Paper short abstract:

High crime rates and the legacy of apartheid reduce opportunities for interracial social interaction in Johannesburg South Africa. This paper explores how gentrification projects, although problematic, may contribute to social democratisation by providing spaces for engagement with racial others.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on ethnographic research undertaken in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2014. It explores how gentrification projects in Johannesburg may contribute to the de-racialisation of South African society. Decades of institutionalised state racism created a society in which racial categorisations determined every aspect of life. Despite apartheid's demise some twenty years ago racial categorisation continues to inform many aspects of ordinary citizens' lives and the urban and social landscape remains indelibly marked with its imprint. It is particularly reflected in the continued existence of extreme socioeconomic inequalities. Contemporarily, high rates of violent crime have resulted in extensive fortification of the city and suburbs and the almost complete withdrawal from public spaces by middle-class (mainly white) residents. The thesis examines the physical and perceptual consequences of these practices by exploring how heightened fear of crime has reduced opportunities for racial interaction and increased white fear of strangers.

In this urban context, gentrification in Braamfontein, an inner city mixed commercial and residential suburb, is explored. The critique of gentrification as an inherently exclusionary neoliberal practice that frequently operates to displace the poor and disenfranchised and increase socioeconomic inequity is accepted. However, I argue that in contemporary South Africa certain gentrification projects may provide physical spaces and social opportunities for city inhabitants' engagement with urban spaces and racial others unobtainable elsewhere. Despite the uncertainty of outcome and ambiguity of investors' motivations, this engagement across racial and social barriers may potentially contribute to the evolution of a non-racial, democratised society.