The housing careers of black middle-class residents in a South African metropolitan area

Marais, Lochner; Napier, Mark; Cloete, Jan; Lenka, Molefi

doi:10.1007/s10901-018-9593-6

Cited by 8 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Ngcobo (2014: 64) writes, for example, ‘As soon as I could barely afford it, I jumped fence, left the township and moved to the ’burbs.’ Of course, the reasons for either staying in or leaving the township go beyond questions of affordability (Marais et al . 2018). Virtually all who do wish to leave, however, reference the roots of raced and regimented spacialization and consumption.…”

Section: Escaping the Township Escaping Homementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Under apartheid, blacks could not own land or homes, even in their restricted townships (Marais et al . 2018: 843) because the townships were set up as dormitory settlements to house sojourners whose homes were not in the city (which purportedly belonged to whites) but in the so-called homelands. Since blacks were thought not to need much, the houses were poky, and little space meant little or no privacy and resulted in compromised dignity.…”

Section: Escaping the Township Escaping Homementioning

confidence: 99%

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Shuttling between the suburbs and the township: the new black middle class(es) negotiating class and post-apartheid blackness in South Africa

Ndlovu¹

2020

Africa

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A generation of South Africa's new black middle class shuttles between the suburbs and the townships. This has become the focus of some South African humorous essayists, among them Ndumiso Ngcobo and Fred Khumalo, on whose works this article is based. The article argues that studying the new black middle class should extend to these literary sources and approaches. The humorous essays by these two authors consistently reference metaphors of mobility and the vexed intersection of black middle-classness, consumption, racialized residential zoning and compromised status. Through the mode of humour, the essays evince the psychological burdens borne by those with township roots but who live in the suburbs, as they negotiate status inconsistency in a post-apartheid search for human dignity. Constant visits to the township and the retreat to the suburbs constitute negotiations of spatial, financial and psychic concerns imbricated in the legacies of apartheid's racialized politics of distinction.

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Section: Escaping the Township Escaping Homementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Escaping the Township Escaping Homementioning

confidence: 99%

Shuttling between the suburbs and the township: the new black middle class(es) negotiating class and post-apartheid blackness in South Africa

Ndlovu¹

2020

Africa

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“…This indicates intergenerational value that is not always considered in the literature on asset building. Marais et al (2018) have recently made a detailed study of black middle-class housing careers in South Africa. In the present study we were interested in determining the extent to which housing has been used as a springboard to further housing assets and also the extent of intergenerational transfer.…”

Section: Using the House As An Assetmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A search of the housing literature of the first 20 years after democracy found only two studies of the lower-middle-class household (Tomlinson, 1997(Tomlinson, , 2007. But recently there has been a revival of academic interest in this topic (Marais & Cloete, 2015, 2017Lemanski, 2017;Marais et al, 2018). Generally, attention has been devoted to the rising black middle class (Southall, 2016), and a special edition of Development Southern Africa (Volume 32, Issue 1, 2015) was dedicated to this topic.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black middle-income housing and asset building in Mangaung, South Africa

Litheko¹,

Marais²,

Cloete³

et al. 2019

Urbani Izziv

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Asset-building policies are used worldwide to reduce state welfare commitments. In the Global South, including South Africa, asset-based housing development is thought to help reduce poverty. This study investigated asset building and homeownership in a sample of South Africa’s emerging black middle class. Interviews with 244 black middle-class households in Mangaung revealed asset value creation and heavy dependence on mortgage finance. Levels of mortgage default were low, although households with recently secured mortgages struggled to pay them off. We found little evidence that property-owning is helping these households to move out of poverty. Their ability to afford mortgage loans appeared to be directly related to their own efforts and human capital. Very few had considered downsizing as an option, possibly because ownership of a house has social value, for passing on to the next generation. Asset building was still in its early stages and, because these households had been denied equal opportunities and barred from homeownership by the apartheid regime, very few intergenerational transfers had yet occurred.

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“…There is a growing, but still small, body of work being done on property and the housing market in South Africa (Saff ; Wood ; Lemon & Clifford ). The topics covered are the township housing market, the need to extend finance to this market, the Housing Subsidy Programme’s potential to create a secondary market and, more recently, problems and opportunities in middle‐income housing (Shisaka Development Management Services ; Tomlinson ; Lemanski , ; Marais & Cloete , ; Hoekstra & Marais ; Marais et al ). Taking a more positive view, the Centre for Affordable Housing in Africa () pointed out that property markets have been developing in many former Black townships of South Africa.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Tale of Two Markets: Unequal Access to Private Property in a South African City

Marais¹,

Awuzie²,

Cloete

et al. 2019

Tijd voor Econ & Soc Geog

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In line with international trends, South Africa's post-apartheid government has embarked on a housing policy that emphasises asset building. Homeownership has become a dominant policy for assisting the historically disadvantaged Black population. This paper looks at two property markets in Mangaung, a metropolitan municipality that includes Bloemfontein. We analysed property activity on 2,545 residential stands in former Black and former White areas in Mangaung since 1990. Our findings show two distinct markets. The formal property market in former Black areas shows a low number of transactions, low value and slow turnover. In the former White areas, a housing investment made between 1990 and 2016 would have yielded an annual return of 14 per cent, but in the former Black areas only 7 per cent. This poor return makes it difficult for homeowners in former Black areas to use housing for asset building.

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The housing careers of black middle-class residents in a South African metropolitan area

Abstract: Important note To cite this publication, please use the final published version (if applicable). Please check the document version above.

Cited by 8 publications

References 27 publications

Shuttling between the suburbs and the township: the new black middle class(es) negotiating class and post-apartheid blackness in South Africa

Shuttling between the suburbs and the township: the new black middle class(es) negotiating class and post-apartheid blackness in South Africa

Black middle-income housing and asset building in Mangaung, South Africa

A Tale of Two Markets: Unequal Access to Private Property in a South African City

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