The legacy of Apartheid on the built environment in South Africa

Thoughts from a recent visit to a country I love, by Priya Shah

I begin my duo of blogs on South Africa by sharing an overview of the impact of Apartheid on the black population and the built environment. A significant chunk of this was enforced in the Group Areas Act (GAA) 1950, making South Africa perhaps the only country in the world to have had a built environment and society developed entirely on race, entrenched by law. It was this aspect that has fascinated my interest in South Africa and the legacy of Apartheid on the built environment post-1994.

Some of the information is from an intense visit to the Apartheid museum in Johannesburg, whilst other conclusions have been drawn from conversations with Black South Africans, general observations in Black Townships and additional archive research.

Housing during Apartheid

The purpose of Apartheid was to allow the white population to accumulate wealth at the expense of non-white populations, predominantly Black people. As such, they embarked on a process of segregation, whereby different races had different (or in most cases, very little) rights. In addition, the process of segregation ensured different races did not integrate with each other and when they did, they would be faced with severe punishments.

The Group Areas Act displaced hundreds of thousands of people, breaking up families, destroying friendships and splinterting communities.

The Group Areas Act came into force in 1950 and was a significant hindrance for all non-white racial groups (Blacks, Indians and Coloureds). The GAA created the legal framework for varying levels of government to establish particular neighbourhoods as 'group areas', where only people of a particular race were able to reside. The GAA displaced hundreds of thousands of people, breaking up families, destroying friendships and splintering communities. This was due in large part to the retroactive application of the law, meaning that once an area was declared a group area, the GAA had the power to demolish all the houses there and displace everyone who was not of the designated group.

Following the Group Areas Act, dozens more laws and regulations were put in place to ensure different races lived apart, worked apart, did not cross marry or breed, all while ensuring the White population accumulated wealth and left other races in subservient positions.

The Black man was always the White man's servant.

Naturally, the result of this was chaotic. Economic deprivation, poverty and inequality rose. The biggest irony was that the Black man was always the White man’s servant (never the other way), and though work would be undertaken within the same home, there was no human interaction.

During this time, the urban population of South African cities and towns multiplied, causing the development of illegal tin shacks and unhygienic settlements around the main city centres. Disease and death was rife, HIV spread like wildfire, and today South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world, a sour legacy of Apartheid and poor healthcare for the Black population.

Housing post-Apartheid

For nearly five decades, the policies under Apartheid shaped and created modern South Africa. When the Group Areas Act was abolished in 1990, planning and development policy was no longer guided by race because it was simply not allowed to. Rather, the new Government in 1994 was about reconciliation and peace; ensuring those who had been deprived for so long had rights, homes, access to education and healthcare. As such, housing became guided by socio-economic status. However, this is indirectly mirrored on race because:

• On the whole, the lowest socio-economic group across South Africa is the Blacks - many Black people are still living on the outskirts of major towns and cities, predominantly in tin shacks. Due to resource limitations, an Indian or Coloured family, for example, living in a crowded one-bedroom house becomes secondary to receiving home improvements when there are people living in tin shacks who simply need just a house to live in. These people happen to be Black and thus planning policy is regarded as favouring them, because they are receiving newly-built homes whereas improvements to dilapidated houses becomes less of a priority.

• There is the psychological attraction of living in areas with people of a similar background, history and culture because it is comfortable. Where there is a large population of a certain culture, funding can go towards relevant infrastructure and services for a particular community. This then attracts more people of the same culture and community to live in the area - it’s a chain effect. At the same time, this reinforces some of the problems that existed during Apartheid because the remnants of racism and hierarchies between different races are still apparent.

• It is evident that a divide between different races still exists. Many people were optimistic that post-Apartheid, the racial divisions would start to evaporate. However, it would be naïve to assume this would decimate overnight or in the case of South Africa, over 25 years. There is a generational gap, where older people continue to view the racial divides, whereas, younger people appear more open and mix with other races. However, the mixing of different races is dependent on a child’s education and whether they are exposed to different races from a young age. Many parents continue to socially engineer their children and keep that separation between their race and other races, thereby continuing that racial divide on a psychological level.

If you’ve always been considered a second-class citizen, how do you erase that from memory?

Today, democratic South Africa is a legacy of its Apartheid past. Though by law you can live anywhere, you will never have Blacks living beside Whites. If you’ve always been considered a second-class citizen, how do you erase that from memory? You can change the law overnight, but social attitudes take many generations to change.

This is just a snapshot of the impact of Apartheid on the built environment in South Africa. Watch this space for part two of my South Africa blog series, focusing on the Coloured population in District Six, Cape Town.