About this site

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

1982. Black Local Authorities Act

Davenport (1987: 442) refers to this as the BLACK LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT of 1983 which seems to be a slight misnomer. According to Price (1991: 132), the government "introduced the BLACK LOCAL GOVERNMENT BILL in 1980. After much discussion and revision the bill was finally passed into law in 1982 as the BLACK LOCAL AUTHORITIES ACT."

At any rate, it "provided for the establishment of a series of local government structures similar to those operating in the White areas" (Christopher 1994: 55), and "for the first time [it] gave African residents of urban locations something like autonomy. If they could not have access to Parliament, at least they now had local power" (Davenport 1987: 552). "Elected by local residents, councillors were responsible for township administration on budgets raised by local rents and levies" (Worden 1994: 125). See also the COMMUNITY COUNCILS ACT of 1977.

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. Return to theThis resource is hosted by the site.