Origins of Langa based on fear, long before apartheid era
LIKE the amaHlubi Chief Langalibalele, from which it reportedly took its name, the Cape Flats township of Langa had to “box” far above its weight to survive during the hostile years of apartheid – and even long before that.
Langa had its origins in 1899, when a fearful white community called on the government of the Cape Colony to act against what it described as a “k **** r invasion of Cape Town.
The reason for this fear – and to put it bluntly, naked racism – was a rapid increase in the African population.
With an 1891 figure of 800 having risen to several thousand on the eve of the 1900s, white Capetonians launched ever-more strident campaigns to get Africans expelled from the city.
Just about everything that went wrong in Cape Town was blamed on the African population. An outbreak of bubonic plague early in 1901 gave the authorities just the excuse they needed to act in the way they were being called upon to, moving more than 5 000 people from District Six to Uitvlugt (later to be called Ndabeni), where present-day Pinelands now stands.
Ndabeni was recognised as a duly established “native reserve location” for almost three decades, until the government of the Union of South Africa began tinkering with legislation to enable the demand for cheap labour to be met without having to grant African people the right to live permanently in urban areas.
The consequence of this was the promulgation of the Native Urban Areas Act, Number 21 of 1923, which led to the establishment in 1927 of Cape Town’s oldest African township. It was named Langa, and its first inhabitants were from nearby Ndabeni.
Because of – or, despite – the tight control the Union government and later the apartheid administration tried to wield over its inhabitants, with regard to racial segregation, Langa was often a focal point of resistance in the years before democracy.
One of South Africa’s most famous historical events had its origins in Langa and nearby Nyanga, in March 1960, when more than 30 000 residents heeded the call of a young PAC-aligned union organiser named Philip Kgosana to protest against the pass laws by marching to the centre of Cape Town.
In the 1980s, Langa was also in the forefront of the bitter fight against PW Botha’s apartheid administration, with many of its residents paying the ultimate price for their activism.
But it was not only in the arena of protest politics that Langa has stood out. In the area of music, it produced one of South Africa’s greatest performers: Brenda Nokuzola Fassie, the anti-apartheid Afropop singer, affectionately known as “MaBrrr” was born in the township.
And, in sport, South Africa’s latest cricketing hero, Temba Bavuma, also has strong connections with Langa.