Public Housing as a Device for White Residential Segregation in Johannesburg, 1934–1953

Abstract

Public housing for whites in South Africa was introduced as an urban-segregation measure in the 1930s. The state's aim in establishing Council housing in Johannesburg is shown to have been the racial division of the residences of working-class people. The white-housing program is assessed and shown to be wanting. It is argued that, particularly in the post-World War II years, housing assistance for whites failed to ensure the racial segregation of the slum or to accomplish the social uplifting of all poor whites. Stringent selection procedures, fiscal shortages, and the shelter demands of the black working class contributed to the persistence of racially integrated suburbs despite state efforts to protect whites through Council housing supply.

The ‘Right to the City’: Institutional Imperatives of a Developmental State

“…In local government there is a highly skewed legacy of state assistance based on race. Under the de facto welfare state that operated for whites, basic municipal services including water, electricity and rates were rebated or subsidized so that the needs of the poor were addressed (Parnell, 1988). The post‐apartheid city challenge is to roll out these services (on which human rights depend) to all urban residents.…”

Are Johannesburg’s peri-central neighbourhoods irremediably ‘fluid’?

“…Their population, today predominantly poor and black, is quite diverse (Table 13.1). In Bertrams, for example, Indian, coloured and Afrikaner minorities (Rule 1989) live in the municipal houses formerly reserved for poor whites (Parnell 1988). In Yeoville, the racial profile is more homogeneously black but socio-economic diversity is higher.…”