Waiting in a Platinum City

Africa Talks seminar

This talk is based on a documentary film, which uses waiting as a lens through which to explore the everyday struggles of residents of informal settlements on the margins of platinum mines in Rustenburg town in South Africa. It demonstrates how waiting is a key feature of residents’ encounters with mining companies, the local municipality, and grassroots structures in their struggles over housing, jobs, and basic amenities. The documentary captures how waiting in

informal settlements is not characterised by passive acquiescence but is often an engaged activity that is informed by residents’ reflexive responses to the different structures and regimes of waiting.

About the Author

Joseph Mujere is a Lecturer in Modern History at the Department of History, University of York. He previously worked at the University of Zimbabwe and the National University of Lesotho. He is the author of Land, Migration and Belonging: A History of Basotho in Southern Rhodesia c.1890-1960s (2019). He has also published several articles in refereed journals, including South African Historical Journal, Journal of Southern African Studies, Critical African Studies, Review of African Political Economy, Labour, Capital and Society, African Economic History, and Journal of Peasant Studies, among others.

• Zoom link