By Ncebakazi Manzi
Lives of Great Men, Chike Frankie Edozien’s debut memoir is not about colonial style houses found in Nigerian suburbs once occupied by the British. It is a beautifully woven book bound by narratives about Edozien being a gay man living in parts of Africa and the United States. He shares his insightful observations about the difficulty of a full and public life for many African gay men, as they end up doing whatever is necessary to put on a front of heteronormativity, including marrying women while secretly enjoying intimate relationships with men.
Days after reading the book, many of its scenes lingered on my mind; the delicious intimacy of the opening chapter; the fancy wedding in the hinterlands of Scotland and Edozien’s compassionate coverage of Amadou Diallo’s violent and premature death. Amongst these many stories from the book, is a scene in the first chapter, in which the author’s childhood home on Lugard Avenue in a Nigerian suburb is expropriated by an entitled cabinet member who has designs on the house and its elaborate grounds. The family is informed, in a rather callous manner, of the government official’s intention to occupy the property and Edozien’s parents are left with no option but to vacate their home.
I chuckled at the sheer arrogance and abuse of power of post-colonial African leadership that this incident displays. The idea of a politician driving around a fancy neighbourhood to scout for a home, picking one that pleases his eye and then ordering its occupants to vacate simply because he has the power to is incredible to me. And sometimes when the cruelty of Africans in power does not incense you, you laugh because constant anger wears your heart thin and your body must find release for all the madness.
There was something about this incident that would not leave me. I was convinced that it couldn’t be that I found it all that incredible because African leaders do and say crazy shit frequently enough for one not to spend endless hours poring over each incident. Over time, I found that my mind had long left the tree-lined houses of Ikoyi and Victoria Island in Nigeria and had travelled to the splendid homes of Parkhurst, Constantia, Komani Park and Summerstrand here in South Africa.
I realised that my mind had circled over the expropriation of Edozien’s home in a luscious middle-class suburb because it gave me pause to think about the contentious subject of the redistribution of suburban land in my own country. Unlike in Nigeria where the British have mostly abandoned these properties, owing to the fear of mosquitoes or insurrection, the White settler community which mainly occupies the suburbs in South Africa has stayed put. And so, whereas I felt sympathy for the Edozien family and the manner in which they had been displaced on a whim by a rapacious politician who happened to spot their beautiful home, in the context of my own country, a familiar rage made a quiet entrance into my body over the largely neglected question of suburban property.
SIZOPHUM’ ELOKISHINI
The first song on Simphiwe Dana’s sophomore album, The One Love Movement on Bantu Biko Street begins with a soft lamentation, a singular voice set at just a few decibels above a whisper. Saphuma sihlupheka sashiy’ indlala Dana sings, reflecting on an escape of poverty and hunger before a short meditation by the piano mirrors the quietness of her voice. It is as though we are listening in on an imagined memory, discussed in the stillness of the night, of having already left an undesirable place. And then unexpectedly and with less care to be discreet, she declares, Sizophum’ elokishini, sizohamba kuyo le ndawo accompanied by a burst of horns that sound like a determined march and joyful dance out of the township all at once.
Dana’s 8-minute manifesto captures a common Black fantasy of leaving the township which is hardly surprising considering its associations with land dispossession, material depravation, economic exclusion, violence and hunger. “No one ever settles here, only stays, waits for better and passes through; at least that is the hope” USA based scholar Saidiya Hartman writes, referring to the dreams harboured by inhabitants of the ghetto on that side of the Atlantic. And yet, despite these wretched places being created to contain Black people, it is here that Abantu “experiment with freedom, and refuse the menial existence scripted for them...[where they] create life”, Hartman writes. The terms of endearment are evidence enough of the love that recognises the “terrible beauty” possessed by these places - Mdaz’bhi , Zwezwe Mandawana, Vrega, Gugs, Berliza – names that you will not find in any atlas or government street pole, only in people’s hearts.
Although Dana is not prescriptive about the ultimate destination of the great exodus from the township, in a context where the Black ghetto’s existence is inextricably linked to that of the White suburb, the latter is the inevitable dream for most or many. Those with the means have already made the move out of the townships in the last three decades or so even if their lives are still tethered to the township in one way or another. The migration of Black families from the townships to the suburbs, however, has not done enough to transform the country’s apartheid geography.
In his paper on apartheid geography and the law, Ralph Madlalate defines the phenomenon as, “the creation and maintenance of racially-identified spaces, coupled with racial and class based segregation and an uneven distribution of social goods and public amenities, which are skewed in favour of White people”. Before providing this definition, Madlalate is careful to clarify that apartheid geography does not begin at the start of formal apartheid but rather has its roots in the colonial encounter centuries prior. Throughout this period, wars of dispossession and a catalogue of laws, determined who would belong to certain spaces and who would be denied a claim:
The enforcement of pass documents for slaves in the Cape in 1709;
The Glen Grey Act of 1894;
the Native Land Act of 1913;
the Natives (Urban Areas) Act 21 of 1923;
the Native Trust and Land Act 18 of 1936;
the Group Areas Act of 1950;
the Group Areas Act of 1966;
the Population Registration Act 30 of 1950;
the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970.
White legislators did not take any chances and the legacy of these laws is still very much visible in every part of South Africa, despite claims that we have left history behind. As academic and curator Mpho Matsipa says of the city of Johannesburg;
“The physical environment is itself an archive of colonialism, imperialism and extraction…and it persists. So this idea of time as linear and that there’s a beginning and an end and we kind of move in this very rational, progressive manner through time is completely undermined by the fact of living in the city and that we have to inhabit this archive at the same time as being in the present ”.
The current landscapes, therefore, still carry the burden the of past and there is no clear rupture with it. This is despite some changes in legislation on urban land ownership in some of the country’s major cities. Earlier this year for instance, the City of Joburg passed the Nodal Review, a policy created to open up exclusive suburban areas to a wider demographic by increasing the density per hectare of the more affluent neighbourhoods. The policy allows for the development of affordable housing in well-resourced White areas which have been previously closed off to low-earning citizens. Its execution would bring many Black families closer to where they work and attend school and reshape the borders of Johannesburg’s most exclusive neighbourhoods.
As the New Frame reports, the policy has been received with resistance by some of the residents of these areas who no doubt feel a sense of entitlement to the suburbs. The Joburg United for a Sustainable Tomorrow (Just) group, is campaigning for support from residents of White suburbia to legally oppose the Nodal Review on the grounds that it may “change the complexion of your suburb” and “result in spaza shops and shebeens in your neighbourhood”. White suburban residents have always taken comfort in the physical and psychological distance that spatial apartheid affords them. This is how many of them could claim little knowledge of the terrors of apartheid and emerge in the post ‘94 era seemingly unscathed by the past but highly bothered by the potholes in ‘their’ neighbourhoods. That said, it is not hard to imagine Black residents of these suburban areas rejecting a policy like the Nodal Review with as much fervour as their White neigbhours and many may very well be opposed to the suburbs they have earned the right to live in being turned into an unrecognizable hodgepodge of mixed income housing occupied by other less deserving Black people.
The fear cannot possibly be about the availability of loose cigarettes, amaKip-kip or a well-cooked smiley and ice cold ngudu at the local drinking hole. Whether real or imagined, the fear is about the physical presence of Black people and the long list of suburbs from which White people have fled is testament to that: Belgravia, Rossetenville, Bezuidenhout Valley, Amalinda, both ends of Windsor. Are these areas even considered suburbs once their white occupants take flight to less melanin-rich areas or does the mere presence of Blacks in large numbers strip them of the worthiness of the title of suburb? How many expectant Black families have driven around a former white suburb they have long aspired to be residents of, only to find it spoilt by the unexpected high ratio of Black people loitering about? “What’s the point?”, they mutter under their breaths, “of escaping the township only to find another one teeming with restless natives and not enough White people to reassure one that the trash will be picked up every Wednesday morning?” Suburbs are clearly built on unstable and constantly shifting ground. If with every migration, white people possibly take the ‘suburb-ness’ away with them, do Black people also bring with them the threat or trauma of the township into every space they enter into? How long will we do this dance? Sizophuma nini elokishini?
REPOSSESSION vs INTEGRATION?
I was drawn to the scene in Lives of Great Men because of the misplaced zeal of that Nigerian politician who expropriated the Edozien home and wondered about applying it to the South African context in ways that provide spatial justice to the Black majority rather than benefitting individuals in the ruling class. The Nodal Review proposes making parts of the suburbs available for the development of low-cost housing, but that will most likely only squeeze Black people into the margins of the suburbs.
I would argue for more radical possibilities such as subdividing ridiculously sized plots; expropriating second and third homes; expropriating blocks of flats owned by individuals or single families? What if the law made it possible for domestic workers who have worked and lived in the suburbs for decades to settle in these areas, if they so wish, in ways that break the legacy of the backroom and allows for people to create homes and spaces for worship, stokvels and whatever recreational and leisurely engagements?
The difference between the Nodal Review and the possibilities I am leaning towards is that the former operates within a framework of integration while the imperative of the latter is repossession. In other words, I am not convinced that spatial justice can be achieved without repossessing currently occupied privately owned property in the suburban areas while policies such as the Nodal Review hope to achieve it by merely accommodating Black people in the vacant spaces.
The Reclaim the City (RTC) movement has been fighting for spatial justice in Cape Town through challenging evictions; questioning the sale of council-owned properties that could be rented out to poor families, and demanding the development of social housing in the city. Interestingly, RTC also operates within a logic of integration rather than repossession because it campaigns “for the redistribution of empty and underutilized public land to poor and working class people” rather than placing emphasis on repossessing currently occupied and highly utilised public and private land and homes. Understandably, the RTC is operating within the confines of the law and the constitution which invariably narrows the scope of its demands. In the arsenal of approaches to the question of urban land, the RTC’s approach has an important place and if the courts are to become more conscious of spatial inequality and recognize its current manifestations, rather than treating it as a relic of the past, as Madlalate argues, social movements like RTC are critical for pushing those boundaries.
That said, the urgency of redressing the legacies of spatial apartheid, cannot always wait for the courts to catch up. The likes of Angie Nyatyoba, described by The Star as, “the hijacker of a R1.2 million Joburg house” know that all too well. In 2018, Nyatyoba, along with other members of her community group, took over city-owned homes in Orange Grove, Johannesburg, in search of “peace and dignity”. The homes were bought by the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC) with the intention of redeveloping them into public facilities and when the properties were left vacant due to delays in the planned development, the community group moved in. The women’s forum, which Nyatyoba belongs to, repossessed some of these homes and ensured that single women and their children became the new occupants. It’s unfortunate that in the report, Nyatyoba’s attitude towards African migrants, or “foreigners”, as she says, do not have an equal entitlement to a home in the suburb as much as she does. Despite her biases, there is something to be said about her courage and indignant claim to the city.
The documentary film, Azibuye: The Occupation also demonstrates just how messy the business of occupying land in the suburbs can be. In the short film, political activists and artists, Masello Motana and Evan Abrahamse describe how they searched for property to occupy due to rent pressures in Johannesburg and decided “fuck this, here’s land sitting in the city, let’s take it” and moved into an abandoned suburban mansion. According to Motana, houses in the area were “built by the slave labour of prisoners of war from wars of [colonial] resistance” a statement that frames the occupation as both a response to their immediate material needs and intentional protest action against historical and current injustice.
After a few months of living in the vandalised mansion and making it more habitable, they discovered that the owner is in fact a Black architect who bought the prime property in the early 90s at a time when White families were emigrating in anticipation of the perceived chaos of Black governance. In the film, the property owner expresses his hurt and anger at being the target of the occupation as a Black person, “Being a Black in South Africa is so sad, even if you come from the ghettoes, work your way through to the top, the hard way, and then such things happen”. Some of the people who initially joined Motana and Abrahamse in the occupation, abandoned the mission upon discovering that the home is owned by a Black person, but the two do not suffer from a similar dilemma and have remained in the home on the grounds that the occupation is still justified and the property owner has “bought into” a capitalist mentality.
However one chooses to view them, the Azibuye project and the occupation by the likes of Nyatyoba are important experiments that blow open critical questions about race, gender, class, citizenship and property ownership that deserve close attention as we think through the past of land dispossession, its present and a future that addresses that history.
HEAVEN HERE ON EARTH?
“I don’t want to go to heaven when I’m dead.
“I want my heaven now,
Here on earth in Houghton and Parktown:
a mansion
two cars or more
and smiling servants.
Isn’t that heaven?” – Oswald Joseph Mtshali
In his seminal collection of poems, Sounds of a Cowhide Drum, Oswald Mtshali writes about township life and the experiences of being in the city with searing detail. He draws a portrait of life in the townships where an abandoned baby is ripped apart by “scavenging dogs draped in red bandanas of blood” and “dark figures dart to deal a deadly blow on passersby”. In the city, he is a “faceless man who lives in the backyard of the [master’s] house” and is “always a suspect”. Mtshali’s poems are set in both the township and city and neither place is without its troubles.
In the poem quoted above, titled This Kid is No Goat, the idea of living in a mansion in one of Joburg’s wealthy suburbs is represented as finding a piece of heaven here on earth. It is a limited dream that imagines owning a suburban home without breaking the suburb’s historical relationship to Black people’s physical and emotional labour or excessive material wealth. Secondly, the framing of the suburb as heaven erases the hellish experiences of Black domestic workers and the many Black homeless people who live in the cracks and crevices of the suburbs and for whom these neighbourhoods may be a source of violation and humiliation.
Finally, even for the Black middle-class, these heavily surveilled neighbourhoods are often not the ‘promised land’. As American sociologist, Rashawn Ray, argues; Black middle-class people, and Black men in particular, who live in White neighbourhoods, rely on a ‘signaling process’ to indicate their class status in order to avoid being criminalised and assert their right to belong. The murder of Black middle-class people in a number of White neighbourhoods by the racially structured police system, for instance, is evidence enough that no amount of signaling or distancing oneself from the lower classes is enough to save any of us.
In Sizophum’ elokishini, Dana leaves the alternative to the township open, a gesture that allows us to imagine different possibilities. What would it mean to push our imagination beyond the limits of the constitutional order, beyond Eurocentric notions of property ownership and servitude, beyond heteropatriarchal and capitalist ideas of who belongs where? If anti-Black violence is central to the creation and maintenance of spatial apartheid, can the township and suburb cease to exist in their current forms within a system founded on that violence? Finally, if whiteness is indeed “the ownership of the earth forever and ever Amen!”, as W.E.B. Du Bois once surmised, is there a place, here on earth, that Black people can truly call theirs?
LIST OF SOURCES
1) Lives of Great Men by Chike Frankie Edozien
2) Simphiwe Dana, Bantu Biko Street https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMhV1qnn2w0
3) Dismantling Apartheid Geography: Transformation and the Limits of Law by Ralph Madlalate
4) Podcast Interviews with Mpho Matsipa in Funambalist Magazine
5) Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman
6) A leap towards undoing Joburg’s spatial apartheid by Dennis Webster in the New Frame https://www.newframe.com/a-leap-towards-undoing-joburgs-spatial-apartheid/
7) Black people don't exercise in my neighborhood: Perceived racial composition and leisure-time physical activity among middle class blacks and whites by Rashawn Ray
9) Why we Hijack Houses https://www.iol.co.za/saturday-star/news/why-we-hijack-houses-13828718
10) Azibuye: The Occupation https://www.sundance.org/projects/azibuye-the-occupation
11) Sounds of a Cowhide Drum by Oswald Mtshali
12) The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Du Bois
NOTE: This article benefited from feedback provided by the following people: Funeka Manzi, Pakama Ngceni, Athi-Nangamso Nkopo, Koketso Potsane, Tiisetso Tlelima and Ntombenhle Shezi. The views expressed in the article are mine and do not necessarily represent theirs.
COPY EDITOR: Bongiwe Tutu bongiwe.tutu@gmail.com
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