Managing sullied pleasure: dining out while black and middle class in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Dining out is generally associated with, and taken as part of everyday consumption choices of the middle classes. However, eating at top-end restaurants is a problematic experience for some members of South Africa’s black middle class, proving that it is a loaded consumption practice. This appears anomalous given the much-touted “rise” of the African middle class in the country. This article uses essays by Ndumiso Ngcobo and Fred Khumalo, as well as interviews with both authors to explore why a potentially pleasurable experience such as eating out results in sullied gratification. Using the concept of public identities in which the restaurant is a theatre, the article argues that blackness complicates middle-classness, suggesting that affording pleasure is not the only condition to enjoy it; there might be need to manage leisure. The questioning of blacks’ legitimacy as diners in these spaces raises questions about race, class, citizenship and one’s humanity.

KEYWORDS:

• South Africa
• black middle-class
• race
• consumption
• dignity
• citizenship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Suburbs in South Africa are low density residential areas, formerly whites-only.

2 The others are: status-based identities, racial identities, class-based identities, suburban identities.

3 Exclamation of surprise and irritation.

4 Afrikaans word meaning village bumpkin or idiot.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thabisani Ndlovu

Thabisani Ndlovu is Associate Professor of literary and cultural studies at Walter Sisulu University (WSU). His interdisciplinary work focuses on the intersection(s) of race, class, ethnicity and gender in Southern Africa. Deploying this approach, he has written on nation and nationhood, migration, masculinities, and black middleclassness.