as it kept African laborers tied to white farms and made it illegal for
Africans to leave their Homelands, except as temporary migrant workers.
There is a story to be told by social historians of the ways in which black
people not only survived under apartheid but also created their own social
and economic worlds.:'! In the urban ghettos, Africans mingled, regardless
of ethnicity. For example, they ignored the government's attempt to carve
up the townships into ethnic divisions; they married across ethnic lines;
and members of the younger generation identified themselves as Africans
(or even, comprehensively, as Blacks, thus including Coloureds and Indi-
ans) rather than as Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Pedi, or Tswana. The story will
also emphasize the achievements of African women, who were particularly
insecure, since the law codified the inferior status that they had had in
precolonial custom and applied it to the very different circumstances of a
capitalist state. Under apartheid, African women, many of them heads of
households as a.result of the persistence of male migrant labor, held the
fabric of African society together.V
Social historians will also record the experiences of African children
under apartheid. In a report for the United Nations Children's Fund, Fran-