Races to consume: revisiting South Africa's history of race, consumption and the struggle for freedom

In 2007, Smuts Ngonyama, then leading spokesperson for the South African government and the ANC, triggered a public controversy by proclaiming, 'I didn't join the struggle to be poor': a frank conjunction of liberation with wealth and what it can buy. For all the vociferous critique of Ngonyama, there are many whose life trajectories seem to underwrite his position. This article reflects on some of the historical antecedents of this version of freedom, arguing for an historically constitutive relationship between the regulation of race in South Africa and the regulation of consumption.