Brief History of Marabastad
Pretoria was founded in 1855 as the capital of the newly formed Transvaal Republic. Voortrekkers (pioneers) who were the descendents of European settlers, migrated north from the Cape seeking to establish a republic outside the boundaries of the British Empire. They selected a beautiful and fertile valley bordered on the north side by what came to be called the Magaliesberg range of mountains and traversed by a river fed by an exceptionally strong fountain.
The Voortrekkers were not the first people to occupy the valley. Hunter-gatherer peoples, who, within historical times became known as the San, inhabited the valley for thousands of years and left behind many petroglyphs depicting the animals that shared the valley with them. Over the past two millennia, migrating Iron Age communities from the north moved into southern Africa and groups settled along the Magaliesberg. In the 1820s Mzilikatzi and his people, known as the Ndebele invaded the interior plateau from the east, conquered the Tswana and other inhabitants of the Magaliesberg and settled in the area. The arrival of the Voortrekkers from across the Vaal river in 1836 resulted in a series of clashes with the Ndebele who were eventually forced to move north across the Limpopo river.
The streets of the capital were laid out in a grid pattern, in the European tradition, with a church at the intersection of the main axis roads. On the north-west outskirts of the formally proclaimed Pretoria, two additional residential areas developed. In the 1870s, the first township for black people, Schoolplaats, was established around the Berlin Mission Society school and church to the east of Steenhoven Spruit (see Map 1). The Schoolplaats community lived on demarcated stands in houses with gardens watered from wells and the Apies River. In the same period, to the west of Steenhoven Spruit and to the south of the Apies River a much more informal community developed around the kraal of the local South Ndebele chief Maraba, head of the Mashashane clan (the South Ndebele were later to become world renowned for their distinctive decorated homesteads and intricate beadwork). In an attempt to deal with the growing informal settlement around Maraba’s kraal, the township Marabastad was proclaimed in 1888 along the south bank of the Apies River between Steenhoven Spruit and Skinner Spruit (from Dutch or Afrikaans ‘stad’ translates as city, and ‘spruit’ is a stream).
The first Indian settlers established themselves in Pretoria in the early 1880’s near the old market square, and the area that later became known as the Asiatic Bazaar, west of the Steenhoven Spruit and south of the original Marabastad. In 1903, the Asiatic Bazaar was formally proclaimed with surveyed stands no larger than 50 by 50 feet (see Map 2). The intimate scale of the township was a contributing factor that allowed the Asiatic Bazaar to evolve a distinctive character that is still evident today. In the 1890’s the name Cape Location was given to the residential area to the south of the Asiatic Bazaar occupied by Coloureds, mainly from the Cape. A small number of Chinese traders also moved into the area.
The name Marabastad was increasingly used to describe the larger residential and business area on the north-west boundary of Pretoria. An urbanized, racially mixed community evolved with, and because of, the existence of Pretoria. Marabastad offered an accessible source of cheap labour and, conversely, a developing city created exciting and rewarding opportunities for people from rural areas or with economically depressed backgrounds. Marabastad is inextricably part of the history of Pretoria although in a sense it was never allowed to be part of the city. Its own history is that of a community that evolved a distinctive, colourful and vibrant character but, for most of its existence, had to endure discriminatory legislation.
The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand during the 1880s resulted in a dramatic increase in local and overseas migrants flocking to the newly established Johannesburg, adjacent mining villages and Pretoria. Marabastad grew and thrived, and although demarcated sections of greater Marabastad were home to one racial group or another, its character reflected a coalescence of races, religions and cultures.
During the Boer War, 1899-1902, the British military authorities who controlled Pretoria, allowed black refugees to settle in an area between the original Marabastad and the Asiatic Bazaar. After the Boer War, New Marabastad and the original Marabastad merged as the population continued to increase. The water supply and sanitary facilities proved inadequate and the Pretoria City Council, who now controlled Marabastad, decided to demolish old Marbastad and relocate residents to New Location, later known as Bantule. The relocation was completed by 1920.
There were justifiable reasons for relocating communities such as old Marabastad due to a lack of space and services but, until the 1980s, it continued to be government and city council policy also to relocate the residents of the greater Marabastad area on purely racial grounds. The 1913 Transvaal Native Land Act heads a long list of racially discriminatory Acts of Parliament with a basic aim to keep inner areas of cities such as Pretoria exclusively controlled by whites. As Pretoria grew and enveloped Marabastad, pressure increased to remove the inhabitants to segregated townships on the outskirts of the city, to New Location, Atteridgeville, Eersterus and Laudium. Central Pretoria, was proclaimed a ‘white area’ in the early 1950s. Indian businesses that were still in the central business area of Pretoria were forced to move their businesses to the Asiatic Bazaar in Marbastad, a designated Indian commercial area or Laudium. They were only allowed to live in Laudium.
The variety of religious beliefs and sects that flourished in Marabastad reflected a spiritual freedom in contrast to the lack of political freedom. Hindu, Muslim, and Christian places of worship were scattered through the township. The Hindu Mariamman Temple, completed in 1938 is a proclaimed national monument and remains a prominent landmark. Schools linked to religious institutions played an important role in a township deprived of state support.
It was inevitable that, from the beginning, tensions would develop between such a community and the authorities. As early as 1893 Mohandas Gandhi, as a young lawyer, lived in Pretoria for a year and experienced firsthand the indignities of discrimination and began to campaign against racial and social injustice. He made his first public speech at a meeting called to discuss the poor living conditions that local Asians had to endure. Gandhi was later to write that the year he spent in Pretoria was formative in terms of his spiritual development and the experience he gained in community affairs and legal practice.
Forced removals and repressive laws made Marabastad, like Sophiatown outside Johannesburg, a base for the political and labour liberation struggle. During the Twenties, Peter Matseke of the Transvaal African Congress organized demonstrations in Marabastad against pass laws. Naboth Mokgatle, popularly known as Ntate Mokgatle became a hero of the liberation struggle. He was introduced to ANC politics at protest meetings in Marabastad in the early 1930s and was arrested and imprisoned many times. He was eventually banned and was forced to leave the country in 1954. He wrote of his experiences in a book entitled The Autobiography of an Unknown South African. From time to time tensions led to outbreaks of violence. In the 1940s, what became known as the Marabastad Rebellion was quelled by police action with loss of life.
Despite poverty and many difficulties experienced by Marbastad residents, it was a ‘slum with spirit’. The vitality of township life in the 1920s and 1930s gave rise to a new indigenous African urban culture and identity. A form of music named Marabi, possibly derived from the name Marabastad took hold. The marabi-swing style was an improvised form of jazz, original in its sound, emanating from Shebeens and dance halls across the townships of Pretoria, Johannesburg and along the Witwatersrand.
As Marabastad developed, the mixture of commerce of various kinds, vehicle workshops, shebeens, schools and homes, together with influences from Asian and African cultures and American music, clothes and cars gave Marabastad a colourful multicultural street life. Soccer was a very popular sport and numerous clubs competed with each other with names such as Carlton Yanks, FM Bantus, Thunder and Swaraj. The Mamelodi Sundowns club so well known today grew out of the Sundowns club, established in Marabastad in 1945.
Three cinema theatres (in South Africa they were also referred to as bioscopes), the Empire, the Royal, and the Orient were built in the Asiatic Bazaar section of Marabastad. The cinemas catered for local residents as well as for people living in Lady Selborne, Attridgeville and other communities well beyond Marabastad who were barred from the whites only cinemas in central Pretoria. The choice of films that were shown was a varied as the character of Marabastad itself: popular Hollywood ‘block busters’, American and Chinese action films, traditional Indian dramas and musicals, and at Easter religious films were popular. The cinemas closed as Marabastad lost its residential population and television and film on video cassettes became popular. The Royal Theater has been demolished and the Empire and Orient in Boom Street are now used as shops.
Writers connected with Marabastad are well known. The internationally renowned writer Eskia Mphahlele was born in 1919 in Marabastad. In the 1950s, he became the fiction editor of Drum magazine and published his autobiographical book Down Second Avenue in 1959 drawing on his early life experiences in Marbastad. Can Themba was born in 1942 in Marabastad. He moved to Sophiatown, wrote short stories and became one of the ‘Drum Boys’. Jayayaman (Jay) Naidoo, born in 1941, grew up in the Asiatic Bazaar section of Marabastad. He left South Africa in 1964 and returned in 1991. He wrote Coolie Location in 1990 about his experiences as a boy in Marabastad. Darryl Accone lived for a time with his family in Marabastad before they were forcibly removed. In 2004 he wrote ‘Memories of Marabastad’ which was published in Chinese in Taiwan and in the same year ‘All Under Heaven: The Story of a Chinese family in South Africa’.
Between 1905 and 1913, the artist Hendrik Pierneef made a series of sketches of the houses along Boom Street and at Schoolplaats and the church at the ‘donkiecamp’, but not of Marabastad itself. The artist Thabang Noto Matseke was born in 1930 in Marabastad, where he lived until about 1950. He was the son of Peter Matseke, mentioned above.As a teacher, art collector and artist, Matseke made a valuable contribution to the development of an indigenous African consciousness though his own work and in his support of other artists.In 1984, the renowned photographer David Goldblatt took a series of photographs on busses that were part of apartheid’s transport system between the homeland of KwaNdebele and Pretoria (Marabastad terminus). One of his photographs is entitled 2.30am Wolwerkraal, Marabastad Bus, 3 Hours Still To Go, First Passengers of the Day.
By the end of the 1970s, most of the inhabitants of greater Marabastad had moved to other townships in terms of apartheid legislation. In addition, a large residential section of the Asiatic Bazaar and Cape Location was demolished to make way for a proposed freeway that never materialized. The era of Marabi jazz, Indian and American films at local bioscopes, American style fashions and the original Sundowns soccer team passed, although echoes were to remain.
Marbastad bore testimony to forces that, one way or another, appeared determined to destroy it. Decades of decay and degeneration were very evident, although a part of Marabastad somehow did survive. The business section of the Asiatic Bazaar remained as a designated Indian commercial centre. Many of the original shops along the main streets of the Asiatic Bazaar area remained intact and formed the core of a still thriving market and shopping complex. However, the character of Marabastad changed - it became mainly a conduit for bus, train and taxi commuters moving between the city of Pretoria and the concentration of homeland residential areas to the north. What were the residential areas away from the main streets were used as bus depots and taxi ranks, or remained abandoned wasteland where informal shops and hawkers spread away from the congested main streets. In parts of Marabastad, informal communities of migrants and refugees established themselves. During the 1980’s the status of the Asiatic Bazaar was further eroded by confusing and changing legislation at municipal and national levels.
The era of apartheid and white domination ended in 1994 and with it, the resistance struggle of which Marabastad had been a part. There were those opposed to political change. On 25 April 1994, a bomb was detonated in a restaurant on the corner of Bloed Street and 7th Avenue in Marabastad. Three people were killed in this attack.
Decades of systematic segregation and marginalization have come to end, and at local and national level ways must be found to meet expectations within the new multiracial dispensation. Since 1994, the Tshwane Metropolitan Council has initiated development and upliftment projects for Marabastad. Original displaced residents have made land claims. The process is complex and progress has been slow. New social problems have arisen that need to be addressed. The potential of a restored and rejuvenated Marabastad as a heritage, business and tourist focal point is clear and the city as a whole would benefit immensely when Marabastad takes its rightful place as a symbol of a struggle to survive in the face of adversity.
