1South Africa, the first economic power in the African continent, has a population of nearly 50 million inhabitants, of whom more than 60 % were urban in 2008. The country has a long-standing network of metropolises (cities), towns and localities (places). These have developed and become hierarchised in the course of a history where population settlement and its distribution have been markedly influenced by colonisation, segregation, industrialisation and globalisation.

2An outstanding set of statistics on population distribution, dating from the start of the 20th century is available for South Africa. This data was however compiled and presented in a succession of post-colonial contexts each very specific in nature: first the Union of the British ex-colonies and the Boer Republics, still very colonial in style, then the apartheid regime, and finally post-apartheid South Africa. These successive periods led to creations and redefinitions of social categories and spatial frameworks: segregationist “engineering” in the territorial, social and political fields, to which statistical data and its processing were subordinated until the end of the apartheid system; territorial reforms aiming to abolish segregationist legal regimes and to reinstate the country and its cities within the globalisation process.

3Thus collating and inter-relating data from census information since 1911 makes it possible to retrace the history of one century of settlement distribution, urbanisation and territorial engineering in South Africa. The Dysturb database available on the CD-Rom and with the set of maps and commentaries derived from this data are the result of this geographical-historical enterprise.1 The database collates, harmonises, geo-references and inter-relates in time firstly all the political and administrative maps for districts, urban agglomerations and places, and secondly the population figures for all these South African entities, both urban and rural, since 1911. In addition, it determines the boundaries and the makeup of the urban entities for each census on a functional basis, moving beyond the administrative divisions and official definitions.

4The demographic and administrative datasets according to the entity considered can thus be processed in the long term, and re-aggregated in constant, present or past functional and administrative spatial frameworks.2 Thus it is the whole spatial and territorial archaeology of South Africa that this tool makes it possible to apprehend in the full diversity of its different modes. The commented geo-historical database Dysturb is compatible with the geographical information systems (GIS) proposed by Statistics South Africa (http://www.statssa.gov.za/) for the last two censuses (which afford access to all census data according to localities subdivided into enumeration areas); it is also compatible with the municipal GIS SA Explorer (developed by the South African Municipal Demarcation Board: www.saexplorer.org.za) which enables access to socioeconomic data for the new municipalities.

The challenge of shifting categories

5Throughout the past century to the classic changes in borders and nomenclature were added changes in category and distinctions in terms of status that were applied to entities of one and the same nature. Paradoxically, the distinctions among individuals on the basis of race and origin, forming the basis of the racist political order until the end of apartheid, generate only minor difficulties in statistical follow-up. Indeed, these distinctions, already present in the colonial era, were maintained, refined and made more rigid in the apartheid period. Thus for the censuses, they were implemented in fairly stable manner, although there were some changes in denomination. An under-estimation of the black population should however be noted at the time of the 'grand apartheid' policy, culminating with the census of 1985, which is not retained in this database for reasons of data reliability.

6The spatial frameworks within which the censuses were compiled are far less stable. Enumerations were conducted within heterogeneous frames with major changes not only in the delimitation and the number of entities up to 1970, but also in their nature and status. Three distinct periods need to be distinguished to apprehend the main changes: the period during which the apartheid system was established at the end of the 1940s and the start of the 1950s, the 'grand apartheid' period (from the start of the 1970s), and the end of apartheid (in the mid 1990s). Apartheid, and in particular the Group Areas Act3, does indeed appear as being fundamental in the systematisation of urban segregation and the differentiation of quarters and localities on a racial basis. On a different scale, the 'grand apartheid' system created what were termed homelands alongside the four historical colonial provinces, with their own districts formed on an ethnic basis. It is also the period during which the urban localities taken into account for the census enumerations were particularly numerous, in particular with the appearance of the townships that were distinct from white areas. Finally, since the end of apartheid, a complete reorganisation of the spatial reference frames and of statistical compilation methods has occurred. Provinces (since 1994), districts and basic municipalities (since 2000) form exhaustive territorial grids that systematically associate spaces corresponding to the former homelands and non-“municipalised” spaces with the spaces corresponding to the former provinces and municipalities. In addition, these entities include the whole population, irrespective of any distinction between urban and rural.

7Concerning urbanisation and the task of tracing its history, South Africa is a rather unique challenge. This arises in part from the practice, subsequently becoming an inherited feature, of physically separating quarters by means of buffer zones that introduce morphological discontinuities within urban areas; it also arises from the practice of “displaced” (resettled) urbanisation beyond the boundaries of the former bantustans, which raises the issue of the nature of isolated but dependent urban agglomerations, and of where they belong.

Dysturb: The three scientific objectives

8By way of its design, Dysturb mainly serves three scientific objectives and domains:

Historical demography and contemporary spatial frameworks placed in perspective

9The database enables novel processing of demographic and administrative data according to locality over a period of one century. The data can be aggregated into stable spatial frameworks, both functional and administrative, past and present. This enables research or demographic history, and makes it possible to put data in perspective in the long term and on different scales, ranging from the local scale of village and quarter to the national scale, via the intermediate scales of district, municipality, province and former bantustan. Work on historical demography4 appears fundamental in the context of the recent reorganisation against a backdrop of colonialism, urbanisation, migratory flows and forced removals, and the ensuing freedom of movement.

An observatory for spatial and territorial archaeology

10It is known that systematising census operations, with the social and spatial classifications upon which this is based, underpins national control strategies in settlement colonies, and this has been studied in particular for the United States (Hannah, 2000). More generally speaking, political geography has explored and used the work by Michel Foucault on “gouvernementalité” and related technologies (2004 a and b) to study the implementation of “geo-powers”5 (Toal, 1996; Rose-Redwood, 2006). In the case of South Africa, this process has been characterised by breaks and marked changes in the spatial categories used, which reflect the successive political systems and governing technologies.

11The database enumerates the succession of divisions, denominations and statuses of places and areas on all scales. These are given for the post-colonial period, for the apartheid period, for the ‘grand apartheidֹ’ period, and the post-apartheid period, each of these periods seeing intense, extremely characteristic territorial engineering activities aiming to manage and use the various spaces for different purposes, colonisation, segregation or reunification. Dysturb enables study of this succession of practices in the division and allocation of spaces, with respect to their general principles and their various modes of implementation according to scale, environment, heritage and opportunity. Beyond the fairly well-known general trends, it is possible to trace the diversity of the different modes of application. Any exceptions identified can take on meaning by way of comparisons with other situations. Finally, it is also possible to cast light on the issues of the status of localities or quarters, and their names, i.e. the toponymy, which is an ongoing concern in South Africa today, by tracing creations and changes of place names in the censuses collated in this database, whether from a monographic viewpoint or with respect to trends.

Study of urban dynamics in the long term

12The database provides a long-term follow-up of the urban entities, from their establishment and through the advancement of the successive waves of the urban frontier, the growth of the population in the 20^th century, and the evolution of the urban contours, both morphological and functional, for each census. Thus the database enables all the localities involved to be linked up, and therefore affords the opportunity to work on South African agglomerations independently from the official definitions in force for each period.

13The population database for these urban entities does not escape the difficulties generated by the statistical sources in South Africa. But it does enable a refinement of the definition of the South African city, viewed as a geographical entity, since it does not reduce it to a mere legal or administrative definition.