1
“Amandla Awethu”
Direct Action by Civil Society
in eThekwini
to Secure Basic Needs
Lizzy Lyons
College of Santa Fe
Politics
Advisor:
Fazel Khan
B. Sc., UPGDE, MA
School of Sociology and Social Studies
Social Policy Programme
UKZN
The School for International Training
Reconciliation and Development
eThekwini, South Africa
Independent Research Project
Fall 200
1
“Civil disobedience is not our problem.
Our problem is civil obedience.”
-Howard Zinn
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolutions inevitable”
-John F. Kennedy
“We are prepared to talk, but if that doesn’t work we are
prepared to use our strength.
We will do whatever it costs us to get what we need to live safely”
-S’bu Zikode
Chairman of Abahlali baseMjondolo
(Shack Dwellers movement)
“Amandla! Awethu!” shout the people of Kennedy Road shack settlement. “Power is ours!” Today, on the streets of South Africa, there is a war being waged by the people against their government and corporations in hopes of securing their basic needs. These people—who suffer daily from lack of housing, electricity, and water—have decided they will not wait patiently anymore for their basic needs, their human rights, to be fulfilled by others—instead they are taking “Direct Action” to try and attain security of these needs.[1] The year 2005 has been a “Year of Action” and this paper humbly hopes to document some of the many actions that were taken this year to secure basic services for the people of eThekwini, South Africa.[2] This is a continuing struggle by the poor of South Africa and because a struggle is not static this paper documents a glimpse into the direct action techniques taken thus far; the future shall hold new actions taken by people, like those found in this pages, who have stopped waiting and have decided that the power is theirs.[3]
“It is a ‘struggle’,” explained a young activist, describing all the actions happening on the streets of eThekwini, “because that is what we are doing here in the jondolos… struggling to survive”.[4] Many of the young activists interviewed shared that the greater community of eThekwini upsets them because it doesn’t understand their struggle. Hopefully, by giving the reasons stated by the actors involved will help the greater eThekwini community gain insight into why people have chosen to take these actions and can help to legitimize their actions for those who do not understand the rational for direct action as opposed to voting and other indirect actions. Additionally, by sharing all the different actions that are happening on the streets it will hopefully serve as a wake-up call to all those who just watch the protests and who are not aiding them so they can achieve their minimal goal of securing to themselves their basic needs.
There are three sections in this paper: the housing section, which looks at the protests and marches tactics of the Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), the Shack Dwellers’ movement; the electricity section looks at the silent direct action of illegal reconnections at Kennedy Road; and the water section briefly touches on the disconnections at Pemary Ridge and conditions at Kennedy Road, both settlements are collectively affiliated to AbM. These three cases show the most common tactics of direct action in the past year and some of the most immediate results that each of these actions has produced thus far. By looking at the reasons the actors gave for taking actions it is possible to understand the conditions that forced these direct actions that many may consider illegal, but were taken out of necessity to fulfill the basic needs of the actors. This paper is written from interviews with activists involved in the different actions, participant observation of Abahlali baseMjondolo, and newspaper articles. The conclusion will touch on issues of leadership and formalization of AbM and ideas on the “Third Force”, and again suggest that Direct Action had to be taken because there were no improvements from voting, the government, or corporations, and the actors were suffering without access to housing, electricity, and water.
Direct Action:
By acting at all, in any way, we overcome our passivity
and deny that we are helpless to affect change[5]
What forms will this action take?
All forms,--indeed, the most varied forms, dictated by circumstances, temperament, and the means at disposal. Sometimes tragic, sometimes humorous, but always daring; sometimes collective, sometimes purely individual, this policy of action will neglect none of the means at hand[6]
When the people of the shack settlements chant “No Land, No House, No Vote” as they are marching illegally up the road in Clare Estates, Durban, they are taking Direct Action. No longer will they be ignored and silenced by those who are supposed to represent them. Instead, the shack residents of Wards 23 and 25 have taken direct action and organized amongst themselves creating truly democratic body that responds to the requests of the people of each settlement. Direct action “seeks to exert power directly over affairs and situations which concern us. Thus it is about people taking power for themselves”, and it includes any number of actions. Some examples of direct action include: blockades, pickets, sabotage, squatting, occupations, establishing own organizations such as food co-ops and community access radio and TV, and taking and squatting the houses that we need to live in.[7] Indirect action is the form of action that the government favors most, and includes “forms of political action such as voting, lobbying, attempting to exert political pressure though industrial action or through the media”.[8] Direct action seeks to attain immediate results whereas indirect action, like voting, hopes for only for future remedies.
The living conditions for the South African poor has historically always been deplorable. This is due to Apartheids’ systematic economic deprivation of the majority of its population and the restrictions of populations into poverty stricken ghettos. In 1966, in an embellished condemnation of conditions in South Africa, Marshall B. Clinard wrote, “of all the slums on the entire earth, few are more appalling, both physically and socially, than those of South Africa populated exclusively by Africans, their filth, congestion, crime, promiscuous sex, and other slum conditions leave the inhabitants in a state of degradation”(italics added for emphasis).[9] Quite the proclamation, but, nonetheless, today in Durban, “10 years after the first democratic elections in South Africa, people still have to be exploited by backyard-landlords, walk kilometers for water even in the cities and shit in a hole in the ground (or a bucket).”[10] The living conditions in Durban have given rise to an active struggle of the poor against the eThekwiniMunicipality and their lack of housing provision and basic services including electricity and water.
This paper is framed on the idea that people have the ‘right’ to have certain basic needs met. The expression of ‘right’ is used because “as human being we have certain needs and that, to ensure that they are not denied us, we express them as rights. And then we insist on their observance”.[11] The rights that are in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that everyone has “the right to an adequate standard of life, including food, clothing, housing…” (italics added for emphasis). In the context of South Africa, the South African Constitution says of housing that “everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing”; of water that “everyone has the right to have access to sufficient food and water”; and of electricity, which is more ambiguous but arguably because of it health hazard from the fuel and fire hazards it could be given as, “everyone has the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being” and “everyone has the right to life”.[12] These are all ‘rights’ of basic needs that poor are taking their direct actions to achieve security of.
With reports that “the number of black people who believe life was better under the apartheid regime is growing” and that “tragically, more than 60 percent of all South Africans polled said the country was better run during white minority rule” it is fair to say that people are not seeing the service delivery they were promised by the government and private corporations.[13] The people of South Africa feel like the new government has betrayed them as they continue to live in shacks in sprawling shack settlements without electricity and running water and they see those around them in similar circumstances, while across the street they see new shopping malls and million dollar casinos being built. Through Direct Action they are calling attention to their conditions; “these protests reassert the right of the poor to take to the streets, and of the dignity of the place in which they live—places against which the middle class roll up their windows as they drive by”. [14]
Housing
MNIKELO NDABANKULU
Forman Road
“It’s a graveyard. It is fenced so it is safer. Who can steal a graveyard. They fenced all over. They just waste the tax- payers money on nothing. When you say ‘build houses for us’, they say, ‘there’s no money’.
There are street posts. These are electricity posts, these are the globes. This area is always light in the night, its always light in the night- there is electricity there. But as we are the residents, we are the human beings, we don’t have electricity. The dead have lights but the living are in darkness.
We don’t have proper houses but there are proper houses there. No people stay there, that house is always closed. There are proper houses in the graveyard. There is electricity in the graveyard.
That is what we are marching for- we don’t get it, but we don’t get it… that’s what we are marching for but the graveyard is not marching and they are getting it.”
Housing
Problems and Conditions
People who have everything just don’t care about other people. They say leave them like that, they used to that. If things are ‘ok’ for them, they are not ‘ok’ for everyone. Things are not ‘ok’ for us, the people who live in informal settlements. I want everyone to have a house, a house that doesn’t leak water when it rains, a house that you feel safe in.[15]
If we organize to be a march we are making them to be scared. The march makes them know what we want. How to raise our voices—the march is better. For what do you fight if you got everything you need. No fight if you have everything. Why are the white people, they’re not fighting—they got everything. But the only people who are fighting are the blacks—because they’re still struggling. They tell us we’ve go the freedom but we don’t see it. Where is the freedom. We are still staying in the shacks.[16]
According to a recent Witness article, “Despite government spending the number of households living in shacks rose from 1,45 million to 1,84 million—a startling 26% increase according to Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu” and that over 2, 4 million people are living in ‘conditions that are unacceptable in a country such as ours’”.[17] In the DurbanMunicipality it has been estimated that over 800 000 out of the city’s 3 million inhabitants live in informal structures.[18] Those who are living in informal structures are prevented from formalizing their structures, meaning they are not allowed to build with bricks or other formal material even if they could afford to.[19] The people living in these informal settlements face a lot of troubles including the obvious hardships of conditions in informal settlements, the increased hardship of conditions when services are removed—like Forman Road which had it’s toilets removed—in order to force people to move out of settlements areas, constant fear of having shacks torn down by bulldozers because of the ‘slum clearance’ program, and fear of forced removal to the rural periphery of the city limits.[20]
People suffer all these conditions because they come from the rural areas to the city to find work and “develop livelihoods, and to access decent education, health care, cultural and sporting facilities and so on are often extremely limited in rural areas and small towns.”[21] Most live in informal settlements for years searching for jobs or working as domestics in the neighborhood; some have been living at the same settlement since they were kids.[22] However, “shack communities are told they can’t get electricity and get only a few toilets and water because they are ‘temporary’ even if they’ve been living in the same place for years.”[23] The government continues to only recognizes informal settlements as temporary and so the conditions never improve. Fikile Nkosi, a 22 year old woman and a resident of Pemary Ridge, a shack settlement in the middle of an exclusive Reservoir Hills area, made it clear how residents feel about their situation as she sadly, looking out the door of her jondolo, says, “we need housing, we really need housing. We can’t stay like this, it’s very hard to stay in the jondolos. We are suffering everyday.”[24]
Why Action
“Protestors often rail against the failure of service delivery. More precisely, protestors cite not only the failure of service delivery, but the fact that they have constantly been promised delivery, and been betrayed”[25]
“I want to suggest that this violence is more than an outburst, but a sign of political maturity, a reasonable and valid reaction to ‘global civil society’. When the citizens of Kennedy Road resorted to violence they were engaging in a response to their situation which was effective and cognizant of the political parameters in play. A measure of this is the extent to which the government capitulated, or least in rhetoric, a week after the violence, by acknowledging the need for urban housing for poor people. Consultation had brought fifteen years of ‘bluffing’—now, after the violence, that is no longer possible”[26]
When different people were asked about if they think that marching is a better action to take than voting 100 percent of them agreed. Most of them cited the reason being that many “empty promises” were made during the election times by the politicians and then the community and the promises were forgotten and nothing happened until the next election when the politicians would come back and make more “empty promises”. System Cele explains “they promise us better life for all, houses, job opportunities, free education. I’m telling you, when it comes to voting their message is good”. The problem is, she further explains, “they forget all about us after they make all these promises. They just forget about us. They count their votes and they leave”.[27] And marching, she feels, makes them remember what they promised you. Marches leave them “shaking in their boots”, System says. Having been badly beaten by the police in the most recent march I wondered if this would affect her willingness to take action and march again, she answered that “if there is another authorized march—Hey, I am going to march. Because I am still living in the shacks and I will march until we get houses, jobs, free education, and ‘equal rights’”.[28]
Those interviewed explained that by putting the masses on the streets it called more attention to the problem—especially more attention than would be given if just one person were to go to Mayor Mlaba’s office and go “Hey, Mlaba, ‘No land, No housing, No vote!” If there is just one person, Fikile Nkosi explained, Mlaba would think “ooh, this stupid woman” but when you “organize a march— go into the streets, make a big noise, making big noise with lots of people. Then Mlaba will see these people are serious because I am suffering enough to go to the streets”.[29] The streets also were explained to be a good way to get attention through the media and make the people “all over the world see what they are doing for us and what they’re not doing for us. And some will say ‘carry on with marches because the government is not doing anything for you’”.[30]
Mnikelo Ndabankulu said, “the people march because the mayor, the media, the newspaper, they’ve started to notice. They started to see the people now really, really want houses.”[31] The marches have gotten the media’s attention. And many feel like the most recent favorable coverage of the peaceful Forman Road march being brutally repressed by the police is what has triggered the offers and put Abahlali baseMjondolo in a favorable negotiating position. As S’bu Zikode said at the meeting after the march, and before a meeting with the Mayor, “We are strong enough and big enough to tell them what we want”.[32]