Emerging Johannesburg: Perspectives on the Postapartheid City (review)

Under apartheid, the editors of this exciting compilation point out, Johannesburg had one dominant identity. As the financial hub of South Africa, it was the quintessential apartheid city, serving as a symbol of white supremacy in its persistent reminder of all that was demanded of and denied to the black majority. In the last two triumphant decades, the city has undergone staggering changes. As it, along with the country as a whole, emerges from its sordid past, understandings of the city have multiplied. From one Johannesburg to Jo'burg, Jozi, and Egoli, this single locale has taken on a variety of identities for the diverse populations that now call it home. Probed in this interdisciplinary assemblage of works from the 2000 conference "Urban Futures," the competing, complex identities of an emerging, postapartheid Johannesburg are thrown into new relief.

The book separates its investigations into the city's transformation into four thematic categories. The first contains five chapters based on spatial analyses of the city since the demise of apartheid. They pay particular attention to the massive demographic changes—the "flight" of white residents (and wealth) from the inner city to the increasingly fortified northern suburbs and the concurrent influx to the center city of both black South Africans and African immigrants from places such as Nigeria and the Congo. Examining the effects of population changes from diverse angles, the authors explore such topics as the security-obsessed architecture of the northern suburbs, the demographics of shopping, and the growth of ethnic enclaves. The conclusions they reach are sobering. Persistent retreats from society, xenophobia, and escalating economic hardships associated with life in the inner city and townships ensure the existence of a deeply fractured city, making an integrated Johannesburg an ever-receding ideal.

Part 2, "Experiencing Change," looks at the lived realities described in the first part: small business owners' struggles to make a living, the devastating outcomes of violent crime, and the haphazard ways in which people come to see themselves as belonging to the city. In a photographic essay, the Johannesburg artist Rodney Place showcases works from his Retreks: Post-cards 1999 collection. Here "new" South African identities such as the white tribe of KwaSandton and Buppie Suburbanites are evidenced in a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the "new" nation. Supposing that the South African miracle has achieved little more than an inversion of previous power dynamics, this piece suggests that continuity—rather than change—may be the key analytic factor for understanding contemporary South Africa.

The third part, "Governing and Institution Building," shifts the focus from analysis to practice. In five loosely related chapters, the authors investigate such varying phenomena as the civics movement, service delivery in the era of HIV/AIDS, social differentiation in Soweto, the limits of the law, and the future of the Johannesburg Art Gallery. These essays are fundamentally concerned with the effort to create a legitimate government in the wake of the antiapartheid struggle against the state. Examining challenges associated with this new battle, this section offers some vaguely optimistic, albeit guarded, suggestions.

The two concluding essays are ostensibly connected by their concern with what is termed "the tyranny of representation." The first offers a persuasive critique of dominant global discourses on cities alongside a well-argued call for scholars to reconceptualize Johannesburg as a single city comprising multiple narratives. This serves as an elegant conclusion to the book by suggesting that Johannesburg's new singularity would encompass the very multiplicity so long denied. Yet the book does not end here. Instead, there is a final chapter that argues that the ANC's policy of nonracialism has adversely led to the marginalizing of race in urban politics. While this chapter rightly stresses the importance of historical consciousness, it comes dangerously close to advocating a kind of national stagnancy, closing the book on a rather odd note.

This is a very useful collection for scholars interested in Johannesburg and urban studies...