Abstract
In the first half of the twentieth century in South Africa, there was a persistent debate about youthful criminality among Africans. Based on an extensive reading of archival sources of the Union Government, municipal records, official correspondence and primary research into prominent figures who were interested in urban, youthful criminality, this dissertation addresses how the authorities and citizens of the Union between 1910 and 1948 perceived this phenomenon as a social issue. The discovery of minerals and consequent industrialization in South Africa led to increasing African urbanization from the1890s. Initially, the urban areas were not places of permanent residency for Africans. By the 1920s, with the growing demand for cheap labour for the mines and other industries, many towns, in particular on the Witwatersrand, migrant workers and their families increasingly settled in the townships around Johannesburg and other urban centres. This dissertation aims to illuminate various factors that contributed to the making of youthful African criminality in urban areas, in addition to tracing how contemporary discourse perceived it as an African male problem, by investigating the socio-economic and political factors of this phenomenon. While much scholarship conducted on youthful criminality in South Africa links the issue to rapid African urbanization and economic migration, this dissertation sheds light on the attitude of the government, missionaries, white liberals and well-wishers towards youthful criminality and urban African children and youth. Many of these children grew up in unfavourable living conditions, and many had experienced their parents break the law from an early age. In addition, some grew up in broken families where there were limited parental control and absent fathers. Increasingly society linked supposed idleness and the absence of regular school attendance with a rise of crime among the youth. In attempts to reduce youthful criminality on the Witwatersrand, various municipalities, authorities and professionals came together to deliberate this issue. The government established the first and biggest reformatory for African boys on the African continent as part answer to the perceived crisis. Prominent newspapers also published debates and opinions of Africans regarding youthful crime, paving the way to a somewhat racially representative discourse on this issue. Although youthful criminality among girls and young women was not a widespread problem, missionaries established hostels for young African women which focused on domesticity to prepare them for domestic service and to protect them from urban ills. As such, this dissertation contributes to the historiographies of 6 crime and youth history in South Africa. It creates space for a detailed account of childhood and youth in Africa by highlighting that 'juvenile delinquency' in South Africa was both a racial construction by the government to further segregate against the urban youth, as well as a phenomenon caused by socio-economic issues that resulted from African urbanization. Keywords: Juvenile Delinquency, Youthful Criminality, Youth, Urban Africans, Reformatory, Rehabilitation, Boys.
D.Litt. et Phil. (Historical Studies)