Abstract
Sadouni offers an analysis of Somalis’ modes of place-making of today. Waves of migration of Somali women and men reinvent a Somali urban identity in Johannesburg that gives them the power to mark and territorialise their economic, political and religious modes of being Somali in Mayfair. This process of multi-identification is better understood as racialisation from below and will be described through the building of Somali religious institutions, but also through the urban planning of a strictly Somali business district in Mayfair based on community trust. The chapter draws attention to the concept of class and the differentiation between those who work and live in the city and those who settle in the townships for business even at the risk of losing their lives.
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Notes
- 1.
Interview with Ahmed, 15 June 2007, Mayfair .
- 2.
Academic literature on the country tells us that these dramatic events have not had as devastating an effect on certain segments of the economy and population of the country as media reports would imply. Peter Little suggests that the resilience of social structures, especially among the pastoralists and livestock traders in southern Somalia , is far greater than among urban Somalis (Little 2003b).
- 3.
Ethiopia intervened in December 2006 in Somalia . The Union of Islamic Courts, which had a major influence on the country and brought stability to Mogadishu in June 2006, had to escape to neighbouring countries. It is worth mentioning that during the Ethiopian intervention in Somalia and the American bombings in January 2007, the Somalis in Kenya and the diaspora supported the Union of Islamic Courts not for its ideology of Islamism but for a movement that had brought peace and stability to Mogadishu. Previously, in 1977–1978, Somalia and Ethiopia had also been at war over the province of Ogaden, where Somalis are in the majority. The Oromo Liberation Front and the Ogaden National Liberation Front are the two armed insurgencies opposing the Ethiopian government.
- 4.
Modes of governance in Somalia are also influenced by regional and global forces such as Ethiopia , the USA and the Somali diaspora (see Bradbury 2008).
- 5.
Yemen also represents an important destination for Somali refugees, who made the perilous voyage there by means of smugglers’ boats.
- 6.
According to Johann Hari and his contacts with the United Nation’s envoy to Somalia , the new age of piracy must be understood in the broader context of the collapse of the Somali state: “In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its 9-million people have been teetering on starvation ever since—and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump their nuclear waste in their seas” (Hari 2009: 13; see also Little 2003: 173).
- 7.
According to the UNHCR , South Africa was the main destination, worldwide, for new asylum-seekers in 2006. “SA Biggest Recipient of Asylum-Seekers”, The Star, 21 June 2007, p. 6.
- 8.
Interview with Z., 7 July 2007, Mayfair .
- 9.
The Somali embassy in Pretoria was opened in 2012.
- 10.
Interview with H., a Somali woman who is doing business in Johannesburg (Mayfair ) and Pretoria, 8 November 2007.
- 11.
Interview with a member of SIREC , 9 September 2007, Mayfair .
- 12.
Interview with A., 13 December 2007, Mayfair .
- 13.
In his book entitled The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber uses “lifestyle” to refer to the guiding principle for group behaviour and the integration of religion and economic life into the Protestant ethic (Weber 2001).
- 14.
Interview with A., 15 June 2007, Mayfair .
- 15.
Interview with A., 2 August 2007, Mayfair .
- 16.
The Somali writer Nuruddin Farah emphasises this need for self-dignity that leads some Somalis in the diaspora to distance themselves from their country of origin: “Even though they live in the United States, even though some of them may even be professors, even though they have American passports, the mention or association with that terrible thing called Somalia shocks them. Well, I take great pleasure in telling people I am a Somali. As I identify myself, I actually also explain what has happened in ways that can be understood by other people in other places because what happened in Somalia could have been foretold, and some of us did” (Samatar 2001: 92).
- 17.
In his book De la démocratie en Amérique (original published in 1835 and 1840), Tocqueville emphasised through his observation of American society the role played by religion in the development of democracy.
- 18.
Interview with A. and I., 21 September 2007, Mayfair .
- 19.
The testimony of a Somali working in a South African township who was victim of xenophobic attacks was published and circulated largely in the Somali community (see Hussein 2011).
- 20.
Interview in Johannesburg with a Somali who worked in the Eastern Cape, 26 July 2007.
- 21.
UN News. South Africa: UN Rights Chief Urges Protection for Foreigners After Brutal Killing. Retrieved from https://news.un.org/en/story/2008/10/276852-south-africa-un-rights-chief-urges-protection-foreigners-after-brutal-killing.
- 22.
We can also draw a comparison with the Italian migrants in the Anglo-American world in the early twentieth century who were considered and racialised as the “Chinese of Europe” in order to mark their dark whiteness or their non-whiteness (see Roediger 2005: 46).
- 23.
William Julius Wilson tries in his work on racial inequality in the USA to understand the impact of both structural and cultural forces. He gives the following definition of culture: “Culture refers to the sharing of outlooks and modes of behaviour among individuals who face similar place-based circumstances (such as poor segregated neighbourhoods) or have the same social networks (as when members of particular racial or ethnic groups share a particular way of understanding social life and cultural scripts that guide their behaviour). Therefore, when individuals act according to their culture, they are following inclinations developed from their exposure to the particular traditions, practices, and beliefs among those who live and interact in the same physical and social environment” (Wilson 2009: 4).
- 24.
According to my informants, the structure of a Somali shopping centre is also found in different contexts of immigration, such as in London.
- 25.
The Eastleigh neighbourhood in Nairobi constituted an Indian residential area and commercial quarter before being dominated by Somalis.
- 26.
Information gathered from an analysis of title deeds, thanks to the help provided by the research project South African National Research Foundation Development Planning and Modelling at the University of the Witwatersrand.
- 27.
Henning Melber asserts that African middle classes need to be understood as a concept and a phenomenon that signifies “modified social relations in African societies”. If we follow this analytical framework, the Somali middle class, “above poor but below rich”, can also reflect not just the changes within the urban society of Johannesburg but also the changes affecting the social relations between Somali immigrants (see Melber 2017).
- 28.
Social security grants can explain the narrowing of this gap. However, income inequality increased in South Africa: the Gini coefficient increased from 0.64 in 1995 to 0.69 in 2005. This African inequality remains high (see Bhorat 2012).
- 29.
See R. Cox’s work on the consequences of production on power and especially in the international arena (Cox 1987).
- 30.
Interviews with a Somali family in Mayfair , June 2008.
- 31.
It is difficult for refugees to find employment in South Africa. Most of the Somalis in Johannesburg have invested in small businesses in order to be self-sufficient and have created their own ethnic market.
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Sadouni, S. (2019). Racialisation from Below: Race and Place-Making in the New South Africa. In: Muslims in Southern Africa. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46708-9_4
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