Social Movements and Shack Dwellers in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Case of Abahlali baseMjondolo in Durban

Click here to read this thesis (in Italian).

Student: Francesco Gastaldon
December 2008

Master’s Degree in Development Studies and Local and International Cooperation

Faculty of Political Science, University of Bologna

Thesis advisor: Professor Anna Maria Gentili (African History; Democracy and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa)

Thesis title: Social Movements and Shack Dwellers in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Case of Abahlali baseMjondolo in Durban

Aim of the dissertation: In the past few years, scholars and international organizations have both shown a renewed interest in the issues of urban poverty and informal settlements (so-called “slums”) in developing countries. Yet many academic publications and international agencies reports (e.g. UN – Habitat, 2003) seem to provide a fairly stereotyped conception of shack dwellers.

On the one hand, they are depicted as violent individuals, fighting a “ruthless Darwinian competition” (Davis, 2006: 201) for scarce resources. On the other hand, they are described as “passive poor” (Bayat, 2000: 538), characterized by fatalism and inactivity. Both representations share a crucial underlying assumption: shack dwellers are not able to carry out autonomous political action. The aim of this work is to investigate the political agency of the urban poor who live in shack settlements, as well as their role in the complex interactions that constitute an urban environment. The context that I analyzed is post-apartheid South Africa, specifically the city of Durban, in which one third of the population lives in informal settlements. In 2005, Durban witnessed the rise of the shack dwellers movement known as Abahlali baseMjondolo (Zulu language for “those who live in the shacks”). Today, it is considered the largest active social movement in the whole country. My dissertation is a contribution toward explaining this phenomenon and better understanding its implications.

Methodology:

In developing an effective theoretical approach, I disputed the concept of civil society in postcolonial countries, and I further challenged the ideological and analytical dichotomy between the state and civil society. Drawing on Partha Chatterjee’s interpretation, I considered civil society as the “closed association of modern elite groups” (2004: 4), and I used the concept of political society in order to re-think popular social movements in the context of post-apartheid South Africa. Through this theoretical framework, I analyzed how the “production of space” (Hart, 2002) in Durban caused the physical and spatial separation between civil society and political society (Mezzadra, 2006), determined by apartheid segregationist policies. This pattern of separation within the same town continued after 1994 (especially with the Slum Clearance project carried out by the Durban Municipality from 2001). I also studied the formation of informal settlements in the city, as well as social and urban policies that have been implemented during the last decades. More precisely, I examined how shack dwellers have reacted to urban organization plans and to “governmental policies” (Chatterjee, 2004) put in place by South African authorities.

Afterwards, my research proceeded to analyze the case-study of Abahlali baseMjondolo. I mainly examined its history, work, documents, web-site, and a number of research papers written by scholars about the movement.

Conclusions:

The relationships between public powers and political society’s “populations” (Chatterjee, 2004) in Durban clearly show how the latter have not been passive victims of public administration’s decisions. Depending on the situation, shack dwellers have taken advantage of some provisions, while cheating or challenging others. The most recent and interesting instance of resistance is Abahlali baseMjondolo. The movement arose from Kennedy Road settlement’s protest against the broken promises of service delivery and “a better life for all” made by the African National Congress. In the last few years, the movement developed into a complex democratic organization, based on three central pillars: rigorously democratic practice in the affiliated settlements (carried out through meetings and discussions), political autonomy from any political parties and any civil society organizations, and universalistic demands. The struggle of Abahlali baseMjondolo has lately been aimed at obtaining the involvement of shack dweller communities in the decision-making process, especially with regard to urban space and social policy issues. Hence, the movement strongly criticized the technocratic approach that both the African National Congress and the Durban Municipality have been using to deal with problems related to informal settlements. Indeed, Abahlali baseMjondolo’s demands and actions represent a clear example of how shack dwellers communities mobilize to act politically and to elaborate political claims. In Abahlali baseMjondolo’s case, the mobilization is grounded in a radical critique of the South African post-apartheid political system, characterized by the exclusion of the poorest strata of the population from a truly democratic decision-making process.

References

Bayat, A. (2000), ‘From ‘Dangerous Classes’ to ‘Quiet Rebels’: Politics of the Urban Subaltern in the Global South’, International Sociology, Vol. 15, No. 3

Chatterjee, P. (2004), The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York: Columbia University Press).

Davis, M. (2006), Planet of Slums (London: Verso).

Hart, G. (2002), Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Mezzadra, S. (2006), ‘Postfazione’, in Chatterjee, P., Oltre la cittadinanza: la Politica dei Governati (Roma: Meltemi).

UN – Habitat, (2003), The Challenge of the Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003 (London: Earthscan Publications).