Martin J. Murray

Cities in contemporary Africa

Introduction: Situating Contemporary Cities in Africa G.Myers & M.Murray PART I:Culture, Imagination, Place, and Space Douala/Johannesburg/New York: Cityscapes Imagined D.Malaquais Internal Migration and the Escalation of Ethnic and Religious Violence in Urban Nigeria D.J.Smith Re(figuring) the City: The Mapping of Places and People in Contemporary Kenyan Popular Song Texts J.Nyairo Photographic Essay: Johannesburg Fortified M.J.Murray & J.Malan (photography) Douala: Inventing Life in an African Necropolis B.Ndjio PART II: Political Economy, Work, and Livelihoods Economic Globalization from Below: Transnational Refugee Trade Networks in Nairobi E.Campbell Changing African Cityscapes: Regional Claims of African Labor at South African-owned Shopping Malls D.Miller Cars Are Killing Luanda: Cronyism, Consumerism, and Other Assaults on Angolas Post-War Captial City. M.A.Pitcher (with A.Graham) Photographic Essay II:Luanda, Angola A.Graham Human Capital, Embedded Resources and Employment for Youth in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe M.Grant Gender Relations, Bread Winning and Family Life in Kinshasa G.Iyenda & D.Simon PART III: Urban Planning, Administration and Governance South African Urbanism: Between the Modern and the Refugee Camp A.Simone Planning, Anti-Planning and the Infrastructure Crisis Facing Metropolitan Lagos M.Gandy City Life in Zimbabwe at a Time of Fear and Loathing: Urban Planning, Urban Poverty, and Operation Murambatsvina D.Potts Social Control and Social Welfare under Neoliberalism in South African Cities: Contradictions in Free Basic Water Services G.Ruiters

Alien Strangers in Our Midst: The Dreaded Foreign Invasion and 'Fortress South Africa'

ResumeLa fin de l’apartheid et la transition vers la democratie parlementaire a attire en Afrique du sud, de tous les coins du monde (mais surtout des pays africains), des dizaines de milliers de personnes a la recherche d’opportunites de securite socio-economique et d’avancement. Si leurs motifs, niveaux d’aptitudes et ressources financieres varient considerablement, ces immigrants recents confrontent typiquement les soupcons, la mefiance et meme la franche hostilite des citoyens sud-africains ordinaires. Les “natifs” Sud-africains, vivant dans un climat d’incertitude, considerent souvent ces nouveaux arrivants comme une menace (reelle ou fictive) a leur bien-etre personnel. L’opprobre qu’ils font subir a ces “autres” indesirables se transforme quelquefois en paniques morales reelles vis-a-vis de l’”invasion etrangere” de la fragile “nouvelle nation.”

The Formalization of Informal/Precarious Labor in Contemporary Argentina

In this article we argue that the Argentinian state is legalizing or formalizing informal/precarious labor. In the actual context of employment crisis in Argentina, the state intervenes in the labor market through a legislation that promotes low wages and unstable and unprotected work. Paradoxically, these precarious conditions are associated with informal labor, where the established theory does not recognize the power of regulation of the state. The new labor legislation in contemporary Argentina challenges the established division between formal-regulated vs informal-unregulated labor, at the same time that it contradicts the neoliberal/anti-state intervention discourses.

The spatial dynamics of postmodern urbanism: social polarisation and fragmentation in Saão Paulo and Johannesburg1

Numerous urban theorists have focused on the changing morphological characteristics of urban landscapes and, in particular, on the use, management, and regulation of city space. 2 In looking at the fragmentation of the urban realm into what Harvey (2000:152) calls “a patchwork quilt of islands of relative affluence struggling to secure themselves in a sea of spreading decay”, these scholars have drawn our attention to the spatiality of contemporary cities. By highlighting such spatial features as ‘edge cities’, gated residential communities and other ‘privatopias’, fortified office citadels, downtown renaissance zones, festival marketplaces and other enclosed shopping-mall extravaganzas as they appear in cities around the world, these urban theorists have made us aware of the evolving patterns of spatial restructuring associated with a distinctive kind of polynucleated and fragmented city form, one which some scholars have called ‘postmodern urbanism’ (Dear 2000; Dear and Flusty 1998; Soja 2000; Hannigan 1995). Unlike other urban paradigms (such as the ‘global cities’ or ‘world cities’ perspectives) which take urban political economy as their point of departure, the theorists of postmodern urbanism lay particular stress on the spatial dynamics of the urban landscape, looking upon the cityscape as a contested terrain where spatial politics involve struggles over the use of urban space, particularly in regard to who belongs where and with what entitlements or citizenship rights (Harvey 2000; Holston 1999:157–73).

‘Blackbirding’ at ‘Crooks’ corner’: illicit labour recruiting in the northeastern Transvaal, 1910–1940

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Africans in search of work were attracted to the wage‐paying employment opportunities on the Witwatersrand. These work‐seekers travelled great distances on foot, battling hunger, disease, and the harsh environment. For those Africans wishing to enter the Transvaal without benefit of official permission, the border presented little obstacle. These clandestine migrants easily bypassed police posts, but they experienced greater difficulty in evading predatory labour recruiters. Illicit labour recruiting took place all along the frontier, but assumed special significance at the far corner of the northeastern Transvaal. It was here where the borders of the Transvaal, Southern Rhodesia, and Portuguese East Africa met that labour pirating, or ‘blackbirding’ as it was sometimes called, careened out of control. Investigating the modus operandi of these unscrupulous labour recruiters sheds light on wider questions concerning the historical formation of labour markets i...

The Pharmaceutical Industry: A Study in Corporate Power:

Most studies of the pharmaceutical industry have focused on such issues as restrictive patent regulation, ineffective products, duplicative marketing procedures, misrepresentative advertising, and the peculiar noncompetitive structure of markets. These investigations have revealed only certain aspects of the structure of the pharmaceutical industry. Three significant trends are investigated in this paper: international expansion, diversification through mergers and acquisitions, and interlocking directorates with financial institutions. The thesis of this paper is that small-scale drug manufacturing firms have been gradually replaced by large-scale multinational conglomerates. Production and sales are no longer dependent on pharmaceutical products. In the typical case, large-scale pharmaceutical-producing firms have been increasingly linked to financial institutions through interlocking directorates.

Introduction: Situating Contemporary Cities in Africa

The process of urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa has elicited a variety of different reactions and interpretations amongst researchers and casual observers alike. There is general consensus in the scholarly literature concerned with African cities that the accumulation of such distressing features as unregulated growth, limited opportunities for gainful employment in the formal economy, severe environmental degradation, lack of decent and affordable housing, failing and neglected infrastructure, absence of basic social services, pauperization, criminality, negligent city-management, and increasing inequalities amount to a more or less permanent condition of urban crisis of monumental proportions (Rakodi 1997; Tostensen et al. 2001). Nevertheless, there is little agreement over the root causes for the ongoing urban crisis, or what to do to reverse the situation. Whereas some attribute the urban crisis largely to explosive population growth and to adverse economic circumstances, others place the blame on corruption, or mismanagement, or the failures of municipalities to provide proper institutional and legal frameworks necessary for triggering entrepreneurial growth and development (Tostensen et al. 2001: 7, 10–11).

Building from Scratch: New Cities, Privatized Urbanism and the Spatial Restructuring of Johannesburg after Apartheid

By the start of the twenty-first century, the once dominant historical downtown core of Johannesburg had lost its privileged status as the center of business and commercial activities, the metropolitan landscape having been restructured into an assemblage of sprawling, rival edge cities. Real estate developers have recently unveiled ambitious plans to build two completely new cities from scratch: Waterfall City and Lanseria Airport City (formerly called Cradle City) are master-planned, holistically designed ‘satellite cities’ built on vacant land. While incorporating features found in earlier city-building efforts, these two new self-contained, privately-managed cities operate outside the administrative reach of public authority and thus exemplify the global trend toward privatized urbanism. Waterfall City, located on land that has been owned by the same extended family for nearly 100 years, is spearheaded by a single corporate entity. Lanseria Airport City/Cradle City is a planned ‘aerotropolis’ surrounding the existing Lanseria airport at the northwest corner of the Johannesburg metropole. These two new private cities differ from earlier large-scale urban projects because everything from basic infrastructure (including utilities, sewerage, and the installation and maintenance of roadways), landscaping, security services, the regulation of common spaces, and selling and branding the city are firmly in the hands of private profit-making corporate entities and outside the mandate of public authorities.

The origins of agrarian capitalism in South Africa: a critique of the ‘social history’ perspective

The ‘social history’ perspective is the dominant intellectual paradigm guiding historical research in the field of agrarian studies. By making use of previously untapped primary source materials and by narrowing the focus of historical investigation, social historians have made great strides in pioneering whole new arenas of scholarly research. Yet the ‘social history’ paradigm does not rest on solid epistemological and conceptual footing. Its deficiencies stem from the failure to specify theoretically the nature and character of agrarian capitalism and the practice of substituting uncritically group dynamics for class analysis. These weaknesses reinforce an unfortunate tendency towards theoretical agnosticism and conceptual eclecticism, which in turn limit the intellectual capacity of the social history paradigm to offer a coherent and consistent explanation for the peculiarity of South Africas agrarian transformation.

Policing in Johannesburg after apartheid

This paper traces the genealogy of the “double paradigm shift” that transformed policing in Johannesburg after apartheid: from public to private and from reactive to proactive. The emergence of a market for residential security services led to the growth of a private security industry and a reconfiguration of urban governance. Responding to a growing demand for “proactive” security services, private security companies have recently begun innovating with new approaches to preventative security. These companies operate in a liminal zone of questionable legality, targeting poor black men as potential criminals to be excluded from the neighbourhoods of their clients.