Edgar Pieterse

Grasping the unknowable: coming to grips with African urbanisms

The purpose of this essay is to make a case for why a much more differentiated and complex theoretical approach to contemporary African urbanism is required. It builds on an important body of work that has emerged over the course of the past two decades that seeks to explicate and theorise the specificity of everyday practices of ordinary Africans as they endeavour to stitch together livelihoods, aspirations, socialities, aesthetics and space amidst conditions of widespread poverty and deprivation. However, this body of work on ordinary urbanism seeks to make a break with the reductionist tendencies in African urban studies to derive observation and explanation from a materialist reading of difficult living conditions, to foreground instead other ways of understanding the density and spatiality of urban becomings. The essay starts with some orienting information about the dynamics and trajectories of urbanisation in Africa in order to underscore how much we still do not know, and to caution against simplistic extrapolations that we need to ‘manage’ a so‐called disastrous tendency. In the section that follows the contextualisation, I switch registers and draw out some of the scholarly perspectives and debates on how we can create an account of African urbanisms with an eye on some of the limitations of this relatively new literature. Thereafter I use this convenient binary to enter into some reflections on what the methodological and philosophical implications might be of trying to come to terms with the elusive essence of African cities. This account is used to then spell out a research agenda that in part informs the overall project of the African Centre for Cities on African urbanisms.

African Reverberations of the Mumbai Attacks

In the wake of Mumbai terror attacks one is forced to reflect on the nature and representation of urban violence across the global South. It is clear that only certain kinds of violence and upheaval warrant attention in the public domain as reflected in the world’s globalized media. This observation immediately forces one to consider the deafening silence about the pervasive execution and symbolic order of terror in much of Africa. Indeed, 88 percent of conflict deaths between 1990 and 2007 in Africa received hardly any media coverage let alone analysis. Given that one is talking about 5.4 million deaths in Congo (DRC) alone, it is very difficult to fully comprehend the differential treatment of conflict, violence and death. Drawing on the rich perspective in postcolonial urban studies that cities can be read as targets, I seek to extend that work by bringing routinized violence, focused on social infrastructures and relations, into the analytical frame. Hopefully, the Mumbai attacks can at least open up fresh and more urgent avenues of theoretical work on the painful and extreme constitution of urban modernities in the global South.

Hip‐hop cultures and political agency in Brazil and South Africa

It is assumed in the article that the contemporary urban condition is marked by an increased pluralistic intensity in cities. Coupled to this shift in the nature of the urban context, one can also observe a proliferation of sites of political engagement and agency, some of which are formally tied to the various institutional forums of the state, and many that are defined by their insistence to stand apart from the state, asserting autonomy and clamouring for a self‐defined terms of recognition and agency. This article draws attention to the significance of one category of urban actors – hip‐hoppers – that can be said to occupy a ‘marginal’ location in relation to the state, but one uniquely relevant to the marginalised existence of most poor black youth in cities of the global South, particularly Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town. The article demonstrates that hip‐hop cultures offer a powerful framework of interpretation and response for poor black youth who are systemically caught at the receiving end of extremely violent and exploitative urban forces. The basis of hip‐hops power is its complex aesthetical sensibility that fuses affective registers, such as rage, passion, lust, critique, pleasure and desire, which, in turn, translates into political identities, and sometimes agency (i.e. positionality), for its participants. In the final instance, the article tries to link conclusions about the potential of hip‐hop cultural politics to larger themes in urban studies, such as participation, public space, citizenship and security.

Urban social movements in South Africa in a ‘globalising’ era

ConclusionIn spite of the dizzying speed of change and increased complexity in the wake of political, economic and cultural shifts at a global level, it is clear that urban social movements are potentially pivotal actors in forging a progressive political agenda. In South Africa the dimensions of these new challenges are presenting themselves with increasing clarity, especially against the backdrop of the unfolding political transition. In the first part of this paper I pointed to some of the dimensions which are inscribed in the sign globalisation, with special attention to the significance it presents for urbanities — the space and place where urban social movements engrave their struggles. One of the central aspects of the argument has been that these movements are increasingly ineffectual in impacting on local politics, especially in so far as they fail to strategically adapt and re-focus their energies to engage the new challenges which are unfolding in urban spaces traversed by global processes.Staking-out strategic ‘turf’ and remaining a key player in urban politics, poses a fundamental challenge to progressive urban social movements becoming reflexive in their ideology and practice. This pressure is in part induced by the nature of the myriad of processes which entangle the urban in globalisation, but also by the vacuousness of traditional left politics couched in class-essentialism. The bulk of the paper explored various dimensions of radical ‘postmodern politics’ and their significance for fresh ideological perspectives, strategic orientations and organisational elasticity. By inserting this into a broader appreciation of the legacy and current posture of the civic movement, I attempted to contextualise and ground useful aspects of radical postmodernism. I hope that this has laid the basis for a new round of critical debate about the significance of building vibrant, independent, non-essentialist and (culturally) rooted urban social movements which can brazenly stake out legitimate claims in urban spaces in the so-called global era.

Urban governance and spatial transformation ambitions in Johannesburg

ABSTRACT Urban governance has been thrust into the spotlight in the wake of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. A number of the 17 goals assume strong urban governments with the requisite powers and financial capacities to restructure the functioning of regional economies so as to establish transition pathways toward more sustainable societies. South Africa, and Johannesburg’s metropolitan government in particular, represents an instructive case study of precisely this kind of local government. South Africa adopted one of the most far-reaching systems of decentralization with the advent of democracy in the mid-1990s and enshrined local government autonomy within the constitution of 1996 along with the provision for integrated metropolitan governments. Significantly, these authorities have the powers and fiscal resources to confront conflictual and irresolvable differences in the city, which are inevitable outcomes from decades of oppressive racial government. The article explores the history of democratic decentralization reforms in South Africa and Johannesburg with an eye on analyzing the significance of the Corridors of Freedom flagship initiative of the Johannesburg metropolitan government. This exercise affords a critical perspective on the latest generation of strategic planning and prioritization in metropolitan South Africa.

African dreams: locating urban infrastructure in the 2030 sustainable developmental agenda

ABSTRACT This paper examines African urban infrastructure and service delivery as an entry point for connecting African aspirations with the harsh developmental imperatives of urban management, creating a dialogue between scholarly knowledge and sustainable development policy aspirations. We note a shift to multi-nodal urban governance and highlight the significance of the synthesis of social, economic and ecological values in a normative vision of what an African metropolis might aspire to by 2030. The sustainable development vision provides a useful stimulus for Africa’s urban poly-crisis, demanding fresh interdisciplinary and normatively explicit thinking, grounded in a practical and realistic understanding of Africa’s infrastructure and governance challenges.