Voices across the divide: undoing racial segregation in South Africa

Apartheid’s rhetoric would have us believe that racial segregation in South Africa was spontaneous. Nel (1962, p. 207), among others (for example Davies, 1971, p. 227) suggested

… that the races in South Africa’s urban areas have traditionally segregated themselves, and [apartheid] was adopted rather to consolidate the existing traditional patterns of racial separation, and to ensure that it be maintained in future, than to enforce something new.