The lived experiences of the African middle classes Introduction

Abstract

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.

Never enough: neoliberalizing Namibian middle-class marriages

“…They were 'recent social climbers' (Lentz 2020: 460), realizing the fragility of their upward move. Many felt insecure about the permanence of their new class status (Mercer and Lemanski 2020), especially when confronted with their non-affluent, often unmarried kin. Performances of their middle-classness, especially during their weddings, were aimed at convincing kin of their class achievements.…”

“…Rachel Spronk (2020: 482) has also stressed the complexity of neoliberal transformations, cautioning against too general and morally charged judgements. Many of my Namibian interlocutors welcomed the neoliberally framed possibilities that were available to them (Mercer and Lemanski 2020;Spronk 2020). Married women expressed deep satisfaction about being able to shape their bodies and minds in ways they, and not their kin, felt were right.…”

“…The contributions to a recent special issue on the lived experiences of Africa's middle classes (Mercer and Lemanski 2020) demonstrate the precariousness and ambiguity of these reconfigurations for these emerging classes. Belonging to the middle classes is very often a fragile and transient achievement, depending on and threatened by unstable political economies (Hull 2020;Southall 2020).…”

“…This brings me back to the anxieties about divorce of my middle-class interlocutors that opened this article. While status anxiety has often been noted as a characteristic of middle-class identities (Lentz 2020;Mercer and Lemanski 2020), the fear of divorce is specific to the Namibian middle classes. In the course of the last forty years, marriage in Namibia has changed from a widespread and affordable life transition available to almost everybody into an exclusive and very expensive middle-class institution, the costs of which can be mustered by only a small minority of the population (Pauli 2019).…”

A SHADOWY ‘CITY OF LIGHT’: Private Urbanism, Large‐Scale Land Acquisition and Dispossession in Ghana

“…Similarly, Bekker et al (2021) also demonstrate how gigantic urban development schemes--like the landreclamation project Eko Atlantic in Lagos, for instance--reflect how the new enclaved and satellite cities in Africa are integral to a whole new urban order on the continent that integrates real-estate speculation, political elites and new forms of dispossession and (spatial, social, financial) separation (see also Watson, 2014;Murray, 2016). For, with the unprecedented sprawling of African cities fuelled by a growing middle class (Mercer, 2014;Melber, 2016;Mercer and Lemanski, 2020), the demand for housing and other urban infrastructure is on the rise. Private small-scale and multinational corporations are leading the drive to meet the housing deficit in African cities through what has been termed private urban development (Bhan, 2014;Watson, 2014;Fält, 2016).…”