Integrating circuits of mobility : translocal and transnational expressions of urbanism in Thohoyandou
Date
2016
Authors
Liphosa, Pandeani
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Abstract
This thesis explores how to use Spaza Shops as an armature that connects local small scale farming with transnational economic networks. Located in Thohoyandou, a rural town near the Limpopo River, this study looks into the coexistence of two groups: one is indigenous to the region having lived there for centuries; the other is a group of migrant Somali traders that form part of a transnational economic network. At varying degrees, both these groups are products of a history of displacement which has now forced them into finding creative ways of integrating into each other. In an environment where resources are scarce the Spaza presents itself as an innovative technology that forms the basis of a certain type of integration that might not be ideal but is none the less effective.
From a local perspective this project looks at this relationship from a historical point of view, where Thohoyandou is a former Capital town that was designed to embody the ‘independence’ and power of a Homeland Bantustan and built to administer its surrounding rural population. In a post-independence context this paper analyses how the presence of migrant traders – in and around the town – contributes to the undoing of Apartheid specialities. From the perspective of the migrant Somali group the town is a resource that is utilise to penetrate themselves into surrounding villages by way of a system of Spaza Shops. As one of the most mobile group of people on the continent and the world Thohoyandou – for them – becomes one of many localities within a network that operates at a transnational diasporic scale. Under this research the Spaza is no longer seen as an exclusively Somalian business model but instead has the potential to become a constituent that locals can use to tap into transnational economic migrant networks by giving them the opportunity of selling produce they grow for subsistence purposes. As a result this will foster the empowerment of local subsistence farmers into becoming small scale commercial farmers.
By assuming that this relationship is currently based on economics it seeks to encourage the taking advantage of culturally produce survival strategies from both sides with the hope that people can find ways of exchanging more than just goods but also cultures, traditions and knowledge