South African cities were highly segregated in the 20th century as a result of the attempt by the White minority to maintain political and economic dominance. An analysis of the data from successive censuses offers a means of measuring the changes
, but also that they rose in the period between 1985 and 1991. The White population remains highly segregated from the remainder. There is nevertheless a number of significant regional differences.
In South Africa the White minority sought to retain political power in the face of majority African demands for equality, by means of state partition. The government attempted to create new states for linguistically defined groups within the African