The neglect of Durban’s CBD speaks as much to a past of exclusion as it does to the ‘walking away’ of moneyed patrons
The Durban Moment narrative is revealing of early hopes to resist, as was Steve Biko’s movement. In hindsight, one questions whether either fundamentally affected the current political outcome. Rick Turner, and of course Biko’s sacrifices, are rightly invested with great respect. But the context of 1970 contained a cauldron of contending players, anxious to stem the tide shifting inexorably to Nationalist power.
Some university campuses, and later black students, tested education controls. But it must surely be acknowledged that mistakes were made. A political vehicle to co-ordinate these resistant energies might have stood up to an increasingly efficient state, infiltrating and legislating, picking them off separately.
In Natal, most white people had first a sense of British colonial loyalty, second as Natalians even a hankering for independence; and only then, conditionally, as South Africans. Basically complacent, open for business and pleasure, their old colonial buildings were important symbols endorsing a fragile hegemony and history.
What one should now be asking is why these apparently much-cherished symbols were so easily abandoned? . An almost casual “walking away” by upmarket property owners, retail and hotel patronage led to a consequent collapse in CBD rates income, significantly affecting capacity to maintain clean, functioning streets, fine old buildings and urban squares. Neglect followed inevitably.
Without patrons, cherished CBD fabric comes rather to symbolise a past of exclusion and selfishness. And a cultural value system whose allocation of resources is seemingly now of little importance.
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