Conspicuous Destruction, Aspiration and Motion in the South African Township

Abstract

The paper limns modes of consumption and wastefulness in recent South African fiction about the township. It draws upon moves of aspiration and carelessness articulated in the youth practice I’khothane to think through the ways in which conspicuous destruction around car-use maps onto township socialities. Accordingly, it compares Sifiso Mzobe’s Young Blood and David Dinwoodie-Irving’s African Cookboy as texts utilizing scenes of consumption and destruction with a variety of effects. While commodity ownership and disposal enunciate identities that can unsettle the status quo, the article argues that aspiration alone cannot provide resources with which to shift structural inequalities persisting in South African cities.