The new tribalism: hostels and violence

Commodification, economic restructuring, and the changing urban geography of labour in post-apartheid South Africa: The case of Gauteng Province, 1991–2001

“…Ensuing conflicts between township and hostel dwellers fragmented local working class communities and weakened social movement unionism's appeal (Sitas, 1996;Bonnet and Ndima, 1999). Moreover, as Ruiters (1995Ruiters ( , 2000 notices, deepening urban stratifications and the emergence of an urban African middle class revealed fractures and divides that questioned the ability of political organisations, specifically those aligned with the nationalist tradition, to weld a coherent meaning of"community".…”

The researcher as the ball in a political game

“…Single-sex hostels (male hostels mostly, sometimes female), they were meant to prevent full urbanization of black migrants who were in a way permanently temporary, and whose roots in their "homeland" was maintained through the division of their family and their relative physical isolation from urban black townships (Ramphele 1993). Hostels crystallized fears and violence in urban areas in the 1990s, around complex ethno-political divisions opposing hostel dwellers to township residents, and instrumentalised by the apartheid regime (Chipkin 2004, Elder 2003, Segal 1991, Sitas 1996. iii The Democratic Alliance (DA) is the main opposition party in South Africa.…”

Building a city for all: notes after Habitat II

“…This is particularly pertinent in the urban context where, for a host of reasons ranging from a nostalgia for roots to competition for resources, some groups retain and even exaggerate their cultural identity and exclusiveness in the city (Bonner, 1995;Bozzoli, 1991;Cohen, 1969). Others meld or inflect rural custom, ethnic identity or other aspects of 'traditional' consciousness with an urban or working class culture (Freund, 1994;Sitas, 1996). Yet others assert distinctive contemporary urban cultures manifest, for example in homeboy dress and talk and rap music in the United States.…”