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Representing Cape Town on the eve of apartheid

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Vivian Bickford-Smith
Vivian Bickford-Smith
Affiliation:
Dept of History, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7700, South Africa
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Abstract

This article attempts a detailed social portrait of Cape Town on the eve of apartheid. In the process it provides a rare cross-racial study of a twentieth-century South African city. The first section reveals a complex place already distinguished by considerable segregation and predictable social inequalities, both between and within racial and ethnic categories. Yet such findings are at odds with popular memories of a golden age – marked by tolerance, greater cohesion and security. So the second section explores and explains the differences. It finds that memories cannot simply be dismissed as myths.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , May 1998 , pp. 36 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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