in Natasha Distiller and Melissa Steyn (eds) (2004) Under construction: 'Race' and identity in South

Africa today. Johnanesburg: Heinemann. pp 51-66.

Assimilation, Emigration, Semigration, and Integration:

'white' peoples' strategies for finding a comfort zone in post-apartheid South Africa1

Richard Ballard

I was part of the system, I was hooked into it . . . [We] continued requires me to be suficiently comfortable with the values,
with our privileged existence knowing that there were all those practices, and words spoken within its boundaries. It must be a
millions. . . out n the cold as it were, knowing hat there had to be source of safety and security both physically and metaphorically.
change somewhere somehow; sort of wanting it, but in he secret In the following discussion, I wish to consider ways in which
of your heart thinking gosh away goes my nice comfortable 'white' South Africans attempt to find comfort zones. In the past,
feeling . . . However much you can want a situation to change, comfort zones were created through formal segregation. To create
you're giving up your comfort zone (Interview, July 1996). living environments which would facilitate their modern, European
sense of themselves, the minority government removed those
Our sense of space and sense of self are mutually constitutive. As people, values, behaviours, languages which were seen to contradict
much as we try to shape our worlds to fit in with our identities, our this identity. However, from the 1970s formal segregation became
environments also shape us, challenge us, and constrain us. We increasingly untenable. The minority government began to promote
attempt to find comfort zones within which it is possible for us to the idea of assimilation in which a 'black' middle class would be
'be ourselves'. These are places that do not challenge our self allowed into the comfort zones of 'white' people in exchange for
conceptions. Home in its ideal form is the best example. It is a place the sanctity of private property and a property market that would
where we feel safe and can let our guards down. Some people say continue to filter out more 'undesirable' people. However, as
that their homes are an extension of themselves. We choose to squatters and street traders have demonstrated, it is possible to
decorate our homes in a way that pleases us and will impress visitors usurp land in the city with little regard for the property market. The
whose afirmation we seek. Home is, visually and in the things done implication for some is that the living environment no longer
and words spoken in its perimeters, a manifestation of our values. functions to affirm a Western, modern, sense of self and is no longer a
If we are lucky, home transcends the literal building we live in and source of security and safety. The extreme response to this dislocation
becomes metaphorically extended to the neighbourhood, city, even is relocation to another country which accords better with the
country or continent. To freely say that South Africa is my home identity to which individuals aspire.

51
 Short of emigration, however, here are local responses which Traditional strategies for creating comfort zones
reflect a similar desire to shift the boundaries of one's comfort zone.
Borrowing a word used in the media, semigration, or partial Explan�tions as to the reasons why racism is useful to 'white'
.
emigration without leaving the borders of Souh Africa, is a useful people are varied. It has been well established that segregation
notion to encapsulate the alternative path to full emigration. If the allowed for massive economic gain for 'white' people (Johnstone
market fails to keep away undesirable people, hen certain steps can be 1982; Wolpe 1972) and also served to shore up control and power
taken to avoid them. Semigration has been used to classify the (Crush 1994; Robinson 1990, 1996). A less developed theme
migration of many 'white' people to Cape Town, for example, as they flagged by contributors such as Melissa Steyn (200 1) and Aletta
believe Cape Town to be a more congenial environment. However, he Norval ( 1990) is that racism helped 'white' people shore up their
word can also be used to understand withdrawal from democratic identity as 'white' . Following the logic frequently deployed in
Souh Africa, to achieve some of the effects of emigration without cultural studies, I understand othering as a key conceptual process in
actually leaving he borders of the country. Spatial practices such as which inferior qualities were projected onto, and seen as, the property
gated communities and enclosed neighbourhoods are examples of of racialised others. Such others were seen as lazy, licentious,
this. Finally, some 'white' Souh Africans do not depend on sanitised criminal, dirty, and so on. The effect of such classifications was to
space for a secure positive sense of themselves. Integration, produce a positive self image for Europe/the West/ 'white' people
herefore, is a spatial strategy that reflects an identity not founded as hard-working, moral, clean: broadly, as civilised. The identity of
on the sharp othering that was the basis for apartheid. 'white' people became cast as 'white' supremacism, where a secure
Using interview and newspaper material, this discussion traces self image came from one's 'whiteness' or at least Europeanness to
the evolution of 'white' strategies to ind comfort zones and which the virtues of civilisation were automatically attached.
suggests that assimilation, emigration, semigration, and integration The dominant strategy for managing this social hierarchy was
have come to dominate the repertoire since the demise of formal ensuring that others were far away. This was a generic colonial
segregation. The primary objective is to offer definitions of what strategy. Boundaries were
might be seen as ideal types of these strategies and to examine how
drawn between civilization and various uncivilized deviant
they relate to one another. The secondary objective is to consider
"others". . . The world map, with civilization in the centre and
the category of semigration in more detail.
the grotesque adorning he periphery, then expressed his desire
This study adds to a growing body of work on gated commu­
for a literal distancing from he "oher". More generally, space was
nities in South Africa, by explicitly locating the semigration strategy
used to establish a hierarchy which distinguished the civilized
in relation to 'racialised' performances of identity.
European from uncivilized native peoples (Sibley 1995:50-5 1).

i2
The problem for European people living in colonies is that if they WE.B. Du Bois, as paraphrased by Bernard Magubane, argued hat
choose for themselves a "civilised and western" identity, it is at odds as "beneficiaries of imperialism, he white could not share a common
with the identity they have given the colonised region (Ballard destiny with the black proletariat" ( 1996:9).
2003). 'Uncivilised' others are not voyeuristically e�perienced as by W ith assimilation now losing popularity as a mechanism for
temporary western tourists, but are an ever-present threat, or an managing oherness, segregationism became the core strategy. Rather
"intimate enemy" (Werbner 1996:20) that has to be ·ontrolled and than create civilised places by civilising the uncivilised, all problemaic
managed. By logical extension it was feared that contact with this people would ideally be excluded or managed. In trying to reinforce
unreformed otherness posed a terminal threat to the civilisation of 'white' identities as 'modern' and 'Western' identities, which depend
Europeans attempting to live outside Europe. By relocating from on he rejeion of 'traditionalism' and 'Africaness', it was imperative
the region that they considered the origin of their superiority to a to create living environments which were also modern and Western
region they believed to be the antithesis of this superiority, settlers with firm defensible boundaries. Cities were posited as the centres
in colonies had to find new strategies for managing their relations of civilisation and progress, a claim hat was made possible not only by
with this intimate other. Colonialists had to neutralise the eff�cts of virtue of the presence of the supposedly civilised ( 'wite') people hat
'uncivilised' and 'barbaric' people that populated he land in order lived there, but also by the exclusion of 'uncivilised' people. From
to secure the viability of their own identities there. 19 13, the physical relocation of 'surplus' 'blacks' represented a new
In South Africa, there were two dominant responses. On one side, drive to create Europe in Africa by removing all (unnecessary) non­
liberals hoped that the problematic otherness of those considered Europeans. The segregationist drive culminated in the ideology of
'racially' inferior could be overcome through education. Possessed apartheid, which sought to achieve what Bauman, speaking
by the 'civilising mission', these settlers sought to assimilate others generically, describes as the close correlation of social space and
into their (putatively superior) society. In 1902, Sir Gordon Sprig, physical space typical in many 'modern' Western countries (Bauman
the Cape Prime Minister, argued hat there was no longer any (eason 1993: 150) . W hen it was useful to allow non-Europeans into cities,
for refusing to allow the natives to associate with the white this was done under strictly controlled conditions in which they were
population". Natives would emerge from barbarism "so hat they regulated, tracked, and made to leave once they became redun lant.
might no longer be a source of danger" (Swanson 1977:399). Contact between 'races' was minimised and parts of the city were
However, by the start of the 20th century, a growing 'black' middle zoned as 'race' specific areas. lnter 'racial' contact was, of course,
class produced precisely by this civilising mission prompted frequent but under these conditions, people of other 'races' were
growing unease among more conservative quarters, particularly denied "normative influence" (Bauman 1991: 66) over 'white'
since the stakes had become much higher with the advent of mining. spaces, thereby securing these spaces as 'civilised' , 'modern' and

53
 'Western'. Spaces zoned for 'white' use were the ultimate comfort matched and managed through spatial boundaries. Social distance
zones. In Bauman's words, they "stood out from the rest of social and spatial distance are thus closely coordinated.
space for the absence of strangers, and hence the satisfying, secure
fullness of normative regulation" (Bauman 1993: 15 1). It was
through exclusion that 'whites' felt they could contend that they Adapt or die: The return to assimilation
lived in civilised, modern, First World cities.
The effect of aparheid, in the words of H. F. Verwoerd, had From the 1970s, of course, apartheid's crisis of legitimacy began to
been to create "a piece of Europe on the tip of the African escalate. This prompted the return to an old idea that had been
Continent" (qtd in Magubane 1996:xvii). It was within this piece of rejected for much of the twentieth century: namely that people of
Europe hat 'white' people could feel secure in their self-conceptions. other 'races' were capable of integrating into modern urban society.
Rian Malan identifies this sentiment in the following: In its final two decades, the 'white' state was forced to abandon
orthodox Verwoerdian thinking and its last roll of the dice was to
Looking back the strangest thing about my African childhood is
turn to the market as a possible sustainable means of keeping
that it wasn't really African at all. It was a more or less generically
problematic others out. The 'white' hegemony began to allow for
Western childhood, unfolding in generic white suburbs where
the possibility that some non- 'white' people, with sufficient
almost everyone subscribed to Le and Reader's Digest, and to the
education, 'development', and acculturation into Western ways of
generic Western verities they upheld. Our heads turned to the
life, had the potential to become 'modern' and 'civilised' and could
north like flowers to the sun, towards where the great white
therefore be assimilated into the Western, First World, 'developed'
mother culture lay. Our imaginary lives were rooted there, not
section of the population.
in this strange place, where Zionists danced on Thursdays and
W ith democratisation in the 1990s (and arguably in the
rain washed the red earth of Africa into the streets ( 1990:62).
'reforms' of the 1980s), South Africa's moral position on racism has
The diabolical project of creating Europe in Africa appeared shifted to be broadly in line with that of the West which itself
possible through pass laws, the Group Areas Act, and segregated underwent a transition several decades earlier. The holocaust,
amenities. Through such mechanisms people attempt to control jim crow racism, colonialism, and apartheid were all underpinned
those things that threaten their identity. W hat the colonial and by the belief that some nations were justified in the extermination,
apartheid projects in South Africa had created were identity­ subjugation, segregation, and exploitation of others simply on the
afirming spaces for European settlers within which Europeans grounds of their 'race'. It is now rare to find such rationalisations in
could feel at home. The boundaries around one's sense of oneself are the mainstream. The enormity of this shift in the moral thinking of

i4
previously racist powers should not be taken for granted. However, in South Africa. Thus, while the 'racial' way in which 'white' people
various analyses have considered the extent to which this shift falls historically understood themselves and social difference is now
short of a truly comprehensive abandonment of all the effects of seldom expressed, much of the substance of the way 'white' people
these racist pasts (e. g. Barkin 1992, Frankenberg 1993, van Dijk understood themselves and others continues.
1993). W hile racism is no longer as explicit as it once was, defensive By the time the 'white' population arrived on the doorstep of
identity-making processes have continued. democracy in the 1990s, few retained any faith in the strategy of
W hat has happened through the moral shift of the latter half of formal segregation, and most had come to accept the possibility of·
the twentieth century is that this mode of identity-construction­ the upward mobility of other groups. The start of this transition was
through-othering has become de- 'racialised'. Since a sense of signalled when P. W Botha took power as Prime Minister of the
'racialised' superiority is no longer acceptable - both publicly and in National Party -led government in 1978, declaring that apartheid
the minds of most 'white' people themselves - it is no longer the would result in a state of permanent conflict and that South Africans
explicit origin of 'white' people's positive self-image. 'White' people had to "Adapt or Die" (Davenport and Saunders 2000:459, Posel
now seldom articulate their identity in terms of their 'whiteness' but 1987:419). Under Botha's leadership ( 1978- 1989), the government
rather in terms of their 'ordinariness' as citizens of a modern,Western, explicitly set out to establish a non- 'white' middle class that would
developed world. This is not peculiar to South Africa, and the fact that act as a buffer against communism. This group would join 'whites'
'white' identities are unmarked and invisible while other identities in having "a stake in the system"; they would secure the longevity of
are marked, is a widespread feature of social differentiation globally 'white' privilege (Marks and Trapido 1987:57, Posel 1987:423-4).
(Bonnett 2000: 140, Frankenburg 1993: 17, McGuinness 2000:227, Contact with such individuals would not be problematic since they
Sibley 1995:23; see also Salusbury and Foster, this volume). For would largely be compatible with 'white' people's sense of themselves
Norval, the "conception of white identity had become less as modern, Western, and First World. This would be same-status
important than the notion of a system, a way of life, which linked contact, or contact between people of different 'races' who have the
SA to the 'free West"' ( 1990: 146). The fact that most people they same level of income, similar levels of education, and similar 'western'
classify as part of this developed community in South Africa are lifestyles. It is a type of contact hat most 'wite' people nd acceptable
'white' is seen as a matter of overlap, rather than there being an and hey are willing to abandon their preious 'racially' exclusive stance
acknowledged causal link. Markers such as 'developed', 'modern', in order to allow these acceptable elements of other 'races' in.
'Western', 'First World' euphemistically replace the now less Thus, the acceptance of other 'races' was conditional upon the
acceptable 'civilised', and have become explicitly detached from conformance of these assimilated groups to the culture, norms, and
'race'. Being First World is not a necessary property of 'whiteness' standards laid down by the 'host' 'white' group. In this way

55
segregationist ideology adapted away from orthodox apartheid Jane: Basically you're paying quite a sum of money to live in
towards a discourse not as easily identifiable as racist. Yet he racist various exclusive areas and you find that those people generally
implications should not be underestimated. W hile non- 'whites' have high powered jobs or jobs where they're working hard and
would be accepted, they would only be admitted if they made they actually have moved away from certain traditions
themselves acceptable as dined by 'white' people. As Gerhard Schutte (Interview September 1997).
explains:
W hile the acceptance of 'other races' was billed as a moral shift
Moderates found blacks to be socially acceptable as long as they away from the evils of apartheid, the change from segregation to
adhered to civilized standards in their behaviour and lifestyle. assimilation is not necessarily a weakening of the 'white' social
The less civilized, according to this view, would automatically agenda but a shrewd move that ensures the sustainability of 'white'
and spontaneously distance themselves. This might be achieved social control within the suburbs. The strategic potential of
through class differentiation. The scheme of reasoning in this assimilation is that it allows for "inclusionary control" of what is
case was a social Darwinist kind rather than a racist one. classified as deviant behaviour in a way that appears progressive
Assimilation of blacks would occur at the top end of society, and relative to the blunt exclusionism of the past (Sibley 199 5:8 5). In
at the bottom there would be poverty and enic differentiation other words, strangers are challenged to "conform or be damned"
(Schutte 1995:334). in an attempt to prevent the introduction of "alienness" into the
space which the social engineers seek to control (Bauman
The qualified acceptance of people from 'other races' abounds in
199 1: 162).
post-apartheid 'white' discourse. To illustrate with interview
material, a New National Party local councillor in Durban put this
rather bluntly when he said he refused to live next to a 'coolie' or a
The limits of assimilation
'kair', but would quite willingly live next door to cultured person
of any 'race' (Interview August 2003). Other respondents expressed
W hile many placed their salvation in market-regulated assimilation,
his logic more politely:
this strategy was limited since some undesirable people do not
Lindsay: You've got to accept [integration]; the thing is that always obey the market. Through "land-invasions", squatters have come
'
economically I hink you will get a better class, you won't just to occupy land despite market forces which would generally exclude
get the one who shouts and you know, when they talk to each them (Ballard 2004). Similarly, informal street trade, although now
other (Interview August 1997). largely regulated, emerged in cities in the 1990s as and where it
pleased without the permission of any authority (Popke and Ballard also] cultural and to learn to do things. If we want them to be
2004). The much-cherished market ilter - whereby only and behave the way we would like to see [them behave] we must
"desirable" people are able to move near 'whites' or take up train them teach them why. They must want to learn to be like
occupation in cities because of the igh cost of renting or buying we feel they should be (Interview September 1997).
property in these areas - is being contemptuously flouted (Emmett
1992: 78). Such people are not upwardly mobile and their bypassing If the wrong kinds of people are flouting the market system, and if
of the market system means that there can be little confidence that there seems to be little prospect of "educat[ing] them" in order to
encounters will be same-status. Otherness, therefore, has let itself diminish the pernicious effects of their otherness, local living
into the lifeworld of 'white' people via the back door. environments no longer function as comfort zones. Otherness is
Events are therefore overtaking those who would control them, brought into he lifeworld of 'white' people in a way that upsets the
and this problem is exacerbated by the slow pace or impossibility of norms of that space. In Zygmunt Bauman's definition, these others
assimilating some people. If liberal optimism derives from the hope are "strangers":
hat he upward mobility of ohers is indeed possible, liberal pessimism
arises from belief that apartheid prevented sufficient opportunity The stranger undermines he spatial ordering of the world -
for ohers to learn from 'whites' . One of my interviewees, Martin, the sought-after co-ordination between moral and topographical
illustrates this in relation to street traders: closeness, the staying together of friends and he remoteness of
enemies. The stranger disturbs the resonance between physical
Martin: It didn't upset me in the sense that seeing [street and psychical distance: he [sic] is physically close while remaining
traders] there is not the problem, it's a question of cleanliness. spiritually remote. He brings into he inner circle of proximity
Why don't they keep the place tidy and neat and clean? And then the kind of difference and oherness that are anticipated and
I don't blame them entirely because it's a question of have we tolerated only at a distance - where they can be either
educated them into that area? Have we taught them, have we dismissed as irrelevant or repelled as hostile (1991: 60) .
taken the trouble to give our time to educate them to say why we
want the place clean? It's one thing telling a person' clean that' As Bauman went on to elaborate in 1993, the most frustrating thing
and sit on him with your foot in his neck demanding that he clean about strangers is that they are not a
it. It's better to get him to want to keep it clean himself. I feel
we've lagged in not educating. That's just one area I mean there are temporary breach of the norm and a curable irritant. Strangers
many areas where I feel there's a lagging in this . .. [education is stay and rfuse to go away (though one keeps hoping that they

57
 will, in the end) while, stubbornly, the net of local European city to a 'Third World' or 'Arican' market place (Popke
rules and thus remaining strangers (199 3: 151). and Ballard 2004). 'Whites' became uncomfortable there and
avoided it. The arrival of informal settlements alongside suburbs has
I would argue hat much of the uncertainty experienced by 'white'
provoked a similar discomfort (Ballard 2004; Dixon et. al1994; Saff
people in the 1980s and 1990s stemmed from a fear of the tmregulated
2001). Such spaces are now for some as Bauman describes as "either
access by people previously excluded to 'their' cities. The arrival of
normless or marked with too few rules to make orientation
street trading in he CBD and squatter settlements alongside
possible" (Bauman 199 3: 1 that once generated a
suburbs represented a breach of the buffers and modernist planning
retssunn£ sense of 'white' achievement are now experienced as
that sought to keep people separate. The very basis of 'white'
"ncanny" or "heterotopic", ·ords that describing the "unsetling
identity as 'civilised' and 'modern' as created through spatial
juxtapositions of incommensurate 'objects' which challenge the way
segregation- was, for some, under hreat by the presence of others.
we think, especially the way our thinking is ordered" (Hetherington
Robert Wilton explores this through Sigmund Freud's notion of the
1997:42; also see Gelder and Jacobs 1995; Wilton 1998). Quite
"unheimlich":
simply, home no longer feels very homely. One speaker at a
Spatial proximity weakens the social distance between self and Conservative Party rally lamented: "I feel like a stranger in my own
oher and challenges the integrity of individual identity. \Vhat is fatherland" (Schutte 1995:113).
normally projected bey ond the ego can no longer be The fears experienced by some 'whites' today are similar to
completely distinguished from the self. Interestingly, if we read those of the past; the main difference is that the State no longer
the "unheimlich" as unhomely, what produces anxiety is an shares them, and now against hem. The fear of
encounter in a place we think of as our own with people who that once drove the colonial and apartheid state projects, as with
don't appear to belong. Yet the reaction we experience is not many modernist projects around the world, is now privatised
just because people are different and out-of-place. It derives Bauman 1992:xviii). The result, is a of alienation and
from the fear hat they might not be different enough (Wilton displacement, which prompts the avoidance of areas where 'whites'
1998:178). feel lack control and hey attempt to find spaces within which
control can be adequately maintained. 'Whites' fear that the very
Unlike the identity-affirming role previously played by spaces such
progress of the country is under threat:
as centres, now have the opposite effect: they are seen to
undermine modern and Western identities. For some, the arrival of Lindsay: We would probably very soon be classiied as a Third
street traders in the CBD altered that space from a more or less World country and I suppose ... levels are dropping, roads are

58
 all collapsing and all this stealing of telephone wires I mean as emigrated who believed that it was better to preserve heir 'whiteness'
if they weren't bad enough before they started doing that and by leaving South Africa than jeopardising it by staying) nor my own,
that sort of stuff (Interview August 1997). should be seen as attempts to collapse these complexities. Rather than
Interviewer: Do you see South Africa as part of the First offer a comprehensive explanaion of emigraion, I will focus on one of
World or part of the Third World? these reasons as pertinent to this chapter. For some, it might be
Denis: It's got a long way to go to become part of the First argued, emigration is the ultimate response to he dislocation hey felt
World. in South Africa. In the past, 'white' minority governments explicitly
Interviewer: You think that's where we should be going? set out to craft cities and a society that would allow their modern,
Denis: Ja (Yes)(lnterview September 1997). Western, First World identities to flourish. Under democracy, these
people fear, there will be little commitment to providing such spaces.
These quotes highlight the divergence between the speakers' sense
Anxieties around crime, education, and unemployment are not
of their local environment and their identity. Denis aspires to First
unrelated, and are in themselves direct threats to the ability of
World but believes the country he lives in to be Third World. It is
individuals to continue a secure sense of self. W here better, then, to be
this consequence of the failure of assimilation to regulate the lived
'Western', 'modern', and 'FirstWorld' than in countries which people
environment which forces the search for even more private strategies.
felt could be more unambiguously characterised as such? The United
Kingdom is a favourite destinaion, as are Australia, New Zealand, and
Canada. Like South Africa, the latter have been colonies of the UK,
Emigration and semigration
but unlike in South Africa there is no longer a majority indigenous
population. This is illustrated in the following exchange in which an
Assimilation, then, is not a suficient guarantee for some people that
interview respondent, living adjacent to the newly established Cato
they can go about their daily business without encountering people
Crest informal settlement in Durban, was considering emigrating:
and events that confront their sense of themselves. They, therefore,
begin to engage more proactively with space by shrinking or shifting Interviewer: Do you feel South African as a citizen?
the boundaries around their communities in order to find a zone Respondent: You know I always have done but recently I'm
that accords with their identities. The most extreme form of this is beginning to doubt whether I really want to live here the rest
emigration. of my life because I'm very unhappy about it, I'm actually
Emigration occurs for a multiplicity of reasons, and neither nervous. I don't know; you live from day-to-day, and you
Steyn's argument elsewhere in this volume (that some 'whites' wonder if today's going to be your day that someone will stick

59
 a gun in my head. I mean especially when I go out in the W hile many whites continue to emigrate - notably the young
morning I'm very nervous . . . You're conscious all the time. in possession of sought-after skills- others are "semigrating", as
W hen I open the garage I look behind me, get in the car look [an anonymous] business leader puts it. That is, they are
behind me, lock my door, reverse out fast, jump out the car, remaining in South Africa, but "withdrawing, opting out of
look behind me again make sure there's no one there, lock the being citizens". Many of these whites are convinced - and who
garage, get back in my car; that's the routine and night-time is can convince them otherwise?- that they can never be anything
even worse if I'm going out to get children. So I am nervous, other than second-class citizens in the present government's
yes, and . . . I can't actually tell you if we're going to live here eyes. So, they ask themselves, why concern themselves with the
the rest of our lives, I can't actually tell you that, it depends if obligations of citizenship? (Barrell 2000)
we can sell this house. At the moment we are prisoners. I am
Semigration emerged specifically to describe the migration of many
actually a prisoner here. We don't have a choice, we cannot sell
from Johannesburg to Cape Town in the 1990s. Christopher Hope
the house (Interview July 1996).
suggested that Cape Town creates the illusion of "not really being
It is clear that this respondent's immediate surroundings are not a part of Africa at all" (Hope 1998). However, taking Howard Barrell's
source of security, or safety, let alone comfort. logic, we could include other practices under the "semigration"
Emigration obviously requires significant resources and rubric, such as high perimeter walls around properties, enclosed
particular life circumstances and is not a viable solution for many. neighbourhoods, and gated communities. To push the heoretical term
Furthermore, regardless of a loss of normative social control, South somewhat, "semigration" is a hybrid of emigration and segregation.
Africa is the place in which some 'white' people want to make their In its extreme, "semigration" is the creation of a 'self-contained
home. Certainly, many 'whites' have a strong commitment to South town' from which residents seldom need to venture. W hile they
Africa (Steyn 200 1:xxiv). W hen the shape of post-apartheid South happen to be located in South Africa, they would like to have as
Africa was being negotiated, the strong interest in federalism and an little to do with it as possible (Hook &Vrdoljak 2002:202).
Afrikaner homeland represented a tension between wanting to At various times after the democratic transition, reports in
remain in South Africa but to withdraw from a democratic future; newspapers announced plans of paricular communiies to enclose
to secede (Hook &Vrdoljak 2002). However, the actual form [Link] their neighbourhoods behind fencing and booms across roads (Kirk
succession was to manifest itself in privatised enclaves. The word 1996; Perkins 1997; Nagoor 1997; McGreal 1999; Rossow 2001).
"semigration" has been mooted in the print media as a way of In some neighbourhoods, organisers attempt to raise money from all
describing these strategies: residents in order to fence off the perimeter, or a vulnerable section,

60
to erect booms across access roads and to pay for guards to operate This was a beautiful area before the squatters moved in. But now
them. One area of the Johannesburg metro council reportedly had I lie in bed at night when the dogs bark and I can't sleep I'm so
360 road closures consisting of booms and gates set up to regulate fearful. I'm keen to pay to block off our road (Perkins 1997).
access (Landman 2000b:2). Proposals were also made to fence off
A real estate analyst advised those affected residents of such areas to
public spaces such as parks in order to prevent access to all except
"move out and start again". He stated that he
local residents (Paul 1995). In green-field residential developments,
organisers attempt to raise investment in new fortified villages that foresees the tendency for middle-class and upper bracket
will allow secure comfortable living behind protected barricades home-owners to live behind high security walls increasing in
and controlled access. Such moves are justified on pragmatic the next five years. "In he Middle Ages people lived behind
grounds: the severe crime situation and apparent lack of action on their drawbridges because they feared for their lives, and that is
the part of the police necessitates neighbourhood action and more what his happening here" (De Ionno 1993).
defensive architecture. Schutte described the trend as follows:
The "upper bracket", then, are likened to landed gentry in the
Over the course of my field trips, I observed how white middle ages forced to build defensive architecture to fend off the
homeowners increased the height of the fences or brick walls marauding hordes. Property developers themselves have adopted
surrounding their properties. Fences and walls eight to 10 feet the terminology of medieval fortresses. George Hazeldon, featured
high line the residential streets. Some owners have afixed in an article on his plan to build a fortiied village near Cape Town,
razor-wire coils to the tops of their walls, and most of the walls likens his envisioned development to the ancient French fortress
display signs warning intruders that the property is protected monastery of Mont St Michel (McGreal 1999). The planned town,
by some alarm system or security firm. The richer the owner, called "Heritage Park", is to consist of 2 000 homes and is intended
the more elaborate the security devices . . . This obsession with to be self-sufficient, providing jobs for most residents and meeting
security is a relatively recent phenomenon that started in the all their retail, health, education, religious, and recreational needs.
1980s, when the crime rate soared with the unemployment Hazeldon describes the planned town in glowingly utopian terms,
rate (Schutte 199 5: 180). an attempt to recreate a sense of community free from worry. The
landscape of this 'ideal town' as is suggested by its name, is inspired
At times, the desire to have an enclosed community is linked
by colonial European architectural styles such as Cape Dutch and
di�ectly with the local presence of squatters. One resident near
Tudor English. In order to defend this utopia, barricaded entrances,
Manor Gardens was quoted in the newspaper as saying:
electric fencing, and dozens of patrolling security guards would be

61
put in place. Predictably, the developer pre-empts any accusation fond their "peace of mind" by establishing privatised fortified
that this is an attempt to secure a 'racially' exclusive space. enclaves, effectively "islands to which one can return every day, in
order to escape from the city and its deteriorated environment"
The blacks and coloureds must be having it worse than we are
(Caldeira 1996:309).
when it comes to crime so there' ll be some who want to live
These trends towards the fortiication of space are not limited
here. The only criteria are that people want to live as good
to South Africa, and have been well documented in places such as
neighbours. We can build part of the rainbow nation here
the USA and Brazil (Caldeira 1996:3 1 1; Davis 1990). According to
(McGreal 1999).
Teresa Caldeira, the fear of crime and violence is closely associated
However, plans for the town had to confront the existence of a with the emergence of new urban forms in a number of places in
squatter settlement of 1 000 residents on the proposed site. To solve the world, characterised by private fortified enclaves designed so
this 'unsightly' problem, Hazeldon planned to flatten the squatter that their aluent occupants can have maximum control over the
settlement and construct a township located, naturally, on the enclosed spaces. Crucially, although crime is cited as the primary
outside of the electric fence. He seemed unwilling to acknowledge reason for such urban forms, it is not the only motivation, and
the echoes of apartheid in his planning logic.
to relate security exclusively to crime is to fail to recognize all
The appeal of Hazeldon's vision rests not only on the idealised
the meanings it is acquiring in various types of environments.
neighbourhood free from others, but also on the potential
The new systems of security not only provide protection from
avoidance of the city as a whole. Cities are seen to be unpleasant
crime, but also create segregated spaces in which the practice
places for many; primarily because of the unregulated mixing and
of exclusion is carefully and rigorously exercised (Caldeira
unrestricted access they permit (Hook and Vrdolhak 2002; Popke
1996:3 1 1).
and Ballard 2004). The city, then, is "a deteriorated world pervaded
by not only pollution and noise but more importantly, confusion Indeed it is possible to question the effectiveness of current trends
and mixture, that is, social heterogeneity" (Caldeira 1996:309). The towards high walls as they go against what some see as international
garden-city landscapes of parks, salmon-filled lakes and views of best practice in security-conscious architecture. Neighbourhoods
mountains contrast with the disturbing CBD environment. By that are serious about crime eradication are urged by security
offering "a self-suficient town" from which some lucky people will experts to build low walls to see from, and into, other houses, and
seldom have to venture, residents will be able to avoid the city all to encourage neighbourly contact (Le Page 2000). This suggests that
together (Caldeira 1996:3 14). Many have therefore abandoned the privacy and boundary control are prominent factors in determining
hope of the achievement of a modern First World city and have the way people build their homes and communities, regardless of
their effectiveness in preventing crime. The privatisation of space move within it, by demanding hat they provide personal details
through fortified enclaves also enables the exclusion of those who in order to enter a space in which they have every right to move
are seen as both criminally threatening and undesirable. In the unhindered (2000).
process of establishing such urban forms, those who benefit from
The role of boundaries, purity, transgression, and out-of-place-ness n
them are, by necessity, undertaking a process of defining some types
of people as safe (desirable) and others as a threat (undesirable). identity construction are now well understood (Cresswell 1994,
1997; Douglas 1984; Sibley 1988, 1995; and Stallybrass & W hite
Contemporary urban segregation is complementary to the 1986). The process of othering, described above, which was he basis
issue of urban violence. On the one hand, the fear of crime is for traditional strategies for creating comfort zones, map into space by
used to legitimate increasing measures of security and surveil­ attempting to remove or regulate people who threaten the colonial,
lance. On the other, the proliferation of everyday talk about Western, modern identity. In a situation where such traditional
crime becomes the context in which residents generate stereo­ strategies (i.e. apartheid) are no longer in place, private boundary
types as they label different social groups as dangerous and maintenance becomes a vital tool. At one level, then, barriers
therefore as people to be feared and avoided (Caldeira regulating access to neighbourhoods are physical statements
1996:324; see Ballard 2004 for further discussion on the regarding the kinds of people who belong and the kinds that do not.
conflation of 'race' and crime). They are an attempt to restore a certain sense of 'our' identity
These urban forms, then, represent to some extent the privatisation through boundary maintenance, prompted by the disturbing
of what was previously a state project: urban segregation. Not only do presence of others which "threatens to overwhelm the boundaries
fences act as physical barriers, ostensibly to keep out criminals, but of individual and collective identity" (Wilton 1998: 183). Vividly
they also act as powerful symbols to pedestrians, and others who using the metaphor of the body and infection, Le Page highlights the
may not be resident in the area but may have wanted to pass through way in which defensive mechanisms such as security check points
(Landman 2000a:6). Social boundaries are thus "architecturally are orientated around the health of the suburban neighbourhood:
policed" (Davis 1990:223) and, as David Le Page comments:
[Roads] are suddenly closed off and fenced off at the ends, like
An enclosed neighbourhood essentially appropriates to a small cauterised veins.. . Specially enlisted antibodies - security
community the public spaces within it - roads, parks and guards, dogs, little huts, booms and visitors' registers- cluster
greenbelt. It infringes the right to privacy of those who would around every foreign body (2000).

63
W ithout recognition by officials of the need for purified spaces, Alan: I've spent my whole life here . . . [in] a European society.
residents are left to direct their own resources to attempt to achieve I didn't have any black friends or, or anything like this and
the same function. Through privatisation of residential, retail, and uh . . . and when I left. . .I mean that inter-relation, that
occupational spaces, the 'underclass' is kept at bay. The fantasy - integration hadn't started yet, social friendship type of thing. . .
sometimes implemented - of a fence around one's neighbourhood, But now I come back after five years, I'm actually missing those
beach, or park, is the expression of the desire to control these five years educational social integration. I'm actually the one
spaces so that access may be regulated. Crime, both real and (laugh) who's gotta catch up (Focus Group 2003).
imagined, provides the justification to avoid areas where one lacks
Thus, wile some 'white' South Africans fall easily into the old
direct control (i.e. public space). A sense of control can only be
scripts, others challenged binaries such as 'First World' I 'Third
achieved within private spaces such as the home, the gated
World' and recognised the poverty and suffering of groups such as
community, the ofice park, and the mall. To the extent that people
squatters and street traders. Some did not read the city as Third
can mobilise resources to manage these fears on their own, by
World but rather as a cosmopolitan space within which they felt
moving out of the CBD to secure privatised spaces, they do.
comfortable to move around. Such people no longer depend on a
heavily regulated and constrained living environment in order to
express their identity and feel secure in what they are. They no
Integration longer depend on seeing an uncivilised other - whether expressed
'racially' or in more recent developmental terms - in order to
Assimilation attempts to control desegregation by reforming define themselves as 'civilised' or 'developed' .
otherness. Emigration and semigration are an acknowledgment of The choice by some to use these discourses represents a shift
the impossibility of that project and the failure of the market to towards what Chantal Mouffe calls, "an identity which can
defend Western modern cities from things that don't fit. But to accommodate otherness, which demonstrates the porosity of its
what extent is it the case that 'white' people still depend on frontiers and opens up towards that exterior which makes it
exclusion for a secure sense of themselves? W hat has the presence possible" ( 1995:265). In the words of Young, such individuals are
of others taught 'white' people? As Wilton asks, is the fear just of open to "unassimilated otherness", the acceptance of and
different people or that different people aren't different enough engagement with difference without trying to reform it to fit into
( 1998: 178)? If so, what is the impact of that realisation? In a focus what 'white' racist societies in the past defined as acceptable (qtd in
group for returning South Africans who had emigrated, one Harvey 1993: 16). In this strategy alliances are formed where
respondent explained that he had missed out on integration: boundaries were once erected (Harvey 1996:360 ; Rorty 1989: 192).
The search for similarities establishes the possibility of common seeks to engage with the diversity of society in a way that does not
ground. Thus, urban spaces change from being spaces of avoidance or feel threatened by that diversity.
assimilation to spaces of engagement. Arguably, the mere presence of
others has forced 'white' people to reconsider what it is they need
Endnote
from their environments in order to feel secure. If transgression I would like to thank Matthew Durington and Gareth Jones for helpf ul comments on draft versions.
I am gratef ul for he use of he 2003 focus group material which comes rom a focus group I facilitated on
unsettles established identities, the massive extent of transgression behalf of th e Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation. The quote on p. 59 is used with permission
of Develo pment Research Africa, the research comp any contracted to conduct the field work.
in post-apartheid South African cities provides the opportunity for
confronting old boundaries. As much as physical proximity has
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