Social control in the 20th century and its impact on households: A case study of disarticulation from Sophiatown to Meadowlands, Soweto

Abstract

In South Africa, racial discrimination was witnessed through renowned segregationist acts including the Group Areas Act (No:41) of 1950, which forcibly displaced families from their homes and triggered significant social upheavals and the callous disintegration of long-established communities such as Sophiatown. The removals were a political strategy to relocate so-called “non-white” people from the inner city to townships such as Meadowlands explicitly chosen for their hazardous impure land known as mine dumps (Rodgers 1980:76). These displacements had a paradox of intergenerational homelessness triggered by instrumental racism that influenced politics of space and in effect, the disarticulation of the lives of black South Africans (Milgroom and Ribotc 2019:184). Therefore, it is important to undertake a study investigating the circumstances that gave rise to these forced removals, the subsequent breakdown of social order, a typical consequence of population relocation, which merits an examination of the contemporary implications and ramifications of disarticulation and highlights, in this regard, some significant shortcomings in post-Apartheid governance.