Native Life in a Johannesburg Slum Yard

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Abstract
Although for reasons of a misguided economy a Native Census was not undertaken in 1931 and consequently complete statistics for the Native population of South Africa are entirely lacking, the available evidence points to a marked increase in the Native urban population. The 1921 census revealed the fact that Native women also were settling in town in much larger numbers than had previously been the case, and all indications point to a much greater increase in this section of the urban population since then. This growing inclination of the Native to settle his wife and children in the urban centre where he earns his livelihood indicates a tendency on his part to divorce himself from his rural bonds and to regard the town as his permanent home and not as the place of his solely temporary employment. The children of these families will, in all likelihood, eventually form a permanent and stable urban population, entirely dissociated from a rural background. Many of them—the potential citizens of a town—have been reared in a slum yard. Such yards represent for many Natives their first, and perhaps only, experience of a home.