Humanism, creativity and rights: invoking Henri Lefebvre’s right to the city in the tension presented by informal settlements in South Africa today

http://www.wits.ac.za/files/dc2pg_333996001384340616.pdf

Marie Huchzermeyer

Inaugural Lecture, School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, 12 November, 2013

The reality of informal settlements and other forms of unauthorized low income dwelling in South African cities, and the frustrations that manifest in street blockades or targeted disruptions to the functioning of the city, are evidence of deep rooted exclusions that signal urgent attention to the realization of city rights. While our socio-economic rights framework is a liberal one, the ‘right to the city’ as coined by the French sociologist/philosopher Henri Lefebvre in the late 1960s stems from a Marxist humanism. The literature that considers the relevance of Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city’ for the urban condition of the 21st century largely emanates from and speaks to urban struggles in the First World or so-called ‘global north’. At the same time, a prominent shack dwellers’ movement in South Africa invokes an explicitly Lefebvrian right to the city in its urban struggles over the past eight years. In this lecture, I discuss key aspects of Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city’, in part contested, in relation to the field of tension that represents informal settlements in cities such as Johannesburg today and the social movements that have emerged from this tension. I focus in particular on Lefebvre’s humanist concept of a right to the ‘oeuvre’ or ‘creative work’ in relation to that of ‘inhabiting’. These are less explored dimensions of Lefebvre’s right to the city, but of central relevance for an engagement with informal settlements and for constructive mobilization around the South African urban condition today.