Spaces of Democracy: Remapping the Apartheid City

Democracy is associated with particular kinds of spatialities. In this paper I address two aspects of the spatiality of democracy through an assessment of transitional arrangements for local government in South African cities. Political identities, as well as spatial arrangements, involved in democratic politics are associated with instability, uncertainty, and ongoing contestation. In democracies, the contestation both of identities and of spaces is institutionalised and this implies the generalisation of particular spatialities. Drawing on a spatially informed interpretation of the work of Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, I argue that the transitional phase in the emergence of democracy in South Africa has involved the growth of a democratic culture—even in situations where substantial compromises have been made to keep recalcitrant white interests on board. I question the assertion of a nonracial politics which seeks to erase the possibility of ethnically based political identities and argue that the failure of the left to hegemonise their perspective of a nonracial political project and a nonracial postapartheid city may have ironically assisted in extending the possibilities for democracy. A key conclusion is that democracies are associated with different spatialities which facilitate contestation and representation. A politics of space, given the radical undecidability of spatial boundaries, is supportive of the extension of democracy.