Income Inequality and Socio-economic Segregation in the City of Johannesburg

This chapter analyses income inequality and socio-economic segregation in South Africa’s most populous city, Johannesburg. The end of apartheid’s segregation in 1991 has been followed by both continuity and change of urban spatial patterns. There is a considerable literature on the transformation of inner-city areas from white to black, and of the steady diffusion of black middle-class residents into once ‘white’ suburbs. There has been less analysis on the nature and pace of socio-economic mixing. Four key findings from this chapter are as follows. First, dissimilarity indices show that bottom occupation categories and the unemployed are highly segregated from top occupation categories, but that the degree of segregation has decreased slightly between the censuses of 2001 and 2011. Second, the data quantifies the way in which Johannesburg’s large population of unemployed people are more segregated from top occupations than any of the other employment categories, although unemployed people are less segregated from bottom occupations. Third, over the same period, residents employed in bottom occupations are less likely to be represented in affluent former white suburbs. This seemingly paradoxical finding is likely to have resulted from fewer affluent households accommodating their domestic workers on their properties. Fourth, although most post-apartheid public housing projects have not disrupted patterns of socio-economic segregation, some important exceptions do show the enormous capacity of public housing to transform the spatial structure of the city.

Connecting Journalists and Community Members

Chapter Two explores an effort to involve residents in the process of making journalism. It follows the case of Curious City, a series produced by WBEZ Chicago public radio that invites listeners to nominate questions about Chicago that they want reporters to explore, using the Hearken digital engagement platform. Curious City undertook a foundation-supported experiment to determine the most effective outreach strategies to elicit participation from residents of historically stigmatized majority Black and Latinx neighborhoods as well as some majority white suburbs. The chapter finds that through offline engagement they strengthened, to a limited extent, what communication infrastructure theory calls “storytelling network” ties –particularly the links between local media and community members. However, because they failed to establish two-way connections with residents, stories were often told about communities without giving residents in those communities opportunities to listen to stories and participate in dialogue.

The Racial Geographies of Criminal Panic

How are the politics of crime in South Africa’s predominantly white suburbs and predominantly black townships similar or different? Through an analysis of what organizers billed as the largest anti-crime protest in South Africa’s history—a virtually all-white affair at a Pretoria rugby club—the chapter shows similarities between the areas in the claims made about crime, and particularly about how the post-apartheid rights regime enables insecurity. However, the chapter reveals two important differences between the suburbs and townships. First, it shows the more directly racialized language through which fear of crime is expressed in the suburbs. Second, it shows how vigilante violence is differently practiced in the different areas, as it is aimed primarily at “outsiders” in South Africa’s suburbs rather than “insiders” in the country’s townships.

The Education and Employment of Low-Income Black Youth in White Suburbs

This study examines education and employment outcomes of Black youth whose families moved from mostly Black urban housing projects to either mostly White suburbs or other mostly Black urban areas. The study examined high school retention, grades, track placement, college attendance, employment, wages, job prestige, and job benefits. Despite concerns about disadvantages due to discrimination and competition with White peers, the suburban youth did significantly better than urban youth in practically all areas. In the suburbs, mothers and youth pointed to positive effects of higher educational standards, additional academic help, greater access to information about college enrollment, and positive role models.