page_title: Soweto
section_title: 1948 to 1976
hierarchical_section_title: Soweto / History / Apartheid / 1948 to 1976
caption_attribution_description: English: Soweto. Soweto Housing, Johannesburg.
context_page_description: Soweto is a township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for South Western Townships. Formerly a separate municipality, it is now incorporated in the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, Suburbs of Johannesburg.
context_section_description: Following the election of the new government, some 7,000 new houses were built in the first two or three years, but very little was done thereafter. In 1952 there was a breakthrough. Firstly the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research came up with a standard design for low-cost, four-roomed, forty-square-metre houses. In 1951 the Parliament passed the Building Workers Act, which permitted Blacks to be trained as artisans in the building trade. In 1952 it passed the Bantu Services levy Act, which imposed a levy on employers of African workers and the levy was used to finance basic services in Black townships. In 1954 the City Council built 5,100 houses in Jabavu and 1,450 in Mofolo.
  The City Council's pride and joy was its economic scheme known as Dube Village. It was intended "primarily for the thoroughly urbanised and economically advanced Native". Stands, varying in size from fifty by hundred feet to forty by 70 feet, were made available on a thirty-year leasehold tenure. Tenants could erect their own dwellings in conformity with approved plans.
  In June 1955, Kliptown was the home of an unprecedented Congress of the People, which adopted the Freedom Charter.
  According to wiredspace, 44 the name Soweto was officially endorsed by the municipalities’ authorities only in 1963 after a special committee had considered various names. Apartheid governments’ intention was for Soweto to house the accommodate black people that were working for Johannesburg
  “Incidentally, the name Soweto was officially endorsed by the municipal authorities only in 1963 after a special committee had sat for a long time, considering various names, including apartheid Townships and Verwoerdstad" (Gorodnov 1998:58). From the onset the Apartheid government purposed Soweto to house the bulk of the labour force which was needed by Johannesburg (1998:58). Africans used to live in areas surrounding the city, so the authorities felt it would be more expedient to concentrate black workers in one district that could be easily controlled (1998:58).
  The new sub-economic townships took off in 1956, when Tladi, Zondi, Dhlamini, Chiawelo and Senoane were laid out providing 28,888 people with accommodation. Jabulani, Phiri and Naledi followed the next year. Sir Ernest Oppenheimer arranged a loan of £3 million from the mining industry, which allowed an additional 14,000 houses to be built. It was decided to divide Soweto into various language groups. Naledi, Mapetla, Tladi, Moletsane and Phiri were for Sotho- and Tswana-speaking people. Chiawelo for Tsonga and Venda. Dlamini Senaoane, Zola, Zondi, Jabulani, Emdeni and White City were for Zulus and Xhosas.
  The central government was busy with its own agenda. The presence of Blacks with freehold title to land among Johannesburg's White suburbs irked them. In 1954 Parliament passed the Native Resettlement Act, which permitted the government to remove Blacks from suburbs like Sophiatown, Martindale, Newclare and Western Native Township. Between 1956 and 1960 they built 23,695 houses in Meadowlands and Diepkloof to accommodate the evicted persons. By 1960 the removals were more-or-less complete.
  In 1959 the City Council launched a competition to find a collective name for all the townships south-west of the city's centre. It was only in 1963 that the City Council decided to adopt the name Soweto as the collective name.
  In 1971 Parliament passed the Black Affairs Administration Act, No. 45 of 1971. In terms of this Act the central government appointed the West Rand Administration Board to take over the powers and obligations of the Johannesburg City Council in respect of Soweto. As chairman of the board it appointed Manie Mulder, a political appointment of a person who had no experience of the administration of native affairs. 
  Manie Mulder's most famous quote was given to the Rand Daily Mail in May 1976: "The broad masses of Soweto are perfectly content, perfectly happy. Black-White relationships at present are as healthy as can be. There is no danger whatever of a blow-up in Soweto."
caption: Soweto housing (about 2009)
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