1.4. The Sites: The Places & Spaces of Lockdown

from City Lockdown Diaries - Issue 01

2.3. Lockdown in an Informal Settlement

The Sites: The Places & Spaces of Lockdown

Diary entries were received from all three of the largest Metropolitan Municipalities in the province: the cities of Tshwane, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni, as well as from Mogale City Municipality (formerly known as Krugersdorp) . Participants were ‘locked down’ in different types of areas or neighborhoods, and living in different unit types, and residential arrangements. These included suburban, inner-city, township, and informal settlement areas. The majority of participants were from suburban and township areas. The chart below below presents the numbers of participants by these main typologies.

The main characteristics of these areas are summarized below:

• Townships: Townships were historically developed as residential areas for black residents under the apartheid regime, and feature a formally planned and predominantly residential pattern. Townships were situated far from traditional CBDs and places of employment, and feature free-standing houses and backyard residential dwellings.

• Suburban: For the purposes of this report, we considered suburban areas to include traditional, centrally located suburbs, as well as suburban gated communities, including enclosed suburban neighbourhoods, gated estates and gated complexes. Suburban areas refer to lower density, low-rise, and more centrally located residential and mixed-use areas, that are traditionally located close to and around CBDs and employment nodes. In South Africa these were historically designated for white residents under the apartheid regime. In the post-apartheid period, many gated communities have located themselves within and close to these suburban areas, while in other instances, largescale gated suburbs were built on the periphery of urban areas (Peberdy, 2017). Barring one participant, all of our gated community participants were located within these old or newer suburban areas.

• Inner city neighborhood: Referred to high-density, mixeduse areas, often close to older CBDs of major urban areas such as Johannesburg and Pretoria.

• Informal settlement: While definitions vary, informal settlements in this research referred to settlements not planned by authorities which are often located on unsurveyed land, or on land that is not proclaimed or designated for residential purposes, and which consist of dwellings that are mainly informal (shacks).

The 3-part series presents our findings, analysis and interpretation of the diary entries, surveys and other forms of media we collected during the 35-day lockdown period. In addition to the writing, infographics and maps, artwork forms a cornerstone of this series. A series of visual artwork for the City Lockdown Diaries has been created by Kagiso Diale. Each issue will use a different medium, and present the artist’s interpretation of the theme and main findings. Each piece has been titled and is also available to view online at www.citylockdowndiaries.wordpress.com.

Note from the artist:

For the first issue of City Lockdown Diaries, the notion and physicality of the concept of home were explored. The representation of these intimate spaces was done through a traditionally European method of depicting architectural context; through the use of watercolours. It was interesting to translate this into a South African context.

The paintings, such as The Monopoly Home, were created with watercolour. As a medium, it walks the delicate line between the physical nature of a building seen in the detailing of its bricks and the hard, geometrical lines of its boundaries; and the nature of the space one occupies within it. The paintings are created using a monotone palette that creates a rich contrast in lighting to emphasize the nature of their geographical contexts, as well as the nature of the concept of home.