i ,11 -
 UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND
 HISTORY WORKSHOP
 THE MAKING OF CLASS
 9-14 February, 1987
 AUTHOR:
 TITLE:
 P.L. Bonner
 Family, Crime And Po l i t i ca l Consciousness
 On The East Rand 1939-1955
 haV&Ml IF I :-V: P, ."? & - '?
FAMILY, CRIME AND POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS ON THE EAST RAND
 1939-1955
 P.L. BONNER
 The decade and a half between 1935 and 1950 have long been regarded as
 watershed years for the South African economy. Following South Africa's
 departure from the gold standard in 1933, South African gold-production
 rocketed, which in turn provided the revenue and demand for sustained
 industrial growth. The commissioning of ISCOR in 1934 further hastened this
 process furnishing the basic metal inputs for an increasingly diversified
 engineering sector. From this solid base South Africa was catapaulted into
 the industrial era during and after the second world war. Import
 substitution and the equipping of the allied forces during the war along
 with substantial direct foreign investment thereafter ensured sustained
 industrial growth. In 1943 manufacturing, which had earlier outstripped
 agriculture in terms of gross national product, finally overhauled mining as
 well.1
 At the centre of this industrial revolution was the Rand. Here the
 change was even more stark. While manufacturing surged forward, checked
 only briefly by the depression of 1948-1949, gold mining went into a
 protracted period of decline. In the Benoni-Germiston area, which is the
 main focus of this paper a spate of mine closures took place, in which such
 solid and well respected names as New Modder, Van Ryn, Witwatersrand Deep
 and Modder Deep disappeared from view. The one development (that of
 manufacturing) partly took place in inverse proportion to the other, as an
 ailing mining sector provided successive transfusions of water, electricity,
 labour and land, to satisfy a voracious industrial demand.
 These shifts in the economy profoundly reshaped the contours of class
 on the Rand. In the decade 1939-49, for example, the composition of
 Benoni's African population underwent radical change. From being a
2.
 predominantly mine-based and mine-housed population in the late 1930's
 (30 278 African mine workers, 23 200 non-mine in 1939) these proportions
 were reversed during the war (17 927 mine workers, 28 593 non-mine in 1949).
 Age and sex ratios were likewise transformed with the black urban population
 being divided by 1950 into approximately 1/3 children, 1/3 men and 1/3
 women. An increasingly large proportion of the East Rand's African
 population were living, to use the official language of the time, 'in family
 circumstances'. To all outward appearances a more stable and settled black
 proletariat based on manufacturing was in the process of being formed.
 This new era was nevertheless far more marked than is commonly
 supposed, by the legacy of gold. Family life, wage employment, social
 interaction, popular protest and political organisation were all carried out
 in its shadow. This paper focuses on a number of areas in which this legacy
 was most pronounced - family life, employment and youth culture - and then
 seeks to relate these to some of the characteristic forms of political
 consciousness and political action of the times.
 1. MIGRANCY, POVERTY AND FAMILY LIFE
 During the 1920's and 1930's a steady stream of African women made
 their way from the countryside to the towns. A significant proportion of
 these were made up of women joining their husbands in town. Prior to 1939
 there were no effective restrictions on women entering the towns, and even
 after the amendment of the Urban Areas Act of that year, a man was entitled
 to bring his wife and family to the urban areas once he had worked there
 continuously for two years. By the mid 1930's this flow of families was
 attaining significant proportions, and prompted G. Ballenden, the
 Non-European Affairs Manager of Johannesburg City Council to complain on
 several occasions of the strain this placed on the available family
 accommodation.
3.
 From the late 1930's it seems possible to detect a change in this
 pattern of migration. Prevously a substantial slice had come from white
 farms. Now more and more labour was being drawn from the reserves, while
 the movement of women was taking place on a far more individual basis. The
 most proletarianised areas of the reserves were in the vanguard of this
 trend. The Keiskammahoek Rural Servey, for example, revealed that many men
 in the Ciskei were simply abandoning their families and moving to town. In
 Keiskammahoek one quarter of the children born after the war were
 illegitimate, while the rate of single female migrancy also registered a
 7
 sharp rise. Basutoland exhibited these patterns in their most extreme
 form. From the 1920's at least, a steady stream of women made their way
 into the Union. From the late 1930's this stream became a flood. It has
 long been recognised that the population of Basutoland actually dropped
 during the decade 1936-1946 by 6 883. What these figures conceal
 nevertheless is an even more startling drop in the female population which
 R
 registered a decrease of 8 500. A massive haemorrhage of women was
 occurring from the labour reserves to the towns.
 A variety of motives prompted this exodus of women to the towns.
 Female infertility, the exactions of chiefs, harsh and unsympathetic in-laws
 (with whom newly narried women had to live), inadequate maintenance by
 migrant husbands, and desertion were all common causes of departure, but
 with the exception of infertility, they all shared one common theme - the
 ravages of migrant labour. Extended periods of migrancy left young women
 defenceless against in-laws, chiefs and the onslought of poverty. As the
 incidence and duration of migrancy increased in the late 1930's and 1940's
 many women abandoned their homesteads and went in search of their men.
 Sometimes they were fortunate and reconstituted their families in Natal or
 g
 on the Rand. All too often, however, their husbands had entered into
 unions with other women in the towns whom they refused to give up. Faced
4.
 with rejection and the prospect of a return to rural poverty migrant wives
 often chose to remain in the towns and establish new relationships of their
 10
 own.
 The damage inflicted on rural society by migrancy was mirrored in the
 urban family on the Rand. One of the features of the Witwatersrand urban
 society which evinced most persistent concern in the 1940's and 1950's was
 the apparent instability of the black urban family. Contributor after
 contributor to the Johannesburg Urban Native Juvenile Delinquency Conference
 held in October 1938, spoke of the transient and 'casual' nature of black
 marriage unions on the Rand and of the problems this caused. Men and
 women, it was claimed, were increasingly coming to town by themselves, and
 establishing 'irregular' family unions with previously unrelated partners.
 Housing regulations encouraged this trend. Neither men nor women could
 secure houses without being married, yet no serious test was applied to
 establish a bona fide customary union. According to Graham Ballenden, the
 Non-European Affairs Manager of Johannesburg, more than a half of marriages
 in the Johannesburg township of Orlando were 'irregular'. Other evidence
 confirmed the same trend. Surveying the townships of Pimville, Orlando
 and Alexandra in 1940, Ellen Hellman found marriages of both recognised and
 unrecognised varieties to be unstable and spoke of a 'veritable progression
 of fathers' in some homes. In Germiston, in 1949, 336 births out of a
 total of 834 African children born in the locations were found to be
 14illegitimate. Again in Benoni, in the same year, 50% of marriages were
 "irregular", and 73% of births occurred outside of any recognised form of
 wedlock. "The family unit" the Non-European Affairs Manager commented was
 'Tast losing its significance". The Ihter-departmental committee on
 Juvenile Unemployment which sat in 1951 echoed his view. "Loose family
 unions" it lamented were producing full scale "social disintegration".
 Many blamed the situation on high levels of labour migrancy. The South
5.
 African Institute of Race Relations evidence to the Inter Departmental
 Juvenile Unemployment Committee saw the '"Migratory labour system" as one of
 "the major contributary causes" along with a "catastrophic shortage of
 housing". Similarly, the most systematic study of black family life
 conducted through this period (Laura Longmore's The Dispossessed) concluded:
 "the urban Bantu male, under present conditions, seems to have
 neither the opportunity nor the inclination to cultivate an intimate
 attachment to places or persons or to indulge in early marriage or
 family life; his is the characteristic of the mobile group, a
 mobility fostered by the migrant character of native employment."
 "The mentality of the migrant" she later noted "is incompatible with settled
 marriage or stability".
 While Longmore was one of the more sensitive commentators of this
 period her language in this instance gives one pause for thought. What
 exactly is "the mentality of the migrant"? And going further, how far do
 "irregular" marriage unions (i.e. those not sanctioned by civil or customary
 ceremonies) and consequent illegitimacy necessarily connote family
 instability? How far are these expressions of shock a product of a prim
 middle-class morality shrinking from some of the seamier sides of working
 class life?
 A survey of lodger families in Germiston in 1948 cautions us against
 reading too much into illegitimacy rates. Of the 400 families questioned
 well over half had been married by civil rites (252), while of the remainder
 115 had been married by 'native custom' leaving 17 and 16 respectively as
 single with family or widowed and divorced. The vast bulk of the families
 surveyed had moreover been married for 4 years or more with one half being
 married for 8-10 years. Finally 3/4 of the families surveyed had lived as
 lodgers in the location for five years or more, with half being resident for
 19double that time. "Family disintegration" was clearly a questionable
 phenomenon in Germiston, and was certainly not the automatic consequence of
 high illegitimacy rates.
6.
 However, while the "problem" of broken marriages and temporary families
 must obviously be scaled down, it equally clearly cannot be spirited away.
 Too much evidence exists from a wide variety of sources to attest to its
 presence. Among the most textured and systematic was that of Laura
 Longmore. Longmore carried out an intensive study of Eastern Native
 Township in Johannesburg between 1950 and 1957 and was profoundly struck by
 the instability of urban marriage, (though not by any necessary and
 consequential incoherence of African urban life).. Urban males, Longmore
 argued "were evading the responsibilities of fatherhood by way of the loose
 union, irregularly formed giving rise to the temporary family". The
 parent-generation forms of marriage she believed to be dying out, leaving
 among the new generation of their children, loose unions of different kinds
 fulfilling a variety of functions. It was not unusual for husbands to
 change frequently, leaving the home in charge of the woman and her growing
 brood of children. A single woman would often have children from 2, 3 or 4
 different men.
 Such temporary marriages, Longmore noted were not necessarily recorded
 as such in township censuses, since "all manner of subterfuges" were
 resorted to, to impress on the authorities that the couple was "legally"
 married, in order to obtain a house in the municipal township. Certificates
 from previous marriages were frequently presented as applying to the new
 spouse. Even the marriage certificates of friends were used, while one
 "enterprising" man of whom Longmore knew had acquired ten separate houses in
 different townships using the same certificate.
 For Longmore a major source of such instability and turnover was "the
 preponderance of unattached males living in the hostels and compounds
 surrounding,[the township]. ' Women "were ceaselessly importuned by
 unlimite'dMfomaViless men". This presented both a problem and an opportunity.
 Women without men were highly vulnerable. "Any African women living in the
7.
 urban areas of the Witwatersrand today need male protection, for in the
 urban African townships, women are being constantly molested". According to
 Longmore's informants "A husband gives the home some form of respect".
 Women thus had every reason to seek or acquiesce in new relationships the
 moment an old one was passed. VA home without a husband (was) defenceless
 in the townships". Such urgency could easily result in a relative lack of
 discrimination in choosing new partners, in which the old cycle was likely
 to resume again.
 The persistent attentions of men was a problem for women in the
 townships. Conversely, the availability of so many womanless men conferred
 a degree of independence on women. "Urban woman has become schooled in
 self-reliance and self-sufficiency" wrote Longmore, with evident approval
 and admiration. Wives no longer accepted the patriarchal authority of
 rural homes. Women refused to be true to husbands who kept concubines or
 had regular affairs. Where husbands spent their money on other women or
 were otherwise unable to provide for the home wives would often resort to
 adultery, and clandestine part-time prostitution. The taking of 'Nyatsi's'
 (back door lovers) was common: the receiving of presents from such men was
 equally common in turn. If men assaulted their spouses or mistreated them
 in other ways, they could easily leave and establish a relationship with
 other men. "If you tie a dog, you teach it to bite" the township wisdom
 24
 went. And women now were growing sharper teeth.
 Poverty and insecurity induced women to enter alternative
 relationships. The large floating male population allowed this to happen.
 This pervasive poverty of the locations also had other more intimate
 connections with migrancy, and helped produce a variety of social
 dislocations and malaises. "Poverty and instability" Margaret Ballinger
 told the 1938 Native Juvenile Delinquency Conference "are the dominant
 factors in the lives of nearly all Bantu families. The struggle to live is
8.
 the continuous pre-occupation of all Bantu family groups, a struggle which
 dominate every other concern". A decade later Longmore echoed almost
 exactly the same view. "Perhaps the most outstanding characteristic of
 urban African life is poverty" Longmore wrote. "This poverty permeates its
 entire social life. The pressure of want is an ever present companion".
 27
 Survey after survey conducted through this period underscored these views.
 Income fell far short of satisfying even the most basic and rudimentary
 wants.
 At the centre of this poverty was the ceaseless flow of migrant labour
 from the country which kept wages low and reduced opportunities for
 employment. Many employers preferred to hire migrant labour rather than
 workers permanently domiciled in town. In June 1950, for example, Benoni's
 influx control officer reported that "firms continued to employ natives from
 the reserves in preference to local labour. They can pay them a lower
 salary and because of the difficulty of being employed after discharge ...
 they work harder and longer". Employers generally found reserve Africans
 "more amenable, with better manners and in general more dependable"
 29
 according to Benoni's manager of Non-European Affairs J. Matthewson. Such
 attitudes did not stop at large industrial concerns. Employers of domestic
 servants "were also prejudiced against urban juveniles and prefer to employ
 rural youths whom they regard as more amenable, reliable and honest", the
 Inter Departmental Committee on Juvenile Unemployment reported in 1951.
 These virtues outweighed the benefits of stability or of basic levels
 of literacy for the majority of urban employers. It has been commonly
 assumed that the rise of machinofacture in South African industry and the
 large scale entry of Africans into semi-skilled jobs fostered the
 stabilising of African labour and the black working class, but this has at
 the least to be qualified for the 1940's and 1950's. Although Africans
 occupied 35* of semi-skilled jobs in Wage Board governed industries by 1951,
9.
 this seems to have had only very limited impact on the turn-over of African
 32labour. The Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce in fact reported in 1951
 "there is no doubt that the rate of labour turn-over has increased greatly
 in recent years". In July 1952 the Benoni City Times was still observing
 that in many firms on the Reef the entire labour force was replaced every 8
 34
 months. The same newspaper conducted a survey on Benoni firms early the
 next year and found turn-over rates of 192%, 180% and 138% in the town's
 heavy industries. Again in 1955 a study by Brooks put the average labour
 turnover of metal companies along the Reef at 88%. Heavy industry was
 obviously exceptionally wasteful in its use of black labour, and a survey of
 turnover conducted by the Benoni Town Council in a cross section of Benoni
 37factories show other enterprises appreciably more stable. Nevertheless,
 even here these tended to be the smaller concerns, and the turnover of the
 labour force as a whole stood at 50% in the early 1950's, a figure
 apparently matched by Pretoria. The cheaper, the more deferential the
 labour it seems, the more the employers liked it, and this outweighed most
 other concerns.
 Employers were not alone in encouraging this endless stream of rural
 labour. Throughout the war years the Reef municipalities made no effort to
 stem the flow. Johannesburg and Benoni were among the least energetic, and
 both were confronted by major squatter movements after the war. When Benoni
 Town Council was asked by the Native Affairs Department in 1938 what it was
 doing about influx control, its answer was 'nothing', since there was 'a
 39great demand for labour' at that time. In 1940 it again asked for influx
 control amendments to its location regulations to be deferred 'in view of
 the international situation', while its evidence to the Fagan Commission in
 401947 recommended that the pass laws be scrapped in their entirety.
 A change of heart was only forthcoming in the middle of 1950. As late
 as November, 1949, J. Matthewson, the Non-European Affairs manager of Benoni
10.
 41
 was still complaining of the council's reluctance to control influx. Then
 in the middle of the following year the Council was confronted by a gigantic
 movement of squatters to the land east of Benoni. Within 10 months its
 population had swelled to 18 000 strong. Not uncoincidentally the squatters
 had settled exactly within the borders of the planned new Apex industrial
 township. As a result, they could not be moved. In terms of existing
 legislation on housing, such squatters could only be displaced once
 alternative accommodation had been found. By settling on the newly
 proclaimed industrial townships the squatters had thus check-mated the
 Council. Now industry could not expand until alternative housing for the
 squatters had been built. Only at this stage did the Council seriously
 42begin to regulate the influx of migrant labour. It is to some of the
 consequences of this sustained 15 year influx of migrant labour that this
 paper now turns.
 2. MIGRANCY, UNEMPLOYMENT AND YOUTH GANGS
 This flood of migrant labour left an indelible mark on urban life in
 Benoni and elsewhere on the Rand. Its most obvious and immediate effect was
 the grinding poverty of black urban life. Many commissions and observers
 drew attention to this point. "As long as migratory labour comes in and
 competes on the labour market" Johannesburg Native Affairs Manager G.
 Ballenden told the Johannesburg Urban Native Juvenile Delinquency Conference
 in 1938 "so long will the difficulty in raising and stabilising native wages
 43
 continue." The burden of the Institute of Race Relations' evidence to the
 1947 Fagan Commission was much the same. "Urban blacks" the Institute
 observed "are in competition with migrant labourers on the labour market and
 since they are outnumbered by the latter, the customary rate of wages is
 determined by what the migrant labourer will take .... Since the Reserves
 reduce the necessity of making the income received by the migrant in the
11.
 town adequate to support his family all the year round, a depressing effect
 on wages results .... Thus the urbanised natives have been forced below
 subsistence level and even when working continuously find that their
 44
 earnings are not adequate to meet expenses." Sections of the permanently
 urbanised black population themselves protested in similar vein. In 1949
 Benoni's Wattville Native Advisory Board roundly denounced the damage
 wrought by the large-scale entry of migrant labour: such workers were
 prepared to accept low wages, they produced acute accommodation shortages,
 45
 and they led to abandoned wives. In August 1956 the Benoni Locations
 Advisory Board took the same argument a step further. Because of the
 massive influx of migrant workers into Benoni, it complained, Benoni's
 African labour was the worst paid on the Rand.
 Other evidence points in the same direction, but without a closer
 analysis of comparative wage statistics than I have undertaken so far, I am
 unable to say whether the large scale migrant inflow into, Benoni in
 47particular depressed its wage levels exceptionally low. What is evident
 nevertheless, is migrant labour's wider wage depressing role. Equally clear
 is its role in promoting urban unemployment. In February 1945 the Native
 Affairs Manager of Benoni was reporting serious unemployment among 'location
 natives' owing to the practice of bigger industries 'giving preference to
 48 49
 outside natives'. By June 1948 the situation remained the same. Even
 then the main brunt of unemployment was not carried by adult males. In
 1945, for example, there were 'only' 300 adult males who were out of work,
 and the figure for 1948 was unlikely to have been much more. It was rather
 male and female adolescents who were the chief casualties of this endless
 stream of migrant workers. Massive youth unemployment existed in many Reef
 towns, particularly those which permitted the relatively unrestricted inflow
 of migrant labour. Thus, whereas there were approximately 1 000 unemployed
 youths of both sexes in Germiston, Brakpan and Springs in 1951, in Benoni
12.
 there were 6 000, in Johannesburg there were 20 000, while in Pretoria a
 staggering 80+% of its youth population not at school, was unemployed.
 Reasons for such high levels of youth unemployment were various but most
 centred around competition from migrant labour. To a greater extent than '
 with urban labour in general, employers found urban youth undisciplined,
 unreliable, unpunctual, prone to absenteeism and dishonest. Partly this
 was prejudice, partly it had some basis in fact, but always the prejudice
 itself helped to cultivate those characteristics of urban youth that
 employers so deplored. The longer urban youth stayed out of work, the more
 likely they were to be immersed in the youth gang culture of the townships
 and to end up, in the language of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Native
 Juvenile Unemployment, as 'unfit for regular and disciplined work'.
 Employers for the most part were blithely unaware of their role in this
 process. Many wrote off "every youth as a tsotsi" the Secretary for the
 Native Youth Board complained. Youths straight out of school, who in the
 view of the Committee, were genuinely keen to work were tainted by
 association. Across the spectrum of employers, urban youths' alleged 'lack
 of stability and discipline' had earned them 'an unenviable reputation'.
 Even ordinary householders preferred rural youths for domestic service:
 neither urban males nor urban females were considered suitable for such
 54jobs, a feeling heartily reciprocated by urban juveniles themselves.
 Other factors also restricted the employment of urban juveniles. The
 pervasive poverty of the locations, allied to the congested and unhealthy
 living conditions reigning there ensured that urban youths were generally
 weaker and lacking in the 'physical stamina' possessed by their coevals from
 the reserves'. Studies conducted in 1939 and 1944 highlighted the appalling
 nutritional standards of urban youth. In 1939, for example, 85% of Orlando
 school-children were not getting enough food. Studies of Benoni children
 revealed the same nutritional gap. Employers were consequently loathe to
13.
 employ urban youths below the age of 18-20 for anything remotely resembling
 heavy work. Urban youth was not itself blameless on this score. The
 overwhelming majority shunned heavy industry and would only offer themselves
 for operator and distributive jobs. A final contributory factor swelling
 the pool of juvenile unemployed was the fixing of common wage rates in Wage
 Board regulated industries for both juveniles and adults. Since juveniles
 were "generally less efficient employees than adults ... [and] lacked
 physical stamina ... [and] a sense of responsibility" employers had no
 incentive to take them on at the same wage. It was one of the main
 recommendations of the Inter-departmental Juvenile Unemployment Committee
 that a differential wage scale be employed.
 A youth culture associated by employers with 'tsotsis1 prevented youths
 from getting jobs. The lack of jobs ensured that that culture would grow
 stronger and more pervasive, and that it would ultimately take on a
 powerfully anti-social character. By the early 1950's the culture of youth
 gangs was one of the strongest currents running through the locations.
 Itself the offspring of instability it profoundly dislocated location life,
 setting up rival poles of allegiance, antagonism and protection between gang
 and gang, between young and old, and above all between the fully and
 transitionally urban. This same youth culture was also a vital resource in
 wider political struggles presenting both opportunities and constraints to
 political action. It is to a broader discussion of this culture and its
 context that this paper now turns.
 The youth culture of the townships was forged on the streets. Urban
 youth roamed the streets because of the absence of other outlets into which
 their energies could be channelled. Not only was suitable employment
 unavailable, but most children generally left school by Standard IV, and
 many did not attend at all. The Inter-departmental Committee on Native
 Juvenile Unemployment reported, for example, that of the 621 718 African
14.
 children between the ages of 6 and 14 in the Transvaal in 1946, only 163 920
 were at school. The vast majority of those that did receive some
 instruction, moreover, pursued their studies for only 2 to 3 years (see
 table below).
 This pattern did not change materially until the end of the 1950's;
 when the era of 'mass' Bantu education finally dawned.
 TABLE I
 Number of
 Sub A.
 Sub B.
 Std. I
 Std. II
 Std. Ill
 Std. IV
 Std. V
 Std. VI
 Std. VII
 Std. VIII
 Std. IX
 Std. X
 TOTAL
 Bantu Children
 and on the
 The 1
 No.
 251 181
 127 412
 111 227
 80 249
 64 580
 46 557
 31 291
 26 413
 13 824
 4 702
 904
 471
 758 811
 in each Class in 1949 in the
 : Rand and in Pretoria
 Jnion
 %
 33,1
 16,8
 14,7
 10,6
 8,5
 6,1
 4,1
 3,5
 1,8
 0,6
 0,1
 0,06
 100,00
 The Rand and
 No.
 18 478
 10 899
 9 144
 7 500
 6 222
 4 794
 3 770
 3 417
 2 107
 820
 126
 . 63
 67 340
 Union
 Pretoria
 %
 27,5
 16,2
 13,6
 11,1
 9,2
 7,1
 5,6
 5,1
 3,1
 1,2
 0,2
 0,09
 100,00
 A study carried out by Ellen Hellman in 1938 identified a number of
 reasons for such high drop-out rates. At the top of the list were poverty
 and the pupils' own disenchantment with school. "The vulnerability of the
 average Native family to any economic setback such as unemployment or the
 expenses of illness is extreme", wrote Hellman in 1939. Of the 500 plus
15.
 school leavers she studied 20% had to withdraw from schooling owing to
 58inability to pay fees and school expenses or the need to find work.
 Refusal to attend school was an even more common reason for leaving.
 Conditions in the sub-standards where most of the pupils clustered were
 appalling. Pupil/teacher ratios stood at 64:1, classrooms were overcrowded,
 facilities were sparse. Pupils found almost nothing to stimulate their
 59
 minds: sheer boredom drove them out. A smaller study carried out by J.C.
 Reynecke between 1943-45 bore out most of these findings. Children were
 either rejecting schooling as useless, or were compelled by economic
 necessity to find work.
 Once out on the streets children were left to do much as they liked.
 Low wages and poverty generally meant that both parents had to go out to
 work. Hen went to the factories and businesses early in the morning and
 came back at dusk. Women spent their days washing and hawking or doing
 domestic work. Benoni's 1938 census showed that of the total adult female
 population 4 374 were in employment and only 419 out of work. In the vast
 majority of households both parents were absent for large parts of the day
 and children were left to fend for themselves.
 'Loose family unions', illegitimacy and 'social disintegration' further
 sapped family discipline. Fathers were less inclined to exercise control
 over children who were not their own: children themselves saw no reason for
 obeying their mothers' temporary spouse. Massive over-crowding compounded
 these problems. Poverty induced many families to sub-let rooms to migrants
 or to new arrivals from the country. Benoni's urban population, for
 example, grew at a rate of about 2 000 a year in the late 1940's early
 1950's most of it arriving from the countryside via the mines. Many of
 these arrivals had to be housed in the locations as did a significant
 proportion of the 4 500 fully migrant workers for whom municipal hostel
 accommodation was not available. Living space was thus at a premium and
16.
 many households tried to balance family budgets by sub-letting one or more
 rooms. Family life inevitably suffered and the 1951 Inter-departmental
 Committee on Juvenile Unemployment painted a sombre picture of the results.
 "Owing to the acute housing shortage and consequent overcrowding", the
 Committee noted,
 "the house, which as a rule serves as the centre of home life and as
 a strong binding force on members of the family very often fails to
 fulfil this function in Native society. Children in fact are often
 encouraged to remain in the streets in order to make room for
 adults."
 Longmore's observations led her to a very similar conclusion "What ought to
 be a home has all too often degenerated in the urban African township into a
 place where the members of the family happen to sleep".
 Such conditions were not uniform or unchanging. Germiston managed to
 place a large number of its juveniles in employment even in 1951, and if its
 lodger survey is to be believed a much more stable family structure than was
 usual managed to survive through the war. From the mid fifties key aspects
 of social problems were ameliorated even in places like Johannesburg and
 Benoni as a result of housing and other reforms. Nevertheless for most of
 the 1940's and 1950's urban life was sufficiently brutalised and unstable as
 to leave its mark on a whole generation of urban children. For a
 significant proportion of this generation the normal socialising and
 disciplinary agencies in society were either atrophied or absent. The
 initiation schools which had carried out this function in rural society had.
 fallen away in the town; parental control was either slack or entirely
 lacking; and the schooling system which carried out this role in most
 industrialised societies was utterly ill-equipped for the task. For
 Longmore the result was a generation of youth that was not so much immoral
 as amoral. Into this moral void stepped the gangs.
 Youth gangs, at least in their highly anti-social 'tstosi1 form do not
 seem to have been a significant feature of township life until the late
17.
 1930's or 1940's. Although predecessor groups like the 'Blue-nines' were
 noted in Johannesburg in the 1920's and early 1930's, they were neither as
 disruptive nor as widespread as those that developed in the war. Some of
 the earliest centres of the new generation of gangs appear to have been the
 overcrowded freehold townships of Sophiatown, Western Native Township and
 Newclare, to the west of Johannesburg, and Alexandra in the east, where
 large numbers of unemployed youth were jammed. By the early 1950's replicas
 or splinters had spread through most of the Reef's townships. In
 Sophiatown, the Americans, the Berliners and the Gestapo vied for
 ascendancy. In Newclare the XY's controlled much of the town. In Alexandra
 the notorious Msomis and the Spoilers ruled the roost. In Orlando the
 dreaded Torch Gang controlled the night. In the course of the 1950's new
 gangs wrested control from the old. In Alexandra the CPZ gang arose, also
 known as the Benzine Boys, after their practice of setting light to their
 CO
 victims. On the East Rand new gangs of younger men also strove for
 ascendancy and engaged in protracted battles of attrition. Germiston which
 had been held in fief by the 'Fast Elevens' became the battleground for a
 deadly conflict between the DMG's (Dead Man's Gulch) and the Vultures,
 after most of the Fast Elevens leaders were incarcerated in goal. In
 Benoni the principal gangs were the Dark Starring (between 4th and 6th
 Avenues in the location) and the Hong Kong (between 1st and 4th Avenues -
 the Indian and Chinese section). Other gangs that rose and fell in Benoni
 in this period were the Plantations, the YBS, the VCR, the Rooikamp, and the
 Kangaroos.
 In the early 1950's, if not before, these gangs began to embrace a
 wider and wider section of the youth. Around this time, for example, the
 Dark Starring formed a junior group called the Mashalashalas (meaning
 somebody who does something very fast), and eventually divided up into three
 distinct sections - the youngest group 8-14 who would prepare the weapons,
18.
 clean shoes for the older boysi and scout; the middle group 15-19 who
 would be in the middle throwing stones so as to confuse the opposition gang;
 and the elder group, 20+, who would encircle the opposition on the flanks
 and carry out the 'stabbing and hacking'. Many of the younger group at this
 point were still at school; the middle group were mostly unemployed, while
 72
 numbers of the senior group were employed in the factories.
 Sources of conflict reflected some of the main pre-occupations of urban
 youth. A major site of struggle were the 'bioscopes' in the location.
 Cowboy and gangster films were immensely popular among township youth and
 were widely regarded as a pernicious influence by the local authorities.
 Both the DMG's and the Dark Starrings took their names from cowboy films and
 the gangs modelled their behaviour on cowboys, hoodlums and, on occasion,
 74
 even Tarzan. For this largely non-literate audience these visual images
 were their major point of access to the outside world, and as in similar
 situations elsewhere, had a profound impact on values, aspirations and
 75
 'style'. Episodes in films were commonly regarded as authentic
 representations of the outside world. At the same time they were not just
 passively absorbed, but were recast in terms more appropriate to the urban
 youths' position in a depressed and oppressive urban milieu. Blinkered by
 its own place in a racially structured order, the Commission of Enquiry into
 Unrest in Krugersdorp, Randfontein, Newclare and Newlands could only partly
 grasp the point, noting with exasperation "The mental capacity of the
 audience is unable to grasp the fact that the hero succeeds in the end and
 crime does not pay".
 Much effort was accordingly expended by the gangs in controlling
 bioscopes. In Dukathole township (Germiston) the DMG's demonstrated their
 authority by controlling the township's main cinema house. In Wattville
 (Benoni) the Star cinema was the scene of a protracted battle for hegemony
 in which the Dark Starring eventually ousted the 'coloured' motor cyclist
19.
 Ghost Ranger gang. Somewhat later an Indian owned cinema on 12th Street was
 the centre of similar struggles: "That was in the middle. No-one had
 direct control of the area and that's where fights would be waged and that's
 78
 where people were killed'.
 Other sources of competition revolved around gambling and women. For
 the middle and older age groups battles frequently centred on women. If a
 gang member's girl friend was taken by - or defected to - a member of the
 opposition bloody fights would invariably erupt. In this case fighting was
 not simply a reflex response to some primordial sexual or territorial
 instinct of men. The same kind of episode was the trigger of numerous
 conflicts between amaRashea (Russian) and other gangs, and reflected a much
 broader shift in the status of women. As was argued earlier on in this
 paper, urban women combined, in paradoxical mixture, a greater degree of
 independence and self-reliance alongside a greater vulnerability to men.
 Repeated clashes over women who were abducted or simply switched their
 79
 affections were a reflection of this change.
 One last persisting source of conflict was gambling. Urban life was
 not only poverty stricken but boring. Urban African youth was addicted to
 dice and other forms of gambling which served to relieve the daily monotony
 of life, and where youths from rival groups engaged in this passtime
 fighting could easily break out. In Wattville in the 1950's "other
 gangsters were involved in pick-pocketing and they used to look at
 themselves as better off than other groups who only relied on gambling, and
 that would erupt in fighting as an individual from one gang would gamble and
 when he had lost would try to retain his money by force. This would cause
 RO
 gang fights".
 As the gangs expanded and matured in the 1940's and early 1950's they
 developed a distinct counter-culture. Young boys were involved in
 pick-pocketing and bag snatching in the towns, in petty thefts of fruit and
20.
 fowls from neighbouring white small holdings, in dagga smoking and even in
 the drinking and sniffing of benzine. The closest many got to work was in
 doing small jobs for Indian shopkeepers, cleaning taxis in the location and
 whites' cars in the town, and in caddying on the multiplying number of golf
 courses on the Rand. Even here the urban youth were in a marginal
 position. Many golf-courses found urban boys unreliable and dishonest, and
 on
 imported youths from the country whom they housed in small compounds.
 Among the older youth a pronounced aversion to any kind of regular work
 developed. "Horses work. People don't" became the motto of the
 no
 Berliners. Across the Reef, in the view of the Non-European Reef
 Administrators, a larger and larger percentage of unemployed juveniles "took
 on the characteristics of tsotsis - unscrupulous, work shy and ripe for
 84
 criminal careers". By the end of the 1940's older 'tsotsis' were not just
 engaging in petty pick-pocketing (or even burglaries) in town, but had also
 begun preying on their own communities. As early as June 1948 Benoni
 location residents out at night near the location were liable to be held up ?
 'by gangs pretending to be criminals' and stripped of all their clothing.
 Passengers on buses were another target of their attentions. Once robbed of
 their belongings, they were thrown out of the bus if they dared to
 complain. Similar reports punctuated most of the next decade. In 1950 'a
 reign of terror' had been imposed on the location by these tsotsi gangs.
 In May 1954 the Advisory Board again denounced the activities of young
 87hooligans who assaulted and stabbed law abiding residents of the location.
 At the end of the same year tsotsis were stoning buses, assaulting bus
 QQ
 drivers and stealing their takings. In February 1957 the Joint Advisory
 3oards of Benoni were again complaining of another "flareup of Tsotsism" in
 the locations and requesting that guns be given to police.
 y In some areas a distinct if ambivalent antagonism to education
 developed. Youths in the cities constructed their own language ('flytaal. or
21.
 90
 tsotistaal') which drew heavily on Afrikaans. To speak English 'was a
 great setback for anyone coming into contact with tsotsis - it was
 considered a sign of showing ones education1. Tsotsis believed 'teachers
 t 91
 have knowledge, but they have sense'. One of the major targets of these
 unemployed youth gangs was therefore children travelling to and from
 92
 school. F., one of the gang members interviewed for this study was forced
 to abandon his schooling (and subsequently to join a gang) because of their
 93
 constant attentions. Again, it may not have been entirely accidental,
 that Elias Monyane, municipal clerk, and 'one of the most respected natives'
 94
 in Benoni location was stabbed and killed by tsotsis in July 1953.
 Youth gangs were street-wise, anti-social and suspicious, but they
 represented a potentially powerful political resource for any aspiring
 political leader. It was widely suspected by white officialdom that many
 gangs were in fact the witting or unwitting tools of political 'agitators'
 The de Villiers Louw commission which enquired into a number of violent
 outbursts on the Rand in 1949 and 1950 explicitly warned that tsotsis
 'thrive on disorder, and played a prominent part in all the disturbances
 probably acting as the storm-troopers of others operating behind the
 95
 scenes'. Many others, including the Johannesburg Manager of Non-European
 Affairs believed the same.
 The gangs were nevertheless not quite the pliable tools that the
 administrators suggested. "The strongest force binding the tsotsis
 together" might be "resentment of whites" but they could not be
 ~ 97
 automatically orchestrated for any political purposes. Would-be
 mobilisers had to strike a responsive chord in the collective consciousness
 c
  of the gangs, and this was not necessarily easily accomplished by the
 intelligentsia leading most of the political groups. The most effective
 *? mobilisers were predictably those who were schooled in street culture
 themselves. One such figure was AB and it is worth studying his career in
22.
 some detail.
 AB was born in June 1924, part of the baby boom of the first post war
 generation of immigrants to the Rand. AB was neglected by his family and
 felt himself particularly rejected by his mother and elder sister. He
 attended the Methodist School in Benoni, passing through the sub-standards
 to Standard VI. According to a teacher from his school he was, at this
 point, expelled for disobedience and cheek. In AB's own account he left
 because of shortage of money at home and because he wanted to enlist in the
 army. Once his father discovered his intention, he gave him 'a hard smack
 and ... as he crawled ... a kick up the arse". AB's army career had been
 brought to an abrupt and ignominious halt, which in turn further fed his
 disaffection. "That's where I became a rebel" AB recalls, a vocation in
 which he was to excell. He went to boxing and weightlifting, activities
 much favoured by street gangs. The agressive streak in his character also
 found other expressions. In these middle to late adolescent years he "had
 no time for girls .... Every time I was chased by the police for assaulting
 girls ... it was my sickness ... I used to hit them very bad".
 An increasingly antagonistic attitude also developed within AB to the
 Indian traders in the Asiatic section in Benoni. According to AB, tsotsis
 often used to rob mine-workers coming to buy in the Indian shops. "The
 Shaganes" AB recalls
 "were funny people. When they come to shop they will be in a group
 of 10 and the last one has the money .... They walk in a line, not
 together - like animals. The tsotsis, who don't work, will grab the
 last one, gag him, pull him away and pickpocket him."
 AB claims the Indian traders originally taught the tsotsis this trick, and
 that they shared the spoils between them. Conflict between the traders and
 the tsotsis later broke out when the tsotsis refused to hand over to the
 traders their share. The traders responded by calling the police who
 'chased the tsotsis with sjambok all over1.
 The bias in AB's account is evident, and the most likely interpretation
23.
 of these events is that the traders called in the police when the tsotsis
 started robbing their customers on too large a scale. AB nevertheless
 turned the event to his own advantage. AB already had a grudge against
 Indian traders. "One day I was, sent [to the traders store]. I" was given
 ?5. When I arrived there I bought some few things and that Indian said I
 gave him ?2. There was a struggle ... (AB was not one to give up without a
 fight) and they pushed me out." IN AB's own perception this was a
 relatively common occurrence. He therefore decided to stop the Indians
 "buggering people around .... I formed my own team and spoke to the
 tsotsi boys and said 'don't you see the Indians are finishing our
 people1. They said 'Yes'. I said 'we must ... hit these Indians ...
 and start taking their money'. We would buy raw eggs, hit the wives
 of the Indians and she runs away and the Indian will come in and the
 tsotsis go to the till and take the money."
 The Indian traders soon responded by calling the police, and, when their
 assailants got off their charges, by negotiating for protection from other
 tsotsi groups. For AB who loved to fight, this was bliss. Along with
 "Jannie Malcolm, Bootje, Jaoobo" and others he defeated the opposition. Now
 the traders "wanted to make friendship with us. Those [Indiands] I used to
 associate with [as a boy], they started tricking me ... make me food, take
 me to rich Indians ... they were playing with my mind ... they were trying
 to bribe us you know".
 Thus feted, more or less amicable relationships were restored and AB
 turned his attention to other pursuits. Immediately after the war a major
 social problem had developed among whites - the so called 'ducktails' or
 delinquent white youth. Among their various activities were assaults on
 blacks. Under the headline 'Klu-Klux Clan Methods' The Guardian reported in
 January 1946 the increasing incidence of unprovoked attacks by bands of
 99
 European youths on Africans, Coloureds and Indians. Benoni was no
 exception to this trend. "In town, you were never, never allowed to walk on
 the pavement. If you do that these white boys see you and they jus't take
 you and throw you right on the veranda of the shop, and glasses will cut you
24.
 to pieces." AB organised 'milk boys' in the town and other youths from the
 location to retaliate against these louts. "We should hit these white
 people with the milk" AB told his recruits. "It must be war against
 whites." On the next S&turday chaos broke out on one side street in Benoni.
 Youths fought, black women shoppers threw stones and soon 'Police came with
 batons ... they were not used to shoot at that time'. Arrests were made on
 both sides, and after a number of similar incidents the police started
 enforcing the right of blacks to walk on Benoni's pavements.
 AB clearly had immense rapport with the gangs. He spoke their
 language, and his daring and agression made him both feared and admired.
 However AB was much more than a tsotsi, if indeed he can be called one at
 all. AB spanned a number of different worlds, although he displayed the
 same persona to each. He mixed as easily with the amaRashsea (Russians) -
 the Sotho ethnic gang - as he did with the tsotsis, and was a personal
 friend of the Molapo faction leader Matsarapane who was hanged for killing a
 white policeman in 1951. This alone set him aside from the tsotsis who
 hated the Russians and were hated in return. "We wouldn't even gamble with
 them" gang member G. recalls, as he strove to express the gulf that yawned
 in between.
 AB also stood out in other respects. After leaving school he continued
 his education at night-classes. Reward for his efforts came in 1946 when a
 local attorney named M employed him in his office in Benoni. AB rapidly
 graduated through the ranks. M's practice did a lot of work with the black
 community and attracted a large number of people in trouble with their
 passes.
 "These people used to come to the lawyer who said he did not know how
 to do them. I must see a plan. He was so clever. I used to go to
 these boys who used to do them, and they were so fond of me. One was
 called Steenkamp. I would say to him, 'Look there is one boy who has
 no pass and he is a good boy.1 He would say, 'Bring horn hier so ek
 sal horn reg maak'. He would fix it and charge the boy ?10. I would
 take ?5 to the office. The boy would give me ?6 after all those
25.
 efforts. From there I was the famous man of making passes. [M, the
 lawyer] said you are making a lot of money and I want a third of what
 you make, but he said don't write on my books the receipts or the
 inspectors will find them - then I used my own exercise book. I
 would make hundreds of pounds. I was now known as a lawyer rather
 than a servant because I had an office.
 Sadly for AB, the market broke down in 1954. .Steenkamp got greedy. One day
 "he got friendly with another boy called Frank - that boy put Mr Steenkamp
 into a mess - he was arrested". Press reports document that Steenkamp got
 off but the racket was at an end.
 Such exploits and contacts further enhanced AB's prestige both with the
 gangs and among Benoni's black population as a whole. AB was a conduit for
 legal aid and in the early 1950's this was almost a priceless resource. AB
 lost little time in converting this into more material capital.. In the
 latter half of 1950 Advisory Board members began complaining of the unfair
 102
 allocation of taxi licences in the Benoni locations. According to
 Advisory Board member Ngengenbula 30 licences had been awarded to African
 owned taxis, 14 to Coloured owned taxis and 46 to Indian owned taxis.
 Ngengenbula demanded a pro rata allocation. Ngengenbula?s complaints
 were part of an orchestrated campaign which extended to Germison and were
 the prelude to applications from 'several prominent natives' for licences to
 run taxis. It seems likely that AB was one of the notables who applied and
 along with the others his application was turned down. He now took the fore
 in an agitation against the unequal allocation of taxi licences. At a
 meeting in his house on 16th April attended by Africans, Indians and Chinese
 demands were made that Indians dispose of their licences (some had as many
 as five) to blacks. A further meeting at the Star cinema a few days later
 104broke up in disarray. Along with Jacob Mashinini and others AB now
 organised a boycott of Indian taxis. "We employed our boys to tell the
 people to get off the taxis." The Indian taxi-owners responded by calling
 in the Sotho's (presumably Russians) and on the evening of the 20th April AB
 was shot in the thigh by an unidentified assailant. In the following days
26.
 all African owned taxis were draped in Yellow, Black and Green, colours of
 the ANC, as the boycott dragged on. The Indian taxi owners now resorted
 once more to negotiation, but although a compromise appears to have been
 reached, it gave little satisfaction to AB. According to him "the Indians
 changed their taxis and called them by their boys' surnames. They fetched
 money in the night, they cancelled the certificates with lawyers and made
 agreements". As far as AB was concerned the Indians had won.
 AB nursed his grievance through much of the next year, along with other
 frustrated African entrepreneurs. A chance to get even came the
 following July. On the 4th of the month a young African boy named Mandla
 was beaten up by Indian traders after he was allegedly found in their shop
 at night. He was taken to the police station where he died in the cells.
 AB vowed that they would not get away with it this time. He organised the
 funeral with the Methodist minister, Reverend Weyi, and then "went to call
 all the notorious boys from Sophiatown - and they came - Boysie from
 Alexandra, Lefty and Company came as well. They knew that they were going
 to loot the Indians". He also bought four drums of petrol and poured them
 into bottles which he had in the veld. After the funeral the crowd marched
 and attacked the Indian shops.
 There followed a week of riot and arson. Repeated attacks were made on
 the Indian shops. According to the Benoni City Times 'tsotsis [were]
 10S
 foremost among the trouble-makers'. F. was a prominent figure in their
 ranks and remembers the incident well. Before the funeral AB had gone round
 the street gangs that hung around the shops in the location and had given
 them instructions. At the church service AB was the last speaker and had
 told the congregation 'to stand bold as a black nation1. F. thereafter took
 part in all of the attacks. Three times he was arrested: three times he
 was set free by AB and the lawyer by whom he was employed. By the middle
 of the next week many of the shops in the Indian section were razed, and
27.
 much of its population had fled. Order was only restored after police swept
 the location from end to end detaining 80 suspects, children included.
 AB was arrested and tried on three charges but the case collapsed six months
 later when nobody could be induced to testify for the prosecution.
 By some curious irony the attack on the Indian shops came within a
 month of the opening of the Defiance Campaign which represented the most
 ambitious effort yet to construct a multi-racial front in opposition to the
 government. The attack on the Indians was clearly a blow to the success
 of this project on the Rand and both the ANC and the Transvaal Indian
 Congress made urgent moves to heal the wounds. While AB was clearly
 contemptuous of the conservative Indian leadership in Benoni, who now once
 again tried to buy him off, he was more impressed by the commitment of the
 younger and more militant TIC. The Indian Congress he recalls
 "wanted real peace - Moodley, Cachalia, Naidoo, Naicker ... came to
 me and we chatted about the unrest. They were trying to join hands
 with the ANC and the ANC was not strong in the north."
 G.R. (who lived in Benoni) also approached AB. "You are a leader", AB
 recalls him as saying "there is nobody more powerful than you on the East
 Hand". AB was flattered, became persuaded of the value of a 'united front1
 and was shortly afterwards elected to the leadership of the Youth League of
 the ANC.112
 The aim of the two Congresses in the area was clearly to curb some of
 AB's more extreme activities and to channel the militant support which he ws
 able to tap. The exercise proved a resounding success. AB now brought his
 youth gangs firmly within the orbit of the ANC and they provided the shock
 troops for much of the rest of the decade. Operating under the name of
 Thaka Enyane (Young Black Soldiers) they were mobilised into most of the
 ANC's later campaigns. Between 1953 and 1955 the ANC in Benoni became
 rejuvenated and AB became a household name.
28.
 In May 1954 the Benoni Council announced rent increases of up to 100%
 for sub-economic houses in Wattville and a 25% hike on 'economic housing1
 rents. The next month an organisation known as the Wattville Helping Hand
 Association - led by AB - was calling for a boycott of buses and.the
 114beerhall (AB was a rigid teetotaler) in protest against the hikes. F.
 recalls the 'Thaka Enyane being summoned to enforce the boycott call. In
 the event the boycott was a flop. There were too many houseless families
 prepared to take over the houses of those boycotting over rent; police
 swarmed through the location on the appointed day, and the Council made some
 minor concessions through the Advisory Board.
 AB was more successful in orchestrating two other campaigns. In
 February 1955 he successfully organised a boycott of the 'childrens treat'
 and other events that accompanied the opening of the Wattville Sports
 Stadium. Minister of Education Eiselen was the guest of honour and the
 boycott was in protest against the introduction of Bantu education. The
 boycott was total. Not a soul appeared on the streets and 3 000(?)
 children's cakes stood untouched. AB remembers the incident with great
 relish. The boycott was merely a prelude to the much more sustained
 campaign against the introduction of Bantu education. This opened in Benoni
 on 12th April 1954 in defiance of the ANC national executive's decision to
 postpone the campaign. Along with Germiston and Brakpan, Benoni was one of
 the militant centres of the movement. AB, the Youth League and the youth
 gangs were at the centre of its organisation. Children were stopped on
 their way to school and sent home. "Young natives walked through the
 classrooms shouting 'Africa' and persuading children to leave their desks."
 Teachers and Advisory Board members were threatened. The boycott became
 total. In the course of the next week several attempts at arson
 lift
 occurred, but the first stage of the boycott was ultimately broken by
 119
 police action and the mass banning of 597 children from schools. Second
29.
 and third attempts at boycott flared up late in May and again in July of the
 same year. In both cases "native women and children" were central, a march
 of 2 000 women and children headed by ANC colours being broken up by police
 120
 on the former occasion.
 The Bantu Education boycott was the most sustained, militant and mass
 based action to have taken place in Benoni's black community. It was then
 that the ANC in the area came of age. At its centre were the Youth League,
 the gangs and the women (to whom we will return later). It success ensured
 the deportation of AB to Vryburg in the north-western Cape.
 Nevertheless the traditon that he had founded carried on. F. recalls his
 gang now becoming connected to the Youth League by Frank Msibi whose mother
 was in the ANC and who was himself one of F.'s YBS gang. F. and his gang
 were prominent in enforcing the women's anti-pass campaign. F. himself had
 a strong antipathy to passes. Indeed he claimed he joined the ANC youth
 wing because he was against the carrying of passes. Significantly, he saw
 them as preventing youths being employed until 20, at which age they got a
 pass. With AB and his lawyer now absent F. quickly found himself in goal,
 after he received a 9 month sentence for assaulting a nurse. After serving
 his sentence, F. continued with his political activities and the young gang
 wing of the ANC only seems to have been effectively broken in early-mid 1960
 when police undertook house to house raids and arrests to wipe out what they
 called the menace of tsotsiism. It was at this point that F. fled to
 Pretoria and many other youth leaders were goaled. It seems likely that it
 122
 was at this time that the youth wing collapsed.
 The youth gangs and the women of Benoni were central actors in the
 Bantu education boycott in Benoni, at least partly because it was they who
 were in the location during the day. The gang networks also fed themselves
 into the political culture of Benoni via an entirely different route.
 However difficult it was for the youth to get jobs, and however reluctant
30.
 many were to seek work, most were eventually employed. Even F., for
 example, who immediately quit his first job (in 1953) when he was shown a
 railway carriage full of sacks he had to unload - entered into permanent
 123
 employment in 1963. Only the most 'incorrigable' continued to spend
 their life on the streets especially after the tightening of influx control
 and passes towards the end of the 1950's.
 Young men were nevertheless highly selective about the work they would
 take. Operative or distributive jobs, especially those which offered the
 prospects of promotion as bonuses were the most highly sought after kinds of
 124
 employment. In Benoni the scope for this kind of work was extremely
 limited. Heavy engineering dominated the local economy, and this kind of
 labour young men shunned. In 1943, however, an important new avenue of
 employment opened, when Amato Textile Mills (then Union and Congo) erected a
 factory in Benoni. From 1945 Amato Textile expanded rapidly until by the
 mid 1950's it employed 4 000 men.
 Amato Textile was unusual in a number of respects. It was by far the
 largest factory in Benoni; it was the major source of semi-skilled
 employment in the town, and it was probably the most effectively unionised
 and militant factory on the Rand. Elsewhere I have discussed the reasons
 for this unusual degree of militancy and organisation drawing attention to
 the semi-skilled nature of the work, the imperatives of production, and the
 character of the management itself. Here I want to emphasise one particular
 feature of the factory to which I did not pay sufficient attention before -
 the composition of its workforce.
 When Amato opened its gates in 1943 it recruited a largely juvenile
 125
 work-force. David Hapane, who worked in Amato, attributes this to the
 efforts of Advisory Board member and squatter leader, Harry Mabuya.
 Mabuya may well have played some part in this decision, but a more
 compelling reason for Amato was probably the competing demands for labour in
31.
 Benoni during and immediately after the war. When Amato Textile approached
 Benoni Town Council in December 1945 for 36 acres of extra land on which to
 expand their factory they explained that
 "the type of native required was the small active type able to use
 their hands in a deft manner in the working of the spinning and
 weaving machines, and this type of [layout?] could be drawn from the
 location without interfering with the labour requirements of the
 other industries in Benoni which usually required natives of the
 strong and physically robust type.
 How 'active' this 'type of native1 could be, they would shortly find out.
 Amato continued with this policy until the early 1950'8 at least. In July
 1951 Benoni Council conducted a survey of juvenile unemployment and
 employment and found that Amato was the largest employer of male juveniles
 1 Pfi
 in the town, this group accounting for 25* of its total complement.
 C.P. was one of this group. He left school at Standard IV because
 there was no money at home to allow him to proceed with his education. Some
 time later at the age of 20 he was employed in Amato Textile. C.P. later
 became a factory militant and a leader in both the SACTU affiliated to
 African Textile Workers Union and in SACTU itself. According to C.P., Amato
 workers were unusually militant because of the influence of the youth.
 "Workers who were employed there were very young, and literate i.e. they
 were more enlightened and had much impact." They were not prepared to
 accept the arbitrary and abusive behaviour of migrant boss boys and white
 129
 foremen, and by developing the union gained protection from both.
 These young workers also brought some of the anarchy and self assertion
 of the streets on to the factory floor. S.M. for example joined Amato
 Textile in 1948, at the age of 17 or 18, and was soon elected shop steward
 of his department. He had left school in Standard 7 after his father had
 died, and spent a couple of years engaged in casual labour before a job in
 Amato turned up. While still at school S.M. had been an active member of
 the VCR gang, and he carried some of its spirit of defiance with him into
 his job at Amato. Strikes, S.M. recalls were a regular occurrence. Some
32.
 strikes were 'geniune' but others were simply frivolous. For example,
 a 'genuine' strike might start if you go outside to smoke, because
 smoking wasn't allowed in the factory. Then the supervisor would
 tell you don't go outside during work time to smoke. So if you are a
 shop steward you have to see whether to take it [the dispute] or not.
 You then turned the argument back on him saying 'Fuck you, these
 people are not in prison'. He then may want to chase you away and
 then the whole work stopped.
 On other occasions they just 'caused strikes because we wanted to go to
 the cinema. A man will go to the manager to say that he needs to go off.
 Then they say to him go away we are busy working and he will go to his
 colleagues and tell them his problem. Then we decide to tools down and to
 and stand next to the office. After 30 minutes they will tell us to go home
 and come back tomorrow'.
 Either through the gangs or through the factory S.M. joined the Youth
 League of the ANC. Many others, through their experience of the TWIU and
 SACTU were doing the same. Some time in the early 1950's C.P. who was by
 then a key leader in Amato 'took his group into the ANC. Shortly before,
 another key leader named Z.M. did the same. Some powerful ballast for
 the ANC's campaign in Benoni was now in place.
 3. WOMEN, THE FAMILY AND POLITICAL MOBILISATION
 The youth culture described in the foregoing pages was part of the
 legacy of gold. It was the offspring of intense poverty, competition from
 migrant labour and family instability. These same factors were also
 responsible for one of the other most striking developments of the 1940's
 and 1950's - the partial emancipation of women. Urban African women, it was
 argued earlier in this paper, were in a highly ambiguous position - more
 independent and self-reliant, and simultaneously more vulnerable to men.
 Women might change partners often, but in the end required a male partner to
 provide physical protection. Yet while men might offer protection, they all
 too often did not provide emotional and economic security as well. Women
33.
 therefore looked for this security in a variety of other directions.
 Longmore explains in this connection
 "It does not follow that looseness^in family involves disorganisation
 throughout community life.... There are other groups capable of
 organising intimate personal relations and controlling individual
 behaviour. Among these ... may be listejgtsotsi gangs, stokvels,
 manyano societies and separatist sects."
 I have not as yet conducted the research which would enable me to
 explore the changing role and character of these institutions. What is
 clear however is that women's search for security went well beyond such
 relatively parochial activity. One particular form of security that urban
 women in the 1940's and 1950's desparately sought was a house of their own.
 In the absence of family security the home for urban women was their crucial
 safety net. It is in this context that one must explain the astonishing
 levels of participation of women in the squatter movements of the 1940's and
 early 1950's.
 The Tent Town squatter camp set up by Harry Mabuya next to Benoni
 location in 1945 is a case in point. The squatter movement in Benoni was in
 many ways a women's movement. It was frequently women who took the
 initiative to move to the encampment and it was they who most vociferously
 campaigned for new houses to be built. Ma-Thibela, who 'set up tent1 in the
 area in 1948 remembers this of the move:
 [At the time] my husband was boss boy at Modder B. mine ... I told
 him that our children needed a change of environment, tbat they
 cannot grow like we did, and that we should learn to struggle like
 other people. At first he was hesitant. He didn't understand what I
 meant by learning to struggle and leaving his job, but ultimately he
 agreed, and we bought a tent and came over this side. The thing that
 made me do this was the mine policy that if a wife left her husband
 she had to leave the quarters and fend for herself.
 She therefore went herself to buy a tent from Mabuya (for ?15) in the first
 of a series of moves which eventually won her a new house in Wattville.
 Women were at the centre of squatter politics. Since their husbands
 were usually at work in the factories all day, it was they who took the lead
 in organising the demonstrations for housing which the native commissioner
34.
 so dreaded. These were often accompanied by Mabuya. Ma-Thibela recalls the
 Tent Town women marching down the road to the Native Commissioner's office
 singing:
 "Siyawugubha, siyawugebhula umhlaba ka Maspala"
 ("We are digging, we are seizing huge chunks of the municipality's
 land.")
 and "we have our 'tsotsi' with us: he is not behind"
 (a reference to Mabuya).
 In the actual administration of tent town women residents also took the
 lead. On the executive committee of the African Housing and Rates Board sat
 Ma-Msibi (Mabuya's cousin) Ma-Ntlokwane, Ma-Senusi, Mr Mhlambi (the
 134
 secretary) and Mr Lesenya. Ma-Ntlokwane was later to top the polls in
 the Emergency Camp's Advisory Board elections, a most unusual event at the
 135time. The African Housing and Rates Board ran every aspect of the camp
 life, from providing food through the Mabuya Township Trading Co-operative
 Society Ltd., to holding church services for the inmates in the morning
 and the evening, to policing the encampment during the week (the job of
 137
 women) and during the week-end (the job of men). It was a highly
 effective form of self-rule.
 The importance of housing to women also explains the almost godlike
 reverence accorded to squatter leaders like Mabuya "He was our Moses" says
 Ma-Ntlokwane. "He was like a priest". The support that Mabuya consistently
 commanded from women in Advisory Board elections gives some idea of how
 T O O
 broadly based that sentiment was. "Housewives-, grannies and widows
 supported him a lot" says Ma-Thibela "because he sometimes was a pillar to
 them. For instance ... there was a policy of not offering women houses on
 their own i.e. when not having a husband ... but he did just the opposite.
 139
 He was very helpful".
 The-experience of the squatter movement may conceivably have bred a new
 confidence in women. When the Benoni municipality introduced a head tax of
 2/6d. a week on all male members of a household, and l/6d. on all female
35.
 members, irrespective of age, they met with an explosion of anger from the
 women of the location. This was a direct threat to the family, the main
 responsibility for which ultimately lay with women. The next day women
 began to boycott the municipal bus service and refused to allow location
 women to go to work in the town. Asserting that it was "a women's quarrel
 and they wanted all women to be in on it" they marched on the location
 manager's offices. Native Affairs Manager Matthewson tried to ride the
 storm out, but was forced to back down the next day when the women of the
 township issued a general strike call. Within the space of 24 hours the
 Council had obtained permission from the Government to waive the collection
 of fees for children under the age of 16 and for school children of any
 140
 years.
 In the events of May 1952 the ANC played a relatively peripheral role.
 By the time of the Bantu Education boycott it occupied the centre of the
 stage. It was at this point that Benoni's women (and women generally on the
 Rand) first entered the mainstream of nationalist politics. Ma-Thibela
 dates her political awareness back to this campaign. "I questioned myself.
 Why this sudden introduction, what is wrong with the education the children
 were getting?" At this point Ma-Thibela's own children were at school, but
 this was not the only reason for her joining the campaign. "Our social
 situation had [also] really made one dissatisfied." The women for
 Ma-Thibela were the lifeblood of the campaign. The overwhelming majority of
 those picketing the schools were women together with 'some men who didn't
 work'. They went from school to school, often chased by mounted police. On
 141
 arrival they just said 'OUT' and all would leave the school.
 The Education boycott ultimately failed but from this time on the ANC
 was a force to be reckoned with in the life of Benoni. With the women and
 the youth marshalled solidly behind it carried great weight. Yet even now,
 while there was no other local political organisation that could seriously
 offer it a challenge, it still did not begin to achieve a hegemonic
36.
 position. At the very moment the Bantu education boycott was clearing the
 classrooms in the locations near Benoni, the tent schools in the new
 township of Daveyton were packed full. Likewise in the women's pass
 campaign of 1956 and 1957 it was the women of the old location and Wattville
 142
 who were solidly resisting, while those in Daveyton broke ranks. What
 this represented spatially was a wider sociological cleavage. The
 ex-miners, the squatters, the new arrivals to town were largely impervious
 to the more 'urban' message of the ANC, while the ANC for its part failed to
 find the means of appealing to this group. To explore this issue requires
 another paper. Suffice it to say that this was one of the reefs on which
 the ANC would founder at the beginning of the following decade.
37.
 FOOTNOTES
 1. D. O'Meara, 'The 1946 African Mine-Workers' Strike in the Political
 Economy of South Africa.' Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative
 Politics, 12, 1 July 1975.
 2. P.L. Bonner, '"We are digging, we are seizing huge chunks of the
 Municipality's Land": Popular struggles in Benoni, 1944-1952', 1-2.
 3. P.L. Bonner and R. Lambert, 'Batons and Bare Heads: The Strike at Amato
 Textile, February 1958', 5-8.
 4. J.C. Wells, 'The History of Black Women's Struggle against Pass Laws in
 South Africa, 1900-1960', Ph.D. thesis. University of Columbia, 1982,
 Chapter 8; Benoni City Times, 25 July 1952.
 5. K. French 'James Mpanza and the Sofazonke Party', M.A. thesis.
 University of the Witwatersrand, 1982, Chapter 2.
 6. South African Institute of Race Relations, Johannesburg Urban Native
 Juvenile Delinquency Conference, 1983. Paper by G. Ballenden; D.C.
 Hindson, 'Pass Offices and Labour Bureaux. An Analysis of a National
 System of Pass Controls in South Africa1 D. Phil.; University of
 Sussex, 1982, Chapter 4.
 7. C. Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa, 147-8.
 8. Colonial Annual Reports: Basutoland, 1937, 6; ibid. 1946, 15-17.
 9. Interview, M.N. Pokone, 10 June 1986, Daveyton.
 10. S. Majara, Matotulo, Mazenod 1965; interview S. Majara 26 April 1986,
 Lesotho.
 11. Johannesburg Juvenile Delinquency Conference,
 12. Ibid., Paper by G. Ballenden.
 13. South African Institute of Race Relations, Monograph series 1-3,
 1938-40, E. Hellman, Problems of Urban Bantu Youth, 1940, 14.
 14. University of the Witwatersrand, Church of the Province of South Africa
 Archives, Katlehong Records microfilm, Reel 2.
 15. Benoni Municipal Archives, (hereafter BMA) Non-European Affairs
 Committee Minutes, (hereafter JffiAC) meeting of 11 November 1949, 611.
 16. CPSA archives, Katlehong Records, Reel 2, S.A. Institute of Race
 Relations Memo, of evidence to the Inter-Departmental Committee of
 Native Juvenile Unemployment on the Witwatersrand and in Pretoria, 12
 July 1951.
 17. L. Longmore, The Dispossessed. A Study of the Sex Life of Bantu Women
 in the Urban Areas in and Around Johannesburg, London, 1959, 51.
 18. Ibid, 118.
 19. CPSA, Katlehong records. Reel 2, Town Council of Germiston NEA Dept.
 analysis of Rodger housing survey, Germiston location, July 1948.
38.
 20. Longmore, The Dispossessed, 51, 60.
 21. Ibid. 59, 61, 70.
 22. Ibid, 61.
 23. Ibid, 58, 118-19, 138.
 24. Ibid, 74, 79, 83-4, 117, 119. ,
 25. Johannesburg Native Juvenile Delinquency Conference.
 26. Longmore, The Dispossessed, 108.
 27. CPSA, Katlehong Records, Reel 2, SAIRR memo, of evidence to the
 Inter-Departmental Committee on Native Juvenile Unemployment; T. Lodge,
 Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (Johannesburg, 1983), 155,
 Johannesburg Juvenile Delinquency Conference.
 28. BMA, NEAC, Meeting, 13 June 1950, 327.
 29. Ibid, meeting 11 November 1949, 611.
 30. CPSA, Katlehong Records, Reels, Report of the Inter Departmental
 Committee into Native Juvenile Unemployment.
 31. e.g. Hindson, 'Pass Offices', 124-6; S. van der Horst, 'The African
 Worker in Urban Areas' Race Relations, XIII No. 2, 1946.
 32. D.H. Terrington, 'An Examination of the Occupational Wage Structure in
 Selected Industries covered by the Wage Board1 M.A. thesis, University
 of Capetown, 1974.
 33. CPSA, Katlehong Records, Reel 2, Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce Memo,
 of evidence to the committee into Native Juvenile Unemployment.
 34. Benoni City Times, 25 July 1952.
 35. Ibid, 6 March 1953.
 36. Ibid, 25 March 1953.
 37. BMA, NEAC, meeting 14 November 1949, 411-24.
 38. Ibid.
 39. Ibid, meeting, 6 January 1950, 11.
 40. Ibid, meeting, 16 January 1946, 19-20.
 41. Ibid, 11 November 1949,' 588.
 42. Bonner, ,'We are digging', 18.
 43. Johannesburg Juvenile Delinquency Conference
 44. BMA, NEAC, meeting, 10 March 1947, 99.
39.
 45. Ibid, meeting 13 March 1951, Minutes of Location Advisory Board, 27
 February 1951.
 46. Benoni City Timnes, 3 August 1956.
 47. Ibid.
 48. BMA, NEAC, meeting 9 February 1945, 36. .
 49. Ibid, meeting, 1 April 1948, NEA Manager to Native Commissioner, 1 June
 1948, 222.
 50. CPSA, Katlehong records, Reel 2, Report of the Committee into
 Native Juvenile Unemployment, 1951, 2-3.
 51. Ibid, 13, 17, 38.
 52. Ibid, 13.
 53. Ibid, Evidence to the Native Juvenile Unemployment Committee, Report of
 the Secretary of the Native Youth Board (H. Mehlomakulu) for 1949-50.
 5,4. Ibid, 11, 13, 17.
 55. Johannesburg Juvenile Delinquency Conference; CPSA, Katlehong Records
 Reel 2, Report of the Committee into Native Juvenile
 Unemployment, 11-13.
 56. Ibid, 20-23. .
 57. Ibid, 8-9.
 58. Hellman, Urban Bantu Youth, 58-72.
 59. Ibid.
 60. CPSA, Katlehong records, Reel 2, SAIRR memo, of evidence to the ....
 Committee into Native Juvenile Unemployment.
 61. Johannesburg Juvenile Delinquency Conference, Paper by Margaret
 Ballinger.
 62. Longmore, The Dispossessed.
 63. Benoni City Times, 6 March 1953.
 64. CPSA, Katlehong Records, Reel 2, Report of the Committee into
 Native Juvenile Unemployment, 6.
 65. Longmore, The Dispossessed, 263.
 66. Ibid.
 67. D. Coplan, In Township Tonite!
 68. Drum, December 1955.
 69. Ibid; Interview S.M., 17 July 1985, Daveyton.
40.
 70. Interview, CD. 14 February 1985, Johannesburg; interview, S.M., 30
 July 1986, Daveyton; interview 'F1, 20 March 1985, 31 October 1985.
 71. Interview CD. and S.M. C.V. Bothma 'Tsotsibendes in Pretoria1.
 Tydskrif vir Rasse-Aangeleenthede, Vol. 3, No. 1 Jan. 1952, 24-35.
 72. Ibid.
 73. Interviews, S.M., CD., M.
 74. Interview M.
 75. J. Brown
 76. Longmore, The Dispossessed.
 77. Cited in M. Chaskalson, 'The Road to Sharpville1, 19 (University of the
 Witwatersrand, History Department Seminar Paper, 1986).
 78. Interview, C D .
 79. Interview CD., S.M. : Also interviews with several 'amaRashea' leaders.
 80. Interview, CD.
 81. Johannesburg Juvenile Delinquency Conference, Interview M.
 82. CPSA, Katlehong records, Reel 2, SAIRR Evidence to the Juvenile
 Unemployment Committee, 3, 13-14.
 83. Drum, December 1955.
 84. CPSA, Katlehong records, Reel 2, Evidence of the Association of
 Administrators of Non-European Affairs to the Juvenile Unemployment
 Committee, May 1951, 4.
 85. Benoni City Times, 4 June 1948.
 86. Ibid, 4 August 19S0.
 87. Ibid, 7 May 1954.
 88. BMA, NEAC, meeting 9 December 1954, Advisory Board Minutes, 23 September
 1954, 480, Benoni City Times, 17 December 1954.
 89. Ibid, 1 February 1957.
 90. Coplan, In Township Tonight, Drum, December 1955.
 91. Ibid.
 92. CPSA, Katlehong Archives, Reel 2, Evidence to the Committee on Native
 Juvenile Unemployment.
 93. Interview, F.
 94. Benoni City Times, 3 July 1953.
41.
 95. U.G. 47/1950,. Report of the Commission appointed to enquire into acts
 of violence committed by Natives at Krugersdorp, Newlands, Randfontein,
 and Newclare, 9.
 96. L.F. Freed, 'The Problem of Crime in the Union of South Africa: an
 Integralistic Approach1, D. Phil., University of the Orange Free State,
 1958, 184.
 97. CPSA, Katlehong Records, Reel 2, Report of the Committee on Native
 Juvenile Unemployment, 18.
 98. Interview, A.B., 8 May 1985, Daveyton.
 99. The Guardian, 17 January 1946, 8.
 100. Interview, F.
 101. Benoni City Times.
 102. BMA, NEAC, meeting 10 August 1950, Benoni location Advisory Board
 minutes, 27 July 1950, 137.
 103. Ibid, meeting 14 November 1950, 385.
 104. Ibid, 14 May 1951, Report Senior Superintendent Benoni location, 355-7;
 Ibid, Advisory Board minutes, 26 April 1951, 369-70; Ibid. NEA
 Manager's report, 384.
 105. Ibid, meeting 11 August 1952, Advisory Board minutes, 27- July 1952;.
 Interview, A.B.
 106. BMA, NEAC, Advisory Board Minutes, 29 April 1952.
 107. Ibid, meeting 11 August 1952, Advisory Board minutes 22 July 1952.
 108. Ibid, meetings 15 July 1952, 1 August 1952. Benoni City Times, 11 July
 1952.
 109. Interview, F.
 110. Benoni City Times, 11 July 1952.
 111. Lodge Black Politics, 43.
 112. Interview, A.B.; See also The Clarion 17 July 1952 and 27 July 1952,
 which speaks of mass meetings held by the ANC and T.I.C. in Benoni old
 location which denounced the attacks and pledged full support for the
 Defiance Campaign. (I have only recently come across this reference:
 hence it is not integrated into the text.)
 113. See below, and Lodge 'Black Polities'.
 114. Benoni City Times, 7 May 1954, 18 and 25 June 1954.
 115. Interview, F.
 116. Benoni City Times, 25 June 1954, 2 July 1954.
N>
 42.
 117. Ibid, 29 April 1955; Lodge, Black Politics, 123.
 118. Benoni City Times, 22 April 1955.
 119. Ibid, 13 May 1955.
 120. Ibid, 27 May 1955, 29 July 1955,
 120a. Ibid; Interview, A.B.
 121. Benoni City Times, 8 and 29 April 1960, 6, 20 and 27 May 1960.
 122. Interview, F.
 123. Ibid.
 124. CPSA, Katlehong records, Reel 2, Report of the Committee on Native
 Juvenile Unemployment, 12-13.
 125. Interview, David Hapane, 2 March 1985, Benoni, interviw 20 April 1985,
 Wattville.
 126. Interview, D. Hapane.
 127. Intermediate Archives, Johannesburg.
 Benoni Council, Box 265, II/l VOL I
 Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Works Committee, 14 December 1945.
 128. Benoni City Times, 20 July 1951.
 129. Interview C.P.; interview Edward Mabaso, 20 May 1985, Wattville (who
 talks of recruiting mine workers as 'boss boys').
 130. Interview, S.M.
 131. Conversation C.P., 1985.
 132. Longmore, The Dispossessed, 183.
 133. Interview, Christina Thibela (Ma-Thibela) 4 May 1985, Wattville.
 134. Interview, Ma-Ntlokwane and Ma-Senosi, May 1985, Wattville.
 135. BMA, NEAC, meeting 12 July 1949, 175.
 136. Ibid, meeting 8 September, 1947. Annexure "B", Notes of interview
 with the squatters committee, 357; interview Ma-Nlbokwane and
 Ma-Senosi.
 137. Ibid.
 138. See results of successive Advisory Board elections.
 139. ? Interview, Ma-Thibela.
 140. Benoni City Times, 23 May 1952.
 141. Interview, Ma-Thibela.
 142. Benoni City Times; interview Ma-Thibela.