ABSTRACT
The apartheid state may be understood as a form of racial capitalism. Apartheid’s early architecture included a set of laws of overt racial brutality, related also to measures of labour control and spatial restriction. It is important to recognise that these laws were promulgated on top of existing segregationist practices and legislation, while at the same time not conflating apartheid with prior practices. In the town of Carnarvon, the apartheid mantle fitted easily over existing deep inequalities. Later, in the apartheid logic of segregation, a new township, Bonteheuwel, was built for Coloured people on the other side of the town’s dry riverbed. In 1956, the Group Areas Act made its first assault on the town, moving to displace a number of families from an area designated ‘white’, one of these being the Boezak family. During the 1980s, many South African church leaders joined anti-apartheid movements, with the South African Council of Churches being a focal point for protests.
