Big-men, allies, and saviours: mechanisms for surviving rough neighbourhoods in Pretoria’s Plastic View informal settlement

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores relationships among Zimbabwean irregular migrants trying to survive a rough informal settlement neighbourhood in Pretoria, South Africa. These migrants suffer some degree of illegitimacy, which leaves them open to hostilities and abuse in the foreign cityscapes they occupy. Using the deep-hanging-out ethnographic technique, the paper studied relations among inhabitants of Plastic View informal settlement. Here, migrants engage in relations of convenience – some might say patronage – with well-positioned migrants and other prominent figures, big-men in local parlance. The resultant systematic exchange dyads that punctuate these relations of convenience ensure the provision, by big-men to clients, of services such as protection from adversity, connection to piece-jobs, physical security among others. In return, clients reward big-men through allegiance and other material or immaterial forms of ‘repayment’. Ultimately, the obtaining patron–client relationships are undergirded by transactional interchanges – sometimes unequal – with parties aiming to derive maximum benefits out of the exchange relationship.