From Jo’burg to Jozi

Abstract

This paper examines a number of stories describing contemporary Johannesburg from Heidi Holland and Adam Roberts’ edited collection From Jo’burg to Jozi: stories about Africa’s infamous city (2002). The objective is to show how the complexity of social and spatial mapping of the city invokes various themes and different narrative forms, which are sometimes intriguing and innovative, as shown by the combination of the journalistic report, factual documentation, the autobiographical and reference to different urban signs and media technologies in some of the stories analyzed here. More important though, is the argument that these multiple perspectives and different narrative forms all help in the representation of urban ambiguities, especially those that describe the city as fraught with social and spatial disparities, and risks, but as an enchanting place nonetheless.