South-east wing of a hostel for Black male workers erected during apartheid as part of a scheme to make Joburg city and suburbs white. Alexandra Township. 1 June 1988 (4_5388)

David Goldblatt
South-east wing of a hostel for Black male workers erected during apartheid as part of a scheme to make Joburg city and suburbs white. Alexandra Township. 1 June 1988 (4_5388), 1988
Silver gelatin hand print
Image: 27.7 x 34.6 cm

"Established early in the century, 'Alex' was one of the very few townships on the Witwatersrand in which Africans could acquire freehold title to land. By 1958 it had become hugely overcrowded with 98 000 people living on its one square mile. Government decided that it should house only those employed in certain areas north of Johannesburg and by 1963 had compulsorily removed 44 700 people. It was intended that 30 000 should live there as families and about 15 000 in hostels. Freehold rights were to be respected. Then in 1963 a new plan was announced. All family accommodation and freehold rights were to be abolished. Alex was to become a township of single-sex hostels, six for men, six for women, each housing 2 500 people. No provision was to be made for Alex families wishing to stay together; somehow they would have to find accommodation in the area in which the head of the household was employed, which, given the influx control regulations and the restrictions on housing for Africans, would be almost impossible. No children were to be allowed to stay in the hostels and, obviously, no one of the opposite sex.' Of the twelve hostels planned, only three were built: two for men and one for women. Some amelioration of their regimented harshness in the form of lounges, beer gardens, and other 'comforts' was attempted. Another facility' built into them was remotely controlled steel shutter doors that could rapidly isolate sections of the hostel if it became necessary to restrain the inmates or put down a riot. The architect of the hostels, Ed Zickmann, told me that he had previously designed police quarters and high-density housing for the state. In the brief for the hostels he was told that they were needed because the policy of 'White by Night' was to be enforced in Johannesburg. To avoid homosexuality in the men's hostel he designed bedrooms to take odd numbers. 'I would have preferred to design family units', he said. 'I told them, guys I'm not happy with these hostels and the way they break up families. They said to me, "Yours is not to reason why ..." High-density, high-security hostels for workers were not new to South Africa. The first and longest-enduring was the Dutch East India Company's Slave Lodge in the centre of Cape Town. The modern' prototypes for single-sex hostels were the compounds used by the diamond and gold mining industries in the 19th and 20th centuries to enable them to house and control large numbers of men who came as migrant workers to the mines. 'spontaneous grouping of believers'. In 1994 the Indian, Coloured, and Black groups united and in 1996 the White section joined them in the complete unification of the church. The hostels of Alex and other townships were built in pursuance of the apartheid dream that would have had all but a neglible number of African workers being commuters or migrants between their permanent homes in the bantustans and their jobs in the cities. The hostels fulfilled the worst fears of their numerous critics. Social disintegration, particularly among the men who lived in them, was widespread. Eventually, in the late 1980s, the hostels became sites of open warfare between inmates, who were mostly migrant workers, and the surrounding settled communities. Those conflicts often had political over-tones; the hostel men tended to be followers of the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party, while the township residents were often sympathetic to the UDF and ANC. This hostel was opened on 1 August 1972. In the late 1980s it became an Inkatha stronghold from which shots were fired on passersby." - David Goldblatt