Apartheid’s township and homeland system was spatial planning engineered for racial control.
Evidence
Such was the case of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Here, the township was the structural form and the homelands became the reserves (rural bases) whereby the flow of migrant labor could be regulated and African urbanization held in check. As Belinda Bozzoli has shown, the township in particular was a place where “severe oppression and poverty were experienced on a racial and class basis.” A sociopolitical, cultural, and economic formation, the township was a peculiar spatial institution scientifically planned for the purposes of control. The functioning of the homelands and townships entailed severe restrictions on production for the market by blacks in white areas, the terminating of land ownership by blacks except in reserved areas, the illegalization of black residence on white farms (except as servants in the employ of whites), the control of urban influx, and later, the denial of citizenship to Africans. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 91
Categorization
- ADDENDUM: Directly extends ‘On Sacrifice’ and the sovereignty themes: this gives a concrete modern instance of stratified, spatially managed population control parallel to the reader’s toolkit on modern bureaucratic rationality enabling mass exclusion.
- SHARE: The specific mechanism that black residence on white farms was only legal ‘as servants in the employ of whites’ is a stark, precise detail worth sending to anyone working on South African history or race and property.
- XREF: connects to: South Africa couples industrial capitalism with race as an articulating principle of social structure.; South Africa’s 1913 Land Act laid apartheid’s foundations. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 261; The apartheid-idea premised racialization of laws on white supremacy. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 552
Related
- South Africa’s 1913 Land Act laid apartheid’s foundations. (similarity 0.86)
- The apartheid-idea premised racialization of laws on white supremacy. (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- South Africa’s 1913 Land Act laid apartheid’s foundations.
#expands(0.85) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 261 - South Africa couples industrial capitalism with race as an articulating principle of social structure.
#corroborates(0.72)