Signs of the Times
Signs of the Times
Commercial Road Mapping and National Identity Insouth Africa
This paper argues that commercial road maps of South Africa do more than assist the traveler to get from one town or neighborhood to the next. They work, through their discourse function and sign system, to create the spaces of apartheid and postapartheid society. In this way, maps produce social systems, territory, identities, and authority by normalizing power relations through their propositional character and everyday use. They perform these functions in the case of South Africa in three ways: by delimiting racialized spaces; by classifying settlements on the basis of infrastructure and services rather than by population; and by demarcating a post-apartheid political geography and ideology. The paper makes these arguments based on interviews with South African map publishers and with reference to maps made in South Africa during the apartheid and postapartheid periods. Apartheid-era road maps can be read as ideological expressions and material artifacts of internal colonialism. Despite significant continuities, postapartheid road mapping is creating a different and more inclusive territory in which identity, memory and culture intersect in a more inclusive way.
Keywords: cartography, South Africa, road maps, apartheid, postapartheid, internal colonialism, countermapping, Map Studio, Automobile Association of South Africa
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