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We need to defend living politics, because of what living politics defend

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We need to defend living politics, because of what living politics defend
Marie Huchzermeyer

Defend Freedom – Democracy under Attack
Briefing and discussion hosted by Church Land Programme. Pietermaritzburg, 6 November

Mine is a perspective from a distance. Nevertheless, I must acknowledge that I feel quite deeply influenced by the ‘University of Abahlali’. And because of what Abahlali has gone through, the learning has intensified for many of us who had the privilege of not being affected in any personal and material way.

I haven’t done much of the actual feeling and tasting (to use Sbu’s words) that Abahlali invites us to do, but I’ve learnt a tremendous amount, and that in itself is worth reflecting on and I’ll get back to that.

Why defend a living politics? From what I’ve learnt over the past few weeks, we need to defend the living politics in the first instance because of what the living politics is defending for us. But what I’m also learning is that this is not where it ends. Nikelo said something very profound yesterday. ‘Abahlali never planned to be a political party. But government has treated us like this. This means we’re heading in the right direction’. Abahlali is occupying a political space, and is conscious of this.

Abahlali were discussing on Wednesday whether anything substantially new had happened with the attacks on Kennedy Road. For a long time, I thought Abahlali’s website and email news was giving us a window on how all poor people, all people in informal settlements are being treated.

Especially criminalisation came to my attention in this way, and I began to realise that independent leaders in Gauteng’s informal settlements were also being arrested illegally for standing up for the rights of their communities (this has been hugely underreported/undocumented).

But it seems that once Abahlali began developing its living politics and defending democracy, the repression intensified to the extent that Richard Pithouse was saying on Wednesday ‘nothing has happened on this scale since the 1980s’. Perhaps what alarmed everyone most was that the ANC resorted to hiring thugs. This is a measure that is common for instance in places like Nairobi, where there is no democracy to speak of.

Its important to reflect on all this also from the perspective of the Slums Act. I’ve been trying to draw attention to the fact that the Slums Act encompasses a wrong way of doing away with slums.

Its not only a silly way, because all it does is chip away at the tip of the iceberg, it is also repressive, it resorts to apartheid-era measures such as criminalising those that are desperately poor and who have no option but to invade land.

The measures include forceful eviction, security/fencing/policing – in effect control, all to the end of eradicating, stamping out any possibility for informal settlements. Judge Moseneke, in the Constitutional Court hearing, referred to ‘smashing the poor’ (in my perception, the Constutional Court Judges were finding more faults with the Slums Act than the excellent legal team had dared bring before them – I understand there were carefully considered legal reasons for this).

I’ve also tried to draw attention to the fact that this negative, direct approach is not only present in the Slums Act (which is a provincial initiative), but also in the then National Department of Housing’s attempts to amend the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act (PIE) – 2006, 2008.

It is also present in local government practice. Municipalities have land invasion units ‘smashing the poor’. Pretoria (City of Tshwane) thought nothing wrong with going one step further and outsourcing the so-called ‘management of informal settlements’ to ‘security companies’. All of this is deeply anti-democratic.

It is all anti-democratic, but it is above board. What I’m just starting to realise is that the Slums Act and these national and local measures are themselves just the tip of an iceberg. There is far more below the surface.

Abahlali have challenged the slums act successfully, but in so-doing have unleashed more of the slums act ethics – what was previously hovering below the surface has now moved up into visibility, without shame, with seeming legitimacy.

Abahlali, immersed in their living politics, expected this. I did not. I naively thought that a victory in the Constitutional Court would seal the deal: upgrading would finally unfold as per Chapter 13 of the Housing Code.

Abahlali were told that their challenge of the slums act had embarrassed high levels in the gov/ANC. We need to realise that those same people have for a long time been embarrassed by informal settlements. We do need to try and understand why.

My sense is that its not just because they want a ‘world class city’ that will attract investment and impress the visitors at 2010. Its becoming more and more evident that its the uncontrolled nature of informal settlements that is the concern to government and the ANC. The kind of town planning that has shaped most parts of our cities was a project of control. This is the kind of city our elites are now long accustomed to and have been perpetuating.

Once a living politics emerges within an informal settlement, and people from within begin to demand democratic development, that is to challenge the control that the state and the party exercise when spending resources that are earmarked for development, then control is meted out in its rawest form.

What Abahlali has done is demanded the right way of doing away with slums. This is an indirect way, a democratic way that accommodates an autonomous living politics. It is development that is shaped by a living politics.

But the big question is how does one win over the political space for this?

The only place that I know where this has been successfully ‘won’, through very hard and ongoing contestation, is in different cities of Brazil. Its the only place that I know where the kind of ethic or living politics that Abahlali ascribe to, and the cross-class solidarity that is emerging around Abahlali have developed at scale into a political movement that has won the space for autonomous practice.

In its early political campaigning, the now ruling Workers’ Party or PT in Brazil used the slogan ‘Without Fear of Being Happy’. For many years the PT was ‘explicitly more concerned about conscientisation and supporting popular movements than about coming into power in the short term’ (Mainwaring, 1984:115).

Brazil the only example I know where ‘policy academics’ (which is what the programme refers to me as) have learnt from a living politics. Universities in Brazil became important sites for the PT.

Its a pity that all the effort and all Abahlali’s momentum has to go into defending – lobbying for an independent enquiry.

S’bu, Mnikelo and Zodwa don’t want our pity. They are warning us: Mnikelo said ‘This doesn’t look like South Africa’. Zodwa spoke about the need for Abahlali to watch the watch-dogs. The Constitutional Court, the Human Rights Commission – these are now spaces that are used in Abahlali’s defence, but there might be a time when these very institutions need to be defended.

There is tremendous hope in the fact that as the democracy of the state is shrinking, a living democracy is born from the grassroots.

Challenging the eradication of informal settlements is not about endorsing poor people having to resort to make shift cities. Its about making sure state resources are used in a democratic way, decisions made outside of state control. This is what Abahlali has done.

Lebogang from CPS asked ‘where are the real sites of reform?’ I believe this is where they are. And as S’bu was saying, the voices (for reform) need to be louder. When there is more time, its relevant to discuss the Brazilian experience of Urban Reform, which was linked to the autonomy project of the PT.

Thank you.

Meaning of autonomy
(Marcelo)

‘deprived of the dimension of autonomy, urban development can only be, at best, a kind of modernisation accompanied by poverty reduction and some degree of environmental protection, overseen by more or less ‘enlightened’ and ‘democratic’ ruling elites’ (Souza, 2003:197).

Does recent litigation bring us any closer to a right to the city?

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Does recent litigation bring us any closer to a right to the city?
Marie Huchzermeyer
30 October, UJ, workshop on: Intellectuals, ideology, protests and civil society

The Bill of Rights and Constitutional Court are important institutions that were fought for in the negotiated transition.

Part of their role was to ensure that the kind of atrocities committed under apartheid rule would never be repeated.

One atrocity was to deny black individuals and households urban freedoms and rights, or ‘a right to the city’.

The Constitution’s mandate, however, goes beyond this, to ensure ongoing transformation towards a more equal society.

This means that the right to the city that our Constitution strives for is one of an equal right to the city. This has important components:

Equal right to participate in decision-making
Equal right to access and use the city
Equal right to basic services

Transformation has occurred in many important areas, but the opposite has also been the case, particularly under city governance approaches that prioritise urban competitiveness.

A competitiveness to attract investment translates into a negative competitiveness to keep the poor out, to not attract more poor than the city next door.

City of Tshwane spends more on security companies to ‘manage’ informal settlements, in essence to keep new arrivals out, than it spends on providing basic services to these settlements.

It is praised for taking steps towards eradicating its informal settlements.
The poor have to migrate elsewhere.

There has been a perverse continuation of urban and housing rights violations post 1994.

It was only in 2000 that the Bill of Rights was evoked by a marginalised and violated urban community (represented by Irene Grootboom) in the Constitutional Court.

In what was received as a landmark ruling, the Court interfered with the Executive, instructing the Ministry of Housing to amend its housing policy to better cater for those living in intolerable conditions.

It took 4 further years for the policy changes to be adopted into housing policy. Chapters 12 and 13 were added to the national Housing Code:

Housing in Emergency Circumstances and
Upgrading of Informal Settlements.

In the following 5 years, these two policies have not been properly implemented, if at all. Unnecessary violations have continued and marginalised communities have had to resort to the courts.

However, the landscape has changed significantly. Whereas the Grootboom case involved an isolated community with only a loose network of support through the Legal Resources Centre which acted as ‘Friends of the Court’, today cases reach the Constitutional Court through social movements such as:

Landless People’s Movement,
Inner City Tenant Forum,
Abahlali base Mjondolo,
Anti-Privatisation Forum and
the Anti-Eviction Campaign.

These movements coordinate, exchange, and take an interest in one another’s legal struggles.

In these legal struggles, there is an inevitable intersection between the ‘learned’ middle class (actually often the very comfortable upper class) and social movements.

It is at this intersection that as a non-lawyer I have had the opportunity to interact with LPM, Abahlali and more recently, the Informal Settlement Network. It has given important insights and meaning to my work, and as I understand it, vice versa.

While there has long been a human rights network, it is only recently that a ‘middle class’ network around urban rights has emerged.

This is not a purely legal network, but one that bridges urban policy and tries to be effective on fronts other than litigation – in order to avoid the need for litigation.

In its interaction with social movements, it is possibly at the beginnings of what an urban reform movement has long been in Brazil.

In Brazil, urban reform is not understood as the liberal agenda that it became in late 19th century Europe, essentially securing a future for the middle class against the threat of a socialist revolution, and therefore despised by Engels in his Housing Question.

Urban Reform in Brazil fills exactly the gap in left thinking about the city (the gap derived from the Marxist ideology of nothing but a revolution). Henry Lefebvre from the 1960s and later David Harvey have worked at filling this gap with the concept of a Right to the City.

Urban Reform in this sense is a pragmatic commitment to gradual but radical change towards grassroots autonomy as a basis for equal rights.

It intersects with but does not dictate to the grassroots.

It is driven by a pragmatic ethic that does not shy away from addressing immediate crises.

Inevitably it is then also a commitment to prevent a regression into increased violations and to ensure existing policies are implemented – this was the core of Abahlali’s successful legal action around KZN Slums Act.

In a very moderate way, the three components of the right to the city that I set out at the beginning:

Equal participation in decision-making
Equal access to and use of the city
Equal access to basic services

have all been brought before the Constitutional Court through a coalition between grassroots social movements and a sympathetic middle class network.

Judgements have involved moderate advances.

Participation in decision-making is a serious concern for the Court, but it faces a huge dilemma on what to do about it. Time and again, a frustrated court orders ‘meaningful engagement’, but is unrealistic about how this will be achieved, who will ensure it, and just how averse municipalities are to this.

Access to (and use of) the city has not been ordered in more than a temporary nature, and only indirectly – in the Olivia Road case, meaningful engagement has resulted in a temporary solution for the evictees from San Jose, within the inner city. In other cases, e.g. the Joe Slovo case in Cape Town, the Court has been insensitive to location of the poor in the city, instead endorsing relocation onto the periphery.

Access to basic services has been the theme in the Phiri/Mazibuko case around the right to water in Soweto. The Court was not sympathetic. In the Harry Gwala case, where judgement is pending, the hearing was sympathetic to the extent that the Provincial government was required to apologise to the community for a three year delay in a feasibility study on in situ upgrading. Whether the court advances the right to basic lighting and sanitation in its ruling remains to be seen.

The convergence around the right to the city, via litigation, is a strong experiential basis for far wider action and interaction.

What my exposure to the KZN Slums Act case has taught me is that intellectual capacity is by no means located only in the ‘learned’ middle class.

Its from this that I derive hope for an urban reform movement in South Africa that centres on a right to the city. However, one must beware that this language is fast being usurped by the ‘mainstream’ within the UN, UN-Habitat, NGOs, think tanks, consultants etc., in something of an empty buzz word, where the concept of grassroots autonomy and meaningful convergence is completely forgotten.

Thank you

Meaningful Engagement

Meaningful Engagement

The Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Wits, are hosting a colloquium on the topic of ‘Meaningful Engagement’ today. The speakers were asked to prepare and circulate their papers in advance. This is S’bu Zikode’s contribution to the discussion.

I thank Lauren Royston and Kate Tissington for the opportunity to comment on the topic of meaningful engagement.

Our movement is always very happy to visit CALS. CALS is an important ally in the struggles of the poor and all our movements hold your organization in high respect. You have worked with us and not for us. You have not been scared to confront power whether it is the provincial government or a gangster landlord. We remember how Stuart Wilson sat taking instruction from Uncle James in Motala Heights while Ricky Govender’s thugs threw rocks at Uncle James’ house. We know how hard and how well Stuart and your team worked on the Slums Act case.

It is a fact that may not be disputed that not all engagements between the state and the people are meant to be meaningful. What is called ‘engagement’ or ‘public participation’ is often just a kind of instruction, sometimes even a threat. Many times it is done in such a way that all possibilities for real discussion and understanding are closed from the start. In these cases what is called engagement is really just a way for the state to pretend to be democratic when in reality all decisions are already taken and taken far away from poor people.

However all purposes of engagement are meant to be meaningful by virtue of their intention. When you engage for a particular purpose you want the purpose itself to determine the nature of the engagement. The purpose therefore comes first. In each engagement we must be clear about who we are and what we want. This determines our tactics and what we can accept and not accept in each engagement.

It is one thing if we are beneficiaries who need delivery. It is another thing if we are citizens who want to shape the future of our cities, even our country. It is another thing if we are human beings who have decided that it is our duty to humanize the world.

Some problems are technical. Some problems are political. But we find that without our own political empowerment we can not even resolve the technical problems. The solving of even very small technical problems, like a broken toilet, requires that we are first recognized as people that count. If you are not recognized they will just say ‘who the hell are you?’. To be recognized requires struggle. It took Abahlali baseMjondolo in Durban three years of hard struggle – with many police attacks, many beatings and arrests – before we were even recognized as people who could negotiate with the state. Then there was another year of a different kind of struggle within the negotiations before we were properly recognized there. Right now in Cape Town Abahlali baseMjondolo are still fighting the first struggle against repression. Right now communities all over the country are in rebellion. Many are still at the stage of demanding to be recognized as people that count. We are very much encouraged by many of these rebellions. We support the land occupations, the strikes and the eating of food in the big shops in Durban. Of course we condemn the new xenophobia in Mpumalanga. When the anger of the poor turns on the poor it is nothing but disaster. Terrible, terrible disaster.

The road is long. We have travelled far in Durban but it remains possible that we could be pushed back. Therefore we must always remain strong – we must remain many, we must remain active, we must continue to think and to debate all issues. This is the only way to ensure that we keep going forward.

There are some clear rules for meaningful engagement. Firstly the people that are supposed to participate in that engagement must be informed prior to date of that engagement and they need to be aware of what is going to be discussed during that engagement. The time, place, language and culture of that engagement must suit the people.

The leadership of the movement or community that will attend the engagement also has important responsibilities. They need to inform all of their members about the engagement in good time. They need to explain clearly what will be at stake. The organizing and placing of notices should not only be limited to a leadership or organizational level but to ordinary people to avoid any form of exclusion. Women must be included on the same basis as men. The young and the old must be included on the same basis. The poor and the even poorer must be included on the same basis. There must be no distinction between people born here and people born in other countries.

The local leadership must use its relevant culture and the strategies that are often used in that particular community. It is important not to allow the NGOs to teach people ways of being ‘professional’ about development that separate people from the culture of a community.

Representatives must be elected and mandated. When there is ongoing engagement it is important that representatives are rotated and re-elected for each engagement. All decisions must be referred back to the movement or community before being finalized.

During the engagement the processes should be conducted in a way that all the parties that are involved in that engagement feel that their opinions are being heard. You cannot have a situation where one party controls the agenda and chairs the meeting without consultation. Everyone must be able to speak freely.

My experience in the past has been that some government officials would come up with a concluded decision with no room to accommodate views of the people and then organize an engagement. This is the experience of most communities and most movements. In these cases what is the point of engaging under these circumstances?

This was most evident to us when the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature introduced the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-Emergence of Slums Bill 2007, in the Kennedy Road Settlement. They started with a police helicopter just above us, flying low over the settlement. There were police everywhere. We were not allowed to speak if we couldn’t quote a section of Act. Those who did speak were dismissed without respect. Our concerns were treated as if they were ignorant or stupid.

It became clear that there was no reason for the legislature to hold this public meeting except that they were required by the law to do it. We organized many shack dwellers to attend this meeting. We prepared for it very carefully. We read that Bill together line by line. We discussed each point in that Bill. On the day the Kennedy Road Community Hall was fully packed. But our presence was turned to be used to justify the passing of the Bill into an Act on the basis that a lot of people were present to endorse the Act! It is thus clear that the good move of holding public meetings can easily be monopolized and abused in order to justify the exclusion of the public from the discussions that really matter.

In such instances one can rightful say that, such government officials see no need to engage ordinary people on policy formulation matters that affect them directly. This thinking goes with the idea that ordinary people should just become the passive receivers of services. They must just trust that everything that is done in their name and for them is an attempt to help them. Of course we cannot trust in this because people are being evicted everywhere. People are facing forced removals everywhere. People are being dumped in transit camps everywhere. People are being disconnected everywhere, burnt everywhere, arrested everywhere, beaten everywhere. We have good reason not to automatically trust the state. Where we have achieved trust with some officials it has been after long struggle and long negotiation followed by the experience of learning to work together.

Active citizen participation is discouraged by those that hold the power. Sometimes it is discouraged with contempt. Sometimes it is discourage with violence. Sometimes it is discouraged by making simple issues too complicated for ordinary people to understand. Sometimes it is discourage by just making it too difficult to engage. How many shack dwellers can afford to be on hold on their cellphones for twenty minutes?

We expressed our anger at the so called ‘public participation’ meeting for the Slums Bill. Some members of Abahlali baseMjondolo were then invited to the KwaZulu-Natal parliament to participate in the discussions there. They prepared carefully. They had a written submission and we were ready for all debates. They travelled there on a work day. But the Act was passed in their presence without any opportunity given to them to say a word. The Act was passed against the will of the people.

Meaningful engagement will of course mean different things to different people. But it is clear that a reasonable service provider, stakeholder, leader or official should not be judged by how many public hearing meetings or izimbizos it conducts but by the number of people whom they manage to reach and listen to and to take into serious account during those meetings. Meaningful engagement should make sure that both parties involved will be able to benefit from that engagement. It can never be meaningful if it is just for the people to listen and to never be able to voice out their own thinking.

The government says that it wants to ‘bring government to the people’. It is much better to ‘bring government to the people’ than to send in the police, the private security and the land invasions unit to evict and disconnect and to then call that good governance. But bringing the government to the people is not enough. Meaningful engagement will only happen when we can, through our struggles, bring the people into government.

That does not mean that we want to replace one councillor with another or one party with another. It means that we want to bring the government, iregardless of who is sitting on the comfy chairs there, under the control of the people.

That is why we also say that the struggle of our movements is a struggle to democratize the society from below. Yes we do want services. Services are needed by our lives. They are basic to life. We will always engage to try and get or to keep these services. These little struggles are important.

But we also want full recognition of our humanity. Things must be done with us and not for us or to us. Therefore the government must come under the people. This requires the current political system to be turned upside down. If each community and each movement builds its power by respecting its members fully so that as each individual grows in power each community and movement grows in its power then we can slowly achieve this step by step. That is our vision for meaningful engagement – a slow revolution from below fought day by day across the country.

S’bu. Zikode.

Kennedy Road Settlement, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, 24 July 2009