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Hoping for a better life, many migrants have
made the journey to South Africa and set up as
informal spaza shop traders in small towns and
township areas, supplying the local residents
with essentials. But thriving in environments
afflicted by unemployment and crime is almost
impossible when armed robberies are a daily
reality, protection from law enforcement is not
a given, and access to justice is effectively out
of reach.
Engaging first-hand with small traders and the
Somali communities in Khayelitsha, Kraaifontein
and Philippi, Vanya Gastrow investigates the
predicament of these modern-day pariahs –
social and political outcasts who belong neither
to the elite nor the common people, and who are
frequently the focus of xenophobic anger.
Tracing national-level regulatory developments in post-apartheid democratic South
Africa Gastrow shines a light on how retailers have been politicised and how they have
faced growing informal and formal regulatory efforts to curtail their business activities.
She demonstrates how democratic and constitutional frameworks can erode in contexts of
heightened nationalism, populism and economic inequality.About the Author
Vanya Gastrow is a lawyer and
research consultant based in
Cape Town, South Africa. She
holds a PhD in migration studies
and wrote this book as part of a
postdoctoral research fellowship
at the Department of Public Law
at the University of Cape Town.Review
Gastrow employs Max Weber’s idea of a ‘pariah
people’ to describe Somali traders in South
Africa: segregated from the social intercourse
around them, their situation forever precarious,
and yet begrudgingly tolerated because they are
indispensable. This seems spot-on to me. Citizen
and Pariah is a fine contribution to contemporary
South African scholarship.
—Jonny Steinberg, author of A Man of Good Hope