It was decided early on that the publication should be well-illustrated, which seemed like an eminently good idea that could easily be realised. However, we did not adequately anticipate the extreme unevenness in the existing photographic archives. Next to nothing exists on everyday life in the old location and townships. Considering the salience of mining and industry, the relative absence of photos on work is staggering. Fortunately, Sally Gaule brought her expertise to bear on the project, conducted the initial photographic research and offered invaluable advice throughout. We also benefited from discussions with Sophie Feyder and the research undertaken by Lucas Spiropoulous and Sifiso Ndlovu. Curators at the Benoni Museum and librarians from Springs, Benoni, Boksburg and Germiston were very helpful. The people who possibly suffered the most from our frantic scramble to find the ‘right’ images were Zofia Sulej and Gabriele Mohale from Historical and Literary Papers who responded to our endless requests with their usual professionalism. We were very fortunate to be introduced to the Ngilima family and Gille de Vlieg who have fantastic photographic archives on life in Benoni Old Location and aspects township struggle in the 1980s respectively.
The staff of Wits University Press was enormously helpful throughout the protracted process of converting the initial manuscript into a book. Julie Miller guided the publication through the various phases and was assisted with editing by Patricia Botes and book design by Debbie Smit. We are grateful to the two reviewers whose comments helped shape the final arguments of the book.
During the last phase of this project, two stalwarts of the region, Cassel Khanyile and Bertha Gwxoa sadly passed away. They were staunch supporters of historical research and constantly encouraged our endeavours. We encountered many others like them across the region, people who are passionate about understanding the past and committed to efforts to introduce young people to their history.
PREFACE
Ekurhuleni, one of the country’s primary metropolitan areas, is merely a decade old. Whereas the promulgation of its more prominent urban neighbours – Johannesburg and Tshwane – as metropolitan areas involved the incorporation of smaller peripheral areas into major pre-existing cities, Ekurhuleni was created from the amalgamation of several relatively equal towns in what was historically known as the East Rand. Each of its constituent towns, including the suburbs, industrial areas, and especially the black residential areas attached to them, have rich histories going back to at least the start of the 20th century. This book is the first to attempt to weave together the separate threads of the pasts of each of these areas into a common historical narrative of the entire region.
Previously published books were usually commissioned by local municipalities to celebrate one or other milestone in the history of the white town. Written during the apartheid years, they focused almost exclusively on the achievements of the white population and were in fact premised on the basic notion that towns were places of white history and development. Their pages were filled with accounts of the experiences of white (usually male) pioneers in mining, industry and local politics. Black residents of these towns were excluded from these official histories, and when they did make fleeting appearances it was generally either as labourers and troublemakers or to demonstrate the goodwill and paternalism of the white authorities towards ‘its blacks’. Women and youth were similarly marginalised: white women were represented as wives or social entertainers, and white youth either as jovial or boisterously anti-social. Social strife, industrial action and political contestations were also downplayed (Benoni, Son of my Sorrow, is the one exception) in order to construct narratives of peaceful progress and enlightened development.
Several of these hagiographic accounts were produced prior to the 1970s. Those written after 1976 ignored or were oblivious to a large body of scholarly research undertaken from the 1970s, which produced fundamentally different histories and interpretations from the officially sanctioned books. Inspired by the turn to social history, academics and students based at universities wrote new histories that emphasised the role of ordinary people – women, men, workers, squatters, tenants and youth – in the making of their own history. Above all else, they consciously aimed to fill the major gap in the existing literature, namely, to recover the histories of ordinary people, especially the black oppressed. The collection of oral testimonies has played a critical role in this process of rewriting histories ‘from below’. Ekurhuleni has been a major site of this research, especially by scholars associated with the activities of the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand. In addition to our own work, the research undertaken by, among others, Sapire, Sitas, Cohen, Webster, Callinicos, Lambert, Gilfoyle, Mooney, Moloi, Seekings, Brink, Menachemson, Ruiters, and Ndima, has generated a rich and diverse set of historical analyses. These writers chiefly drew attention to the complex processes of urbanisation (and particularly the role played by African and Afrikaner women), the making of working class cultures, popular insurgent movements, ethnic-based violence, and the re-emergence of independent trade unions and civic movements from the 1970s, and posited innovative analyses of the contestations in the making of apartheid and the political violence of the early 1990s. Despite the existence of this treasure trove of social history, very little is more widely known about Ekurhuleni’s significant contributions to the country’s history. This is partly due to the fact that a significant proportion of this body of work consists of unpublished theses and conference papers. One of the main objectives of this book is to bring into the public domain relevant aspects of this literature.
It remains the case, however, that most of the aforementioned literature took individual towns or locations/townships as their principal point of reference. Consequently, we know a considerable amount about squatters in Benoni, stayaways in Brakpan Location, forced removals in Payneville and Benoni Old Location, trade unions in Germiston and hostel violence in Kathorus. This book builds on and highlights the peculiarities of these local histories but it also draws attention to the numerous common processes that spread across the region. Competition between towns, especially in the economic field, tended to exacerbate differences between them. In reality though, they were all competing in the same frame, often to be the same thing, while the socio-economic borders between them were quite porous and distinctive town-specific identities rarely crystallised among any section of the population.
Ekurhuleni is unique because it is the single largest urban region in South Africa, comprising nine of the country’s leading urban towns, two of its largest African township conglomerations and has for extended periods been the country’s leading industrial region. These salient features emanate from the region’s pivotal role in the development of the country’s modern economy. Perhaps more than any other city or region, Ekurhuleni has reflected the rhythms of development of the mining and industrial sectors of the national economy. During the first half of the 20th century it was among the leading gold mining regions in the world and in the decades following the Second World War became the undisputed ‘workshop’ of the rapidly industrialising local economy.
An important and far-reaching consequence of this combination of characteristics was that from the early 20th century the various towns of the region attracted work-seekers from across the region and globe. Much like Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni very quickly developed a cosmopolitan character. The roll call of early mine owners and political leaders reveals a strong British presence, and later, as immigration from eastern and southern Europe increased, Jewish, Greek and Portuguese families also made their mark in various facets of life in the region. By far the most significant group of immigrants into the region was black workers from various parts of southern Africa, first to work on the coal and gold mines, and then in even larger numbers in the rapidly expanding secondary industry. From the outset a large proportion of the region’s population, black and white, was working class. In the first half of the 20th century this was mainly mine-based and thereafter the region was dominated by an industrial working class, making the locations of Ekurhuleni important sites in the creation of working class cultures and politics. This was reflected to some extent in the history of workers’ organisations and episodes of workers’ militancy such as the 1922 White Miners’ Strike, the wave of strikes in the early 1940s, the emergence of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) in the 1950s, the rise of independent unions in the 1970s and early 1980s, and the influential role played