ABSTRACT
Far from being self-evident, Mahmood Mamdani’s phrase ‘the rural in the urban’
may be construed as a figure of speech that delineates the ways in which the
rural functions as a silent referent in the discourse of the urban.1 Post-apartheid
city planners might heed the caution entailed in Mamdani’s critique of South
African exceptionalism, especially his thesis that apartheid was a variation on the
theme of indirect rule that similarly defined systems of colonial governmentality
in tropical Africa and apartheid South Africa (1996: 27). In the genealogy of
these apparent connections, Mamdani traces the dynamics associated with the
exercise of power of the homeland system as it overflowed into the streets of the
apartheid city, with, as we know, dire consequences for many. I wish to argue
that the phrase ‘the rural in the urban’ does not merely call attention to the co-
incidence of two otherwise discrete entities but to specific relations of power and
subjection.
