Black Africans in Cape Town, 1890–1939

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century many black Africans, willingly or unwillingly, gravitated towards South Africa’s emerging cities. Most of these migrants were involved in mining, various forms of low-skilled labour, and, less commonly, domestic service. The mines of Kimberley and the Transvaal attracted black Africans from various parts of southern Africa. The labour forces of the factories and farms of Durban and the harbour of Port Elizabeth consisted mostly of black Africans of various ethnicities from the nearby rural homelands. As black Africans were not permitted to own land in the cities, this rendered their presence in the urban areas temporary and often resulted in circulatory systems of migration, aspects of South African migration that are extensively covered in the historiography. Cape Town’s commercial economy, even though dominated by white and coloured workers, attracted black African migrants
as well. Most arrived in Cape Town at a mature age, became semi-permanently settled and returned to their rural homelands at retirement age. This does not match the general circulatory pattern of black mobility in South Africa....