New Regional Imaginaries in Post-Apartheid Southern Africa – Retail Workers at a Shopping Mall in Zambia

In contrast to the dominant depictions of African stagnation amongst ‘Afro-pessimistic’ scholars, South African regional (and retail) multinationals are dynamic agents of regional transformation and new regional contradictions. This article is about the regional claims of workers at the foreign branches of Shoprite, a South African retail multinational. The Manda Hill branch of Shoprite in Zambia is the case study for this analysis. The context of these workplace studies is post-apartheid southern Africa, where investment by South African companies is expanding. This retail sector investment follows the model of shopping centre development, where Shoprite's food supermarket is the anchor store for these new malls. I argue that a new regional moment is shaping the workplace experiences of African workers. The Shoprite workplace is an important agent of a new regional imagination amongst these retail workers. Workers claim inclusion into the regional company on an equal basis with South African workers privileging their ties to South Africa through the company. The South African reference point in workers' claims is interpreted here as a regional claim. The high social visibility of shopping malls and new, South African-owned sites of consumption drive a complex regionalism, where different social forces claim the new region in competing ways. The new regional moment opening up in post-apartheid southern Africa has created a dynamic set of contradictions between the self-representation of Shoprite and the regional expectations of workers at these foreign workplaces.