African advancement under apartheid

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 16 October, 1995At the end of the 1960s, after South African capitalism had experienced a decade of unprecedented economic growth, scholars were deeply divided over the impact of this economic growth on racial inequality. Although the deepest differences were between liberal scholars who argued that economic growth would erode racial inequality and revisionists who argued the converse, there was little agreement even among revisionists on the extent and pattern of changes to the racial division of labour in South Africa. I shall argue that the reasons for the different estimates of the extent and pattern of African advancement are due to the limitations inherent in neo-Marxist theories of class and of the sources of data used by revisionists. To provide a reliable estimate of the extent and pattern of African advancement that overcomes some of these limitations, I have relied on a somewhat eclectic classification scheme that incorporates insights from labour process theory and Weberian class theory. Following the example of Simkins and Hindson, I turned to the Manpower Survey data instead of the Population Census because it provides a more detailed occupational classification and time series. The results of my analysis are restricted to the formal urban workforce. Following earlier analyses of African advancement, this study does not deal with the question of African unemployment. Although an analysis of unemployment would greatly enrich this study, there are no data which provide an occupational breakdown of the unemployed population. A study of the inequalities caused by unemployment therefore has to be conducted through an analysis of trends in wages and income which I have dealt with elsewhere

Race, inequality and urbanisation in the Johannesburg Region, 1946-1996

The city of Johannesburg lies at the heart of a sprawling metropolis. This metropolis, which we shall call the Johannesburg region, roughly corresponds with the boundaries of Gauteng Province.1 It stretches from Soshanguve in the north to Vanderbijlpark in the south and from Carletonville in the west to Springs in the east (Fig.1). While Johannesburg is an obvious example of a large city in a poor country that is riddled by social and economic inequality, there is a certain irony in its portrayal as a world city. After all, only five years ago, Johannesburg was the hub of a pariah nation that was the object of one of the most successful international sanctions campaigns. Notwithstanding the impact of the boycott against apartheid, Johannesburg has long served as the major urban centre of southern Africa. It is an unusually cosmopolitan city, with extensive demographic, political, and economic connections with Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, that date back to colonial times (Parnell and Pirie, 1991). Increasingly strong links are now also being forged with Australasia through immigration and sport

Social polarisation or professionalisation? Another look at theory and evidence

The debate over whether or not the de-industrialisation of cities is accompanied by the occupational and income polarisation of their working populations has been characterised by some confusion over the relationship between incomes and occupations in the service sector. Specifically, many scholars have misunderstood the significance of middle-income service sector occupations for their interpretations of the post-industrial class structure of cities. Through a comparative study of de-industrialisation in Cape Town, we present evidence to show that the growth of service sector employment can, under specific conditions, produce a large middle-income occupational class of clerks, sales and personal services workers. The growth of this class can offset the decline of middle-income jobs caused by the loss of artisans, operatives and drivers in the declining manufacturing sector

A matter of timing: migration and housing access in Metropolitan Johannesburg

The city of Johannesburg lies at the centre of the largest urban conurbation in sub-Saharan Africa. In the past, this conurbation was known by the clumsy acronym 'PWV', which stood for the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging complex. Today, this urban region has the political status of a province and has been re-named 'Gauteng', a popular local name meaning 'place of gold'. A province that is almost entirely urban, Gauteng is home to 7.3 million people: about one-third of the national urban population of 21.8 million.2 At the last census in 1996, the population of Johannesburg itself was about 2.6 million.3 In the national hierarchy, this placed the city of Johannesburg just after the largest city in South Africa, namely Durban (2.8 million) and marginally ahead of Cape Town (also about 2.6)

Social differentiation and urban governance in greater Soweto: a case study of post-apartheid reconstruction

This paper explores the historical and contemporary terrain of local level struggles in post-apartheid Meadowlands, a township in Greater Soweto. It looks at the implications for urban governance of increasing social differentiation and suggests that social polarisation mitigates against sustained levels of public action

Race, class and the changing division of labour under apartheid

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree oi'Doctor of Philosophy, University of the Witwatersrand, JohannesburgAbstract not clear.AC 201