While South African cities may have different origins and histories, their demographics have all been determined by laws and regulations relating to race relations. After gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand in 1886, the mining settlement had a continuous stream of newcomers, and Johannesburg soon became the fastestgrowing and largest city in South Africa. Katherine Eales identifies four distinct periods when black women migrated to Johannesburg: 1903–1912, 1913–1923, 1924–1931 and 1932–1939. Apart from the many other restrictions they faced, the looming threat of the pass laws, which were eventually implemented in 1956, was a heavy burden to domestic workers. To this day, a defining characteristic of many such women is their status as migrant workers.

1903–1912

‘She may take it into her head to walk away the next day’

The fact that 1903 is such an important date regarding the settlement of black people on the Witwatersrand is owing to the South African War (1899–1902). Quite apart from the imperialistic ambitions of Cecil John Rhodes, the war was provoked by the British to give them a greater say in the running of the gold mines in the Boer Republics. The lengthy war had left the region's economy in tatters, and there was an urgent need for the mines to start producing again. There was a huge shortage of unskilled labour in the area around Johannesburg, and around 129 000 workers were urgently needed to go down the mines. In his influential study, Anglo American and the Rise of Modern South Africa (1984), Duncan Innes makes the following observation: ‘Given the centrality of the mines to the Transvaal's economic recovery, the mines’ labour problems became the state's Native Question in this period.’ Initially, the term ‘natives’ referred only to men, and so women were not considered part of the ‘Native Question’. The result was that, for many years, women occupied an ambivalent space in the urban environment.