After Crispian Olver controversially lifted the lid on graft in Nelson Mandela Bay in his 2018 book,, a new book shifts the spotlight on to the other major motor hub in the Eastern Cape, Buffalo City., South African anthropologist Leslie Bank focuses on the historical roots of state capture and argues that the present political and economic malaise in the Buffalo City municipality can be traced back to the 1960s.
Firms were lured out of the metro to decentralised, state-funded industrial parks in the “homelands”. The apartheid turn also signalled the end of a post-war revival of white liberalism in the region, which had been supported by the emergence of a more inclusive development model. Meanwhile, black “homeland” leaders rebuked whites at the same time as they took massive cash handouts from Pretoria.
Hefty state subsidies are used to keep these companies in the province, although reindustrialisation remains a distant dream. At the same time, meaningful rural development has not materialised because the state has sought to re-entrench tribal authorities. Bank uses the term “occupy urbanism” to describe the orientation of the historically black universities and the new local black middle class, which seem to be “in but not of the city”.