6 - Urbanization and Afrikaner Class Formation: The Mine Workers’ Union and the Search for a Cultural Identity

Summary

The first half of the twentieth century in South Africa is characterized by the rise and growth of its cities. The tempo of urbanization in South Africa was accelerated by about 1920. Although research into urbanization as a sub-discipline of South African historiography was neglected to a large extent in the past by historians, a number of academic scholars were nevertheless attracted to the study of urbanization as a historical phenomenon. One of the early pioneers who attempted to come to grips with the social processes occurring in urban centers in South Africa was William Macmillan. In his study, The South African Agrarian Problem and its Historical Development, for example, Macmillan investigated the social and economic conditions that would ultimately lead to the urbanization of rural blacks and whites.

The groundbreaking studies by the American historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, which boldly rejected the Turnerian frontier hypothesis and asserted the importance of the city in American history, had a strong influence on South African scholars who also ventured into the historiography of urbanization. According to Schlesinger, the American countryside was transformed from a simple agrarian society into a highly complex urban society. Although this occurred on a smaller scale than in the United States, similar processes in South Africa initiated huge urban-bound trek movements of its population.

The processes and social and economic consequences of this large-scale urbanization of rural whites has also intrigued the Afrikaner intelligentsia. A number of prominent Afrikaner academics—economists, sociologists, and theologians—compiled the five-volume Report of the Carnegie Commission on the Poor White Problem in South Africa. According to Van Jaarsveld, the Report was influenced by the American experience in this regard. And in 1947 a conference was organized by the Afrikaner Dutch Reformed Church (DRC)* to discuss the ramifications of the urbanization of rural Afrikaners.

In recent times no one has done more to promote the study of urban history among Afrikaans-speaking historians than the eminent scholar in this field, Floris van Jaarsveld. He has written widely on the historiography and methodology of urban history, as well as on the urbanization of Afrikaners, but did not himself produce any major work on the history of an urban centre.