Paper short abstract:

The experiences of young, urban professionals who take up entrepreneurship in Johannesburg are often solitary despite a societal embrace of entrepreneurship. This paper explores the solitudes of aspirational entrepreneurs to reveal some paradoxes of entrepreneurialism in post-apartheid South Africa.

Paper long abstract:

Young, urban professionals in Johannesburg who take up entrepreneurship as opposed to a corporate career experience various sorts of solitude on their journey towards business success. Sometimes it is an enjoyable kind, for example when it concerns the freedom to decide when, where, with whom and towards what goals one labours, or winning a pitching challenge. Other times, carrying the risks and responsibilities of pursuing business in a context of limited opportunities (and grand expectations) alone is a source of suffering. But all of these experiences stand in stark contrast to the apparent societal embrace of entrepreneurs in post-apartheid South Africa: Public media and political speeches are filled with a celebratory discourse of entrepreneurs transforming society and serving the nation, and hundreds of so-called business incubators, start-up hubs, and entrepreneurship networks that have emerged in Johannesburg over the last decade host an endless array of get-togethers on a daily basis. Thus, while the discourse of entrepreneurship in post-apartheid South Africa suggests sociality, the lived experience of its uptake entails considerable aloneness. In this paper, I ethnographically explore the various solitudes these 'aspirational entrepreneurs' in Johannesburg find themselves in and the ways in which they respond to them. Doing so reveals the ways in which a globalizing ideology of entrepreneurialism paradoxically interacts with the post-apartheid political economy of South Africa.