RACIAL SEGREGATION AND MEDICAL DISCOURSE IN 19TH-CENTURY CAPE-TOWN

This study considers the timing and the nature of the emergence of rac ial segregation in two kev colonial institutions of the nineteenth cen tury Cape, the Breakwater Prison and the General Infirmary on Robben I sland. Whereas many historians have pointed to the early 1900s as a cr ucial decade in the development of systematic racial segregation in so ciety as a whole, the Robben Island hospitals and the Breakwater priso ns provide evidence of segregatory pressures from the 1860s and 1870s. In this regard, medical and scientific discourses played an important role, as they did in defining the need for urban segregation (on 'san itary' grounds) at the turn of the twentieth century. Institutional se gregation on grounds of race occurred earlier, in part because prisons and hospitals offered controlled environments suitable for experiment ation. Racial segregation was also linked to other segregatory practic es, such as those which were defined in terms of gender and social sta tus. The precise tinting for the introduction of racial segregation di ffered between institutions; a process which has to be accounted for i n terms of the particular character and ethos of each individual insti tution. Tensions between the universalist ethic of health care and the increasing pressures in favour of segregation were not easily resolve d. By the 1890s, however, the social and scientific consensus in favou r of racial segregation was overwhelming, and this was soon to be rein forced by wider political developments.