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ABSTRACT
This essay explores the significance of abandoned trolleys in South Africa. As an international student who later settled in South Africa, I did not initially notice abandoned trolleys. However, as I became more familiar with the senses of South African society, I began to spot trolleys abandoned in seemingly random locations throughout the country. Using Jacob Dlamini’s charge that studies of South African urban history should foreground the senses, I take up the sight of abandoned trolleys as symbols of the contradictory excessiveness of post-apartheid South Africa. Drawing from my own experiences and photos, and the work of Ivan Vladislavić’s emphasis on “tomasons,” I illustrate their centrality within South Africa, albeit from the margins of society. By zeroing in on an object that tends to be overlooked, the polarizing contradictions that exist between people can be distilled from the abstract into the human.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See Vladislavić, Ivan, Portrait With Keys: Joburg & what-what, 50. I chose this quote to begin the essay because it frames an important reminder: that the impressions of daily life of South Africa I find interesting might be impressions South Africans overlook or fail to see entirely.
2 Buck-Morss, Dialectics of Seeing, 4.
3 Dlamini, Native Nostalgia, 75.
4 Marais, Kobus, Matthew Robson, and Ruan van Staden, “The Story of the Urban Trolley Pusher in Johannesburg,” 18.
5 Ibid.
6 See D’Acosta, “Why don’t people return their shopping carts?”
7 See Company News, “RIP Shopping Trolley.”
8 See Legg, “Mystery of the murdered trolleys.”
9 See Rabinowitz, “The trolley collector.”
10 See Harry, “Trolley thefts push up business costs.”
11 See Staff Writer, “Man found with nearly 100 stolen trolleys.”
12 Rabinowitz, “The trolley collector.”
13 See Asset Management, “Pick ‘n Pay to fight trolley theft.”
14 Harry, “Trolley thefts push up business costs.”
15 See Coetzee, J.M., Life & Times of Michael K, 13.
16 Ibid., 21.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 16.
19 See Washinyira, “Hard work and little pay: pushing heavily-laden trolleys while dodging traffic.”
20 Schoeman, “Trolley Pushers in the City of Johannesburg,” 367.
21 Ibid., 361.
22 See Scott, “South Africa is the world’s most unequal country.”
23 See Kreis, Switzerland and South Africa 1948–1994, 315.
24 See Tan, “Abandoned trolleys at the most unusual places.”
25 See Barthélemy, “ The war on abandoned trolleys can be won.”
26 See Gall, “‘Track-a-trolley’ app launched to report abandoned trolleys.”
27 Montague, The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America, 8.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., 6.
30 Buck-Morss, Dialectics of Seeing, Preface.
31 Marais, Kobus, Matthew Robson, and Ruan van Staden, “The Story of the Urban Trolley Pusher in Johannesburg,” 19.
32 Dlamini, Native Nostalgia, 70–71.
33 Ibid, 71.
34 Ibid.
35 Gqola, “Defining People,” 94–8.
36 Ibid., 96–7.
37 See Barnard, “Post-Apartheid Modernism,” 224.
38 See Posel, “Races to Consume,” 158.
39 Ibid, 160.
40 Ibid., 159.
41 See Gita Pather, “Commemorating RFK’s 1966 Historic Visit to South Africa,” who remarks how “Freedom and democracy are inextricably linked to the material wellbeing of people. A hungry man has no time for the vote.”
42 Merkel, “Is capitalism compatible with democracy?” 6.
43 Montague, The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern Northern America, 6.
44 Ibid.
45 Brown, “Thing Theory,” 4.
46 Ibid., 5.
47 See Cerbone, “Composition and Constitution,” 311–12.
48 Vladislavić, Portrait with Keys, 173.
49 Ibid., 174.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid., 175.
52 Ibid., 175–6.
53 Ibid, 175.
54 See Barnard, “Post-Apartheid Modernism,” 227.
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David Reiersgord
David Reiersgord is an independent scholar and the Interim Centre Director for IES Abroad Cape Town where he works with curriculum development, advising, and lecturing on post-apartheid political history. He has published dozens of op-eds in the Daily Maverick and book reviews in Business Day. He completed his Master’s thesis on Marlene van Niekerk’s novels Triomf and Agaat, focusing on metaphors of narrative.