless series of irritations in overcrowded houses. Local Housing Allocation Bureaus were made responsible for the execution of the billeting policy managed by a system of residential permits. In practice, their work focused on housing middle- and upper-class people, and ignored low-income people. The interests involved in a residential permit were enormous. People without a roof over their heads were desperate to force entry into a dwelling (or room in a dwelling). Conversely, many people who were accommodated relatively spaciously frantically tried to keep others out. The officials responsible for deciding whether a residential permit was warranted held near discre- tionary power. The significance of permits to the public, the disproportionate power of civil servants, compounded by the decrease in purchasing power of Housing Allocation Bureau officials and professional bureaucratic standards that had declined in Japanese times, opened the doors wide to corruption. Indeed, the Housing Allocation Bureaus were notorious for their corruption. The billeting policy was supplemented by a policy of rent control, introduced by the Japanese, and continued in an adjusted form by the returning Dutch, and later the independent Republican government. The losers in the state policies of billeting and rent control were private homeowners. Homeowners saw rental income shrink below the cost of maintaining their property and they lost control over who occupied their houses. In extreme though not exceptional cases, homeowners were denied residential permits for their own houses and had to put up with inferior accommodation, while strangers lived in theirs. Not surprisingly under these circumstances, home- owners lost the incentive to bother maintaining their property, let alone to invest in the construction of new houses for rent. In other words, in the long run the state policy of billeting and rent control, which aimed at solving the housing crisis, achieved exactly the opposite of its goal. The short-term solution of billeting and rent control thwarted a structural solution to the housing shortage: private construction of rental dwellings. Beginning with the Japanese invasion, construction of new houses began to fall behind demand. Those who profited most from the billeting policy and rent control were salaried people with small incomes, who had difficulty in acquiring housing on an open, competitive rental market. The main beneficiaries were civil servants and soldiers. Hence what became visible in state housing policy was the contours of a neo-patrimonial state: a bureaucracy that used its authority to further the interests of its own employees. Another group that displayed patrimonial characteristics was the Army. An intense conflict emerged between Army leadership and civil authori- XI Conclusion 407 ties over control of housing. The first signs of this conflict were discernible shortly before the Japanese invasion, but it is best documented for the years 1945-1949. On the national level, the Dutch Army leadership, Department of Public Works, and Department of Social Affairs contested the lead in policy making (and control of the funds involved). On the municipal level, civil servants and army units fought over control of local Housing Allocation Bureaus, and army units refused to hand over vacated houses to these Bureaus, as they were obliged to do. On the level of individual houses, billeted soldiers regularly refused to comply with the rightful demands of civil authorities; for instance, soldiers would flatly deny Housing Allocation Bureau officials the right to inspect how many people were living in a particular house. To make a long story short, during decolonization three undesirable institutions appeared: corruption, self-gratification by the neo-patrimonial state bureaucracy, and military disdain for civil authorities. These three social institutions, which have been ascribed variously to the Old Order and New Order regimes (Anderson 1990; McVey 1982), actually had their roots in late-colonial (Japanese and Dutch) times. This triple, deleterious colonial legacy was manifest in housing, and at the same time was partly caused by the struggle for housing. One puzzling matter is the hypothesis that the political passivity of the masses is a necessary condition for the functioning of a neo-patrimonial state (Crouch 1979:583-5). How could this theoretically postulated passivity be reconciled with the intense political mobilization of the early 1950s, culmi- nating in the national general elections of 1955? The paradox is explained by the abolition of city councils by the Japanese (except in eastern Indonesia). As of 1943, the municipal executive power was responsible to the central government, and was no longer controlled by local legislative bodies.9 This was a setback, because between the establishment of the first municipality in 1905 and the Japanese invasion, many councils of autonomous municipalities had gradually matured into politically adept, democratic bodies. The killing of the local trend towards decentralization and public participation in local democracy, although not a result of the housing crisis, is a fourth ugly legacy of the long decolonization.

Surviving the chaos

The majority of people, of course, did not enjoy the protection of working for the state or the military and had to rely on other means of surviving the chaotic decade after the Japanese invasion. Some groups managed better than

9 Between 1957 and 1959 mayors were made temporarily accountable to city councils again. 408 Under construction others. One group that was losing out consisted of private homeowners, and they longed for a return to what they considered normality: the lifting of rent control, a return of construction costs to the low pre-war level, and the dis- solution of the Housing Allocation Bureaus. Associations of homeowners and housing agencies lobbied the government to improve their lot, but without much effect. The deteriorating position of homeowners is the likeliest explanation of an important riddle. In the collective memory of Dutchmen, the loss of their houses during the Japanese occupation and Indonesian Revolution looms large. The loss was especially traumatic to blijvers (stayers), most of them Eurasians, who had invested their savings in real estate. Given the importance of this loss of houses in the Dutch collective memory, I have encountered surprisingly little hard evidence that their houses were simply seized by Japanese soldiers or Indonesian revolutionaries, or forcibly sold far below market price because the owners felt intimidated.10 Houses seized by the Japanese were later returned to the original owners, and the occupation of houses by Indonesians during the revolution was often successfully contested in court by the rightful owners. What probably happened was that the property severely deval- ued, as a result of the combined effects of rent control, billeting by Housing Allocation Bureaus, overdue maintenance because costs of repairs rose above rents received, and encroachment by squatters. When the houses were finally sold, the price was far less than what had been expected before the Japanese invasion. If the administration is also to be blamed for unchecked squatting, the devaluation of real estate can by and large be attributed to the housing policies of the successive administrations: Japanese, Dutch (1945-1949), and Indonesian, both at the local and national levels. This finding runs parallel to the bursting of another historical myth: the alleged theft of Dutch private assets by Japanese occupiers. Not until 2000 was it discovered that such plun- dering of bank accounts had not taken place, but that the bank transfers had in fact been restricted by anti-inflationary regulations issued by the Dutch colonial (1945-1949) and Indonesian governments (Keppy 2006:10). Corporate enterprises fared better than private homeowners. They succeeded in insulating themselves from the housing crisis by flexing their financial muscle. Nevertheless, after Independence Western companies especially were harassed by state housing policies more than they had been in colonial times. Those unfortunate house-hunters who were neither employed by the state or army nor by large companies had to find housing in the private rental sec-

10 I have found no written evidence of such losses in the archives, and former European homeowners I asked never did produce details of how they purportedly lost their property. XI Conclusion 409 tor. In theory, housing scarcity should favour landlords, but in practice rent control tipped the balance of power to the side of tenants. In everyday life, the discrepancy between market conditions and state intervention was alleviated by the illegal but widespread practice of key-money. Key-money, however, created new problems, even if everybody acquiesced in this illicit custom. Landlords needed a certain turnover of tenants in order to benefit from their key-money option; it was about the only way to make the rental business profitable. Landlords therefore often tried to get rid of tenants, sometimes not eschewing violent intimidation or applying for a ruling by the local Rent Tribunal. Tenants, on the other hand, were reluctant to move, or, if they had to, tried to snatch key-money from the incoming tenant before the landlord had a chance. The last resort when all else had failed for people seeking a dwelling was to squat on land. The insecurity of land tenure opened the opportunity to squat, but squatters were at risk of being prosecuted by the municipality. Squatters played cat and mouse with city officials, who tried to remove squatters haphazardly rather than attacking the problem firmly. In independent times squatters were better able to withstand the government than had been the colonial kampong residents who resisted unwelcome kampong improvement projects, for at least three reasons. First, the sheer multitude of squatters provided them with a degree of protection. Second, the new urban administrators lacked the experience which would have allowed them to recognize properly the threat that squatters posed to the urban order. Third, the rise of a civil society that supported squatters enlarged squatters’ political clout. So, although political parties could not make a dent in municipal councils to halt the depredations of patrimonial civil servants, outside the council the parties did show solidarity with the masses to protect the people’s rights. Although the urban administration deemed squatting a threat to the urban order, it must also be seen as a safety valve to relieve pressure on the housing market. Without this escape route, urban misery during the decolonization of Indonesia would have been much greater. The construction of new houses by migrants, either to live in or to rent out, was a time-honoured practice, albeit now on illegally occupied land. In a way, squatting was a fine example of ‘normality’.

National integration

The amount of freedom permitted to squatters varied considerably from city to city. The urban administration of Semarang was quite accommodating, whereas, for instance, Surabayan administrators took a stricter stand. The determined stand of the Surabaya town hall was confronted with, and 410 Under construction perhaps prompted by, what were possibly the most activist squatters in the country. The understanding attitude of the Semarang administration can perhaps be traced back to a history of four decades of progressive urban government. The activist attitude of the Surabaya squatters may have been related to Surabaya kampong residents’ famous revolutionary resistance to British forces. In fact there were quite a few differences between cities. Several land tenure systems were peculiar to one city or a small number of cities: Sultan’s grants and Deli grants in Medan; particuliere landerijen (private estates) in Jakarta, Bogor, Semarang, Surabaya, and Makassar; communal urban land in Padang and Manado. During the Revolution, Yogyakarta, the Republican capital, provided shelter to a large number of refugees fleeing from Dutch violence, but simultaneously drove out thousands of Chinese residents. The municipal administration of Yogyakarta lacked a secure regular budget, but Republican sympathizers throughout Indonesia sent money in support of the city. The Makassar administration, wishing to rebuild the bombed Chinese quarter, was the first to implement the new town planning ordinance after the Second World War. Medan, in contrast, flatly refused to comply with the central government’s admonition to draw up a town plan. Semarang invested the largest efforts, both before and after Independence, into public housing truly aimed at lower-income groups. And so forth. Throughout this book I have tried to maintain a balance between generalizing about Indonesian cities and fleshing out local differences. The colonial Vereeniging voor Locale Belangen (Association for Local Interests) had facilitated an exchange of ideas and best practices among municipal administrators. Partly attributable to the work of this association, local policies in colonial times tended to converge. After Independence, the mayors of provincial capitals held a seminal meeting in November 1954 to discuss joint problems and strategies, and to lobby the central government for support. There is, however, no evidence of an ongoing debate among urban managers comparable to the Vereeniging voor Locale Belangen. Hence, in independent times the colonial bottom-up stimulus to synchronize local policies was lacking. The variation in local policy and land tenure after Independence and the absence of an organization such as the Vereeniging voor Locale Belangen limited the national integration of the country. National integration in this context is understood as convergence of urban policies and land-use patterns. A new and most important obstacle to national integration after the proclamation of Independence was the growing gap between Jakarta and the rest of the country. After the Dutch returned to Jakarta following the Japanese surrender, the city’s population began to grow more rapidly than other cities, swelled by refugees and by people attracted by the employment opportuni- XI Conclusion 411 ties in the national government. As a result, Jakarta suffered from one of the worst housing shortages in the country, but to offset this, it also received the lion’s share of central funds for public housing. Central government officials suffered personally from the housing crisis and decided to invest virtually the whole of the national housing budget in the new town Kebayoran Baru. Although the Jakarta city government may have interpreted the national government intervention as an intrusion in its business, the city undoubtedly profited from the proximity to the national government. The disproportionate investment of national funds in the national capital may be counted as a fifth undesirable legacy of the last phase of colonialism. It caused resentment in other cities, especially cities on other islands, and must have hampered the sense of togetherness of the young republic.

The politics of housing during the long decolonization

In retrospect, the long decolonization of Indonesia was – and how could it have been otherwise? – characterized by both continuity and change. Continuity was most marked in residential segregation based on class differences. Because of this continuity in class differences, public housing policy in independent times was faced with the impossible task of achieving its goal of proper housing for the masses. Instead, as in colonial times, public housing continued to serve the middle class. Continuity was also characteristic of other socio-spatial processes: kampong formation (although in the form of squatter settlements after 1945), kampong improvement, planning based on zoning, and the legal distinction between formal and informal land tenure systems. The decolonization of Indonesia, however, was also a period of dramatic changes. Some revolutionary forces successfully threw the country into chaos, and other actors struggled to restore order. To the latter category belonged urban administrators, landlords, and corporate enterprises. Of course, return to normality never meant a standstill. The swing from colonial normality, to revolutionary chaos, and back to post-revolutionary normality was only partially completed. In the process important changes had taken place. Squatters, for instance, profited from the chaos – the temporary suspension of title deeds, the general disarray at the Land Registration Office, absentee landowners fleeing from violence, and local governments busy setting themselves up – to occupy land, but then fought to have their self-established kampongs acknowledged and lead regular lives. Even if their occupation was not legally recognized, they had actually introduced a new, previously unacceptable land tenure system: squatting. Another change that occurred in decolonization consisted of the appear- 412 Under construction ance of three undesirable institutions: corruption, self-gratification by the neo-patrimonial state, and military disdain for civil authorities. These three social institutions, which are often ascribed to the Old Order or New Order regimes, had their roots in late-colonial (Japanese and Dutch) times. The favoured treatment of the national capital, which was at the expense of state investments in other cities, can be added to this list. These four unpalatable colonial legacies were clearly manifest in housing, but at the same time were exacerbated by the struggle for housing. The struggle for housing, in its turn, was intensified in many ways by decolonization: very rapid urban growth, insecurity of land tenure, insecurity of home occupancy, and the physical destruction of dwellings. Another victim of the long decolonization, although not directly related to the housing crisis, was the waning of decentralization and local democracy. Decolonization of cities has therefore had a lasting impact on the society at large, but not only negatively. On the positive side of the balance sheet stand the sincere efforts of the new urban administrators who tried to manage the cities. Healthy housing for everybody, order in kampongs, and abolition of the ostensibly discriminatory distinction between European and Indigenous land tenure systems ranked high on their list of priorities. The disappointing failure to achieve all these ideals can be attributed primarily to the unprecedented urban demographic explosion. For many urban residents, it was this runaway urbanization rather than the Indonesian Revolution itself that threw their lives into the greatest chaos. Appendix 1 Population figures of Indonesia’s major cities 414 Appendix 1 60,000 52,054 38,169 Padang 121,724 122,964 118,172 116,283

89,000 84,855 56,718 302,094 180,000 165,000 158,000 357,415 346,085 326,748 294,987 Makassar

73,726 208,379 321,248 290,916 287,134 108,145 283,401 Palembang

90,000 76,584 45,248 Medan 260,000 250,000 165,659 121,000 120,000 108,000 111,000 338,553 307,115 310,569 308,837

189,940 150,000 289,422 280,067 274,060 136,649 268,252 103,711 Yogyakarta

emarang 351,373 341,844 331,059 238,807 411,922 235,413 389,970 373,874 217,796 369,996 158,036 S

94,800 694,057 689,779 668,149 644,475 190,000 142,900 100,000 480,000 239,000 224,717 951,828 216,144 913,528 202,926 870,346 839,346 166,815 805,071 Bandung

urabaya 822,507 715,000 500,000 400,000 208,889 618,674 518,729 421,319 403,000 384,484 374,316 980,905 935,688 341,675 926,471 192,190 S 1,043,283

Jakarta 847,483 854,502 550,000 533,015 306,309 1,851,531 1,845,592 1,732,178 1,583,578 1,174,252 1,992,999 1,927,788 1,871,163

1954 1953 1952 1951 1950 1949 1948 1947 1946 1945 1944 1943 1942 1941 1940 1958 1939 1957 1938 1956 1930 1955 Year 1920 Appendix 1 415 eher in urabaya urabaya Padang 143,699 N S

ddy Harjady ddy

E LV H 1297(40); LV Berita Indonesia .1, Arsip Medan; .1, Arsip Medan; IT E 384,159 olana Hardjasaputra Makassar S ick 2002a:123; ick

oekirno 1956:265. liver 1971:10; Jakarta 1944: 1971:10; liver mail 1964:99, 154; Bandung S O S urabaya urabaya 1951: S 474,971 Palembang .J. Kramer, to Minister L. C Antara 24-9-1949/A; Yogyakarta 1949:

r. r. I eli. Medan 1940, 1949: Letter A.J. Paling, D Medan 479,098 377,145 emarang 1951-1953:

S ornelis. Jakarta 1941: ornelis. urabaya 1940, 1948-1950: 1940, urabaya

S C 312,698 tatistiek 1941:2; Bandung 1940: A. S Yogyakarta

:148-9); Yogyakarta 1942: ecretarie 1060; Bandung 1945-1946:

tatistiek 1941:2; S II S tatistiek 1941:2; tatistiek irecteur Verkeer en Waterstaat, to en irecteur Luitenant Waterstaat, Verkeer Gouverneur-Generaal, S D 503,153 emarang irecteur Verkeer en Waterstaat, D Algemene

s Antara 8-1-1960/A. urabaya urabaya 1943: Aminuddin Kasdi et al. 1986:16; S .J. Warners, .J. Warners, NRI lectriciteits Maatschappij te Medan, Medan, 8-2-1950, no. 695/P C E Asia Raya 29-6-2605; Jakarta 1948, 1951-1953: Heeren 1955:700. 972,566 986,800 entraal Kantoor voor de Bandung 1,028,245 C

urabaja Post 25-3-1959.

entraal Kantoor voor de S entraal Kantoor voor de voor Kantoor entraal C V Gas- en C N Antara 2-12-1951/A-B. urabaya Antara 15-9-1950/A; Medan 1943: Pelzer 1978:125; Medan 1947, 1951: Hasselgren 2000:358; Medan 1,007,945 1,152,338 Antara 4-2-1955/A;

Antara 18-3-1954/A. s urabaya 1959: urabaya S ijswijk, Batavia, 21-1-1948, A Jakarta verzicht verzicht betreffende de bevolkingssterkte in de onderafdeling van Bandoeng in april 1947, K 2,973,052 R O Antara 25-1-1951/A; Medan 1959:

emarang 1938-1939: urabaya 1938-1939: urabaya

Makassar 1940 and 1946: Letter Palembang 1951: Palembang S Medan 1920 and 1930 includes the urban parts ruled by the sultan of Yogyakarta: Yogyakarta: 1920, 1930 (Volkstelling 1930 1934, S Bandung 1921 (114,311 persons), 1926 (140,181 persons), 1931 (161,569 persons), 1950-1952, 1958-1960: 1950-1952, persons), (161,569 1931 persons), (140,181 1926 persons), (114,311 1921 Bandung he figures for Jakarta 1920 and 1930 include Batavia and Meester and Batavia include 1930 and Jakarta 1920 for figures he ources: 1920, 1930, 1954-1957, 1961 for 1920 all and cities 1930): (except Milone Yogyakarta 1966:108-39. Medan 1942, 1948: 1950: gemeentesecretaris to Heyning 1951:53. Bandung 1953: 2002:186; Bandung 1942, 1948: Letter wd. 1947: Paleis Paleis 1961 1960 Asia Raya 21-6-2604; Jakarta 1945: Year 1959 S T 1976:25; Bandung 1938-1939: 24-9-1951; 1942, 1945, 1946: 416 Appendix 1 nderafdeling O vergave vergave Afdeling O ensuses were taken in 1920 C econd World War; unfortunately War; econd World S he Japanese army also took a census, a took also army Japanese he T he census of 1920 has a margin of error of T . Beudeker, Memorie van C 1938:19). . N able 3, Figure 6, and Figure 7 were calculated by T he rounded-off figures for the 1940s are mostly esti- T have used the source that gives data about the largest I esident, R he government prepared for a census of Jakarta in June 1945 ddy Harjady 1976:25); the change of source (from municipal T E have used the month closest to the middle of that year. When I Antara 3-1-1956/A. ndonesian government. I ecretarie 927; Makassar 1947: W.J. de Klein, Bestuursmemorie van de S LV H 1069; Makassar LV 1953: IT LV LV H 902; Makassar 1948: Assistent- olombijn 1994:48. IT C , Algemene NRI he precise figures for the 1940s and the 1950s come from the population registration by the local government T he average growth rates and graphs of population size in T Padang 1940: Padang he population figures come from different sources, with varying degrees of reliability. was able was to find Japanese censuses for only two cities. number of years (in order to reduce hopping from one source to another). Abrupt changes, such as Medan in 1950, were were 1950, in Medan as such changes, Abrupt another). to source one from hopping reduce to order (in years of number sometimes caused by territorial extension; such an extension should not be considered a factor distorting the growth rate, but a correction of the actual urban area. extrapolating in linear fashion from the known data found in Appendix. this registration to census) explains the apparent population decline in Bandung in 1961 in this Appendix. When figures for the different months of one year were available, different sources mention different figures for the same year, and they have a wide margin of error; an extreme example is the figure for Palembang in 1951, the population 208,379 size souls, was estimated while by knowledgeable observers at 300,000 ( Antara 2-12-1951/A-B). Municipal governments also sometimes over-reported their population figure; for example in 1961 1,025,118 citizens were registered in Bandung, but the census counted only 979,759 people ( mates. I ( Kan Pō 4(68) 2605), but did not have time to carry out its plan. which according to (1978:125) Pelzer is probably more reliable than counts after the perhaps 5%, the 1930 census is considered highly accurate. systematic A bias lies in the fact that circulatory migrants ( Toelichting census 1920 the in not but census, 1930 the in counted were and 1930 by the colonial state and in 1961 by the T Makassar 12-6-1948, K 2-5-1947, A Makassar 1947, K Bibliography