ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the reciprocal relations between place and society in the context of the asymmetric access to power of different social groups and social beliefs in Cape Town, South Africa. The social beliefs of the dominant minority have been institutionalized in the Group Areas Act, and for strategic and economic considerations this act has been implemented in the forcible expulsion of "Coloured people" from their racially integrated inner city homes to racial ghettos on the edge of Cape Town in the sand dunes of the Cape Flats. The agricultural village of Mowbray and with it the humble dwellings of ex-slave servants and laborers were enveloped in the late nineteenth century by the urban sprawl of Cape Town. Mowbray was defined from outside, in its 'foreign relations', as 'non-White' Mowbray and as such suffered exclusion by White property-owning and political power. The chapter considers South African society's struggle for power between 4.50 million Whites and 18.75 million Black Africans.
