Landscapes of peripheral and displaced urbanisms

This paper examines the ways in which the people of northern Tshwane mediate their exclusions through engaging with the Mabopane Station to reach different places and to carry out socio-economic activities at the Station itself. In particular, it shows how mediating their socio-economic exclusions is debilitated by poor transport connections and dysfunctionalities as well as the Station precinct’s ambiguous spatial design. It draws research materials from interviews and historical records, scaling up the discussion by locating the townships of northern Tshwane in historical context. This is in order to argue that the mobilities of traditional communities in this region were always nomadic, and although the apartheid spatial organisation may have been scaled down into disparate ethnic and racialised spaces, northern Tshwane continues to be a space of circulation. That said, the inequities regarding the practices, spaces, and subjects of mobility between the Mabopane Station precinct and those of Gautrain are a commonplace. This precinct is not a node in the global mobilities, nor is it a space of unimpeded walks based on choice; walks for self-expression and self-replenishing. Its mobolities are rather co-producers of itself as a landscape; they are a key aspect of existence; and a means to making a living for the people of the northern GCR.