Access to employment : work and citizenship in Diepkloof.

Abstract

The report is divided into four main chapters: The first chapter introduces the topic, relevant literature and details surrounding the event and context. The second chapter gives a detailed ethnographic and historical background of Soweto and Diepkloof, and will discuss the conditions under which the Township was founded. It also shows how the development of the Diepkloof Square only served to reinforce existing social differences that have been imagined by the employed and the unemployed residents over the years. Chapter three focuses on the tensions between the employed and the unemployed members of Diepkloof, and will discuss and analyze the resident’s perspectives on work and citizenship. Chapter four looks at the dynamics that I have observed between Diepkloof Business Forum (DBF), state representatives and the developers, discusses and highlights many of the contradictions which I came across during the research. It came to my attention that there was a sufficient amount of press coverage from prominent newspapers around the scandals that overshadowed the building and the opening of the shopping centre, and as a result I begin by looking through the newspaper archives covered by the media as part of the methodology. The process allowed me to reconstruct a timeline of events leading to the hiring of workers and the opening of the retailers, and to understand the role played by the media in the recreation of the narrative around the Diepkloof Square project. I also got in contact with many of the participants through references from existing participants and through being referred. It concludes that the controversial promises of jobs were never kept by the developers and state representatives, thus has looked at how parties within the Township contested the sense of what the developers owed to the residents. The focus is particularly on questions about the link between work on the one hand and the dynamics of citizenship or belonging on the other.