Enclave Rustenburg : platinum mining and the post-apartheid social order

18 Jul 2016

In the absence of a levelling out of income and resources, as well as arbitrary violence in everyday life, the post-apartheid social order is characterised by the formation of various enclaves. In the platinum mining town of Rustenburg, these enclaves are constructed on the foundations of the apartheid categories ‘suburb’, ‘compound’, ‘township’ and ‘homeland’. Such enclaves include security villages, converted compounds with access control, and informal settlements with distinctive gender, linguistic and class formations. The article draws on David Harvey’s formulation of absolute, relative and relational space and the case of Rustenburg to elaborate the concept of enclave further.

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