Reformatories and industrial schools in South Africa: a study in class, colour and gender, 1882-1939

Abstract

This dissertation explores the establishment of reformatories and industrial schools in South Africa between 1882 and 1939. It focuses on the political and economic context of their emergence; the social and ideological construction of delinquency and the child in need of care; the relationship of the class, colour and gender divisions in the reformatory and industrial school system to the wider racial and sexual division of labour in a colonial order, and the implications and significance of the transfer of these institutions from the Department of Prisons to the Department of Education in 1917 and 1934 respectively Thematically, the study is divided into three parts. Part One composing chapters one. two. three, four, five and six situates the reformatory and industrial school in their political and economic, social and ideological context. Beginning with the origins of the reformatory in the nineteenth century Cape Colony it then shifts focus to the Witwatersrand where the industrial revolution re-shaped and brought into being new social forces and institutions to deal with children defined as delinquent or in need of care. It also examines the place of the reformatory and industrial school in relation to the wider system of legal sanctions and welfare methods established during this period for the white and black working classes by a segregationist state. Part Two comprising chapters seven, eight, nine and ten contrasts and compares social practices in the institutions in terms of class, colour and gender between 1911 and 1934. Included here is a consideration of the different methods of discipline and control, conditions, education and training, and system of apprenticeship provided for black and white, male and female inmates Responses of inmates to institutionalisation are explored in the final chapter of this section. The third section comprises chapters eleven (a) and (b) and chapter twelve These chapters expand on themes developed in earlier sections for the period 1934-1939. Shifts in criminological thinking and changing strategies towards juvenile delinquency in the nineteen thirties are considered in chapters eleven a) and b). The final chapter examines the nature and significance of the changes brought about particularly by Alan Paton in the African reformatory, Diepkloof, between 1934 and 1939 The conclusion provides an overview of the main arguments of each section.