Westbury has no coloured problem

Like many other former apartheid settlements, the suburb suffers ills of constraints upon its population, writes Khulu Mbatha

Oh Westbury my birthplace,

My real roots and my home;

They now call you a coloured problem;

Since when are you a coloured problem?

Gold was discovered on farmlands in 1886 and in the same year the city of Johannesburg was born. In 1918, towards the end of World War 1, Westbury was established by the Johannesburg Town Council to legally accommodate Africans and it was first called Newlands Location. Nearby residents of the real Newlands objected to the name and in 1919 it was changed to Western Native Townships.

In 1963, following the forced removals of Africans to accommodate coloureds from Doornfontein and Pageview, it was proclaimed the Western Coloured Township. It was again renamed to become Westbury in 1967.

Westbury lies next to Newclare, Martindale and Sophiatown. In the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, before the full establishment of Soweto, the majority of people here were Africans, and these areas were the most popular in Johannesburg for vibrant activities activities related to the ANC and the Natives Representative Council, following the Representation of Natives Act No. 12 of 1936.

Leaders like PQ Vundla, JB Marks, Gaur Radebe and Robert Resha, some of whom were members of the executive of the ANC and the SA Communist Party in the Transvaal, as well as Ida Mntwana, the first official president of the Women’s League, were residents here in Westbury. At some stage in the 1950s the strongest branch of the ANC was also from here.

Just across Main Road in Sophiatown there was Dr AB Xuma, ANC president from 1940 to 1949, the man who introduced a new constitution to the ANC and planted the idea of the Africans’ Claims in 1943.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Sophiatown was demolished and named Triomf while Western Native Township, then known as Western, was renamed and preserved for coloured people. We were forcefully removed to Soweto and placed in townships like Moroka (Rockville), Chiawelo, Diepkloof and Meadowlands.

I was born in Westbury. During our time, birth happened at home or at the nearest hospitals such as Coronation and Bridgeman, now known as Rahima Moosa and Garden City, respectively. All my siblings – six of them – were born here and I was the last to attend school here.

Westbury has become notorious and made headlines these past few weeks. The media and some of its current residents called it a “coloured problem” and accused the black government of their suffering and neglect, unconsciously or maybe intentionally making this area fertile for racial conflicts to break out.

Where are the origins of the problem? In 1897 a speculator bought the land on which Westbury sits and in 1905 the government of the day – under British control because they had just won the Anglo-Boer War – wanted this area to build a township for whites. But they discovered there was a municipal sewage plant nearby, which brought the value of the property down. The place was then marketed to Africans and in 1919 the Western Native Township emerged.

Close to Western, Sophiatown, Newclare and Martindale were exempted from the 1913 Natives (Urban Areas) Land Act and Africans bought and owned property there. The “freehold” status caused many Africans to rush here and it soon got overcrowded and led to sanitation problems, rent racketeering, the formation of gangs and political discontent.

By the 1930s the Johannesburg City Council was getting irritated by this “ka***r problem” or “black spots”. After World War 2, as a result of industrialisation and more Africans coming to Johannesburg, the population rose to about 60 000 people by the 1950s.

The apartheid regime had ascended to power in 1948. They wasted no time and came up with forced removal plans, first to Meadowlands in 1955. By the 1960s the area had been cleared for “sanitary and safety reasons” and space was created for whites, Indians, and coloureds. My family was among the last ones to be moved, in early 1962, shortly before I was eight.

I remember the ride so well – in that big truck provided by the city council – because days after that ride and out of naivety I kept asking my mother: “When are we moving again?” I wanted a ride and it never came. My eyes only opened when I reached high school at Sekano-Ntoane Secondary School, where student politics led us to the Black Consciousness Movement and later to exile.

Only 24 years into democracy and some call Westbury a coloured problem. Was it once an African problem? Or was this not the pattern of life in the whole of South Africa and its cities?

AJ Christopher said: “The majority were founded as colonial cities with a measure of economic segregation which was reflected in racial terms. Within the colonial polity, however, lay the elements of legal segregation inherited from the experience of the colonial in earlier times. The apartheid city therefore has its origins deep in the colonial period...”

Apartheid refined segregation and only separated “…first, the black indigenous population from the remainder and later the white population from other groups. This involved not only a major structuring of legal constraints upon the population as to where people may live, work and enjoy recreation, but a major exercise in land-use zoning to achieve the aims of the legislators.”

It is this that has not been tackled by our post-1994 democratic political order. Many South Africans, and not Westbury residents alone, still live with the scars of apartheid. Africans, Indians and coloureds suffered loss, humiliation, injury and death.

Very recently a black leader of an opposition political party allegedly blamed Indians for the suffering black people are still subjected to in KwaZulu-Natal. It is clear that perceptions of group marginalisation provide ideal conditions to foment interethnic and interracial animosity.

Westbury has a problem and it involves coloured people. It includes killings, gang violence, inadequate policing, widespread alcohol and drug abuse, poor street lights, poverty and unemployment. There is nothing coloured about it nor can we say it is a coloured problem. As we try to fight the crime we must deal with the conditions that give rise to it.

Busani Ngcaweni wrote that: “Policies designed to address spatial injustice have not worked for the people of Westbury, as much as they have not worked for the people in hostels and peri-urban areas. Further, social cohesion interventions have not worked, hence the sentiment of racial exclusion.”

The structures created under colonialism and apartheid have not been fully dismantled and they still have an impact on the lives of all South Africans, but mainly Africans, coloureds and Indians. It is not only in the political and economic life of society that redress is necessary, as there are many social and cultural issues, which include moral and ethnic matters that need urgent attention if we are to build a new nation.

• Mbatha is an adviser to President Cyril Ramaphosa, an author, a columnist and a diplomat