Forced Removals in Greater Cape Town, 1948-1970

by Martin Legassick, 2006

During and after the Second World War the African population of the Cape Peninsula grew enormously in number. Until at least the mid-1950s most black Africans lived not in official ‘locations’ such as Langa but in privately-owned and rented high density flats and houses along the docks-Observatory axis, scattered through the predominantly white and Coloured residential areas of Cape Town as plot owners or tenants -- and, mainly, under conditions of extreme squalor, in unregulated ‘pondokkie’ settlements in the peri-urban areas around the fringes of Cape Town. In the 1950s, however, Cape Town “became a test case for influx control and racial segregation”. Government policy, implemented by local authorities, forcibly removed the African population to official ‘locations’ or endorsed them out of the area altogether.

South Africa: Capital Accumulation & Violence

by Martin Legassick, 1975

Click here to download this article in pdf.

Marikana massacre – a turning point?

by Martin Legassick, Socialist Project

The massacre of 34, and almost certainly more, striking mineworkers at Marikana (together with more than 80 injured) on August 16 has sent waves of shock and anger across South Africa, rippling around the world. It could prove a decisive turning point in our country’s post-apartheid history.

Marikana is a town situated in barren veld, dry brown grass in the winter, with occasional rocky outcrops (kopjes, hillocks). The Lonmin-owned mines – there are three, Karee, West and East Platinum – are situated on the outskirts of the town. Alongside two of them is a settlement of zinc-walled shacks festooned with lines of washing called Enkanini, where most of the mineworkers live.

Whose Liberation? A Partly-Forgotten Left Critique of ANC Strategy and Its Contemporary Implications

By Steven Friedman, 2012

At the beginning of the 1980s, a group of left intellectuals and activists sought to press the then-exiled African National Congress (ANC) to adopt a change of strategy which would have given priority to the organized collective action of workers and the poor: they were expelled and their proposed remedies ignored. But, while it had little impact on political practice at the time, the implied debate between the dissidents and the ANC raised issues crucial to understanding the challenges which face South African democracy today. Although the dissidents’ approach was based on a flawed analysis of the processes which produce social change, it did highlight an aspect of anti-apartheid resistance strategy which has made achieving a more egalitarian and democratic South African more difficult.

A review of Jacques Depelchin's, 'Silences in African History: between the syndromes of discovery and abolition'

by Professor Martin Legassick
History Department
University of the Western Cape

The last time I saw Jacques Depelchin I drove him (together with Ibrahim Abdullah) around the townships of Cape Town. We drove along a road bordered by shacks in Khayelitsha and Jacques commented "this is worse than anywhere I have seen in Africa." Some of those shacks were the so-called QQ section of Khayelitsha which, along with a number of areas in the Cape Town metropolis this last winter, rose in revolt at the lack of delivery of services and housing, putting up barricades of burning tyres to close the road that Jacques and I had driven on, and throwing their garbage across the road.

The Struggle for the Eastern Cape 1800-1854

Black, white, and shades of grey

reviewed by John Boje, IOL

The Struggle for the Eastern Cape 1800-1854

by Martin Legassick

The STRUGGLE for the Eastern Cape is a graphic account of the subjuga-tion of the Xhosa people during the first half of the 19th century. The pro-settler history of my schooldays was written in black and white. 

Legassick’s synthesis of more recent scholarship excellently reveals all the shades of grey – intersections and ambiguities, intricacies and interstices. 

Housing battles in post-Apartheid South Africa: The Case of Mandela Park, Khayelitsha

by Martin Legassick, Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, 2003

Mandela Park is situated in Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest township, some 26 kms from the city center. It was established by the Botha government from 1983 with the initial intention of housing all Africans in the area. This of course proved impossible: Crossroads, KTC etc as well as the established townships of Gugulethu, Nyanga, Langa remained. Instead the repeal of the pass laws in 1986 resulted in the mushrooming of Khayelitsha, partly from other parts of Cape Town, but mainly from new immigrants from the Eastern Cape. The township grew to perhaps 300,000 by 1990 and to 500,000 and more during the 1990s – and is possibly the second (after Soweto) or third (after Mdantsane) largest in the country. Mandela Park was established within Khayelitsha in the late 1980s, by the banks, who bought the land and started building housing on it in 1986 – one of the few areas in the country where Africans bought housing through bank bonds.