South Africa's black middle class through the prism of literary sources and humour

Various and contested attempts at defining the middle class in Africa have resulted in a ‘conceptual quagmire’ (Lentz Reference Lentz and Melber2017: 18). The heterogeneity of income levels, occupations and fluid self-categorizations have made such attempts difficult, but in spite of the fuzziness in the definition, the term has become ‘rather attractive, both for policy and market analysts and as a term of self-description’ (ibid.: 25). Various organizations have devised economistic measurements based on income or daily expenditure, such as the World Bank's US$2 threshold and the African Development Bank's US$4 to US$20 a day (Stofel Reference Stofel and Melber2017); however, useful as some of these quantitative measurements are, the low base used suggests that ‘everyone not starving is middle-class’ (Melber Reference Melber and Melber2017: 2). Income and expenditure are but two aspects out of a plethora of others; figures alone ignore the performative, processual element and the importance of self-categorizations (Melber Reference Melber and Melber2017; Spronk Reference Spronk2014).

Definitions of the African middle class also depend on the approach one uses (Spronk Reference Spronk2014), with increasing numbers of researchers preferring a Weberian to a Marxist approach because of the realization that class goes beyond material concerns. Whereas the latter views class as emanating from ‘the outcome of capitalist relations of production that give rise to fixed groups’ (ibid.: 98), the former, in differentiating economic power and status, creates room for deeper investigation of the function of culture in the performance of class, which is what this article does. It is thus part of efforts that employ various and multiple methodologies to understand the African middle class(es) in such a way as to avoid ‘[t]he representation of Africa's growing middle-class as a homogeneous urbanised group with predictable economic, political and consumer behaviours’ (Mercer Reference Mercer2014: 228).

In the South African context, the term ‘middle class’ is equally slippery and elastic. Attempts to measure and characterize the country's ‘new’ black middle class(es) – those earlier denied full participation in apartheid's racialized economy – have highlighted numerous and varying factors (Crankshaw Reference Crankshaw1993; Seekings and Nattrass Reference Seekings and Nattrass2002; Southall Reference Southall2016; Kistner Reference Kistner2015). These range from quantitative attempts to measure the size of, and differentiations within, this class (Muller Reference Muller and Gqubule2006; Southall Reference Southall2004; Schlemmer Reference Schlemmer2005), through surveys about homeownership (Crankshaw Reference Crankshaw2008; Krige Reference Krige2015) and discussions of the role of credit in facilitating its rapid but precarious growth (James Reference James2015), to explorations of its political roles and attitudes (Rivero et al. Reference Rivero, du Toit and Kotze2003; Southall Reference Southall2004) and its economic roles through the Black Economic Empowerment programme (Southall Reference Southall2006).

While acknowledging the contribution of these numerous studies, of key importance to this article are those approaches that focus, first, on subjectively experienced, self-reported perceptions (Mbembe et al. Reference Mbembe, Dlamini and Khunou2004; Phadi and Ceruti Reference Phadi and Ceruti2011); second, on consumption (Ngoma Reference Ngoma and Melber2017: 175; Burger et al. Reference Burger, Louw, de Oliveira Pegado and van der Berg2015) as central to ‘understanding class both as position and as practice’ (Spronk Reference Spronk2014: 98; see also Posel Reference Posel2010: 161); and third, on the spatial mobility of the black middle class as lived experience and metaphor (for example, Khunou Reference Khunou2015; Mbembe et al. Reference Mbembe, Dlamini and Khunou2004).

But I go beyond these sociologically oriented approaches. Responding to Henning Melber's (Reference Melber and Melber2017) call for as many perspectives as possible for engaging the subject of Africa's middle class(es), I proffer literary studies as one key contribution. Novelistic and other modes of narration in the arts – biography and humorous essays included – have a unique way of distilling individual and group experiences. They can put a face to a phenomenon, revealing in full nuance the complexity and slipperiness of our cognitive and affective engagements in the construction of identities. Given that Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2007; Reference Ngcobo2014) and Khumalo (Reference Khumalo2010), in varying degrees, self-identify as belonging to the black middle class and are themselves actively involved in shuttling between township and suburb, their writings exemplify these contradictions with particular poignancy.Footnote ³ In keeping with the freedom that accompanies the genre of humorous writing, the two writers have a lively, vigorous writing style and a keen sense of observation, and are often at liberty to express unbridled feelings of anger, anxiety, happiness or loss regarding their own ‘middle classing’ (Chipkin Reference Chipkin2013) and that of others.

Although deployed to evoke laughter, the humorous essay, Khumalo points out, can be of a reflective kind – the kind where ‘you think while roaring with laughter’ (Reference Khumalo and Ngcobo2007: 12). Notable figures in the humorous essay genre in Europe and America include Jonathan Swift, William Hazlitt, John Trumbull, Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Parker, most of whom wrote for newspapers, literary quarterlies and magazines (Stuckey-French Reference Stuckey-French and Chevalier1997). In modern-day South Africa, Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2007; Reference Ngcobo2014) and Khumalo (Reference Khumalo2010) have been successful in this genre to the point of publishing books based on selected newspaper columns and blogs. They employ humour because it is a useful tool to ‘confront tensions around sensitive subjects’ (Devlieger Reference Devlieger2018: 165) such as gender, race, death, illness, sexuality, disability and the like. Race in South Africa, conflated with class, often tends to ignite tensions, but humour may serve to defuse these without suppressing them. Examples from South African media abound. Globally, best known among these is comedian Trevor Noah, who became famous for poking fun at the country's race issues. At about the same time, Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2007; Reference Ngcobo2014) and Khumalo (Reference Khumalo2010) were gaining local fame by tackling the same subjects. This development is in line with Ngcobo's answer to why he wrote Some of My Best Friends Are White (Reference Ngcobo2007):

There seemed to be a different set of expectations in the genre of comedy – a kind of pact enabling humourists to discuss, safely and publicly, subjects they otherwise would consider off limits.

Given this context, it is not surprising that in the process of classing and racing themselves and others, relying at times on self-levelled irony, irreverence and self-deprecation, Khumalo (Reference Khumalo2010) and Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2007; Reference Ngcobo2014) employ humour as a ‘way to negotiate different values and moral expectations’ (Devlieger Reference Devlieger2018: 163) that emanate from consumption associated with residential spacialization and leisure in South Africa. In their self-categorizations, then, humour emerges as ‘a way through which [they] critique the existing social order as well as themselves’ (ibid.: 165). Humour thus becomes a shield and conduit for self-exploration and troubling people's received opinions about race, class, status and consumption. Seen in that way, the invitation to ‘play’ is, in fact, an invitation to ‘responsible participation in civic life’ (Rossing Reference Rossing2016: 3).

How Ngcobo and Khumalo self-categorize

Both authors stressed the primacy of race – that they are black before any other identity marker. As Ngcobo put it: ‘I am first and foremost black … then Zulu, then middle-class’ – suggesting that class was less significant.Footnote ⁵ This self-assessment tallies with Ngoma's findings in her study of how black professionals constructed their identities regarding class and politics. She found that ‘[w]hile multiple descriptions of middle-classness were given, race emerged as an explanatory factor that served to resist, contradict and disrupt middle-class location and belonging’ (Ngoma Reference Ngoma and Melber2017: 176). This is a significant finding as it stresses the salience of race in South Africa and Posel's (Reference Posel2010) concept of racialized consumption, as will be illustrated later.

Notwithstanding this claim that race trumps class, in our interview Ngcobo had no qualms about calling himself middle-class. He pointed out that he was of ‘middle-class stock’ going back to his great grandparents, some of whom had belonged to a class of blacks called amazemtiti (exempt ones) under the 1865 Natal Exemption from Customary Native Law Act. Fred Khumalo (Reference Khumalo2006: 22) calls this group ‘the black people who were exempted from “native laws”; the urbanised, educated class of black people in Natal who could vote and could drink white man's liquor’. I cite Khumalo (ibid.) as further evidence of the pervasive nature of racialized consumption in South Africa and its massive impact on quotidian reality. Exempt natives were an exceptional class of blacks who could enter into legally binding business contracts, particularly those related to buying and selling property, when the rest of the natives could not legally do so. Here we must qualify claims hinted at earlier about the rapid growth of the ‘new’ black middle class post-1994. Although the rise of this class, post-democracy, was formidable, the ‘old’ black middle class had its roots in earlier processes; it was ‘the result of intra-generational transmission dating back to the mid-nineteenth century’ (Mabandla Reference Mabandla2015: 76; see also James Reference James2015: 42, 139–40, 201). This puts into perspective Ngcobo's key definer of his middle-classness – ‘access to power and resources’.Footnote ⁶ To illustrate this, he reeled off an impressive list of influential government officials and others in industry – people with whom he attended high school or university. These were influential people only a phone call away who could facilitate what he wanted. In this way, some of the benefits, privileges and power he enjoyed (limited though they were) echoed those that had accrued to his amazemtiti forebears.

Unlike Ngcobo, Khumalo was reluctant to call himself middle-class because his parents were working-class. Whereas Ngcobo's parents hailed from the ‘old middle class’ – his father was a school principal and his mother a hospital matron – Khumalo's father was a groom or stableman and his mother a domestic worker. This background meant growing up, as Khumalo put it, ‘with absolutely nothing’. In this sense, then, Khumalo can be said to belong to the ‘new’ black middle class, whose ‘newness’ is widely attributed to the advent of democratic rule post-1994, through ‘government policies and the general widening of opportunities [for blacks] in the country’ (Southall Reference Southall2016: 166). Begrudgingly, Khumalo self-identified as middle-class because of his ‘level of education and material status’; otherwise, he felt he was ‘working-class’. The attainment of tertiary-level education or a certain level of erudition was cited by both authors as one of the prerequisites for gaining middle-class membership. Ngcobo cited formal certificated education as being ‘90 per cent’ of middle-classness.Footnote ⁷ The salience and fruits of education and their links to norms of middle-class worthiness and respectability, or ‘the virtues of professionalism’, among the black middle class in South Africa are also stressed by Elizabeth Hull (Reference Hull2020).

As further markers of middle-classness, Ngcobo and Khumalo, in both their works and interviews, include the eschewing of manual labour, access to previously whites-only facilities in the suburbs, such as former ‘Model C’Footnote ⁸ schools, and dining out in top-end restaurants. This list matches that in Ngoma's (Reference Ngoma and Melber2017) research, which included the ability to buy luxury items, going on holiday, sending children to private former whites-only schools, access to credit, and living in suburbs. Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2014: 98) lets it be known that middle-classness is an intellectual identity by writing that his involvement in physical labour can only be at ‘spectator or supervisory level’, and regards his middle-classness as his ‘constitutionally guaranteed right to not participate in the pleasures of manual labour’. He also cites, as a quintessential marker of middle-classness, a preoccupation with poor service and the ability to complain about it: ‘I spend huge chunks of my life bemoaning the appalling level of customer service in this, my beloved country, South Africa. In this regard I am no different to the average member of the Professional Whingers’ Association, otherwise known as middle-class South Africa’ (Ngcobo Reference Ngcobo2014: 226).

Escaping the township, escaping home

The subheading above is somewhat misleading. It suggests that most people who belong to the black middle class in South Africa are desperate to leave the township when, in fact, according to Donaldson et al. (Reference Donaldson, Mehlomakhulu, Darkey, Dyssel and Siyongwana2013), more than half (53 per cent) of their sample of 180 participants remained resident there, compared with only 32 per cent who had moved to former whites-only suburbs. Nonetheless, 60 per cent of the participants expressed a wish to relocate to the suburbs, and there are certainly those who make it a priority to leave at the first possible opportunity. Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2014: 64) writes, for example, ‘As soon as I could barely afford it, I jumped fence, left the township and moved to the ’burbs.’ Of course, the reasons for either staying in or leaving the township go beyond questions of affordability (Marais et al. Reference Marais, Hoekstra, Napier, Cloete and Lenka2018). Virtually all who do wish to leave, however, reference the roots of raced and regimented spacialization and consumption. It is these that frame ideas of belonging and limits of aspiration with regard to the buying of property and how to relate to the township and suburban space. This observation raises the following questions: (1) why do some sections of the black middle class stay in the townships?; (2) when members of the black middle class leave the township, where they can easily afford to buy a house, what is it that they are leaving behind or escaping?; (3) when purchasing a suburban house, what are they buying?; and (4) to what extent can they partake in the amenities offered by the suburbs?

The study by Donaldson et al. (Reference Donaldson, Mehlomakhulu, Darkey, Dyssel and Siyongwana2013) sheds light on why some members of the black middle class stay in the township, with a few even owning suburban houses that they rent out:

Unpacking these results revealed that ‘ubuntu is perceived to be non-existent in the suburbs’ (Donaldson et al. Reference Donaldson, Mehlomakhulu, Darkey, Dyssel and Siyongwana2013: 117), the very aspect Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2007: 37) persistently returns to ‘soak up’ in the township, so as to ‘become human again’ (ibid.: 32). But Ngcobo (ibid.) proceeds to illustrate the contestable nature of this claim, as detailed later in this article. As far as the study by Donaldson et al. (Reference Donaldson, Mehlomakhulu, Darkey, Dyssel and Siyongwana2013: 117) goes, there seems to be an unproblematic conclusion by some of the participants that life in the suburbs is ‘too Eurocentric (for whites only)’ and, despite one's middle-classness, a black person is likely to be an ‘outcast’.

All these sentiments need contextualizing. Owing to entrenched and protracted racial segregation in South Africa, to discuss the history of class, residential zoning and residential preference (or the lack of it) is to discuss apartheid's drawing of racial lines, which tended to be coterminous with class, status, physical and social spacialization. These related aspects should be seen as an expression of ‘racially politicised consumption’ (Posel Reference Posel2010: 160) that created and reinforced regimes of belonging. The township was created as a zone of limits. Under apartheid, blacks could not own land or homes, even in their restricted townships (Marais et al. Reference Marais, Hoekstra, Napier, Cloete and Lenka2018: 843) because the townships were set up as dormitory settlements to house sojourners whose homes were not in the city (which purportedly belonged to whites) but in the so-called homelands. Since blacks were thought not to need much, the houses were poky, and little space meant little or no privacy and resulted in compromised dignity. As one interviewee in a study by Mbembe et al. (Reference Mbembe, Dlamini and Khunou2004: 505–6) put it:

This crippling environment was worsened by limited shopping areas as well as by the ban on buying or selling luxuries, because black aspiration to luxury was seen as ‘racial offence’ (Posel Reference Posel2010: 170). The latent message was about poverty, which is what Ngcobo referred to when he remarked that ‘in our minds we believe that blackness is by definition poor, which is a rubbish thing but it is part of the racism we have in South Africa’.Footnote ¹⁰

The township, then, emerges as a place set up to prove that, since all black people are poor, nothing should suggest the contrary. Consequently, there were initially no efforts from the apartheid regime to acknowledge distinction among blacks. What could be called middle-class blacks – mostly professionals such as teachers, principals of schools and nurses – lived, where possible, in ‘extensions’: that is, extended sections of a particular township that would cater to this group.Footnote ¹¹ The township, with its limits, became home to black people who were described in relation to the township as denizens. One became, to quote Khumalo in the epigraph to this article, ‘township’ by identity. As expected, certain stereotypes attached to this identity, most suggesting backwardness, lack of sophistication, ignorance, poor education and the like. There is a tacit assumption that all of these will follow members of the black middle class when they move to the suburbs.

By now, it should be apparent that, although the township is a modern invention, ‘its purpose was to construct its inhabitants as pre-modern and incapable of negotiating modernity’ (Ellapen Reference Ellapen2007: 116). It was also intended to proscribe full participation in the consumption and ownership of things. It started as an ‘othered’ place; as a trope for blackness with all the supposed failings of that race. Physical spacialization went with social spacialization, with far-reaching and lasting legacies, as Ellapen elaborates:

A good example is Khumalo's explanation of the common saying ‘muhle engathi ugeza ngobisi’ (her astounding beauty is like that of someone who takes regular baths in milk), which he explains thus:

This example brings out clearly how the township is seen as a zone of limited aspiration and poverty, as expressed through limited food consumption or choice. It is partly this deprivation that accounts for some of the stereotypes about all black South Africans, including the acculturated or sophisticated black middle class; they are assumed to be unfamiliar with what are thought to be non-black or non-township foods, including the places and ways of consuming these foods.

Furthermore, the resultant stereotypes about the township and its inhabitants meant that the township was (and still is) inextricably associated, as with American ghettoes, with lower-class blacks of ‘lower moral worth’ (Moore Reference Moore2005: 448) and the associated high crime rates, unemployment and grinding poverty. The township was painted as a ‘dark’ place. It became a raced space of supposed inferiority, containment and ‘entrapment’ (Peterson Reference Peterson2003: 207), with limited or no urban facilities or economic opportunities. Enduring stereotypes about blackness and the township – the two used interchangeably – were produced, circulated and reinforced. Yet townships remain home to the overwhelming majority of South Africa's urban dwellers, both poor and middle-class. They are places imbued with a sense of history, belonging and cultural identity (Ellapen Reference Ellapen2007). What started as zones of containment, brainwashing and abjection have become homes in both literal and symbolic senses.

But not for those who decide to leave. Although the township is ‘home’ to some black middle-class people, it can be very unhomely – indeed, very dangerous. Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2007) delineates striking examples of dehumanizing experiences in everyday township life as a strong ‘push’ factor. Having moved to the suburbs, he decides to get his share of ‘ubuntu’ during the Easter break: to ‘reconnect with my people’, as he puts it, by visiting the township of his childhood (ibid.: 37). Just as he drives into the township, he is ‘abruptly brought back to earth by the attempted murder of [his] family’ (ibid.: 35) at the hands of a reckless teenage driver, visibly high and not paying attention to the rules of the road. Just after the teenager has narrowly missed hitting the Ngcobos’ car, he stops, blocking the road, and abandons the car there to court a girl passing by:

What makes it worse is that the teenager is armed with a gun. Good Friday in the township turns out to be a very rowdy affair of drunkenness, with the church service drowned out by loud music nearby (Ngcobo Reference Ngcobo2007: 37). One of the neighbours, a ‘thoughtful fellow[,] dishe[s] out a free soul-classics concert at about 100,000 decibels – until 4am the following day’ (ibid.: 38). That morning, Ngcobo is subjected to poor service at the local tavern and xenophobic sentiments. Eventually he decides not to move back to the township, choosing instead to live in his ‘cold, unfriendly complex with high walls and electric fences’ (ibid.: 40). The ‘buzz’ of the township he once identified as one of the strong pull factors becomes a disconcerting and dangerous din.

Suburbia: peace and unhomeliness

If living in townships carries the kinds of stigma and limitations highlighted above, moving to former white suburbs perhaps promises an amelioration of both, and the taking on of some of the characteristics of esilungwini, or ‘whiteness’. This, then, ought to be a positive experience, or at least one that comes with more or less the same privileges enjoyed by fellow suburbanites. Predictably, this movement tends to be regarded as a ‘symbol of increased social status’ (Donaldson et al. Reference Donaldson, Mehlomakhulu, Darkey, Dyssel and Siyongwana2013: 114) or achievement. However, the black middle classes find out that blackness complicates or contradicts middle-classness through what Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2014: 208) calls ‘unique problems’ or ‘special challenges of black people’ (ibid.: 207). Most of those people who leave the township do so on the basis of salaries that allow them to buy a house on credit (James Reference James2015) in the suburbs; a bank underwrites the sale and keeps the property until the mortgage (‘bond’ in South African parlance) is paid up. But a black person buying a house in a ‘white’ area would seem to some people, including fellow blacks of a lower class, to be out of place. The old spatial zoning template with its race–consumption nexus is mapped onto this new situation with results that induce anxiety and feelings of inadequacy in the black middle class. We are thus reminded that buying a house in a South African neighbourhood is to enter the complexities of neighbourhood cultures and politics, particularly as played out in public places such as upmarket restaurants, what Ngcobo labels the ‘unique problems of black diners’ (Reference Ngcobo2014: 206).

Writing about limited cross-racial contact (or any neighbourly contact for that matter), Ngcobo declares: ‘The suburbs are unfriendly, cold places. I once lived in a house for three years and never knew the name of even one of my neighbours’ (Reference Ngcobo2007: 33) because of ‘rules and aloofness’ (ibid.: 34). One way for the black middle class to enter racialized patterns of consumption is by eating out at upmarket restaurants. No rules discriminate against any race when it comes to dining at restaurants, although some of them have been accused in the media of discriminating against blacks through a racially skewed reservation system or as treating black patrons in racist ways.Footnote ¹² Dining at restaurants in the suburbs, clearly still a white-dominated activity, is a consumer choice newly opened up to the black middle class despite having been ‘the preserve of whites not long ago’ (Chevalier Reference Chevalier2015: 119).

But what is supposed to be an uncomplicated thing such as eating out becomes a bit of a quandary for Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2014). He agonizes over whether or not to tip black waiters (known locally as waitrons).Footnote ¹³ He gives the example of one who clearly ignores him as a black person, preferring to serve white diners first, largely believed to be in their element at upmarket restaurants and to tip generously. He writes: ‘If you tip, you reward shoddy service and having been insulted, and if you don't, you fulfil the script of miserly and ignorant blacks, along the lines of, “Aha! I knew I shouldn't have bothered”’ (ibid.: 228). At the back of Ngcobo's mind are black people who can hardly afford to eat out but force the matter to gain hollow prestige:

To be thought of as one such ‘darky’ puts a lot of pressure on Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2007) to prove that he is not this sort, that he is refined and firmly belongs in the suburbs with its middle-class culture of fine restaurants and tipping waiters. But the pressure to prove oneself as better than the rest of one's race and class at every turn, particularly to fellow blacks of a lower class such as waitrons, is a lot of work and involves psychic baggage.Footnote ¹⁴

At its worst, the preferential treatment given to whites at restaurants and the surliness reserved for black patrons result in a lingering sense of having been more than insulted. There is a feeling that, as a member of the black middle class, one is always perceived as suspect and as a source of danger in a ‘white’ space, partaking in ‘white’ practices of consumption – what Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2007: 32) calls ‘being treated like a suspected al-Qaeda operative by restaurant staff’. The underlying logic is that all blacks should be in the township. When not being treated as suspect, black patrons are nonetheless viewed with great condescension by restaurant staff. Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2014: 207) writes about how his wife, ‘a coffee aficionado’, always gets advised by black waitrons at restaurants not to order espresso because it is very bitter. At some point, one waitron watered down the espresso and added four sugars to make it ‘palatable’ (ibid.: 207). Another example is the quiet warning by a waiter when a black patron orders sushi: ‘That one is not cooked, you know’ (ibid.: 207). Khumalo identified such behaviour as internalized oppression.Footnote ¹⁵

James puts a finger on the display of similar behaviour through the word ‘jealous’, which tends to be used as both noun and adjective in black communities:

The beginning of this feeling or attitude is that, in the first place, the waiter thinks that the black diner is no different from him because they are both of the same race. There is also an assumption that they are also both from the township. The diner may no longer be living in the township but does hail from there. Ngcobo puts it very well:

Although he said he understood what was going through the minds of the waiters, Ngcobo was still upset by this kind of behaviour:

Khumalo was of the opinion that this phenomenon was more prevalent in Cape Town than elsewhere in South Africa.Footnote ¹⁸ Here, invariably, the overwhelming proportion of diners at ‘fine’ restaurants is white; the presence of black diners evokes disdain or jealousy in the waiter and thus, one way or another, might become an affront to the waiter. In a sense, then, the black diner is regarded as an usurper, an interloper in a space that is not his (he is township, after all) and in which he is likely to make a fool not only of himself but, by racial extension, of the waiters too. Hence Ngcobo's (Reference Ngcobo2014) rendition: ‘A few years ago I found myself the only dark-hued individual at a dinner at some or other five-star hotel. Our waiter adopted me from the moment we sat down.’ The black diner's presence and intention to eat are both perceived as ‘racial mimicry’ that has to be ‘disciplined’ (Posel Reference Posel2010: 170) or advised. Black diners are thus seen as ‘exceeding their proper social station’ (ibid.: 170), ironically by their economic inferiors as well as, at times, by racist whites.Footnote ¹⁹

From the foregoing, the importance of space and its link to time (Bakhtin Reference Bakhtin1981: 84) means that what unfolds in a space cannot be separated from events or practices, which themselves have antecedents. This ‘intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships’ (ibid.: 84), in light of historical antecedents of racialized regimes of spacialization and consumption, leads to a schematic classification:

In the case of the black middle class, this schema is out of step as it lags behind the ‘move’ they have made into the middle class and their attempted access to its economic and cultural privileges.

In the new settings, some waiters still use the regulated consumption and spacialization palimpsest, resulting in what Khumalo, as noted above, called internalized oppression or ‘self-hate’.Footnote ²⁰ Another example is given by Ngcobo (Reference Ngcobo2014). He describes how his black middle-class friend, in a suburb that is the very epitome of middle-class respectability, gets chided by a black shop attendant for wanting to buy four new tyres for his car. The shop attendant offers the prospective buyer ‘really good second-hand tyres we took out of a white guy's car!’ The attendant subconsciously believes that whatever a white person discards is still good enough for any black person. Economic class gets erased by race and the historical weight of the naturalized link between blackness and poverty. A black man buying four new tyres at once appears, in the eyes of the attendant, impossible or imprudent. Another example of unsolicited advice given to Ngcobo (ibid.: 208) is that instead of buying ‘a bottle of Gaviscon’, which is ‘verrrrry expensive’, he should use the ‘bicarbonate of soda at home’. Similarly, when he wants to buy two avocados, he is advised, ‘Why don't you save your money and buy a pack of five for R39.95’ (ibid.: 209).

While James (Reference James2015: 46) speaks of ‘status anxiety’ – that is to say, worrying about ‘what others think’ – and uses that term to explain why some individuals of the black middle class get into unmanageable debt, Khumalo's (Reference Khumalo2010) and Ngcobo's situation is that of status inconsistency. Status inconsistency refers to a situation in which an individual's status attributes are acknowledged as elevated in one respect while some are ignored or ranked lowly (Stryker Reference Stryker1978). While the black middle class may have the economic resources to take part in consumption activities that their money affords them, the obstinacy of race with regard to the politics of urban space and consumption denies them easy participation in activities within their financial reach. Their middle-class identity and dignity are compromised, leading to a strong sense of indignation at the implied inadequacy of blackness when it is attached to middle-classness. The resultant frustration is partly why the two writers consistently drive back to visit the township. Seen that way, this shuttling is more than a nostalgic yearning for childhood places, family and friends, familiar sights, and rhythms of the township, as noted below.

Shuttling between the suburbs and the township

Those in the black suburban middle class frequent the township for what seem to be mundane activities such as buying meat or having their hair done (Chevalier Reference Chevalier2015), but these trips have deeper meanings for some, given the alienating and anxiety-inducing interactions in the suburbs already described. Much as there are problems that push the black middle class out of the township, returning there has its appeal for some:

Khumalo also cited going to the township for social reasons, particularly entertainment in the form of live music or taking his collection of jazz music to play at friends’ houses, where, as a ‘loose association of jazz lovers’, they compare notes on the music.Footnote ²² Ngcobo cited more instrumental reasons, such as getting his ‘eight-year-old Mercedes Benz C Class’ serviced by his mechanic of many years, who lives in the township, works at a Mercedes Benz dealership and does the job much more cheaply than it would cost at the dealership.Footnote ²³

According to Fred Khumalo, going back to the township with his beautiful car and wearing good-quality fashionable clothes goes a long way towards providing a role model for young black people there. He once asked a provocative question: ‘If you [as a black middle class] can't show off in your township, where else can you show off?’ (Khumalo Reference Khumalo2010: 174). Mindful of the tendency to casually associate the black middle class in South Africa with mindless conspicuous consumption, he nonetheless contends that there is something positive about driving to the township of one's youth in a flashy car if one is part of the educated black middle class and has not incurred crippling debt to drive such a car (ibid.: 139). The intention is to display the fruits of education, stressing that such cars or luxuries are not the preserve of gangsters.Footnote ²⁴ In other words, the role of the new black middle class with all its trappings is to inspire hope, rehumanize a space associated with all forms of vice and entrapment, and normalize the participation of blacks in the consumption of high-end goods. To do that, the black middle class constantly needs to be ‘on display’ in the township as ambassadors of hard work and upward social mobility.

Describing a similar context, Livermon (Reference Livermon2014: 285) draws a strong link between consumption and human dignity, insisting that consumption should be seen as ‘one of the primary vectors through which participation, citizenship, and human dignity are forged in a contemporary globalizing world’. This could be one way of reversing the far-reaching psychic effects of racialized and regimented spacialization and consumption. That being the case, such consumption – enabled by respectable sources of social mobility such as high levels of education and income – is a way of searching for dignity (Khumalo Reference Khumalo2010). James likewise suggests that responsible debt can be part of ‘restoring citizenship rights [through] redistributing associated resources and entitlements to a population that keenly felt the pain of their denial’ (Reference James2015: 232).

Shuttling between the suburbs and the township reminds us, too, that although the township was conceived as external to the city, it has always been an intrinsic part of it, and we should not unduly stress its marginality. Mbembe and Nuttall point out that we should pay attention to the ‘imbrication of city and township’ (Reference Mbembe and Nuttall2004: 357), and, for the purposes of this article, of suburb and township. Going a step further than those who for decades have commuted between these spaces to get to work, the new black middle class who traverse the township, suburbs and other parts of the city are spearheading this imbrication. Their shuttling further reminds us that the townships, although they started as a zone of racial inferiority and proscribed ambition, are still home to most urban South Africans, including the black middle class who live in suburbs. The stereotypes of townships and blackness need unsettling, and humour does this by both mediating and elucidating the tensions that these stereotypes produce.