Wake up, this is Joburg (Tanya Zack & Mark Lewis). Duke University Press
Wake up, this is Joburg
Tanya Zack and Mark Lewis
Duke University Press
ISBN: 978-1-4780-1870-4
Wake up, this is Joburg, published by Duke University, offers ten lively, nuanced vignettes of life and survival in one of Africa’s most cosmopolitan cities. It tackles the big topic of a big city, but its empathetic narrative and stunning photography portray ordinary people’s extraordinary lives very accessibly for a general audience; yet they leave much to think about for urban planners, scholars and decision-makers. The effect lives up to a powerful quote upfront in the introduction from Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage: “The truth sometimes reminds me of a city buried in sand. As time passes, the sand piles up even thicker, and occasionally it’s blown away and what’s below is revealed.”
Don’t take this to be either all glorious and romantic or all miserable and sad, though. Early on, it is made clear that the book aims at those “who are inquisitive about urban living in ways and worlds that they do not encounter on a daily basis” and with “a sense of the complexity of urbanity”. There is rich nuance in Tanya Zack’s flowing, sensitive narrative and Mark Lewis’s striking photography. The stories they tell are deeply human and individualised, yet cleverly interwoven within Johannesburg’s broader racial, social and economic anomalies. The big story of this big city gets told and powerfully demonstrated in vastly diverse public and intimate living spaces, relationships and lifestyles. It depicts Johannesburg as an agile, inventive “place of reeling … where the public good is contested … making a living can be messy” and “violence simmers … as the city lurches between crisis and celebration and back again”.
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There is rich nuance in Tanya Zack’s flowing, sensitive narrative and Mark Lewis’s striking photography. The stories they tell are deeply human and individualised, yet cleverly interwoven within Johannesburg’s broader racial, social and economic anomalies.
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At one point, Zack writes: “The city swanks. Its conspicuous consumption has outlasted fads and eras” from one-time “extravagant department stores … with displays of glamorous French fashions and delicacies” to “low-price fast fashion frenzy, it’s a ‘show-off’ kind of place”. At another, she describes Johannesburg’s common narrative as “hyperbolic”. And indeed, this shines through, from its genesis in the 1880s on the “richest gold-bearing seam in the world” to the “rumbling diversity and beat” of today’s “postcolonial Afropolitan metropolis”.
"S’kop" takes us to the city centre, where a sea of unlicensed butchers has been selling cow heads in a condemned parking garage, targeted by officialdom but remaining in high demand. (Photo: Mark Lewis, Wake up, this is Joburg)
The book captures the city’s “stubborn geography of segregation” as a “go to case study for urban inequality”, impacted by extractive industries (especially gold) and as a trading hub that transcends national boundaries. But it also shows a city of transformation and “the trademark arrival city on the African continent”. The authors resist the term “underbelly”, ie, it is not “some underside of the city” but rather an urbanity and ‘cityness’ of lives lived “alongside our own, but in the shadows – possibly even shadows we ourselves cast”. They probe the dreams and intentions of people and their impact on remaking the form and structure of today’s city.
“Inside out” captures the vibrancy of Yeoville’s cosmopolitan market and street shops, where traders’ sources and clientele defy parochial and xenophobic bias. (Photo: Mark Lewis, Wake up, this is Joburg)
Based on an earlier series of ten booklets by the same authors, but now integrated by Duke University Press into this colourful and lively volume through a reflective, cross-cutting introduction, Wake up, this is Joburg reflects entrepreneurship, social richness, pathos and tension, and the extraordinary survival of migrants from all over Africa, South Africa and different parts of Johannesburg itself. While acknowledging macro themes like globalisation and migration, it also sweeps – in short story mode – through a kaleidoscope of places, lifestyles and characters improvising to make a living:
- “S’kop” takes us to the city centre, where a sea of unlicensed butchers has been selling cow heads in a condemned parking garage, targeted by officialdom but remaining in high demand.
- “Tony dreams in yellow and blue” opens up – delightfully – the home and world of a Madeira-born Joburger from the suburb Rosettenville as a “castle with a tooth-like parapet edging” and with “two human-sized plastic beverage bottles” that “share the garage roof with a boat, a windmill, a vintage mo-ped driven by a Michael Jackson-lookalike manikin” and much more.
- “Inside out” captures the vibrancy of Yeoville’s cosmopolitan market and street shops, where traders’ sources and clientele defy parochial and xenophobic bias.
- “Zola” takes us to the hustle and bustle of hundreds of mini-taxi drivers waiting for the late peak hour, with the tensions around their industry, but also its positive economic impetus.
- “Good riddance” tells us about (mostly foreign) traders in the city centre, and their economic impact.
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“Undercity” depicts the hardship and dangerous work of unregulated “Zama Zama” miners, and the environmental injustice of mineral extraction. (Photo: Mark Lewis, Wake up, this is Joburg)
- “Tea at Ansteys” introduces a new cosmopolitan mix of professionals, musicians and poor occupants in an inner city apartment block, once a benchmark amid luxury department stores.
- “Bedroom” conveys the intimacy-without-privacy life in a dilapidated, overcrowded one-bedroom flat in once trendy but now middle-class-avoided Hillbrow.
- “Undercity” depicts the hardship and dangerous work of unregulated “Zama Zama” (a Zulu term for “trying”) miners, and the environmental injustice of mineral extraction.
- “ Made in China” covers the proliferation of traders and shoppers – and not only Chinese – in the city, citing a property economist estimating that cross-border shoppers spend the equivalent of the annual turnover of Johannesburg’s biggest shopping mall.
- “Master mansions” reflects the proud connections of migrants with Johannesburg, including an Indian hatmaker’s moving memory of a hat that he helped make for Winnie Mandela for her husband’s presidential inauguration.
Any criticism?
Quite frankly, not much.
- Perhaps one could question whether the book is quite as consistent in telling stories rather than drawing conclusions, as the authors would contend. For example, criticism of former mayor Mashaba’s fierce stance against informal foreign traders in the inner city is pretty categoric. But they do build their case very systematically and empirically around the vibrant economic role and social richness of Johannesburg’s cosmopolitanism. Moreover, the South African Human Rights Commission also did demand that the mayor apologise for his anti-foreigner comments.
- The authors raise delicate intimacy in some of the narrative and the images, for example, in chapter seven (“Bedroom”), which enters the awkward space of a severely overcrowded apartment in Hillbrow. But they explain elaborately how, throughout, people interviewed and/or featured were carefully consulted, and offered the option of being cited anonymously, or not being photographed. Relationships with interviewees were carefully built over years, and one gets a real sense of mutual respect, and that they appreciated their stories and experiences being aired.
On balance, though, one would have to be very hardcore in one’s perspective to dismiss the book as one-sided. Its narrative and visuals are beautifully and systematically presented and integrated, and while it shows tangible empathy with the people it features, it really offers moving, powerful visual and narrative observations, rather than a rigid ideological view.
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It challenges many preconceptions, based on years of observation and direct interaction with people in spaces that most of us would never or rarely see up close. Aside from its value for urban experts and decision-makers, it is so colourfully and powerfully written and photographed, that it promises to stimulate and be enjoyed by a much wider audience.
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In sum, this is an extraordinary book, with beautiful, powerful photographs and a sensitive, robust and accessible narrative. It provides a fresh perspective on life, struggle, survival, creativity and uniqueness in one of Africa’s major cities. Jointly, the photography and the narrative convey very personal stories, without stereotypes. It challenges many preconceptions, based on years of observation and direct interaction with people in spaces that most of us would never or rarely see up close. Aside from its value for urban experts and decision-makers, it is so colourfully and powerfully written and photographed, that it promises to stimulate and be enjoyed by a much wider audience.
Acknowledgements
- Wake up, this is Joburg (Duke University Publishers) is available from Exclusive Books, from Love Books in Melville, Johannesburg, or online from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Wake-This-Joburg-Theory-Forms/dp/1478018704.
- Photos by Mark Lewis
- Chris Heymans is an independent analyst, specialising in the political economy of cities, urban development and water and sanitation.
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