The Emergence of a Racially Mixed Residential Suburb in Johannesburg: Demise of the Apartheid City?

The Group Areas Act, passed by the South African Parliament in 1950, aimed to enforce residential segregation. Widespread contraventions of this legislation in White residential areas and an official investigation thereof resulted in recommendations in 1987 that the government modify its policy in this regard. This paper elucidates the changing social geography of a section of Bertrams, Johannesburg which has increasingly become a racially integrated suburb.