Entrepreneurship as legacy building: Reimagining the economy in post‐apartheid South Africa

Melissa Beresford

Economic Anthropology, 2020, vol. 7, issue 1, 65-79

Abstract: Twenty‐five years after democratic transition, the political liberation of Black South Africans has yet to translate into socioeconomic transformation. As protesters highlight the nation's failed economic transformation, a group of residents in Khayelitsha—Cape Town's largest township—are attempting to bring about economic transformation by becoming entrepreneurs. While informal entrepreneurship has been a mainstay of South African townships for decades, in this article, I examine the motivations of this new generation of Khayelitsha entrepreneurs, who are starting formal businesses with the goal of gaining a foothold in the power center of South Africa's economy. I demonstrate that while many scholars view entrepreneurship as a symptom of neoliberal ideology, Khayelitsha entrepreneurs view entrepreneurship in less individualistic and more communally oriented ways: as a path to establish greater wealth and opportunity for future generations of Black South Africans. I argue that these understandings of entrepreneurship are indicative of alternative economic imaginations that could have the potential to dislodge dominant capitalist ideas of economy.

Date: 2020
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