ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the importance of Sharpeville to the success of modern South Africa as a source of labour for the industrial heartland of South Africa, the present-day Vaal Triangle. The region’s power stations, steel mills, and all sorts of industrial manufacture were fuelled by local coal and manned by workers who were strictly separated from Vereeniging. Crowded onto small plots of land in Top Location with few services, the inhabitants nevertheless built their own houses and created their own community. And in the face of continued police harassment, they fought back as they could, sparking what officials would call riots at least three times in the 1930s. In the face of what the White community viewed as threats to its safety and success, in 1937, officials decided the location should be demolished and its inhabitants moved further out of town to a new location, Sharpeville.
