The road between Sandton and Alexandra Township : a Fanonian approach to the study of poverty and privilege in South Africa

Abstract

The key challenge to socio-economic transformation in South Africa is closing the gap between the poor and the rich. What is distinctive about South Africa is the uneasy coexistence of poverty and opulence. This study seeks to explore the structural, historical roots of poverty among the blacks in South Africa by deploying Fanonian Critical Decolonial theory. This is the ideal theoretical approach to unmask the structural causes of poverty and inequality in South Africa. Colonial ambitions and the global political engineering of the world by America and Europe spans more than four hundred years, and is still very much alive today in subtle forms. This study asserts that this imperial history is the cause of poverty, lack of agency, and the hellish conditions under which many black people live. The rise of industrial capitalism and attendant urbanisation is at the core of this impoverishment of the black man. It is also shown that, once impoverished, the black man’s poverty gathers its own momentum, leading to more poverty that is then handed down to succeeding generations. Contrary to Eurocentric theorising, the study shows that blacks are not ‘problem’ people but people with problems, who, instead of being condemned, should be regarded with sympathy. This research thesis focuses on Alexandra Township and Sandton as symbols of poverty and privilege, respectively. The former represents Fanon’s zone of non-being where life is lived in conditions of want and poverty, whilst the latter represents the zone of being characterised by good living and prosperity. The thesis will demonstrate the fact that these anomalous socio-economic disparities are not natural but man-made, and therefore require the action of human beings to correct them.