African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Apartheid. Port Elizabeth

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    "Render unto Caesar' : the central state, local government and struggles over segregation in Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage, 1948-1962
    (1995-09) Adler, Glen
    In early December 1968 the Town Council of Uitenhage began the first forced removals of African people from the inner-city location of Kabah to the new township of Kwanobuhle on the southern Municipal boundary. The removals were the beginning of a comprehensive plan to make Uitenhage conform to apartheid urban policy principles by removing Africans from Kabah, where they had historically lived side-by-side with coloureds, and reproclaiming the old location as part of the growing Coloured Group Area. However, in the two decades that followed these removals, Kabah was never fully conquered by the state. Both central and local governments perennially failed to realise the goal of comprehensive social engineering due to shortages of funds, bureaucratic inefficiency, continued migrations from Cape country districts, and the stubborn efforts of ordinary people to stake a claim to urban space. By contrast, in 1968 Port Elizabeth was well along the path of near-total segregation. A decade earlier Africans had been virtually entirely removed to proclaimed townships, and in the late 1960s the Municipality was embarking on a program of removing Coloureds. The result of these programs was that Port Elizabeth soon became among the most segregated cities in South Africa.