Relocation, relocation, marginalisation: development, and grassroots struggles to

transform politics in urban south africa.1

Photos from: Abahlali baseMjondolo website: www.abahlali.org and Fifa website: http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/organisation/ticketing/stadiums/stadium=5018127/

Dan Wilcockson.

An independent study dissertation, submitted to the university of derby in partial fulfilment of requirements for

the degree of bachelor of science.

Single honours in third world development. Course code: L9L3.

March 2010

Relocation, relocation, marginalisation: development, and grassroots struggles to

transform politics in urban south africa.

Abstract

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Society in post-apartheid South Africa is highly polarised. Although racial apartheid ended in 1994, this paper shows that an economic and spatial apartheid is still in place. The country has been neoliberalised, and this paper concludes that a virtual democracy is in place, where the poor are excluded from decision-making. Urban shack-dwellers are constantly under threat of being evicted (often illegally) and relocated to peri-urban areas, where they become further marginalised. The further away from city centres they live, the less employment and education opportunities are available to them. The African National Congress (ANC) government claims to be moving the shack-dwellers to decent housing with better facilities, although there have been claims that these houses are of poor quality, and that they are in marginal areas where transport is far too expensive for residents to commute to the city for employment. The ANC is promoting ‘World Class Cities’, trying to facilitate economic growth by encouraging investment. They are spending much on the 2010 World Cup, and have been using the language of ‘slum elimination’. Services to shacks were halted in 2001, and shack-dwellers in the Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) social movement feel that they are being forced out of the city of Durban. Development practice in Durban seems to be based on physical development for economic growth, rather than human development. After analysing the socioeconomic climate, and neoliberal development path, of South Africa, this paper concludes that much can be learnt from AbM’s political theorising, and that the ANC should listen to the poor if they want more equality, and a stable, functioning democracy in the future. South Africa is in a much healthier economic position than other African countries, and thus has more of a chance to make positive social changes for its poorest citizens.

Contents

List of figures 7

List of tables 8

Acknowledgements 8

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Acronyms 9

Chapter 1

Aims, objectives and methodology 10

1.1. Introduction, and rationale to the study 10-11

1.2. Aim of the study 12

1.3. Objectives of the study 12

1.4. Methodology 12-14

1.5. A ‘utopian’ politics 15

Chapter 2:

South Africa in the process of globalisation,

or neoliberalisation? A ‘virtual democracy’ 16

2.1. Introduction 16

2.2. The ANC and neoliberalism 16-18

2.3. Virtual democracy 19-20

Chapter 3:

Neoliberalism and Development in South Africa 21

3.1. Geographical overview of South Africa 21-23

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3.2. Social and economic challenges in South Africa 23-25

3.3. Growing profits, but who is gaining? 25-27

3.4. Neoliberalism and a ‘home-grown’ SAP 27-30

3.5. Human development 30-31

Chapter 4:

New Social Movements in

post-apartheid South Africa 32

4.1. Introduction 33

4.2. A natural reaction to neoliberalism? 33-34

4.3. Social movements: old and new 35

Chapter 5:

Subaltern resistance from the imijondolos of Durban:

Abahlali baseMjondolo and a politics of the poor 36

5.1. Introduction 36-38

5.2. A brief history of imijondolos in Durban 38

5.3. The 1980s: The poor recapture a place in the city 39

5.4. Life in Durban’s imijondolos 39-43

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5.5. Evictions and relocation 43-45

5.6. The 2007 KZN slums act 45-48

5.7. Imijondolo fires: Abhorrent ‘accidents’? 48-50

5.8. Abahlalism: A living politics, and a politics of the poor 50-53

5.9. Conclusions 54-55

References 55-68

List of Figures

Figure 3.1: Map of South Africa 21

Figure 3.2: Percentage contribution of turnover per industry to total turnover for March and June 2009 27

Figure 3.3: Antiretroviral therapy coverage, among people with advanced HIV infection, in top 23 countries of Africa (%) 29

Figure 4.1: Social movements in South Africa: Primary objectives and strategies of resistance 33

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Figure 5.1: Location of Durban; and map of Durban with suburbs 37

Figure 5.2: Kennedy Road and Foreman Road settlements 41

Figure 5.3: Types of eviction carried out by eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality 44

Figure 5.4: Distance from Durban Central to Parkgate 45

Figure 5.5: Housing rights: From internationally recognised rights and the South African constitution, to the ‘Breaking New Ground’ policy. 47

Figure 5.6: Attacks on Kennedy Road, 26 September 2010 48

Figure 5.7: AbM’s demands in conclusion to Birkinshaw’s ‘shack-fires’ report 50

Figure 5.8: Theories from the ground up: The key political ideas of Abahlalism 52

Figure 5.9: The pitfalls of development experts in community participation: empowerment for whom? 53

List of Tables

Table 3.1: Country overview of South Africa, with some comparisons 22

Table 3.2: Three broad classes in South Africa 24

Table 3.3: Profitability of top 23 countries’ private non-financial corporations, 2000/2001 26

Table 4.1: Distinguishing ‘new’ and ‘old’ social movements 35

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Table 5.1: Levels of housing and services by population 42

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Dina Abbott and Dr Heather Moore. Their knowledge and support is very much appreciated. Additionally I would like to thank Dr John Stubbs and Dr Francis Jegede, who both gave me some support with the initial idea for this paper. I would also like to thank Abahlali baseMjondolo, and all the other social movements in South Africa who are struggling to bring positive change in a country with a history of immense injustice.

Acronyms

AbM Abahlali baseMjondolo

AEC Western Cape Anti Eviction Campaign

ANC African National Congress

APF Anti Privatisation Forum

BBBEE Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment strategy

BEC Branch Executive Committee

BNG Breaking New Ground policy

CALS Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Johannesburg)

CAX Coalition Against Xenophobia (Johannesburg)

CBO Community-Based Organisation

CC Constitutional Court (South Africa)

COSATU Congress of South African Trade Unions

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eMM eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality

GEAR Growth, Employment and Redistribution Strategy

HDR Human Development Report

IFI International Financial Institution

IMF International Monetary Fund

KRDC Kennedy Road Development Committee

KZN KwaZulu Natal

LPM Landless People’s Movement

NEDLAC National Economic Development and Labour Council

NGO Non-Governmental Organisation

NP National Party

PGKZN Provincial Government of KwaZulu Natal

PIE Prevention of Illegal Eviction and Unlawful Occupation

of Land Act

PPA Poor People’s Alliance

SA South Africa

SECC Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee

TAC Treatment Action Campaign

Chapter 1:

Aims, objectives and methodology

1.1. Introduction, and rationale to the study

Globalisation, socioeconomic development and urbanisation are all interrelated. Post-apartheid South Africa’s urbanisation policies reflect these relations. In a highly interconnected, competitive and interdependent global economy, semi-industrialised South Africa (see figure 3.1 on page 21 for map of South Africa) is striving to compete and attract investment into its cities. The African National Congress (ANC) government of South Africa (SA) aspires to foster what it calls ‘world class cities’. Since the ending of the morally repulsive racial apartheid system in 1994, one could

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argue that a socioeconomic and spatial apartheid has remained in place. This paper will feature social and economic analysis which indeed alludes to increasing inequality in SA, not helped by the neoliberal nature of ‘economic development’; but it will additionally ask if the ANC government has been forced into this neoliberalism, by dominant powers in an uneven global economy, in which SA is arguably still only semi-peripheral.

SA is an extremely complex and interesting country regarding development. Many phenomena in the country interact with development. Theses include neoliberal capitalism and the socioeconomic inequality this might cause; social boundaries of race, class, ethnicity and gender; urban spatial inequality; and a colonial and apartheid history of what Hunter (2006) calls “racial capitalism”. The ANC is attempting to leave this legacy behind, although this paper will show that inequality is still omnipresent in SA, with black women being the most economically disadvantaged. On average, whites are still much richer than blacks, with the median income for whites being $11,000 compared with $2,000 for blacks (New Internationalist report, 2010, p. 34). As the paper progresses towards a more local level of analysis, the questions will be about ethical, moral and political issues affecting people’s everyday lives.

Development is inherently political. However, technocrats often fail to realise this, and party politics is not as democratic as some might assume. The main social movement analysed in this paper, Abahlali baseMjondolo (literally translated to People living in shacks) focuses on local political, ethical and moral issues. Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) have opted out of party politics, and attempted to form their own autonomous, participatory politics, after feeling betrayed by ANC politicians, who promise them much in the run-up to elections, but often fail to deliver. AbM’s slogan is “no land, no house, no vote” (AbM, 2006a, on-line), after they controversially boycotted elections in 2006 (ibid). The movement have democratised the local governance of many imijondolos (shack settlements); stopped evictions in many imijondolos; stopped the industrial development of land promised to residents of the Kennedy Road settlement; won access to schools; and forced numerous government officials and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to ‘come down to the people’ (ibid).

AbM hold peaceful protests; take direct action; and take their battles to the constitutional court convincingly, as will be seen later. A major issue AbM resists is relocation of shack-dwellers. Relocation of slum-/shack-dwellers increasingly occurs across the developing world, often with the promise of ‘rehabilitating’ the slum-dwellers; but often displacing them to marginal spaces, far from opportunities. Abbott (2010, p. 93) reports of 30,000 slum-dwellers on the edge of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, in north Mumbai, having their slum demolished, and being relocated and ‘rehabilitated’ to a village far away in Kalyan, “miles from their work and social links”. This is

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certainly not a unique case, and resonates with the plight of shack-dwellers in AbM, who are also concerned with another recent force causing more evictions and relocations to take place: the 2010 South African World Cup.

Before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, there was news of ancient neighbourhoods (shanty-towns) being destroyed due to the sporting event (Yardley, 2006). As the 2010 world cup approaches, the eradication of informal settlements has become increasingly urgent for the government of SA. This is one of the reasons for choosing the topic for this paper. AbM activist and president of the movement’s youth league, Mazwi Nzimande, claims that the only thing the government is remembering to do is build stadiums and promote the country, while shack-dwellers are the “forgotten citizens of the country” (Democracy Now, 2009, on-line). The ANC does not want tourists to see shantytowns in their ‘World Class Cities’ with ‘World Class Football stadiums’.

This paper will first focus on SA’s location in the global economy and the country’s neoliberal development path; subsequently progressing to the analysis of market-driven urban development and the effects this has on urban shack-dwellers in Durban, who face the constant threat of slum ‘elimination’ and relocation to marginal spaces. Finally, the paper will focus on the shack-dwellers’ perceptions of politics and development. Many social movements, including AbM (which now claims to be the largest social movement in SA) have sprung up in cities throughout SA, as a result of demanding the participatory democratisation of what Harvey (2008) calls the right to the city.

1.2. Aim of the study

The broad aim of the study is to analyse the politics surrounding socially and economically excluded groups, in urban areas of South Africa; focusing mainly on those living in marginal spaces such as informal shack settlements. The shack-dwellers increasingly face prospects of being relocated to the even more marginal peri-urban areas, which may further marginalise them from socioeconomic opportunities.

1.3. Objectives of the study

Beginning with analysis of the implications of South Africa competing in a globalised economy, and progressing to the more local issues of poor, marginalised groups, the objectives of the dissertation are set out in three questions. The objective is to answer these as the study progresses:

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1. Many studies have argued that the neoliberal nature of the ANC government’s socioeconomic development strategies have led to further polarisation between the rich and poor. However, could it be argued that the ANC has little choice but to conform to a globalised economy which they do not want to be excluded from?

←2. What are the motives of the ANC government, vis-à-vis both ‘slum-clearance’ and urban

regeneration programmes? Encouragement of economic investment in city centres is claimed to be a motive, thus facilitating economic growth; but will this essentially help the most excluded?

←3. What are the implications of what S’bu Zikode calls a politics of the poor and living

politics, adhered to by some local social movements and networks, which have grown in resistance to social exclusion in South Africa? Can these local struggles eventually have a wider influence on both South African and global politics?

1.4. Methodology

The data collection has been from a wide range of published books and journal articles. Official South Africa government websites have bee utilised, such as: www.statssa.gov.za; www.info.gov.za ; www.kznlegislature.gov.za. Historical data has been explored through South African History On-line (www.sahistory.org.za). Websites of the social movements covered have been used. AbM’s is particularly useful, as it features the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo, which includes many articles by - and interviews with - members of the movement, along with many published articles by academics.

Nature, scope and limitations of data collection

Maybe the most significant limitation of the study is the fact that the author has not been to South Africa and spent time with the people being studied. Furthermore, AbM appeal to be spoken to, rather than spoken for by academics, NGOs and councils, who the movement claims sometimes falsely represent them. Thus, for the author it is important to reflect that this study is being written in the Global North, about issues in the Global South, and that the author’s subjectivity may have an influence on the study. This study is a learning process for the author, rather than the author trying to teach the marginalised about why they are marginalised.

I am not economically poor, so I can claim no intellectual authority regarding a politics of the poor. Rather, the aim is to evaluate the political discourse coming from the socially excluded themselves.

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They are the experts in social exclusion; they are the ones who have experienced economic vulnerability and a lack of opportunities; and they may be the most adept in finding solutions.

Beginning with a living politics?

S’bu Zikode (2009a) calls AbM’s politics a living politics; a politics which does not require a formal education and begins not with external theories, but rather emerges from, and is shaped by, the everyday experiences of the poor, and can easily be understood as the demand for needs such as electricity and toilets, because these are essential to life (lack of electricity has led to shack fires, and lack of toilets can kill, as children get diarrhea). AbM are not anti-theory, and some very established academics have written positively about them, as will be shown later. What they ask of academics is that they try to understand the situation from the shack-dwellers’ perspectives, rather than making assumptions and simply speaking for AbM, from some theoretical perspective which the shack-dwellers may not agree with. The author of this dissertation has tried to take all this into account, and this is why AbM’s living politics has been discussed in this chapter. What Zikode calls a politics of the poor (a slightly different concept to a living politics) will be discussed more in chapters 4 and 5.

The movement believes that when linking theories to AbM, it is the living politics of the shack-dwellers themselves which should be the starting point. So although this dissertation will start with the broader socioeconomic situation in SA, the main theoretical section (and most substantial section) of the paper will be chapter 5, which after giving a history of shack settlements in Durban, will then analyse the everyday political realities the shack-dwellers face, and the political theorisations which AbM have formulated themselves.

AbM’s vision of what ‘development’ should be, shares similarities with Peet’s (1999, p. 198) critical modernist perspective of development, which claims to distrust any elite, and instead favours the views of oppressed peoples of all kinds. A living politics may have the potential to be an emancipatory politics that could “draw together the oppressed majority to counter....the overwhelming power of an exploiting minority” (ibid). The movement also holds a radical democratic humanist perspective similar to that of the late Paulo Freire’s (2006). A culture of radical humanism exists in SA, due to both the struggles against dehumanisation (colonialism and apartheid) and the humanist philosophy of Ubuntu, but it must be clear that AbM’s politics are their own, and the movement is adamant that it will not let it’s politics be “gentrified” (AbM, 2009) by elites or middle classes. Furthermore, in contrast to such thinkers such as Freire, AbM believe that oppressed people can already possess a critical consciousness, rather than necessarily needing ‘progressive’ intellectuals to teach them the ‘skills’ to free themselves from poverty. As Pithouse

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(2008, p. 80) suggests, “This is not an anti-intellectualism. On the contrary, it is a rigorous intellectualism that....prefers to engage with a real situation rather than take refuge in empty jargon”.

The author of this paper recommends that the reader, before continuing, could perhaps watch a short, 8 minute film about AbM. Dear Mandela, (2008) is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qe2nhP9exM. This short film (which will soon become a feature length documentary according to the directors: see Pambazuka News, 2008, on-line) sets the tone for the thesis of this paper, which is that the ANC should be listening to what the poor have to say, and giving the poor more freedom and opportunities to work; be secure; and have a healthy, happy life. The film importantly illuminates the perspectives coming from a few AbM activists and shack-dwellers, such as S’bu Zikode (president of AbM); Zimase Hohlo (her shack is destroyed in the film by the local municipality); Mazwi Nzimande (chairperson of AbM’s youth league); Shamita Naidoo (chairperson of AbM and community leader of Motala Heights); and Mnikelo Ndabankulu (chairperson of AbM). Many other AbM video documentaries can be found on the internet. As no fieldwork was conducted for this study, it has been important to analyse many of the videos to hear the perspectives of the shack-dwellers (and not only the main spokespersons of the movement).

1.5. A ‘utopian’ politics?

First impressions of AbM and other movements in SA, may cause some to perceive their politics and resistance as idealistic and utopian; or criminal in the sense that they illegally reconnect electricity, or that their protests may turn violent (usually due to State aggression). However, by the end of this paper, it is hoped that the reader will have a clearer picture of AbM facing a stark choice. They can either face the violence and desperation of poverty silently; or on the other hand, voice their anger and take direct action (with a threat of State violence) against local elites and neoliberal capitalism, and try to promote a more humanist development. Indeed, neoliberal capitalism will later be discussed as perhaps being more utopian than AbM’s socialist and radical humanist ideals. The poor of the world are still waiting for all boats to be lifted into utopia, by the rising tide of footloose globalisation, and the trickle-down of capital to the poor.

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Chapter 2:

South Africa in the process of globalisation, or neoliberalisation? A

‘virtual democracy’

2.1. Introduction

Out of the three questions that this dissertation aims to answer, the first one will be focused upon in chapter 2 (see page 12 for research questions). The global economic context which South Africa (SA) is located in, will be briefly analysed. Globalisation and development are interlinked. However, arguably it is globalisation – particularly in its economic form – which is the most powerful force shaping the world at present; affecting both the nature of democracy, and the nature of development policies. Development and democracy are evidently linked, as the people who are the so-called ‘beneficiaries’ of development policies – the people who development is done ‘to’ and/or ‘for’ – may or may not be part of the decision-making process on these policies.

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The social movements studied later call for more participatory forms of both democracy and development. However, global power structures patently affect the power of Nation States in the South to make autonomous decisions and serve their constituencies’ demands. When the ANC came into power, their strategy was very socialist. The initial Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) – essentially a socialist programme – “was the election manifesto of the ANC” (Narsiah, 2002, p. 5) and was translated into policy when the ANC assumed power in 1994 (ibid). However, neoliberalism was fast becoming the hegemonic ideology. So how much control did the ANC have, regarding this change in policy thinking?

2.2. The ANC and neoliberalism

“In some ways neoliberal discourses have changed the very nature of politics, where exclusion is normalised and naturalised as acceptable and inevitable....[Just one of the] ‘bumps on the road’ to progress” (Power, 2003, p. 222).

A development policy committed to improving living conditions for black people in SA, has long been articulated by the ANC. However, their strategy towards promoting this was displaced from a basic-needs oriented, leftist plan, to the neoliberal, Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy, implemented in 1996 (Peet, 2002).

The GEAR strategy, and the neoliberal nature of this (former president, Thabo Mbeki, at the press conference announcing GEAR, actually quipped, ‘Just call me a Thatcherite’ (Bond, 1996, p. 30)), has been criticised by many; some critics even calling it the “Greed Entirely Avoids Redistribution” strategy (Lester et al. 2000, p. 319). Narsiah (2002, p. 5) suggests that:

“The ‘new’ version of development began a movement from social heterodoxy to neoliberal orthodoxy [and] South Africa was formally subsumed into a neoliberal, free-market paradigm in 1996 – with the adoption of the....GEAR program”.

However, it is somewhat hard to imagine, in the contemporary, globalised world economy, that South Africa could have carried through their original leftist promises, contained in the RDP. Exogenous pressures exist which seem to force most contemporary African countries into adopting capitalist free-market policies. Indeed, as Nattrass (1996, p. 25) states, “capital is all-powerful; national policy must pay obeisance or pay the cost”.

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Disciplinary pressure on the ANC came from two main sources according to Peet (2002, p. 72). External pressure came from the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), i.e. World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF); and internal pressure came from the media and business organisations within SA (ibid). Peet’s (ibid) study analyses hegemony in SA from a Gramscian perspective, and discourse from a Foucauldian perspective. The conclusion of his study suggests that the counter-hegemonic discourse, coming from the ANC during apartheid, was disciplined and colonised by a neoliberal hegemonic discourse.

This discourse was underpinned by an academic-institutional-media complex, “producing policy prescriptions, position papers, press releases, popular columns, commentaries and programs, news bites, expert interviews, and a vast panoply of well-written, illustrated books, reports, and articles” (ibid, p. 58). Popular magazines, newspapers and television programmes, linked to advertising revenues and commodification, also picked-up on ideas which were propagated by institutional and academic agents (ibid). Thus, the hegemonic ideology of neoliberalism was propagated in SA not only through economic subordination in a global economy (even though the country has some of the richest corporations in the world: see next chapter), but also through the discursive power coming from ‘experts’ in academic, political, and media institutions nationally and globally, which assure us that economic ‘growth’ is the panacea to all our ills. The Washington consensus is disseminated to these ‘experts’, and portrays development as the quest for growth and fiscal stability, which can only be attained through market-centred approaches (World Bank, 2000).

This is not to say that economic growth is not important in SA. Although SA is an extremely powerful country regionally (see next chapter), it is arguably semi-peripheral in a global context, and in the current global economic framework, economic growth is important to the country. However, “growth-enhancing policies and spending on social services are not mutually exclusive objectives” (Andreasson, 2003, p. 398; See also Sen, 1999). Economic growth can occur in the medium to long-term by committing resources to health care and education, as the allocation of considerable resources to social spending in the early stages of development in Japan and South Korea demonstrates (ibid). This line of thinking is more in tune with the original RDP strategy, but as Power (2003, p. 210) suggests, the IMF and powerful investors forced the ANC to “adapt itself to the ‘realities’ of the global economy”. Rather than growth through redistribution, the GEAR plan emphasised redistribution through growth (ibid).

So if the ANC was disciplined by powerful actors and the forces of ‘globalisation’, can they really take blame for their shift to a neoliberal development path? Some would argue that the ANC had to approach development in this way, to not be isolated from the global economy, and to create a ‘stable’ investment environment. However, globalisation should not be thought of as simply an

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inexorable and ‘inevitable’ force. IFIs may present globalisation as almost natural, with no alternative. However, what is arguably occurring is the exogenously and endogenously induced neoliberalisation of countries in the global South (Power, 2003): Countries where much of the population is disconnected from many of the dynamics of globalisation, but are presented as being globalised rather than neoliberalised. The IFIs (based in the hegemonic US), as well as Southern elites who prosper from neoliberalisation, such as the ANC, are very much complicit in the process.

2.3. Virtual democracy

At the core of IFI policy prescriptions are increasing trade openness, privatisation, price liberalisation and fiscal discipline (Andreasson, 2003). Like many other Southern governments, the ANC facilitates this process, striking “fast deals with capital interests” (ibid, p. 398) and pursuing economic growth at all costs, while the societal unrest generated by decreased social spending are hoped to be contained by the rhetoric of ‘empowerment’ of the poor; strengthening ‘social capital’ and ‘participatory development’. Andreasson (2003) suggests that all that can be hoped for in this situation is a virtual democracy, at the expense of participatory, inclusive democracy. Capital enjoys mobility and leverage in the increasingly open and deregulated economy, however this economic liberalisation causes societal upheavals “inimical to bringing in the economic investments supposed to produce economic growth - thus undermining the assumptions about the relationship between policy and development on which the failed predictions of....GEAR were based” (ibid, 399).

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As African leaders are lobbied hard by international capital actors and Western governments to pursue neoliberal reforms (Widner, 1994; Mkandawire, 1999; Bond 2000; Andreasson, 2003), and “capital actors reinforce their bargaining power via a neoliberal intellectual hegemony in development thinking” (Andreasson, 2003, p. 385), the result is an alliance between State and capital, and a defensive isolation of the State from society (ibid); especially the poorest members of society. This virtual democracy is what AbM is fighting against as they call for substantive, participatory democracy. Virtual democracy, according to Andreasson (2003, p. 386), is especially damaging in new democracies, because both horizontal and vertical accountability is adversely affected. There is an erosion of the vertical link between elected decision-makers and their constituencies; and horizontal accountability across government branches is eroded when key government officials marginalise parliamentary input, “in collusion with capital actors” (ibid). The worst case scenario is that virtual democracy “degenerates into the all too familiar ‘one man, one vote, once’” (ibid) situation, such as in Zimbabwe, where structural adjustment and liberalisation have depressed the country beyond even virtual democracy and “contributed to a complete democratic breakdown” (ibid, p. 400).

In summary then, the ANC is very complicit in it’s development approach, and this chapter has provided a synopsis of the transition of SA into a (virtual) democracy in the latest era of globalisation. The next chapter will demonstrate that the poorest citizens in SA are not benefiting from this approach, and are not connected to the benefits of globalisation. The ANC elite, and (international) capital actors are connected to the benefits of globalisation. The remainder of this paper will show that inequality has increased in SA; a crisis of unemployment exists; and many of the poor (still mainly black; many of them women) population are not connected to the benefits of globalisation that the rich (still mainly white) population enjoys.

The ANC may think that there is no alternative to neoliberalisation, but as Andreasson suggests above, the societal upheavals this process causes is inimical to the economic investment the ANC is trying to attract. The resistance movements which emerge from this upheaval are not always as peaceful and progressive as the ones in this dissertation.

Organised xenophobic attacks have occurred in postapartheid SA. These have not been helped by discourse coming from the government. Gibson (2008b, p. 710) comments that although Jacob Zuma (who has promoted ethnic populism) distanced himself from the May 2008 xenophobic ‘pogroms’, many of the mobs “were singing Zuma’s controversial trademark song, ‘Bring me my machine gun’, as they attacked African foreigners”. The poverty which exists in SA is a breeding ground for xenophobic ideologies. Hence, does this situation really indicate the stable and attractive investment environment the ANC is promoting, through their myopic policy of neoliberalisation?

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AbM spoke out against the xenophobic pogroms of 2008 “with a press statement highlighting the important principle of solidarity and the unity of the oppressed in their organization” (Gibson, 2008, p. 705).

The conclusion to this chapter is that the ANC cannot simply blame the forces of the global economy (although these certainly do constrain governments) for their austere social spending (evidence of this austerity is in the next chapter). By far the richest country in Sub-Saharan Africa, SA arguably has a great chance to really help it’s poorer citizens. However, the current practice looks too much like a return to the colonial mentality of divide and rule. The question must tentatively be asked: Do the ANC really desire a stable sociopolitical environment, attractive to investors? Or do they desire an unstable environment where the rich get richer in their gated communities, and the poor suffer the violence of poverty, HIV/AIDS, and are divided through xenophobia and ethnic populism in an unstable environment? As Gibson (2008, p. 698) states, “xenophobia expresses the collective badge of power of the powerless against the powerless”. The next chapter will analyse this unequal environment, focussing on the neoliberal economy of SA which leads to both virtual democracy, and resistance at the grassroots level.

Chapter 3:

Neoliberalism and Development in South Africa

3.1. Geographical overview of South Africa

SA is Africa’s tenth largest country (Lester et al. 2000, p. 15) and with an estimated population of over 49 million, it is the continent’s fifth most populous country; after Nigeria (149.23 million), Ethiopia (85.24 million), Egypt (83.08 million), DRC Congo (68.69 million) (CIA World Factbook, 2009). As illustrated in figure 3.1, SA shares borders with Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland. Further south, the independent kingdom of Lesotho is fully surrounded by South African territory.

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SA has the largest economy on the continent. The country had an estimated Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $491 billion in 2008 (CIA World Factbook, 2009), above Egypt; the second largest economy in Africa with an estimated GDP of $443.7 billion in 2008 (ibid). Furthermore, Egypt has a population (83.08 million (ibid)) almost twice as large as that of SA’s (49.05 million (ibid)). This is somewhat reflected in the GDP per capita (PPP adjusted: see table 3.1 for explanation) of each country. SA’s was estimated at $10,100 in 2008 (table 3.1), whereas Egypt’s was only estimated at

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$5,400 (CIA World Factbook, 2009). Hence, SA is a huge economy vis-à-vis the African continent; rich in mineral and metal resources (table 3.1), with an economically advantaged middle class and a wealthy elite. Sometimes SA is referred to as a ‘developed’ country. However, this paper will show that development (a highly contested term in itself which should be measured in much broader terms than the economy) has been highly uneven in SA.

3.2. Social and economic challenges in South Africa

On the African continent, exogenously imposed constraints on welfare measures, education and health; along with tax concessions on profits, liberalisation of price controls, and the break-up of state enterprises, have all contributed to the widening of internal disparities (Manji and O’Coill, 2002, p. 580). Regarding these constraints, the case of SA is not dissimilar from the rest of the continent. However, contemporary SA has been shaped by a unique history. With an economy over-dependent on gold, the country has seen much instability in the past due to fluctuating gold prices, and as Butler (2009, p. 68) states, some historians have even blamed gold for the political trajectory of apartheid:

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“Always dependent on extremely low cost labour, some analysts claim that the migrant labour system - in which workers would be employed on short contracts in the prime of their working lives, while their families, children, and old people languished in the reserves - was a direct product of the gold economy”.

Furthermore, the South African economy was transformed under apartheid through industrialisation and its accompaniment: deagrarianisation. The enormous importance of the labour market in the distribution of income reflects this transformation. Nattrass and Seekings (2001, p. 51) describe this well:

“Black sharecroppers and labour tenants were squeezed off white-owned land. Excluded from the towns by the pass laws, they were forced into the reserves, where agricultural production collapsed through overpopulation. The pass laws (and other measures) also served to restrict the informal sector. The result was a society unusually dependent on waged work”.

SA is indeed a country where people are very dependent on waged work, and with unemployment levels being so high, as seen later in this chapter, inequality is a massive problem. Interracial inequalities exist in SA, but are not as severe as during apartheid. However, as Nattrass and Seekings (2001, p. 65) argue, the decline in interracial inequality “has not reduced overall inequality”, and will probably not do so in the future, as the forces that drive inequality “have become increasingly significant at the intraracial level” (ibid). The country can now be seen in three broad classes, rather than simply two racial groups (ibid) (table 3.2), and although in SA there has been a broad coincidence between race and class, “it has never been a straightforward one” (Lester et al., 2000, p. 5). A black middle class has emerged in SA, and thus, in recent years, the social boundaries of race and class have been reconfigured dramatically (Lester et al., ibid). When the social boundaries of gender and ethnicity are considered along with those of race and class in South Africa, one can see how complex the social relations in the country really are.

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In chapter 5 of this paper, local issues in Durban’s urban shack settlements will be analysed. A great social and economic injustice exists in these settlements. Neoliberal, urban regeneration policies are intent on creating ‘World Class Cities’ to attract (foreign)investment: Cities which do not contain shack settlements, or ‘slums’, as the ANC government calls them. These policies have not helped the shack-dwellers, as will be seen; and according to Marx and Charlton (2002), the population of shack-dwellers in Durban receiving the least services from the state in 2002 (546,441 people) were 99 per cent black African. Thus, although a Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) strategy – which “aims to increase the ownership, management, and control of businesses by black citizens, and especially women” (Butler, 2009, p. 75) – exists as an attempt to deracialise opportunities, chapter 5 will show that the poorest shack-dwellers (often black and many of them women) often do not benefit. They are under constant threat of being evicted and relocated to the periphery of the city, far away from any opportunities the ‘World Class City’ may offer. More about this in chapter 5.

The social inequalities which exist in SA are being targeted by the ANC government. However, the neoliberal obsession with deregulation and the privatisation of previously state-run enterprises has generally led to more unemployment (at least 24.5 per cent and rising; see page 31), and a small percentage of the population gaining economically, while according to Gibson (2008b, p. 700) “seventy per cent of the population lives close to or in poverty.”

Nevertheless, SA’s economy has many advantages over other African countries. A wide range of materials are produced, i.e. gold, platinum, diamonds, manganese and many other minerals (ibid). Sales of platinum group metals (R27 billion) in 2000 were more than that of gold (R25 billion) and coal sales were some R20 billion (ibid). There are many corporations in SA making huge amounts of money.

3.3. Growing profits, but who is gaining?

In an article by Citron and Walton (2002), the profitability of non-financial corporate sector operations were compared internationally. SA’s profitability was 9.6 per cent, coming ninth out of the top 23 countries in 2001 (the most recent year measured). This was above the US, in fifteenth place, with 6.9 per cent profitability (Table 3.3). It was the highest level on record for SA, and was partly due to the gold industry recording very high profits (ibid, p. 33). However, it was also due to the growth of gross operating surplus as a percentage of total factor income, which indicates that

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prices grew faster than wages (ibid). Increases in productivity supported this. This illustrates that while companies make more profit, wages often do not grow sufficiently; and many in the country still live in poverty.

SA has massive reserves of coal, and its manufacturing sector has grown. Unlike most other African countries, SA’s manufacturing sector is well-developed (Lester et al., 2000, p. 37) and contributed a turnover of 26.9 per cent to total turnover in the period from March to June 2009 (figure 3.2). Trade, manufacturing, and real estate along with other business services actually made up three quarters of the total turnover (figure 3.2). The mining and quarrying sector only made up 7 per cent of the total. This illustrates that SA’s economy is more diversified in 2009 than in the past, when

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mining and quarrying would have contributed to a much larger percentage. The South African economy is a powerhouse in comparison with its neighbouring countries, so would it be unfair to criticise the ANC government’s neoliberal policies, when the country is in a better economic position now than in 1994, when they took power? Many have gained in SA, even if inequality is still prevalent.

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3.4. Neoliberalism and a ‘home-grown’ SAP

Rustomjee (2006, p. 431) argues that the ANC, in 1994, inherited an economy, political system, and social system infrastructure in “profound crisis, as well as an external financial crisis”. As Pithouse (2006, p. 248) states, the ANC was “the first African government to ever voluntarily impose a structural adjustment programme on its people”. Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), imposed on countries by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are claimed by many to have created the ‘lost decade of development’ (1980s) in Africa, being criticised for their economic austerity and the harm they do to the poor, especially women and children (Potter et al., 2008, p. 93). However, Rustomjee (2006, p. 431) defends the South African government’s home-grown SAP:

“[The South African government] did not borrow from the International Monetary Fund. Having fought hard for sovereignty, the new government was unwilling to cede influence to the IMF (or World Bank) or indeed to acquire any dependence on external creditors. Instead, the government of national unity embarked on its own home-grown structural adjustment programme.”

In his 2006 article, Rustomjee (ibid, p. 432) argues that many advantages have come from the ANC’s policies, including the SAP. He states that the government debt to gross domestic product (GDP) declined, and further states that social service delivery in some sectors, notably clean water provision, electrification and sanitation has been of the standard of international best practice (ibid).

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Rustomjee’s case may be a convincing one. However it depends on what comparisons are used for this best practice he talks of. These are probably not developed economies such as the UK, where water provision and sanitation are not a huge problem. If compared to Latin American countries, many of these would probably fare better than SA. If compared to other African countries, then yes, SA probably has spent more money on social service delivery than many others on the continent. But surely this ought be the case, when SA has such an enormous GDP when compared to these countries. Table 3.1 (page 22) showed that education expenditures in SA, for example, were 5.4 per cent of GDP, whereas in Lesotho this figure was 13 per cent and in Kiribati 17.8 per cent. Of course, it could be argued that with a larger GDP in SA, 5.4 per cent is actually a much larger expenditure than Kiribati’s 17.8 per cent. However, Kiribati’s much needed 17.8 per cent expenditure on education leaves less to spend on other important social services, such as the water provision, sanitation and electrification Rustomjee (ibid) talks of.

It must be remembered that SA is actually in a powerful position when compared to many other African countries. Table 3.1 (page 22), which gave an overview of the South African economy, illustrates this power, showing for example how much more money is made on exports compared with Namibia, and SA’s larger GDP per capita than Namibia, which is classed by many as a fairly successful country, compared to others in Africa. However, the table additionally shows how unequal South African society is, with the poorest 10 per cent of households only consuming 1.3 per cent while the highest consume 44.7 per cent. Moreover, the economic austerity towards social spending can be seen in statistics such as the provision of antiretroviral therapy among people with advanced HIV infection, illustrated in figure 3.3.

As SA has one of the worst HIV/AIDS problems in Africa, and the largest GDP in the continent, the country should essentially have the widest coverage when it comes to antiretroviral therapy. However, as figure 3.3 demonstrates, SA is actually below the regional average of 30 per cent. Namibia’s coverage is 88 per cent, compared to SA’s 28 per cent. Additionally, SA comes 17 places below Namibia. SA may have a larger population of HIV infected people to reach than some

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of the countries above it, bringing the percentage down, although we can clearly see that the country should be doing more where HIV is concerned. Moreover, Botswana has a 79 per cent coverage of therapy, only just behind Namibia. Interestingly, Botswana is not even that far behind SA in terms of the population infected with HIV - 585 per 100,000 people, compared with SA’s 721 per 100,000 people (WHO, 2009, p. 48 and 54).

The amount of the South African population with access to improved drinking-water sources was 93 per cent in 2006 (WHO, 2009, p. 90). In urban areas this is claimed to be 100 per cent. The ANC government can take credit for this, however the shack-dwellers from AbM would have to ask how many taps there are per urban shack settlement? Moeng (2009) reports of residents in the Harry Gwala informal settlement, in South Gauteng, sharing 2 taps between 500 households, while Birkinshaw (2008b) claimed that the Kennedy Road settlement in Durban shared 5 communal standpipes between 8000 people. For a country with a fairly large GDP, these are disturbing facts.

The above has given an example of social development at the local level. Rather than Rustomjee’s (2006) macroeconomic analysis, which pays little attention to local issues and social impacts ‘on the ground’, chapters 4 and 5 of this paper will look at very real local, social issues, and basic service delivery which is often not of ‘best practice’.

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3.5. Human development

Many development scholars believe that a fast growing economy is not essentially enough to provide adequate socioeconomic development and lessen social inequity. ANC policy has been very neoliberal and growth-oriented in character. The question to ask is have people’s lives been improved?

The human development index (HDI) is used to measure human development by combining measurements of life expectancy with education and GDP per capita. The higher the rank, the higher the human development. In 1990, SA had a HDI rank of 0.698. By the year 2000, this had actually reduced to 0.688. In 2007 it was even lower at 0.683 (UNDP, 2009a, on-line). These may not be huge changes, but if these statistics are to be taken seriously, then SA’s overall human and social development has not been improving since 1990.

Extreme differences exist regarding wealth and income across race, gender and location in SA. Inequality between racial groups for example, as measured by the Gini coefficient rose from 0.64 to 0.69 in the period 1995-2005 (World Bank, 2009). The country’s disadvantaged groups have limited access to basic services and economic opportunities, and “despite a 6 percentage point drop over the last six years, the country’s unemployment rate of 23.6% remains very high” (ibid). The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report states that the current financial crisis has inevitably turned into a jobs crisis (UNDP, 2009b, p.41). The South African government’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey illustrates that the unemployment figure had risen to 24.5% in the third quarter of 2009 (StatsSA, 2009b, p. vi), further stating that between quarter 2 and quarter 3, 283,000 jobs were lost in the formal sector and 116,000 jobs were lost in the informal sector (ibid).

The most disquieting indicator of the severity of the unemployment crisis, is that the official statistics - grim as they are - are only based on a ‘strict’ definition of employment, and hide a harsher reality (Butler, 2009, p. 92). ‘Discouraged’ work-seekers, who have “no hope of finding employment where they live and cannot fund the transport and other costs associated with work-seeking” (ibid; and definition also on StatsSA, 2009b, p.xvi), are excluded from the official unemployment figures. An expanded definition of unemployment, which would include the ‘discouraged’ work-seekers, maybe as high as 35%, or up to 45%, according to Butler (2009, p. 92). Therefore, these statistics could arguably indicate the neoliberal project failing to improve the lives of many disadvantaged people in SA.

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For urban shack-dwellers, the discouraged work-seeker statistics are particularly salient. Gibson (2008b, p. 697) argues that the ANC’s promise of homes in urban areas has been transformed into the threat of shacks being demolished and people being relocated to peri-urban areas which can be “20 miles from the city” (ibid) and thus opportunities. When relocated to the periphery, people often become ‘discouraged work-seekers’ as they have little hope of finding jobs. Chapter 5 will analyse Durban’s shack-dwellers in more detail, with a case study on Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM). First though, chapter 4 will introduce some of the new social movements which have emerged in resistance to the above socioeconomic and political climate.

Chapter 4:

New Social Movements in Post-apartheid South Africa

4.1. Introduction

After political transition in 1994, adversarial social struggles with the state were thought by many to be a thing of the past (Ballard et al., 2005). The state had formed collaborative relationships with community-based organisations (CBOs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and corporatist institutions like the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC); so state-civil society engagements were thus mainly collaborative (ibid). However, by the time of South Africa’s second democratic election and Thabo Mbeki’s rise to presidency, several social struggles had emerged. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) opposed the government’s neoliberal GEAR strategy, and other government policies were challenged (ibid). The remainder of this study analyses resistance to more local issues; issues felt directly by the poorest South African citizens.

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Numerous new social movements have materialised in post-apartheid SA, in the context of the “negative effects of years of belt-tightening fiscal policies on the poor and marginalised majority of the country” (Greenberg, 2004, p. 1) following the adoption of the GEAR strategy. A handful of these will be briefly discussed in chapter 4. The social movements illustrated in figure 4.1 are all based in urban areas, apart from the Landless People’s Movement; a national umbrella organisation uniting representatives of urban and rural landless peoples (Greenberg, 2004).

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) campaigns for the rights of people with HIV and AIDS, and fights against the economic austerity (an important component of neoliberal economics) of the ANC in the provision of antiretroviral therapy among people with advanced HIV infection. Evidence of this austerity was demonstrated in chapter 3 (figure 3.3, page 29). Another component of neoliberal economics; privatisation, is being opposed by the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) and the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC) (figure 4.1), who each have been illegally reconnecting people to electricity. People are disconnected as they cannot afford to pay for privatised electricity. Thus, the political principles of these social movements are various and particular, rather than homogenous. However, the movements in figure 4.1 share a universal political principle with many other social movements globally. This political principle is resistance to neoliberalism.

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4.2. A natural reaction to neoliberalism?

The last two chapters have shown that neoliberalism has become the hegemonic ideology in SA, and that although the above components of neoliberal economics have produced winners, there have been more losers, vis-à-vis material well-being. The gap between these winners and losers is increasing, as the rising Gini coefficient demonstrated in chapter 3. Therefore, resistance is arguably a natural process in this inequitable environment. There is an increasing dialectical opposition between the neoliberal ANC government and many social movements. S’bu Zikode (2009a, p. 34), elected president of AbM, suggests that AbM is a natural movement, “generated from different people, with different ideas, who have grown up in different places, in different levels of space”. The beginnings of the AbM movement came from much humiliation and frustration. Zikode (ibid, p. 32) points out that when this humiliation is expressed, “it is like taking out a poison. You become free to act and you become angry....That anger is the source of an incredible energy”.

This anger “could have gone in many directions” (ibid, p. 31). Thus, credit should be given to many social movements in SA for keeping their strategies peaceful. The disruption of apartheid was relatively peaceful, and the members of most contemporary social movements, who resisted the formally unequal system of racial apartheid, are using peaceful means to disrupt the formally equal but materially unequal system currently in place. Zikode (ibid) perceives the beginnings of AbM as something unplanned. People did not sit down and decide to establish a movement. They simply formed a road blockade in protest and did not know what would come next. They took one step at a

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time: “We learnt as we went. It’s still like that now. We discuss things until we have decided on the next step and then we take it. Personally I have learnt a lot” (ibid, p. 32).

This is not a simplistic strategy. It is substantively democratic and learns from the process it takes; thus remaining holistic and grounded in the everyday realities of the poor. This is why Zikode (ibid) calls AbM’s politics a living politics. It is a politics that does not emerge from external theories, but begins with the everyday lived experiences of the poor: it is “a popular politics, a politics of ordinary women and men. It is not an elite politics but a politics of those who do not count” (Gibson et al, 2009, p. 78), i.e. a politics of the poor. AbM’s political thought will be analysed more in chapter 5, but it will suffice to say for now that social movements are arguably a natural reaction to the current, inequitable system which chapters 2 and 3 of this paper gave evidence of.

4.3. Social movements: old and new

Definitions of social movements are plentiful. Kaldor (2003, p. 82) defines them as:

“organisations, groups of people and individuals, who act together to bring about transformation in society. They are contrasted with, for example, more tightly organised NGOs or political parties”

Social movement literature commonly distinguishes ‘new’ social movements from ‘old’ social movements (ibid, p. 84). Table 4.1 shows the distinctions between the two. New social movements are widely considered to have emerged from the 1968 student revolutions (ibid). Gibson (2006, p. 18) suggests however (particularly in a South African context) that new and older social movements operate along a continuum, and that the differences between the two blur in practice, even if they are sharply divided in theory. Some early workers’ organisations had much in common with radical new social movements. They were often spontaneous and radical in both their work-related and social demands (ibid). Loyalty to the state, often through corporate arrangements, along with the union’s bureaucratisation and formal legalisation within the system, are what “aged them quickly” (ibid, p. 19).

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AbM is certainly new in the sense that it emerged in 2005 (although culminating from many years government promises, anger and frustration). The movement endeavours to be autonomous from party politics, claiming that party politics is a politics of the rich, not a politics of the poor (Zikode, 2009a); a politics which cannot emancipate the poor. The next chapter will focus on the history of shack-settlements in Durban and AbM’s resistance to an increasingly authoritarian ANC government and local municipality. AbM’s theories of development and democracy will then be focused upon.

Chapter 5:

Subaltern resistance from the imijondolos of Durban: Abahlali

baseMjondolo and a politics of the poor

5.1. Introduction

Figure 5.1 illustrates the location of Durban, and an expanded map of Durban which also locates the imijondolo (shack settlement) where the AbM movement emerged from: The Kennedy Road settlement. The Foreman Road settlement, which quickly became affiliated with AbM and joined the resistance, is also located in figure 5.1. In 2008, AbM had spread to almost 40 settlements and the movement represented at least 30,000 shack dwellers (Gibson, 2008a, pp. 6-7).

There has been much interest from scholars, on both the political model AbM have been forming, and the strategies of their resistance to social inequality and marginalisation of the poor (Ngiam, 2006; Birkinshaw, 2008a&b; Bryant, 2008; Gibson, 2008a&b; Patel, 2008; Pithouse, 2008; Huchzermeyer, 2009; Vartak, 2009). The AbM movement emerged from residents of the Kennedy Road shack settlement forming a road blockade on 19 March 2005 (Ngiam, 2006, p. 31), after finding that land promised to them for new housing had been sold to a private developer. As Ngiam

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(2006, p. 31) argues, “the story of struggle in the informal settlements did not begin on that day....It was the culmination of more than a decade of promises, negotiations and thwarted hopes”. The elected president of AbM, S’bu Zikode (2009a, p. 29) claims that to begin with, when he was chairperson (elected in 2001) of the Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC), he saw the ANC as “a tool to transform this community....a platform for the shack dwellers.....We thought that all we had to do to secure our place....in the city, was to take the initiative to support the ANC”. In 2002 Zikode joined the ANC and was elected to the Branch Executive Committee (BEC), and in the following year became the Deputy Chairperson of the ANC branch in Ward 25 (ibid). Many promises and negotiations followed, only to culminate into feelings of anger, frustration and betrayal.

Before analysing AbM’s political strategies, the historical and political context that shack-dwellers of Durban are situated in will briefly be discussed. Durban is under the jurisdiction of the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality (eMM) and the wider Provincial Government of Kwazulu Natal (PGKZN). The actions of eMM toward the shack-dwellers will be discussed; particularly regarding the evictions and relocation of shack-dwellers, and the KwaZulu Natal Elimination and

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Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act (KZN Slums Act), passed into law by PGKZN in 2007 (KZN Legislature, 2007; Pithouse, 2009b). Analysis will then be on AbM’s opposition to these actions, and how the movement theorises through what their elected leader, S’bu Zikode calls a politics of the poor (Zikode, 2009a, p. 35) and a living politics (ibid, p. 39).

5.2. A brief history of imijondolos in Durban

In 1948, Afrikaaner nationalism had ascended to state power, following a narrow electoral victory for the National Party (NP) (Lester et al., 2000, p. 172). The NP endeavoured to “establish a firmer basis by which racial boundaries could be protected” (ibid). In 1950, segregation in Durban was given more legal foundations through the newly-passed Group Areas Act (Pithouse, 2009a). By 1958, the apartheid state began to achieve its full power and Durban’s African population began to grow (ibid). This caused the Durban City Council (now eMM) to begin a massive slum clearance project, and residents of the largest settlement, Umkhumbane, were to be ‘cleared out’. Umkhumbane, had a population of 120,000 (Pithouse, 2007, on-line), and in 1958, the Durban City Council began a slum clearance project which removed shack dwellers forcibly “to racially segregated modern townships on the periphery of the city” (ibid). Pithouse (2007, on-line) reports that forced removals from the settlement were militantly opposed, primarily because “transport

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costs from the new townships to work were unaffordable. In 1959, demonstrations stopped the evictions three times.”

The resistance was clearly organised (ibid), and at times, articulated as a women’s project (Pithouse, 2007; COHRE, 2008, p. 34). Indeed, women residents in the Cato Manor settlement (part of Umkhumbane at that period) “issued a direct challenge to the state and the dominance of men in the settlement. The slogan ‘Wa thint’ abafazi wa thint imbokodo!’ (You strike a woman, you strike a rock!) was widely used” (COHRE, 2008, p. 34).

Lives were lost as the conflict escalated. In January 1960, 6,000 people marched into the city. The army was utilised, and the resistance overpowered (Pithouse, 2007, on-line). “The mass evictions were largely completed by August 1965 and are remembered as a great crime of apartheid” (ibid). However, by the 1970s, barriers around white space began to weaken, due to urban militancy, such as the 1973 Durban strikes and the 1976 Soweto uprising (COHRE, 2008, p. 37).

5.3. The 1980s: The poor recapture a place in the city

The apartheid state was increasingly confronting insurrectionary, township rebellions into the 1980s; while occupying Namibia, and at war in Angola (Pithouse, ibid). Thus, the capacity to completely regulate the movement of Africans was lost (ibid). The apartheid state began to lack the political credibility and capacity to carry out mass forced evictions (COHRE, 2008, p. 37).

By 1986, approximately 1.7 million shack-dwellers were located in Durban (COHRE, 2008, p. 38). Some of these shack-dwellers were political refugees from pro- and anti-apartheid violence. New shacks also reunified families split apart from the migrant labour system (ibid); and urban shacks allowed people trying to escape rural poverty to access urban opportunities (ibid). Furthermore, people fleeing abusive conditions on white farms also came to the shack settlements looking for a better life (ibid). There were multiple reasons for imijondolo growth.

In the 1980s, the World Bank and NGO consensus was that ‘informal settlements’ (previously called ‘squatter camps’) were “opportunities for self-help via popular entrepreneurship, rather than a threat to white modernity, state and capital” (Pithouse, 2007, on-line). However, although the imijondolos had become increasingly targeted for assistance from the World Bank, NGOs and the

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government (Kennedy Road received some toilets and a community centre), in 2001 things began to change.

The UN Habitat ‘Cities without Slums’ project selected Durban as a pilot city (ibid). The project was supposed to redeem the ANC’s promises and bring decent housing to the residents of informal settlements (ibid). However, the word ‘informal’ became increasingly salient, in the sense that ‘formal’ equality in SA was celebrated by the ANC, but material inequality was increasing, and ‘informal’ areas were seen as problematic and unattractive. ‘Informal’ settlements were increasingly seen by the government as ‘slums’ that required ‘elimination’. Shack-dwellers were to be relocated to ‘formal’ housing, mostly in peri-urban areas, and “the provision of electricity and other services to settlements was immediately halted” (ibid).

5.4. Life in Durban’s imijondolos

The above historical context demonstrates that shack-dwellers in Durban are not in their situation through any fault of their own, but because of a history of racism, oppression and elite planning which has kept the poor firmly in place – in desperate poverty. Neoliberal policies of the elite have culminated in the combination of a Slum Clearance programme (see below) and urban regeneration programmes which are increasingly centred on the 2010 World Cup. Both are intended to promote economic investment in the city, thus facilitating economic growth and creating a ‘World Class City’, with no ‘slums’ in sight for World Cup tourists. However, as Pithouse (2009c) reports:

“Mega-events....give local elites an opportunity to reorganise cities in their own interests. There is often a spatial reorganisation that physically expels the poor to the urban periphery. One report estimates that the Olympic Games has displaced more than two million people in the last twenty years”.

AbM know all too well about this kind of displacement, which was happening in Durban long before the FIFA World Cup was planned. So what is life like in the imijondolos? Why do the shack-dwellers not want to be displaced?

Figure 5.2 is a satellite image showing the Kennedy Road and Foreman Road settlements; two of the main strongholds of AbM. Together, these two settlements (which are approximately 2 kilometers apart), hold a population of at least 14,000 people (Birkinshaw, 2008b, p. 5). Figure 5.2 illustrates the small areas the two imijondolos occupy, alluding to the cramped conditions the residents experience. Marx and Charlton (2003) claim that 33 per cent of Durban’s population live

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in informal areas. An overwhelming majority of these residents are black African (ibid). 56 per cent are female, 44 per cent are male and 27.9 per cent of the households are female-headed (ibid). Women’s agency has played a key role in AbM. Zikode (2009, p. 41) suggests that a woman will “fight like a lion to protect her home and her family....Women are often in the forefront of struggles against eviction, for toilets, for electricity and against the fires. Sometimes in Abahlali women feel that men are very slow and too compromising”.

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Women’s vulnerability and HIV in the imijondolos

According to Sen (1999, p. 189), women’s agency, and not just their well-being, is highly important to development. Women are increasingly perceived as active agents of change: “The dynamic promoters of social transformations that can alter the lives of both women and men” (ibid). The women shack-dwellers of AbM are certainly following this line of thought, but a little should be said about their well-being, as race and gender boundaries are still strong in SA.

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Table 5.1 illustrates how salient the issue of race still was in SA in 2002. Blacks represented 99 per cent of the population in informal housing areas receiving the lowest services. Only 13 per cent of the population were black in high income, highly serviced housing. This might be an improvement in comparison to the apartheid era, but there is certainly no picture of racial equality painted in table 5.1. Black women in Durban’s imijondolos often face the hardest challenges.

The HIV/AIDS situation in SA’s imijondolos is alarming. Prevalence rates are suggested to be nearly twice as high when compared to other urban and rural areas (Hunter, 2006). The US-based HIV organisation, CHAMP (Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project) has been in solidarity with AbM’s Women’s League. They claim that “women of ages 15 to 24 are up to four times more likely to be HIV positive than their male counterparts” (CHAMP, 2010, on-line). Zandile Nsibande, from AbM’s Women’s League, observes that:

“Our women and children are vulnerable to HIV because they become homeless through eviction....They involve themselves in conditional love, because they need a place to

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sleep with their children, and they are voiceless when it comes to condom use” (cited in CHAMP, 2010, on-line).

In summary, the above indicates the disadvantaged situation of black, female shack-dwellers. The above quote also indicates that people are not always relocated when evicted. Figure 5.3 illustrates the three main forms of evictions which occur in Durban’s imijondolos. The second type of eviction leaves many people homeless (including many women) and is illegal. Figure 5.3 shows that the first type of eviction is also illegal, and that a ban on erecting new structures creates serious overcrowding which further exacerbates women’s vulnerability. However, AbM’s women are attempting to work with men to change their situation, along with setting up a new income generation programme for women, in which mutual financial support is hoped to facilitate women to invest in making/growing products to sell, thus protecting them from HIV (CHAMP, 2010). Zandile Nsibande asserts that the “income generation programme can help....women to live financially independently without sexual relationships” (ibid).

5.5. Evictions and relocation

Figure 5.4 illustrates the distance from Parkgate – one of the relocation sites for ‘beneficiaries’ of slum clearance – to Durban Central. Even the shortest route is 26.5 kilometers. When considering the average wage of shack-dwellers, and the transport costs from relocation sites to the city for work and education, the impracticalities of relocation on shack-dwellers’ livelihoods are clear. Lindela Figlan, Vice President of AbM, claims that shack-dwellers’ average monthly income is approximately R600, and that if relocated to Parkgate in Verulum, “most of the earnings would be spent on transport and people would bring hardly anything home” (cited in Vartak, 2009, on-line).

The Parkgate housing project first housed families relocated from the Quarry Road settlement in 2000. As the first families were moved, the Ward Councillor, Jayraj Bachu, claimed that the “shaky edifices” the shack-dwellers inhabited did not “constitute adequate housing and as families are relocated to their new homes, their shacks [will be] demolished” (cited in eMM, 2000), also asserting that there would be vigorous enforcement of laws that prohibit illegal land occupation, to ensure that “we don’t demolish slums today only to see them cropping up tomorrow” (ibid). Bachu gives no indication of what will happen to the homeless, who are disallowed to build new shacks. Bachu also claimed that the Parkgate project would accommodate families from four settlements and on completion would yield 1530 houses (ibid). This means if each house accommodated 8 people, then 12,240 would be housed at Parkgate. When considering that at least 14,000 people in total live in Foreman Road and Kennedy Road, then 1530 houses is certainly not going to provide a

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large percentage of shack-dwellers in Durban with houses, particularly when Gibson (2008b, p. 697) reports that some of these new houses are 10x10 feet. Eight people per house would be uncomfortable to say the least. Butler (2009, p. 101) claims that although achievements have been made by the ANC regarding housing provision, there is a “current backlog of more than two million units”, and critics claim that many new homes are of poor quality (ibid).

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When Councillor Bachu spoke of “fundamentally” altering “the lives of most....people living in slums” (cited in eMM, 2000), the residents of “shaky edifices” and “slums”, hoped that the alterations to their lives would be of a positive nature. However, according to AbM, these residents don’t get consulted by the councillors, or their views are simply ignored.

5.6. The KZN slums act

On the 14 October 2009, AbM won a Constitutional Court case against the KwaZulu Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act, which was passed into law in July 2007

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(KZN Legislature, 2007; Pithouse, 2009b). Section 16 of the Slums Act was declared “unconstitutional and invalid” (CALS, 2009). Section 16 mandated landowners to evict illegal occupants irrespective of their desperation (KZN Legislature, 2007, p. 13), regressing back to a provision in the 1951 Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act (Huchzermeyer, 2010, on-line). In practice, section 16 has often (although not always) resulted in illegal, forced evictions (COHRE, 2008).

Figure 5.5 illustrates section 26 of the constitution, and Part B of the Breaking New Ground (BNG) policy which was implemented in 2004 (NDHS, 2004). Both of these policies are highly progressive, and are meant to protect the rights of informal shack-dwellers. The constitution states that everyone has the right to adequate housing, and BNG clearly states that in-situ upgrading of settlements should take place: “Settlements must urgently be integrated into the broader urban fabric”. Thus, the SA constitution and the BNG policy are progressive, rights-based policies which link well with international human rights law (figure 5.5). The Prevention of Illegal Eviction and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act (PIE) is also a progressive policy which was enacted to give legislative support to section 26 of the constitution (COHRE, 2008, p. 4). However, as Pithouse (2009b, p. 1) suggests, “In some parts of the country municipalities have routinely acted towards the poor in ways that are unlawful and, in strict legal terms, criminal”. Chetty (2007) even asserts that:

“I have never come across one incident where the City has acted in accordance with the law in terms of Section 21 of the Constitution and PIE Act. There is not one instance that we know of where the City has evicted with a court order” (cited in Pithouse, 2009b, p.1).

This begs the question: If AbM has won the constitutional court battle, does this necessarily mean that eMM will stop evicting by force? These evictions, according to COHRE (2008) are illegal anyway. A disturbing fact is that the Kennedy Road imijondolo was violently attacked on 26 September 2009, just over two weeks before AbM won their court case. An independent investigation has been demanded by more than 20 civil society organisations (Sacks, 2009, on-line) only to be refused by the ANC (ibid). The ANC claims that it rescued residents at Kennedy Road from a mysterious structure “simply known as The Forum” (South African Government, 2009b, on-line) which had placed an illegal curfew on the residents and stopped them “watching television” (ibid). The Forum is also alleged to be responsible for the attacks, and has links with S’bu Zikode, according to the ANC (ibid). Sacks (2009, on-line), who lived at Kennedy Road for weeks, claims that no sinister forum exists.

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Many journalists, scholars, organisations, churches, and it seems anybody who has actually spent any time with AbM, have condemned the attacks and indicated that the local ANC branch most likely instigated them (Amnesty International, 2009; Huchzermeyer, 2009; Neocosmos, 2009; Sacks, 2009; War on Want, 2009). Figure 5.6 shows the Kennedy Road attacks in more detail through the particular concerns that Amnesty International reported. Two people died in the attacks.

Huchzermeyer claims that the local ANC had expected the court judgement and thus unlawfully evicted AbM from its base (Huchzermeyer, 2009, on-line), also claiming that AbM activist and part-time student Zodwa Nsibande was “publicly threatened for her comments on TV about the court judgment” (ibid). So although it is often AbM who are criminalised (members of AbM have been arrested for the attacks, and are often arrested for protesting), it is the increasingly autocratic

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ANC which constantly seems to be acting illegally. The defensive isolation of State from society and lack of vertical accountability, i.e. the virtual democracy Andreasson (2003) speaks of, seems to exist in SA when considering the above. SA’s progressive constitution is not being adhered to.

5.7. Imijondolo fires: Abhorrent ‘accidents’?

Municipal manager of eMM, Mike Sutcliffe (2007, on-line) boldly claims that the ANC can house well over 90 per cent of shack-dwellers by 2015. Even if we are to believe this, the refusal of upgrading and services to the remaining shack-dwellers for the next 15 years would be grossly

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unacceptable. Bryant (2006) reports that eMM have pursued a policy of “making conditions unbearable....to force people to relocate” to the periphery of Durban. Fires often spread through the imijondolos, as people are forced to use paraffin stoves/lamps and candles in shacks made of flammable materials, due to the government de-electrifying the settlements in 2001. Matt Birkinshaw (2008b), who spent three months living with AbM, compiled a very revealing report about the politics of shack fires. A political situation exists where eMM stopped providing electricity to shack settlements in 2001 (ibid; Pithouse, 2008). Birkinshaw (2008b, p. 9) claims that eMM have even “pursued a dangerous campaign of armed de-electrification against shack settlements”.

Until 2001, it was possible although difficult, for residents to have pre-paid electricity meters installed in their shacks (Pihouse, 2008). Birkinshaw (2008b) reports that paraffin is more expensive than electricity; so shack-dwellers would be willing to pay for electricity (the ones who could afford it: some cannot afford electric or paraffin). Hence, even though movements such as APF and AbM are against the commodification of electricity and water, many shack-dwellers in SA are simply refused electrification, whether they are willing to pay for it or not. The fire problem is compounded by the fact that there are only 5 taps per 8000 people (ibid) at Kennedy Road for instance, and no kind of hoses or fire extinguishers provided.

Residents of informal settlements are disallowed from formalising their structures. Even if they wanted to build with bricks or other formal, inflammable material, they are not allowed (ibid). As Birkinshaw (ibid, p. 1) remarks: “Shack fires are not an act of God, They are the result of political choices, often made at the municipal level”. When a political choice to ‘eliminate the slums’ and ‘relocate’ shack-dwellers also exists, one could be forgiven for being suspicious of the motives of local municipalities such as eMM. Additionally, the pit latrines at Kennedy Road stopped being emptied in 2001 (Pithouse, 2008). AbM activists can thus be forgiven for thinking that these political choices are directly aimed at clearing the shack-dwellers out of Durban. Birkinshaw (2008b, p. 7) reports that “between 2001 and 2005, a total of 1003 people died in shack fires in South Africa’s five largest cities. This is an average of 200 deaths a year in these cities alone”. Disturbing figures indeed. AbM’s demands, regarding the fires, are illustrated in figure 5.7.

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5.8. Abahlalism: A living politics, and a politics of the poor

The above has shown that AbM are proving very capable of demanding their rights and fighting injustice through the constitutional court, and furthermore that the ANC seems to see them as a threat to their power. However AbM do more than just win court battles. According to Ngiam (2006, p. 32), the movement is driven by eloquent and rich “personal theorisations of injustice.....and political ethics”.

No Land, No House, No Vote

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AbM claim that many promises are made to shack-dwellers at election time. This is the time when local politicians visit the shack-dwellers, “intent on gaining their votes” (Nimmagudda, 2008). However, after elections the shack-dwellers feel they are forgotten about, as Lindela Figlan, Vice-President of AbM points out:

“We think our government is ignoring us, or they have forgotten us. They only remember us when they need us to vote for elections....They promise whatever. I think our democracy is just to vote for them....Then we go back and sit in the mud” (cited in Ngiam, 2006, p. 33).

This situation causes Zikode (cited in Ngiam, 2006, p. 32) to talk of AbM’s struggle being about “moral questions, as compared to the political questions as such. It is more about justice....Why do I have to live in a cardboard house if there are people who are able to live in a decent house? So it’s a moral question”. When Zikode refers to moral rather than political questions, he means party politics, which he and AbM have lost all faith in. The movement, along with affiliated movements in the Poor People’s Alliance (a network of movements including AbM, the Rural Network, LPM and AEC) now boycott elections; their slogan being “No Land, No House, No Vote”. The boycotting of elections is not simply an apathy towards voting. It is a political statement in itself, which sends out a message that the poor are no longer fooled by politicians’ rhetoric. The poor are trying to organise from within; to form their own living politics, autonomous from an increasingly autocratic State.

AbM’s very coherent, political philosophy has been called Abahlalism (Zikode, 2009a; Gibson et al., 2009). The politics of Abahlalism consists mainly of two key concepts: a politics of the poor; and a living politics (Pithouse, 2008; Zikode, 2009a). These concepts are illustrated in figure 5.8, which also alludes to the inclusiveness of Abahlalism. Every human being is important in Abahlalism, and ABM conducts politics in a scrupulously democratic fashion, in contrast to the virtual democracy of the ANC.

AbM calls for a politics in common with shack/slum-dwellers, nationally and internationally, but additionally recognises the heterogeneity of slums/shack settlements – even across Durban. Therefore, each settlement affiliated to AbM is deconstructed from government discourse that often perceives a world of homogeneous crime-ridden ‘slums’. Each of these settlements carries out its own particular politics, albeit with some principles being universal to the movement, such as non-xenophobic principles and the right of everybody to be treated as equal human beings. According to S’bu Zikode (2009a), the movement must “ensure that the spirit of humanity is for everyone....that

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it is universal”. He goes on to assert that “we cannot allow division, degradation – any form that keeps us apart. On this point we have to be completely inflexible”.

The elected leaders of AbM are used more as a tool through which organic democratic decisions – based on actual life (and death, e.g. shack fires) experiences of shack-dwellers – can be communicated; rather than the leaders simply making political decisions on the shack-dwellers’

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behalf. As Lindela Figlan (cited in Nimmagudda, 2008), vice-president of AbM suggests, “leaders are meant to lead and to be led” by those who elected them.

AbM has clashed with some NGOs who try to speak for rather than to the movement. Potter (2008, p. 16) reports of Botes’ (1996) important and lucid summary of some of the main criticisms towards NGOs and the part that outsiders play in community participation. These criticisms are illustrated in figure 5.9, and as the figure shows, one of the main criticisms is the fact that some NGOs favour technological issues, or ‘hard’ issues over ‘soft’ issues such as decision-making and community involvement. These more time-consuming, difficult issues are a constant concern of AbM. Pithouse (2008, p. 78) reports that “from the beginning, the meeting was the engine of struggle” for AbM. He claims that activists have had good cause to dread these meetings as slow, protracted and “enervating nightmares” (ibid). AbM believe that development should be a deeply democratic process where everybody’s concerns at meetings count. Thus they have democratised the governance of imijondolos they are affiliated with, and try to remain autonomous from SA’s virtual democracy.

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5.9. Conclusions

Regarding the neoliberal nature of the ANC government’s socioeconomic development strategies, further polarisation between the rich and the poor certainly seems to be the case, as chapters 2 and 3 demonstrated. Global processes are exogenously affecting States in Africa, often adversely, while many States have little capacity to prevent, or even ameliorate these effects. However, as chapter 3 shows, corporations in SA make huge profits. Arguably an economic and spatial apartheid still exists, where the poor are ‘relocated’ to the peripheries of cities, where they can’t afford transport to the city centre, while the rich (and some of them extremely rich) live in ‘gated communities’, keeping the poor at bay with ‘armed response’ security. It has to be concluded that the Slums Act and the urban regeneration programmes in SA are mainly motivated by profit. These profits are not ‘trickling down’ to the poorest.

The ANC government has constantly conceded to capital, as they try to stop capital flight from the country. They crave ‘World Class Cities’ which will attract investment. Urban regeneration; cities without ‘slums’; housing for everyone; along with high economic growth seem like fine ideals to aim at, although it is hoped this paper has demonstrated that these development ideals should be engaged with critically, and that the voices of the poor should be heard on their own terms. Voices of the poor should not just be listened to, regulated, and used as a tool to make development initiatives sound legitimate. Rather, the ‘beneficiaries’ of development should be a part of every process of the development ‘being done to them’. In fact, development should not be done to the people at all, but with the people. Development should be a reflective, holistic, organic process, where everybody counts; where everybody is part of the process.

Mazwi Nsimande (chairperson of AbM youth league) and Reverend Mavuso Mbhekiseni (president of the rural network) travelled to the US in 2009 to facilitate linkages and build solidarity with those engaged in similar struggles in the US. While at the Poverty Initiative conference in New York, they were in dialogue with poor Americans who have been made homeless. One of the Americans spoke of “a commitment to the struggle of poverty in the midst of plenty” (Poverty Initiative video footage, 2009, on-line) and of “building a global movement to end poverty” (ibid). Reverend Mavuso adds to this by suggesting that in organising globally,

“we need to remind people that we are all victims of so-called development, because we are all evicted in the name of development....and that is happening in the name of democracy....We are victims of the so-called ‘trickle down’ economic theory [which suggests that] after making profit....that money will go down to the poor after a certain [many] years. We need to fight that trickle down theory now” (ibid).

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This eloquent theorisation concisely explains the pitfalls of neoliberal development, especially where the poor are concerned. It demonstrates the realistic political thinking emanating from social movements of the poor, and shows the unrealistic nature of profits ‘eventually’ trickling down to the poor. These profits are in fact reinvested to provide economic growth (reinvested into World Cup Mega Events and World Class Cities for instance), of which the poor often do not see real benefits.

AbM’s theories come from legitimate demands, emerging from real struggles. They demand the freedom to develop democratically, and not to be displaced and dispossessed in the name of development. AbM’s reasoning is legitimate and deeply democratic, whereas many of the government’s actions have been illegitimate: a virtual democracy at best. Maybe this quote from Frantz Fanon (1963, p. 38) is most apt, when considering whether AbM’s demands and claims to democratic justice are truthful, ethical and legitimate:

“The unemployed man, the starving native [sic] do not lay claim to the truth; they do not say they represent the truth, for they are the truth”

The poorest citizens of SA must be listened to and included in development. They are the truth, and there is much to learn from their struggles to transform SA’s politics from a virtual democracy to a substantive, deep democracy.

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