Johannesburg Central Pass Office fire kills 77, August 31 2023
Thoughts on the persistence of harm
On 31 August 2023 a fire at a building in downtown Johannesburg killed 77 people. I avoided the media for most of the day not only because such incidents upset and distress me but also because I knew, inductively, that this event belonged firmly within the crime scene of apartheid. The news indicated that most of the dead were poor Africans who had migrated to South Africa in search of economic opportunities. Yet, few people watching the news made the link between this horror and apartheid. The building that caught fire was 80 Albert Street, the former Central Pass Office where all Africans went to apply and queue for the hated dompas. The dominant narrative was that this was yet another example of what is happening with “hijacked buildings” in Johannesburg’s Central Building District, leading to familiar speculations about how South Africa is a failing state marked by lawlessness and porous borders.
The fact that the building at the centre of the deadly fire was the old Pass Office did not generate national pause, reflection, or discussion. In 2023, No. 80 Albert Street did not generate discussion on apartheid and the persistence of harm. Instead, the undertone was split between disinterest and xenophobia. One thing is clear today as it was in 2012 when I began Apartheid Studies. We lack a vocabulary, framework, and methodology to talk about and detect apartheid. There is a gap and a deficit. For more than 10 years, my work has targeted this deficit and sought to fill this gap. Once again, I continue to make the invitation to Apartheid Studies: to abandon the contemporary disciplinary silos and tongue-tied stances in favour of an inductive forensics that seeks to render apartheid detectable and put it on trial. Apartheid Studies seeks to understand how people live with harm and live in harm’s way, seemingly without crisis and contradiction, and how this “policy of good neighbourliness” at sites of harm defines the highest stage of oppression: apartheid.
For more on the Apartheid Studies Framework, see here, here, here, and here. The invitation stands. The work ahead is huge.