Against the Wall: Reflections on Wandering and Precarity in South African Cities

South Africa’s post-apartheid cities are defined by coloniality and precarity, particularly for the urban poor. Owing to the protracted history of colonialism and apartheid, these cities are simultaneously characterized by spaces of ‘first-world’ affluence, as well as spaces of abject poverty and alterity resulting in increased inequalities and the constant quest for survival through formal and informal means. In this chapter, we employ a collaborative autoethnographic approach to uncover the politics and practices of wandering in the post-apartheid urban spaces of alterity, i.e. the townships and now debilitating central business districts where the majority of poor black people reside. It is argued here that the prevalence of rapid urbanization of poverty and high levels of unemployment, and the snail-paced delivery of affordable housing, has resulted in what might be called the everyday politics of wandering. In appreciating this politics of wandering we reflect on how the hitherto racially banished people still find it near-impossible to be firmly rooted in ‘post-apartheid’ cities due to the crushing weight of socio-spatial and economic marginalization. We therefore recommend that while wandering represents the prevalence of social suffering and coloniality in post-apartheid cities, it also compels urban planners and policymakers to embrace planning strategies and approaches that are centered on decolonization that allow for the ‘unlearning’ of the Western conception of development particularly in the cities of the global South.