Source 3a

Transcript

11. The Act will affect the various non-European communities in different ways. Segregation is the principle underlying the Native legalisation which Parties of all complexions have accepted for the past half century, and the Act does not add materially to existing powers in respect of Africans. The Native land Act of 1913, the Native Land and Trust Act 1936, and the Native (Urban Areas) Consolidated Act 1945, had already, before the Group Areas Act was ever heard of, provided for Africans being given certain areas to live in and being forbidden except under stringent conditions, to live elsewhere. Of course, the Reserves never contained all the Africans. Of the total African population in the Union of some 8 million, only about 3.5 million live in the Reserves and similar areas, while about 2.3 million live, mostly with their families like their fathers before them, as labourers on farms outside the Reserves. The drift of Africans to the towns, where there are now some 2 million of them, has greatly increase in recent years. Most of these live segregated in native locations and townships and mine compounds, but many live close to Europeans. The Nationalists find it difficult to reconcile themselves to this drift and thus are reluctant to take the steps necessary to make life in the towns more tolerable for Africans. But the less doctrinaire among them appreciates that there can be no question of the Union’s industry foregoing voluntarily its African labour force, however far ahead one looks. If the consequences of this are accepted and the Group Areas Act used to facilitate the replacement of the overcrowded African slums in Johannesburg by a series of adequately built townships to the south of the City, with sufficient transport facilities to bring their inhabitants to and from their work, as was recommended by the Fagan Commission in 1948, a real contribution

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would be made to the easing of racial relations in South Africa. One of the results of the rioting in Johannesburg early this year was to strengthen the demand, among the European inhabitants bordering on the African areas in the City, for the removal of the Africans from their overcrowded hovels. The expense of this operation would however be very great, and its adoption would involve acceptance by the Nationalist of the fact that the Africans have come to the towns to stay. It is therefore unlikely to find any early place in the Government’s programme for the implementation of the Group Area Act.