PLAN OF THE LESSON
- Your turn
- Westbury in the larger context of the city of Joburg
- Discussion with Mr S Constant:
- What are the challenges of people in Westbury?
- How do people try to make another place of and life
in W.?
- What is ‘Local Studio’?
CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
The SUN, Published: 2011-01-22
Jodi Bieber, Fast Gun
….“inadequacy of representational systems as a
stand in for lived experience” (Renov,1993:7,
quoted by Dannhauser 2006: 7)
HISTORY OF WESTBURY &
THE ‘WESTERN AREAS’
HISTORY OF WESTBURY
- Today’s Westbury: Founded as WESTERN NATIVE TOWNSHIP, 1918
- WESTERN COLOURED TOWNSHIP
- Today: WESTBURY
- Known as part of the then so-called “WESTERN
AREAS”
Image Photograph: Western Native Township 1958: Chapman after Beinart, 1975:160
“WESTERN AREAS”
- Sophiatown, Newclare, Martindale, Western
Native Township ( the latter controlled by
Johannesburg City Council)
- “The point was that the Western Areas were
not locations but suburbs. “ (Lodge, The
Destruction of Sophiatown, 114)
-“The Western Areas also provided opportunities for
prostitution, gambling, casual craftwork, and
hawking, which - given the absence of municipal
regulations and the geographical situation of the
suburbs - were rather more profitable than
elsewhere. Another response to material
conditions was gangsterism. “ (ibid)
-“These social categories should be seen as fluid and
blurred at the edges. “
Increasingly overcrowded due to:
- ‘Slum Clearances’
- Migration to the cities
- Structure of the city laid out by Apartheid rule
1920S AND 1930S
“The late 1920s and early 1930s saw increased concern over
violence in the Western Areas, yet officials could still refer to
W.N.T. as a 'model' location as late as 1930-1. Thereafter
criminality seems to have increased markedly, but it was only
in the middle of the decade that the Western Areas became
noted for crime, particularly violence and theft.”
From the paper: D. Goodhew: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Crime,
Policing and the Western Areas of Johannesburg, c.1930 – 1962. Presented at
Wits Historical Workshop, Feb 1990. (EduLink)
- Group Areas Act – declared ‘coloured’
- Area ‘Development Plan’ -- Western Coloured Township --- Changes in the layout of the suburb
- Playcourts – pedestrian & vehicles intersecting
- Lack of private/family space.
APARTHEID LEGISLATION
- 1950 Group Areas Act
-declared “coloured”
- Forced Removals of residents, eg from Sophiatown
- Spatial control
- Movement control.
- “suppress the mobilisation of black opposition (…) ,
secondly, they proposed to meet the demands of white
farmers and white workers for an effective administration
of influx control that would prevent Africans leaving the
countryside to settle permanently in the city and
undermine the jobs of white workers” (Unterhalter, 10)
PRE-APARTHEID LEGISLATION
• “Natives Land Act, No 27 of 1913”
• ”Natives (Urban Areas) Act of 1923”
• (…)
EFFECTS OF LEGISLATIONS (AMONGST OTHERS..)
URBAN/RURAL
SPACE
FAMILY
STRUCTURES
GENDER
RELATIONS
SPACE MATTERS…
•Private and public spaces
•Privacy
•Safety/Security
•Community / Individual
HOW TO ANALYSE SPACE..
“In
moving beyond the highly descriptive phase
of urban history new paradigms are required
to approach the question of the place of race
in the city. “ (Mabin, p 43)
De Certeau, Michel The Practice of Everyday Life. 1974; Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984. Translated by Steven Rendall.
HISTORY OF CRIME & RESISTANCE
- Western Native Township Tram boycott
- Organised by Anti-Tram Fare Action Committee
- 1939 Beer Hall Boycott
- 1 November 1949 - clash police – residents
- 29 January 1950: clash police-residents because of
liquor --- setting an Asian store alight
- 1980s Residents, LTA and government in conflict over
space & redevelopment of ‘Westbury’
A HISTORY OF WOMEN
- Strong role of mothers & other women
PHYSICAL STRUCTURE & SOCIAL LIFE
• Overcrowded, lack of private space
• Planned environment
Changing Perspectives
CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
“One of the player's childhood friends, Branwynn Scheeders,said: "There's
another big gang-fight going on at the moment. We had a funeral last
week and there's another one at the weekend too.
"It's all over drug-dealing — 'tic', cocaine and heroin. Westbury has
improved since Steven lived here but after the shootings everyone is
scared to go out at night.
"The real problem is the police — they are afraid to come in here. A lot of
them get paid off by the gangsters and murders aren't solved.’
“
GANGSTERISM / RITUALS
“In the urban context, however, the importance of ritual has
been submerged in the struggle for survival and young
people devise their own rites of passage.
‘They create structures and rituals that work for them, carve
their names into the ghetto walls and the language of
popular culture, arm themselves with fearsome weapons and
demand at gun-point what they cannot win with individual
respect. (Pinnock, 1996)’”
From: Dissel, A: Youth, Street Gangs and Violence in South Africa. In Youth, Street Culture and
Urban Violence in Africa, proceedings of the international symposium held in Abidjan, Ivory
Coast, pp. 405-411, 5-7 May 1997. http://www.csvr.org.za/wits/papers/papganga.htm
POINTS BY DANNHAUSER:
• ‘Race’ as a marker of ‘difference’:
“Coloured community in South Africa by the fact
that race has always been used as a marker of
difference. During the apartheid era, the position of
Coloured communities, and Westbury in particular,
was circumscribed by the politics of segregation.
This
marginalisation was
exacerbated by the
‘justifiable’ view from the outside, based on evidence
of police records and media reports, of Coloured
culture as violent and unstable.” (p2)
COMPARE ALAN MABIN
- “'Race': The A Priori Category of Urban Studies: Typically articles on
South African cities begin with a note on racial categorisation and
terminology. The official designations of the state are denounced
and the authors assert their opposition to artificial racial
classifications. Nonetheless, race remains the ubiquitous lens
through which the South African city is viewed. “ (40)
RECENT HISTORICAL EVENTS
• 2000: TAG (Together Action Group) is
formed
• 2001: rallye initiated by churches –
‘reconciliation’
• 2011: LOCAL STUDIO IS FORMED
LOCAL STUDIO
FINANCIAL MAIL 8.9.2011 http://www.fm.co.za/Article.aspx?id=152872
“This project begins with the notion that in
‘entering through the backdoor’ one is
able to look past the stigmas that brand
a community such as Westbury: stigmas
which entrench and exacerbate the
divide between a desolate past and a
hopeful future. ” http://snwe.tumblr.com/post/3065001180/bttc
-1-introduction-to-westbury
PLACE-MAKING
“Placemaking is a multi-faceted approach to the
planning, design and management of public spaces. Put
simply, it involves looking at, listening to, and asking
questions of the people who live, work and play in a
particular space, to discover their needs and aspirations.
This information is then used to create
vision
a common
for that place. The vision can evolve quickly into
an implementation strategy, beginning with small-scale,
do-able improvements that can immediately bring
benefits to public spaces and the people who use them.”
http://www.pps.org/articles/what_is_placemaking/
SOCCER DAY
PARK DAY
TOUR ‘MEMORY IN THE CITY’ CONFERENCE
PROJECT – THE SHOP
Filip De Boek –
Kinshasa: Tales of the Invisible City
“What it needs in order to
operate a garage is not
a garage itself, but the
idea of a garage”