Book Reviews : TOWNSMEN OR TRIBESMEN: CONSERVATISM AND THE PROCESS OF URBANISATION IN A SOUTH AFRICAN CITY By PHILIP MAYER Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1961. 293 pp. 45s

Race ◽  
1962 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-80
Author(s):  
Elspeth Huxley
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
South African City ◽  
African City ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Oxford University Press

Representing Cape Town on the eve of apartheid

Urban History ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Bickford-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
South African City ◽  
African City ◽  
Racial Study

ABSTRACTThis article attempts a detailed social portrait of Cape Town on the eve of apartheid. In the process it provides a rare cross-racial study of a twentieth-century South African city. The first section reveals a complex place already distinguished by considerable segregation and predictable social inequalities, both between and within racial and ethnic categories. Yet such findings are at odds with popular memories of a golden age – marked by tolerance, greater cohesion and security. So the second section explores and explains the differences. It finds that memories cannot simply be dismissed as myths.

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