I temba liyaphilisa:
Redefining Development Through the Joe Slovo Anti-Eviction Struggle
Alyssa Huff
Advised by Martin Legassick and Richard Pithouse
School for International Training
South Africa: Reconciliation and Development,Fall 2007
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………2
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………………4
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………….5
Background and Context
- Breaking New Ground? ………………………………………...……..11
- “There is a saying that Delft is not ok.”………………………….16
- “Delft is a Dessert” Concerns About Transport /Distance…….19
- “My breathing now, is hard”: Health Concerns……………….21
- The Ungovernable: Violence and Crime………………………23
- Delft Forever…………………………………………………..25
- The State of Joe Slovo…………………………...………………..26
Findings and Analysis
- Community Mobilization in Joe Slovo……………………………34
- “The task team has our same voice”………………………..…38
- What about the Women?...... 39
- Divisions in the Community: Mr. Pensi……………………….42
- “No one colonizes innocently”: The Marginilization and Othering of Informal Settlement Residents…………………………………43
- Democracy?...... 46
- Capital………………………………………………………....51
- ‘Marginalized in Physical Development’……………………...53
- Police Brutality………………………………………………...54
- Third Parties and Outside Support…………………………….....58
- Voices from the Dessert: Questions of Mobilization in Delft……65
- Looking Back: ‘Action is part of us, part of our blood’………....71
- Residents Imagine their communities…………………………73
Conclusion...... 76
Recommendations...... 77
Works Cited………………………………………………………………………...79
Primary Sources ……………………………………………………………….....79
Secondary Sources……………………………………………………………...80
Appendix A...... 85
Acknowledgements
Thank you to all of the members of the Joe Slovo task team and the Anti-Eviction Campaign who welcomed me into your communities with open arms, offered me innumerable glasses of cooldrink and hospitality, and let me attend meetings, court cases, and rallies.
I would like to give my sincerest thanks to Martin Legassick, who spent countless hours driving me into Joe Slovo, introducing me to some of the most amazing Anti-Eviction Campaign leaders, and accompanying me on trips to search for pumpkin pie filling. More than a wonderful advisor and friend, your work and continued involvement in struggles even after retirement, is a true inspiration and commitment which few dare to undertake.
Richard Pithouse also helped me infinitely, fielding outlines flying left and right, followed by frantic g-chat conversations, and extremely thought provoking talks in Corner Café. In him, I could not have found a more perfect advisor for where my academic interests lay, and his undying ethical compass and fight against repression was a guiding light in my research and in the consideration for my future.
It’s hard to know how to properly thank Mzwanele Zulu, who served as my translator, interview subject, and constant companion throughout the project. Your outlook on life and your sacrifices to redefine your community have touched me in a way that is hardly expressible. I think in you I have found a friend and inspiration for life.
Without the impressive academic prowess of John Daniel, the advice of Vanessa Nichol-Peters, the coordination of Shola, and the cheery check-in conversations with Langa, this project would not have been possible. Thanks to all of you for giving me the opportunity to study and research such an amazing and complex country.
I’d also like to thank all of the amazing students that I’ve met on this trip for thought proving conversations which lead to the completion of this project, countless hours of paper induced floor-flailing, companionship, and hours of hilarity. You have kept me sane and smiling
Thank you to my wonderful family for the opportunity to come here and for countless hours of emotional and academic support. One of the many things I’ve learned from the men and women of Joe Slovo is the true importance of family and I have to say I got pretty luck with mine. I’d also like to thank my friends from home, particularly Chris and Susannah who talked me through much of my research and whose work and passion inspires me to develop my own.
Lastly, I would like to thank the brave residents of Joe Slovo who’s struggle and optimism has helped to redefine my conceptions of participatory democracy, family, and hope. The members of the community were some of the most welcoming people I have ever met, and whose knowledge, intelligence, and courage humbles me.
As Proust once said, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” And for me, it is the family, friends, and strangers I have meet here, who have taught me to have, new eyes, to see and observe, for the simple act of doing so.
Abstract
In the post-Apartheid Era and in the interest of reconciliation, South Africa is faced with addressing massive inequality. Ranked only below Brazil as the most unequal country in the world, suitable housing and employment continue to be detriments to the ANC’s quest for ‘development status’. With a substantial constituency within informal housing, the delivery of effective and sustainable housing for the residents of informal settlements is pressing to say the least. The government, however, has not followed through on its campaign promises, and thousands of residents all over South Africa are currently refusing evictions.
This project explores the factors which have lead to the mobilization of the anti-eviction movements in informal settlements. More specifically, it uses interviews and observation of members of the Joe Slovo informal settlement anti-eviction mobilization, as well as interviews of Delft residents who have been relocated to TRA’s, or Temporary Relocation Areas. In analysis of my observations and interviews, I have sought to parallel the struggle against evictions and for inclusion with the negritude movement expressed by Aime Cesaire and Leopold Senghor. More importantly through the words of residents of Joe Slovo themselves, I have sought to contribute to the literature on informal settlements that often lacks this voice.
Introduction
“It's not difficult in South Africa for the ordinary person to see the link between capitalism and racist exploitation, and when one sees the link one immediately thinks in terms of a socialist alternative.” Joe Slovo, South African Communist Party politician and first ANC Minister of Housing
Today there are over a billion squatters globally (Catterall 2). This is, “almost one in six people on the planet (Squatters and the Cities of Tomorrow).” With this growth, by 2030 there will be two billion or more squatters globallyand by 2050 some three billion people will call squatter communities home. As many scholars have noted, there simply aren’t enough homes in existence to accommodate that number of people. Left with no other alternative, these communities have done what is human nature: they’ve constructed shelter for themselves. With fifty-percent of its city residents living in informal settlements, many of South Africa’s citizens (Abbott), like millions of people around the world, have had to provide themselves with housing where their government has neglected to. Since 2003, South African national housing policies have been directed at ‘eradicating’ informal settlements and focused on delivering as many government built houses as possible, with an end goal of wiping out informal settlements in South African by 2014. On a national and local level, the methods of removing informal settlements are well described by the term eradication. Daily, as I had first-hand experience of in Khayelitsha, informal settlement, residents are given a day’s notice to remove all of their belongings between their shacks are demolished. Many South African academics have equated the policy of evictions and the approach to housing with that of the Apartheid era, commenting that while race still plays a vital role, the current housing policy in South Africa has become class apartheid.
Joe Slovo informal settlement in Cape Town is one of these communities set for eradication. It was first erected in 1994 when a few hundred people began to occupy land near Langa that had been previously used as a dumping site. The population grew quickly---and within a couple of year thousands of families arrived from the Eastern Cape, in search of government housing. And Joe Slovo is not alone in this, with about 5 million South African households in the metropolitan areas, 650,000 of those families are living in shacks. In Cape Town alone, the number of informal shacks has increased from 24,000 in 1993 to 100,000 in 2003 (Legassick 104). A mere 12,000 of those 650,000, Joe Slovo residents named their community Joe Slovo, hoping to attract the attention of the first minister of housing and make him good on the ANC’s promise of shelter as a constitutional right.
In 2005 tragedy struck Joe Slovo. In January a massive fire in January swept Joe Slovo and the residents of Langa, leaving almost 3,800 people homeless according to the DAG Delft report. Many of the displaced families found shelter and support from their extended family (Mzwanele) but 2500 residents (DAG report) had to be accommodated in emergency shelter provided by the city. This tragedy prompted the mayor (Nomaindia Mfeketo) and provincial government who had denoted Joe Slovo as the first focus of the N2 Gateway project an arm of the Breaking New Ground housing policy, a response to increasing national and international pressure to address the housing gap by National Minister of Housing Dr Lindiwe Sisulu, to speed up the relocation of residents to Delft where 2000 TRA, or Temporary Relocation Areas, units had been built. Out of 17 possible relocation sites, Delft was decided on by the Housing Committee, a location which was notably decided on without consulting the victims of the fire or Joe Slovo residents. Delft is situated significantly outside of the resources and networks that Langa provided for them, and is an area notorious for limited employment and poor transportation.
Joe Slovo residents, faced with the prospect of moving far away from their livelihoods, communities, schools, and clinics to Delft, have formed a cohesive anti-eviction movement, whose protests have gained national attention. Their refusal to move has lead to a standstill on evictions which the city filed when residents first started resisting relocation; while a court case surrounding the evictions is being heard. "We are angry,”Mzwanele from the Joe Slovo Task Team said in a September 10th press release, “We want RDP house in Joe Slovo. We want the Department of Housing to stop moving our people to Delft. We refuse to be moved there. It is far from our workplaces and also from places where we look for work. Those of us who are not getting paid undecent salaries are spending every day looking for work. We can't and won't move. The government took this decision without consulting us and now they must change it( 2)."
Meanwhile, the residents of TRAs in Delft, who agreed to be moved there after promises of being returned to their community and livelihood in Joe Slovo in new RDP homes, have been left waiting for three years. According to an article by the Mail and Guardian dated October 5th, 65% of Delft’s temporary residents wish to move back to Joe Slovo or Langa while Joe Slovo residents are, “loath to move to Delft because their social and economic networks will be severely disrupted.” Moreover a report on Delft complied by the Development Action Group found that 63% of people moved from Joe Slovo to Delft have lost their jobs. Yet, unlike Joe Slovo, Delft residents have not formed or mobilized task teams or actions to either demand to move back or request different housing arrangements.
This study sought to explore the mobilization of the highly effective anti-eviction movement of Joe Slovo residents that has gained national attention. My interest and objectives were twofold. I first attempted to ask and examine how anti-eviction movements become mobilized and successful in the face of eviction from informal settlements. Secondly, I attempted to answer why, if many residents of Delft are unhappy with their conditions and location, hasn’t a stronger community committee, similar to that in Joe Slovo, formed in Delft? In asking these questions, I sought to analyze the role of consultation in housing development policies and programs, and to examine its effects on the communities that ‘development’ proposes to help.
To gain insight into these questions I conducted 15 interviews, three in Delft, three in QQ section, and nine in Joe Slovo. In Joe Slovo I interviewed five community members and four task team members. While these interviews were extremely helpful and answered many of the questions that arose during my research, the time I spent around Joe Slovo, sitting and chatting to residents was most important. I spent many days doing one or two interviews, but staying and hanging out with Mzwanele for the majority of the day, playing with Mrs. Gaqa’s children, and sitting with men as they played checkers. I was also privileged enough to spend time with Martin Leggasick, Nzonke, and Mnce of the Anti-Eviction campaign as they supported and aided Joe Slovo residents in organizing the march for November 28th. In just merely being there, I was able to observe the process of planning the rally, to attend the court case of eight Joe Slovo residents for ‘inciting public violence, community and task team meetings, and to participate in the rally that took place on the 28th of November. It was this experience, personal and first-hand, that allowed me to understand the struggle of Joe Slovo and the situation in Delft.
With more time, this study and the number of interviews I completed would have been more fleshed out and more complete. This is a subject that many academics have spent their lives writing about, and I only completed a small survey of a complex struggle.
Using Mzanele Zulu, a member of the task team and the community, as my translator necessarily biases the interviews to some degree. Community relations are extremely complex interactions and situations, ones which as an outsider only there for a month I would never pretend to understand. Moreover, there are a number of community dynamics and voices I did not get to hear in my short time, and short introduction to the community. For example in interest of not disrupting the task teams’ activities and creating conflict in the community, I refrained from interviewing Mr. Pensi, the decided voice of opposition to the task team’s work. Avoiding divergences within the community because of my presence proved far more important to me than getting every interview.
As I was completing my research during the planning of several rallies, preparation for the court case, and the awaiting of several trials, the Joe Slovo task team and its community constituency was excited, tense, hopeful. In many ways this was the best possible time I could have interviewed them. But numerous arrests and visits from government officials and academics with an agenda, had made the task team very worried about confidentiality and information leaking to the state before the court case. I was in many ways allowed to have access to privileged information and gain the trust of Mzwanele, and I did not disrespect this by probing into questions which he declined answering. This is a limitation in the information I was able to gain access to. This was also a limitation in Delft, where community members are extremely concerned about talking to academics, journalist, NGO workers for fear that the Department of Housing will see their name linked to oppositional activity and take them off the waiting list for housing.
Moreover, I choose to use a translator, as interview subjects desired, to allow them to express their ideas fully in the language they were most comfortable with. As they say, something is always lost in translation, and though I made a concerted effort to make sure the words that were translated actually belonged to the interview subject, and were expressed correctly in English, I’m sure much was lost.
In completing this study I have sought to record the voices and statements of a very complex struggle. In doing so, I hope they will be heard and respected in the way which they ought. That their organization, autonomy, and passion can serve as an example to other informal settlement struggles, and a message to their government which refuses to listen.
Background and Context
I. Breaking New Ground?
The Breaking New Ground legislation is seen as the governments’ response to the constitutional courts’ 2000 ruling in ‘Grootboom case,’ which found that the governments’ informal settlement policy was failing to either respond or provide sufficient housing. The court ruled that the constitutional right to adequate health care was being denied across the nation. The Cape Town Metropolitan area is no exception. According to Legassick, by 2005 the housing backlog in the Western Cape, “was being estimated at 360,000 units and the backlog in the Cape Town metropolitan area at 260-265,000 (31),” while 16,000 new families moved to Cape Town each year, and Cape Town’s, “waiting list grew by 25,000 a year(31).” Legassick further reveals that in 2005 there were a half million people living in 98, 031 shacks in 156 to 170 informal settlements in the Cape Town metropolitan area, with the average waiting period for a home taking 12-18 years.