Civic Organization in Alexandra in the Early 1990s: An Ethnographic Approach

Abstract

Alexandra township is an underdeveloped black ghetto in the middle of white Johannesburg’s plush northern suburbs, (see Map 2) Plans to transform Alexandra into a middle-class family township resulted in a few areas being redeveloped in the 1980s, but the money soon ran out, and much of the area remains an overcrowded and under-serviced slum. The township is home to a population of about 400, 000, squeezed into 1.5 square kilometres. Brick houses dating from Alexandra’s freehold past are intermingled with and vastly outnumbered by thousands of tiny zinc shacks, or mkhukhus.

With the exception of elected officials of organizations, the names of persons and places in Alexandra referred to in this chapter are pseudonyms. Unless otherwise indicated, all interview material has been drawn from my M.A. thesis (Lucas, 1995).