Shades of Grey: The Politics of Compounded Waiting in Southern Africa
Sophie Oldfield
This project contributes epistemologically and empirically to an emergent global southern literature on the post-colonial condition of waiting for development, services and the state. It interrogates the ways in which waiting generates cultural and political possibilities in post- colonial southern Africa. Through exploring practices of waiting in the southern African region the project will examine relationships between ordinary people – citizens – and states and their developmental projects, documenting varied ways in which citizens in wait endure and side-step the state, as well as strategically engage it, to access resources. Working through the texture and topography of waiting, the project will contribute to a debate on state domination and citizen agency, and their inter-relations in the southern Africa region.
