Be
Review
Alan Morris (1999) Bleakness andLight: innercity transition
                   in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. Johannesburg:
                   Witwatersrand University Press.
Shahid Vawda
Bleakness and Light is about the transformation of Hillbrow, a famous,
once supposedly bohemian Johannesburg neighbourhood. In stark form it
is the change from anall white group area to one dominated by black people
in the new non-racial South Africa. The most common image usually
conjured up whenthinking of Hillbrow todayis that of the degradation of
 an innercity suburb, with associated projections of crime, sleaze, and
 illegal immigrants. These imagesare not denied,but are challenged in Alan
 Morris’s book Bleakness and Light. Hillbrow more than any other
 neighbourhoodin SouthAfrica, as the book demonstrates, has a multiplicity
 of dimensions, ranging from its prevailing transient population, racial
 prejudices, and class structure, to new elements which signify both
 contemporary innercity decline and the emergence of interracial co-
 operation andfriendships. It is a bricolage of events and people, of struggle
 and resistance, of white flight, and more recently black flight to the
 suburbs, of decay and attempts at urban renewal, imbricated with the
 voices of black and white tenants and notorious landlords, city councillors
 and membersofparliament, building inspectors and new migrants,transients
 of various kinds, some with occupations of dubiouslegality.
     Using mainly, though not exclusively, three standard research methods
 — historical archival work, a household survey and in-depth interviewing
 — Morris has provided a finely documented sociological study of the
 changes in the neighbourhood,reflecting them partly as a microcosm of
 changes occurring in South Africa, and partly as unique to Hillbrow. It is
  this ethnographic quality that allows the book to be read at a numberof
  levels. For example, and the most obvious, this is a study of changes taking
  place ina single neighbourhood, with particular emphasis on race relations,
  or rather more accurately the interracial interaction in a period of
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                                                                       Review
 desegregation. Thus we read of landlords complaining ofthe destruction of
 building facilities by black tenants, whereasothers praise the sobriety of
 black tenants whopaytheir monthly rents promptly. Then there are white
 tenants’ prejudices, apparent in the refusal to acknowledge black tenants,
 orthe clustering of ethnic groupsin particular buildings. Conversely there
 is evidence of black and white tenants getting on with their lives in
 tolerance and respectof each other,of friendships and marriagesacross the
 colour line. While the flatlands breed alienation and anomie, it also
provides anonymity for gay people and freedom for many black tenants
 seeking refuge from overcrowded and violent townships.
    Hillbrow, over the last two decades, presents a bewildering array of
racial interactions. It is in the sociological evaluation of these everyday
racial interactions that the book makesits most significant contribution,
and where mostseriouscritical attention needs to be exercised. The dust
cover claims it to be ‘a major contribution to the study of innercity
transition’ andthe ‘field of urban studies’. There is no doubtthat it makes
a contribution to understanding innercity transition, especially of racial
interaction, where noneexisted in the past except on a master-servantbasis.
So, in this sense, it is pioneering in its analysis of contemporary racial
interaction and the degree of integration in the ‘new’ South Africa.
Bleakness and Light will probably be a benchmark for futurestudies ofthis
kind.
    But the book is not just a mere chronology of racial incidents and
situations. Morris provides a context for these emerging and sometimes
entirely new social situations. Although Morris does not provide an
explicit historical periodisation, the book delineates five periods: the
classic apartheid period of the 1960s and early 1970s; the early signs of
‘preying’ in the late 1970s and early 1980s; a period of intense
neighbourhood activism and state political manoeuvring in the early
1980s, followed by the dramatic changein the racial compositionin thelate
1980s and early 1990s, followed by post-1994 period characterised by new
migrants, apparent innercity decay, in part a result of red lining by banks,
and inadequate control andlack of foresight in creative service provision
and planning by the municipality. The early periods are interesting for they
provide a carefully argued case of the way in which factors externalto the
neighbourhood played themself out and shaped events inside them. Thus,
for example, in the 1980s the ever-widening contradictions of apartheid
becamepart of the sharply focused political attention on the application of
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Shahid Vawda
the Group Areas Act in Hillbrow. Morris shows how the state’s options
were limited in returning the status quo ante, given the backdropofa fiscal
crisis, an inability to address the issue of an urban housingcrisis, and
effectively to challenge and extinguish neighbourhood activism because of
its attempts to woo Indians and coloureds into the tricameral parliament.
This meantthat despite somesabrerattling, the National Party government
could do nothing substantial about contraventions of the Group Areas Act.
Indeedit sets the scene for the formation of the Conservative Party, and the
flood of new migrants into Hillbrow from the nearby townships andtherest
of the country.
    It is this period betore the 1994 elections when dramatic changesin
Hillbrow’s racial and ethnic composition are experienced, though not
necessarily a fundamentalshift in the transient nature of the population or
class structure. Morris showsthat the underclass or ‘ghettoization’ thesis
of American cities has little relevance when applied to Hillbrow. The
changesin the racial character of Hillbrow are carried overinto the post-
 1994 period, but ambiguities aboundin termsofinterracial relations. These
become enmeshed with a rise in crime, drug dealing, the proliferation of
sex workers andthe arrival of émigrés from outside the country. Changes
in racial, ethnic and national composition are the new realities of the
neighbourhood. These however, contribute to the growing mythology of
Hillbrow as a crime and drug-infested, and decaying innercity district.
Such myths are debunked by exploring the variety ofinterracialinteractions,
particularly the everyday urban experiencesof racial integration. Such
racial integration that exists is simultaneously superficial and anonymous,
supportive of friends and neighbours, and other times confrontational and
violent. But then someof these racial interactions may well be based on
myths, which begsthe question ofthe relationship between mythology and
reality.
    Bleakness and Light, however, is also suggestive of a range of other
 issues. To mention just two: Hillbrow presents its own unique flavour for
an extended analysis of race, class and nationality in contemporary times.
Muchearlier work on these themes has been historical, and confined in
 large measureto critiques of, or support for, the ‘four nation’ theory, or
more quaintly to questions of pluralism, multi-culturalism and ethnic
 identity. But the presence offoreigners, particularly African foreigners, in
 significant numbersin Hillbrow providesfor a ratherdifferent interpretation.
 Morris constructs the question of these new émigrés as double victims:
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 first, as victims of economicandpolitical instability in their own countries,
 and second, as victims of South African xenophobia. While the victims
 play their roles in the interracial drama that is importantto the story of
 Hillbrow’s transition,the really interesting question is the construction of
 ‘the other’ in the discourse and behaviour of South Africans. Whatis the
purposeoflabelling African foreigners as job-stealing illegal immigrants,
criminals, drug dealers and disease ridden sexual deviants? What exactly
do the emergenceof these new points of urban social interaction mean in
termsofnation building (the rainbow nation)? How does this connect with
the lofty sentimentsof the African renaissance in Hillbrow? Morebroadly,
is the construction of ‘the other’ a necessary corollary to building a South
African nationalism? I am not suggesting that Morris. should have looked
at these issues, but it is certainly is a path worth pursuing.
    A secondinteresting aspect that the book implicitly raises is that of the
theory of social change. The relationship between the neighbourhood of
Hillbrow andoutside social and economic forces becomesthe locus around
which social change is conceived. Morris suggests the unfolding events
and processesoverthe last two decades reveals a combination of structures
and agency with unforeseen consequences. Thestructuresherefers to are
mainly the ‘material circumstances’ such asfiscal crisis, housing shortages,
conflict and violence in townships, while agencyrefers to people’s actions
as represented by their willingness to break the law, the formation of
tenants organisations (ACTSTOP ~ Action Committee to Stop Evictions),
challenges to landlords and the localstate, etc. The combination of these
structures and agency led to social change with multiple and unforeseen
outcomes.
    This is all suggestive of a materialist interpretation of Giddens’
structuration theory, and should generate useful discussion on its
applicability to race relations and urban studies in contemporary South
Africa. However,it is not clear whatis the status of ‘neighbourhood’. Is it
merely a spatial concept defined as such for empirical convenience as
suggested in the beginning ofthe book so as to accommodatethelimitations
of social survey methods? Or is ‘neighbourhood’ the locus of social
relationships within an urbanlocality whose contextgeneratesthe possibility
of a range of actions and interventions within a larger context of state,
society and economy? Certainly neighbourhood/urban studies as invoked
by Morris’s Bleakness and Light provide a bright searchlight for more
urban studies in South Africa. One should look forward to stimulating
empirical studies and theoretical debates inspired by Morris’ study.
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