4.1.2. Community
Based on the findings of my fieldwork, this subsection
aims to examine the types of
community that exist in the inner city, in order to
see whether they can facilitate greater cohesion for a just city. But
before analysing the inner city communities, it is important to define
the term `community' broadly.
There are many definitions of `community' but, for Hill
(1994), community is a group of people «sharing common interests
in a network of social relationships» (Hill, 1994: 34). In other
words, communities exist through human communication, and people can
communicate only if they interact with each other in the course of their
everyday social and economic lives.
Thus, people's experiences of community are both spatial and
social. What is central to the
notion of community concerns the fact that people have something
in common called `space'
(to which they attach some meanings) and `values' (that they
can discover from each other through social and economic interactions).
From the spatial side of people's experiences of community, Hill
emphasises the importance
of cohesion (spatial cohesion) among members of communities
and believes that they should find the meaning of community in `shared
interests and values (Hill, 1994: 35). That is, the core of community should
be found not in territoriality but in shared interests and values.
Looking broadly at the communities of people living in the
inner city of Johannesburg, and based on my interviews with the members
of CSOs and FMs, as well as on my own experience as an inhabitant
of the inner city, I can argue that there is a lack of real
communities that Hill defines in terms of group of people sharing common
interests. From the side of the South Africans, the interests of their own
community groups are at the top of the agendas compared to the interests
of all the inhabitants of the inner city as a whole. The
historically disadvantaged South Africans (especially blacks) think that
all the government actions should be focused only on them, for their
`empowerment'. The politics of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) seem to be
used as an argument to justify their intention of excluding and prevent
other residents (especially foreigners) from sharing with them the
benefits and the resources of the Johannesburg or of the country. The majority
of black people regard FMs as those who came in Johannesburg to compete with
them and steal their jobs. That is why, most of my informants claimed that it
is common in the inner city to hear South Africans launching slogans such as
«Makwerekwere» or «foreigners, go home».
From the FMs' side, as most of them feel like excluded and
marginalised in the inner-city, every single FM prefer to choose friends only
among people from his/her own country. That
is why, one can notice that, in places such as Hillbrow and
Yeoville, Nigerians (for instance) prefer to stay together in order to
share (as a community of people coming from the same country) their
day-to-day experiences. The same behaviours can be seen among the DR-
Congolese, Zimbabwean, Tanzanian, and Ethiopian communities. Feeling excluded
from the city's life and from the citizenship practices, the majority
of FMs developed a fearful and hostile attitude towards South
Africans. According to Mr Anonymous One (see Chapter Three), such
attitude can be seen especially when the South African national
soccer team
plays against a foreigner team. He argued that the majority of
foreigners do not like to support
Bafana Bafana, not because they do not like soccer, but because
they have developed hostile
attitudes towards South Africans due to their
xenophobic attitudes towards foreigners
(Interview with Anonymous One, 2006).
According to me, encouraging more interaction (through
communication, dialogue, and intercultural activities as I will recommend in
Chapter Five) between South Africans and FMs may be one of the better means
that local authorities may used to help them to develop strong social
relationships between them and create real communities because,
as Hill says, communities can exist only through human communication and
people can communicate only
if they can interact together in the course of their everyday
social and economic lives (Hill,
1994: 34).
In planning, communicative planning theorists emphasise the
importance of communication
in citizenship practices. Forrester, for instance, and others,
«drew inspiration from Habermas
to pose communication as the most important element of planning
practice» (Watson, 2002:
29). Communication may help interest groups towards
interacting, communicating ideas, forming argument, debating differences in
understanding, and reaching consensus on issues regarding their lives in
the city. As I have already said, communication or dialogue should be promoted
by the city's authorities to facilitate social cohesion between South
Africans and FMs. By doing so, FMs can fully live their presence in
the city without feeling excluded because the cities of the 21th
century will be intercultural or «The City which is Not One»
(Sandercock, 2006 and Tagg, 1996).
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