The geopolitics of South African cities: States, citizens, territory

Abstract

Much of the research concerning the stark spatiality of South African cities has focused upon the empirical history of segregation and apartheid. this paper offers a theoretical interpretation of the historical meaning of the racially segregated residential spaces that have made up South Africa's urban areas and then considers their changing significance within the transitional post-apartheid urban order. The focus is specifically on the state and the reasons why the racial organization of space was crucial to the exercise of apartheid state power and how this heritage of racial segretation is shaping post-apartheid local government. Exploring the work of michel foucault and making use of an expanded concept of citizenship, I argue that the spatial arrangement of (in this case) african residential areas, and of the form of the apartheid city, was crucially related to the exercise of state power and to the domination of subjects excluded from democratic citizenship rights. Like citizens elsewhere, african people in South Africa's urban areas were bound up in the surveillance networks of the state. These networks operated effectively, i argue, because of the spatial organization of both state apparatuses and residential environments. while much of south african historiography is blind to the importance of spatiality in the construction of state power, this paper makes a strong case that the survival of the apartheid state was centrally dependent upon the geographies that it created. And far from erasing the significance of these racialized spaces, the present transition to democracy has witnessed the emergence of a power-sharing arrangement in local government which has ensured the continued political significance of urban racial segregation. In addition, the relationships between the state, citizenship and space are shown to be as important in the emerging post-apartheid city as they were under apartheid—albeit in a quite different form.