Urbanisation and the Soildarity of Afrikaner Nationalism

Abstract

In 1904 just over 6 per cent of South Africa's Afrikaners lived in the towns. By 1936 the percentage had risen to 44, and 1960 to 76 per cent. Slightly less than half of this number live in smaller centres, regarded for census purposes as ‘urban’ although most of them are dorps or hamlets. 1 The causes of this demographic revolution go back to the simultaneous crisis of farming and the rise of mining and other industries that led to the growth of towns. Rural poverty pushed people off the land while the possibilities of earning higher incomes drew them to the towns. In the folk-lore of Afrikanerdom, towns—particularly Johannesburg—were evil places: they were regarded as the seats of an ‘English—Jewish’ capitalism that was bent on ploughing the Afrikaner under, and as hotbeds of vice and crime. 2