Zwelethemba at 70, a Glocal Experience for Decolonial Economics

Townships are a hallmark spatial rearrangement by the successive racist regimes in South Africa, most prominently in the 20th century. Townships were built as labour camps for black men in leading industries of the South African economy, i.e. mining and agriculture. Townships disintegrated the traditional black family unit and people fought to keep their families together by fighting for the legal inclusion of women and children in townships. These labourers, forcefully resettled by the state for capital exploitation, were the backbone of the industries that characterized the South African economy. Desperate for their survival as families, black South Africans were cheap labour, moveable and disposable as per the needs of the states and private capital that controlled their lives. Another function for townships was to maintain a reserve army of labour to keep wages down while masking this exploitation along ethnic or regionalist lines.

This collaborative workshop of community elders and young scholars offers an opportunity to document experiences of survivors of Apartheid forced removals. The glocal focus will highlight the ways in which the community of Zwelethemba played a crucial role in the agricultural industry in some of the most globally well-known exports such as South African wine, fresh, dried and canned fruits to mention a few. The decolonial aspect of listening to working class will offer rare insights often overlooked in official historical accounts.

The structure of the workshop will comprise of 4 main speakers, two elders from the community (Mr. Phanyanyaphanya, 81 year-old and Mrs. Mfengu, 84) and two scholars (Professor Kessi and Professor Fuh) from the University of Cape Town. The conversations will be guided along socioeconomic lines where we explore state organised economic geographies of labour supply for exploitation in the form of townships for capital accumulation and export orientation.

This workshop aims to bring together the YSI community, interested scholars, and provide an exchange between economic theory and lived social realities by shifting the sites of knowledge production to the site of economic activity.