Dealing and sharing: the construction of community in a Pretoria public park

Abstract

This paper describes how a group of men, who are invisible to the state because they possess no formal legal documentation, such as ID books or passports, and do not take part in the formal economy, live in a public park in Gezina, Pretoria. It explores how they negotiate some of the ambiguities of street life and community through acts of sharing and illegal public gambling. While the moral and economic principles organising life in the park are plural, forms of everyday communism predominate. I argue that this predominance allows for a form of community that allows the men living there to navigate their daily uncertainties more easily, and explore the ways in which public gambling functions to maintain the conditions for constructive relations amongst them.