‘Anginayo ngisho indibilishi!’ (I don't have a penny!): The gender politics of ‘Native Welfare’ in Durban, 1930–1939

Abstract

This paper examines how the Durban Bantu Child Welfare Society (DBCWS) came to be established by African women in Durban in the early years of public political activity by African women in Durban and its relationship to African women's welfare societies (the Durban Bantu Women's Society and the Daughters of Africa) also established in the 1930s. I consider kholwa (African, mission-educated) women's interaction with the local state and also with white liberal segregationists who were participating in a national turn towards the establishment of ‘Non-European’ child welfare societies in South Africa. The DBCWS began its work in the context of fierce opposition, particularly by kholwa women, to the promulgation of new pass law regulations aimed at controlling African women's movements into Durban. In inter-war Durban, ‘Native Welfare’ first referred to control of African male leisure time and focused primarily on migrant labourers. By the end of the 1930s the DBCWS worked with officials of the Durban Town Council (DTC) and with the Durban Children's Court. The state provided reluctant and limited assistance to impoverished African families, whilst also continuing to enforce the rule of segregation.

Key words:

• social welfare
• African women's politics
• urban segregation

Notes

1. The quotation in the title is from Rhoda Dhludhla, ‘Amadodakazi AseAfrika Nabadingayo’, Ilanga lase Natal, 27 August 1939. I quote more extensively from this letter of praise to the combined activities of the Durban Bantu Child Welfare Society and Daughters of Africa towards the end of this paper. I would like to thank Mwelela Cele for correcting and improving my own translation from isiZulu to English. All mistakes that remain are mine. Note that all quotes from Ilanga lase Natal reflect the original orthography.

2. In this paper I occasionally call the Durban Town Council ‘the Durban Corporation’ – one of its official names for most of the twentieth century – or indeed ‘the Kopoletsheni’, as it was locally known in isiZulu.

3. Durban Archives Repository (hereafter TBD), Town Clerk's Correspondence (hereafter 3DBN), Native Advisory Board Minutes (hereafter NAB) 1/2/12/1/1, 9 November 1932. Sililo had recently been appointment as clerk in the Native Welfare Office. By ‘Department’ he could have meant this office but more likely referred to the DTC's Native Affairs Department. Either way Sililo was reminding the DTC of its duties towards a loyal employee.

4. The Native Women's Hostel was represented by Mrs Albina Ngidi. No published research exists about the hostel's establishment, but it was likely started with significant involvement from the American of Board Missions. See D. Gaistskell, ‘Christian Compounds for Girls: Church Hostels for African Women in Johannesburg, 1907–1970’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 6, 1 (1979), 44–69.

5. Report of the Native Economic Commission, Verbal Evidence, Volume 9, Submission by Isabel Sililo on behalf of the Durban Joint Council, 4 April 1931, 6372.

6. TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/2/1147, Native Advisory Board Correspondence. ‘Views of Mrs Sililo’, newspaper cutting dated 18 October 1931.

7. Other executive members were the nurse Katie Makanya, Constance Mtimkulu (who was married to the Reverend Mtimkulu of the Natal Native Congress) and Bertha Mkhize. As discussed in more detail below, the latter had been active in the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) during the 1920s.

8. The Durban Bantu Women's Society was renamed the Durban National Council of Bantu Women sometime after 1935. Mabel Palmer Collection File 24, KCM 17674, ‘Bantu Child Welfare Society Correspondence’ Constitution of the Durban National Council of Bantu Women’. Sililo's name is pencilled onto this undated document, sent to Mabel Palmer.

9. M. Healy-Clancy, ‘The Self, the Nation, and the World: The Scale of Clubwomen's Work, 1912–1943’, Southern African Historical Society Conference, June 2013. M.D. Koffie, ‘Mrs I Sililo's Crowded Life. Mrs Isabel Arthur Sililo’, Bantu World, 7 November 1936. I would like to thank Meghan Healy-Clancy for alerting me to this article and Bantu World's series on African women and social welfare.

10. Bertha Mkhize represented the Bantu Girls’ Friendly Society. Mkhize is yet another woman whose considerable political activities have scarcely been researched. She was not involved in child welfare activities, but as will become apparent in this paper Sililo and Mkhize both belonged to the same African women's welfare societies and were prominent in the protests against the municipality's efforts to regulate African women's movement in and out of Durban.

11. In colonial Natal, Africans who converted to Christianity came to be known as ‘amakholwa’ (believers). For a discussion of articulations of this identity, see H. Mokoena, Makema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2011). Goolam Vahed, ‘Control of African Leisure Time in Durban of the 1930s’, Journal of Natal and Zulu History, 18 (1998), 68–70 provides statistics of the growth of Durban's African male and female population.

12. See Vahed, ‘Control of African Leisure Time’, 67–123.

13. A. Cobley provides a short account of ‘Social Welfare Initiatives by African Women’ in The Rules of the Game: Struggles in Black Recreation and Social Welfare Policy in South Africa (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997). His definition of social welfare, however, is unwieldy and includes voluntary associations such as stokvels (savings of investment societies) and manyanos (women's prayer unions). His brief account of 'elite' African women's welfare initiatives has a number of factual errors, including that Isabel Sililo was a nurse, that she was active in Durban in the 1920s (instead of from the 1930s), that African women opposed pass laws in Durban in the 1920s (they did so from 1935–1937) and that Sililo was the president of the 'Durban branch of the Daughters of Africa' (she was national president in the mid-1930s). J. Wells also includes a brief discussion of 'Early Welfare Organisations' in We Now Demand: The History of Women's Resistance to Pass Laws in South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1993). In her account of African, 'petty-bourgeois' women's social welfare efforts in Johannesburg she erroneously assumed that the Orlando Mothers' Welfare Organisation, started in 1937, was 'the first such welfare organisation' (95).

14. J. Seekings, ‘“No single white person should be allowed to go under”: Swart Gevaar and the Origins of South Africa's Welfare State, 1924–1929’, Journal of African History, 48 (2007), 378.

15. I. Sililo as quoted in ‘Views of Mrs Sililo’ (see fn.6 above).

16. M. Healy-Clancy, ‘Women and the Problem of Family in Early African Nationalist History and Historiography’, South African Historical Journal, 64, 3 (2012), 450–71.

17. This paper is part of a larger project that researches the longer history of state social welfare in South Africa. I am also researching the emergence of a self-proclaimed Child Welfare Movement and its interaction with different tiers of state from c. 1917 to 1960. Aspects of state policy included in this research include contestations around child maintenance grants or 'mother's pensions' as they were popularly known from the 1920s (the grants became available to ‘European’ and ‘coloured’ recipients from 1921). This involves research across several state departments and particularly, the history of the Children's Court system in South Africa.

18. Ilanga lase Natal, ‘Umhlangano Wamadodakazi AseAfrika’, 2 January 1937. Indlu Emnyama (also sometimes Indlu Entsundu) could be said to mean ‘Black House’, but as with many direct translations that ignore metaphorical play, this falls too awkwardly on the ear. The phrase may have invoked the House of Assembly and therefore to signal claims of political rights as citizens of South Africa, and to speak for black civil society. The phrase was used at least from the 1890s in Imvo Zabantsundu, and in Ilanga lase Natal, from 1909. Both newspapers also referred to ‘Umuzi Omnyama’ on occasion, invoking the African/isiZulu/isiXhosa homestead as metaphor.

19. Vahed, ‘Control of African Leisure Time in Durban of the 1930s’, Journal of Natal and Zulu History, 18 (1998), 67–123. Worker strikes on the Rand had been the main impetus for the Joint Council Movement of the early 1920s. Prominent figures of Johannesburg's Joint Council were involved in starting urban, municipal welfare projects and efforts to encourage a moderate politics amongst members of the urban African elite: P. Rich, White Power and the Liberal Conscience, Racial Segregation and South African Liberalism, 1921–1961 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 10–20. A Durban branch of the Joint Council Movement was started in 1922. Few records seem to exist of its earlier years although Durban's Joint Council did make recommendations to the Urban Areas Act of 1923, in line with the general thrust of this legislation, and apparently without any consultation of black members. University of the Witwatersrand, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers Research Archives (HP), Joint Council of Europeans and Africans Records, 1924–1954 (JCEA), AD 1433 Cd 3.2, Durban Joint Council Annual Reports, 1925–1949. Ilanga Lase Natal, ‘The NARA criticised’, letter to the editors from Lawrence Kanyile. Kanyile criticised the Native Affairs Reform Association for announcing that a debate about the Native Urban Areas Act would take place in the new Joint Council, when it had in fact already written the report.

20. M. McCord, The Calling of Katie Makanya (Cape Town and Johannesburg: David Philip, 1995), 228. Margaret McCord presented Katie Makanya as prompting the formation of the DBWS with ‘my sister Charlotte’ and her Bantu Women's League as an example. ‘Mrs Sililo agreed. Together they invited everyone they knew to a meeting and after much discussion, the Bantu Women's Society was formed’ (Ibid.). But this biography inaccurately recounts other details of African women's politics in Durban, notably the campaign against pass laws, which is transposed from 1935 to 1937 to the 1920s and conflates several petitions and marches into one event. So this version of its establishment can only be taken as a rough indication of dynamics between women who belonged to the first executive of the DBWS. However, the biography provides a fairly detailed account of interactions between Katie Makhanya, then over 50 years old; Sibusisiwe Makanya, and especially Bertha Mkhize, who 'in particular used to come for advice' (215).

21. See the detailed account of African politics in Durban of the late 1920s by Paul La Hausse, ‘The Message of the Warriors. The ICU, the Labouring Poor and the Making of a Popular Political Culture in Durban, 1925–1930’, in P. Bonner, I. Hofmeyr, D. James, T. Lodge, eds, Holding Their Ground: Class, Locality and Culture in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press & Ravan Press, 2001), 19–57. The chapter includes discussion of the ICU's militant Women's Auxiliary's role in 1929. Katie Makanya also recounted what she apparently saw as Bertha Mkhize's youthful infatuation with Garveyism in McCord, The Calling of Katie Makanya, 214–217.

22. P. van der Spuy and L. Clowes, ‘“A living testimony to the heights to which a woman can rise”: Sarojini Naidu, Cissie Gool and the Politics of Women's Leadership in South Africa in the 1920s’, South African Historical Journal, 64, 2 (2012), 343–363.

23. Campbell Collections, Mabel Palmer Papers, File 24, KCM 17674, ‘Bantu Child Welfare Society Correspondence’ Constitution of the Durban National Council of Bantu Women’. Sililo's name is pencilled onto this undated document, sent to Mabel Palmer.

24. Campell Archives. Mabel Palmer Collection, File 24, KCM 17674, Bantu Child Welfare Society Correspondence. Whether this was the constitution as written in 1930 is not certain, although the document states this as the year when the Society was started.

25. M. Healy-Clancy, ‘The Self, the Nation and the World’, 9. Ilanga lase Natal, ‘Umhlangano Wamadodakazi AseAfrika eThekwini’, 2 January 1936.

26. J.E. Holloway, R.W. Anderson, F.A.W. Lucas, A.M. Mostert, A.W. Roberts, P.W. Le Roux Van Niekerk, C. Faye, Report of the Native Economic Commission, Verbal Evidence, Volume 9, Submission by Isabel Sililo on behalf of the Durban Joint Council, (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1930–1932), 6372.

27. J.E. Holloway, R.W. Anderson, F.A.W. Lucas, A.M. Mostert, A.W. Roberts, P.W. Le Roux Van Niekerk, C. Faye, Report of the Native Economic Commission, Verbal Evidence, Volume 9, Submission by Isabel Sililo on behalf of the Durban Joint Council, (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1930–1932), 6372.

28. J.E. Holloway, R.W. Anderson, F.A.W. Lucas, A.M. Mostert, A.W. Roberts, P.W. Le Roux Van Niekerk, C. Faye, Report of the Native Economic Commission, Verbal Evidence, Volume 9, Submission by Isabel Sililo on behalf of the Durban Joint Council, (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1930–1932), 6372. See the introduction for a first mention of this comment by Sililo.

29. J.E. Holloway, R.W. Anderson, F.A.W. Lucas, A.M. Mostert, A.W. Roberts, P.W. Le Roux Van Niekerk, C. Faye, Report of the Native Economic Commission, Verbal Evidence, Volume 9, Submission by Isabel Sililo on behalf of the Durban Joint Council, (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1930–1932), 6372.

30. J.E. Holloway, R.W. Anderson, F.A.W. Lucas, A.M. Mostert, A.W. Roberts, P.W. Le Roux Van Niekerk, C. Faye, Report of the Native Economic Commission, Verbal Evidence, Volume 9, Submission by Isabel Sililo on behalf of the Durban Joint Council, (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1930–1932), 6373.

31. I have chosen to use the phrase ‘liberal segregationist’ because their opposition to the Stallardist version of urban segregation did not, for the most part, entail insistence on the integration of social and cultural spaces of the city.

32. NAB, CNC, 94, 2028/12; Isabel Pewa and her sister Harriet applied for ‘exemption medals’ in 1912, providing the details of her parents’ application for exemption from the Natal Code of Native Law (Law 19 of 1891) in 1893. This was two years after. (As Isabel explained, ‘I have been exempted of native law from my birth. May I ask you to kindly get me my medal, Sir’.) Her father had given his name as Mzamo Mbumbulu. In the application of 1893 her mother was listed as Marietta Matu (NAB, SNA, 1/1/17, 1357/1893. According to Koffie's profile of Isabel Sililo (in Bantu World, 7 November 1936 – see fn 9) she was from Bishop Colenzo's Ekukhanyeni mission station.

33. NAB, SNA, 1/1/457, 694/10. The Chief Magistrate noted that ‘[t]he applicant has a very good knowledge of the English language and reads Zulu very well. He was able to render several sections of Law 19 of 1891 and vice versa. He has a fair general knowledge of the Laws of the Colony.’

34. Ilanga lase Natal, ‘Abapumelele kuTeachers Examinations’, 5 February 1909. For a history of Inanda Seminary, see M. Healy-Clancy, A World of their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education (Durban: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2013).

35. Ilanga lase Natal, 19 January 1915, ‘Libuyile Ibandla likaMafukuzela’. Also ‘Lapho Kuhamba Khona uMafukuzela neBandhla Lakhe’. Ilanaga lase Natal, 8 January 1915.

36. Ilanga lase Natal, ‘Izindatyana ngezinto nabantu’, 25 February and 19 May 1916.

37. Ilanga lase Natal, ‘Umdhlalo weTennis’, 16 July 1915; ‘EzaseMgun'dhlovu’, 7 January 1916; ‘Izindatyana ngezinto nabantu’ (mention was made of that Rev Sililo's visit to the Pewa family in Inanda). An announcement of the couple's engagement followed shortly after, on 14 January. A.J. Sililo is listed as Ilanga lase Natal's Pietermaritzburg distributor, for example, on 29 October 1918. There are a number of references to his evidently successful public career as head teacher. For example ‘Natal United Teacher's Conference’, 11 October 1918; ‘The Educated Native. Viscount Buxton Receives Native Teachers’, 2 August 1918; ‘Natal Education Committee. Evidence of Native Teachers’, 16 December 1921.

38. Ilanga lase Natal, ‘Ngempikisano yeZulu Orthography’, 2 March 1917. This was a letter signed ‘The Zulu Orthography’. It reported competition results that listed ‘Mrs Isabel Sililo (Pietermaritzburg)’ as third, having achieved 73% for her ‘umsebenzi omuhle’ (lovely work): M.D. Koffie, ‘Mrs I Sililo's Crowded Life. Mrs Isabel Arthur Sililo’, Bantu World, 7 November 1936.

39. TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/2/232 File: Native Locations 1930-1932, Volume 6. Report, 15 August 1932.

40. TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/2/1147, Native Advisory Board Correspondence. ‘Views of Mrs Sililo’, 18 October 1931.

41. TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/2/1147, Native Advisory Board Correspondence. ‘Views of Mrs Sililo’, 18 October 1931.

42. University of the Witwatersrand, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers, JCEA, AD 1433 Cd 3.2, Durban Joint Council Annual Reports, 1925–1949, September 1930, ‘Report on the Housing of natives in Durban and the Peri-urban areas’.

43. Selby Ncgobo's work and politics during the 1930s and 1940s merit more research. He was a teacher at Adams College at this time, and is also referred to as principal of the Loram Secondary School (where many of the children of Married Quarter residents were educated) in the 1940s. He would become professor at the University of Botswana and at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies: J. Cabrita, ‘Texts, Authority, and Community in the South African ‘Ibandla lamaNazaretha’ (Church of the Nazaretha), 1910–1976’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 40, 1 (2010), 74.

44. University of the Witwatersrand, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers, JCEA, AD1433, Cd3.5, ‘Durban Joint Council of Europeans and Natives, Budgets collected by Mr Selby Ngcobo, with notes by Mrs Mabel Palmer’.

45. It was only later that this accommodation was given the name of Baumanville, and at this time, even in the course of one document, a variety of names were often used. The new township that came to be known as Lamontville was first referred to as Umlazi Native Village and was not yet planned or approved at this time. It would be built in 1934.

46. University of the Witwatersrand, William Cullen Library, Historical Papers, JCEA, AD1433, Cd3.5, ‘Durban Joint Council of Europeans and Natives, Budgets collected by Mr Selby Ngcobo, with notes by Mrs Mabel Palmer’.

47. J.T. Campbell, ‘T.D. Mweli Skota and the Making and Unmaking of a Black Elite’, University of the Witwatersrand History Workshop Series, 1987, 2.

48. Ilanga lase Natal, 10 June 1939. Two of the Sililos’ children became a nurse and a doctor, respectively.

49. TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/2/1147, Volume 1, letter from J.T. Rawlins to Town Clerk, dated 29 October 1930. See also Rawlins’ letter of 11 December 1930, in which he confirms that Sililo had been transferred to his office. He was recommended to Rawlins by Rev Msimang.

50. Vahed, ‘Control of African Leisure Time’, 67–123.

51. TBD, 3DBN, W40 YMCA, Volume 1. Minutes of the executive, 20 March 1933.

52. TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/2/1147, Letter from J.T. Rawlins, 5 May 1931.

53. TBD, 3DBN, W40, YMCA, Volume 1. Extract from the minutes of the Native Administration Committee, 8 September 1933.

54. The DTC's disinterest in any strategy of substantial political inclusivity was all too clear to participating ‘Natives’ who intermittently conveyed their dissatisfaction with the Board's ad hoc status and its lack of decision-making powers which (so they explained) prompted fellow Africans to question their legitimacy and trustworthiness as elected representatives. While they articulated such concerns to the ‘European’ chair and vice-chair they also continued to participate. The NAB's activities added a certain status and structure to the public political activities of the city's African elite, on the periphery of Corporation politics, quite remote from the centres of power and with short-lived hope for meaningful political incorporation. Vahed discusses the initial optimism from Champion and others which waned by the late 1930s in ‘Control of African Leisure Time’, 71 and 122. Also see TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/2/1147 (Native Advisory Board correspondence), A.W.G. Champion to the Town Clerk, 27 December 1929.

55. TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/2/1147. Native Advisory Board correspondence, List of Rent Defaulters, 5 January 1934.

56. TBD, 3DBN, 1/2/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 14 September 1932.

57. TBD, 3DBN, 1/2/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 12 April 1933.

58. TBD, 3DBN, 1/2/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 14 September 1932.

59. TBD, 3DBN, 1/2/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 14 December 1932.

60. TBD, 3DBN, 1/2/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 12 April 1933.

61. TBD, 3DBN, 1/2/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 14 September 1932; 11 January 1933; 13 September 1933.

62. TBD, 3DBN, 1/2/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 8 November 1933. The municipality's discriminatory policy regarding relief works is interesting to consider in the context of NAD policies that sanctioned relief employment for Africans in the reserves.

63. TBD, 3DBN, 1/2/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 10 October 1934.

64. TBD, 3DBN, 1/2/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 10 October 1934.

65. Vilakazi mentioned several women by name, including ‘Mrs Mafukuzela herself [Angelina Dube] Mrs A J Sililo (Durban), Mrs J Mqwebu (Groutville), Misses V S Makanya (Imbumbulu), L P Vilakazi and Tshabalala (Driefontein)’: Ilanga lase Natal, 17 March 1933.

66. TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/2/1147. Native Advisory Board Correspondence. G. Townsend (Honorary Secretary, National Council of Women to the Town Clerk, 2 November 1932). This letter also supported the request of a ‘Native Child Welfare Clinic’, discussed below.

67. TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/2/1147. Native Advisory Board Correspondence. ‘Views of Mrs Sililo’, 18 October 1931.

68. TBD, 3DBN, 1/2/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 15 July 1931.

69. TBD, 3DBN, 1/2/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 15 July 1931.

70. TBD, 3DBN, 1/1/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 14 December 1932.

71. Debby Gaitskell, ‘“Getting close to the hearts of mothers”: Medical Missionaries among African Women and Children in Johannesburg Between the Wars’, in V.A. Fildes, L. Marks, H. Marland, Women and Children First: International Maternal and Infant Welfare, 1870–1945 (London, New York: Routledge, 1992), 178–202. The DBWS was likely referring to such initiatives as the American Board baby clinics in Johannesburg and the Bridgman maternity hospital, which opened in 1928 – it also ran a prenatal clinic. DBWS executive member Katie Makanya was a nurse at the American Board's McCord Hospital at this time. M. Mackenzie, secretary of the South African Council of Child Welfare, produced a 'Memorandum of Infantile Mortality in Union of South Africa and in Southern Rhodesia' in 1931 (SAB, NTS, 7208, 54/326, Vol. 1). Mackenzie was the recipient of a Carnegie Bursary at this time and visited various European countries including Switzerland and also the United States, where she completed this report. See also Dominique Marshall, ‘Children's Rights and Imperial Political Cultures: Missionary and Humanitarian Contributions to the African Child of 1931’, The International Journal on Children's Rights, 12 (2004), 273–318. See also M. du Toit, ‘The Domesticity of Afrikaner Nationalism: Volksmoeders and the ACVV, 1904–c.1929’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 28, 1 (2003), 155–176.

72. TBD, 3DBN, 1/2/12/1/1. Minutes of the Native Advisory Board, 15 June 1933.

73. ‘A Children's Charter for South Africa’, Child Welfare (published by the SANCCW), June 1927, 8. This Charter was based on the ‘Save the Children's Fund’ Charter. I aim to do more research on connections between the SA ‘Child Welfare Movement’ and children's rights/welfare initiatives associated with the League of Nations, such as the International Save the Children's Union and the broader context of a movement of international citizenship. See for example H. McCarthy, The British People and the League of Nations: Democracy, Citizenship and Internationalism, c. 1918–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011).

74. Campbell Collections, Mildred Lavoipierre Papers, KCM 89/18/19/1. Extract from the minutes of the SANCCW, Executive meeting, April 1928. These were proposals of a sub-committee put forward by Handel-Thompson, who was an inspector of Schools on the Rand in the late 1910s, and involved in initiatives to care for African elderly and destitute African children by the mid-1920s. He was also chairman of the SANCCW.

75. South African Outlook, 1 March 1929, 56. Child Welfare Societies were typically engaged in a range of efforts to assist impoverished (white) families.

76. D. Posel, ‘The Case for a Welfare State: Poverty and the Politics of the Urban African Family in the 1930s and 1940s’, in S. Dubow and A. Jeeves, eds, South Africa’s 1940s: Worlds of Possibilities (Cape Town: Double Storey, 2005), 66–68. See also M. du Toit, ‘The General View and Beyond: From Slumyard to Township in Ellen Hellmann's photographs of Women and the African Familial in the 1930s’, Gender and History, 17, 3 (2005), 613.

77. See also P. La Hausse, ‘The Cows of Nongoloza: Youth, Crime and Amalaita Gangs in Durban, 1900–1936’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 16, 1, 79–111, which suggests an interesting continuum of discourse about crime.

78. The history of Juvenile and of Children's Courts has not been researched in any detail. Juvenile Courts operated throughout the 1920s but African children were dealt with in a ‘Native’ Juvenile Court. The change of name indicated a new policy specifying that magistrates with specialised knowledge must preside in court cases involving aspects of the Children's Protection Act. Auckland Park's Children's Court was the first (1929), then Durban (1934) and Cape Town (1938). Durban followed in 1934 and Cape Town in 1938. The apartheid state excluded African children from this system with the Children's Act of 1960. My initial research suggests that amongst the bodies that campaigned for this system were Child Welfare Societies and the SANCCW together with the Joint Councils. See L. Chisolm, ‘Gender and Deviance in South African Industrial Schools and Reformatories for Girls, 1911–1934’, in C. Walker, ed., Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (Cape Town: David Philip, 1990), 293–312, and also A. Badroodien, ‘From Boys to Men: The Education and Institutional Care of Coloured Boys in the Early Twentieth Century’, South African Review of Education, 17, 1 (2011), 1–20.

79. The Natal Mercury, 14 July 1934.

80. Fannin stressed ‘the needs of the Native, Indian, Coloured and European’ (Ibid.). In the 1920s already the SANCC evinced a strong interest in questions of ‘mental hygiene’ and publicised the efforts of the eugenicist ‘Mental Hygiene Movement of South Africa’. (For example, Child Welfare, June 1927, 16–20). I have yet to research this interconnection. At this time, South African Mental Hygiene Societies were largely concerned with ‘poor white’ deficiencies.

81. The Natal Mercury, 3 September 1934.

82. HP, SAIRR collection, AD843, B23.3.1, Committee on Native Juvenile Delinquency, M Webb to L van Schalkwyk, Secr of Ed, Union Department, 17 September 1934.

83. The Natal Mercury, 27 September 1934.

84. A. Maphalala, ‘iDurban Bantu Child Welfare, Umsebenzi Otusekayo’, Ilanga lase Natal, 28 August 1965. The Durban Bantu Women's Society was renamed the Durban National Council of African Women later in the 1930s and Sililo used this version of its name in this interview.

85. Ilanga lase Natal, 30 November 1934. Reports in English and also isiZulu sections of the newspaper.

86. TBD, 3DBN, Native Advisory Board Minutes (1/2/12/1/3), 19 June 1935.

87. The Natal Mercury, Juvenile Court Work. Mr Fannin's Address’, 21 August 1935.

88. P. La Hausse, ‘The Message of the Warriors’.

89. ‘Native Villages in Reserves. Yesterday's Evidence Before Urban Areas Committee’, The Natal Mercury, 30 August 1935. The newspaper described this as a ‘Government Committee investigating Native conditions in urban areas […] comprised of Mess J M Young (chairman) and A L Barrett’.

90. The Natal Mercury, 30 August 1935. Isabel Sililo sent a copy of the memorandum to Killie Campbell ‘With Compliments’. KCAL Manuscripts Collection, File 51 (Killie Campbell. Further Correspondence), KCM8872. ‘Memorandum to Be Submitted to the Special Government Commission on Natives in Urban Areas’, August 30, 1935.

91. The Natal Mercury, 30 August 1935.

92. The Natal Mercury, 31 August and 3 September 1935.

93. Ilanga lase Natal, ‘Isifazane Sabantu Namadolopa’, 11 January 1935.

94. While official statistics put the male to female ratio of Durban's African population at 6.6 to 1 in 1921, it was 3.6 to 1 in 1936. Census statistics give the population of 1936 as 64,023 Africans, 86,684 whites, 97,217 Indians, 7040 Coloureds and a total population of 236,964: Vahed, ‘Control of African Leisure Time’, 68–70. See also Paul Maylham, ‘The Black Belt: African Squatters in Durban, 1936–1950’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 17, 3 (1983), 413–428.

95. TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/3/1635, File 359c, V1 (Propposed Compulsory Registration of Women). Draft Amendments. Native Registration Regulations.

96. ‘Umthetho Omusha Wesifazana sabantu eThekwini’, Ilanga lase Natal, 15 March 1935.

97. ‘Durban Town Council and Native Women’, Ilanga lase Natal, 12 April 1935.

98. TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/3/1635, File 359c, V1 (Proposed Compulsory Registration of Women. January 1936 to May 1946). Councilor Kemp to the Town Clerk, 12 June 1936.

99. ‘Umhlangano Wabantu Ethekwini’, Ilanga lase Natal, 11 July 1936.

100. TBD, 3DBN, 4/1/3/1635, File 359c, V1 (Proposed Compulsory Registration of Women. January 1936 to May 1946).

101. Ilanga lase Natal, 16 January 1937. The first women's page appeared on 5 December 1936, although for the first few months, the selection of articles that appeared on this page was random. By 1 January 1937 the page had acquired “Beauty Notes” and it soon had the requisite recipes. On 20 February 1937 it also included a report of the Bantu Women's Civic Society's first ‘Tea’. The page was variously called ‘Page for the Ladies’ and similarly, ‘Elamakhosikazi’ and ‘Ikhasi lamakhosikazi’. Other pages had the banner ‘Izinthombi Zakithi Nezazo’ (our young women and their concerns).

102. Ilanga lase Natal, 2 January 1937.

103. Bantu World, ‘Mrs I Sililo's Presidential Address’, 20 February 1937. I would like to thank Meghan Healy-Clancy for sending me this article.

104. Ilanga lase Natal, 11 July 1936. I have not found evidence that the DBCWS and the Durban Indian Child Welfare Society worked together in the 1930s, but this did happen in the 1940s, particularly through Mildred Lavoipierre, who became chair of the DBCWS in 1943.

105. Ilanga lase Natal, 11 July 1936. I have not found evidence that the DBCWS and the Durban Indian Child Welfare Society worked together in the 1930s, but this did happen in the 1940s, particularly through Mildred Lavoipierre, who became chair of the DBCWS in 1943.

106. Campbell Collections, Mabel Palmer Papers, File 24, KCM17674, Secretary's second annual report for 1936-1937.

107. Rhoda Dhludhla, ‘Amadodakazi AseAfrika Nabadingayo’, Ilanga lase Natal, 27 August 1939.

108. TBD, 1DBN, 3/2/1/2/32, 24/4/2/277/36. Case File, Children's Protection Act Committal.3/2/1/2/36, 26/4/2/379/36.

109. TBD, 1DBN, Durban Children's Court, 3/2/1/2/36, Enquiry under the Children's Protection Act, 26/4/2/870/36, Children's Protection Act Committal (Case File).

110. Campbell Collections, Mabel Palmer Papers, File 24, KCM 17661, Durban Bantu Child Welfare Society: Fifth Annual Report, 1939–1940.

111. TBD, 1DBN, Durban Children's Court, 3/2/1/1/2/34, Enquiries under the Children's Protection Act, Case Files 26/4/2/155/36, 26/4/2/177/36. The Brandon Boy's Hostel itself merits further research. An African headmaster was in charge, and boys elected a representative council and attended local schools. It was traumatically dismantled in the 1959 and apartheid officials escorted the boys to half-established rural youth camps – they possibly ended up on farms. Many escaped their minders during the train journey away from Durban.

112. I have changed or withheld all surnames of families with case histories the archives of the Children's Court. The Children's Protection Act files in the Durban Archives Repository have ‘restricted access’ status. While child maintenance grants were made on the basis of economic need, foster care, adoption and criminal charges against children were also the subject of many enquiries.

113. TBD, 1DBN, 3/2/1/2/41, 26/4/2/113/37. Children's Protection Act Case File. I Sililo to Magistrate, Children's Court, 7 May and 11 June 1937. Sworn statement by AWG Champion, 21 May 1937.

114. 1DBN, 3/2/1/2/52, File 26/4/8/62/38, Children's Court Enquiry. Sworn Statement by N. M 6 June 1938 on Sililo to the Probation Officer, Durban, 15 June 1938.

115. TBD, 1DBN, 3/2/1/2/52, 26/348/87/38. Mrs Sililo to the Commissioner of Child Welfare. Covering letter to Statement by J.M. 26 October 1938.

116. TBD, 1DBN, 3/2/1/2/52, 26/348/87/38. Mrs Sililo to the Commissioner of Child Welfare. Covering letter to Statement by J.M. 26 October 1938.

117. TBD, 1DBN, 3/2/1/2/35, 26/4/2/347/36.

118. TBD, 1DBN, 3/2/1/2/35, 26/4/2/347/36: Report by N. C. Magwaza on visit, 4 February 1937.

119. TBD, 1DBN, 3/2/1/2/35, 26/4/2/347/36: Report by N. C. Magwaza on visit, 4 February 1937.

120. TBD, 1DBN, 3/2/1/2/35, 26/4/2/347/36: Report by N. C. Magwaza on visit, 4 February 1937. In this particular case, the Secretary of Education claimed that if the parents were not ‘legally married’, the children would have to ‘remain in the care and custody of the Child Welfare Society’ instead of being committed to the care of the parents (the Society would bear additional responsibility, as in the case of foster children – they would still live with their parents).

121. Campbell Collections, Mabel Palmer Papers, File 24, KCM17660 and 17661.

122. Campbell Collections, Mabel Palmer Papers, File 24, KCM17660 and 17661.

123. Campbell Collections, Mabel Palmer Papers, KCM17600, DBCWS Fourth Annual Report 1938–9.

124. Campbell Collections, Mabel Palmer Papers, KCM17600, DBCWS Fourth Annual Report 1938–9.

125. SAB, VWN, SWC, 2254, 16/7, vol 1, GAC Kuschke, 18 May 1938.

126. National Archives Repository (SAB), Department of National Welfare, (VWN), SWC, 2254, 16/7, vol 1, G.A.C. Kuschke, 18 May 1938.

127. SAB, VWN, SWC 2254, 16/, vol 1, Circular no. SWC1 of 1939. The circular stated that “the payment of cash incentives to Natives residing in the towns will be an incentive to Native women to flock to the urban areas and thus aggravate a position that has already become acute”.

128. Campbell Collections, Mabel Palmer Papers, KCM 17654, 17658, 17611.

129. Wits Historical Papers, AD843, B631.1. Isabel Sililo to the Chairman, NACCW, 27 June 1939.

130. Wits Historical Papers, AD843, B631.1. Isabel Sililo to the Chairman, NACCW, 27 June 1939.

131. Wits Historical Papers, AD843, B631.1. Isabel Sililo to the Chairman, NACCW, Isabel Sililo to Mackenzie, 9 January 1940.

132. Campbell Collections, Mabel Palmer Papers, File 24, KCM 17662, Durban Bantu Child Welfare Society, 8th Annual Report, 1942–1943.

133. J. Seekings, ‘“No single white person should be allowed to go under”: Swart Gevaar and the Origins of South Africa's Welfare State, 1924–1929’, Journal of African History, 48 (2007), 378.