I first discovered the “Grey Street Casbah and surrounding” Facebook group (hereafter “Grey Street Casbah”) when searching out images for a conference presentation.Footnote 1 Initially, I did not consider the Facebook group as an archive but was simply fascinated by the store of information it contained. Since I joined the group, posts would frequently appear in my feed. One post in particular that caught my eye shared information about the establishment of a historical society through the new 1860 Heritage Centre.Footnote 2 Comments by the administrator who made the post prompted me to reconsider the significance of the group. He lamented, “Sadly it seems our group were not even notified! I guess we are probably not ‘academic’ enough,” and after wishing the 1860 Heritage Centre well, he reminded the “Casbah family, we will continue to put out ALL OUR history on the ground as best as we can.”Footnote 3 As a result of this post, it became evident to me that the group’s administrators and many of its members understood the archival value of the group, so why are historians overlooking it? In this paper, I argue that the wealth of knowledge generated on informal online platforms such as this Facebook group should influence and inform historical interpretations of our urban pasts.
As we emerge into a post-COVID world, it is essential that scholars recognize the role that digital “community-based archives” will play in influencing our work.Footnote 4 For example, the “Grey Street Casbah” is a compelling collection of thoughts, memories, and emotions that should influence our interpretations of the past. It is not only a way for members of the group to share their stories and (re)connect with their community but it is also a validation of their role in building contemporary South Africa.
In marginalized populations, such as Indian South Africans, all too often historians prioritize the voices of notable members of society, placing the hopes, motives, and actions of those few as representative of the masses as well.Footnote 5 This is all too frequent not only within their political analyses, but also with historians’ evaluations of the socioeconomic and cultural issues within the anti-apartheid struggle.Footnote 6 Finding ways to access the voices of the “masses” or the “subaltern” is difficult. However, social media sites such as this Facebook group provide a space for the subaltern to be seen and heard.
Urban scholars have made distinctions between place and space, where space is “impersonal and unrelated to people, but a place is what people give names to and get used to and have a unique relationship with. Space does not belong to anyone in particular, but a place has a social and cultural meaning to people who live there [….] Place means different things to different generations.”Footnote 7 The “Grey Street Casbah” consists of people who “live[d] there” with the goals of collecting and sharing the social and cultural meanings they have with the places of the Casbah. One could argue that the creation of the entire Facebook group itself was an act of nostalgic nationalismFootnote 8 – a way to maintain an identity its members felt was being expunged by yet another government who did not have Indian South African best interests at heart.Footnote 9 As such, the “Grey Street Casbah” provides digital space for Indian South Africans to remember, memorialize, and reminisce about the place they fondly refer to as the Casbah. In many ways the Facebook group functions in the same way: a place for a community to gather much as they did in the physical places of the Casbah.
This paper argues that it is essential that academics understand the role that digital “identity-based community archives” such as the “Grey Street Casbah” can play in our work, especially when considering the collection, accessibility, and current movements to “decolonize” African archives.Footnote 10 Michele Pickover, Curator of Manuscripts of the University of Witwatersrand’s Historical Papers, has questioned the emphasis and prioritization of what is collected and digitized in African archives. She is critical of persistent trends towards a “monolithic nostalgic legacy,” and rather challenges historians and archivists to consider “who has agency to recover narratives of the past?”Footnote 11 Vivian Bickford-Smith has challenged historians to use less conventional sources in their research. Referring specifically to South African history, he urges historians to consider sources such as:
travelers’ accounts, newspapers, government commissions, oral histories, popular ‘city’ songs, and autobiographies […] but there are also, and in prolific numbers, local city histories, guides, novels, poetry and books about the ‘state of the nation’ [….] newsreels, documentaries and feature films […] Many of these sources have hitherto been little used by histories.Footnote 12
The “little used” sources, he argues, “provide rich evidence about South Africa’s urban past.”Footnote 13 By accessing such sources, historians get a much richer and complex depiction of the past. Social media collections, such as the “Grey Street Casbah” can accomplish the same sort of enrichment, especially in South Africa with its long tradition of colonial and apartheid sponsored archives. One way to “decolonize” the archives is to do as Pickover suggested, allow the people to have “agency to recover their narrative of the past.”Footnote 14
The “Grey Street Casbah” is doing exactly as Pickover suggested.Footnote 15 The stated intent of the group claims:
This group [is] for all the people that lived in Durban in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's. Remembering life back then. People that lived in [T]own[,] what you remember and for those that lived out of [T]own, how you use[d] to catch buses and come to Town to buy clothing, music, going to the bio's [sic] or meeting friends.Footnote 16
An administrator clarified that “this group is here to make some record of the pass [sic], as in history. If things posted bring back wonderful memories thats [sic] good. Part of our history was also bad, that lets [sic] talk about it, record it. Remember why this group was formed.”Footnote 17 The priority of the administrators of the group insist on giving agency to the people who experienced a particular place at a specific moment: a downtown Durban neighborhood during apartheid South Africa. They do so in order to provide a space for a collective effort to recover a history of a community that, due to the end of apartheid, no longer exists as it once did.Footnote 18 They are also acting out of a perceived need to record such histories – a sense that the “average” person, the subaltern, has not had their history told. As a result, this collection contains a tremendous store of memories and experiences essential to our understanding of the past.
This paper will first define the Casbah and explain the methodologies included in this project. Then, this paper will discuss the unique functions and contributions of this Facebook group, and those like them, to urban history. The final discussion will explore potential themes or topics that would benefit from academic examination of such a Facebook group as the “Grey Street Casbah.”
Defining Place, Space, and Methodology
The Casbah, also referred to as the Grey Street Complex or Duchene, has its epicenter on Grey Street (now Dr. Yusuf Dadoo Street). Its borders, however, are a bit more fluid. Aziz Hassim, a well-known historian and an original administrator of the Facebook group, defined the Casbah as “running from Darby Street near Greyville Racecourse in the north to Pine Street in the central business district, from Soldiers Way up to Warwick Avenue on the fringe of the Berea. It was a place where the ‘real South Africa’ converged.”Footnote 19 Rosenberg describes it as:
An old precinct in the city that grew on the periphery of the European CBD [Central Business District], starting in the Grey Street area and growing outwards to the west and north-west in the Wester[n] vlei. Shaped, restricted and compressed into a fairly small area it has all the ingredients of what constituted a community, such as commercial and residential areas, worship sites for Muslims, Hindus and Christians, educational institutions including a University of Technology, recreational and cultural sites, a women’s hostel, a burial site, hospital, fire station, bus, train and taxi transport nodes, numerous markets and struggle sites.Footnote 20
Despite the Durban Municipality’s varied attempts to control it, the Casbah was a unique “black spot” that endured.Footnote 21 In colonial Natal, the Native Affairs Department controlled the movement of black South Africans to the Durban Central Business District (CBD) by requiring a permit and passing the Native Beer Act of 1908, which used beer revenue to subsidize hostels and control the availability of African labor.Footnote 22 The “Durban System,” as this became known, was then utilized as the groundwork for apartheid-era legislation limiting space for Indians and black South Africans while maintaining the dominance of whites in the CBD. With this long history in Durban of racial segregation, post-apartheid restructuring was highly problematic.Footnote 23 As a result of the influx of black South Africans into the Durban CBD in the 1980s, Indians fled the Casbah (whites fled downtown as well) for new private, walled developments on the Durban periphery.
The “Grey Street Casbah” Facebook group was created in 2011 by Aziz Hassim, and is currently administrated by Ishaan Blunden and Buddy Govender, both born in the Grey Street neighborhood and activists in promoting local history.Footnote 24 Demographically, the “Grey Street Casbah” is mostly Indian South Africans who grew up in Durban and their descendants. However, the 2011 census reported 573,334 people (16.7 percent) of eThekwini (Durban) Municipality as marking the Indian/Asian category.Footnote 25 There seems to be a substantial portion of group members who no longer live in Durban; some of this diaspora have moved to other South African cities such Johannesburg or have relocated outside of South Africa altogether.Footnote 26 Temporally, this “Grey Street Casbah” addresses the apartheid years of the 1950s to the 1980s, but discussions range to other topics such as issues of Indian indenture or modern South African governance.
I approached the closed Facebook group in the same manner historians approach a private/closed archive that requires permission from administrators to use its materials. The administrators suggested to me that group members provided their permission by agreeing to the terms of the group and thus were fully aware that their words may be used. Since there is no privacy statement for the group, their information is open to the public despite it being a private group.Footnote 27 A significant challenge of using the group’s information is balancing the need for data collection with privacy or ownership concerns of individuals within the group. Informal archives force historians to think about source material and contributors in a different way.Footnote 28 The three primary ethical areas of concern for me were the nature of consent, properly identifying and respecting expectations of privacy, and strategies for data anonymization.
I struggled with the nature of consent and respecting expectations for privacy because of different expectations on how postings of social media can vary between people. Michael Zimmer has argued that it is problematic to consider the justification that anything submitted to Facebook is done so with the belief that it can potentially be used in a public manner.Footnote 29 He echoes my concern that this view “reveals a troublesome lack of understanding of how users might be using the privacy settings within Facebook to control the flow of their personal information across different spheres.”Footnote 30 However, Roxana Willis has argued that Facebook observations are “comparable to observational research in a public space,” and thus justifies waiving informed consent of group members.Footnote 31 Willis also makes a compelling argument for the consideration of this information as public or “semi-public.”Footnote 32 She argues that informed consent is not required due to the unique nature of private Facebook groups. The space between public and private on social media can be difficult to delineate. Whiteman argues that technical levels of access do not determine whether information is considered public or private, rather it relies on the levels of privacy or publicness as “perceived by the users of online communities.”Footnote 33 Since the administrators of the “Grey Street Casbah” have indicated that group members view their memories and stories as public and the group was formed in part to help people have a fuller understanding of Durban history, they have essentially granted access to researchers.
I also struggled with how to appropriately anonymize the names of the contributors while maintaining readability. The administrators suggested to me that I should footnote the author of the quotes and contributions I would like to use as “Grey Street Casbah and surrounding,” thereby avoiding specifically naming individuals without their explicit permission while enabling researchers to still be able to verify my research. Out of respect for their preferences, I have followed their suggestions in this body of work.
In examining posted materials, I have employed an oral history methodology as my primary analytical approach. Oral histories have become the industry standard for “history from below.” Rife with their own issues of memory, remembering, and forgetting, oral history requires the parties involved to build a rapport over time to cultivate a level of trust. This trust lets the interviewee feel free to convey their ideas in an honest and open way. The traditional format for collecting oral histories has been to conduct and record interviews. While this format is beneficial in many ways, in our digital era I argue that there are other ways to acquire this source material that can avoid some of the challenges inherent in the interview process. One way is online platforms, such as the “Grey Street Casbah,” which act as informal archives where anybody who is a member can contribute memories and share experiences and photographs.
As these members construct their archive, they are also creating their own narrative of history. Despite its more than 15,000 members, the fact that “Grey Street Casbah” is a closed group provides a sense of security or safety, despite the actual public nature of social media. This feeling of being amongst trusted friends enables many people to post more freely and openly about personal experiences relative to the urban locations being mentioned or shared. Some of the personal stories shared in the “Grey Street Casbah” are very similar in nature to collections of oral histories. For example, I have conducted many oral histories that focus on the late post-war era, including memories of the 1949 “riots.”Footnote 34 Posts and comments about the riots also appear in the “Grey Street Casbah” and mirror many of the discussions I had when conducting my interviews. Posts included personal accounts from those who experienced it,Footnote 35 a debate on the causes of the riots,Footnote 36 and unpublished photographs of the chaos.Footnote 37 One particular photograph of the riots elicited 75 responses.Footnote 38 Amongst these responses, some comments shared personal or family memories, such as one man who shared his father’s injured shin while working in townFootnote 39 or another’s story about her mother being hit in the head with a brick.Footnote 40
The photograph also stimulated the same type of debate about the causes of the riot that I heard during my oral interviews. Some commenters mentioned the urban legend of white men in black face, the official story of an assault on an African boy by an Indian, and even white government divide-and-rule tactics.Footnote 41 Stories in this format provide an open and convenient way to help historians contend with the various issues of nostalgia, collective memory, and remembering public events through “broader commemorative trends.”Footnote 42 Historians need to engage with these processes. We, as academics, would benefit greatly from contributing, participating, and cultivating relationships within online groups and incorporating these important historical materials into our scholarship.Footnote 43
I have found using an oral history method quite useful in my various examinations of the 1940s–50s Durban landscape. For example, my earlier project on “Red Square” examined the connections made between the spatial history of Red Square, fondly remembered for its anti-apartheid meetings, protests, and activities, and the role Indian South Africans played in the anti-apartheid movement. My work discussed how memory of such sites, now obliterated by a parking garage, persist in stories of the Casbah and illustrate a resiliency of the area.Footnote 44 This Facebook group supports these conclusions. For example, a member posted a current picture of the intersection where Red Square used to be and captioned it: “This often taken for granted intersection with the old Red Square to the right and Madressa Arcade on the left still traverses the throbbing pulse of our city.”Footnote 45 Another responded to the post with “a part of Durban that has a lot of history and character that is no more […] sad it is no longer ther [sic] but still remains in our minds hearts and soul.”Footnote 46 Similarly, another member shared that “We used to feel proud to attend a meeting held at THE Red Square! There was a sense of belonging and of fighting back in our simple way. And the turn-outs used to be huge and many significant speeches were heard there.”Footnote 47 Despite the disappearance of the physical site in discussion, these group members were able to contribute to a collective memory that can help historians reconstruct the past.
While examining this group with an oral history approach is quite beneficial, the fact that it is not an oral history must be acknowledged. The group has similar issues related to memory and nostalgia as oral history collections, as well as similar considerations of trust and ethics relative to oral histories. Social media, such as this group, also provide a space for contributions to our collective knowledge, facilitating authentic “history from below” in similar ways oral histories do. However, contributions are primarily textual and photographic in nature, with some video/audio posts. The vast number of posts are not oral. Despite this, I feel the dynamic nature of social media facilitates posts that are interactive and cooperational in their construction and are thus similar to the interview process. While I am still developing my own approaches, I am confident scholars can find a method that will bridge the gap between more traditional historical methods of analysis and oral history methodology.
Lastly, I would like to briefly comment on my own positionality within this work and my larger research agenda. I am an academic of the Global North whose work centers on understanding the history of the Global South. I have spent substantial time living and working in Durban, but I am not from Durban. I did not grow up there and so while I understand cognitively much about the people, their culture and politics, I cannot embody the social and political landscape of Durban. I am an outsider looking in. As such, however, I recognize most keenly the need for historians, archivists, and the academy as a whole to focus its efforts on centering the voices of those of the Global South. I realize my positionality challenges this, perhaps even hinders it, but the goal of this project, and my work as a whole, is to do my part to aid the move to decolonize the academy.
Rethinking the Urban History Archive
The “Grey Street Casbah” is particularly useful for its contributions to urban history. The geographical and temporal boundaries of the group mean that photos, comments, debates, and discussions are all centered on spatial understandings and considerations of place. Indeed, even the definitions of these boundaries are frequently negotiated among members of the group.
Perhaps one of the more enticing aspects of using social media, such as the “Grey Street Casbah,” is its convenience and functionality. An administrator of the group put into words my initial sentiment upon discovering this group: “This is just a snippet of the ‘magic’ we have in our Casbah collection […] original, never-before-seen photos of our Casbah.”Footnote 48 There is a tremendous storehouse of knowledge, experiences, and ephemera being collected and stored in this group – often by people who would never think to donate their materials to an official archive. These are things passed down to family members and stored in attics and on dusty bookshelves. This group allows them out into the light and for public access, some for the first time. Additionally, the ability to search the group is perhaps my favorite function. Rather than having to sift through thousands and thousands of documents, a simple key word search can reveal a wide range of relevant pictures, comments, and people.
The “Grey Street Casbah” allows a collective interpretation of the urban landscape, landmarks, street names, etc. that are often missing from most traditional (and even digital) archives. Facebook comments seem to also act as a way to corroborate memories – when someone posts about a building and calls it a landmark, that action historicizes it, cementing it into a position of social and cultural (and perhaps political) importance. When others comment on these same locations expressing a variety of positive memories, it further bolsters a collective agreement that these places played a significant role in the development of both the “imagined” community and the individual, simultaneously. Amanda Grace Sikarskie refers to this development as “citizen scholars.”Footnote 49 The mixture of collective agreement and diverse perspectives provides historians and researchers a significantly larger pool of information with which to consider these sites. By studying the series of comments on such posts, researchers can begin to reconstruct the urban environment – not just geographically or physically but also in relation to the sociocultural environment and political sentiments and situation. A great example of this was on a thread about a fish tackle shop:
Member #1: “[administrator], do u recall in the 70’s there used to be a fish tackle shop along this road. The owner used to also make bookings for dep [sic] sea fishing. Can’t seem to remember the owner or the name of the shop.”
Member #2 responded “Anglers paradise moved to berea road.”
Member #3 first mentioned a roasted nuts factory behind the Kajee Moosa Building which was in the picture adjoining the original post.
Member #4 responded “remember the nuts place-one could buy a paper cone of them for a few cents and the yard where the muharram stuff was held.”
Member #3 replied, “the smell of the nutr [sic] was tempting”
Member #5 agreed that “the smell of those nuts wafted thru [sic] the whole area…”Footnote 50
Such interactions show us the sociocultural attachments people associate with their urban environment. The transformation of the thread from one about a well-known fish tackle shop to the tempting smell of nuts provides a sensory rich glimpse into how the people who lived in this area remember these places. It also illustrates the ability of this type of platform for contributing to collective remembering – where one person’s memory triggers another in someone else and thus builds off itself, creating an intricate description of a particular location at a particular point in history that was created, or reimagined, by a group of unrelated people who experienced it.
Another unique and helpful feature of such collections is the flexible use of the comments, which allows discussion, debates, and expressions of memory and nostalgia. However, they also provide a space for collaboration where commenters can tag friends, ask questions, or reply with images or pictures that can further the discussion of the original post or take the discussion in an entirely new direction. For example, in 2014, two group members discussed pictures posted of golf players.Footnote 51 This discussion devolved into one member sharing that he had his father’s old golf pictures, to which the administrators requested an email of digital scans of them to make them shareable. This illustrates how this archive is molded and shaped by its contributors as well as its administrators. Others posted questions, such as those seeking clarification on an “urban legend or truth” that Zulu was the lingua franca between whites, Indians, and Africans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.Footnote 52 The ability to pose a question that facilitates historical inquiry generally does not exist in a traditional archival setting.
One very important element of social media is that people are able to engage in debates. Therefore, within this group researchers can become more in-tune with the varying perspectives and topics that garner heated debates within this particular community. This transpires in both historical and contemporary topics. The debates also offer glimpses into how people within the community base their information, sometimes being ahistorical or composed of rumor and sometimes centered on their own personal examples. For example, one member lamented the loss of “another Durban landmark crumbling away [….] all gone now, replaced with characterless businesses.”Footnote 53 The responses varied from blaming the corrupt government, calling Durban a “slum,” claiming the inferred decline was due to a loss in hope, examinations of suburban growth (i.e., white/Indian flight) at the end of apartheid, and a claim to “love Durban warts and all.”Footnote 54 This feature provides the unique ability for an archive to include historical and contemporary contexts simultaneously with its artifacts.
Additionally, the desire to “save” history is pervasive throughout the posts and comments in the “Grey Street Casbah.” Some view the group as one of the only places trying to keep the Casbah “alive.”Footnote 55 Other discussions lauded the preservation and dissemination of information on the group for its ability in “reviving a culture [that] will soon spill down to the younger generation.”Footnote 56 It appears there were two primary foci in using the group in this vein. The first was a sense of bringing together “multi generations on several continents”Footnote 57 to share “priceless memories”Footnote 58 with “our children,”Footnote 59 who, as understood by a collective assumption of loss here, “miss out on the ‘Real Durban.’”Footnote 60 The second was an acknowledgment that the collection of memories, pictures, and stories on the group was a valid contribution to the historical knowledge their children would benefit from. Indeed, one member responded to a post by one of the administrators of the group, who was discussing the “sustainability of the memory of all this [sic] was Casbah,”Footnote 61 by claiming “And when we die […] our ONLY hope is that our children look into material of calibre from YOUR ARCHIVES […] that YOU’VE PRODUCED.”Footnote 62 Such emphasis indicates a belief in the vital role the “Grey Street Casbah” plays in influencing the historical narrative for future generations. This sentiment seems especially important throughout discussions in this group, perhaps due to post-apartheid changes in the Casbah, which according to Derek H. Alderman “challenge[s] lines of identity.”Footnote 63 Some members of this group desire to promote the history of the Casbah, not just for its historical and cultural significance, but as a way to locate and maintain their identity in the midst of rapid change.
Efforts to archive or “save” history include strategies such as posting images of particular locations with simple labels, such as “Berea Road” or “Pine Street now days,” seeking to elicit memories and stories by group members.Footnote 64 Others post questions or advertise events, such as sharing a news article to the group page asking group members to “please help save our history & heritage by supporting this cause […]We would also appreciate any historical photos and other records”Footnote 65 or comments on threads such as one member who was “working on Red Square. Any folks with memories or images of it are encouraged to share them with him.”Footnote 66 Such posts speak to the utility of this archival format as well as to the sense of community the archive has cultivated. Both indicate a way to tap into and develop additional resources that can only enrich academic research and our collective understanding of the past.
Finally, I argue that there should be a place in the digital humanities for informal “identity-based community archives” such as the “Grey Street Casbah.”Footnote 67 Aubrey Parke makes similar claims regarding the searchable online archives StoryCorps. Parke states that StoryCorps can “claim scholarly space in the field of Digital Humanities” because it is a digital tool for “crowdsourcing” oral histories.Footnote 68 Parke’s discussion of StoryCorps’ emergence into the digital humanities is based on the belief that the digital humanities support research that can “facilitate new, collaborative modes of teaching and publication,” in similar ways to the “Grey Street Casbah.”Footnote 69
Academics and archives alike are exploring innovative ways to (re)define the digital humanities. Jennifer Douglas argues for the need to “expand the principle of provenance by exploring methods or archival creation,” arguing for a “broader understanding of the types of agents and processes that create an archive.”Footnote 70 Perhaps more importantly, considering social media community archival sites as a part of the digital humanities supports moves in academia to decolonize the archive. James Ocita has argued that post-apartheid narratives celebrate ethnic self-assertion and foregrounds cultural authentication, thus validating social media as archives as providing a way to better understand contemporary subaltern voices.Footnote 71 Similarly, Patrik Svensson has argued that “one of the most important functions of the digital humanities is to empower individuals and groups whether they are based in a department, a digital humanities lab, or elsewhere.”Footnote 72 The increasing awareness of scholars for the need to broaden the umbrella of digital humanities facilities a greater, and much needed, democratization of archival and research practices.
Debating Identity and Belonging
The “Grey Street Casbah” has a wide variety of examples of nostalgia, discussions of “community,” and debates over issues of belonging. Because these discussions are all framed within a bounded location, they serve to expand our understanding of how a particular place, and its spatiality, influence the identity of those who experienced it. The Facebook group serves as a precise example of Diener and Hagan’s claim that “the city serves as crucible that concentrates and focuses notions of memory, collective identity, and place attachment.”Footnote 73 Arguing for the importance of understanding memory within an urban setting, they explain, “we affix memories and identities to urban space and place as a means of giving tangible and lasting form to intangible and transient moments.”Footnote 74 Scholars have referred to this as “counter-memory” where a group’s collective memory makes an identity directly connected with a place, such as the Casbah.Footnote 75
Those in the diaspora, whether they be in Australia or Johannesburg, further complicate post-apartheid Indian South African identity. Pratap Kumar argues that the nostalgia for the newer generation of Indian South Africans is for a particular street or location, such as the Casbah, rather than previous generations’ nostalgia for a “universal place called India.”Footnote 76 Thus, “counter-memory” acts to create to different identities amongst two different generations, despite the fact that they all originated from the same place.
The pervasive nostalgia in this Facebook group is also significant within the urban South African context. Vivian Bickford-Smith argues that “Black as well as White South Africans often recalled aspects of everyday city life within the apartheid era in nostalgic fashion. Their memories reveal an intimate relationship between social identity, territorial belonging and loss.”Footnote 77 The Casbah, by definition, holds these elements. The memories and experiences of this group demonstrate repeatedly what Bickford-Smith describes as “positive remembrance” of a particular place and time which are amplified primarily because of the lack of community that resulted from the demise of the location.Footnote 78 While Bickford-Smith is referencing apartheid-era removals, the members of “Grey Street Casbah” likewise exhibit a sense of a “paradise lost” with accounts mourning the loss of “places destroyed.”Footnote 79 Similarly, examples of what Jacob Dlamini calls “native nostalgia,” which asserts a society’s “right to recollect both the good and bad” aspects of a township, is evident throughout the “Grey Street Casbah,” suggesting Dlamini’s notion “that a sense of place plays an important role in individual and collective identity.”Footnote 80 Vivian Bickford-Smith explains:
Such reminiscences frequently also demonstrate that this identity is influenced by the national and international circulation of ideas and popular culture [….] for their part, memories of those forcibly removed during apartheid suggest that the past in general is often remembered as a ‘Lost Eden’ myth, the ‘reverse image’ of the difficult present. Within such mythology in memories of ex-residents across the globe, the ‘slum’ is commonly transformed into a ‘warm and homely place, a little commonwealth where there was always a helping hand.’ The experience of urban life for the majority living in ‘slums’ surely lies somewhere between the grimmest judgments of external observers and this nostalgic insider remembrance.Footnote 81
While the Grey Street Complex is rarely depicted as a “slum,” ample examples from the “Grey Street Casbah” support notions of “native nostalgia” by disregarding the hardships that existed. For example, “native nostalgia” can be found in a series of responses to a picture posted of Clover Beach, the apartheid-era Indian-only beach:
Member #1: Now this looks more like FUN. The good old “INDIAN” beach.
Member #2: Awesome memories…wish we could bring back the good old days…
Member #3: Tin fish sandwiches…I wish we could go back to those days…all the beaches were noit [sic] open to us but we were happy and at least we could all go to clover beach…can’t do it anymoreFootnote 82
Additionally, another member commented on a thread discussing nostalgia within this group which exemplifies “native nostalgia” by explaining “when some post ‘good old Days,’ people are talking about friendships, safety and happiness, where your kids could walk safely, the house parties, the old school dancing, socialising, cafes, eating houses, nightclubs, although not everyone was privileged to own big homes and drive German cars people generally made the most of it and had a good time with very little.”Footnote 83 Such examples indicate the importance for urban historians and other researchers to pay particular attention to the type of nostalgia prevalent on particular threads, as they provide a variety of ways to understand Indian South African approaches to grappling with post-apartheid changes to the Casbah, and perhaps to South Africa in general.
One of the earliest posts in this group acknowledged the nostalgia problematic. One member posted:
Being a regular contributor to this wall and others of a similar nature, has led me to the conclusion that most of us at some time or the other, tend to be less than honest when we romanticize the past and talk about the so-called ‘good old days’. If we are really honest with ourselves, we will admit that the physical and also the financial hardships that most of us experienced in those days were far worse than the position of relevant comfort that most of us find ourselves in now.Footnote 84
His honest reproach towards frequently nostalgic posts provides a critique intended to challenge such moves.
Woven throughout many of the discussion threads is a curious interplay between those living or working in the Casbah, those living in greater Durban, and those in the diaspora. Due to the global nature of the group, conflicts often boil down into these types of assertions – as if staying in Durban legitimates one’s experience over those who have left. This is clearly articulated in a somewhat heated exchange where one commenter accused another of speaking like a “white racist,” to which the subsequent exchange occurred:
Member #1: “… assuming you not in Durban”
Member #2: “…no, but I’m from Durban”
Member #1: “Maybe you need to visit then comment”Footnote 85
Such discussions contribute significantly to understandings of the changing notions of community and belonging in post-apartheid South Africa, particularly amongst Indian South Africans. This example illustrates a dissonance created by post-apartheid migrations. However, social media debates that use spatial proximity to legitimate memories can also illustrate growing connections. In other words, members who live geographically closer to the place in discussion have more perceived legitimacy when sharing their memories than those in the diaspora, and yet these debates are able to connect members who would have never met in person. Christopher Helland argues that “modern social media is playing a major role in connecting people who have not seen each other for decades.”Footnote 86 Kumar agrees that “such re-connections of people revolve around more and more concrete spaces that they had shared,” such as specific street names, where the “street becomes like the home that they once shared.”Footnote 87 Whether reconnecting people with their memories, reconnecting old friends, “bringing together lost friends and families,” facilitating new friendships and acquaintances, or connecting the diaspora with its “homeland,” members feel a bond between themselves based primarily on a connection with a place that was once frequently visited.Footnote 88
“Nostalgia” and the Racial Politics of Place-Naming
Much of the nostalgia shared about the Casbah is a mournful tone of the loss of a safe place to socialize.Footnote 89 For example, one member responded to a picture posted on the group of a scene from 2019 on “West” Street, “I don’t if [sic] I’m disgusted or just sorry the way this once beautiful city has turned into a filthy, dangerous ghetto,” to which she added “I can’t believe I worked in ‘West/Smith St’ @ a bank & felt safe walking all the way to Grey St daily for my ride home & shopping to my hearts [sic] content in the 70s without all that mess & mayhem now.”Footnote 90 Since notions of safety are wrapped in the relatively privileged position of Indian South Africans during the apartheid era, many comments and posts are feebly masked racism. While many Indian South Africans suffered under apartheid, they often held a more privileged position above their African compatriots, such as the potential to earn higher wages, gain permits to own their businesses, and pursue higher education. What is frequently missing in these posts is the admission to this in-between status of Indians at the time and the resulting level of privilege this offered. The Casbah seems to be collectively remembered as an oasis of free movement, despite the presence of gangs, the intrusion/discrimination of the Durban municipality, and the ever-oppressive apartheid state.
Researchers can also glean a variety of viewpoints on spatial perceptions of race and racism within memories of the Casbah and Durban Central Business District in general. Contemporary conceptualizations of these spaces as in moments of “decline” are a rampant and oft-repeated theme amongst group members. Perhaps best illustrated on a recent thread discussing “Queen Street,” where a poster claimed, “Name change of streets has contributed to the decay of Durban […] very sad.”Footnote 91 The member demonstrated a racist nostalgia for apartheid-era controls when interpreting the change in street signs as being symbolic of the loss of a “golden age” for Indians in South Africa. She clarified her position that “queen street is regal […] now the universe is subject to…” while not specifically naming who the “universe” refers to, the comment suggests racist sentiments towards black South Africans in Durban.Footnote 92 Such a comment equated white/British/European as better or “regal” and trails off indicating African is equated to “decay.”Footnote 93 This sentiment was echoed not-infrequently amongst group members, where commenters would reminisce that “Those were the good old days – apartheid and all,”Footnote 94 or another who when discussing West Street, wonders “if it is still called that?” in an unmistakable tone of disdain and with much irony since the post was in 2017 and almost a decade after streets had been renamed.Footnote 95
However, it should be mentioned that some commenters would call out the racist and ahistorical nostalgia in their responses. One member clarified on this thread that, “Queen Victoria was indirectly responsible for destroying the lives of millions of Indians. This street observes the British monarchy, who are responsible for the shit that were [sic] in. Live with African dirt or European rape?”Footnote 96 So, while acknowledging racism from British Imperialism and white control, at the same time the member is also displays racism towards Black South Africans. Unfortunately, such racist comments often engendered very little recourse. The simple response to this comment was “Understand your point, but they built some beautiful buildings.”Footnote 97 Despite this languid reply, several other posts in this group call out this racism claiming, “what I resent most is the thinly disguised racism in posts….”Footnote 98 Similarly, another responded to a series of comments: “Can we please not have any racist comments on this page. The name of a street has nothing to do with the decay!”Footnote 99 Such interactions provide insights into the ways the people express the relationship between identity, memory, and the urban environment, specifically place and space. These interactions also expose racism and racist attitudes that still exist within the community and challenge accessibility of the group. Racism in such groups often act to silence or censor people. Although some become more vocal as illustrated above, most do not. As such, allowing racism in this group is a hinderance to members, the community, and researchers.
Recent studies on the link between power and naming include a variety of examinations on government bodies using everyday locations as spaces to assert a particular version of the past, while “alternative histories and ideologies are erased.”Footnote 100 However, Kumar suggests that identifying landmarks from the Casbah on the Facebook group is a way participants can remind “themselves of who they were and how they could be identified,” even at a distance.Footnote 101 He calls this an “imaginary bond” where those who once lived in the Casbah or feel associated with it but do not have any actual “tangible” connections now feel a connection to this “common place.”Footnote 102 While I agree with his notion of “imaginary bond,” I think it might be more complex. I proffer that this bond is also quite real, particularly in the context of the Casbah. I acknowledge, however, that there is a different connection/bond to a location, street, building, or landmark from those who have left than from those who stayed. However, just because the people are not there anymore does not invalidate their connection or make it any less real (i.e., imaginary). Vivian Bickford-Smith urges for a “social and territorial component” to collective recollections which are not “purely imagined.”Footnote 103 He explains that social networks, often built up over generations, contribute to “perceptions of common ties.”Footnote 104 Diener and Hagan describe this phenomenon as a “palimpsest of identity” where the urban landscape is repeatedly rewritten but “earlier writings are never completely erased.”Footnote 105 Evidence of this exists throughout discussions in the Casbah group, especially surrounding landmarks and street names.
Street naming, and renaming, play significant roles in generating and preserving personal connections to specific locations, despite a lack of physical connection to those places.Footnote 106 South African street (re)naming is especially complex, because the process of colonial and apartheid naming and subsequent post-apartheid renaming cannot be divorced from its racialized past.Footnote 107
In the late 1980s and 1990s, place-name studies had a “critical reformulation” that transformed approaches to the field.Footnote 108 As a result, recent scholarship has focused less on names of geographic locations and more on the “cultural politics of naming” due to its role in oppressed or minority groups as they “struggle for legitimacy and visibility.”Footnote 109 Researchers argue this approach allows us to understand naming as a “contested spatial practice”Footnote 110 essential to understanding the “ideological construction of nationalisms.”Footnote 111 As a result, scholars agree that place-naming, especially street renaming in places such as South Africa, are social constructions, often with “competing interpretations,” which allow people to orient themselves within “wider networks of memory.”Footnote 112 Additionally, as is the case with the Casbah, researchers understand naming to “conflate place and group identity.”Footnote 113
Post-apartheid street renaming occurred in Durban in 2007–2008.Footnote 114 It was directed by the African National Congress (ANC)-led local government with the aim of “symbolic transformation” and the goal to support and memorialize a particular version of the past.Footnote 115 Many minorities in South Africa subsequently perceived this as a threat to their own histories and legacies. As a result of the way the renaming occurred, much debate and resistance was expressed – to the point that still today, many inhabitants of Durban do not refer to the new names, despite their existence for over a decade. Interestingly, commenters in the “Grey Street Casbah” almost exclusively call the various streets of Durban by their apartheid and colonial names. This is perhaps understandable for those not living in Durban as they have not been confronted with the new name changes and are thus largely ignorant of them. It could also indicate that few of the commenters in this group venture to the Grey Street complex on a routine basis such that they would gradually need to start integrating the name changes. Most likely it is due to a “subtle” resistance that has persisted more than a decade since the names officially changed.Footnote 116 However, based on the pervasive use of older street names, it could also be argued that group members apply a collective determination to use historical place/space names as their form of discourse, the old street names act as a common language of identity between expats and residents alike within a historically bounded context. Regardless of the intent of commenters using older street names, the result is that historians are provided the historical context – a glimpse into a historical moment – that subsequently no longer exists as it once did.
Additionally, it appears most Durbanites are generally unaware of the historical significance of the people the streets are named after. The members of the “Grey Street Casbah” are not trying to commemorate the European people by their continued use of colonial and apartheid-era street names but have rather applied their own (local) historical context to these streets, where the European references were the lost and new, arguably just as problematic, ones applied. Before the post-apartheid renaming, most Durban streets were named after European historical places or prominent people.Footnote 117 An interesting example is Aliwal street, renamed Samora Machel Road, which was originally named to commemorate the 1849 British victory against Indians near Aliwal in Punjab, India.Footnote 118 So the continued use of the colonial and apartheid era street names, such as Queen and Aliwal Streets, illustrate John McIntyre’s belief that the street names are “household words but which have no significance for most of us.”Footnote 119 Despite McIntyre’s beliefs, the “Grey Street Casbah” demonstrates street naming significance relative to their own collective memory rather than the streets’ historically accurate significance.
Perhaps that is why the resistance to the post-apartheid street renaming project in Durban was so strong. The recognition, whether conscious or not, that these culturally constructed (or reconstructed) historical contexts relating names of streets and places in the Casbah would be lost if the names were lost, despite the irony of the oppressive imperial and racist legacies of the people and places being commemorated. Much research on renaming places in former communist countries supports this idea, concluding that “such renaming of streets virtually wiped out old memories of people.”Footnote 120 As a result, scholars have described the renaming of places in post-apartheid South Africa as “acts of transformation and resistance.”Footnote 121 However, the complexity of the Casbah example needs further exploration, because this resistance continues to act within apartheid era paradigms of racial constructs and behaviors.
Conclusion: New Local, Digital Histories
The abundance of information shared on informal online platforms, such as the “Grey Street Casbah,” can shape and inform historical interpretations and our understanding of urban history. The informal nature of this space allows the creation of identity-based community archives that can share a vast amount of knowledge, memories, and experiences, while allowing members to partake in the construction of their own history.
Using social media as data sources for research is not without its issues. As discussed throughout this article, any analysis of such sites requires careful consideration and mindfulness of nostalgia and the nuances of memories within the particular culture of the group. This obviously also applies to the bias and/or specific focus of the group. While the geographical and temporal focus of this group is definitely a benefit for those working on urban issues, it comes with its own issues and biases. Accessibility is an especially challenging aspect to social media groups. For example, since the “Grey Street Casbah” group is closed, non-members (i.e., other academics or those reading this article) cannot verify any of my citations. Additionally, problems with sourcing the reliability of contributions seems inherent in social media platforms. Often either no one follows up or questions the source of things shared, or, if questioned, sometimes members do not know the original source of their contribution or simply do not reply. Similarly, not all 15,000 members are contributing to the discussions, so original posts and the comments are driven and navigated by a significant minority of the group membership.Footnote 122 Thus, an inherent bias develops which influences the tone of the discourse and what others would be willing to share and comment on. Members can also delete posts, so information can be lost very easily.
Despite these various issues, data from social media discussions such as the “Grey Street Casbah” offer researchers much in return. The ease and convenience with which researchers can navigate these groups is vastly more efficient than most formal archives. The type of material, such as personal photographs and ephemera, are often not the type of materials collected, recorded, and shared widely by formal archives in South Africa. Additionally, the flexible use of the comments feature can facilitate further discussions in the original post or take the discussion in a new direction, which is a unique contribution of social media collections.
Social media collections can act as complimentary repositories of historically relevant material. Groups such as the “Grey Street Casbah” are sites of organic creation. The detachment of this collection from academia, and instead its cultivation by those who lived there encourages members to share unsolicited information and minimizes issues such the observer’s paradox.Footnote 123 The administrators and members understand themselves to be saving their own history. The global nature of the group facilitates connection with the diaspora. By allowing the diasporic communities to be in conversation with one another, the “Grey Street Casbah” provides a way to bring together the diaspora in one space that does not otherwise exist. Perhaps most importantly, incorporating collections such as the “Grey Street Casbah” into our research repertoire supports important movements to decolonize the archives. Maja Kominko agrees that “access to records is crucial not only for knowledge of the past and the self-definition of communities, but also for shaping communities’ futures; it is vital for justice, reconciliation, language revitalization or any other form of mending broken links with the past.”Footnote 124 Most South African archives historically have left out the voices of their Indian citizens, excepting perhaps its notable members, which is perhaps why many in the Indian South African community understand the value of creating their own collection.
