Class in Soweto by Peter Alexander (review)

Class in Sowetois coauthored by Peter Alexander, Claire Ceruti, Keke Motseke, and Mosa Phadi, all of the University of Johannesburg, and Kim Wale, of SOAS, University of London. Under the auspices of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the coauthors have utilized their separate research projects to present analyses of more than 2000 questionnaires, which go a long way to offer insights covering a six-year period. With class structure and class identity as their focus, they impart useful information on the daily life of the residents of Soweto, South Africa’s most populous and politically important township, and on the urban condition of the global south. With several useful photographs (tucked between pages 84 and 85), listed abbreviations (pp. i–vii), and acknowledgments (pp. vii–ix), the book has ten chapters and two appendices (pp. 249–259), a comprehensive bibliography (pp. 274–294), and an index (pp. 297–230).

Alexander, a sociologist by training, uses chapter one to introduce the book and give an overview of its contents. Quoting from J. N. Pieterse’s essay on global inequality (2002), he focuses on affordability and action. Without mincing words, he underscores that when it comes to South Africa, “income inequality and unemployment have reached extreme levels” (p. 1). He points out that 69 percent of adult Sowetans are not in the labor force, are unemployed, or are engaged in survivalist activities, and that traditional occupation-based categorizations have limited value. Alexander in his introduction and overview, provides an enlightened discussion of the book’s theoretical and methodological framework, an appraisal of relevant international literature, views of class in South Africa generally and the African petty bourgeoisie, analysis of unemployment and class, an account of the book’s main findings, a summary of its contents, and a section of notes.

Most certainly, historians will appreciate Wale’s “Historical Introduction to Class in Soweto” (chapter two), in which readers are given, with precision, the historic township’s summarized history. The chapter offers the history of Soweto, in which important subtopics discussed include the construction of Soweto; apartheid’s influx controls and new divisions; stratification within townships; consumption and status in Soweto; reform and resistance, 1979–1990; reform policy and Soweto’s new middle class; township resistance; postapartheid Soweto, 1990–2011; negotiations, disillusionment, and resistance; stratification, class, and material culture; a conclusion; and notes.

Chapters three, on contemporary Soweto; four, on Soweto as a proletarian township; five, on the township’s underemployment; six, on models, labels, and the town’s affordability; seven, dealing with perceptions of class mobility; and eight, on language of class and difficult words—contributed by Ceruti; Alexander and Wale; Phadi and Ceruti; Wale; Phadi and Manda; and Motseke and Mazibuko, respectively—are useful chapters, which readers of the book should find ample time to digest. Alexander’s final substantive discussion, as chapter ten, ends the book with answers for several posed research questions, including what the coauthors started the book with, which was about the possible class basis of divisions between trade unions and social movements. Also, theoretical pointers are offered, while readers should be happy to stumble into coherent implications of the provided studies. Appendix one, by Alexander and Ceruti, deals with methodology; appendix two, by Ceruti alone, discusses Sowetans in the classifying Soweto survey, where useful diagrams and graphs are exhibited for clarification for quantitatively minded readers.

In a back-page blurb, American Sociological Association President Erik Olin Wright, a distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, describes the book as an exemplary study of social class and its ramifications for the lives of the people studied, judging that it is a publication that should be read by anyone interested in studying the problems of class in the contemporary world, not only in South Africa.