Featured graphic. Taxi hand signals in Johannesburg

摘要

The growth of the taxi industry in South Africa since the 1980s has been viewed as one of the country's great socioeconomic success stories by'advocates of the free market (Magamola, 1990), while others have exposed it as a mafia-styled operation characterized by feuding, turf wars, illegal business dealings, and labour exploitation (Khosa, 1992). Whichever view one holds, the industry has incontestably brought about new claims on urban space, new platforms for experimentation with governmentality and urban design, and new relations between the body and the city (Bremner, 2012). Unique to taxi operations is a system of hand signals whereby commuters signal their desired destination to taxi drivers. This aligns gestures, bodies, infrastructure, and the city in new ways.