Abstract
This introductory chapter explores the historical context, nature, implementation and consequences of the apartheid city, beginning with the social formation of settler-colonial and segregation cities before 1950. It explains race zoning legislation and its physical and human consequences, discussing Indian and coloured South Africans in specific towns and cities. The marginalisation of black Africans, most of whom were treated as a necessary labour force whose home was in bantustans or ‘homelands’ and subjected to influx control, led to widespread informal black urbanisation and ‘frontier commuting’ from the bantustans. Growing pressures on both race zoning and influx control in the 1980s forced official policy changes leading to the repeal of influx control legislation in 1986 and of the Group Areas Acts in 1991, but this by no means guaranteed rapid transformation of the physical character and social geography of apartheid cities.
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Lemon, A. (2021). The Apartheid City. In: Lemon, A., Donaldson, R., Visser, G. (eds) South African Urban Change Three Decades After Apartheid. GeoJournal Library(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73073-4_1
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