Book review: Bank, L. 2019. City of broken dreams: myth-making, nationalism and universities in an African motor city. Cape Town: HSRC Press. ISBN 978-0-7969-2454-4.

Abstract

After Crispian Olver controversially lifted the lid on the politics of graft in Nelson Mandela Bay in his 2017 book How to Steal a City, a new volume focuses attention on the historical roots of state capture in the other major motor city in the Eastern Cape, East London. In his latest ethno-historiographic monograph of this city's life and people, Leslie Bank argues that the present political and economic malaise in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, of which East London is part, can be traced back to the 1960s, when a burgeoning, settler-dominated regional economy, driven by British capital and a paternalistic ideology of trustee liberalism, was overturned by the apartheid state. At the same time, he posits that the contemporary challenges facing East London are not unlike those faced by cities with African American majorities in the North American rust belt, such as Detroit, St Louis and Cleveland.