THESEGREGATIONEAA
a period of slight decline after 1941, coal-mining and the manufacturing
industries continued the rapid expansion that had begun in 1933. Between
1938-39 and 1945-46 the number of employees in the coal-mining indus-
try increased by 50 percent to 51,643 and in manufacturing by 60 percent
to 379,022. In particular, the garment industry nearly doubled in those
years; by the end of the war it was employing 60,856 people and producing
goods worth £42 million.74
This expansion drew more and more people into the towns. By 1946, 76
percent of the white population, 70 percent of the Indians, 62 percent of the
Coloureds, and 24 percent of the Africans were in towns. The African
figure was the most significant. There were more Africans than Whites in
the towns by 1946. Moreover, whereas 55 percent ofthe Africans who were
in towns at the time of the census of 1911 were male migrant laborers,
serving short-term contracts in the gold, diamond, and coal mines, at the
time of the census of 1946 only 21 percent of the urban Africans were
employed by those industries. Large number ofAfricans, including African
women, like Whites, Coloureds, and Asians, were settling permanently in
the towns.i" The most pregnant social process in South Africa in the first