Creating racial privilege: the origins of South African public health and town planning legislation

Abstract

Town‐planning measures adopted by the infant Union Government were worded in the fashionable new language of international planning and were not explicitly concerned with the regulation of African settlement. Nevertheless, the planning regulations introduced in the 1910s were part of the emerging racial framework of urban government of the South African city. Dr Charles Porter, Johannesburg's first Medical Officer of Health, was a major force behind the introduction of British planning ideas to white South Africa. The inclusion of town‐planning clauses in the 1919 Public Health Act and the 1920 Housing Act were aimed at entrenching urban privileges for whites. By establishing colonial city management standards in selected areas of the city, the position of urban Africans was marginalised. Moreover, the passage of public health and town‐planning laws which prevented overcrowding and rent racketeering and enabled slum rehousing, offered state assistance to unskilled whites. The social and political problems arising from the exclusion of poor whites from unskilled work were ameliorated by such urban reforms.