Itemba liyaphilisa: Redefining Development Through the Joe Slovo Anti-Eviction Struggle

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Itemba liyaphilisa: Redefining Development Through the Joe Slovo Anti-Eviction Struggle

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 globally and 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.
The mission of the Breaking New Ground legislation is notable as it was the first South African housing policy created to address the needs of informal settlements; previous policies had simply viewed informal settlements as a failure in housing delivery. The Breaking New Ground Plan proposed not only lessening informal settlements but actually eradicating them. In her article, The New Instrument of Upgrading Informal Settlements in South Africa: Contributions and constraints Marie Huchzermeyer argues that due to national press on informal settlements, the publishing of reviews of South African democracy, the appointment of Housing Minister Bridget Mbandla, and lastly the support given to the ANC in the 2004 elections, the national government was forced to develop ‘Breaking New Ground.’ The policy was earmarked to address the Department of Housing’s identified causes of informal settlements. It set goals to ‘eradicate’ informal settlements through contained poverty eradication, reduced vulnerability, and inclusion. Though it was an objective and policy adopted by the National Housing Minister, the implementation of Breaking New Ground would be done by all three levels of government, with the majority of work falling on the shoulders of local government. Local governments are therefore given much of the responsibility for implementing and managing policy, but little to no say in its formation.
The ‘Breaking New Ground’ proposal started by identifying nine pilot projects; the N2 Gateway project was at the top of the list, calling on municipal governments to identify informal settlements to upgrade and relocate. According to the ‘Breaking New Ground Proposal’ drainage, storm-weather intervention, and the engineering of steps on slopes are land upgrading developments enabled through the Informal Settlement Upgrading Program. ‘Breaking New Ground’ also encourages municipalities to make unused livable land available at no cost for relocations, in order to alleviate middleclass fears of informal resident invasion near costly homes.
Under the Breaking New Ground national initiative, the provincial government in the Western Cape developed the N2 Gateway project as its flagship provincial project. It aimed to construct 22,000 houses with the intention of housing 100,000 residents at a cost of R1,6 to R3 billion (Legassick 41), and denoted the shack settlements of Boys Town, Joe Slovo, Lusaka, Vukuzenzele, Gxagxa, Barcelona, Kanana, Lotus Canal, Europe, New Rest, and Bunga, as well as 4,000 houses in District Six. Mayor Mfeketo has said, “The N2 Gateway project is an important element and trail blazer for national housing initiatives. City residents can rest assured that it is not the only housing opportunity. It is part of an overall strategy to consolidate people’s needs, housing opportunities and, importantly, all the community facilities that bind people together CapeGateway).”
The reality of implementation however has proved a stark contrast. The initial optimism of both government officials and informal settlement dwellers was quickly squashed. Though the government originally proposed to provide residents with attractive three story flats with courtyards and community space, in reality they planned to provide residents with, “three people per bedsit and six to a one-bedroom flat and the only three bedroom houses would be located in Delft (Legassick 47).” Moreover, the housing proposed for N2 is unaffordable to residents of informal settlements, making it impossible for them to stay in the communities they’ve been living in for years. Minister Sisulu said that 70% rental and only 30% ownership which would either grant subsidies to members of informal settlements or put housing allocations on a lottery system, leaving residents of the sites that N2 was to be developed few guarantees that they would ever return once relocated. Moreover the Sunday Times reported that, Shanaaz Majiet, head of local government in the province announced that to be able to own a unit in the N2 Gateway Project, people would have to finance the difference between their R31,000 subsidy and the projected cost of R68, 000 of the unit (Sunday Times 8/5/05).

The National Housing Ministry, moreover, has vested interests in seeing the N2 Gateway project succeed. As Huchzermeyer argues in her article, and Martin Legassick confirms in his book, the FIFA announcement that South Africa had won the World Cup bid, heightened and changed objectives in the Breaking New Ground program. Specifically, housing that could be seen by visiting fans, making clear and visible the existence of poverty in South Africa, was pushed to be transformed into, “respectable built environments (Huchzermeyer 45).” An November 30th IRIN News article further reported, “The multimillion-dollar N2 Gateway housing project, situated adjacent to the highway, will change the first impression hundreds of thousands of international visitors have of the city – which reaps hundreds of millions of dollars from tourism – as they will travel past a formal housing estate rather than a squatter camp on their way to the city.”
The implementation of Sisulu’s pet project has not been going well, however. The project has been wrought with internal disputes on the city, provincial, and national level and the exclusion of the City of Cape Town by the National Government further complicated the city driven Emergency Servicing of Informal Settlements plan. As the September 12th Cape Argus reported, “Since the launch in 2004 of N2 Gateway, Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s pet ‘flagship’ project has run into problem after problem: delayed delivery, cost over-runs, above all lack of consultation.” The IRIN News reported further that within a year of the launch of the N2 gateway project which contracted to be managed by Thubelisha Homes, “was beset with problems ranging from inter-governmental infighting and cost overruns to a lack of consultation with residents and strikes by construction workers (11/30/07).”

Due to the poor management and implementation of the N2 Gateway project Helen Zille expressed her concern with the project saying, “it was flawed and had become ‘a poisoned chalice’ (IRIN News11/30/07).” After Zille’s comments the ANC National Housing Ministry fired the city council from role as a partner in the project’s implementation. The Western Cape Provincial government with the National Housing Ministry then took full control over the project.

Furthermore, in Informal Settlement Upgrading in Cape Town: Challenges, constraints and contradictions within local government, Nick Graham, writes about the Emergency Servicing of Informal Settlements Project, implemented to deal with residents of Langa and Joe Slovo effected by the January fire, to exhibit the challenges that local governments face when confronted with upgrading informal settlements. In 2004, the city of Cape Town shifted its outlook towards informal settlements with both the Grootboom case and ANC’s election, and consequential securing of control in Cape Town. Both of these factors prompted the eradication of informal settlements, to gain prominence on the city agenda.

The Emergency Servicing of Informal Settlements or (ESIS) is a three set upgrading plan designed by the city of Cape Town to acknowledge that, “The poorest of the poor rely on government to deliver on their aspirations and that the government has to move faster to address challenges of poverty eradication and second economy interventions.” The system consists of three stages of incremental upgrading. Upgrading would consist of phase one: basic service provision, phase two: tenure and full services, and phase three: formal housing. Graham reports that though the Mayor of Cape Town pledged that phase one of this program would be completed by June 2004, without consulting the actual implementers of the plan. According to Graham’s analysis lack of land, community politics, red tape, and a difficulty in accessing funds/ resources for the upgrade were all limitations faced by the implementers of the ESIS project. More importantly, he found three major discrepancies between the Breaking New Ground policy’s philosophy and its implementation on a local level. Program planning and the procurement of funds are often overshadowed or shaped by political alliances or promises made by the municipal government. Thus the N2 Gateway project has been set substantially off course.

II. “There is a saying that Delft is not ok.”

Residents of Joe Slovo were relocated to Delft about 15km away from their homes in Langa. Delft, far away from the train access, job opportunities, school systems, and social networks of Langa, has proved to be more of a curse than a blessing for the many families who moved there in hope of a better future for their children and a home for their families. While the sheer conditions which residents of Delft are subjected to living in are appalling, concerns which have been revealed both in interviews documented in Development Action Group’s Delft Report entitled Living on the Edge and interviews that I conducted personally reveal the tenuous existence economically, socially, and mentally that is every day reality for Delft residents.

Delft was not the National Housing Committee’s first choice for relocation of Langa and Joe Slovo fire victims. As is revealed in the DAG Delft report, the city of Cape Town placed notices in the local newspapers stating the city’s intention to use two plots in Epping for sites of TRAs to house the January fire victims. This followed procedure, as is stipulated by the Environmental Conservation Act. About 1500 letters of objection were received, from the Epping Industrialists Association and the Pinelands Residents who appointed legal representatives to act on the matter (DAG report 4). In light of the objections and appointment of the attorney it became clear to the city that Epping was no longer an option, as they deemed the time and cost of a long court case, unproductive the set up of TRAs.
Moreover, when 500 TRAs were erected in Langa there were strong ojections from Langa residents, and the only piece of land they approved for victims of the fire was the unused Transnet site, or ‘Intersite site,’ on the edge of Langa, behind Zimasa Primary School, close to the Tent City that was erected after the fire. The Transnet site was a former hostel for railway workers and the City of Cape Town received permission from Intersite to erect TRAs for a handful of fire victims.

The city then earmarked Delft as their best option and residents of Joe Slovo and victims from the fire were asked to start moving into TRAs in Delft. The Mail and Guardian report titled ‘We don’t want to move to Delft’ by Pearlie Joubert, reported that the removal of Joe Slovo residents to two areas in Delft where TRAs were quickly built, but residents have been waiting for permanent housing in these TRAs for the last three years. The areas have been named “Tsunami” and “Thubelisha,” Thubelisha after the development firm contracted to manage the N2 Gateway project by the national government and Tsunami, the residents say got its name because “it’s a disaster waiting to happen (Joubert)”. According to the article, “the TRAs are made up of 24m2 houses closely packed together. A Reconstruction and Development Programme house is generally 30m2. Communal standpipes and communal ablution blocks stand between the houses, which are prefabricated and made of corrugated fibre-reinforced cement. There are no individual plots for each box house, which has one room (1).”

Deflt, a good forty minutes outside of the city center with no traffic, seems to appear out of nowhere. Sand clouds one’s view as tin structures appear on the flat corroded earth, and scarcely a soul is in sight. Most of the entrances to the TRA settlement are blocked off by city construction vehicles and cement blocks, forcing motorists wishing to drive into Thubelisha or Tsunami to go through the older established colored community of Delft RDP type houses built during the Apartheid era. Disgruntled stares meet visiting development workers and construction cars, as many of the older Delft residents await housing and amenities from the Housing Department themselves.

The image of the TRA settlement is a stark one. Rows and rows of fiber and tin boxes sit on the blowing sand, as women futilely shake out front door mats. Unlike the clusters of imjondolo in Joe Slovo and neighborly visits, the residents of Delft keep to their own homes, and children are seldom allowed to play in the streets or in between houses. There is little color save the spray painted number allocated to each house by Thubelisha and home improvements have been forbidden to prevent any informal shacks or additions being added onto TRAs.

The houses are very small one room structures, in which families have had to put up scrap wood to maintain privacy, among sometimes nine family members sharing one TRA. The majority of the households in Delft do not have electricity and the DAG survey of the area reports that the communal toilers, taps and showers have not been kept up since residents were moved there. All of the residents that I interviewed reported that the toilets had been closed for a year because they were not maintained. They also said that water was turned off during the day, forcing residents to wait in line at the water tap at five in the morning. Only a few spaza shops and shebeens have been started in the TRA section of Delft in the three years that residents have been living there and many of the women in the community can be seen going to the older, established part of Delft daily to buy bread and paraffin.

As their situation and amenities continue to deteriorate, Delft residents are starting to loose hope that they will actually ever receive formal housing. Mbantu Mazikile came to Delft from Joe Slovo because he was promised that he would be able to return once the N2 Gateway project was finished. “The ANC councilor promised that they will build us permanent houses in Langa. My family and I left with only our clothes and bedding and with the promise that we can return to Langa once they’ve built houses,” Mazikile say (Joubert). But instead of returning to Langa, Delft residents are met with the prospect of receiving permanent housing only in Delft, that is if they qualify for it, and a laundry list of complaints against the unlivable conditions which they’ve been put in. As the DAG survey completed in Feburary and March of 2007 found, 68% of the residents reported that they were unhappy with the move to Delft and the TRA’s they were being housed in. This unhappiness was reflected in the interviews I conducted both with residents of Delft and the horror stories, and fears that Joe Slovo interview subjects revealed to me. Both Delft residents and Joe Slovo residents responses were centered around three main concerns, the location of Delft and the increased cost of transport, the health conditions in the TRAs, and the increased violence in the TRA settlement that has resulted from the estrangement of residents from the community and the strained relation with the colored community of Delft.

“Delft is a Dessert”: Concerns About Transport/Distance
According to the DAG survey, the lack of affordable transportation from Delft was the major source of unhappiness and extra expenditures by families (16). Further analysis of the survey found that, “Almost all respondents (95%) felt that the income or expenditure of the household had changed significantly as a result of moving to the Delft TRA compared to where they had lived before. Without exception, people who felt that there had been a significant change said that there had been an increase in expenditure” and went on to say that the main reasons residents cited for increased expenditures were paraffin for gas (as Delft does not have electricity) and increased transport costs. This increased expenditure for transportation has taken a very real toll on many of the residents. Sixty-three percent of people moved from Joe Slovo to Delft have lost their jobs (DAG). Thirty-four percent responded that, “someone in their household has lost their job or is no longer able to find employment as a result of moving to Delft (18).” The stories and fears are numerous.

Bongiwe Notshokouu a thirty year old woman who moved to Joe Slovo from the Transkei to marry her husband in 2002 said, she’s not happy with the fact that people are moving to Delft. “There is a saying that Delft is not ok.” People are far from taxis and work. Children are far from schools especially coming from Langa because they would have to pay for transport. In Delft most people are not working. Those that are aren’t receiving decent salaries. Usually people go to look for work at Epping, Rilands, and Gateville. In Delft they can’t do that (Bongiwe Notshokouu 11/14).

Moving from Langa to Delft has put a financial burden on Banoyolo Mqalelo’s family. She admits, “My husband now travels to work by taxi and it costs R100 week. In Langa it only cost R70 a month (Banoyolo Mqalelo 11/23/07).” She also goes back to visit her friends in Langa frequently, as she has not made very many friends in Delft. This is a twelve Rand round trip and another expenditure that has to be factored into the family budget.

A Joe Slovo resident Mandela Sarjin said, “I am sympathetic with the people who agreed to move to Delft because their living conditions are not good and some have lost their jobs. Delft is far away and poor for work places. They are struggling to look for jobs. There is also a market in Langa where people can get food and earn money selling things. My children are also going to school in Langa and my income is not enough to send them to school from Delft (Mandela Sarjin 11/19/07).”
Potise Dumezweni, an old man who is unsure of his age because of forgery during the Apartheid era for work papers, says he doesn’t want to go to Delft. He is seeing doctors in Langa and he won’t be able to see them if he goes to Delft because of the distance and cost of transport. “Delft is a desert (Potsie Dumezweni 11/19/07),” he warned.

Gloria Gaqa is a 34 year old mother who has four children, ages 15,12,5, and 3. She has been living in Joe Slovo since 2000 when she moved to her current umjondolo with her husband. She came from Zuntu (on the other side of Langa) where she was living. “Living here is not good actually but this area is central. There should be houses built here instead of Delft. I have a lot of children so that’s why I don’t want to move to Delft. No transportation there, no schools, no train, and no taxi. Lots of murders in Delft and people breaking in and hurting children. It’s not right. Here I have four rooms: a sitting room, a bathroom, a bedroom, and a room for the children. In Delft they have one room. No room even for all their things (Gloria Gaqa 11/14/07).”

“My breathing now, is hard” : Health Concerns

Many of the residents of both Delft and Joe Slovo were extremely concerned about the health of their families due to the broken toilets and, particularly because of the asbestos that is rumored to exist in the building materials of the TRAs. It turns out these rumors are right; the November 30th Mail and Guardian, titled a Lethal Find reported the finding of crocidolite, a lethal finding of asbestos in the materials used to build the temporary housing in Delft. Crocidolite is one of the most lethal forms of asbestos which causes untreatable, aggressive lung cancer. The article was based on an affidavit which Chris Harris a professor at the University of Cape Town submitted to the Joe Solvo eviction case due to take place December 12th. Both Tubelisha and the Department of Housing have denied that these findings are accurate and have implied that the material used for the analysis was not the material that was used to in the TRAs. “The government has been moving Joe Slovo residents into the temporary relocation areas (TRA) in Delft called ‘Tsunami’ and ‘Thubelisha for the past three years and has claimed consistently that the material used to construct the temporary houses is reinforced fiber cement and not asbestos (‘Lethal Find’ Mail and Guardian). Though Thubelisha denies that the material is in fact from the TRA’s, Everite the company contracted to produce the materials, confirmed that the serial numbers on the pieces of material from which the samples, “belonged to the firm (‘Lethal Find’ Mail and Guardian).”

Banoyolo Mqalelo came from Joe Slovo and moved to Delft originally because her house was destroyed in the fire. She spent three months living in the temporary tent settlement and was then moved to a TRA in Delft in 2005. When I interviewed her she had just moved been moved into an RDP home in Delft. Her new home is a four bedroom duplex shared with another family, and even during the day, one could hear her neighbors talking and music blaring. The walls are corroded and there already water marks starting to form. She has been living in her RDP home for three months and as of yet, there has been no electricity installed. She and her family have had to use paraffin, which has upped their monthly expenditure on ‘electricity’ by R100 a month. Business, she says is booming here because people are making a living selling paraffin to all of the residents relocated to the RDP homes. Banoyolo now has to frequent the market every day because, as she said, “Milk sours in a day (11/23/07).” She has a refrigerator in her kitchen that sits unused and admits that at first it was hard to adjust to not having electricity like she did in the TRAs, but she is getting by. She hopes to have electricity by January. Banoyolo is happy to have her new RDP home in Delft despite the lack of electricity. It is infinitely better than living in the TRA’s, as she said, “The conditions in the TRAs were bad. They glued the toilets closed because nobody cleaned them and you have to wake up at five in the morning to get water before they shut it off for the day. The walls had the asbestos,” she added, “the children couldn’t breath (Banoyolo Mqalelo 11/23/07).”

Thandiwe Mafuta lives in one of the TRAs in Tsunami, which has no electricity. The TRA that she has been assigned is one room, and her family has had to put up cardboard separators to make the space more livable. They have also connected electricity illegally from a neighbor and pay R150 month, as opposed to the R50 they paid in Joe Slovo. The entire interior was painted a powder pink, a solution Thandiwe explained to the asbestos that they could feel when they breathed. Thandiwe originally moved to Delft because of, “the promises of houses being built in Joe Slovo (Thandiwe Mafuta 11/23/07).”

The Ungovernable: Violence and Crime

Residents in Delft admitted that the amount of crime in Delft was a constant worry while residents of Joe Slovo gravely feared the tragedy that crime would wreak on their families if they were forced to move to Delft. The Mail and Guardian report titled ‘We don’t want to move to Delft’ by Pearlie Joubert, reported that, “Parts of Delft are pitch dark at night and it’s virtually impossible to do conventional and adequate policing here – the criminals use this and robberies and rape are massive problems in Delft,” a local policeman says.

Not only were basic services not provided, Banyolo said, but the TRA’s were frightening. “In the TRA’s there was a lot of crime. If they knew there were no husbands around they kicked the door and took all of your things. When you went to work or to the market they took your bag (Banoyolo Mqalelo 11/23/07).” She added about Joe Slovo, “Both women and men are safer here than they are in Delft. There have been more incidents of rape and murders and some house breaking [in Delf] (Bongiwe Notshokouu 11/14).”

Gloria Gaqa another resident of Joe Slovo said, “I have a lot of children so that’s why I don’t want to move to Delft. No transportation there, no schools, no train, and no taxi. Lots of murders in Delft and people breaking in and hurting children. It’s not right. Here I have four rooms: a sitting room, a bathroom, a bedroom, and a room for the children. In Delft they have one room. No room even for all their things (Gloria Gaqa 11/14)” When I asked her about crime in Joe Slovo she said, “It is safer to live here than Delft with the TRA’s. People can kick the doors of the TRA’s in much easier than our doors here. When they do that they hurt you, but also the asbestos falls. People say they have flu and colds all the time there now; it is the asbestos. In Delft there are communal toilets and no electricity. This is causing a problem during the night because people are breaking in (Gloria Gaqa 11/14).”
Nosandile Galadaw, a Joe Slovo resident who is resisting moving to Delft said, “The people that have moved from Joe Slovo to Delft have become corrupt, drinkers, and addicted to drugs because they loose their jobs.”

As Thandiwe Mafuta, a Delft resident said, “We must go to the field because the toilets are locked (11/23/07).” She admitted that especially as a woman, going to the fields was a major risk and no one except a few men would go at night.

Delft Forever

As the DAG Delft report concluded, “The future of the residents of the Delft TRA is uncertain (8).” Many of the TRA residents desperately await housing, and though a few families have received RDP housing in Delft, there has been no indication as to when the others can expect to receive homes. Moreover, there are also families anxiously awaiting homes in Delft who lost their homes in the Joe Slovo fire, but do not qualify for government housing subsidies, and as the DAG report states, “this issue has not yet been resolved (8).” The families moved into TRAs in Delft may face an even more tenuous situation than they themselves realize. The DAG report hypothesizes that: “Due to the high demand for cemetery sites in Cape Town and the fact that Phase Four is built on a site intended for permanent housing, all four Phases of the Delft TRA could at some stage be dismantled and all traces that a TRA was once there will be removed (9).”

III. The State of Joe Slovo

Joe Slovo informal settlement, named after the late minister of housing, is an outgrowth of Langa township in Cape Town. Joe Slovo sits between the buffer strips to the south and east of Langa in view of the N2 Gateway. It neighbors the hostel area in Langa which was originally built to house migrant workers during Aparthied. Shacks weave between the hostel flats and into a site that was formally used for dumping waste from Langa’s homes. Residents of Joe Slovo make use of the abundant resources which Langa offers—namely its frequented market, train station, schools and nearby hospitals. Many men walk to Epping and neighboring factories for temporary jobs or more permanent job inquiries. Because of its superb location, Joe Slovo has grown rapidly and by 2003 had grown to 5,451 dwellings in a 30 Ha area (DAG report). As the Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Statement on August 2nd stated, “All the Joe Slovo children are at local schools in Langa, which also has clinics and employment projects. The vast majority of Joe Slovo residents are unemployed and only get piece work in the city centre from time to time. It will cost them R16 per day per child in taxi fare from Delft to Langa and back to send their children to school.”
In 2004, Joe Slovo residents learned of the proposed Breaking New Ground Development plan and after the tragic fire that displaced 3,800 people (DAG report) they learned of the Housing Minister’s sped up plan to relocate Joe Slovo residents to far away Delft.

After many were moved to Delft and spoke of its horrors, the remaining residents of Joe Slovo did not sit quietly by. The men in the community organized a task force and approached the community with ideas for action. As Zithulele Nogsi said “The task team was nominated when the large group of men met to decide that they needed action. After we were elected, we started to go door to door and tell people what was going on (11/25/07).”

After attempting to express their position to representatives from Tubelisha and their ANC representative, with no response to calls and frustrating meetings, the residents of Joe Slovo decided to have a march to bring government and media attention to their situation. Zithulele explained, “First we decided to have a march to the housing department in Cape Town and went to Helen Zille and she said she can’t be involved because it is a national government issue. So we started to have meetings with the housing minister. We raised our problems with Delft to him but he didn’t respond to our worries (11/25/07).” As an Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Release covering the Joe Slovo N2 Gateway march reported, “The residents marched on 21 Sept last year (2006) to provincial housing minister, Dyantye, they were met with no response; several fruitless meetings were held with him but the essential dispute remained.” The housing ministry started the implementation of the second phase of the N2 gateway project and promised very little to the residents of Joe Slovo whose homes they would be uprooting to build bond houses there. As Zithulele Nogsi said, ““They started building bond houses. They said there is too little land for us. So we decide to make a march outside of Parliament and gave them seven days to respond to our memorandum. But they don’t come to us. They only came to the papers and TV (11/25/07).”

When the government officials that the Joe Slovo community had helped elect refused to speak with them, and continued to respond only in media comments, the Joe Slovo task team discussed their options at a community meeting. Zithulele Ngosi told me, “So we decide to go to N2. It was 2 am in the morning. Everybody was there and we were burning tires. We made a small bridge across the river because we know the police will chase us. When we got there the police were already there. We closed the road in peak traffic and at half past four in the morning the morning the police started shooting (11/25/07).” As a Cape Times article titled, N2 Protest Ultimatum reported, that protestors started to gather in the vacant slot earmarked for the N2 Gateway housing project around 4am. Despite extreme police brutality, the brave residents of Joe Slovo stood their ground. On Monday September 10th, a Joe Slovo Shackdwellers Task Team Press Report Stated, that the residents were, “protesting their imminent forced removal to the wasteland of Delft, over 30kms away. They have held the highway for almost 5 hours and are refusing to move.” The article also report that more than 30 marchers had been, “seriously injured by police who shot them with rubber bullets at very close range.” During the N2 rally, Zithulele explained, violence reached its height, “(After they started shooting) we go back because then we say the only way they can stop us is to kill us. Some guys with cars volunteer to take people to the hospital. We were about 7,000 by then. The police say they need to talk to us and then start shooting us and they went between the shacks to hunt us down. They shot even the old men, they didn’t worry (Zithulele Nogsi 11/25/07).”

The N2 march left Helen Zille and members of the housing ministry furious and concerned about the future of the N2 project which had already been hailed by many as a flop. Instead of responding to the marchers’ memorandum, the minister decided to take forcible action. An Anti-Eviction Campaign press release dated Monday September 24th reported that the Ministry of Housing had applied for a court order to, “allow them to forcibly remove 100 families per week for the next 45 weeks.” The Mail and Guardian article of September 29th entitled Victory for Joe Slovo Residents further commented on the true intentions of N2 developer observing, “On Wednesday, an entire Bench in court was taken up by senior government and housing officials all anxious to secure eviction orders so they can start the relocation of about 5 000 homeless Joe Slovo residents — “relocation” is the preferred term used by the political authorities these days for “forced removals”. The case was to be held in court the following Wednesday. The Joe Slovo residents however, knew that being evicted and moved to Delft meant social and economic death. Unable to attain adequate legal representation in time, the task team organized transport for 5,000 residents to go to the court and file an objection to the eviction papers. The residents had to represent themselves and had to file individual notices of intention to oppose the application of eviction from the housing minister. A September 26 2007 IOL article by Fatima Schroeder titled 5 000 at court to fight N2 evictions called it, “A day Cape High Court officials will probably never forget.” It took the court and employees from Nongogo and Nuku Attorneys over five hours to stamp each individual petition to oppose the evictions, and had to set up tables outside the court to process all five hundred petitions (Mail and Guardian 9/29/07). When Cape Judge John Hlophe received the 5,000 applications from Joe Slovo opposing the government application to evict the 25,000 Joe Slovo residents he ordered a nine-week postponement on evictions, severely disrupting the government’s plan of evicting 100 familes a day to Delft (Joubert). When residents received the news, the Mail and Guardian report titled ‘We don’t want to move to Delft’ by Pearlie Joubert, reported that, “the 2 000 people outside court broke into wild celebratory song,” because, “Every week people are allowed to stay in Joe Slovo is seen as another victory against the state’s attempt to remove them forcibly to the outskirts of Cape Town.” Presiding judge Hlophe also gave the residents of Joe Slovo a week to obtain legal representation. The Mail and Guardian article of September 29th entitled Victory for Joe Slovo Residents reported, that Judge Hlophe advised that the community contact the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) and the community contacted Steve Kahanovitz from the LRC, whose article on informal settlement development task team leaders had previously read. After reading the article and speaking with him at the LRC, the task team regarded him as a comrade and after the consent of Mr. Kahanovitz, appointed him as their lawyer.

The National Housing Ministry did not take the court order seriously however. A September 26 Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Statement reported that the state had sold the land which Joe Slovo is located on to First National Bank for a, “a paltry R5 million,” while it has assigned, ‘Thubelisha Homes (the BEE company which builds poor quality houses across the country) with removing the current residents from the land.” In response to this move by the state, the Joe Slovo task team, with the aid of Anti-Eviction Campaign, began to plan a march to Thubelisha and FNB to condemn their involvement and complicacy in the eviction of Joe Slovo residents. Meanwhile the task team has also been working diligently on the court case with Steve Kahanovitz, compiling affidavits and putting together evidence.

When I approached the task force, they were beginning to plan the march to Thubelisha and FNB on November 28th. As I accompanied Mzwanele Zulu to apply for permission from the city for the rally and Martin Legassick to arrange for buses to pick up supporters from Delft, Guguletu and section QQ, it was clear that, like any event, hours of work went on behind the scenes to make the march possible. Mzwanele made multiple trips into town to meet with city police to arrange the route of marchers, actively making sure that it was clear to the city and the police that it was to be a peaceful, fully legal march.
The Anti-Eviction Campaign, a network of community organizations that provides a crucial support system for community leaders fighting eviction around the Western Cape, approached Joe Slovo leaders informally when they heard of the evictions. Nzonke Poni, a leader from section QQ and Martin Legassick have been the most involved Anti-Eviction Campaign Members in the Joe Slovo evictions. As is their standard method, the Anti-Eviction Campaign approaches communities whom they’ve heard have been evicted, and ask them if they want support. During my stay, I witnessed one such meeting. Martin and Mnce, both members of the Anti-Eviction Campaign, were driving and saw that the shacks across from the Guguletu Seven Monument had been torn down. We knew the demolitions were recent as we’d seen them intact just the day before. We stopped and Mnce arranged a meeting with community leaders, arranging a time when everyone would be available. We went back a second morning and spent several hours talking to residents and waiting to meet with the leaders of the community. The Anti-Eviction Campaign’s approach with Joe Slovo was similar, and they have continued to aid them in what ever avenue the Joe Slovo task team sees fit, most recently in preparations for the march.

The community prepared for the march as well. At the community meeting, members spoke out urging their neighbors, brothers, and sisters to attend. The task force prepared lists of community members going and figured costs for train fare. The Anti-Eviction Campaign brought the task team extra banners, fliers, and signs to distribute amongst the marchers. The march was to be on Wednesday the 28th of November, starting at the train station, going up Adderly street to reach the offices of Thubelisha and then toyi toyi-ing to the head branch of FNB. The task team and the Anti-Eviction Campaign had prepared memorandums to be delivered to both officials at Thubelisha and FNB, asking them to stop doing business that would evict communities from their homes.

The day of the march there was tension in the air. Members of the Anti-Eviction Campaign anxiously awaited the arrival of the Joe Slovo residents at the train station while, Martin Legassick coordinated the buses arrival from Delft, QQ, and Guguletu. Media slowly started to gather around the members of the Anti-Eviction Campaign who donned red t-shirts that declared, “Stop the evictions!,” “Housing for all!.” asking apathetically for interviews and commenting that “Mr. Zulu” didn’t seem to have time for them. When the residents of Joe Slovo arrived, the excitement was visible in the air. 1,000 marchers poured out of the entrance the train station and men, women, and children waved signs that said, “We are not Europe! We live here,” “Housing for All,” “Down with FNB, Down with Thubelisha,” “Open vacant buildings for mass occupation!” and, “APC says: Support Joe Slovo families!,” “ANC-FNB: The new Colonisers,” “House for all, not for some only!” , and “ANC evicts and profits from Banks.”

As Mzwanele Zulu and Zithulele Nogsi spoke to the police to confirm the route and rules for marchers, the crowd began to sing. Men began to toyi toyi and women, some with children in hand and babes attached to their backs, joined in. The momentum gained as 1,000 marchers toyi toyied their way along Adderly. Women and men smiled next to me asking me to take their pictures with their signs and told me how proud they were to be participating, to be fighting for their rights. As we reached Thubelisha, the task team and leaders from supporting areas and organizations spoke, giving their public support to the residents of Joe Slovo and sounding battle cries of “Amandala, Awethu” and “Viva Joe Slovo!” Several representatives from Thubelisha stood, watching the marchers uncomfortably, ready to take the memorandum and leave. After a woman from the community read the memorandum, Prince Xhanti Sigcawu accepted it, signing it quickly to record that he had indeed received it and made his way back into his office without addressing the crowd.

The memorandum delivery to FNB saw a similar reaction from corporate officials at the national bank. As marchers toyi toyi-ed to the front of building, office workers and corporate spokespersons stood on balconies and watched the marchers. After speeches which denounced FNB’s complicacy in housing development and its land deals with the ANC, the FNB official bowed his head, accepted the memorandum, and slipped into the Goliath skyscraper that housed FNB’s headquarters. As they headed back to the train station marchers were elated that all had gone well, but all were preoccupied with the court case to come on the 12th.

Findings and Analysis

I. Community Mobilization in Joe Slovo

The task team members explained to me that it was first created when the fires destroyed a section of shacks and a large part of the hostels in Langa. Shortly afterwards, government officials made rounds. As the residents who were left homeless were put into a tent encampment in, and forbidden from rebuilding their shacks, government officials started to come visit the unharmed shacks. Zithulele Nogsi, said this was out of the ordinary, “Our councilor said people must not rebuild their shacks because they are moving to Delft. Before when shacks had been burned NGOs used to supply people with material to rebuild, but now the councilor did not let them (11/25/07).”They asked the people of Joe Slovo to relocate to Delft as part of the N2 Gateway project. “We said, ‘no,’ what type of houses are you going to build. These are rented houses. We realized, no, these are not houses for us. So that is when we started the task force and hired the lawyer to do everything legally (Mzwanele Zulu 11/15/07).” Zithulele Nogsi the secretary of the task team explained further, “Our councilor told us we must move to Delft. We knew that they had built houses in N2—they built houses and none of us got them. The piece of land was sold to FNB and they built the bond houses. Only people with money buy bond houses. They are making the population of Joe Slovo worse because they are not giving houses to people who need them. We don’t agree with evictions, we want RDP houses built for residents They said seventy percent Joe Slovo and 30 percent other, but then they only gave houses to people who had money. There is no guarantee who will come back to Joe Slovo if we move to Delft. We ask, why don’t you take rich people to Delft because they are able to go to Cape Town, the poor we are not, we cannot pay for transport (11/25/07).”

Mzwanele Zulu explained, “The task team first came together when we saw that this was a problem and called all the men in the community for a meeting. Then we had a general meeting for everyone. “We decided we needed to be directly involved in the development—make decisions and be employed in the development they were doing in our community.” At the general meeting the community appointed a task team, and then elected members of the task team to certain positions. The task team is comprised of 15 men, and women were not selected to run and join. Mzwanele commented that, “though we know that sometimes women are competent, but then you’ll find they are gossiping and we didn’t want info leaked (Mzwanele Zulu 11/15/07).”Out of those 15 task team members elected by the community, seven have leadership positions. The task team is headed by, the chairman, Sophiso, Mzwanele’s brother and aided by a deputy chairman Mr. Diko. The chairman’s task is to organize meetings and share them with the community. The coordinator, Mzwanele Zulu’s task is, “moving up and down making sure communication doesn’t break down between Joe Slovo and people and the city of Cape Town (Mzwanele Zulu 11/15/07),” Mzwanele himself jokes. The secretary is Zithulele Ngesi, and his job is to record task force and community members as well as to make an agenda for meetings. The treasurer is Mr. Ntlultha. While conventionally as the treasurer he handles the money, Mr. Ntlultha has also played a vital role in facilitating the marches and lawsuit. Mzwanele explained, “The treasurer got the money for transport to marches because when the task force first started each household donated R200 (Mzwanele Zulu 11/15/07).

Task team meetings are organized according to the team
members’ schedules. They are often in the evening so that those who have jobs won’t miss a meeting and those who don’t can undertake the daunting task of continually searching for employment. The men gather, usually in Mzwanele’s home, and take unused beer cartons to use as extra seats. They laugh and joke until everyone comes, and then discuss the agenda for the community meeting, marches to come, and the ever ominous court case. While before they were jovial, it is clear when the men are discussing these matters that business is at hand—the room is silent for the man who is speaking, all are grave, nodding in agreement when a good plan of action is suggested. They take comfort in the recent analysis of the asbestos found in TRA’s in Delft and it’s inclusion in the court case, but worry about the case being jeopardized. Mzwanele and others worry that not enough community members will come to the rescheduled court case on the 5th of December as well. Tasks are dolled out, and the task team breaks, serious and determined, but clearly invigorated with new energy and passion.

Shortly after, a community meeting is called. It is Sunday afternoon, a perfect time to gather people, as everyone is back from church; the women starting the washing and the men gathered around two of the major shabeens in the center of the city. One of the men in the community drives around Zithulele, the task team secretary, who uses a bull horn to tell the community to meet in the center of the settlement, at the large open clearing next to the now abandoned school. About a thousand residents gather in a big circle, and the grand majority of attendees are women, who gather centrally on one side of the circle, while men take another side. The women bring stools, crates, benches, and slabs of wood to be used as seats. The women see to it that gogos and other elderly members of the community get seats first and as the opening prayer starts, the meeting commences.
The task team members who are present, then start to apologize to the community for the members who are not there, and assure the men and women who are attentively listening that they will try to resolve divisions within the task team. The organizer of the task team Mandela, starts to go through the agenda. First on the agenda is a discussion of the FNB March. After Mandela gives the details of the when and wheres of the march, community members approach him. A woman takes the bull horn first. She thanks him for the information and vehemently urges her neighbors to come, encouraging them by adding, “Ask everybody to come to the march, even if you have a boyfriend in your house, you must go and you must ask him to go.” Later on, as the details of the court case were discussed and Mzanele told residents that its postponement to December 5th was more serious that before, another man approached the circle and urged, “Those people who aren’t coming to the meetings because they are skeptical of loosing jobs, must rather go to Delft, that way they’ll be sure to loose their jobs!” The task team hand the bullhorn around evenly, each conveying a point of the agenda to the crowd, while attendees sign an attendance sheet that asks for their name, house number, cell phone number, and signature, and return it to Mzwanele throughout the meeting. What’s most striking in the attendees of the meeting is not their organization, nor their willingness to gather on that scorching, hot afternoon. As each person speaks, they address the crowd with vigor and pride. There is a real sense of volition and struggle that vibrates across the corrugated tin that surrounds them. Moreover, the speakers understand the language of their situation. It is not uncommon to hear “N2” and “RDP” in between strong Xhosa soliloquies. Arguably more importantly than agendas and meeting times, these meetings serve to show every resident of Joe Slovo and anyone in the world who cares to watch that no one is ashamed of what they are doing, and all seem ready to fight.

As Mzanele said, “The task team demands, RDP houses for people living in these poor health conditions and request to be included in the process. We want all the infrastructure services. We are using the bucket system here in Joe Slovo so these are the things that must be changed (Mzwanele Zulu 11/15/07).” He also adamantly insists,“ If there’s any proposal for development, the important thing is that they (government) should talk to the community and it be unanimous, involve all stakeholders (Mzwanele Zulu 11/15/07).”

“The task team has our same voice”

In interviews, I asked community members to express what they thought of the task team’s leadership and what had motivated them to first support it. Many compared the current task team of 15 to the former community committee who had been apolitical and dealt strictly with internal issues. All interviewees claimed to be extremely happy with the task teams’ work. Below are some of their responses:
Bongiwe Notshokouu is a regular attendee of the community meetings. Bongiwe joined the task team because she wants things from the government. “The first things I would have the government fix is electricity, housing (number one), toilets, and water. If you have houses these others will come (Bongiwe Notshokouu 11/14/07).” “The task team hears the people,” she says. “There were other leaders on the Task Force before and they never did anything. The community selected these members because they are responsible, the community has seen them do things before (Bongiwe Notshokouu 11/14/07).”

Gloria Gaqa joined the Joe Slovo struggle after years of waiting for government housing that post-1994 democracy promised. She explained, “I could not get housing in the N2 first phase because I had only R247 a month. I care about this (the Joe Slovo struggle). The government should consider that some people are working and not earning decent salaries. From 90’s to now we are all waiting for our houses (Gloria Gaqa 11/14/07).”

Nosandile Galadaw is a 34 year old woman who came from the Eastern Cape in 1995. She was looking after her uncle in a hostel in Langa but after he died in 1998 she moved to Joe Slovo with her three kids. She said, “I joined the marches because I want to stay in Joe Slovo. I don’t have a husband and I want to be in a place near work (Nosandile Galadaw 11/25/07).” “The task team has our same voice (Nosandile Galadaw 11/25/07),” she added.

Potsie Dumezweni a Joe Slovo resident said,“There was nothing provided by the past leaders of the committee because they were only concerned with community issues, they were not asking for political issues (11/19/07).”

What about the Women?

Though the interviews I conducted with the task team would suggest a desire for community consensus and inclusion, it is important to note that there are no female members of the task force, purposefully. This is extremely uncharacteristic of community committees in informal settlements across the nation, as men and women serve equally in many community organizations and in all social movements in Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg. The task team was originally initiated by the appointment of 15 men from a meeting of all the men in the community and then later approved by the community at large. Task team members reported that they excluded women because women gossip too much and might leak information. I found this exclusion notable, and started to include a question about women’s absence on the task team in my interviews. Perhaps influenced by Mwanele Zulu who served as my translator, perhaps as a belief in stereotypes, or perhaps for reasons that can not be understood by me most of the respondents (including women) confirmed both these suspicions and doubted the competence of a woman on the task team.
For example, Bongiwe Notshokouu supports the fact that there are no women on the task force because, “Women are not reliable, they decide to leave meetings, and can create problems in the task team by fighting Bongiwe Notshokouu 11/14/07).”

Another community member Gloria Gaqa commented, “It is good women aren’t on the task team because they get exhausted very early now and have to leave when there is a problem with a child(Gloria Gaqa 11/14/07).”Differing from the gossip myth, Mnilkeli Ntsinte a member of the task force explained, “The women might encounter risks so we decided to make the task team all men (Mnilkeli Ntsinte 11/25/07),” when asked why women were excluded from the task team.
On the suggestion of Professor Legassick I visited two of the female community members of QQ to get their prospective on being women on the community committee. QQ is an informal settlement established in 1989, situated under ESCOM power lines. Its location makes it particularly prone to fires. Residents voted the ANC in in1994 believing that their situation might change with the party’s promises to equitable housing. But as task force leader Nzonke Poni said, “After 1994 it was so disappointing to see there were no changes in our community (11/21/07).” QQ has about 620 homes with about 3,000 residents and only 15 water taps, 7 of which are currently working, Nzonke reported. There is no waste disposal, no toilets, and no electricity. The majority of children who live around dumping sites have scabies and many people get TB from the lack of waste disposal.

The QQ community committee is made up of twelve community members, equally divided between men and women. They are elected by the community, and work on a horizontal power structure, where each member of the committee has equal say. As Nzonke Poni said, ““The community elects the committee; most are young though there are some veterans. The committee identifies a problem and takes it to the entire community and, look, you’d be surprised, people will come up with better ideas than yours. No one leads up in front (Nzonke Poni 11/21/07).”

Ms. Marobobo, a 21 year old women living with her mother who came to QQ in 1999. When I asked her why she joined the committee, she replied simply, “I like to work with the community to help the people to find their needs. We (on the committee) tell people what has happened and what we have to do. We have to pull ourselves to find a better place to live. We have to fight together (Marobobo 11/21/07).” On being a woman in on the committee she says, “Sometimes it is hard because other men (in the community) look down on you when you say something because you are a woman but listen to something said by another man. Also, sometimes it is hard (to attend meetings) because I don’t have a person to stay with the child (Marobobo 11/21/07).” But she thinks ultimately there is hope, and the only way things are going to get better is by working with one another. “Our communities, we are working together, we can go together to find a place where we can feel comfortable and I will feel proud when I get it (Marobobo 11/21/07).”
Nozibele Duma is a 34 year old woman and member of the QQ community committee. She has 2 kids, a 17 year old daughter who is finishing grade 7 because she had lived with Nozibele’s mother on the Eastern Cape. She told me she first joined because, “I am interested to show people if you stay here you must act and then you get something.” When I asked Nozibele if there were any challenges she faced as women on the committee. She replied, “Some people in the community have problems with the committee. In a house there is a man and a woman, sometimes they don’t want to listen to a woman in a meeting, because they don’t listen to a woman in the home. But if you are a man they will listen (Nozibele Duma 11/21/07).”

The women of QQ, set an example for other committees in informal settlements, and their struggle to be heard as legitimate leaders in the larger struggle for the right to adequate housing and basic human rights, is one that is worth noting in this paper. It is a fight for equality that is especially important in light of the absence of female members on the Joe Slovo task team despite the majority attendance of women at meetings, case hearings, and rallies.

Divisions in the Community: Mr. Pensi

There was also a notable division in the community which the pending court case and ethical desire to leave the community wholly unharmed from my research prevented me from probing further. According to Mzwanele Zulu and Martin Legassick Mr. Pensi a resident of Joe Slovo, has hired his own lawyer separate from the representation that the rest of the community is using. He has tried to create divisions in the community and while obviously a burden to the task team, neither the task team nor the community members know what to do about him except shake their head.
Mzwanele says, “Mr. Pensi, he’s creating a real problem. You, know, I don’t know what he’s up to. He says he’s representing 1,500 people, but we are representing everyone, plus or minus 6,000 people (Mzwanele Zulu 11/15/07).”

Another community member Goria Gaqa said of him, “I don’t even know what to say regarding him. He’s no longer a member of the community, we don’t know what he wants. He is causing problems. I want him to take his shack and move away (Gloria Gaqa 11/14/07).”

II. “No one colonizes innocently”: The Marginilization and Othering of Informal Settlement Residents

Janice Peralman’s 1976 Myth of Marginality helps to point out the failure of government to recognize its poor citizens as a resource within community and city development. In the Myth of Marginality Perlman studies the government’s marginalization of migrant labors in Brazil, and the culture from which its policy decisions emerged. From this she conceives a “myth of marginality’ in which cities and ‘integrated’ citizens stigmatize ‘informal’ and migrant citizens as outliers who have no real place in the city framework, that they are in fact parasites. Moreover, under this myth ‘migrants’ and inhabitants of informal settlements hold on to traditional values with the ultimate goal of earning enough money to return to the rural area. Peralman’s research and data shows, however, that the opposite was in fact true of these ‘migrants.’ Most of them had middle class aspirations and many were an integrated part economy and framework of the city. In the Myth of Marginality Perlman suggests that in view of inclusion and integration of squatter communities, governments should adopt policies which legalize squatter camps and provide support and resources for community derived, ‘self help’ projects.

Before Perlman, philosophers Senghor and Cesaire also pointed out a narrative of marginality that existed in African states as a result of the colonial power structure. They expressed this marginality in terms of ‘othering,’ and formed the negritude movement as a reponse to the repression and ‘thingification’ that the colonial government imposed upon its citizens. The theory of the negritude movement is probably best known in Sartre’s “Black Orpheus,” an introduction to a collection of works of Senghor, Cesaire, Damas. In this introduction, Sartre, writes of the ‘look that others,’ a theme that would become central to his philosophy in the years that the negritude movement was first forming. Though the negritude movement is framed in the context of colonialism, a social, physical, and economic exclusion, which was like the Apartheid State, based on race, a strong argument can be made that the exclusion of Joe Slovo, and residents of other informal settlements is an a social, physical, and economic (opportunity) exclusion based on class. The word ‘slum’ got its origins in19th century Victorian England, where it was used to described, “the poor condition of the vast tightly packed and physically smelling slums of London were breeding revolt.” The term slum came to describe not only the conditions of poverty but also the social stigma associated with their inhabitants. As the British empire expanded the marginality associated with slums implicitly became racialized. As Cohre wrote, “The Victorian journalist Henry Mayhew referred to ‘slums’ as a ‘terra incognita’ (unknown land), a ‘dark netherworld’ inhabited by ‘a savage or heathen race right in our very midst.’ The struggle of shackdwellers of ‘slum’ residents, is therefore intrinsically linked to the colonial legacy. Joe Slovo residents have themselves made this connection, displaying signs at their recent rally on the 28th of November reading, “ANC-FNB: The new Colonisers”

In Sartre’s Black Orpheus, an introduction to a collection of works of Senghor, Cesaire, Damas, an anthology of the negritude movement, he clearly addresses the ‘othering’ of the black man and the place, as he sees it, in universalism and existentialism. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre describes the realization of inter-subjectivity as one of being ‘othered.’ Sartre explains the feeling of otherness as one of being looked at—the moment in which you become an object of another world and the realization that, “the Other looks at me not as he is ‘in the midst of’ my world but as he comes toward the world and toward me from his transcendence (361).” In other words to be ‘othered’ is to realize that you are present, an object, in a world or subjectivity which is not fully yours.

More than merely othering, Cesaire argues colonialism is an overt action, an aggressive stealing of the resources and initiative of a colonized people while imposing a, “thingification (42),” of the colonized; espoused in ideology touting westernization as ‘civilization’ and ‘development.’ To undergo a ‘thingification’ is to be more than ‘othered’ by Sartre’s terms, it is to be ‘othered’ and objectified without the possibility or the potential to ‘look back.’ Therefore, Ceasire argues, colonialism forces its subjects into a constant objectification.

This constant objectification has survived the colonial era, and in South Africa the era of Apartheid. It survives, thriving in the post-apartheid neo-liberal South African state, a colonization and ‘othering’ of “the poors.” As Potsie Dumezweni an old member of the Joe Slovo community said, “I was aware of development and marches even before the democratic government started ruling because I was also involved in the struggle against Apartheid. It is the same as the struggle against Apartheid. Then people were fighting for their rights and now people are still fighting for their rights (11/19/07).”

And South Africa certain isn’t the first one to invent this kind of ‘othering’; it is a long standing tradition in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, Perlman points out, to characterize those without in pejorative terms, as people, and sometimes even ‘things’ to be feared. The introduction of informal settlements into the city landscape is often sensationalized into a narrative that speaks of an ‘invasion’ from rural areas that will ‘dirty,’ ‘criminalize,’ and ‘demoralize, a former homogenized, gentrified city of gold. But as Cesaire warns, “ No one colonizes innocently… and a nation which justifies colonization is a sick civilization a civilization which is already diseased (39),” as it’s colonies are , “drained of their essence, cultures trampled under foot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out (43).”

Democracy?

Perlman points out that, paradoxically, the, “characteristic way to handle the dread of these masses, of these ‘others’ is to profess to ‘integrate’ them (92).” These masses are ‘integrated’ into the margins of the city both socially and physically, allowed only to weave into the cityscape insofar as they can benefit the better half of ‘society’ economically, through labor and consumerism. Yet the ‘masses’ are seen as just that, they are ‘integrated’ into a system which fails to see any individual human value or volition. As Cesaire writes, “there is an infinite distance; that out of all the colonial expenditures that have been undertaken, out of all the colonial statutes that have been drawn up, out of all the memoranda that have been dispatched by the ministries, there could not come a single human value (34).” As was the case in Pearlman’s study in Rio de Janeiro, and is sadly the case in South Africa today, this narrative of marginality does not merely exist in the realm of social exclusivity and bigotry, nor even of media headlines, but is reinforced and dispersed by government and civil society organizations who marginalize informal settlements both in their practices and language. As a member of the Joe Slovo task team Gubesa Mbangazita said, “These organizations that are in parliament and the government is just implementing a system of imperialism. We are against the government applying things to us. We don’t want just one person to decide for us (Gubesa Mbangazita 11/25/07).” But it is clear that the national government is bent on one person deciding for many—and in the case of the Joe Slovo residents that one person is National Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu. In an August 6th report by the IOL, Sisulu said that, “decent and affordable housing stock for rental or purchase (1),’ had to replace, “slums that are both a blight on democracy and unsuitable for human development (1).” The article goes on to say that, “She added that those marching would have to understand (2).” A Cape Times article titled, N2 Protest Ultimatum reported Sisulu’s ultimatum where she stated, “She said residents of the Joe Slovo informal settlement had to decide whether they wanted to co-operate with the government and qualify for housing. ‘If they choose not to co-operate, they will be removed completely from all housing waiting lists.” A Wednesday 13 September Abahlali Press Statement, reported, “The Minister of Housing, Lindiwe Sisulu, is now clamping down on this established community of 6000 people with an iron fist, calling them “squatters” as if they just arrived in Cape Town yesterday.” Sisulu’s actions are widely seen as exclusionary and reminiscent of Apartheid era forced removals and ultimatums. Martin Legassick has written that, Sisulu’s action is, “reminiscent of old apartheid ministers.” Her language and behavior towards residents, “is a symptom of the arrogant, aloof, and self-satisfied unwillingness to listen to ordinary people that increasingly characterizes the Mbeki government. Sisulu talks of frequent “consultation” with communities over N2 Gateway. But this “consultation” has not involved listening but rather telling communities what they should do (Abahlali Press).” Cape Argus article titled N2 Gateway and the Joe Slovo Informal Settlement: The New Crossroads? commented that Sisulu’s threat, of course, violates the constitutional right to housing to which every South African is entitled “She has declared we are not South African” Joe Slovo resident Sifiso Mapasa acutely said. This, the article pointed out echoes “the famous words of Sol Plaatje about the segregationist 1913 Natives Land Act, that it turned Africans into ‘foreigners in the land of their birth.’” (9/16/07).” Sadly, Sisulu is not alone in her ‘othering.’ As Micheal Neocosmos argues in Citizenship and Politics, “From the perspective of a democratic emancipatory project, the state should not be allowed to dictate whether popular organizations are legitimate or not, and neither can intellectual inquiry allow itself to narrow the concept to adhere to state prescriptions; only people themselves should be entitled to bestow such legitimacy (9). However, just as Neocosmos warns the state has tried to dicate on this matter. After the march the Cape Times reported that “Housing and Local Government MEC Qubudile Dyantyi condemned the protesters, describing their action as an “act of thuggery”. Dyantyi said it had become evident Joe Slovo was over-populated and that some of the people to be moved from there would be unable to return once the whole area was redeveloped.” The article also noted provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha’s condemnation of the protestors who said, “the blockade was unacceptable and that protesters were either uninformed or unreasonable in their demands (N2 Protest Ultimatum).”

It is clear from the language and tone implied by Sisulu that the national government, and she as a representative of it, have no intention of talking, or negotiating with the residents of Joe Slovo, in other words of recognizing their voice and right to play an active role in the development of the land on which they reside. Cape Argus Article titled N2 Gateway and the Joe Slovo Informal Settlement: The New Crossroads? reported, “She (Sisulu) claims that Thubelisha, project manager of N2 Gateway, is responsible for interacting with residents and that she has “the fullest confidence” in them. Thubelisha was established to build houses, and lacks people-management skills. Residents of Joe Slovo have met with Thubelisha management several times, to no avail. (9/16/07 http://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=3131).”

Moreover, it is clear from Sisulu’s language that she sees the Joe Slovo informal settlement, as not only a “blight” on the cityscape, but on democracy itself, something which she says must be, “eradicated (1),” going so far as to call it a “slum,” implying that not only the area, but the community living in it are degenerates which need to be moved to make way for “respectable” renters. And this is precisely how the government is acting. As Gloria Gaqa of Joe Slovo said, “There is no consultation. The government is not talking to the people; they are just doing whatever they want to do. People are being removed and they are promised houses, but then the houses that are constructed are not for them (Gloria Gaqa 11/14/07).”In fact Sisulu has vehemently refused to consult the ten-year old community whom she is attempting to uproot. After Joe Slovo residents blockaded the N2 Gateway, “Leaders of the protest had demanded that Sisulu address them. But instead she threatened them first with removal from the housing waiting list, and then on Tuesday with forced removal (3),” as The Independent reported on September 12th, 2007. The national government, with Sisulu as it’s representative, is actively ‘othering’ the residents of Joe Slovo by refusing even to address them, and harkening back to the chilling methodology of the Apartheid state of forced removals. Task team Organizer, Mandela Sarjin says, “Government must make sure that it is negotiating and speaking to community members. Resolving problems with the community, instead of taking the community to court. The government must make decisions with the community as it is a democratic government. This means they must practice government in a certain way (Mandela Sarjin 11/19/07).” As Mandela astutely points out, it is not the informal settlements themselves which are a ‘blight on democracy’ but the exclusion of community participation in development.

The active exclusion and ‘othering’ of residents of Joe Slovo and other informal settlements in the planning and implementation of state housing does not only have grave implications for the residents but for the effectiveness of the National government’s ‘development’ program. In Local Governance and Social Conflict: Implications for piloting South Africa’s new housing plan in Cape Town’s Informal Settlement scholar Nick Graham warns that the exclusion of informal settlement communities is a determent in the shaping of effective and long lasting development. The exclusion of community participation from the development process, he argues, is caused by centralized decision making and a tendency to ignore or not even ask the requests of community members. Imbizo, or a mass meeting approach, has been used by the ANC nationally as a mechanism for garnering support or a mandate for a project from voters, but involves little to no consultation afterwards. This façade of community inclusion undermines the need and benefits of community engagement within informal settlement upgrading policy, and highlights its true importance for effective, ‘settlement intervention.’ In accordance with Graham, Catherine Cross forsees a similar problem. In Local Governance and Social Conflict: Implications for piloting South Africa’s new housing plan in Cape Town’s Informal Settlement she looks at Cape Town’s informal settlement Crossroads as a case study to examine the failures of the Breaking New Ground policy at a local government and recipient level. The failure of implementing officials to recognize either the historical legacy or the diversity of informal inhabitants in their methods has lead to a deadlock in the Crossroads community and may, Cross, warns lead to massive community upheavals, like those taking place currently among the residents of Joe Slovo, when it was upgraded under the Breaking New Ground legislation. Like Graham, Cross suggests that without a serious review of housing policy and an exploration of how to include recipients in the process, the national housing ministry should seriously reconsider a pushed ‘eradication’ within the next ten years and understand that, “abolishing informal housing entirely is probably unrealistic as long as rural-to-urban migration continues.”

Capital

Perlman continues in The Myth of Marginality to reveal that the narrative of marginality is justified through economic interests of those to whom capital advantages, more than occupy prime real estate as the urban market inflates, ‘squatter’ communities that dare to border or desecrate the view of existing properties devalue the investment of its owners. This is exemplified by the plans for N2 gateway to be developed as rental and purchasable property rather than RDP homes which the residents of Joe Slovo could afford. Moreover the contraction of N2 development to Thubelisha and First National Bank, emphasizes the trend for ‘development’ to be a business, one whose methodology and interest will serve big business. This, preference for capital over consultation has increasingly become the norm post-1994, and as a result has marginalized, has ‘othered’ those without. Moreover, as Perlman states, “What is considered ‘mainstream’ and what is considered ‘marginal’ has come to be determined less by what is done by the numerical majority or minority, and more by what is done specifically by the middle and upper classes (92).”
Private and government owners have placed real Estate (and fear of is depreciation), over ‘real human value’ has further marginalized the inhabitants of informal settlements. As Pithouse writes in Second Democracy for the Second Economy?, “The ANC can afford to abandon the underclass, to whom it once directed its most urgent appeals, as it cements unassailable support amongst the working and middle class.” Protecting the interests and investments of this working and middle class constituency has consistently been a priority on the national government’s agenda. An November 30th IRIN News article reported, “The latest 2007 First National Bank Residential Property Barometer revealed that Cape Town housing costing less than R600,000 (US$85,700), has experienced the highest property growth rate in past year, when compared with other major cities like Pretoria, Johannesburg and Durban. The land occupied by some of the city’s informal settlements has become extremely valuable in recent times and, rather than make it available to the country’s poorest residents, politicians and the private sector want to cash in on its potential, said anti-eviction task team co-ordinator Zulu. “The bonded houses in the N2 Gateway project will cost between R150,000 (US$21,500) and R250,000 (US$35,700) and private sector banks will make loans available to people who can afford the repayments – which is not the residents of Joe Slovo (IRIN News).” And as an April 4th article from Engineering News titled Cape Town’s Killer Fires: It’s time for Government Action, conveyed using the example of residents of Hout Bay ‘s reaction to the tragic fire in the settlement of Imizamo Yethu, “residents of neighboring wealthy communities have much to say when fires break out n informal settlements,” because they fear a negative impact on surrounding real estate, and feel that Hout Bay has ‘had its turn’ at playing host to an unwanted community (Katharine McKenzie 1).”

‘Marginalized in Physical Development’

More than excluded from a discussion with the Housing Minister on how the process of ‘development’ will take place, the residents of Joe Slovo and Delft have been excluded from the physical building of housing structures and the income that this employment would pump into the community. However, according to a January 18th report by the IOL, shortly after the fire, Local Government and Housing MEC Marius Fransman said: “We will bite the bullet, meaning that no one will be allowed to rebuild their shacks in Joe Slovo. The City Police will cordon off the area. I have requested that it be labour-intensive to provide employment to the local residents.” –“W Cape need R2bn to get rid of shacks (January 10th 2005).” Fransman’s promise of employment has not become a reality according to the residents of Joe Slovo and Delft. Amonda Nopasika, a resident of Delft and one of Banoyolo Mqalelo’s friends, has a husband who has been looking for work in the construction sites of the RDP’s and has been consistently turned away. He is therefore forced to continue depending on the market in Langa for employment and stays with his mother who is in one of the TRA’s in Langa. He stays in Langa Monday thru Friday because he can’t afford the taxi fare back to Delft. Amonda is therefore left to tend to their three kids completely alone. Banoyolo commented, “There is no form of participation from community in terms of getting employed in the building of the RDP houses (Banoyolo Mqalelo 11/23/07).”

Moreover the police presence that Fransman speaks of, has become more than a ‘cordoning’ off, as task team member Zithulele reported, “They stand with a crane above your house and say your shack will get destroyed with you in the middle. So many people, they get scarred and just take their clothes and run on the truck to Delft (Zithulele Nogsi 11/25/07).”

Police Brutality

A Monday September 10th Anti-Eviction Campaign press release on the situation at the N2 march stated, “A heavily armed police force shot many more people at close range with rubber bullets (which are only supposed to be shot from a distance of more than 50 metres).They shot women and children and people are seriously injured. The police have instructed the hospitals not to admit any Joe Slovo residents.”

“The police break everything. They break our house. They break our cars. I knew people who were hurt in the marches and people were never fighting against the police. The police decided to shoot and some (rubber bullets) were taken from inside (marchers’) faces. One lady had bullets in her leg for four months and had to find a special doctor (Gloria Gaqa 11/14/07).”

Perhaps most shocking of all, is the marginalization, the ‘othering’ that residents of Joe Slovo and other informal settlements face in the form of sheer police brutality. The ultimate expression of inferiority, physical brutality with little accountability, reeks of both colonialism and the Apartheid State. As Pithouse reports in A Second Democracy for the Second Economy?, “The repression faced by the shack dwellers’ movement includes widespread illegal behaviour on the part of the police (1).” Police brutality reached its height, residents reported when they rallied on the N2 gateway. On September 10, 2007, the date of the rally, the Abahlali baseMjondolo website reported that Joe Slovo residents were, “Facing off against about 150 police who are standing just opposite on the other side of the highway. They say they are waiting for the Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu to come down and respond to their memorandum.” The Abahlali baseMjondolo website also repotted, “Just about one hour ago, the police gave the protestors 20 seconds to disperse and then opened fire randomly. News from an eyewitness who was in Joe Slovo informal settlement since 3am this morning is that when people first started occupying the N2 highway at about 3:30am this morning, the police arrived swiftly. They set up a cordon along the N2 and then started firing indiscriminately into Joe Slovo settlement (September 10th).” Professor Martin Legassick added that afterwards the police were, “still occupying Joe Slovo and arresting people at will (Letter).”

When I asked Mzwanele Zulu, the coordinator of the Joe Slovo task team to describe the police’s actions the day of the N2 gateway march he said:

“The police are very brutal. (During the march) they started shooting us in the road and the community wasn’t violent at all and the police changed it all into violence. Maybe that was their plan. Eight people were arrested and held without bail for two days.”—Including you? “Yes. I had eight rubber bullets in prison that stayed in me for those two days. People (who were wounded in the march) were chased away from the hospital by the hospital officials. I don’t know if someone told them, don’t help the residents of Joe Slovo. The Pan African Congress of Azania brought doctors to help (Mzwanele Zulu 11/15/07).”

After the N2 march, “The police were banning us from holding meetings. This was difficult because we couldn’t hold meetings and we had to deal with the judgments in the high courts and tell the people about them. On October 17th the police came to arrest me and two other guys at 2:00 in the morning when we were sleeping. We were released two days later with the charges dropped (Mzwanele Zulu 11/15/07).”

Another task team member Zithulele Nogsi extrapolated:
During the N2 rally, Zithulele explained, violence reached its height, “(After they started shooting) we go back because then we say the only way they can stop us is to kill us. Some guys with cars volunteer to take people to the hospital. We were about 7,000 by then. The police say they need to talk to us and then start shooting us and they went between the shacks to hunt us down. They shot even the old men, they didn’t worry (Zithulele Nogsi 11/25/07).”He added, “Mzwanele was arrested for calling a meeting. They said he was inciting public violence for calling a meeting to tell people what happened. If our government sees you leading people, they try to scare you (Zithulele Nogsi 11/25/07).” On Monday September 13th, a Joe Slovo Shackdwellers Task Team Press Report Stated, “Two nights ago, Zulu and Diko went to the police station to inform police that the community wanted to have a general meeting inside the settlement to discuss the way forward. The police agreed not to harass or attack or shoot at the general meeting in any way. However, just minutes later as they were walking home, police swooped and arrested them. They had not committed any crime and hence the arrests were unlawful. In fact, Zulu was the media spokesperson and negotiator with the police the day before and hence it is clear he was targeted for being an activist.” A September 12th article from the Sowetan backed up the press statement commenting that, “It was “quite clear” that Zulu had been arrested merely for being an activist and a media spokesman.

What’s more, the resident of Joe Slovo realize that what the police are doing is illegal but feel they have little power, say, and resources to stop the brutality that is being inflicted upon them. A task team member, Gubesa Mbangazita, sighed and acknowledged that he knew what the police were doing is against the law. A solution, however, seems like a distant fantasy. He said, “We are not happy with what the police are doing we are just struggling because we do not know what we can do to raise our concerns because we don not have more money for a lawyer (Gubesa Mbangazita 11/25/07).”

This is the treatment the ‘othering,’ ‘the stare,’ and fist that Joe Slovo community is constantly confronted with when merely asking to be consulted, when asking the national government to follow through on its campaign promises, even when asking for homes to be built which it can afford in a place where its children can go to school and their mothers and fathers can find work, and where the community itself can maintain in tact. Mnilkeli Ntsinte , a member of the Joe Slovo task team said, “We have become victims because when we just go for a petition and all we want is a response. It is amazing that all we get is harassment and beating, when all we want is assistance.” He adds, “Our movement is being blocked by the police, they are with the government and we find ourselves deserted. No one is above the law, even the police. They are beating us, you see, they are criminals (Mnilkeli Ntsinte 11/25/07).”

III. Third parties and outside ‘support’

“Sometimes, if you wear suits for too long, it changes your ideology.” Joe Slovo

In the review of literature on informal settlements, the question of involvement from outside parties such as non-profit organizations, policy makers, and academics is often addressed and debated. The involvement of outside organizations is an extremely complicated one, it takes the form of government involved non-profits, international organizations, and academics inquiring into the quantitative aspects of the struggle. These relationships are too numerous and complicated to fully express in the length of this section, but as third parties constantly approach informal settlement leaders, and have already approached Joe Slovo, they necessitate mention. While NGOs, and academics sometimes bring necessary financial resources and publicity to the struggle of informal settlement movements, there is sometimes doubt as to whether or not these outside parties do more harm than good. With the onslaught of media coverage that Joe Slovo has received, outside involvement of this kind is a very real possibility and concern. When I asked him about NGOs and their talk of globalization Zithulele Nogsi, the secretary of the task team responded, “When it comes to those things, those people are too much involved in politics, but me, I just want to fight for our rights (11/25/07).” This possibility seemed to necessitate an analysis of the benefits and harms of this kind of involvement in the other informal settlement movements. On Professor Legassick’s suggestion, I interviewed Nzonke Poni a member of QQ community committee and a member of Anti-Eviction League. He agreed to let me talk to him about QQ’s mobilization of its community committee and it’s involvement with NGOs. He said: “The first community committee was established in 1987, when the settlement was developed but was only involved in community issues. It was comprised of mainly older residents and dealt with internal community issues such as arguments with neighbors and issues of crime.” Nzonke was not satisfied with this focus, “I joined the community committee in 2001 and left in 2003 because the committee was only focusing on those issues. Talking about issues like neighbors throwing water on each other’s front doors, created division instead of making people realize that their conditions are causing these problems.” Before, the committee was partnered with SANCO (South African National Civic Organization), the local ANC Councilor, and faithfully attended development conferences. But, Nzonke explained, at SANCO meetings nothing could be discussed in terms of development or moving people from informal settlements; all they would talk was job initiatives. They judged people on their political party membership, and favored members and supporters of the ANC.

Rather than conform to the structure and agendas of third party organizations, the residents of QQ and Joe Slovo have recognized the need to maintain autonomy in their struggle. Nzonke explained, “I was determined by SANCO, and the ANC councilor to be problematic because I always asked about informal settlements. The councilor distanced himself from talking to us in QQ. The committee decided we need community action and to stop working with SANCO, the ANC, etc (Nzonke Poni 11/21/07).” “Our first action was to occupy a piece of land across the N2 (in an attempt to invade). This attempt was disrupted by the police and SACP members. Next, we had a march which was peaceful. It was peaceful, we burned tires and blocked the road, but it was peaceful. We went to the Mayor’s office (in 2005) and the Mayor refused to accept the memorandum. This opened the eyes of many residents. She was only accountable to rich people. Through mobilizing communities, protests, through our own action we have voiced our opinion. We have negotiated, we have done that. Even here at home I have letters, documents, and for 90% I have no responses. We’ve had to go to the street” “After we chose to use violence in protests like barricading the N2, the police would no longer negotiate, so we had to have a plan to fight back against the police. We thought, if we create an environment which is politically unstable, most businesses will withdraw from the area, and the politicians will have to do something. But in 2006 the local elections took place and QQ was left behind.” Therefore, the committee he said, decided, “Our strength is within the community. Government will reserve certain respect for you if you know you can pull 5,000 people if you can barricade a street for 5 to 8 hours. Then, let us not join neo-liberalism because if we vote, we must join them in their game. If we want to be sexy in their way we will have to play the neo-liberal game of globalization and not focusing on our problem. Sometimes this is seen as too simple because we are focusing on people’s problems and not the cause (the banks, the government). We are best at this strategy (of focusing on people’s problems). We have to ensure that communities are united so no one looses their house. NGOs and academics [are always wanting to] partner with us but, you know, they are not partnering, they are taking advantage. They want to improve their image. Having people who benefit from our struggle insults us.” He adds that after the community decided to disassociate from these NGOs so that they fully became, “masters of our own ideas, our own actions. ”
In South Africa anti-eviction movements of informal settlements have often come to a head with the desire of outside organizations to assert an ideology or to position themselves within a global fight. By providence, informal settlement movements have chosen to align themselves with different methods and different groups, focusing on internal community processes and horizontal networks between communities rather than vertical relations with NGOs to generate their ideas and strategies. This is not unusual and, given, the extend to which northern movements often rely on Southern NGOs to negotiate ‘global’ solidarity it sometimes creating a divergence between what movements in the North and South are asking for. As Pithouse writes, “The new Northern movements that seek to range themselves against global rather than national domination may make different choices but at the very least the Southern movements need to seek to secure organizationally and ideologically autonomous positions in the transnational movement of movements against millennial capitalism and to push them to become more genuinely global (Pithouse 252).”

To maintain its autonomy and sense of pride, against these conflicting ideologies, the community in QQ choose a practical strategy to democratize development from below. They pressured their counselor to accept People’s Housing Process development because they wanted to be able to build their own homes and plan the development of their own community, rather than just accept RDP homes which are small and often have problems. All three members of the committee said that PHP development would be much better for them because then they would be able to build their own space, design their homes in the fashion they saw fit, and be proud of what they had achieved. The committee has also decided to disaffiliate themselves with any NGOs or political organizations in order to maintain unanimous community consensus in the movement. Many would say this is a wise move. One area of concern about NGO domination is articulated by Richard Pithouse. He points out in South Africa, civil society projects are not just implemented and run by organizations like the World Bank and USAID. Often, they are projects of the ANC that are used for promotion and partnership of the party’s agenda. In Solidarity, Co-option and Assimilation Richard Pithouse writes, “These projects take on a variety of tasks but generally function a to co-opt the expression and inhibit the development of social antagonism by encouraging various forms of (always unequal ) “partnership” that produce anti-political corporatist “arrangements for managing conflict (e.g. lobbying, public participation etc.)(256).” However, Pithouse points out that NGOs range from internationally funded, and therefore often implicated in neo-liberal politics, to innovative local, progressive think tanks. Suggesting, therefore, that one can premeditate a relationship between an NGO and a social movement as always beneficial or as always cooption, is short sighted. He suggests that this will have to be carefully negotiated on a case by case basis paying close attention to the degree to which the NGO is willing to respect the intellectual autonomy of the movement.

It is for this reason, that the QQ Section Committee have chosen to conduct all of their meetings in Xhosa, so that all meeting attendees understand. “We had a march to the Mayor’s office and local government housing office in March 2007. The city then finally allocated 300 sites at Backdalle. The community decided on PHP (People’s Housing Process) approach, because it would give people sense of community and create jobs. People are opposed to RDPs because they are small and made by companies.” Another committee member Nozibele Duma affirmed Nzonke’s comment. “They can give us a place to make our houses. It is important to plan our space (Nozibele Duma 11/21/07).”
On the issue of language he warns, “The committee was nearly torn apart because we were having meetings in English, tried to find people who passed Matric, who spoke good English and used big words. But many people didn’t understand what was going on in meetings and people felt insulted. Now all of our meetings are in Xhosa. We have to acknowledge our personalities and resources the way they are. It will be up to the city councilor to bring a translator.” Likewise, the Joe Slovo task team has also chosen to have all of their meetings in Xhosa, so that everyone in the community can understand and participate. Language as a tool for oppression is reminiscent of the colonialism which negritude sought to eradicate. The language which the colonizer imposed on the black man, fails him. It fails to express his existence, namely his hopes, fears, desires. This is one facet of the annihilation of culture by colonialism which Cesaire speaks and will address in Colonialism and Culture. The lines, “this despair—equal to no other, Of ever taming words from France, This heart which came from Senegal, (Black Orpheus 302)” are used by Sartre to exemplify the anguish and objectifying ‘look’ which the black man experiences in the very language which he uses. It is his language, as he learns it from birth and is adept and skilled in its formulations, yet Sartre writes that it steals from the black man what he desires to say—it prohibits his expression of existence.

Cesaire expresses his views clearly in the ending paragraph of his Letter to Maurice Thorez by writing, “I do not reject solidarities. But I do not want to erect solodarities in metaphysics (namely universalism without particulars),” and goes on to clarify this by saying, “I am not burying myself in a narrow particualrism, but neither do I want to loose myself in an emaciated universalism (141).” Unlike Sartre’s raceless classless society, Cesaire is unwilling to tout straight universalism without deference to both individual freedom and the vibrancy and essence of culture. Perhaps it is the very existential experience of being ‘othered’ himself which has taught Cesaire to value the coexistence and individuality of particular culture combined with existential idea that each persons’ choice is a choice and a judgment on value and worth of all men.

Shockingly, the world has learned little since 1976. Like the Latin-American policy makers which, “equated the problem of marginality with that of standard housing,” and saw marginality as, “something to be physically eradicated (105),” so too the South African National Government’s Comprehensive Housing Plan has put, “eradicating or upgrading all informal settlement by 2014 as its prime target (4 Housing Department Pocket Housing guide). Increasingly, as in Rio de Janeiro, physical structures, whatever their location and whatever their condition, have been seen by South African policy makers as the ‘solution’ to not the plight of the masses, but to the marginalized themselves.

And indeed, not only policy makers, but academics and theorists have taken it upon themselves to devise this ‘solution’ through analysis of a variety of international housing policy, through analysis of the failures of current policies, and through data collection in informal settlements. As Marcelo Lopes de Souza warns, “we must try to overcome the intellectual (possibly also ideological) prejudice which prevents us from seeing that civil society does not only criticize (as a ‘victirn’ of) state-led planning, but also can directly and (pro)actively conceive and, to some extent, implement solutions independently of the state apparatus (1).” de Souza proposes that when civil society organizations cannot organize themselves autonomously, they become apparatuses of the state and squelching the growth of equality and democracy. de Souza details the importance of the autonomy of social movements and civil organizations to effectively engage all members and achieve their starting goal. On the issue of autonomy, Pearlman’s decade of research found that the very people most often called marginal, were anything but in their aspirations, and only made so by the social construction of them as such. The very analytic schemes employed to study ‘marginality’ have in fact further proliferated its myth. Much of the existing literature on informal housing in South Africa has done just this. This authors of this literature have based their analysis on, “a number of fundamental assumptions about the nature of society which are not necessarily true (244).” The majority of authors who have undertaken an analysis of informal housing in South Africa have done so by reviewing international housing policy, critiquing current South African policy and analyzing data, all the while failing, as the government, has failed to ask the people whose situation, future home, and future likelihood to succeed they are analyzing. They have assumed without asking, a far graver assumption—an assumption of marginality of intellect.

“We never thought about NGO’s and political organizations because it was the community organizing itself (Mnilkeli Ntsinte 11/25/07).”

IV. Voices from the Dessert: Questions of Mobilization in Delft

While the residents of Joe Slovo have a mobilized a task team and have organized a mass anti-eviction movement, the situation in Delft is strikingly different. The interviewees in Delft and Joe Slovo reported a very weak community committee that deals solely in internal disputes and the moving of residents to new RDP homes. This seems particularly strange considering a Mail and Guardian report quoting 65% of Delft’s temporary residents wish to move back to Joe Slovo or Langa (10/5/07). As Mzwanele Zulu said, “The people of Delft were told they were going to be moved temporarily. So they are still waiting, they are always waiting. Some moved voluntarily, but now are just waiting (11/15/07).” When visiting Delft it appeared Mzwanele was right. The residents seem to lack volition, lack energy, and are just desperately waiting for their homes. Bongiwe a resident of Joe Slovo suggested a reason why this might be the case. When asked why she thought there wasn’t a task team like the one in Joe Slovo in Delft, she said, “Perhaps people (in Delft) don’t have a strong committee because they are satisfied. Or maybe they have no options. Because they are waiting (Bongiwe Notshokouu 11/14/07).” A recent report by the Mail and Guardian Report titled ‘We don’t want to move to Delft’ interviewed a policeman, who did not want to be named, and reports that the police are finding “women hurting their babies” in Delft. The article went on to say, “The experts say it’s because people are desperate and depressed. Last month a women strangled her newborn child; three months ago a women burnt her four-month-old child,” he says.

As Thandiwe, a resident of Delft living in Tsunami, talked to me, her resignation filled the room. She did not want to talk about struggles, the energy was clearly drained out of her. She sighed and said, “I would like a house in Joe Slovo, that was promised. But even if it is in Delft I don’t mind. I am just waiting for a house.” When I asked her what she thought of the protests in Joe Slovo she said, “I have mixed feelings about the people in Joe Slovo. They may be delaying development because if the Joe Slovo people are still living there, they cannot build houses. But I do not know what will happen to the Joe Slovo people. The houses may not benefit them. Because before the N2 was turned to rental houses. It is difficult to trust that they will build houses to accommodate them (Thandiwe Mafuta 11/23/07).”

Through the course of the interview she seemed uneasy, as if what she told us might hurt her chance at a new home or get her name taken off of a waiting list. She was literally looking over her shoulder and outside of her TRA to make sure no one important saw us in her home. She was reluctant even to sign a consent form until we explained to her that if she said anything she didn’t want us to include, it could later be taken out. At the end of the interview, she admitted, “I am not prepared to wait much longer because if it’s a year or two it would be best to go back to Joe Slovo. It’s true, I am just tolerating the situation here (11/23/07).”

Zakhele Ketey is 28 and from Joe Slovo originally. He has now been in Delft for two years. When his shack was burnt in the fire he lived in the tent camp for three months. He lives in a one room RDP house with eight other people, a number that the small floor plan would barely accommodate. He lost his permanent job as a stocker at ShopRite, as soon as he was moved to Delft because the cost of transport was too high. Now, he and his brothers survive on piece jobs. His grievances included, a lack of jobs, no facilities for the children growing up here, and no bus for the workers. Moreover he told us that the RDP building he and his brothers resided in was, “an asbestos building (11/23/07).” He said, “I know at least half of people want to move back to Joe Slovo because life in Joe Slovo was simple. It was well located land, one can access the train. It is quite expensive for transport here.” “There is more crime here. People are stealing money, there are car hi-jackings, lots of murders, and the shebeens stay open all night which causes more crime. This is because people here, they don’t care about things, they don’t care about their community (11/23/07).” When I asked about the community committee in Delft Zakhele Ketey shrugged and said, “All the community committee does here is clean toilets, control jobs when people are moved into BNG houses, but there is no relationship between the committee and the government. All they do is channel decisions the government has already made. They do not give people any options (11/23/07).”
He said, “I know at least half of people want to move back to Joe Slovo because life in Joe Slovo was simple. It was well located land, one can access the train. It is quite expensive for transport here.” Zakhele and his brothers were perfectly happy to talk, as they sat sharing cigarettes crowded around their bed, but their attitude and answers were soaked in apathy. Zakhele didn’t think that rallies were the best solution to his situation but he didn’t really know what was. He said, “We try to tell government, but government does not listen (11/23/07).” He had given up trying anything, a home is his only goal. “Wherever I have a house I will be satisfied,” he explained. With no prospect of work in sight, and with the thought of sheer survival on their minds, Zakhele and his brothers, like many Delft residents, are simply waiting.
One possible explanation for this apathy, depression, and despair is the exclusion from development of their communities and marginalization that Deflt residents have faced after cooperating with government officials and developers, hoping desperately for a new home and better life for their families. Delft residents have been waiting in a waste land of violence, sickness, and unemployment for three years, unable to plan their new communities or their futures. And this exclusion is continuing. Neither the community committee nor the community at large was involved in the making or distribution of the new RDP homes. When asked how people were picked for and first notified of their new homes Banoyolo said, ““Thubelisha had a list of people and sent letters to us. The community committee just helped to put us in (.Banoyolo Mqalelo 11/23/07)” Joe Slovo residents on the other hand have spoken out, while Deflt residents have had to take a passive seat or risk not receiving homes. Moreover, little electricity, unlit streets, and high rates of crime make it hard for the Delft community committee to even meet, much less mobilize the community for marches. Joe Slovo task team Organizer, Mandela Sarjin said, “The task team has power because it is working for the community. And we are asking the government to provide us with services. Comparing with Delft, the situation is totally different. People are suffering in Delft, it is too hard for them to even meet. The people in Delft moved, but they agreed with the government, worked with the government, and now they are in Delft. Now they cannot resist the government. There is not even electricity at Delft. How can the task team meet when people were used to having electricity (Mandela Sarjin 11/19/07)?” Mzwanele suggested that people want to leave Delft because they weren’t properly informed, “as far as making development for themselves (11/15/07).”

Residents of Joe Slovo also suggested that Delft residents were now caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place. Because they had cooperated with government officials and moved to Delft they are frightened to protest and demand houses in Joe Slovo as they were promised, adequate services on the Delft TRA site, and faster housing delivery. As Mzwanele Zulu said, “The committee in Delft is supported by the government and when people get support from the government they forget they can ask. Being appointed to parliament doesn’t mean you can deceive people (11/15/07).” Moreover, as Thandiwe Mafuta reported, “The ANC calls and controls meetings (11/23/07).” The ANC’s involvement in community meetings makes it virtually impossible for residents criticize or resist N2 gateway, the pet project of the ANC controlled Department of Housing.

“Between colonialism and civilization,” Cesaire writes, “there is an infinite distance; that out of all the colonial expenditures that have been undertaken, out of all the colonial statutes that have been drawn up, out of all the memoranda that have been dispatched by the ministries, there could not come a single human value (34).” It is a fallacy to think, therefore, that colonialism has enabled a divergence of cultures, a borrowing of societies; it has rather, Cesaire argues, robbed colonized societies of motivation. Sharing and borrowing across societies can only take place if both of their cultural elements are harmonized and both are willing participants. It is obvious then, that colonialism could never facilitate this sharing. More than limit the harmonization of cultures, colonialism repressed the ability of its colonies to produce new and unique ideas and to initiate growth and development. In other words, to colonize a culture is to rob it of its base and identity–it is to impose the culture of the colonizer. Language, Cesaire argues, is not only a way to ‘other’ an individual but also one of the bases that colonialism has taken away. Cultures and societies have, then, been ‘othered.’ These are the ‘particulars’ which Cesaire’s initial quote speaks to.

The residents of Joe Slovo are eager for the residents of Delft to voice their concerns to the government. Joe Slovo resident Nosandile Galadaw suggests, “The people of Delft have to form an association so they can resist the government (11/25/07).”Vuyisile Sobazele another Joe Slovo resident suggested, “The people in Delft if they want their voice to be heard they need to make a picket to the government.” And commented, “I think that the people of Delft they don’t have the solidarity to resist (11/25/07).” Mzwanele commiserated with the situation of Delft but felt frustrated at the stagnation of the community committee, “I’ve been in touch with the committee in Delft and they have told me they are supporting us (the task team). The problem with them is they aren’t using initiative or being creative. This is a big problem in this world. They aren’t aware of the current government; they know they are free but the policies haven’t been conveyed to them (Mzwanele Zulu 11/15/07).”

V. Looking Back: ‘Action is part of us, part of our blood’

“Our action is part of us, part of our blood. Because of our daily conditions that we live in and because of the state response to our condition (Nzonke Poni 11/21/07).”

As Perlman writes, “Marginality is both a myth and a description of a social reality. As a myth it supports personal beliefs and social interests, and is anchored in people’s minds by roots that will remain unshaken by any theoretical criticism. As a description of a social reality it concerns a set of specific problems that must be treated in an alternative theoretical way to be understood (242).” The description of informal settlement marginality propagated by the media, the police force, policy makers, and politicians has indeed marginalized the residents of Joe Slovo. As Joe Slovo resident Mnikeli Ntsinte said, “We are sick and tired of government decisions. We are against the government taking decisions without involving people (Mnilkeli Ntsinte 11/25/07).” But the residents of Joe Slovo have not accepted this marginalization, this ‘othering.’ Instead they have ‘looked back’ at their oppressors, as the negritude movement did. In Black Orpheus, Sartre applies his solution of ‘looking back’ when being ‘othered’ to the poets of the Negritude movement and as a solution for the whole of Africans and the African Diaspora. The only escape, Sartre proposes is for the ‘othered’ to ‘look back,’ and in turn reaffirms the speaker subjectivity. By actively fighting against eviction, affirming their own volition and demanding to be consulted on the development of their own communities, the residents of Joe Slovo have defined their ontology and societal worth in terms that are separate from the ‘colonial’ definition of ontology and the homogenization of cultures and societies. As Cesaire writes, “It is a will to distinguish between alliance and subordination, between solidarity and resignation (138).”

This is a strong and notable departure from the generally prescribed solution to the ills that economic neo-liberalism has wrought on the marginalized citizens of the world has been to promote the mobilization of ‘human rights’ and alternative forces in international bills, policies, and conventions, rather than critically revising democratic and economics at a state level, as Michael Neocosmos suggests in his article, Civil society, Citizenship and the Politics of the (im)possible: Rethinking Militancy in Africa Today (3). Neocosmos proposes that what may be necessary is a removal of, “oneself from state subjectivity,” through a, “reconceptualization of citizenship as active citizenship and an understanding of emancipatory politics as prescriptive politics (6).” Joe Slovo resident Gloria Gaqa put this notion into words beautifully when she said, “I saw there was a need for struggle. Without struggle you cannot survive in South Africa. Without struggle you cannot have housing and development. But there is development because people are marching, the court is listening (11/14/07).”By marching, delivering memorandums, and asking their politicians to listen to residents rather than bank officials, the residents of Joe Slovo are calling for a new form of truly participatory democracy where citizens share a vital and respected role in government, no matter their race, class, gender, or religion. By this looking back the residents of Joe Slovo are working for the type of the democracy that academics and policy makers have been talking about for years.

Residents Imagine their communities: Ideas about Development

The exclusion of communities of informal settlements from housing practices inherently suggests that those communities are unable to conceive of a development plan that would be worthwhile or effective. It is clear that the refusal from members of the Housing Ministery to consider the views of people living in Joe Slovo has been based on a ‘myth of marginality’ as Perlman would say; that residents of are uneducated, unknowing, and unable to competently understand the what they construe as the complexity of housing policy. The agency and understanding displayed to me through interviews and observation of Joe Slovo task team meetings completely undermined this assumption. In listening to respondents’ answers and community meetings in Xhosa, ‘RDP,’ ‘development,’ ‘involvement,’ ‘N2’ were some of the most frequently spoken words. Respondents’ knowledge of legislation, rulings, and initiatives that involves them astonished me, far surpassing that of many middle class South Africans I’d known in my five months here. With this understanding and despite their marginalization from politicians and policies, Joe Slovo residents have neither become despondent nor passive to the development that is happening around them. Instead, they, like other residents in informal settlements across the country are discussing and envisaging new forms of community and are hopeful for the future. A member of the task team Gubesa Mbangazita suggests, “If maybe they (the government) would ask us it would be better because we could come up with the best solution to the situation for the future. They are saying again and again, ‘we have decided’ but who are they deciding for (Gubesa Mbangazita 11/25/07)?”And as Ms. Marobobo a member of the community committee from QQ suggested, “Our communities, we are working together, we can go together to find a place where we can feel comfortable and I will feel proud when I get it (Marobobo 11/21/07).” Not surprisingly, residents who live daily in communities and on the land plots slated for development have an intimate and astute knowledge of what would function in and improve community structure and space. This is evident in the very organization of many of the shacks in Joe Slovo itself. Rather than rows of identical boxes, resembling prison cells, residents have arranged their homes into smaller communities with makeshift courtyards, and big communal meeting places at central points of the settlement. This planning creates relationships and trust among neighbors, reducing untidy waste-dumping, crime, and neglect. Many families have planted gardens, shrubs, and vines around their homes which provide additional food and lessen erosion around pieced together tile floors after particularly bad floods. Homes are painted in bright colors, distinguishing houses and creating a cheerful lively atmosphere. Where they exist, streets are large enough for people and cars to move about. For example when asked what she wanted in developed community, Joe Slovo resident Bongiwe Notshokouu said, “There need to be streets that people can move freely between houses with (11/14/07).”

The Joe Slovo task team has demanded in meetings and memorandums addressed to government that it build RDP homes for Joe Slovo residents on the land that they currently occupy. As I talked to leaders in informal settlement QQ who are requesting PHP, or People’s Housing Process, whereby the government provides plots of land, equipped with water taps, electricity boxes, and toilets, where residents can build homes themselves with subsidy grants from the government, I wondered why the residents of Joe Slovo hadn’t requested the same thing. When I queried Mzwanele Zulu he, as usual, replied with a thoughtful answer. “We are asking for RDP homes because the government has not involved us,” Mzwanele said, “if they talked to us there are several ways we could think about development (Mzwanele Zulu 11/15/07).” Vuyisile Sobazele another Joe Slovo resident explained the situation thoroughly and simply. He said, “If the government wants to build houses they need to consult the people. If the government would talk to the people maybe they would prefer RDP homes or not. They could decide (11/25/07).”
Conclusion

The Joe Slovo struggle, its background and particulars, is important. It is indicative of a worldwide struggle for the right to housing, and the growing stigmatization for its agents. In detailing the background of the policy, conditions, and events which mobilized the Joe Slovo task team, I hope to make clear that while Joe Slovo is particular and unique in its situation, it is also the eviction notices on doors all over the world. The strength and effectiveness of the Joe Slovo struggle is notable, and by paralleling the theories of Janice Perlman and the negritude movement to the ideas expressed by residents, I hope to show that they are no different, that just like the struggle for housing in Rio de Janeiro and against colonialism, residents of Joe Slovo are fighting for and articulating their rationality and their humanity.
While Joe Slovo residents are asking for their constitutional right for housing, for a place which they can raise families, start businesses, and improve schools, they are also asking for more. In expressing their autonomy as a movement and in demanding consultation from their government representatives, the residents of Joe Slovo are demanding the recognition of their volition, of their existence as rational beings. Housing officials, private management firms, and cooperate investors, however, have routinely, systematically and purposefully disempowered and excluded residents from the development process. The struggle of Joe Slovo residents is one that thousands of people all over South Africa are currently facing. This struggle is instantiated in housing evictions, land redistribution, and unemployment rates and articulated through meetings with councilors, NGOs, and mass meetings. It is a struggle for equality, for a re-humanization of the poor in the second most unequal country in the world. Ultimately, what the residents of Joe Slovo are requesting, what the ‘othered’ citizens of South Africa are requesting, is what any human requests—dignity.

As Bob Catterell writes, “When squatters fight for these things (the right to water, electricity, and land tenor) their deprivation becomes real to the rest of the city. And when they win these city services, their communities become, quite literally, a bit more powerful, a bit more estimable and a bit more legitimate (7).” As residents of Joe Slovo, and other informal settlements around the world, continue to right for the basic right to shelter, the burden is on not only the policy makers, but the academics and theorists, the framers of philosophy and dialogue to recognize that the demand has come from the bottom up, and now, too, must the solution.

By their demands public, their struggle autonomous, and their fight theirs, Joe Slovo residents are questioning the existing democracy in South Africa, and in doing so, beginning to redefine it. As Joe Slovo resident Nosandile Galadaw pleads simply, “If the government comes up with a plan, asks the people and it is suitable, the people will appreciate (11/25/07).” Perhaps, the government should listen.

Recommendations

With the inequality in housing distribution and the growth rate of informal settlements annually, the study of anti-eviction struggles is wrought with possibility and extremely important. In the current academic arena there is a significant void in literature focusing on the autonomy of such movements, and their choice to retain their autonomy in the face of state and NGO pressure to give it up. The often authoritarian attempts by NGOs and academic organizations to ‘partner’ with informal settlements is another highly relevant area that this project, regretfully, could not fully cover. The horizontalist organizing strategies developed by grass roots movements such as Abahlali baseMjondolo and The Anti-Eviction Campaign would also be extremely valuable topics of future research.

On a more personal note, for respect to the residents of Joe Slovo and the recipients of RDP government housing everywhere, I vehemently suggest that SIT refrain from giving First National Bank its business in the future.

Works Cited

Primary Sources:
Banoyolo Mqalelo 11/23/07
Bongiwe Notshokouu 11/14/07
Gloria Gaqa 11/14/07
Gubesa Mbangazita 11/25/07
Mandela Sarjin 11/19/07
Mnilkeli Ntsinte 11/25/07
Mzwanele Zulu 11/15/07
N Marobobo 11/21/07
Nosandile Galadaw 11/25/07
Nozibele Duma 11/21/07
Nzokne Poni 11/21/07
Potsie Dumezweni 11/19/07
Thandiwe Mafuta 11/23/07
Vuyisile Sobazele 11/25/07
Zakhele Ketey 11/23/07
Zithulele Nogsi 11/25/07

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