ABSTRACT
This chapter examines popular constructions of ‘community’ in the land restitution process in District Six. ‘Community’ is theorized as a structure of aspiration born of a particular socio-legal context. As the restitution process moves from an initial phase of mobilizing claims to a subsequent phase of settling claims, a fundamental tension arises between desire and expectation. The aspiration to ‘community’ variously (and imperfectly) reconciles claimants’ idealized desires for redress – based on memories of a sense of solidarity and order in the former neighbourhood – with their feelings regarding what might realistically be expected of restitution. The chapter examines how this tension is resolved in the shifting ways in which ‘community’ is ‘imagined,’ and analyzes attendant forms of class and race-based social exclusion in the context of group formation.
