Abstract: This paper reviews post-apartheid South Africa through Fanon’s critical

analysis of decolonization. Since, for Fanon, apartheid represented the purest form of

the Manichean politics of space that characterizes colonialism, a Fanonian perspective on

South Africa asks to what extent has the geographical layout of apartheid been remapped?

Addressing this question necessitates shifting the “geography of reason” from technical

discourses of policy-makers to the lived reality of the “damned of the earth”. From this

perspective, Fanon’s critique becomes relevant in two ways, first as a prism to understand

the rise of xenophobic violence as a symptom of the degeneration of the idea of South

Africa’s “promised land” and second as a way to listen to a new grassroots shack dweller

movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, that is challenging both neoliberal and progressive

assumptions by advocating a quite different geographic layout for a “truly democratic”

society.