Abstract:
OK
Bazaars,
Clicks,
Spar,
CNA
and
Checkers
are
the
gaudy
names
of
South
African
supermarkets
which,
in
Phaswane
Mpe’s
classic
‘mapping’
of
crime-‐ridden
Johannesburg
in
Welcome
to
Our
Hillbrow
(2001),
mark
the
protagonist’s
walk
through
inner-‐city
(WH
7-‐8).1
The
names
of
these
supermarkets
in
Mpe’s
text
resonate
evocatively
with
allusions
to
the
putatively
liberal
spaces
of
the
post-‐segregation
city
of
the
early
1990s:
‘OK’
with
a
new
but
shortlived
optimism,
‘Clicks’
with
the
African
languages
now
to
be
heard
on
the
streets
of
once-‐whites-‐only
Hillbrow,
‘Bazaar’
with
the
influx
of
informal
street
economies
into
the
once
regimented
grid
of
the
CBD,
or
‘Spar’
with
the
real
austerities
and
exacerbated
inequalities
of
the
neoliberal
regime
which
rapidly
supplanted
the
ANC’s
erstwhile
imaginations
of
socialist
egalitarianism.
