Editing Soweto (section)

===Kliptown and Pimville===
[[File:Johannesburg dagsoom (copy).jpg|left|thumb|Klipspruit and [[Diepkloof]], South-west of Johannesburg, laid out on Randjeslaagte]]
In April 1904, there was a bubonic plague scare in the shanty town area of Brickfields. The town council decided to condemn the area and burn it down. Beforehand, most of the Africans living there were moved far out of town to the farm Klipspruit (later called Pimville), south-west of Johannesburg, where the council had erected iron barracks and a few triangular hutments. The rest of them had to build their own shacks. The fire brigade then set the 1600 shacks and shops in Brickfields alight. Thereafter, the area was redeveloped as Newtown.<ref>John R Shorten, The Saga of Johannesburg, John R Shorten (Pty) Limited, Johannesburg, 1970, p. 240.</ref> Pimville was next to [[Kliptown]], the oldest Black residential district of Johannesburg and first laid out in 1891, on land which formed part of Klipspruit farm. The future Soweto was to be laid out on Klipspruit and the adjoining farm called [[Diepkloof]].

In the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek and the subsequent [[Transvaal Colony]], it was lawful for people of colour to own fixed property.<ref>Tshewu v Registrar of Deeds, 1905 T.S. 130.</ref> Consequently, the township of [[Sophiatown]] was laid out in 1903 and Blacks were encouraged to buy property there. For the same reasons, [[Alexandra, Gauteng]] was planned for Black ownership in 1912. The subsequent [[Natives Land Act, 1913|Natives Land Act of 1913]] did not change the situation because it did not apply to land situated within municipal boundaries.<ref>Natives Land Act, No. 27 of 1913, section 8(1)(g) & (i).</ref>