Johannesburg is filled with many migrants from across Africa and
the world, seeking opportunities in the `city of gold'. In this
book, Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, who began her life in South Africa
as a street trader, uses narratives and images to explore the lives
of women from Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo
Brazzaville, Nigeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and
Zimbabwe, now living in Johannesburg. Using their stories of love,
illness, fears, children, violence, family and money, she explores
women's relationships with host and home communities, the South
African state, economy and the city of Johannesburg. Rather than
ask how political forces and global capital shape Johannesburg,
this book turns the dominant urban question on its head, and
interrogates how cross-border women shape Johannesburg's politics,
regulatory systems and local economies. It explores migrant women's
fl uid lives against the backdrop of a city that is also in flux.
It looks at what it means to live in Johannesburg, yet remain
dislocated there; what it means to be in the inner city, yet aspire
to live elsewhere; and what it means to be both visible and
invisible in the city. The author poignantly illustrates how
migrant women enable us to see how populations living in society's
margins influence urban practices. As we follow them through the
city's streets, the boundaries between legality and illegality,
formal and informal, official and unofficial collapse - rendering
these categories inaccurate descriptors of the city or their lives.
The women in this book compel us to rethink these easy binaries
that have for so long shaped how we plan and govern cities. Kihato
argues that transformation within urban planning and governance
structures a redefinition of these terms for twenty first century
African cities. This insightful ethnographic study is a must-read
for those working in urban planning, gender and migration studies
and governance and service delivery.
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