This paper explores everyday lived experience of mobility in the context of public transportation in the city of Cape Town, South Africa. Using examples from ethnographic field work in both bus and informal taxi services, this highlights the micro-politics of mobility with particular reference to race, class and identity. At the same time, exploring personal, embodied and micro-political dimensions of mobility in a context where race continues to dictate the expected parameters of mobility practice, while it also corresponds to the delivery of mobility (in)justice. The ethnographic evidence sheds light on hidden dimensions of mobility inequality and contributes toward filling a gap in empirical evidence on contemporary bus and informal taxi passengering in South Africa, and the continuing role of race in everyday mobilities.
Author bio: Bradley Rink (PhD, University of Cape Town) is a human geographer and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography, Environmental Studies & Tourism at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in Cape Town, South Africa. Born and raised in Geneseo, Illinois, he has lived and worked for the past two decades in South Africa. His current research project Mobilities in the global South is concerned with the relational aspects of people, objects and ideas in/around urban environments. His recent outputs have been published in leading journals within his field, including Mobilities, Transfers, Tourism Geographies, Urban Forum, as well as various edited collections including most recently Transport, Transgression and Politics in African Cities: The Rhythm of Chaos (Routledge). He is the recipient of the 2016 Faculty Research Award, the 2017 UWC Faculty of Arts Teaching & Learning Award, as well as the 2017 CHE-HELTASA National Excellence in Teaching and Learning Award.
