Chapter 1 BOMMASTANDI of ALEXANDRA TOWNSHIP
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Chapter 1 BOMMASTANDI OF ALEXANDRA TOWNSHIP 1.1. Background In 1912 the following billboard written in Sotho, Zulu and English appeared in Alexandra Township advertising freehold properties. First, this advert points to the obvious; Africans were already engaging in private property at the turn of the 20th century. This township was subdivided into 2,500 stands which were sold to individuals. Title deeds were given to the individuals once payment was concluded. Second, it indicates that Africans were acquiring private property away from a „traditional village‟ where access to property is said to be communal. A closer look at the acquisition processes of such properties unsettles the notion of private property as individual. It becomes increasingly clear in the study that in spite of the naming of an individual in the titled deed it was not uncommon for family resources to be pooled during acquisition of the said property and hence a shared ownership among members of extended families would be understood. The following conversations attest to some of these experiences. Mme Mihloti explains how her parents and her siblings purchased their properties. 1 Ko 15th o ka re ke nako e abuti a bereka le mosu ausi, ke bona ba neng ba thusa mokgalabe. ......... Bona ke itse ba berekile ba thusa, ba ntshitse chelete ausi le abuti, ena Lucas. …….1 (It seemes like when my brother and sister were working, they are the ones who helped the old man with purchasing the property at 15th Avenue. I do know that they contributed some money helping our father in acquiring the properties…… Another example is drawn from mme Hunadi‟s family. Her parents bought two properties and her brother contributed towards the third property. Later her brother bought two properties. A tlo joyina ke abuti wa ka hee....... ba be ba reka e nngwe ko 3rd, ko 135.........Ke ge a tlo bula shopo ya ko 6th. then e be e le gore ga a ntse a prosper, a reka di property tse two; ge a ya Daveyton ke ge rente e kolekiwa ka mo gae, e berekisiwa ke batswadi ba ka. For the three properties, le tse tsa gagwe tse two2. (My father was joined by my brother at a later stage (This was his only son) and they bought another property at 3rd Avenue at no.135.......then he (the brother) opened a shop at 6th Avenue. As he was prospering he bought two more properties. When he left for Daveyton, the rent was collected and used by my parents. That is for the three properties: my parent‟s and the two that belonged to my brother). Although in both these cases there is a suggestion that these properties belonged to specific family members the benefits from rent and from expropriation were apparently shared by the larger family. In this thesis I argue that while the notion of property ownership regimes is useful as a historical tool to explain how social property relations evolved in the west, it fails to encapsulate the specificity and difference of social relationships and practices in some other societies. This argument is further developed in later in this chapter. A closer look at the acquisition processes of properties of bommastandi unsettles the notion of a neat subdivision of property relationships into regimes such as private and communal. Such subdivisions tend to obscure understandings of other modalities of relationships, and suppress other related associations to people that emerged or led to specific property relations. A specific example 1 Interview with Tsakani and mama Mihloti, Alexandra, September 16, 2003 2 Interview with mme Hunadi, Alexandra.n September 2, 2003. 2 is the understanding of a myriad of relationships that Africans have with their properties, which can neither be compartmentalized, nor categorised. My contention is that the private/communal binary is not useful since it masks other possibilities of understanding property ownership that may operate between and within the two „regimes‟. Finally, such properties were being acquired while the native land question was being debated in parliament. This appears to suggest the futility of the native land acquisition exercise at the time since this Act was to be the beginning of a long struggle for access to land which is still being fought at present. Nonetheless these properties were meant for exclusive ownership of Natives and Coloured. In spite of this experience and many similar others3, representation of private property owners such as bommastandi in areas that lay outside the reserves in South Africa is limited in the academy. This means that their voices are not sufficiently heard in academic discourse, if at all. Nonetheless the story of Alexandra has been told repeatedly and academic work has highlighted the plight of Alexandra residents (Tourikis 1981; Swift 1983; Sarakinsky 1984; Raymer 1989; Nauright 1992; Bozzoli 1991, 2004; Jochelson 1991; Carter 1991; Mayekiso 1996; Lucas 1995, 1996; Marume 1995; Bonner & Nieftagodien 2008). It was also told through print media such as Alexandra News, Dark City Report, Izwi lase Township, The World, The Mail, Sowetan, the Rand Daily Mail, The Star, Sunday Times, City Press, Tounship News and other international media such as The New York Times. Such sources have covered the different struggles for survival that Alexandra residents faced (Nauright 1992).The story also covered the plight of Alexandra in the post-1994 period (Sinwell 2005; Lange 2006). However, this story speaks to private property ownership only to the extent that it provides a background explanation to the plight of Alexandra residents. In this thesis I explore private property ownership in Alexandra Township by centralising the significance of the concept of mmastandi as an analytical tool (Brubaker & Cooper 2000). The term was used to denote African property owners from the early 20th century onwards in Johannesburg.4 I use the concept mmastandi in order to understand the social standing that bommastandi attained through the activity of owning a stand. Bommastandi is plural of mmastandi, a property owner. I further examine it as a term that denotes a virtual identity (Jenkins 1996), since it outlived bommastandi‟s status of owning private property in that when their families lost their ownership rights and became government tenants in the same properties, their nominal identity (Jenkins 1996) remained. 3 As stated in this chapter there were other townships where Africans bought their properties freehold 4 The origin of general use elsewhere is currently unknown to the author. 3 The aim of this study is therefore also to better understand the identities of the residents of Alexandra and the urban African residents of South Africa. In the following section I explain why Alexandra is important as a site for understanding and centralizing the concept mmastandi as a unit of analysis. 1.2 . Alexandra Township - An Exceptional Space The combination of Alexandra Township's geographic location, that is, its proximity to South Africa's fastest growing urban area at the time, it‟s unusual "window of opportunity" for black residents as property owners, and the fact the state would not take direct responsibility for its administration until the late 1950s makes Alexandra Township enormously significant as an area of study. The specific conditions of the second proclamation of Alexandra, in 1912, set private property acquisition and ownership in the township apart. This story is told first to show how legislation that was promulgated to control access and conditions of the stay of Africans in Johannesburg in general and the particular temporal and spatial dimensions of Alexandra‟s second beginning reveal a particular private property owning experience. Second, to show how the “native” property owners also carved out a life for themselves in this legalized space that was both in and not in Johannesburg as well as how their independent strategies of dealing with challenges they faced in the surrounds of Johannesburg of the early 20th century impacted on their experience of private property ownership. The birth of Alexandra freehold is exceptional in that Alexandra was established as a solution to a “native” problem in Johannesburg. During this time there was a demand for the acquisition of land by Natives and Coloured in Johannesburg (A letter of March 14, 1913 by the Alexandra Township Committee to the Minister of Native Affairs). This solution was provided by the Alexandra Township Company (ATC) which reproclaimed a white township established in 1905, and then a “native and coloured” township in 1912. The motivation for its reproclamation as pronounced by the ATC was that “in view of the demand which existed, and still exists, for the acquisition of land by Natives and coloured persons … (who) wish to reside with their families within a reasonable distance from Johannesburg, my board decided, during the month of January 1912 to dispose of the township in question in freehold to Native 4 and coloured persons only”.5 The view expressed by the then Minister of Native Affairs, was that Alexandra was meant for the “respectable natives” who wanted to lead decent lives with their families. In his speech, which was cited by the ATC, “He urged upon them the necessity for providing some decent and respectable location where these people (own emphasis) could live in a decent and respectable way, and abide by their families. There seemed to be a prejudice against this in Johannesburg.”6 This second proclamation of Alexandra occupies a confluence of several significant moments in the life of a “native” in South Africa. For instance Bonner and Nieftagodien (2008:17) contend that “the majority of new immigrants who initially bought land in Alexandra were formerly relatively prosperous sharecroppers and labour tenants squeezed out of white South Africa‟s farms”.