SafundiPub Date : 2020-04-02DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2019.1701813
A. Mututa
{"title":"Customizing post-apartheid Johannesburg: the dialectic of errancy in Ralph Ziman’s Jerusalema","authors":"A. Mututa","doi":"10.1080/17533171.2019.1701813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2019.1701813","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In post-apartheid inner-Johannesburg, the built environment reflects a city no longer wrenched apart by race, but by socio-economic stratification. Even as the city is refurbished for global appeal through gentrification, the rich-poor tussle among black urban dwellers motivates peculiar spatial practices which, while illustrating embedded urban pressures, produce new urban rationalities. Among these practices is hijacking of white-owned buildings in Hillbrow, a practice that impacts theorization of the ways in which black urban dwellers have customized Johannesburg post-1994. Through close reading of Ralph Ziman’s Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema, this article theorizes building hijacking as a curious case of sprouting city-making practices. Terming this aggressive do-it-yourself approach to urbanism as errancy, the article argues that such customization of the city usefully illustrates not only the annexation of post-apartheid Johannesburg, but the peculiarity of changing perceptions of freedom among black urban residents..","PeriodicalId":501459,"journal":{"name":"Safundi","volume":"115 22","pages":"206 - 223"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141216662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}