Urban areas legislation

The principal laws regulating the African urban population are the urban Areas Act itself and the proclamations and regulations promulgated thereunder. It is with the position of the majority of the African people, namely those who have no homes of rights of any kind in the ‘Native areas’, with which this paper primarily deals. The fundamental proposition which this paper seeks to demonstrate is that the central and local authorities are equipped with powers to deny to the African any enforcable right to reside, acquire property, carry on independent economic activity, freely to seek and take up employment in an urban area.