Introduction

The formal ending of apartheid, and the coming to power of the country’s first democratically-elected government in April 1994, raised the possibility of fundamental social and economic change in South Africa and promised ‘a better life for all’. Of all the manifestations of inequality and oppression under apartheid, none was as stark, or potentially as enduring, as the territorial separation of people along racial lines. The ‘native reserve’ were central to the policy of segregation, both as a rural base for migrant workers and as places where the African population could be controlled under a separate legal and administrative system. The coming to power of the overtly racist National Party in 1948 under the ideological banner of apartheid, or ‘separate development’, marked the beginning of a decisive new phase in the evolution of South Africa’s system of racial segregation and in the function of the reserves. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.