Johannesburg, in certain respects the Republic's
leading urban centre, celebrates her centenary in
1986. Acquisitive citizens and indifferent officials
have, however, long driven much of her past from the
streets. Today carnival history is being
manufactured hurriedly beyond remote tarmac parking
grounds and behind ticketing turnstiles. Although
its popularization is also overdue, scholarly
interest in South African urban history fortunately
has not attracted only whimsical attention. In the
brief review which follows an attempt is made to
sketch the outlines of the South African urban past,
to capture the flavour of substantive research into
South African urban history and to contour the
intellectual climate in which this has been
conducted and shaped. Emphasis is placed on research
reported in scholarly outlets. Not unexpectedly
there is a wide range of other publications which
contain elements of urban historical interest, these
ranging from newspapers and magazines to general
historical texts and finely liveried, lavishly
illustrated Africana. For the purposes of this
presentation, the ‘modern period’ of South African
urban history is closed during the 1950s.