The lived experiences of the African middle classes

What are the experiences of the African middle classes, and what do their experiences tell us about social change on the continent? While there have been ample attempts to demarcate the parameters of this social group, the necessary work of tracing the social life and social relations of the middle classes is just beginning. The articles in this special issue provide compelling accounts of the ways in which the middle classes are as much made through their social relations and social practices as they are (if indeed they are) identifiable through aggregate snapshots of income, consumption habits and voting behaviours. Rachel Spronk (2018: 316) has argued that ‘the middle class is not a clear object in the sense of an existing group that can be clearly delineated; rather, it is a classification-in-the-making’. We agree, and our aim in bringing these contributions together in this special issue is to develop our understanding of how this process is emerging in different contexts across Africa. In her opening contribution, Carola Lentz suggests that we need more research on ‘the social dynamics of “doing being middle-class”’, or what we term here ‘middle-classness’, which attends to this ‘classification-in-the-making’ through urban–rural changes over intergenerational life courses, multi-class households, kinship and social relations. Such an agenda has recently been opened up by two edited volumes on the African middle classes (Melber 2016; Kroeker et al. 2018). We further develop this agenda here through a series of empirically rich articles by scholars in African studies, anthropology, literature and sociology that explicitly address the question of the lived experiences of the middle classes. Echoing Spronk's unease with taking ‘the middle class’ as an already constituted social group, what emerges across the articles is rather the unstable, tenuous and context-specific nature of middle-class prosperity in contemporary Africa. Social positions shift – or are questioned – as one moves from the suburb to the township (Ndlovu on South Africa) or into state-subsidized high-rise apartments (Gastrow on Angola). Stability gives way over time to precarity (Southall on Zimbabwe). Wealth is not tied to the individual but circulates more widely through social relations. Should one invest in the nuclear or the extended family (Hull on South Africa; Spronk on Ghana)? In a house or a car (Durham on Botswana)? And why does it matter – for the individual, the household, the family, the city, the nation and the continent? To grasp what it means to be middle-class in Africa today necessarily requires an understanding of the historical, social and spatial embeddedness of lived experiences at multiple scales

Living in state housing: expectations, contradictions and consequences Introduction

This special issue focuses on state housing in Africa as a space of living. This topic is prompted by two factors: firstly, an empirical recognition that increasing numbers of African citizens are living in state-supported housing, particularly in urban areas; and secondly, an academic awareness that there is insufficient scholarship addressing the everyday realities of living in (as opposed to legislating or delivering) state housing. The special issue has a history in a panel session convened by the authors at the 6th European Conference on African Studies held in Paris in July 2015, and we are grateful to the conference organisers for providing the physical and intellectual space for the ideas presented in this special issue to emerge

Citizen action: participation and making claims

This chapter explores citizen action in the context of the state-citizen relationship, focused on how citizens make material and political claims through both formal institutional and informal everyday channels. Employing the analytical framework of invited and invented participation (Andrea Cornwall, John Gaventa), the chapter uses case studies from India and South Africa to critically explore whether participatory forms of urban governance can empower citizens and transform cities to become more just and inclusionary spaces without (re)creating forms of inequality and marginalisation. The case studies comprise Delhi’s state-initiated Bhagiadri scheme, to which middle-class homeowners and municipal officials were invited to develop consensual solutions to city problems, to the dynamic and inventive ways in which low-income beneficiaries of state-subsidised housing in Cape Town adapt their welfare product to better suit their needs. In both empirical examples, the role of the state in (de)legitimising citizens, actions and issues is common. At the same time, the chapter reveals the ways in which citizen action can bypass participatory spaces to create alternative spaces of radical disruption. These alternative (invented) spaces of citizen action can be both loud and performative (e.g. violent and peaceful protests), as well as more quiet and everyday (e.g. changes to the built environment), and yet both challenge the authority of the state (and other institutions) in sometimes very effective ways

Infrastructural Citizenship: (de)constructing state-society relations

In this viewpoint I introduce the analytical framework of Infrastructural Citizenship using examples from my research in contemporary South Africa. This is not a tightly-defined concept but a broad heuristic tool to connect critical scholarship on infrastructure and citizenship that has been divided by disciplinary. Essentially, I argue that citizenship is embodied in infrastructure for both citizens and the state. For citizens, the state is materially and visibly represented through everyday (in)access to public infrastructure, while the state imagines and plans for citizens through infrastructure provision and maintenance. Infrastructural Citizenship provides an analytical framework to critically analyse these connections, and there by deepen understanding of both concepts as well as better understand the vitality of urban life.Leverhulme Trust (RF-2017-166), Isaac Newton Trust (17.24(h)

The nature of social integration in post-apartheid Cape Town

This research considers the nature of social integration between individuals living in desegregated neighbourhoods in post-apartheid Cape Town. Social integration is understood as a dynamic process between individuals from apartheid's different racial classifications as opposed to the common emphasis in the literature on the static outcome of a neighbourhood being integrated. The research was based on both quantitative and qualitative methods. A quantitative analysis of South Africa's 2001 census results was conducted. From this analysis neighbourhoods in Cape Town with "multiple population dominance', where no single group comprises more than 50% of the suburb population and at least one other group comprises over 25%, were identified. Qualitative fieldwork (semi-structured interviews and mental maps) was conducted in two of these 'multiple population dominance' suburbs. Based on research in these neighbourhoods I conclude that labelling a suburb as physically desegregated implies a level of social cohesion that was not found, and masks the reality of division based on length of tenure and socio-economic status. Within the specific South African context of racial inequality, such opposition to desegregation that is not matched by a shared class is likely to restrict the potential for social integration to develop beyond the confines of black middle-classes moving into 'White' areas, and poor Coloureds and Black Africans living in low-cost housing, thus affecting only a handful of the population.</p

Residential responses to fear (of crime plus) in two Cape Town suburbs: implications for the post-apartheid city

This article addresses citizens' physical and emotional responses to fear (of crime plus) in post-apartheid urban South Africa. Using primary research undertaken in two Cape Town residential suburbs, the impact of fear on citizens' lifestyle choices is demonstrated. In the first suburb the response to fear manifests in the immense physical security of a gated community, while residents of the second suburb have created an 'Improvement District' in order to 'upgrade' their residential area. Although markedly different responses to crime (and its associated fear), citizen responses in both suburbs focus on displacing both crime and individuals elsewhere, predominately into socio-economically weaker areas. Both gated communities and improvement districts also create exclusionary spaces that thwart the post-apartheid drive for integration and desegregation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Desegregation and Integration as Linked or Distinct? Evidence from a Previously 'White' Suburb in Post-apartheid Cape Town

This article analyses whether the physical desegregation of a residential neighbourhood ultimately facilitates the social integration of its residents. Desegregation is measured quantitatively (i.e. using census data for a suburb in which no single race comprises more than 50% and at least one other racial group comprises 25%), and social integration is assessed qualitatively using indicators such as friendship, common local identity, sharing local facilities and involvement in local institutions. Essentially this research is concerned with whether labelling a suburb 'desegregated' is a superficial term that whilst implying racial mixing actually masks social segregation; and also whether assumptions that urban policies of desegregation ultimately facilitate social integration are accurate. This desegregation/integration nexus is explored by examining the lives of residents of a desegregated Cape Town neighbourhood. South Africa provides a timely context because the legacy of apartheid's spatial and social design continues to dominate the urban scene despite policy efforts to promote both desegregation and integration. Copyright (c) 2006 The Author. Journal Compilation (c) 2006 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.