The Suit Is Mine: Skhothane and the Aesthetic of the African Modern

Abstract

Localised in townships across South Africa’s Gauteng province, skhothane emerged during the early 2010s as a cult of status characterised by a style of flashy, branded dress. For izikhothane (the adherents of skhothane), surface is power. This emphasis on surface and visibility reveals much about the process of identity fabrication among township youth, positioning the trend not so much as a subculture but rather as a performative aesthetic existing in a continuum of style that includes, but is not limited to, pantsula, umswenko, and amakrwala cultural practices. This continuum might also be seen to function like technology, positioning the skhothane aesthetic as an intertext of recurrent sartorial quotation which can be used as a platform for imaginative speculation. Skhothane creates a highly visible entanglement with the ideation of the “African modern” (Nuttall and Mbembe. Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008), producing connections between township and late-capitalist metropolis that are not based on the historical one-way transfer of labour, but rather on complex interconnectivity between Johannesburg and its edges, the city and its inhabitants.

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