‘They don't know who's who in the zoo’: The ironic failure of state-managed racial desegregation in the government viliage of Oribi, Pietermaritzburg

Abstract

Abstract This article explores racial desegregation in a government managed village for low-income families in Pietermaritzburg. At first glance Oribi village seems to offer an alternative model of racial desegregation based on state management rather than individual choice in the market-place. Oribi has undergone significant change in racial demography since 1994 with little evidence of racial succession, white flight, infilling or mixed densification. This amounts to a process of racial desegregation in spatial, but perhaps also social, terms. Further, this is a process of desegregation ostensibly driven by the state for the public good. However, closer investigation revealed this alternative model to be a chimera, with the state relinquishing much control to market-related forces. Ironically, the spatial desegregation of Oribi from 1996 to 2003 was the unintended outcome of two racialised means of access. While some poor white families were placed by the state, many better-off black families bought their way in through informal networks. This racialisation of access was mirrored in racialised attitudes towards desegregation in the village.