Timeline

A century of contest over who could buy, sell, and work in South African public space.

1897 — Prohibition on the Witwatersrand

Mining capital and local authorities prohibit black access to alcohol. The policy does not produce a dry city. It produces the shebeen, a durable informal institution that will adapt through every subsequent regulatory phase.

1904 — The “sanitation syndrome”

Black residents are removed from central Johannesburg to the segregated location at Klipspruit under the logic of plague and disease control. Public-health rhetoric becomes a recurring justification for excluding black economic activity from white urban space.

1908 — The Durban System

Durban’s Native Beer Act establishes a municipal monopoly on sorghum beer. Revenue from beer halls funds hostels, policing, and what officials term “native welfare.” The model will become the template for financing black townships nationally.

1912 — Alexandra proclaimed

Some 12 kilometres north-east of central Johannesburg, Alexandra is established as a black freehold township. It becomes one of very few townships in which black residents can own land.

1922 — Johannesburg’s CBD closed to hawkers

The central business district is declared a restricted area. Black traders who supply food, drink, and goods to black workers must now do so near stations, termini, and factory gates.

1937 — The beer monopoly extended

The Durban sorghum-beer system is nationalized. Municipal brewing and beer-hall profits now
finance township administration across South Africa. The state is formally invested in an economy it elsewhere criminalizes.

1940s–1950s — The coffee-cart war

Johannesburg’s municipal authorities mount a sustained campaign against black coffee-cart
traders who feed commuting workers. Framed as a public-health issue, the campaign removes roughly 2,000 carts from the city’s streets before the trade collapses.

1962 — Liquor access expanded

The Liquor Amendment Act permits Africans to purchase bottled liquor. The shebeen does not
disappear but shifts: bottled lager and commercial products gradually displace home-brewed sorghum beer as the core of the trade.

1963 — Alexandra designated for demolition

The government announces that Alexandra will be razed and replaced with a single-sex hostel city. Forced removals begin. Over the following sixteen years, the population is cut sharply as residents are relocated to Soweto and other townships.

1973 — The concept of the informal economy

The anthropologist Keith Hart, writing on migrant labor in Accra, Ghana, coins the term informal economy to describe income-generating work conducted outside regulated wage employment. The concept will structure half a century of research on African urbanism,including the scholarship that documents townships like Alexandra.

1970s — Shebeens legalized; beer financing weakens

Shebeens enter a phase of partial legalization, remaining centers of township popular life. At the same time, consumer preferences shift from sorghum beer to commercial lager over the course of the decade. Beer-hall revenues fall, and the state-financed township economy loses a principal funding source, tipping local administration into a prolonged fiscal crisis.

1979 — Alexandra reprieved

The Riekert Commission introduces a new distinction between urban “insiders” entitled to remain in the city and “outsiders” to be excluded. Alexandra is reclassified as an insiders’ township. Demolition is abandoned; redevelopment is promised. The Save Alexandra Party and the Alexandra Residents’ Association form to contest the terms of that redevelopment.

1980 — The master plan

A redevelopment plan is announced, promising infrastructure, leasehold housing, and a new central business district. Financing never arrives at the promised scale. Rents rise sharply; overcrowding intensifies.

1983 — The Alexandra Town Council

Under the Black Local Authorities Act, the government installs a black municipal council in
Alexandra. Charged with administering the township on a self-financing basis, it inherits a fiscal base too narrow to sustain services and becomes widely regarded as corrupt. By June 1985 local
government in Alexandra is in open crisis.

1984 — Survey of a township under pressure

Average monthly individual wages in Alexandra are R264; mean household income is R568. New rents run to R130–R145 a month for people earning R150–R250. Nearly 30 percent of households report members working in informal activity, including hawkers, hairdressers, dressmakers, herbalists, shebeen operators, childminders, witchdoctors, tailors, cobblers, painters, and golf caddies. Some children work as newspaper vendors and caddies.

February 1986 — The Six Day War and people’s power

Political violence erupts in Alexandra. In its aftermath, residents organize through yard, block, and street committees as structures of “people’s power,” with responsibilities spanning housing, health, disputes, and political education. The line between domestic, economic, and political space thins to the point of dissolution.

1994 — End of apartheid

Formal racial restrictions on urban settlement and trade are abolished. For most black residents, however, access to affordable housing and formal commercial premises does not follow. The informal economy remains the principal livelihood of millions.

1990s–2020s — The continuing contest

Informal economic life expands rather than contracts. Small-area census work documents 9,401 micro-enterprises across eight township sites, and researchers estimate the informal economy now employs at least 2.4 million people nationally. Most traders still work without permits. Johannesburg’s by-laws continue to constrain informal livelihoods rather than support them./p>