What is it about an undistinguished, if picturesque, northern Free State town called Kroonstad – or, more accurately, its black residential areas – that makes it a fertile field of study for a social historian?

For one thing, its history. Seventy-five years after it was established in 1855, Kroonstad was recognised as the second-largest town in the then Orange Free State (OFS). The town has two black townships: Maokeng (‘place of thorns’ in Sesotho), whose black residents initially came from all over South Africa and from neighbouring countries; and Brentpark, established in the latter half of the 1950s to accommodate the town's coloured community in line with the requirements of the Group Areas Act.

This book demonstrates that in the 1980s Kroonstad's black residential areas lagged behind other black residential areas across the country when it came to protest politics. This was mainly because in Maokeng and Brentpark, at least until 1989, there were no pressing socioeconomic grievances – these areas were led by, respectively, the town council and management committee which made every effort to meet the residents’ basic service needs without increasing rent (or, at least, by keeping it at an affordable level).

The study that led to this book concentrates on a politically significant area which has received scant scholarly attention. In fact, in their chapter on activists’ networks and political protest in the Free State, historians Chitja Twala and Jeremy Seekings make an important observation: ‘… overall, political struggles in the Free State did not compare with those in many other parts of the country’. Perhaps this has discouraged researchers and scholars from undertaking studies in this region. The observation does not, however, imply that there is an absolute absence of work on the Free State, or parts of it. In 1985 the city council commissioned a book to celebrate Kroonstad's 130 years of existence. The book, a massive 645-page volume, provides useful information about the establishment of Kroonstad, the development of the town and its white residents, and the role of the white city council. Until recently it was the only authoritative history of Kroonstad. Apart from alluding to a few incidents such as the role played by the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) and the boycotts against increased rent in the late 1920s, the book is silent on political activism in the black townships.