mercialization of agriculture and Africans who could not survive in the
reserves. By 1936,
according to the official census of that year, the urban
population numbered more than 3 million and comprised 3 I percent of the
total population. Of this, about
1.3 million were classified as White, I. I
million as African, 400,000
as Coloured, and 200,000
as Asian. Sixty-five
percent of the White population of South Africa, 44 percent of the Colo-
ured, 66 percent of the Asian, and 17 percent of the African population
were in the towns. Johannesburg, the largest city,had 5 1.9,000
inhabitants:
258,000
Whites,
229,000
Africans,
22,000
Coloureds,
and
10,000
Asians.t"
The government tried to limit the flow of Africans into the cities with a
complex accumulation of pass laws. The origin of those laws goes back to
the eighteenth century, when slaveswere obliged to carry documents signed
by their masters when they were absent from their masters' homes. Some
pass laws were designed to ensure that white farmers should not lose their
African laborers. It was unlawful, for example, for Africans to leave the
farms where they were employed without a pass (Document of Identifica-
tion) provided by the farmer. Others were designed to prevent Africans