Page 80 - SARB: 100-Year Journey

This marked the beginning of a prolonged and sustained period in which nationalistic leanings (Sunday Times, 20 December 1931) and the national question of South Africa would dominate Union politics, and spill over into government policy and the economic landscape. The changes drew General Hertzog closer to General Smuts’s South African Party. General Hertzog and General Smuts were effectively two sides of the same political coin. However, the point of variance between the two was that the former had little regard for English-speaking South Africans – or the internal British – while the latter was more sympathetic. These differences were not insurmountable. In 1934, General Hertzog’s National Party forged formal ties with General Smuts’s South African Party, in an arrangement that resulted in the formation of the United Party.
Both generals were fervent supporters of racial segregation, which resulted in substantial support being provided to white farmers and poor whites during the Great Depression. Furthermore, their brand of social Darwinism found expression in the adoption of job reservation policies in favour of whites while aggressively curtailing the movement of black South Africans into the cities.
The Slums Act 53 of 1934, for instance, enabled the government to declare certain areas as ‘slums’. This resulted in inhabitants being relocated along racial lines. Black South Africans were often moved outside cities, away from economic opportunity, while white residents remained behind in better housing conditions.
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Sophiatown, in Johannesburg, is synonymous with resistance against the apartheid system and its sporadic removal of black residents from major economic centres. /Getty Images