Tormented by Umnyama: An Urban Cosmology of Migration and Misfortune in Inner-City Johannesburg

Zulu, Melekias; Wilhelm-Solomon, Matthew

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-08768-9_8

Cited by 23 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…For more about the so-called "illegal migrants" living conditions in Johannesburg inner city, see the documentary Into the Shadows: Inside Johannesburg's Underworld (2018). See also Zulu andWilhelm-Solomon 2015 andFassin et al 2017. 27 For more information about the recent attack in Joburg CBD, see Burke 2019.…”

Section: The Case Of Maboneng: Illegal Migration and The "New Urban Wave"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Places you shouldn't go to”

Albernaz

Pires

2021

Oñati Socio-Legal Series

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Pursuing the broader political effects of the relationship between violence, mobility, and inequality, the article describes some of the grounded political-economies (re)producing social inequalities in Brazil and South Africa, and a discontinuous experience of the urban space. This fragmented spatial experience is produced by the simultaneous operation of a discursive apparatus projecting a split ideal of “city”, and grounded social mechanics, in the intersection of values and power relations. In Johannesburg, South Africa, we’ve described the creation of Maboneng, a “urban development project”, to highlight the role of social mobility and growing class aspirations as powerful political vehicles for neoliberal markets reissuing old apartheid socio-spatial divisions. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, we’ve explored the relationship between the State and its margins to understand the production of the milícia as a violent anti-modern capitalist venture, aiming to control the circulation of people, capital and political support in the city.

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Section: The Case Of Maboneng: Illegal Migration and The "New Urban Wave"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Places you shouldn't go to”

Albernaz

Pires

2021

Oñati Socio-Legal Series

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“…This produces a state of unmyama or darkness. 27 Prophet Tshabalala explained to us how misfortune or umnyama enters the body:…”

Section: The African Bodymentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2019

IJCAM

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Hidden away from the public gaze, women and men, most of them migrants gather to participate in healing sessions using the steam-bathing hut they have erected next to a mining dumpsite in the south of Johannesburg. Steaming as a healing practice take elements from the African and Christian traditions. In post-apartheid South Africa, we have seen this practice reinvigorated by immigrants from neighbouring countries. For participants in the steam bathing, steaming responds to a multiplicity of material, physical and metaphysical challenges linked to life in the city they use it to address problems that are believed to have spiritual causes. In its current fashion, steam bathing is done collectively with both men and women steaming together the steam bath shacks are erected in the outskirts of the city. This work documents the urban and current form of this practice paying attention to what drives participants to use this healing system as well as how the body is prepared for cleansing, in this process the blending of African and Christian traditions are observed. This paper is based on an ethnographic work conducted by the authors who were witnesses and participants in steaming and its associated healing ritual at the Wemmer Pan Park in southern Johannesburg. It includes a series of interviews conducted with the prophet leading the steaming practice, and participants, members of various African Initiated churches.

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“…In the period after the auction in 2005 when the building fell into disrepair and was unlawfully managed, utility services were cut off and the building became one of the dark buildings of the inner city. Umnyama or darkness in isiZulu and isiNdebele languages refers to the lack of light and the existence of metaphysical threat, witchcraft and misfortune (Wilhelm‐Solomon, ; Zulu & Wilhelm‐Solomon, ). The darkness even for residents was something uncodifiable, a place of threat and haunting in which they demarcated their own rooms and places of intimacy.…”

Section: Decoding the Dark: A History Of Chambersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the aftermath of the violence, Solomon and several others in the building reported hearing footsteps of the dead victims of the violence dancing on the roof, while others reported hearing the ghosts of those killed by fire and of those who had died of HIV/AIDS. Although this paper is not the place to discuss in more depth the forms of spiritual insecurity characterizing life in the dark buildings, which I have addressed elsewhere (Wilhelm‐Solomon, ; Zulu & Wilhelm‐Solomon, ), what is important to note here is that these spaces are characterized by high levels of spiritual threat related to experiences of migration, exposure to illness, violence and untimely death, and fears of unseen and malevolent forces (cf. De Boeck & Plissart, ; Ashforth, ; Nunez & Wheeler, ).…”

Section: Decoding the Dark: A History Of Chambersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decoding dispossession: Eviction and urban regeneration in Johannesburg's dark buildings

Wilhelm-Solomon

2016

Singap J Trop Geogr

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In January 2012 the residents of an inner‐city tenement building in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, were evicted on a court order. The building was situated in a post‐industrial neighbourhood in which thousands of South Africans and foreign nationals, many blind or disabled, live in unlawfully occupied buildings without access to water, basic sanitation, electricity and waste management services. Such buildings are known in policy discourse as ‘bad buildings’, and informally as ‘dark buildings’, invoking both a sense of developmental failure and spiritual insecurity. In this paper I analyse how urban renewal policies created social divisions and alliances not only among the residents of Chambers, which were channelled along nationalist lines, but also between the able‐bodied and disabled, and produced new social alliances. In particular, I document how a group of blind Zimbabweans experienced threats of violence and accusations of betrayal, as they were offered alternate accommodation by the evicting company because of their disability. I argue here that the pressures of private‐sector housing developments intersected with the insecurities and divisions of inner‐city social spaces and also fostered new alliances. Following the work of Deleuze and Guattari, I invoke the concept of ‘decoding dispossession’, proposing that ongoing evictions and dispossessions are characterized by simultaneous movements of ‘decoding and deterritorialization’ and ‘overcoding‐reterritorialization’.

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Tormented by Umnyama: An Urban Cosmology of Migration and Misfortune in Inner-City Johannesburg

Cited by 23 publications

References 8 publications

“Places you shouldn't go to”

“Places you shouldn't go to”

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Decoding dispossession: Eviction and urban regeneration in Johannesburg's dark buildings

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