Abstract
This chapter uses three different approaches to talk about middle classness in two South African neighbourhoods, a white suburb and a black township. Firstly, the author argues that property ownership is an important signifier of middle classness, one that has, so far, been underemphasized in debates about African middle classes. Using ethnographic comparison, Heer explores property ownership and middle classness as social categories. Secondly, she approaches social differentiation as it evolves in everyday urban lives through the concept of relational micro-milieus (Hradil, Soziale Ungleichheit in Deutschland. Opladen: Leske+Budrich, 1999) embedded in the contrasting urban spaces of Johannesburg’s neighbourhoods. Thirdly, she deploys the class definition of Seekings and Nattrass (Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), who developed a nine-fold classification scheme for South Africa based on occupational groups in the Weberian tradition, in order to point out the key socio-economic differences between the two groups in focus. The cases from Johannesburg presented in this chapter highlight the relationship between spatial arrangements and political attitudes in two contrasting social milieus, whose divergent social trajectories must be viewed in the context of South Africa’s past. The two milieus discussed in this chapter are surprisingly similar where their relationship to property ownership is concerned, and they display conservative political attitudes.
Notes
- 1.
‘Black’, ‘Indian’, ‘coloured’, and ‘white’ were the official racial categories under Apartheid .
- 2.
While research on suburb s tends to focus on issues like gated communities, neighbourhood associations and private security governance, township studies tend to contribute to debates on urban poverty, urban violence, and political protests.
- 3.
The ARP was long an intergovernmental entity and part of a national Renewal Programme. In 2014/2015 (after the data for this study was collected) the ARP became merged with the Johannesburg Development Agency.
- 4.
During apartheid , the other freehold townships of Johannesburg (e.g. Sophiatown, Newclare, and Martindale) were erased. This is why little is known about the history of freehold townships or the affluent black African groups who lived in them (Bonner and Nieftagodien 2008, 5).
- 5.
In the life history interviews conducted for the Alexandra History Project the typical life trajectory which emerged was ‘that of the sharecropper turned urban businessman and entrepreneur in Alexandra’ (Bonner and Nieftagodien 2008, 5). There is a strong link between liquidated rural assets, urban property ownership , and urban entrepreneurship (Bonner and Nieftagodien 2008, 4).
- 6.
Seekings and Nattrass (2005) define class in the Weber ian tradition based on occupation al groups. They developed a nine-fold classification scheme for South Africa .
- 7.
The term ‘Black Diamonds’ was introduced by the marketing industry to describe South Africa ’s affluent black middle class which emerged after 1994 (Southall 2016).
- 8.
Whether the ANC housing policies and redistributive welfare programmes are really ‘progressive’ from the perspective of critical academia is another question which cannot be discussed here due to lack of space.
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Heer, B. (2018). Propertied Citizenship in a Township and Suburb in Johannesburg. In: Kroeker, L., O'Kane, D., Scharrer, T. (eds) Middle Classes in Africa. Frontiers of Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62148-7_8
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