Law spatiality and the Tshwane urban space

Abstract

This project focuses on the relationship between law and space. In the South African context, apartheid can be understood as a legal system that regulated material space. This system produced social relations and conditions that remain, despite the abolition of the apartheid legal system. Spatial justice captures the relationship between law and space. Looking at law from the perspective of spatial justice provides a vocabulary for explaining how spaces (as social relations) remain after laws have gone. Following feminist geographer Doreen Massey, I call for law to recognise relational space. The city of Tshwane's lawscape provides me with three instantiations through which to investigate the spatial justice discourse. The first chapter considers the case of Schubart Park, a high-rise complex in the inner city of Tshwane. An estimated 700 families were evicted from the building complex in 2011. The constitutional court, one year later, ordered the re-instatement of the inhabitants, but the buildings still stand empty. The second chapter focuses on the city of Tshwane street names case. During 2012, a number of street names across the city were changed. The constitutional court, in 2016, handed down a judgment that brings to the surface the notions of belonging in the city. The third chapter traces the grand narrative of the municipality by analysing the mayoral speeches of the past five years and the Tshwane 2055 plan. This project hopes to contribute to the vocabulary of spatiality and spatial justice from a post-apartheid South African perspective and in particular from the vantage point of the administrative capital.