Geography Reference
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I can't relate to these people. So, the gardener is from Zimbabwe, the maid is
from Lesotho. Lovely people, but they're in completely different space to where
I'm at. So I'm in the privileged white, you know, monied [space], my kids go to
the best schools.
Stephen's wealth clearly enables him to occupy only the spaces of privilege. He con-
nects these with his car journeys around the city, sweeping through, observing the land-
scape and lives of his fellow citizens but remaining spatially distanced from them, both
materially and imaginatively. However, for other, less well-remunerated British, Johan-
nesburg's divisions require less comfortable negotiation. Neil, a computer programmer
in his late twenties, has been in the city for six years. Married to an Afrikaner woman,
they have just had their first child, and this, and the fact that they position themselves
within the Jo'burg subdiscourse of crime and security, is prompting them to think about
returning to the UK.
Theylive inasmallish flat inamiddle-income white neighborhood,onthecorners of
which cluster groups of black men waiting for offers of work or chances to sell things
throughcarwindows.DrivingpastthemonadailybasismakesNeilnervous:hisrepres-
entational space is full of danger and crime, and as such he positions himself as ever on
the brink of victimhood. This defines his spatial practice: he has never been to Soweto,
for example, and his pathways around the city are confined to car journeys between his
house, his workplace, the shop, and a British style pub where we meet for lunch. As
he explains: “normally the most you would walk is from your car to the shop, or car
to work, or car to the garage. That's all you do. Nothing else, don't do walking—I can't
even think of a place you would walk without worrying about it.”
At home, Neil enjoys the “luxuries you have behind the barbed wire
fence—swimming pool, greenery, somewhere to park my truck…” and he is willing to
defend these privileges:
No-one's going to get in my house. I mean I have weapons as well and I'll use
them if anyone does get in the house, I mean not a gun and stuff but I've got an
axe and I've got a knife, and they're strategically placed. Because all the horror
stories that I hear, it's unbelievable.
Yet, whilst his daily life is largely produced in some comfort behind these defenses,
he resents what this does to the representation of space as well as his own representa-
tional space:
There's no freedom, where do the children play? Well she can go round the
corner there, but it's all within security fences, it's all electrified you know. Then
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