ABSTRACT
In November 1976, the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg was the site of an unusual conference. Titled ‘Quality of Life of Urban Communities’, it brought together white business leaders and the Committee of Ten, a civic organisation from Soweto that had arisen after the student protests of June 1976. Afrikaner businessman Anton Rupert was one of the main speakers at the conference. ‘We cannot survive unless we have a free market economy, a stable Black middle class with the necessary security of tenure, personal security and a feeling of hope for betterment in the heart of all our peoples,’ he said. Rupert went on to outline a programme of development which, he thought, would lead the way out of the dead end of increasingly repressive apartheid policies: job creation, training, a living wage, greater commercial opportunities, extended home ownership, improved housing, and the provision of sporting and other amenities (Butler 2007: 8).
