ABSTRACT
Apartheid operated on a local, urban level. The major impetus of the initial years of the National Party administration after 1948 was directed towards the implementation of residential and personal segregation rather than the more philosophically based concept of state partition. Much of the basic legislation affecting Africans was already on the statute book and was duly enforced with greater ruthlessness. However, the residential segregation of the remainder of the population was a popular issue which enjoyed wide support within the White community of whatever political persuasion. By the 1960s political debate in the country, whether in White or African communities, was essentially urban based. Urban segregation and the attempts to restrict African access to the urban areas were thus the dominant political issues of the ensuing decades.
