Challenging Minority World Privilege: Children's Outdoor Mobilities in Post‐apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Whilst the notion of children's movement has been examined across diverse settings in the minority world, explorations within majority world contexts have remained more sporadic. This paper contributes to an emerging body of literature offering new perspectives on mobility which crossover with, and in some instances challenge, those understandings drawn from the minority world. The manipulation of mobility, central to the existence of the apartheid state in South Africa, has left an indelible mark upon the landscape of this emerging democratic society. However, through an investigation of children's independent outdoor mobility within a suburban area of Cape Town, this paper argues that the legacies of apartheid should not be considered as the seminal factor shaping geographical movements throughout neighbourhood space. Rather, it should be positioned alongside a range of different concerns, such as the mobility of baboon troops, domestic ‘guard’ dogs, traffic and family composition. Thus, for these children growing up in a post‐apartheid context, the influence of apartheid upon their outdoor mobility was both nuanced and inconsistent.