those two townships. Before 1948 the township of Dube was set aside as an area where wealthier Africans could obtain freehold title and build their own houses. The National Party put a stop to this and changed it to 30-year leaseholds. By 1954 African residents had built 2,500 houses from their own resources. The top-of-the-range houses cost around £1,500 compared to the £250 of the "matchbox" houses in other townships. In 1959 Mr. Carr, the city council's manager of Non-European Affairs, launched a competition to find a new name for the council's showpiece of slum clearance. He offered a prize of £10. After four years of hot arguments the naming committee decided to call it Soweto, an abbreviated version of South-Western Townships. The 1957 Alexandra bus boycott was a protest undertaken against the Public Utility Transport Corporation (PUTCO) by the people of Alexandra. The bus boycott lasted from January 1957 to June 1957. At its height, 70,000 township residents refused to ride the local buses to and from work. For many people this daily journey to downtown Johannesburg was a twenty-mile round trip. In the 1950s the Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom) decided to move its headquarters from the centre of town to Braamfontein. ESCOM acquired a whole block fronting on Smit, Harrison, Loveday and Wolmarans Streets, a site formerly occupied by a dairy. The cost of the site was £261 220 and the building cost was £1 854 620. The building was completed in 1958 and was 17 storeys high. It was called Eskom Centre. Randburg was founded in 1959 as a new municipality of 32 suburbs northwest of Johannesburg. Although economically linked to Johannesburg, residents chose to create their own town council. The name Randburg was chosen in a competition, and is derived from the South African Rand currency, which was introduced at around the same time that the new municipality was established. Randburg was a stronghold of the National Party during the apartheid era. On 31 May 1961 the Union of South Africa became the Republic of South Africa. Republic of South Africa 1961 to 1969 The Albert Hertzog Tower in Brixton Johannesburg was completed in 1962. It is 237-metre-high (778 ft) high concrete radio and (now) television tower. The first transmission took place on 22 December 1961. Presently 18 FM programs and 7 TV stations are broadcast from there. When Albert Hertzog fell into disfavour with the