City Slums, Rural Homesteads: Migrant Culture, Displaced Urbanism and the Citizenship of the Serviced House

Abstract

This article deals with the connections between Cape Town migrants and their rural homes on the former Transkei coast, which is presented here as a hidden frontier of social change in post-apartheid South Africa. The paper explores how older migrant cultural forms, which developed in the apartheid migrant hostels and then moved to the shacklands of Hout Bay in Cape Town, have shifted their focus from away from agriculture to new forms of rural investment over the past two decades. More specifically, it investigates how new ideas about citizenship and belonging, developed in relation to the experience of shack life in the city, are finding material expression on the Transkei coastline. The article introduces concepts such as ‘displaced urbanism’ and ‘symbolic mobility’ as key terms for understanding the dynamics of post-apartheid migration, citizenship and rural life in the former homelands. It rethinks the complex relationship between the urban and the rural in South Africa through the lens of urban informal settlements. In particular, in noting the stigmatising of informal settlements and the state's failure to provide adequate urban housing in cities, it appreciates their ideological and cultural impact on the rural landscape of the former homelands.