The Marikana land occupation in Cato Manor, Durban, in 2013 and 2014: A site where neither the state, the party nor popular resistance is fully in charge

by Richard Pithouse

This chapter provides an account of some of the contestation around a landoccupation in Cato Manor, Durban. It shows that none of the actors aspiring toexercise control – party structures, the local state, the courts, NGOs and popularorganisations – were, in the period under study, able to exercise full control over thepeople or territory in question. It also shows that actually existing forms of contestationfrequently operated outside the limits established by liberal democratic arrangements