Race, Inequality, and Urbanization∗

12 Johannesburg: race, inequality, and urbanization∗ Owen Crankshaw and Susan Parnell The city of Johannesburg lies at the heart of a sprawling metropolis. This metropolis, which we shall call the Johannesburg region, roughly corresponds with the boundaries of Gauteng Province.1 It stretches from Soshanguve in the north to Vanderbijl Park in the south and from Carletonville in the west to Springs in the east (Map 12.1). While Johan- nesburg is an obvious example of a large city in a poor country that is riddled by social and economic inequality, there is a certain irony in its portrayal as a world city. After all, only five years ago Johannesburg was the hub of a pariah nation that was the object of one of the most successful international sanctions campaigns (see Gelb 1991). Notwithstanding the impact of the boycott against apartheid, Johannesburg has long served as the major urban center of southern Africa. It is an unusually cosmopoli- tan city, with extensive demographic, political, and economic connections with Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America that date back to colonial times (Goty and Simone 2002; Parnell and Pirie 1991). Increas- ingly strong links are now also being forged with Australasia through immigration and sport. Johannesburg is the economic hub of both South Africa and of the southern African region. As an urban giant located in a middle-income ∗ Financial assistance from the Research Foundation and the University of Cape Town for this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed in this chapter and conclusions arrived at are those of the authors and are not necessarily to be attributed to the National Research Foundation. 1 A note on terminology: this metropolis used to be called the “PWV,” an acronym for the “Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging Complex.” The functional importance of this region has since been given the status of a province and is now known as “Gauteng” (the place of gold). However, the names “PWV” and “Gauteng” are not known in international circles so, for the purposes of this chapter, we have chosen to name this metropolitan area the “Johannesburg region” or simply “Johannesburg.” When we refer to the city of Johannesburg, we will refer to its formal administrative designation of the “Greater Johan- nesburg Metropolitan Area” or simply as the “city of Johannesburg.” The Greater Johan- nesburg Metropolitan Council was an interim municipal authority that incorporated, amongst others, the erstwhile local authorities of Johannesburg, Randburg, Roodepoort, Sandton, and Soweto (see Map 12.1). 348 Johannesburg 349 Map 12.1 The Johannesburg Region country amidst extremely poor nations like Mozambique, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, and Swaziland, Johannesburg dominates the southern African region.2 Within South Africa, the dominance of the Johannesburg region is unquestioned. The coastal centers of Cape Town 2 The sum of the 1997 gross national products (GNP) of these countries is less than one sixth of South Africa’s GNP, United Nations Development Programme 1999, pp. 180–3. 350 Owen Crankshaw and Susan Parnell and Durban, although they are large and important cities, do not com- pete with the political and economic power of the Johannesburg region. Johannesburg is therefore set to remain the economic heart of both South and southern Africa (Rogerson 1995). A number of authors have made the case for Johannesburg to be seen as a regional, if not a world, city (Friedman 1995; Simon 1995). This claim has some substance. Even by global standards the numbers of international flights from Johannesburg airport are significant. The Johannes- burg stock exchange is the twelfth most powerful in the world, reflecting the place of South Africa at the leading edge of emerging nations (Beavon 1997). Other indicators of global connectivity abound, from telephone links to Internet usage (South Africa ranks twentieth in connections) (National Geographic 1999); the 5.9 million square meters of high-quality office (to which thousands of meters of new A-grade office space is added each year) (Beavon 1997); the concentration of office head quarters (Rogerson 1984); and the growing percentage of the working population who were born outside of the country (Morris 1999; South African Migration Project). Our concern in this chapter is not to follow the train of analysis that lists the indicators of Johannesburg’s world city status, or that which seeks to debate the opportunities or the constraints of globalization for southern Africa’s primary city. Instead, we have chosen to reflect on the world city literature to extract analytical tools for reinterpreting urban change in Johannesburg in the post-Second World War period. Our specific atten- tion falls on the utility of linking global economic and demographic shifts to the changing patterns of employment inequality within the city. This chapter is thus a study of the changing relationships between urbanization, racial inequality, and the structure of the labor market in the Johannesburg region. Race, inequality, and urbanization in the Johannesburg region Since Johannesburg was first settled in the late nineteenth century, it has been a city of immigrants. Migration from places as diverse as Greece, Britain, Germany, Zambia, Angola, India, and Malaysia meant that it was also an ethnically and racially mixed city (Parnell 1991). As a quasi- colonial city, it was structured in ways that reinforced racial inequality. However, this pattern of racial inequality has changed dramatically over the last half century. Whereas racial inequality was once the touchstone of social inequality in South Africa, inter-racial inequality is increasingly being overshadowed by intra-racial inequality. The most recent analysis Johannesburg 351 of national trends in household income show that, although inter-racial inequality has decreased over the past two decades or so, this trend has not been accompanied by any decrease in inequality among the population as a whole (Whiteford and McGrath 1994). Instead, figures for 1975 and 1991 show that household income inequality remained very high and unchanged, hovering at a Gini coefficient of 0.68.3 Whiteford and McGrath argue that the erosion of inter-racial inequality has not been accompanied by general decline of inequality because intra- racial household income inequality has grown. In other words, although there has been a general redistribution of income from whites, on the one hand, to Africans, coloreds and Indians, on the other, this has not affected the general pattern of household income inequality because most of the increased income which accrued to the black population has gone to the richest black households. Their evidence from the Population Censuses shows that between 1975 and 1991 the richest 20% of black households became richer in absolute terms. By contrast, the poorest 80% of black households became poorer. This shift in the racial distribution of household income has increased intra-racial inequality to the extent that the Gini coefficient for African households was as high as 0.62 in 1991, almost as high as the Gini coefficient for all households (Whiteford and McGrath 1994, p. 51). This means that intra-racial household income inequality contributed as much as 75% to overall inequality, with inter- racial inequality contributing only 25% (Whiteford and McGrath 1994, p. 57). Rising income inequality was not restricted to black households. Although the incomes of the richest 20% of white households remained unchanged, the incomes of the poorest 40% of white households fell in absolute terms (Whiteford and McGrath 1994, pp. 42–5). These findings upset the conventional interpretations of South African society that have tended to emphasize the extent and character of inter- racial inequality rather than intra-racial inequality (see Lemon 1991). The reasons why South African scholarship has tended to emphasize inter- racial inequality is obvious: since the earliest colonial times, the South African state has pursued racially discriminatory policies. In more recent decades, the apartheid state was responsible for racially discriminatory policies and laws which regulated the urbanization, education, employment, residence, and political rights of black South Africans. Scholars who opposed the racist policies of the apartheid government were therefore keen to identify the relationship between racially discriminatory state policy, on the one hand, and racial inequality, on the other. Although this 3 South Africa has one of the highest Gini coefficients in the world, comparable with that of Brazil: Whiteford et al. 1995, p. 21. 352 Owen Crankshaw and Susan Parnell approach to urban studies correctly identified the extent and character of inter-racial inequality and its relationship to government policy, it has generally failed to identify, let alone explain, the rise in intra-racial inequality over the past few decades. There is another obvious reason why we can no longer rely on racially discriminatory government policies to explain inequality in South Africa. This is because the new democratically elected South African government has abolished all racially discriminatory legislation, including job reservation. Of course, the historical effects of racial discrimination dur- ing the apartheid period will continue to cause inter-racial inequality for many years to come. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that there are other causes of inequality that are at work in South Africa and that these causes are driven by intra-racial divisions. Moreover, these intra- racial dynamics of inequality are increasingly the main cause of inequality within South African society generally, and urban society more directly. Whereas the most startling feature of the South African city was once its division along racial lines, new and less obvious cleavages are now more significant, especially within the African urban population. Recent research has examined in detail trends in intra-racial inequality in South Africa as a whole (Bhorat et al. 2001; Nattrass and Seekings 2001; Seekings and Nattrass forthcoming). But there has been little work focusing specifically on intra-racial inequality in urban areas.

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