How can infrastructure be criminal? How does a mine, a gas field, a suburban neighbourhood or a dam become a perpetrator of violence and insecurity? Surviving Society Presents: Material Crimes answers these questions. Each episode investigates a different piece of infrastructure, tracing its global, colonial connections across time and space. The series shows us how the physical sites of everyday life are linked to networks of private and public actors who profit from violence inflicted on spaces and communities on the margins. The series also shines a spotlight on the people-powered movements exposing and challenging the many crimes of infrastructure.
Season Two is out now. New episodes air every Tuesday until 15 October!
︎︎︎ About the Project
︎︎︎ A Guide to Making an Episode
For Season One click here
Season Two is out now. New episodes air every Tuesday until 15 October!
︎︎︎ About the Project
︎︎︎ A Guide to Making an Episode
For Season One click here
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Murder in Melville
On New Year’s Eve 2019, a drive-by shooting took place in the popular Johannesburg suburb of Melville. Two people were killed and six injured in this shocking and as-yet-unsolved case. Almost unheard-of in this crime-ridden city, the drive-by horrified local communities, provoking surging anxiety in everyone from middle class home- and business owners to student renters and informal workers. To unravel the “true crime” beneath the sensational headlines, Nicky Falkof speaks with Antonette Gouws, who was present at the drive-by, as well as local “character,” Danny Nunes, and filmmaker and academic, Dylan Vally. As we’ll hear in this episode, these unsolved murders expose the convenient fictions of Melville’s multilateral security infrastructure. Local sleuthing about the drive-by also unveils long-held beliefs about race, corruption, violence, insecurity and belonging in this complicated city.
Useful Links
Sophiatown Arts Akademy
:
@sophiatownartsakademy
Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa:
www.seri-sa.org
Sticky Situations:
www.stickysituations.org
Dlala Nje:
www.dlalanje.org
@sophiatownartsakademy
Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa:
www.seri-sa.org
Sticky Situations:
www.stickysituations.org
Dlala Nje:
www.dlalanje.org
Further Reading
Zimitri Erasmus. Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South Africa (Johannesburg: Wits Press, 2017).
Nicky Falkof and Cobus van Staden (eds). Anxious Joburg: The Inner Lives of a Global South City (Johannesburg: Wits Press, 2020).
Martin J. Murray. City of Extremes: The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg (Durham: Duke UP, 2011).
Tanya Zack and Mark Lewis, Wake Up, This is Joburg! (Durham: Duke UP, 2023).
Nicky Falkof and Cobus van Staden (eds). Anxious Joburg: The Inner Lives of a Global South City (Johannesburg: Wits Press, 2020).
Martin J. Murray. City of Extremes: The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg (Durham: Duke UP, 2011).
Tanya Zack and Mark Lewis, Wake Up, This is Joburg! (Durham: Duke UP, 2023).
Nicky Falkof is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at Wits University in Johannesburg. She is the author of The End of Whiteness: Satanism and Family Murder In Late Apartheid South Africa (2017) and Worrier State: Risk, Anxiety and Moral Panic in South Africa (2022), and co-editor of Anxious Joburg: The Inner Lives of a Global South City (2020) and Intimacy & Injury: In the Wake of #MeToo in India and South Africa (2022).
Voiceovers: Nkululeko Sibiya
Voiceovers: Nkululeko Sibiya
