Vivian Bickford-Smith's The Emergence of the South African Metropolis is a groundbreaking study of urban history and identity formation. Like the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the country of South Africa was conceived by white settlers as an outpost of European ‘civilization’. In most of these other countries, the domination of European settlers decimated indigenous peoples. In South Africa, however, black Africans remained a formidable political, social, and demographic force, in spite of the extremely adverse institutional constraints of white-minority rule.
The book is organized thematically and chronologically into six chapters. In Chapter One, Bickford-Smith introduces the book and lays out its framework. Chapter Two is the lynchpin of the book. In it, the author situations the construction of identity among three competing groups in South Africa – the British, Afrikaners, and Africans – in the changing political and economic landscape of the country. He shows that the creation and consolidation of social identities in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban was conditioned by both race and the different urban spaces that each nationality, ethnicity, and class occupied. While the British largely used class to create separate settlements, the Boers used race to exclude blacks from the urban centers. Bickford-Smith furthermore discusses extensively the efforts of the British to create South African cities in their own image by lauding the benefits of Britishness.
Anglicization began in Cape Town, home of the earliest British settlements. As Britain expanded into the interior, it sought to create a South Africa that bore an English demographic and cultural imprint, through immigration, the enforcement of English language use in schools and churches, and the creation of suburbs, neighborhoods, streets, facilities, and institutions designed in ‘recognizably English style’. The British promoted the material benefits of Britishness for other groups (blacks, non-English whites, Coloureds, Malays, Indians) who voluntarily adopted English life ways. Britishness was heralded as an ‘attractive urban identity’ and an emblem of civilization. As Bickford-Smith explains, ‘British traditions travelled to South African cities by means of migration, print and electronic media, and the transnational circulation of British “things”, people and ideas in mutually informing fashion’ (44). Textbooks praised British sovereignty and denounced the rule of the Dutch East Indies Company as despotic. The British government was portrayed as ‘the best government’ and the British as the best people and the English language as the language of ‘civilisation’ (53). The author details how the English-speaking middle class controlled municipal governments and disseminated Anglicization and Britishness, ‘with complex material traces of British traditions: red post boxes, stamps, coins, architecture, portraits, monuments, signs, institutions, dress, flags, anthems, bugles, music hall, sports and parades’ (76).
At the same time, as Chapter Three details, Johannesburg became home to a large concentration of blacks and the creation of segregated ‘working class townships’. Black workers ‘shared traditions’ at mining centers, factories and neighborhoods and they adopted ‘musical and dance traditions … to urban experiences and conditions’ (93). Africans maintained their identity and links to their homes through ‘singing and sporting clubs distinguished by different costumes’ (100). In their New Year Carnival, Africans made a ‘satirical emulation of British army ranks and military services’ (100), and sang British and American songs during the parade. In this chapter, the author also discusses developments following the creation of the Union in 1910 until the establishment of apartheid in 1948. They include clearing slums and the use of Native Affairs laws to dismantle established political rights of Africans (15). The process of exclusion gained greater momentum and assumed more rigid proportions with the apartheid regime of 1948.
Bickford-Smith argues that developments during the Second World War shaped the new extreme policies of apartheid from its rise in 1948 to its demise in 1991. During the war, South African cities experienced changes because of migration, shifting demographics, and the creation of new settlements – and the racialized segregation solidified by apartheid. Among the three major metropolises, Johannesburg felt the impact the most because of its unique nature in the South African urban hierarchy. Its meteoric evolution from a gold-mining settlement into a modern industrial hub made it a dynamic center of change and identity formation for South Africans from all walks of life. As Chapter Four shows, these processes helped to forge the identities of both whites and blacks. Large numbers of black migrants, especially in Johannesburg, contributed to the proliferation of townships, the spread of poverty, and overcrowding. It was in those African quarters that Africans from different regions shared identities and invented new traditions.
In Chapter Five, ‘Bitter Cries and Black Baudelaires’, the author presents a thoughtful and balanced discussion of urban conditions from both white and black perspectives during the era of apartheid. Drawing on contemporary, eyewitness accounts, Bickford-Smith highlights the political, economic, and social developments in the apartheid era and the manifestation of different forms of African resistance to that system of rule.
The larger question for this important book, however, is this: what makes the invention of British cities in South Africa different from the invention of French cities in Senegal or from British cities in its other African colonies or from Ethiopian cities in Oromia? (There, quite notably, Amhara conquerors changed the names of cities and quarters into Amharic names and enforced the use of Amharic language in ways similar to what the British did in South Africa.) A comparative analysis of South Africa's urban history and processes of identity construction by Bickford-Smith could have provided the book with a broader analytic perspective.
Nevertheless, Vivian Bickford-Smith has produced a fascinating and intellectually stimulating book that enriches readers’ understanding of South Africa's urban history. It will serve as a veritable resource and important reference for years to come.
