DOORNFONTEIN AND ITS AFRICAN WORKING CLASS, 1914 TO 1935*• A STUDY OF POPULAR CULTURE IN JOHANNESBURG Edward Koch I A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Arts University of the witwatersrand, Johannesburg for the Degree of Master of Arts. Johannesburg 1983. Fc Tina I declare that this dissertation is my own, unaided work. It is being submitted for the degree of Master of Arts in the University of the Wlj Witwaterirand Johanneaourg. It has not been submitted before for any H 1 9 n degree or examination- in any other University. till* dissertation is a study of the culture that was made by tha working people who lived in the slums of Johannesburg in the inter war years. This was a period in which a large proportion of the city's black working classes lived in slums that spread across the western, central and eastern districts of the central city area E B 8 mKBE M B ' -'; of Johannesburg. Only after the mid 1930‘s did the state effectively segregate the city and move most of the black working classes to the municipal locations that they live in today. The culture that was created in the slums of Johannesburg is significant for a number of reasons. This culture shows that the newly formed 1 urban african classes wore not merely the passive agents of capitalism. These people were able to respond, collectively, to the conditions that the development of capitalism thrust them into and to shape and influence the conditions and pro­ cesses that they were subjected to. The culture that embodied these popular res­ ponses was so pervasive that it's name, Marabi, is also the name given by many people to the era, between the two world wars, when it thrived. The values and attitudes that were incorporated into marabi culture also had an important influence over the kinds of political activities that were undertaken by the working classes in Johannesburg. Finally, despite the destruction of the slumyards and the culture I that was spawned in t.h«a, Marabi continues today to influence the culture of black urban townships. This study is an examination of the conditions tha gave rise to E [ marabi culture, the network of activities and institutions that made it up, the effect that it had on popular politics in Johannesburg and the forces that went into the segregation of the city and the slums in which Marabi was spawned. Docrnfun- tein is often popularly referred to as the 'home' of Marabi. Thus this slumyard area forms the central focus of the thesis, although other slum areas are also LIST or ABBREVIATIONS ANC African ifetio CAD Central Archives Depot Communist Party Church of the Province of South Africa Johannesburg City Library Natal Archives Depot SAIRR South African Institute of Race Relations SAP South African Police SNA Secretary for Native Affairs CONTENTS —II PREFACE .................................................................. 3 B'; r iiaEHHMgBH /' ^1 . K m '. '\:\ C HAP TER ’/ I H I n ' I E ” ' % ' I VMM Ej^S^jiB A: 1. CULTURE, IDEOLOGY AND CLASS STRUGGLE - A THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION ... & Definitions i ......... |j.............................................. 9 Culture and Class Formation ........................................ *3 Culture as a Site of Struggle ...................................... 3,8 Culture and Political Organization ........ U. .... *.............. Cult'ire and Oral History • • * • • 29 2. THE ORIGINS OF SLUMYARDS IN JOHANNESBURG 1900 - 1923 42 H F j The Emergence of An Urban Proletariat and Its Response to Housing 1 ® 5 « i u ^ Conditions in Johannesburg before 1923.. .............................BE Black Working Class Residential Areas in Johannesburg 1900 - 1923 .. 49 Capital and Black Working Class Housing in Johannesburg before 1923 ..................................................... 55 Bousing, Class Struggle and the Local State ....................... - ^5 3. "WITHOUT VISIBLE MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE") MARABI CULTURE IN THE INTER 102 WAR YEARS ........................................................ Conditions of Life in the Slums ...................................... 102 Marabl .............................................................. 108 4. "MOBILIZING IN THE STREET". MARABI CULTURE AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN THE SLUMYARDS OF JOHANNESBURG - 1920 TO THE DEPRESSION ......... 138 The Black Petty Bourgeoisie and Political Leadership in 1 4 4 Johannesburg ................................................... The ICU and ANC in Johannesburg in the 20's .................... 347 Spontaneous Responses to State Action in the Slums ................. 155 The Liberal Reform Movement in Johannesburg and its Effects on Political 157 Organization ........................................................ Political Organization in Municipal Locations - A Brief Comparison .. 166 The Depression and Popular Struggles in Johannesburg .............. 170 p/vas Is,' ■ MARABI CULTURi: - ATTEMPTS AT URBAN SEGREGATION IH W ,r ^ -S -.b J . 1 8 4 I P IN THE 1920’S AND 1930’s g ............ "The Absence of affective Mecbinory" - Contradictions within the m E | 1 8 7 local state in the 1920'• f t * * ......................... Conflicts Between Central and Local State Authorities!........ W 1 9 7 H r h e Depression and its Aftermath ...................... *...........liiL' Conclusion ................................ 209 6. THE EFFECTS OF URBAN SEGREGATION ON POPULAR UEBAN MxLITANCY IN 1 « 0 ' » ..................... f l ................................ U ™ The Growth of a New Militancy- - Early Signs g ...................... The Causes of Urban Militancy in the Forties ....... ijls*.......... 228 Popular Struggle and Political organization in the1940' s .......... 237 Popular Strjl^gle and the Apartheid State............................. 242 ' I I | | I I I | 2 5 5 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................ " For almost two decades after the First World War the predominant form of housing for Johannesburg's black workers was the brick and tin shanties of the elumyard* [ that spread across the central districts of the city. These slum, made up | § »H i e u in which most of the city's labouring poor struggled to survive and cope with the conditions off exploitation that came with living in the city under capitalism. The slumdwelJ ers' struggle to survive, and to humanize the brutal conditions of town life involved the creation of a variety of new institutions and social relationships in Johannesburg. These included new family structures, welfare networks, forms of mutual cooperation and assistance, informal economic activities and a range of leis­ ure time activities - all of which were accompanied by the creation of a new ident­ ity and set of value, on the part of the cown newly urbanized black working classes. Thus the slums of Johannesburg, in the inter war period, were a major part of the terrain upon which, to use E.P. Thompson's celebrated phrase^ the black working class of Johannesburg, "made iWelf as much as it was made." This thesis is about the emergence of the slums and the struggles that went into the making of uhe culture of the people who lived in cnem. ■ Some academic work touching on these issues has already been undertaken. In the 1930's, after the depression, the increasing poverty of South African cities stimu­ lated an academic interest in the problems of urbanization. An important product of the spate of academic work that followed was Ellen Heilman's study of life in a slum- yard in Doornfontein in the early 1930's - Roolvard: A Sociological,Study o_f an Ttrban Native Slum.2 My thesis draws extensively on the extremely valuable empirical material presented in Heilman's work. However much of her interpretation is coloured by a dominant liberal concern at the time for the "problems"and "difficulties" in­ volved in african adaptations from "traditional" society to "western" urban condi­ tions. This thesis uses a different analytic1 framework. It attempts to show that black responses to urban conditions were rational and often ingenious forms of coping with a new environment rather than awkward attempts to adapt from a conservative precolonial culture to a new western life style. The thesis also attempts to situate tho responses of the black working classes in Johannesburg to their urban environ- within a more historical and materialist context. This is done by looking at jjjfLforces that went into the growth of the slumyards and which accounted,two decades j M t , for the destruction of the slums and the way of life that had grown up in them. Another aspect of the thesis, tba. differs from Heilman's work is it, use ojjoral testimony to present the experience of life in the slums through the word, of people who lived in them. Tl,e thesis also attempts to provide an explanation of urban segregation in Johannes­ burg in the 1930's that is rooted in a historical materialist approach. Here a range of recent Marxist theoretical works on urbanization have been used to gain insight into the class forces that gave shape to the city of Johannesburg in the inter war y«fears The thesis especially look* at the way in which the stubborn de­ termination of the working classes to remain in the slums opened up a series of con­ flicts and tensions within the town's ruling classes that delayed the iaplementatiog of segregation and allowed the culture of tha siumyards to grow and thrive, jjjjpl thesis argues that intra ruling class confllr" ever who was to pay for the c o n l W | of the black urban working classes was a ctusU/. L factor in this delay in urban seg­ regation. It was only when more financial resources became available during the post depression economic boom that these contradictions were resolved and segregation .„«Uv.ly Wl-nt*. ITT I I I I I I This interpretation is based upon and ex^'vs upon ideas that wer^ developed by Paul Rich .hi Anflr. Proctor in « r l i « w r k - . i g F Th. -t.rl.llst «.pha.l. of the thesis and of the above works thus depart from the liberal tradition that sees urban segregation primarily in terms of the parliamentary machinations of individual poflrJ ticians who were motivated primarily by racial nostility. This^kin* of approach to urban segregation is best seen in the work of Rodney Davenport.