Review by Imraan Buccus

Getting to the heart of the city

The new book that undresses Durban illustrates how the city is experienced by the different, unequally divided groups of people living here

WE ARRIVE (in Durban). We haven't slept in a while, come out into the sunshine, drive to the city, see hills.

Wow! No one said there were hills here - we thought there was only crime.

We drive to a house. It has an electric fence and a remote-controlled gate.

Inside there is a board that says this is the GSP refugee camp, there is a pool and palm trees beyond.

We don't have accommodation, so this is where we will wait until we find a place to stay. Old friends, new place, high walls - it's all unreal, but need to sleep now.

We wake up. The sun is setting. Should we check out the nightlife?

"Are you crazy?" our friends, who got here last week, ask us. "You can't go out after 5.30pm."

So begins a chapter in a new book entitled Undressing Durban (edited by UKZN sociologists Sultan Khan and Rob Pattman) and launched at the Time of the Writer Festival in Durban. The book looks at Durban through many lenses and engages with readers as intelligent and critical laypeople, not as academic specialists, employing a variety of evocative styles.

Durban is a fascinating and plural city with a co-dominance of African, Asian and European cultures.

Fractured

But Durban is also in South Africa, and South Africa is a brutalised and fractured society, still recovering from centuries of domination and prejudice, so while there may now be a co-dominance of cultures, most things are still seen through the lenses of the white middle-class minority. And this book attempts to change that.

The way "insiders", "outsiders", poor blacks and Indians, gangsters, sex workers and street children experience Durban is vastly different from the way Durban's city fathers promote the city. And different from the way typical middle-class people experience the city.

Such a complex and multi-dimensional construction of Durban would mean that a book, especially one edited by sociologists, would make for interesting reading.

Rather than dressing up Durban in the images familiar to tourists, Undressing Durban illustrates different experiences of the city, highlighting vast material inequalities between various groups, and investigates the cultures and identities they construct in their everyday lives.

One can read about "Coloured gangs" from the perspective of their members, about Indian culture, and the paranoia about crime in a sociologically fascinating city.

Interestingly, the book surfaces information that readers in Durban may not be aware of. Durban has pockets of wealth and poverty, and informally racialised spaces sitting next to each other.

While Durban has much in common with other cities in post-apartheid South Africa, what gives it its specific character is its particular mix of cultures and races (partly derived from its position as a major sea port on the East Coast).

What also makes Durban different from other cities in South Africa is the close proximity of different groups marked by huge disparities in resources and life chances.

For example, exclusively black areas such as Amaoti, in Inanda, compete internationally for the lowest ranking on the Human Development Index, whereas Umhlanga, an overwhelmingly white area, just next door to Amaoti, competes with California in terms of the index.

Engagement

The city's attempts at "hiding away" street children when conferences take place in Durban mean that delegates do not get to experience the real Durban - and only experience Durban as tourists, precluding engagement with various groups of people living here.

When visitors to Durban live in beachfront hotels, whisked from one conference venue to another, they do not experience the Durban that also has poverty, street children and a lack of housing.

Thus, when Durban is "undressed", the paraphernalia on marketing the city as first class falls away, and what emerges quite starkly is the fact that a great deal more needs to be done to deal with the social issues in the city.

One soon realises that the city cannot be taken for granted and be masked behind tourism images.

Undressing Durban is a compelling read, not for those seeking a perverted insight into the city, but for those wanting to nurture their social imagination through the lenses of writers with first-hand experience of this urban space.

What ultimately emerges from this fascinating read is the idea that human development goes beyond beautiful gardens, buildings and golden sand on the beachfront.

-----
Imraan Buccus is a political researcher and is undertaking a PhD in issues of poverty and civil society.

Originally published in The Mercury - April 04, 2007 Edition 1