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Shuttling between the suburbs and the township: the new black middle class(es) negotiating class and post-apartheid blackness in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2020

Thabisani Ndlovu
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Abstract

A generation of South Africa's new black middle class shuttles between the suburbs and the townships. This has become the focus of some South African humorous essayists, among them Ndumiso Ngcobo and Fred Khumalo, on whose works this article is based. The article argues that studying the new black middle class should extend to these literary sources and approaches. The humorous essays by these two authors consistently reference metaphors of mobility and the vexed intersection of black middle-classness, consumption, racialized residential zoning and compromised status. Through the mode of humour, the essays evince the psychological burdens borne by those with township roots but who live in the suburbs, as they negotiate status inconsistency in a post-apartheid search for human dignity. Constant visits to the township and the retreat to the suburbs constitute negotiations of spatial, financial and psychic concerns imbricated in the legacies of apartheid's racialized politics of distinction.

Résumé

Résumé

Une génération de la nouvelle classe moyenne noire en Afrique du Sud fait la navette entre les banlieues et les townships. Certains essayistes humoristiques sud-africains traitent de ce sujet, au rang desquels Ndumiso Ngcobo et Fred Khumalo, dont les œuvres servent de base à cet article. L'article soutient que l’étude de cette nouvelle classe moyenne noire devrait s’étendre à ces approches et sources littéraires. Les essais humoristiques de ces deux auteurs font constamment référence à des métaphores de mobilité et à l'intersection controversée du classe-moyennisme noir, de la consommation, du zonage résidentiel racialisé et du statut compromis. Sur le mode de l'humour, les essais attestent des fardeaux psychologiques portés par ceux qui sont issus des townships mais vivent dans les banlieues, alors qu'ils négocient l'incohérence de leur statut en quête d'une dignité humaine post-apartheid. Leurs visites constantes des townships et leur repli vers les banlieues constituent des négociations de préoccupations spatiales, financières et psychiques imbriquées dans les problèmes hérités de la politique de distinction racialisée de l'apartheid.

Type
The lived experiences of the African middle classes
Information
Africa , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 568 - 586
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Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2020

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