Suchergebnisse

A Zambezia seminar paper on race relations in South Africa in the 1970's era of minority rule. ; Historians do not solve social problems. Indeed it is even possible that they may have a sordid professional interest in keeping them unsolved. They prefer the society which in the Chinese proverb 'has been through interesting times', rather than the lucky country which has no history at all. More seriously I believe that the function of historians is to be not so much that of direct social analysis as that of helping people to reflect; and the objects of that reflection are the unique situations which give a faithful expression, voice or texture to the events we are trying to understand. The history of race relations in South Africa is an enormous area; so instead of trying to cover the whole of it let us look at a few representative and illuminating situations, beginning with the story of Eva.

A bad influenza epidemic hit South Africa in 1918, and in the words of the Department of Native Affairs it afforded to the general public a startling revelation of the distressing conditions under which the Natives live in our urban centres and to what a great extent these conditions were a standing menace to the health of the whole population, European and native alike. It was an incentive to press ahead with the urban areas legislation, and in this task the Department now had the assistance of two new bodies, the statutory Native Affairs Commission set up under the Native Affairs Act of 1920, and the Transvaal Local Government Commission under Colonel C. F. Stallard. The Department announced a revised Bill in its Report for 1922. It contained most of the clauses of the 1918 Bill had a pronounced welfare focus, and aimed to give local authorities necessary powers to provide adequate housing and services, if necessary by borrowing money and recouping themselves through trading ventures in the locations. ; Digitised by Rhodes University Library on behalf of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER)