Surplus People Project /Records

The Surplus People Project (SPP) grew out of the resettlement programme of the National Party government in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. This resettlement programme was one of the cornerstones of the apartheid state as it worked to ensure that political and economic supremacy remained in the hands of the white elite. This was to be accomplished by the so-called 'White South Africa' into the ten bantustans or into separate group areas within urban areas.
The SPP was established in late 1979 as a national research project to investigate and report on the resettlement programme and the ramifications that it was having and would have in South African political, economic, psychological and social life. The event which sparked the formation of the SPP was the announcement in 1979 that Crossroads, an illegal squatter settlement in Cape Town, would be relocated. Although the area managed to receive a reprieve, this was to prove temporary - by 1984 this community was again under threat of removal.
The SPP was intended to last a year in duration, but managed to stretch its funds over three years, during which much of its time was spent in coordinating and carrying out research projects into population relocation throughout South Africa. Areas that were under threat of relocation, as well as areas to which people had been relocated, were both included in the project.
The basis of the research project tended to be household questionnaires, the results of which were then collated for the general and provincial reports produced and printed in 5 volumes by the SPP. As the communities which had been surveyed were largely illiterate, the SPP organised slide shows, field trips and meetings to report back to these communities their various findings. They were helped in this regard by AFRA (Association of Rural Advancement, the Black Sash Rural Development Project, GRC (Grahamstown Rural Committee and RAP (Rural Action Project). Laurine Platzky, who coordinated the SPP project nationally, and Cherryl Walker, who coordinated the project in Natal, were asked to write a book on behalf of the SPP so that the reports that had been compiled might be presented in a more accessible manner for the broader public.
The work of the SPP was at times hampered by the state's actions, with several of the SPP's key members being arrested and its fieldworkers harassed. By 1983 the SPP was no longer an active organisation, but existed only to oversee any subsequent editions of the volumes that might be produced.