ECAS 2013

Making a living in African cities increasingly requires engagement in informal income activities such as street vending. In the pursuit of their livelihoods, informal actors fundamentally transform cityscapes in ways that deviate from Western inspired models of urbanism and planning rationalities. Such models and rationalities are often instrumental for local elites, driven by economic and political imperatives. Street workers are often seen as a source of disorder, as dangerous and ungovernable. Urban authorities in many cities therefore attempt to re-establish 'order' and tackle the expanding crowds of street vendors by removing them from the streets and relocating them into designated markets. This paper examines the process of relocation into a hawkers' market in central Nairobi, justified by the authorities through a rhetorical developmental aim of enhancing the business opportunities of vendors through the provision of hawkers' markets. While the market was apparently planned in line with the stated aim, the outcomes would turn out to be very different for many of the relocated. The paper examines the consequences of the relocation for the livelihoods of the vendors and well as their responses. Through transgressive spatial practices, the vendors came to gradually re-occupy unauthorized spaces. Such subversive practices of space-making could be seen as a form of resistance that potentially disrupts dominant city visions and destabilizes urban planning practices that address street vending through strategies of confinement.

Drawing on subaltern paradigms and studies in social resistance, this discussion explores contradictions in the crafts of comedians' political laughter and social commentators as opinion makers in post-1994 neoliberal South Africa. It will be argued in the discussion that in line with post-1994 liberal theories, social commentating has become liberalized despite the growing use of indigenous languages, just as political laughter has become conformist in spite of the everyday quotidian life experiences from which its content is drawn. It is argued that as a result of these ideological and economic shifts, these crafts have by and large become mediocre as they provide stunted political interpretation and satires that explained away (mal)administration rather than arming the marginalized polity with critical vocabulary with which to challenge, demand redress and justice from the ruling elite. The only exception to the trend of political commentating in South Africa, are the views on Andile Mngxitama, whose Black Consciousness imperatives provides continuities between the struggles for social justice during apartheid and post-1994's mass call for social retribution and redress. Through a consideration of Eugene Khoza's political laughter and Andile Mngxitama's political commentaries, this discussion will demonstrate how Khoza's laughter contains and channels political opinion and how Andile Mngxitama's trenchant commentaries strike on (un)resolved historical anxieties that forces certain political discourses to be re-opened, a feat that has not been achieved by social commentaries of liberal analysts.

Political satire is a powerful component of the public sphere, often credited as a barometer of democracy and a window on a nation's zeitgeist. Analysis of the narrative formed by political cartoons over a longer period provides for a diachronical account through which to explore the contested process of democracy. However, such approaches remain fixated on the cartoon and cartoonist, privileging their intent as the only focus of analysis: the power of political cartoons lies not only in the cartoonist's intent, but in the audience reactions - be these through first hand observation or framed by intermediaries interpretations, translations and relaying of the cartoon.

Framed by these concerns, this paper seeks to explore the diachronical account formed public reactions to South African cartoonist Zapiro's depictions of President Jacob Zuma. Analysis of the images is layered on to consideration of popular responses to these images as expressed in letters and responses posted to social networking sites and South African newspapers. Divergences in intent and reception and the multiplicity of readings of the images are identified as key factors in continual negotiations of questions of race(ism), gender violence, understandings of democratic freedoms and institutions. Concerns with how these discussions are policed and framed are linked to growing disquiet with attempts to introduce further legislative curbs on journalistic freedom and increased censorship of the press. Narrative analysis identifies how the South African public sphere continues to be marked as a contested and increasingly politicised space wherein political satire and humour hold an important position.