Abstract:
Beginning in the mid-1990s, South Africa’s geopolitical, social and economic landscapes have been
rapidly transforming. Driven primarily by government policy particularly after 1994, these changes have
among other effects offered tailor-made opportunities to the educated and resourceful black South
Africans (so-called ‘black diamonds’) in the townships to rise on the socio-economic ladder. The main
question this research paper attempts to answer is why only some of black middle-class township
dwellers (black diamonds or BDs) do not relocate to former whites-only suburbs? The study, conducted
on BDs in the townships of Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Pretoria, reveals the role of
cultural, social, spatial, political and economic factors in the residential-location decisions of the black
middle class. The survey found a duality of social identities emerging within the black middle class which
could no longer be perceived as a single cohort. These identities may be categorized as the BDs who live
in, educate their children there and are assimilated into the historically white suburb culture and those
who are inextricably enmeshed in the townships. This paper also reports that there are other incentives,
incorporating unquantifiable socio-economic benefits, that keep BDs ‘sparkling’ in the townships
because they may be absent in the former whites-only suburbs. Although their consumption power may
be of most interest to economic planners and analysts, their role in the townships transcends economics
into some being seen as role models.
