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Urbanisation and the Soildarity of Afrikaner Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

David Welsh
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Extract

In 1904 just over 6 per cent of South Africa's Afrikaners lived in the towns. By 1936 the percentage had risen to 44, and 1960 to 76 per cent. Slightly less than half of this number live in smaller centres, regarded for census purposes as ‘urban’ although most of them are dorps or hamlets.1 The causes of this demographic revolution go back to the simultaneous crisis of farming and the rise of mining and other industries that led to the growth of towns. Rural poverty pushed people off the land while the possibilities of earning higher incomes drew them to the towns. In the folk-lore of Afrikanerdom, towns—particularly Johannesburg—were evil places: they were regarded as the seats of an ‘English—Jewish’ capitalism that was bent on ploughing the Afrikaner under, and as hotbeds of vice and crime.2

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , July 1969 , pp. 265 - 276
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

Page 265 note 1 Sixth Census of the Population of the Union of South Africa (Pretoria, 1938)Google Scholar, which gives figures for 1904 and 1936; Population Census, 6th September 5960 (Pretoria, 1963)Google Scholar. For an analysis of these figures, see Report of the Commission of Inquiry into European Occupancy of the Rural Areas (Pretoria, 1959–1960), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

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Page 267 note 2 The Star (Johannesburg), 9 01 1902.Google Scholar

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Page 269 note 2 Jenks, Christopher, ‘Is it all Doctor Spock's Fault?’, in New York Times Magazine, 3 03 1968.Google Scholar

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Page 270 note 1 Mayer, Philip, Townsmen or Tribesmen? (Cape Town, 1961), pp. 90 ff.Google Scholar

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Page 271 note 1 du Plessis, op. cit. p. 234.

Page 271 note 2 Pretorius, Gert, in The Cape Argus (Cape Town), 28 03 1968.Google Scholar

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Page 273 note 1 Richard, ibid. 28 June 1968.

Page 273 note 2 For an amusing account of Pretoria's peculiarities, see Louw, N. P. van.Wyk, ‘Só Broei Hulle Mekaar Warm’, in Die Beeld (Johannesburg), 14 07 1968.Google Scholar

Page 273 note 3 Jaap, Marais M. P., ‘Liberalisme: so bedreig dit ons’, in Dagbreek, 24 03 1968.Google Scholar

Page 274 note 1 Quoted in The Cape Times (Cape Town), 10 07 1967.Google Scholar

Page 274 note 2 Hofstadter, Richard, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (New York, 1965), p. 51.Google Scholar

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Page 275 note 1 Personal communication from an English-speaking businessman to the writer.

Page 275 note 2 The South African evidence corroborates H. Blumer's hypothesis that industry adapts to the system of race relations, rather than the reverse; see his essay in Hunter, G. (ed.), Industrialisation and Race Relations (London, 1965).Google Scholar

Page 275 note 3 Letter from D. J. du. Plessis in Die Beeld, 14 September 1968.

Page 276 note 1 A. B. du Toit, ‘Verligtes het die Inisiatief’, ibid. 10 June 1968.