Entrepreneurship as legacy building: Reimagining the economy in post‐apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Twenty‐five years after democratic transition, the political liberation of Black South Africans has yet to translate into socioeconomic transformation. As protesters highlight the nation's failed economic transformation, a group of residents in Khayelitsha—Cape Town's largest township—are attempting to bring about economic transformation by becoming entrepreneurs. While informal entrepreneurship has been a mainstay of South African townships for decades, in this article, I examine the motivations of this new generation of Khayelitsha entrepreneurs, who are starting formal businesses with the goal of gaining a foothold in the power center of South Africa's economy. I demonstrate that while many scholars view entrepreneurship as a symptom of neoliberal ideology, Khayelitsha entrepreneurs view entrepreneurship in less individualistic and more communally oriented ways: as a path to establish greater wealth and opportunity for future generations of Black South Africans. I argue that these understandings of entrepreneurship are indicative of alternative economic imaginations that could have the potential to dislodge dominant capitalist ideas of economy.