‘Playing at Public Health’ The Search for Control in South Durban 1860–1932

Abstract

The title of this article is an appropriation that I use to describe the various ways in which public health ideology was employed in the time period that this paper covers. It points to the sometimes half-hearted nature of the more 'progressive' public health measures undertaken in the area not to mention the occasions when attempts at greater control floundered because of resistance from those it was aimed at. The phrase can also be used to characterise the weak and often blundering public health administrative structures that were intended to provide enhanced control over Durban's peripheral areas from the middle of the 1920's until the extension of the borough boundaries in 1932. As the paper's conclusion suggests, it can also be applied to the manner in which local industrialists and the Durban City Council exploited the failure of attempts at control in South Durban to justify the incorporation of the area into the borough, paving the way for its transformation into the major industrial area it is today, as landowner interests were superseded by those of industrial capital.