The Nomad, the Refugee, the Developer, and the Migrant: Four stories of inner-city travelers in Johannesburg

Is the urban migrant a traveler? Can even small spaces, within the city, become sources of radical transformation? This chapter tells the stories of 4 diverse people who inhabit the same neighbourhood in the inner city of Johannesburg, each in extremely different ways. We follow a West African entrepreneur who survived seven days blockaded with his family in his apartment while xenophobic violence raged in the streets below, only later to establish a West African restaurant catering to migrants from across the continent. Then there is JJ, a young white venture capitalist who returns to South Africa from Europe, hoping to develop what he believes might be the next New York style urban environment in the inner city, up against building hijackers and slum lords. Vusi, a garbage reclaimer, moves 15 km with his trolly from the rich white suburbs into the inner city every day and reinterprets the language of travel in his own project of transforming waste, wealth and social space. Finally, we meet Nathi, a blind Zimbabwean who along with a few hundred other blind Zimbabweans, fled to Johannesburg and now occupy an inner city building, on the edge of the soon-to-be gentrified neighbourhood. Each, in their own way, is a traveler of one kind or another, transformed by their journeys in very different ways, while still sharing very close physical proximity to each other. What is the meaning of our relationship to territory, and ‘freedom’ of movement in a time of vast eco­nomic disparity, economic migration, class and racial conflict? The basis for this chapter comes from research developed as part of a cinema-verite documentary shot in 2012 by a group of South African filmmakers in the Johannesburg neighbourhood of Jeppestown, and makes use of visual sociology, ethnography and film transcripts.