DOCSLIB.ORG

University of Cape Town

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
University of Cape Town The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only.ape Published by the Universityof of CapeC Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive licensey granted to UCT by the author. Universit RE-ASSESSING THE INNER CITY OF JOHANNESBURG: AN EXPLORATION INTO EMERGING AFRICAN URBANISM AND THE DISCOVERY OF BLACK AGENCY IN PHASWANE MPE'S WELCOME TO OUR HILLBROW AND KGEBETLI MOttE'S ROOM 207. Emma Vivian O'Shaughnessy OSHEMMOOI A minor dissertation submitted in partialfullfilment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Masters of English in Literature and Modernity Under the supervision of DR. HARRY GARUBATown Faculty of the Humanities ape University of Cape Town 2008 of C y COMPULSORY DECLARATION This work has not been previously submitted in whole, or in part, for the award of any degree. It is my own work. Each significant contributionUniversit to, and quotation in, this dissertation from the work, or works, of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced. Signature: ~ G:'Ghu\forms\m-title-page .' UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN GRADUATE SCHOOL IN HUMANITIES DECLARATION BY CANDIDATE FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER IN THE FACULTV OF HUMANITIES I, Of, Town do hereby declare that I empower the University of Capeape Town to produce for the purpose of research either the whole or any portion of the contents of my dissertation entitled: of C y RE-ASSESSING THE INNER CITY OF JOHANNESBURG: AN EXPLORATION INTO EMERGING AFRICAN URBANISM AND THE DISCOVERY OF BLACK AGENCY IN PHASWANE MPE'S WELCOME TO OUR HILLBROW AND KGEBETLI MOELE'S ROOM 207. Universit in any manner whatsoever. 'Zka) kl\.1 200 % DATE g:\ghu\forms\m-declaration ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I extend my deepest gratitude to The University of Cape Town and the National Research Foundation for their generous funding of this project. Also, I thank the staff at the UCT Postgraduate Funding Office who have always been most helpful and attentive. Greatest thanks to my supervisor, Dr Harry Gamba, whose gentle, sage advice and articulate criticism gave me the freedom and confidence to explore the ideas in this project. I thank the English Department and in particular Dr Carrol Clarkson, who has been my intellectual bedrock these last three years, Thank you also to Dr Gail Fincham and Mr Peter Anderson for their helpfulness and humour. To my mother, without whom none of this would have been possible, to my sister for her patience, to Kelly, David and Jane Rosenthal for their support and love and to all the rest of my friends for their confidence in me, I thank you. And, thank you fInally to my beloved father -the writer and poet­ who in his lifetime taught me the love of words and life, and in whose footsteps I aspire to follow. Town ape of C y Universit ABSTRACT At present, we are witnessing an exciting moment in African urban discourse, one that sees writers and theorists engaging with new avenues in which the African city c~ be configured and read. The discourse reflects and focuses on the myriad, creative ways in which African urbanites capitalise on their environments, exploring the kinds of challenges and freedoms generated by a life in the African city. Underlying this exploration is the notion that through the development of creative tactics, African urbanites can lay claim to agency amidst difficult conditions and can also shape their urban environments into flexible and enabling spaces. This approach challenges the idea that African cities are simply 'dysfunctional' or 'chaotic'. Simultaneously, this allows the stigma attached to the entire 'sign' of Africa to be challenged. The following study uses this basis of African urban discourse and applies it to a South African context. Indeed, one local urban centre that has always garnered a wealth of interest is the inner city of Johannesburg. Recent theory and research around African cities allows me to delve deeper into the intricacies of its social and geo-politicallandscape. TheTown purpose of this is ultimately to shape a literary study. The discourse will aid me as I analyse two novels set in the inner city, namely Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Ourape Hillbrow and Kgebteli Moele's Room 207. The theoretical framework creates a context in which I explore the impact of these two, post-apartheid novels. The texts also provide a crossover point that enables me to explore the ideas propagated byof emerging C African urban theory in depth. Both novels are realistic and semi- autobiographicaly accounts of life in the inner city. In a sense, the novels provide a semi-fictionalised 'ethnographic' frame for my research. This is not to imply that literature can challenge social theory or that the two naturally should correspond. What this approach does allow for is for me to show how valuable the writer is in this kind of environment, as well as how the city generates a particular kind of story and storytelling. Furthermore,Universit it gives me a space in which the central tenets of African urban thought can be explored and applied in detail. For these reasons, the following research is multidisciplinary, using a range of social, urban theory to understand two creative, urban texts. The contribution it aims to make is to both to the field of literature and to the study of (South) African city spaces. -CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE 1.1. INTRODUCTION pp.1-7 1.2 EMERGING AFRICAN URBANISM pp.7-21 CHAPTER TWO ENTERING THE CITY: JOHANNESBURG'S INNER DISTRICTS 'THEN' AND 'NOW' pp.22-45 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVELS pp.46-47 CHAPTER THREE THE POSSIBIUTIES OF RESOLUTION AND SOLUTION: PHASWANE MPE'S WELCOME TO OUR mLLBROW pp. 48-76 CHAPTER FOUR THE TENSIONS IN 'BECOMING': KGEBETU MOELE'S Town ROOM 107 pp.77-113 ape CONCLUSION pp.114-120 of C y BmLIOGRAPHY pp.121-131 Universit CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION EMERGING AFRICAN URBANISM Town ape of C y Universit 1 Introduction This mini-dissertation was prompted by my interest in an unprecedented moment in world history, one in which the urban environment is fast becoming the destination of choice amongst many of the world's peoples.} It was also prompted by what is an exciting moment in urban thought and theory. At present, there is a new kind of urban discourse emerging, one that challenges the way that cities in Africa, and other so-called developing countries, are configured or read. Nowadays, dominant urban discourse, having emerged from the West, is revealing itself to be increasingly limited. What this means is that the models used for historical assessments of the urban space are in the process of being re-assessed. Traditional urban discourse, in foregrounding developmentalism and modernization, reinforced historical binaries that typecast African cities-- and Africa in general- as deficient or problematic. African urban discourse seeks to transcend these dichotomies by emphasising agency and a dynamic way of viewing the urban space. New and exciting scholarshipTown on the African city tends to emphasise forms of agency amongst African actors in the urban space, prioritising their capacity respond to the urban environmentape in productive and creative ways, despite limited choices or access basic services, jobs, education and so on. Many urban scholars are focusing on the avenues through which the city dweller in Africa is able to create significant and meaningful lives ofin this environment,C despite obviously difficult conditions. In addition, these 'difficult'y urban conditions are in the process of being re-assessed so that instead of being seen as problematic, they are rather seen as 'different'. By emphasising the ways in which the individual in the African city exercises flexibility, autonomy and resilience in response to the overarching power structure of the urban environment, the very 'sign' of the city in Africa is challenged, from the bottom up. Individual performancesUniversit are seen to have the capacity to re-shape the urban space, } See Mike Davis, Planet o/Slums. London, New York: Verso, 2006. He states that: 'Cities, indeed, have absorbed nearly two-thirds of the global population explosion since 1950, and are currently growing by a million babies and migrants each week. The world's urban labor force has more than doubled since 1980, and the present urban population-3.2 billion- is larger than the total popUlation of the world when John F Kennedy was inaugurated. The global countryside, meanwhile, has reached its maximum population and will begin to shrink after 2020. As a result, cities will account for virtually all future world population growth, which is expected to peak at about 10 billion in 2050.' Pp. 1-2 2 making it dynamic, flexible and enabling. This aspect of forging or establishing autonomy and making creative life choices in the face of potentially limiting urban conditions, informs the use of the tenn 'agency' in this dissertation. If agency refers to the power in a human person to enact choice and act freely within society, then within the city, this notion will be applied to the particular conditions of the urban space. In particular, within the space of the South African city, Johannesburg, the tenn 'black agency' invokes the black individual's capacity to make choices and act in an autonomous way in a democratic socio-political context. However, as we shall see in the dissertation, this is problematic since for so many black people in South Africa, the capacity to act freely is still not possible, considering that the remnants of apartheid's socio-economic strategy are yet to be completely dismantled.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Blood on the Page
    Blood on the Page Blood on the Page: Interviews with African Authors writing about HIV/AIDS By Lizzy Attree Blood on the Page: Interviews with African Authors writing about HIV/AIDS, by Lizzy Attree This book first published 2010 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2010 by Lizzy Attree All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-2077-6, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2077-6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Interview with Phaswane Mpe................................................................... 21 Interview with Sindiwe Magona................................................................ 33 Interview with Kgafela oa Magogodi ........................................................ 77 Interview with Alexander Kanengoni........................................................ 99 Interview with Vivienne Kernohan aka Violet Kala................................ 111 Interview with Charles Mungoshi ..........................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Discourse, Disease and Displacement: Interrogating Selected South African Textual Constructions of Aids
    DISCOURSE, DISEASE AND DISPLACEMENT: INTERROGATING SELECTED SOUTH AFRICAN TEXTUAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF AIDS by FELICITY JUNE HORNE submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY in the subject ENGLISH STUDIES at the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA SUPERVISOR: Dr G. Graham-Smith CO-SUPERVISOR: Prof. B. Spencer JUNE 2010 2 DEDICATION Dedicated to my late parents Margaret and Billy Kirk for giving me a love of the English language and books. 3 DECLARATION I declare that this thesis, entitled ‘Discourse, Disease and Displacement: Interrogating Selected South African Textual Constructions of AIDS’, is my own work and that all the sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references. Signed: 4 Discourse, Disease and Displacement: Interrogating Selected South African Textual Constructions of AIDS SUMMARY This thesis explores the theme of displacement in AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome)-related discourse in post-apartheid South Africa in the period 1994−2010. It contends that the subject of AIDS and the AIDS-ill is seldom confronted directly in the discourse, but displaced in various ways. Using the theory of social constructionism and the discourse theory of the French poststructuralists, particularly Michel Foucault, selected texts, both literary and non-literary, are subjected to discourse analysis, in which the interrelationships between linguistic and visual representations of AIDS, practice, knowledge and power relations are examined. Recognising that all representations are to some extent displaced constructions, the thesis investigates additional reasons for the particular kinds of displacement of AIDS seen in AIDS discourse. These include stigma, fear, defensiveness and the enduring power of pre- existing discourses onto which AIDS is grafted.
    [Show full text]
  • 00A-Ariel 37(4)
    New South African Writing: A Special Cluster “Reader, be assured this narrative is no fiction”: The City and Its Discontents in Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow Gugu Hlongwane Th e delicate line between fact and fi ction in Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow is suggested in one of the novel’s epigraphs attributed to W. E. B. Du Bois: “Reader, be assured this narrative is no fi ction.” Th at Mpe evokes a strategy of address employed by African-American scholars and slave-narrative writers such as Harriet Jacobs who spoke directly to their readers insisting on the authenticity of their traumatic experiences in racist America, speaks volumes about South Africa’s fl edgling inde- pendence.1 In his damning indictment of a South Africa that retains the socio-economic markers of apartheid, Mpe focuses on drug- and prosti- tution-ridden areas of post-1994 Johannesburg that are predominantly black. Th ere is, here, neither evidence of Nelson Mandela’s “rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world,” nor of a reconciled society. If relations with whites who occupy positions of power over blacks seem strained, they are even more so amongst urban blacks who form a very fragmented community. In fact, the once politically oppressed South African blacks are now portrayed as the new oppressors of Africans from outside the country, thus making the notion of a new and diff erent South Africa a very premature one. But the novel does attempt to steer away from this toxic mood by adopting a moral didacticism designed to encourage social transformation.
    [Show full text]
  • Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow
    Reappraising the myth of the new South Africa : Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to our Hillbrow Richard Samin To cite this version: Richard Samin. Reappraising the myth of the new South Africa : Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to our Hillbrow. Alizés : Revue angliciste de La Réunion, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences humaines (Université de La Réunion), 2004, Founding Myths of the New South Africa / Les mythes fondateurs de la nouvelle Afrique du Sud, pp.80-94. hal-02344106 HAL Id: hal-02344106 https://hal.univ-reunion.fr/hal-02344106 Submitted on 3 Nov 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Reappraising the myth of the new South Africa: Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow Richard SAMIN University of Nancy 2 (France) Introduction The political transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa naturally generated mythic representations to convey the momentousness of the event, using people, concepts and institutions to bolster its impact and, in Allister Sparks's words, to “[swell] the ineffable spirit of national rebirth” (Sparks 1996: 228). The personality of Nelson Mandela largely contributed to the popularity of a new South Africa as a land of reconciliation and renewal along with the symbol of the rainbow, the notion of “ubuntu” and the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
    [Show full text]
  • Where There Are Feet, There Is Hope
    CONTENTS 2 Preface: Who is Walking? 5 Conscientious Objections 15 Border Crossings 23 Speeding towards Paris 28 Slow Walk to Freedom 34 Finding the Balance 44 In the Footsteps of Bosman and Dickens, via Hillbrow 51 A Cappella 61 Fast Forward 68 References 76 Afterthoughts 146 Bibliography Preface: Who is Walking? In 1951 Ray Bradbury wrote his short story “The Pedestrian”. The story records the last walk of Leonard Mead, the sole remaining pedestrian in A.D. 2053. Though part of a collection of science fiction stories, it was inspired by Bradbury’s experience when out walking in Los Angeles one night with a friend. A police officer stopped them and asked them what they were doing. “Just walking,” Bradbury replied. “Well, don’t do it again,” said the policeman. Los Angeles, Bradbury’s home, is an extreme case in its autocentricity, but this suspicion of pedestrians is not new. Thomas De Quincey describes – in his account of his 1802 journey from Wales to London – the “criminal fact of having advanced by base pedestrian methods”. The origins of a vagrant being described as a tramp don’t require too much speculation. In South Africa, with its particular history, remnants of the artificial construction of economic access along racial lines are echoed in the current profiles of pedestrians. Walking continues to be considered a practice of the poor and marginalized. And since the majority of the poor remain black, white pedestrians are regarded, if not with suspicion, certainly with curiosity. While walking at all in Los Angeles is considered vaguely pathological, the profiles of people using public transport have come increasingly to resemble those in Johannesburg: almost invariably the working poor, and people of colour.
    [Show full text]
  • Marginality in Post-Trc Texts: Storytelling and Representational Acts
    MARGINALITY IN POST-TRC TEXTS: STORYTELLING AND REPRESENTATIONAL ACTS Ha-Eun Grace Kim Thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts at the University of Stellenbosch Supervisor: Professor Meg Samuelson Department of English November 2010 1 DECLARATION I, the undersigned, hereby declare that the work contained in this thesis is my own original work and has not previously in its entirety or in part been submitted at any university for a degree. Signature: Date: 14 February 2011 Copyright ©2010 Stellenbosch University All rights reserved i ABSTRACT As a society that is only in its adolescence as a democracy, South Africa faces massive inequalities, both politically and socially. Within this context, Fanie du Toit of the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation urges us to remember that “nation-building in our young democracy requires opportunities for South African voices to be heard, particularly those from the margins of society, so often excluded, ignored or forgotten” (1). This thesis thus focuses on story-telling and representational acts of the marginalized in post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) texts. The term “post-TRC” is an indication of the framework I use to explore the poetics and politics of representation, as well as the past‟s impact on contemporary South Africa. In my overview of the TRC, I focus not on actual testimonies, but on the space provided for the marginalized to speak, as well as methodologies and techniques of representation that stem from the TRC process. Antjie Krog‟s Country of My Skull (1998), which mimics and expands on the TRC‟s work, sets the platform for my discussion as Krog incorporates many of the victims‟ testimonies into her narrative.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading the City: Analysing Literary Space in Selected Postapartheid Urban Narratives by Niall Mcnulty a Thesis Submitted In
    Reading the City: analysing literary space in selected postapartheid urban narratives by Niall McNulty A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the degree of Master ofArts University ofKwaZulu-Natal 2005 Declaration The Registrar (Academic) UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL Dear Sir/ Madam I, Niall McNulty Student No: 204520432 Hereby declare that the dissertation entitled: Reading the City: analysing literary space in selected postapartheid urban narratives Is the result ofmy own investigation and research and that it has not been submitted in part or in full for any other degree or to any other university. Signed by _ Approved by ---------------------- Supervisor Date 11 ABSTRACT Reading the City - analysing literary space in selected postapartheid urban narratives. Space can be read through text. Space is also constructed through text. Literary and critical theory has, however, emphasised time over space. However, space, place and location are crucial determining factors in any literary study. Through reference to theories of construction of place as well as writings on spatial history and the city I will discuss how place is created through text and how the urban environment affects literary production. Using the work of Michel Foucault (1986, 2002) on space and power, Michel de Certeau's approach to cities (2002) and WaIter Benjamin's (2002) theories on space, time and the city, as well as South African theoretical approaches to space and the city, I will attempt an analysis of place in chosen pieces of literature set in the post­ apartheid city by selected writers. I have chosen to focus on the cities of Durban and Johannesburg, and in particular the innercities, because it is here that major transformation in the use and representation ofspace has occurred.
    [Show full text]