Political Liberalization and the Cultural Turn in South Africa: The Case of Newtown in the Inner City of Johannesburg

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South Africa’s process of political liberalization led by the ANC government has opened to new dynamics of urban change in which new cultural images epitomized by the use of struggle heroes have become major instruments to reconstruct the meaning of urban spaces. The use of the names of African struggle heroes and narratives has become part and parcel of the South African urban renaissance in the generation of the symbolic economy. In the process, new urban spaces have developed to open opportunities celebrate the new democracy, but at the same time such celebrations are undermined by the social injustices that emerge from the same urban spaces. While these social injustices are taken to be part of “business as usual,” by government officials, this paper seeks to tests these approaches against the country’s imperative to engender social transformation. The paper explores the implications of the political and cultural liberalization to urban development by using the case of Newtown in the Inner City of Johannesburg.

Stream: Cultural Sustainability

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Fana Sihlongonyane is lecturer in the School of Architecture and Planning. His interests spread over a wide range of theoretical, applied and policy arenas in the global as well as African realms of development. His research focus envelopes principally the interface between development and urban studies largely within the poignant dynamics of the political economy of Africa. Over the years, he has worked and published in areas of land reform, housing, planning, gender, spatial development, urban politics, local economic development, community development, political culture and African city. The analysis of these topics is drawn from a wide range of disciplines which include: economics, history, sociology, anthropology, political and geography. However, his insights in the exploration of these areas draw largely from his experience as an African.