Non-fiction
Criteria:
The winner should demonstrate the illumination of truthfulness, especially those forms of it that are new, delicate, unfashionable and fly in the face of power, compassion, elegance of writing and intellectual and moral integrity.
We ask Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon about his book, The Blinded City: Ten Years In Inner-City Johannesburg (Picador Africa), which has been shortlisted for the non-fiction award.
In chapter two you write that you first entered one of Johannesburg's dark buildings in November 2010 and it was there that this book's life began. Can you expand on the background to the journalistic research you did which evolved into this book on the lived experiences of the residents of inner-city Johannesburg’s “dark” or “hijacked” buildings?
In 2010 I was finishing my doctorate, which was a study of HIV treatment programmes to displaced communities in northern Uganda. Based on this, I had an interest in humanitarian interventions and made contact with Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), who were providing medical and humanitarian support to asylum seekers and refugees in Johannesburg at the time. They conducted a survey which estimated 50,000 to 60,000 people were living in inner-city Johannesburg in substandard conditions, with access to water and sanitation below international standards for refugee camps created by the UN. I had studied journalism and worked as a freelance journalist, so decided to write a piece about the survey for the Mail & Guardian, and it was then that I visited my first unlawful occupation or so-called “dark building” or “hijacked” building — the Chambers in New Doornfontein. This was shocking, as the building was five minutes from my family home. When I returned for postdoctoral studies in 2011 at the African Centre for Migration & Society at Wits University, I decided to continue the research.
How did you decide on the title The Blinded City: 10 Years in Inner-City Johannesburg and why the inclusion of the subtitle?
The title came to me quite late in the research, while on a walk. It surfaced not only because several blind migrants from Zimbabwe shared their stories with me and were my guides throughout the research, but also from the idea that “blinding” is not solely an issue of visual impairment. There are many forms of blinding, for instance, that of white South Africans towards the past and of middle-class Johannesburg residents towards the violence and evictions happening in the inner city. The title also has literary resonances, for instance, to the work of Teju Cole and to José Saramago. Saramago, in his novel Blindness, writes, “I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.” The subtitle also came very late in the work, when I was revising the draft. I never planned to conduct the research for a decade, but it unfolded that way and the idea of framing the narrative over a decade began to make sense.
In an interview with ST Books, you noted that you prefer neither “dark” building nor “hijacked” building when referring to illegally occupied buildings, but rather “unlawful occupation”. Can you expand on this?
Unlawful occupation is the term used more commonly by housing activists. It’s more morally neutral and distinguishes the term from the criminal associations of “hijacking”. Of course, there are criminal syndicates operating and exploiting the shortage of housing in the inner city, but the label of “hijackers” has been applied indiscriminately to low-income households simply seeking accommodation in the inner city. It has also legitimated unconstitutional and ineffective police raids targeting a poor inner-city population and served to label an urban housing crisis as an issue of criminality. The term “dark building” is often used informally in the inner city to refer to buildings that were literally dark because of the lack of electricity, but also more widely to derelict buildings. In some cases, it has associations with violence and misfortune, and so is not a neutral term either.
The fire which engulfed 80 Albert Street, Marshalltown, on August 31, killing 77 people and injuring 88, revealed the precarious living conditions of the residents of inner-city Johannesburg. Visiting the site, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared this travesty a “wake-up call for all of us”. Share your thoughts on why death and destruction got the government to respond/address the disenfranchised and marginalised residents of Johannesburg's inner-city.
The horrifying scale of what happened and the international media attention it drew forced a political response (though often targeted, by various parties, at scapegoating civil society). It’s astonishing that it's considered a “wake-up call” given that the awful conditions and threats of fire have been known for at least a decade (I write about fires in The Blinded City), yet little has been done to improve basic living conditions for thousands of inner-city residents — South Africans and international migrants — living under the threat of fire. Saying that, I hope the fire elicits a meaningful political and policy response, and the committee of inquiry draws attention to the structural reasons leading to the fire. I hope it highlights the necessity for a broad-based response which engages inner-city residents rather than criminalising them.
As an academic, how did you go about balancing academic writing and narrative writing?
I don’t necessarily draw a clear distinction. Narrative writing and long-form journalism requires as much rigour, scholarship and skill as writing more technical and theoretical “academic work” (which I also write). The force of strong storytelling plays an important role in conveying complex issues and social worlds, and reaching a wider audience. Storytelling is the most powerful way to circulate nuanced ideas.
Were you ever met with mistrust during your many visits to the buildings?
Negotiating access to the buildings was a slow process and one of building trust with the committees and leadership of the buildings. I made sure residents knew who I was and followed a policy of anonymising buildings that were still unlawfully occupied at the time of writing. In one building known as Dark City in Doornfontein, in which there were groups collecting illegal rental, there were rumours that I was working for a property company, and I heard a rumour there was a plan to attack me. I don’t know if that was true or not, but I withdrew from conducting research there.
Your attentiveness to maintaining the dignity of the residents of unlawfully occupied buildings is tangible; can you expand on the human(e) approach you took to recounting their lived experiences?
The main narratives in the book are drawn from a number of interviews and conversations conducted over several years, along with other archival research. Although I deal with a lot of trauma in the book, I tried not to ever force interviewees to speak about issues that triggered trauma but to allow them a space to speak when they were comfortable. Having been fortunate to conduct year-long research allowed me to build good relationships and trust and I hope that trust was deserved. Where I could, I read over the main narratives of inner city residents with them, to both fact-check them and to ensure the writing maintained integrity with their experiences.
How has your perception of Johannesburg, your hometown, changed since you started researching the book?
I still love Johannesburg, where I was born — its vitality, spirit, music and sense of care. But it is a city whose residents are living with a vast amount of trauma and grief. It was an emotionally hard book to write. Johannesburg is a city in which dispossession and violence against its most precarious black populations has become part of its fabric. The postapartheid constitutional order has limited this, but not erased it. I remain moved by the networks of care in the city, but under no illusions of how brutal the city can be.
What impression do you want readers to take away after reading this?
It’s not my role to say what readers should think or feel. I have a political perspective but a reader could engage the stories and emerge with a quite distinct set of thoughts and feelings, which is part of the beauty of literature. I hope though that any reader who engages the book seriously will leave it with sense of the precarity, intimacy and life of the inner-city, and think deeply before reproducing the violent language and ideas about its residents which are so common. I also hope that some of the vitality, care and spirit which makes the city liveable has left its traces in the book.
In what way do you think the book “illuminates truthfulness”?
I hope the book maintains integrity to the stories I have tried to tell with empirical rigour, nuance and force. Of course, no single book can begin to contain the multiplicity of stories and perspectives in the city. Rather, I see the writing process as a rebellion against the erasure of so many histories, communities and spaces in the city. This, I hope, offers a truth that resists the dehumanising of inner-city residents in popular and political narratives about the city.
Click here to buy The Blinded City.
