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THE NATIVE VILLAGE DEBATE IN PIETERMARITZBURG, 1848–1925: REVISITING THE ‘SANITATION SYNDROME’*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2017

MARC EPPRECHT
MARC EPPRECHT*
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Kingston
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Abstract

This article examines the history of debates around the creation of a ‘native village’ in Pietermaritzburg culminating in the construction of the city's first formal township. This, and the decision to locate the new township next to the city's main dump, have commonly been interpreted to corroborate Maynard Swanson's influential concept of the ‘sanitation syndrome’. Swanson first coined that term to explain the origins of racial segregation in Durban, but it struck a chord very widely, not only because it problematized science as metaphorical, but also because it shifted responsibility for the antecedents of apartheid onto urban, self-styled progressive English-speaking officials and voters. From the Pietermaritzburg evidence, however, I argue that the concept ‘sanitation syndrome’ now unhelpfully elides or oversimplifies a complex history. I thus question its continued utility as a critique of cultural racism within liberal or modernization discourses in the wider contemporary regional context.

Keywords

SegregationNatalPietermaritzburgSobantuEdendaleamakholwaurban planningsanitation
Type
Colonial Plans and Local Politics
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , July 2017 , pp. 259 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by the International Development Research Centre and Queen's University (Canada). It is adapted from M. Epprecht, Welcome to Greater Edendale: Histories of Environment, Health and Gender in an African City (Montréal, 2016) with the permission of McGill-Queen's University Press. The author welcomes comment and insights. Author's email: marc.epprecht@queensu.ca

References

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3 Maritzburg is the widely-used abbreviation for the city, sometimes also PMB. Heather Peel was the first historian of Maritzburg to apply the concept locally, finding that the 1925 vote ‘further substantiates’ Swanson. See H. Peel, ‘Sobantu village: an administrative history of a Pietermaritzburg township, 1924–1959’ (npublished BA honours thesis, University of Natal, 1987); see also Peel, ‘Sobantu village’, in Laband, J. and Haswell, R. (eds.), Pietermaritzburg, 1838–1988: A New Portrait of an African City (Pietermaritzburg, 1988), 82–4Google Scholar. The syndrome has since been invoked to explain Pietermaritzburg's segregated geography and differential health outcomes by Wills, T., ‘Pietermaritzburg’, in Lemon, A. (ed.), Homes Apart: South Africa's Segregated Cities (London; Bloomington, 1991), 93Google Scholar; Lester, A., From Colonization to Democracy: A New Historical Geography of South Africa (London and New York, 1998), 87Google Scholar; Merrett, C., Sport, Space, and Segregation: Politics and Society in Pietermaritzburg (Scottsville, 2009), 89–90 Google Scholar; and Dyer, J., Health in Pietermaritzburg (1838–2008): A History of Urbanisation and Disease in an African City (Pietermaritzburg, 2012), 172–3Google Scholar. The most recent iteration at the time of my writing is by Guy, J., Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal: African Autonomy and Settler Colonialism in the Making of Traditional Authority (Scottsville, 2013), 374Google Scholar, who stretches the concept yet further back in time (to the early 1870s). For context, Sobantu today has a population of about five thousand, a small fraction of the size of the townships built in the 1960s for African and Asian ‘groups’ and of postapartheid RDP estates like ‘France’ (the latter currently estimated at 70,000). See Goebel, A., On Their Own: Women and the Right to the City in South Africa (Montreal, 2015)Google Scholar.

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7 M. Swanson, ‘The rise of multiracial Durban’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1965); Swanson, M., ‘The joys of proximity: the rise of Clermont’, in Maylam, P. and Edwards, I. (eds.), The People's City: African Life in Twentieth Century Durban (Portsmouth, NH; Pietermaritzburg, 1996), 286Google Scholar.

8 Lester, From Colonization to Democracy, 87.

9 Medical Officer of Health for Pietermaritzburg, Dr Albertyn, quoted in Natal Witness (Pietermaritzburg, hereafter NW), 28 Feb. 1933.

10 Thorrington-Smith, E., Pietermaritzburg: A Town Planning Report for the Borough (Pietermaritzburg; Durban, 1974), 32Google Scholar.

11 Public history in line with principles of inclusivity, the promotion of human dignity and postapartheid nation-building expressed at the national level is an important goal of the municipality's ambitious plans for urban regeneration. See Msunduzi, , Greater Edendale: Urban and Township Regeneration Project: Towards the Development of a Cohesive and Sustainable Urban Place (Msunduzi, 2009)Google Scholar, or Houston, G. et al. , The Liberation Struggle and Liberation Heritage Sites in South Africa: Report (Pretoria, 2013)Google Scholar.

12 I acknowledge that I am not the first to offer a critique of Swanson. Rich, P., ‘Ministering to the white man's needs: the development of urban segregation in South Africa, 1913–1923’, African Studies, 37 (1979), 177–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for example, does so with aplomb from a materialist perspective. See also Wright, Marcia, ‘Public health among the lineaments of the colonial state in Natal, 1901–1910’, Journal of Natal and Zulu History, 24–5:1 (2006–7), 135–63Google Scholar, for a subtle querying of Swanson. An important limitation to this critique is that Zulu-language newspapers or other documents (if they exist) remain an untapped source for now – mea culpa. However, judging from opinion in the nationalist Ilanga lase Natal (Durban) in later years (1950s) and a study of one of its key contributors by Couzens, T., The New African: A Study of the Life and Work of H. I. E. Dhlomo (Johannesburg, 1985)Google Scholar, my prediction is that views in that paper on the location topic would have likely conformed to those that African leaders expressed in the English language sources discussed below. It is also quite possible that the topic was not a concern in the isiZulu press at all. H. Selby Msimang, whose family was deeply involved in the location debate, pointedly does not mention it in his overview of the history of black settlement and governance in Edendale. H. S. Msimang, ‘The history of Edendale’ (unpublished manuscript, Pietermaritzburg, Alan Paton and Struggle Archives [APSA], PC 11/1/6/2/1–8).

13 The early history of Natal's location system is the focus of considerable scholarship including Guy, Theophilus Shepstone, while its eventual economic collapse (and social consequences thereof) are analyzed in, among others, Lambert, J., Betrayed Trust: Africans and the State in Colonial Natal (Scottsville, 1995)Google Scholar.

14 The classic study of early amakholwa successes stands the test of time: Meintjes, S., ‘Edendale’, in Laband, J. and Haswell, R. (eds.), Pietermaritzburg, 1838–1988, 66–70 Google Scholar, distilled from her ‘Edendale 1850–1906: a case study of rural transformation and class formation in an African mission in Natal’ (unpublished PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, 1988).

15 National Archives, Pretoria (NA) NTS 9433 6/388, Volume II, discussion of census.

16 M. Caesar, ‘A “new experiment in local government”: the local health commission: a study of public health and local governance in black urban areas in Natal, South Africa, 1930–1959’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Queen's University, 2015).

17 See, for example, Meintjes, ‘Edendale’; P. Limb, The ANC's Early Years: Nation, Class and Place in South Africa before 1940 (Pretoria, 2010); and Epprecht, Welcome to Greater Edendale. To note just one pertinent instance, amakholwa outrage at white vigilantism played an important role in defusing the so-called Black Peril moral panic: Martens, J., ‘Settler homes, manhood, and “houseboys”: an analysis of Natal's rape scare of 1886’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 28:2 (2002), 379–400 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Pietermaritzburg has tended to be overlooked in the historiography of urban South Africa, or simply lumped together undifferentially with Durban. The two cities did indeed share a colonial culture, relatively diverse economies, close proximity of large tribal African areas, and large Indian populations. However, a key difference to emphasize here is that, while Maritzburg is now small and poor compared to Durban, for much of the period under discussion it was not only the administrative centre for the colony, then province, and home to a powerful ‘squirearchy’ of landed elites ( Morrell, R., From Boys to Gentlemen: Settler Masculinity in Colonial Natal, 1880–1920 [Pretoria, 2001]Google Scholar). It was also much closer to Durban in population size (about half as opposed to today's one fifth or less. See (http://www.populstat.info/Africa/safricat.htm), accessed 21 June 2016. Its long-term economic and population stagnation only really set in after Union and the closure of the imperial military base (1914), a profound malaise which likely affected voter sentiment in the 1925 plebiscite. Another key difference is that in Pietermaritzburg the British inherited a very spacious town layout and ‘town lands’ from the Afrikaner trekkers who had originally them staked out, and even today it has a relatively low population density compared to many South African cities (a third of Durban's, notably, and a quarter of Johannesburg's). See South African Institute of Race Relations, Demographics (Johannesburg, 2012), 30.

19 NW, 19 Sept. 1855.

20 Natal, , Blue Book on Native Affairs, 1898 (Pietermaritzburg, 1899), B71Google Scholar.

21 Natal, Blue Book 1903, A79.

22 Pietermaritzburg Archive Repository (PAR) 3/PMB (Town Clerk correspondence) 4/3/341 TC 80a/1939.

23 PAR LHC, Volume II B (Annexures), Memo in response to Natal Indian Organization, 19 Nov. 1952, citing Pietermaritzburg valuations of property by racial group. See also Wills, T., ‘The segregated city’, in Laband, J. and Haswell, R. (eds.), Pietermaritzburg, 1838–1988, 33–44 Google Scholar.

24 PAR CSO 44, part 1, letter from T. Shepstone, C. L. Gibb and D. Lindley to the Colonial Secretary, 20 Jan. 1848.

25 Atkins, K., The Moon is Dead! Give Us Our Money! The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843–1900 (Portsmouth, NH; London, 1993), 118Google Scholar.

26 Town council minutes, draft regulations by Mr Smarfit, as published in NW, 5 Oct. 1855.

27 Councillor Hoffmann, NW, 14 Sept. 1855.

28 NW, 21 Sept. 1855.

29 NW, 14 Sept. 1855.

30 NW, 6 Apr. 1855.

31 NW, 14 Sept. 1855.

32 Dyer, Health, 100. See also Flint, K., Healing Traditions: African Medicine, Cultural Exchange and Competition in South Africa, 1820–1948 (Athens, OH, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 PAR 3/PMB 394/1902, 4 Apr. 1902.

34 W. C. Holden, History of the Colony of Natal (Cape Town, 1963 [orig. pub. 1855]); NW, 30 Nov. 1855.

35 Colenso, J., Ten Weeks in Natal (London, 1855), 50Google Scholar.

36 NW, 5 Oct. 1855.

37 Ibid . For context, that area is just slightly smaller than today's so-called RDP homes.

38 NW, 12 Oct. 1855.

39 NW, 30 Nov. 1855.

40 Ibid .

41 That standard was not imposed for another 68 years! Pietermaritzburg (PMB), Corporation of Pietermaritzburg Yearbook (Pietermaritzburg 1923), 41; PMB, Yearbook (1925), 8.

42 PMB, Yearbook (1919).

43 J. Parle, ‘The impact of the depression upon Pietermartizburg during the 1860s’ (unpublished MA thesis, University of Natal, 1988), 136.

44 ‘Inspector of nuisances’, NW, 7 Mar. 1873, interpreted as an early proof of the sanitation syndrome by Guy, Theophilus Shepstone, 374.

45 Wills, ‘The segregated city’, 40.

46 Swanson, ‘Durban system’, 165.

47 NW, 14 Dec. 1886.

48 Martens, ‘Settler homes, manhood, and “houseboys”’.

49 Natal, Blue Book 1898, B27.

50 Ibid .

51 Leader, NW, 9 Dec. 1886.

52 Atkins, The Moon is Dead!, 131–6.

53 Natal, Blue Book 1903, A80.

54 Natal, Blue Book 1893, B57.

55 Natal, Blue Book 1894, B2.

56 Maritzburgers seem to have been typical in this prejudice. See Swanson, , ‘Asiatic menace’, for a comparison with Durban or Rodriguez-Torres, Deyssi (ed.), Nairobi: The Paradox of a Fragmented City (Dar es Salaam, 2006)Google Scholar on Kenya's capital.

57 The petition was submitted to the magistrate in Pinetown, suggesting at least some of the authors were from the nearby Table Mountain reserve, and that both Durban and Maritzburg were on their minds. See Statement by Ziboni, 25 Oct. 1905, cited in Carton, B., Blood from your Children: The Colonial Origins of Generational Conflict in South Africa (Scottsville, 2000), 82Google Scholar.

58 M. Swanson, ‘The rise of multiracial Durban’, 387. We can only speculate why Swanson underplayed this part of his analysis in subsequent, more widely read, publications. My guess is that it by complicating the narrative, it makes a less compelling critique of cultural racism.

59 Ibid .

60 M. Wright, ‘Public health’, 136–9.

61 ‘The plague’, NW, 3 Dec. 1903, 3.

62 NW, 27 Nov. 1903.

63 NW, ‘City council debate’, 9 Dec. 1903.

64 NW, leader, 5 June 1903, 5.

65 ‘The administrator and the Christian natives: a petition to Sir Garnett Wolseley’, NW, 23 Sept. 1875, and subsequent responses, including the editor's mockery of amakholwa inconsistency on ukulobola.

66 Dyer, Health, 172–5.

67 PMB, Yearbook 1908, 45.

68 Ibid .

69 Hausse, P. La, ‘Drink and cultural innovation: the origins of the beerhall in South Africa, 1902–1916’, in Ambler, C. and Crush, J. (eds.), Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa (Athens, OH; Pietermaritzburg, 1992), 78–114 Google Scholar.

70 PMB, Yearbook 1909, 34.

71 PMB, Yearbook 1910, 21.

72 For example, in 1915 the mayor tried to stoke fears by referring to a case of non-sexual transmission of syphilis from a female African domestic worker to a European child, while Inspector of Nuisances James J. Niven declared Africans living in the city to be a ‘distinct menace to the health of the whole community’. PMB, Yearbook 1915, 16, 119.

73 PMB, Yearbook 1919, 22; Phillips, H., ‘The local state and public health reform in South Africa: Bloemfontein and the consequences of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918’, Journal of Southern African Studies, XII:2 (1987), 216, 222Google Scholar.

74 PMB, Yearbook 1923, 56.

75 PMB, Yearbook 1926, 72; Brain, J. B., ‘Infectious diseases’, in Laband, J. and Haswell, R. (eds.), Pietermaritzburg, 1838–1988, 193–5Google Scholar.

76 PMB, Yearbook 1919, 19.

77 These politics are analyzed in, for example, Marks, S. and Rathbone, R. (eds.), Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Bradford, H., A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924–1930 (New Haven, 1987)Google Scholar; and Thompson, P., ‘The Pietermaritzburg voter and parliamentary elections’, in Laband, J. and Haswell, R. (eds.), Pietermaritzburg, 1838–1988, 198–200 Google Scholar.

78 H. Phillips ‘Bloemfontein’.

79 Parnell, S., ‘Sanitation, segregation and the natives (Urban Areas) act: African exclusion from the Malay Location, 1897–1925’, Journal of Historical Geography, 17 (1988), 271–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parnell, , ‘Creating racial privilege: the origins of South African public health and town planning legislation’, Journal of Southern African Studies, XIX:3 (1993), 471–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 As the city engineer put it in his report in PMB, Yearbook 1920, 76.

81 NA NTS 6018 133/313 (Pietermaritzburg Municipality: Establishment of Locations), Native Affairs Department, Native Village, Hostels and Church Site Regulations (25 Oct. 1934).

82 Peel, ‘Sobantu Village’, 10.

83 NA NTS 6018 319/307, 6 Nov. 1924.

84 APSA PC 11/1/6/2/1–8, H. Msimang, ‘The history of Edendale’, ch. 3, p. 6.

85 PAR 2/PMB 3/1/1/2/5, B. A. Dormer, ‘Tuberculosis Survey: Edendale’, 16 June 1938.

86 Cited by Merrett, Sport, 110 and 129, fn. 53, in his correspondence with the town treasurer and the sport associations.

87 NW, 11 Mar. 1925.

88 ‘NATIVES SAY THEY WILL NOT GO TO BISHOPSTOWE’, NW, 10 Mar. 1925, emphasis in the original.

89 NW, 10 Mar. 1925.

90 NA NTS 6018 133/313n, petition to Minister of Native Affairs Department, 24 July 1925.

91 That is, 1926, as originally proposed in PMB, Yearbook 1923, 15. See also NA NTS 6018 133/313, correspondence with Pietermaritzburg Municipality: Establishment of Locations, in particular town clerk assurances to the Native Affairs Department, 24 Nov. 1924, and the latter's stipulation of the conservancy's removal as a prerequisite for approval of the Bishopstowe site, 3 July 1925.

92 ‘The native village’, The Times of Natal, 26 June 1925.

93 PMB, Yearbook 1928, 17.

94 NA NTS 6018 133/313n, Secretary of Native Affairs to Chief Native Commissioner-Natal, 17 Aug. 1925; PMB, Yearbook 1928.

95 NA NTS 6018 133/313n, Petition to Secretary of Native Affairs Department, 29 Dec. 1925.

96 Times of Natal, 11 Mar. 1925.

97 G. F. Robbins, letter, NW, 10 Mar. 1925; see also the letter from a European resident of Camp's Drift who claimed to be a fluent isiZulu-speaker and to have talked to ‘hundreds’ of African residents about the issue, NW, 13 Mar. 1925.

98 See, for example, the letter from ‘White in Willowfontein’, NW, 17 Mar. 1925; ‘Camp's Drift’, NW, 13 Mar. 1925; and H. Mason, NW, 24 Mar. 1925. To help contextualize this, when the Edendale and District Public Health Area was created in 1942, it became the third largest local authority in Natal with a population of an estimated 13,584. See University of Natal Department of Economics, Experiment at Edendale: A Study of a Non-European Settlement with Special Reference to Food Expenditure and Nutrition (Pietermaritzburg, 1951), 30Google Scholar.

99 Cope, N., ‘The Zulu petit bourgeoisie and Zulu nationalism in the 1920s: origins of Inkatha’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 16:3 (1990), 431–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Diemel, R. Van, In Search of Freedom, Fair Play and Justice: Josiah Tshangana Gumede, 1867–1947: A Biography (Belhar, South Africa, 2002)Google Scholar.

100 Times of Natal, 30 June 1925, 3.

101 PAR LHC, Volume VIII1a, 29 Apr. 1950.

102 As denounced by the Edendale Advisory Board (PAR LHC 13/1b, 30 Aug. 1954), and reported sarcastically in an Ilanga lase Natal column by Rolling Stone (H. E. I. Dhlomo, 18 Aug. 1954), 17.