Abstract:
This paper describes how a group of men, who are invisible to the state because they possess
no formal legal documentation, such as ID books or passports, and do not take part in the
formal economy, live in a public park in Gezina, Pretoria. It explores how they negotiate
some of the ambiguities of street life and community through acts of sharing and illegal public
gambling. While the moral and economic principles organising life in the park are plural, forms
of everyday communism predominate. I argue that this predominance allows for a form of
community that allows the men living there to navigate their daily uncertainties more easily, and
explore the ways in which public gambling functions to maintain the conditions for constructive
relations amongst them.
