Category Archives: Mandisi Majavu

Daily News: What is the Cut Off Date for Inequality?

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http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/765.1

http://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/opinion/no-cut-off-date-for-inequality-1.1156046

What is the Cut Off Date for Inequality?

By Mandisi Majavu

Recently, Tokyo Sexwale, the Human Settlements Minister, announced that free housing for the poor has to have a “cut off date.” He argued that it is unsustainable to provide free housing to the poor “for a long time.” This is a far cry from the Freedom Charter’s spirit, which champions the principle that “All people shall have the right to live where they choose, to be decently housed and to bring up their families in comfort and security.”

The post-apartheid state has become what Fanon warned against – a postcolonial government that governs with total disregard for the new social relations that black people of this country fought for. When black people came out in huge numbers to vote in 1994, they did so because they wanted to do away with white supremacist institutions; they wanted to change history. They wanted social revolution, not social evolution. That is what we were promised when we came out to vote in 1994. What we are living through at the moment is a ‘fragile travesty’ of what we fought for. Post-apartheid South Africa is going through a social evolution of the worst kind.

White privilege is still very much intact; and it self-perpetuates itself in different guises with plausible deniability. That is the logic of whiteness after all. Apart from the fact that whiteness is predictable, it is oppressive, and quite frankly boring. I use the term whiteness to refer to the system that allows whites to occupy most of the top positions in South African institutions, i.e., universities and private companies.

Economically, the post-apartheid government is powerless. And, in reality, big capital rules. That is partly why companies such as Anglo American Corporation, Old Mutual and South African Breweries were allowed to list on the London Stock Exchange. Moeletsi Mbeki recently pointed out, “This is proving to be one of the largest removal of capital gains, with the dividends being paid into another stock exchange.” So what is our government going to do about that?

We can reasonably assume that there is no “cut off date” for the South African companies that have their primary listing on the London Stock Exchange. Yet we constantly hear that there ought to be “cut off dates” for reforms like affirmative action and free housing.

When post-apartheid social movements point out that many black people in this country live in poverty and therefore there ought to be a cut off date on that too, the government sends out its goon squads to beat people into silence. There have been instances where these half-crazed, functionally illiterate goon squads have actually killed people. The case of Andries Tatane comes to mind. Abahlali baseMjondolo in Durban have intimate knowledge of how far these goon squads are prepared to go when in action.

Other government critics that cannot be dealt with through the use of violence are dismissed as being too dull to understand the intricate logic of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). Apart from the reforms based social evolution that is currently taking place, the NDR has yet to disrupt the workings of fundamental historical forces.

Frantz Fanon wrote that postcolonial revolutions ought to give birth to new men and women. Are we to believe that BEE types such as Tokyo Sexwale, the founder of Mvelaphanda Holdings, are the embodiment of the new man Fanon was talking about? There is nothing new about BEE types or tenderpreneurs for that matter. White capital, BEE types and tenderpreneurs are all members of the same family. They play similar social roles; they exist to unashamedly exploit decent and honest working people, and to abuse society’s resources to serve their goals, which can be reduced to simply making maximum profit.

Many black people fought against these social roles during the apartheid regime, and they are still resisting them today. This is what post-apartheid social movements are partly fighting against. However, we are told that there is a ‘born free generation’ that supposedly has different aspirations. It is not clear how this born free generation has different aspirations when they are also expected to fill in social roles in institutions that require them to interact in old ways, albeit slightly different. As Al Sharpton said of the U.S., “We’ve gotten to an era where people are much more subtle and more manicured. Jim Crow is now James Crow, Jr, Esquire.”

What further complicates the issue in South Africa is that the people who are politically in charge are black people. Social movements such as Abahlali baseMjondolo point out, however, that the roots of social problems in South Africa are oppressive social institutions, and not individuals. They argue that it is ‘better to destroy’ the set of institutions that compels social actors to oversee an oppressive system. “Nothing good can be done on a rotten terrain,” according to Abahlali.

The other interesting point about the post-apartheid South African society is that it is a society that has different societal institutions that are pulling in different directions. For instance, the ANC views itself as a revolutionary movement that is engaged in the NDR project while, on the other hand, it is implementing neoliberal policies that are hurting the poor. Consequently, a large number of black people are unemployed, and many people live in poverty. The ANC Youth League is calling for nationalizations of economic institutions. The communist party and trade unions are in bed with the government. The white party, the Democratic Alliance, exists to preserve white privilege. And we supposedly also live in a non-sexist society where, ironically, violence against women is a national sport.

Also, as it has been said before, South Africa is a country with two economies: one developed and the other under-developed. Through social movements, people from the latter economy are organizing themselves to fight for a just and equitable society. It is starting to dawn on people that the NDR has reached its “sell by” date. It is possible that this is the thinking behind what the media refers to as municipal revolts.

Mother City to Some: The Story of Housing in Cape Town

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http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/733.1

Mother City to Some: The Story of Housing in Cape Town

by Mandisi Majavu, SACSIS

Cape Town is the second largest city in South Africa. Affectionately known as the ‘mother city’, it is home to about 3,4 million people. Helen Zille recently argued in the Sunday Times that Cape Town is “the least unequal city in South Africa.” The point, however, is that Cape Town is an unequal city – a white city that is not very motherly towards poor people of colour.

A large number of people of colour live in poverty. It is estimated that 400 000 families of colour do not have access to basic services and shelter in Cape Town. For them, prospects for decent housing are extremely limited.

As things stand, the situation is likely to get worse. Research conducted by the HSRC shows that “the estimated housing backlog in Cape Town is between 360 000 and 400 000, and growing at a rate of 16 000–18 000 units per year.” Further, the housing backlog is expected to reach 460 000 by 2020. Commentators point out that the growing housing backlog has the potential to undermine social stability.

To deal with the situation, the City has, amongst other things, introduced a Five Year Housing Plan, which it claims will improve housing conditions for the poor. The Social Housing Foundation, an agency that works in close collaboration with government and supports the development of social housing in South Africa, argues that Cape Town’s housing plan “advocates a wide range of interventions from informal settlement upgrades to the development of formal freehold housing opportunities for residents who have incomes in excess of R3 500 per month and are therefore no longer entitled to state housing subsidies.” Additionally, the plan aims to boost the development of social housing, as well as rejuvenate existing hostel accommodation in order to provide subsidised rental accommodation.

However, NGOs such as the Development Action Group (DAG) argue that the City’s housing plan reinforces and perpetuates “apartheid spatial patterns.” DAG’s argument is informed by the view that the location of the City’s new low cost housing projects is predominantly in black and coloured areas. As far as DAG is concerned, these new projects could be built in historically white suburbs, where “relatively large tracts of open land often are unused.”

In this regard, the NGO raises some pertinent questions, “How does the city justify continued separate housing developments for different race and class groups? What are the impacts of inequality and separate development of Cape Town as a city and a society?”

The ideology behind this separate and unequal development is rooted in neo-liberalism. World famous academic and political geographer, Professor David Harvey, argues that neo-liberalism is a theory of political economy practice based on the view that human wellbeing is best advanced “by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.” Naturally, the role of a neo-liberal city is to create and maintain an institutional framework that is consistent with neo-liberal policies. To this end, the City of Cape Town has adopted an urban development model known as City Improvement Districts (CIDs), which are managed by the public-private partnership, Cape Town Partnership (CPT).

The values underpinning Cape Town’s CID’s are so problematic that the plan has attracted international condemnation. US-based academic, Faranak Miraftab, who works in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois, has written specifically about spatial apartheid in Cape Town. She contends, “The CIDs in Cape Town…restructure urban space to serve the ideal of a world class city integrated into the global economy, at the cost of the city’s social and spatial integration.”

Predictably, the City receives global rewards for its efforts to keep the City segregated, sanitized and a “highly ‘aestheticised commodity’ for global investment and consumption,” she says.

For instance, Cape Town was recently shortlisted for the World Design Capital 2014. The CPT received the news with enthusiasm writing that “we believe that Cape Town possesses many assets that could make it a World Design Capital. From a history of hosting big events like Cape Town’s own internationally acclaimed design event, Design Indaba to the World Economic Forum…”

But organisations that work amongst the poor take a different view. What the CPT statement does not mention is what DAG bears witness to on a daily basis – Cape Town’s highways form “neat impenetrable buffers between predominantly coloured, black and white suburbs (Bonteheuwel, Langa, Athlone, Pinelands…)” We have families of colour who reside in informal settlements being removed to crime infested ‘transitional relocation areas’ on the periphery of the city. And, research shows that 39 percent of all households in Cape Town live below the poverty line.

Moreover, in our neo-liberal world poverty and misery are conveniently turned into commodities for consumption by tourists. Miraftab astutely points out that the City of Cape Town “markets the poverty and stigma of its marginalized communities as exoticism for tourism consumption, in townships tours and coffee table, township picture books.”

Cape Town’s poor communities most certainly do not share in the wealth generated from the city’s massive tourism industry.

It is estimated that tourism generates R14bn per annum for the City of Cape Town. Wealthy people who own land, hotels, restaurants and farms are the main beneficiaries of the revenues generated by the tourism industry. So skewed are the benefits of tourism that just last month Cosatu noted that “the exclusion of workers from the tourism board by the MEC for economics is a further indication of his desire to control this industry in the interest of the owners and at the cost of the workers.”

These social tensions are rooted in Cape Town’s colonial struggle, which “imposed elitist fantasies” that sought to keep the Cape white and disconnected from the rest of Africa – in addition to maintaining a distance from the struggles of people of colour who wished to be treated with dignity and as equals.

Cape Town was considered a white space under the apartheid regime. The apartheid government declared it a ‘Coloured Labour Preference Area’ and black Africans caught without a passbook were deported to the homelands. This colonial encounter continues to play itself out in various ways. As Miraftab points out, “whether and how the tensions will resolve is far from preordained; it remains an open question.”

SACSIS: The Case for Opening SADC Borders: ‘We live here, we work here, we’re staying here!’

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http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/712.1

The Case for Opening SADC Borders: ‘We live here, we work here, we’re staying here!’

At the end of July 2011, the South African government plans to lift the moratorium on deportations to Zimbabwe and will probably start the deportation of all undocumented Zimbabweans living in South Africa.

Given the Minister of Home Affair’s stated intent to begin ridding the country of undocumented people from other African countries after she is finished with Zimbabweans, it is more than likely that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) is going to intensify its crackdown on all undocumented people after July 2011.

The irony is that in certain cases, the DHA is to blame for undocumented people in the country. A recent research study undertaken by the People Against Suffering Oppression and Poverty (Passop) shows that scores of people are turned away on a daily basis from the Refugee Reception Office (RRO) in Cape Town, “rendering them undocumented through no fault of their own.”

Passop monitored the RRO for two weeks between March 28, and April 8, 2011. During this period, 1,659 people were tuned away for various reasons. About 365 people were turned away because there were no forms for them and 363 people were turned away due to border pass issues. Some people were turned away because 1) there were too many people to serve that day, 2) they had no money to bribe officials, 3) they were at the wrong office, or 4) for visiting the RRO on a wrong ‘nationality day’.

It is partly due to the factors highlighted above that the Passop report argues that the RRO in Cape Town is operating “under capacity” in comparison to the numbers of people applying for papers. Instead of penalizing immigrants for something that is beyond their control, the South African government ought to consider extending the concept of the Zimbabwe Dispensation Project (ZDP) to other foreign nationals from the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

The SADC region is moving towards a free trade area. Research shows that the opening up of national economies has largely been accompanied by the increased mobility of labour across borders.

Interestingly, the proposed Protocol on the Free Movement of People in the SADC of 1995 had initially also put forward an “open borders” concept, i.e. SADC citizens having free movement within SADC.

Apart from the fact that the SADC region is moving towards a free trade area, it is worth keeping in mind that immigrants from the SADC countries helped build the South African economy. Research also shows that South African mines (and the South African agricultural industry) depended on cheap foreign labour in order to make profits. In fact, “mining has consistently been one of South Africa’s most important industries, one of its biggest employers and the driving force of its industrial economy,” contends Jonathan Crush, the director of the Southern African Migration Programme (SAMP).

SAMP research further shows that throughout the 20th century, at least 40 percent of the mine workforce was non-South African. A research paper published by the Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM) in 2005 points out that by 1970, there were over 260,000 male labour migrants on South African mines. Put differently, this means that hundreds of thousands of male migrants from the SADC countries have spent the greater parts of their working lives in South Africa, argues Crush. These workers came from Malawi, Lesotho, Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola and Tanzania.

It was in recognition of this fact in 1995 that the post-apartheid South African government offered permanent residence to mineworkers from outside of the country who had been working on the mines since 1986.

Crush reports that 26,440 miners applied for permanent residence, but points out that the reason a small number of miners applied was twofold.

Firstly, miners were poorly informed about the first amnesty and had insufficient time to make their applications.

Secondly, the fact that the miners had to have served 10 years to apply is unjust given the 5-year limitation on SADC country citizens applying for permanent residence. If all miners were to apply for a reopened amnesty, the results would be startling. Some 150,000 non-South African miners would be eligible.

Additionally, the GCIM’s research paper reveals that many adults in SADC countries have either parents or grandparents who have worked in South Africa in the past. “In every case, nearly a quarter or more people have grandparents who had worked in South Africa…About a quarter of the people in Namibia and Zimbabwe have parents who had worked in South Africa. So did 41% of Batswana, 54% of Mozambicans and 83% of Basotho.”

It is this history that compels me to argue that the South African government ought to consider extending the concept of the ZDP to other foreign nationals from the SADC region.

Based on the foregoing, people from the SADC countries have political grounds to apply for South African papers that allow them to work and live in this country. Their fathers and grandfathers, after all, were exploited, like all blacks in this country, by a white supremacist regime in order to build the South African economy. In some cases, their fathers and grandfathers paid the ultimate price, dying from pneumonia and other lung diseases on the South African mines.

Perhaps it is worth noting that many people in the SADC region live in poverty and view South Africa as a place with many economic opportunities. Although South Africa has its own problems and challenges, the truth of the matter is that South Africa is the economic powerhouse in the region (some might argue on the whole continent). In a policy brief written for the Economic Justice Network, Dale McKinley argues that SADC member states have a population of about 250 million people and a combined GDP of some US$432bn – 65 percent of which comes from South Africa alone.

Needless to point out, South Africa became the regional economic powerhouse that it is today partly on the backs of immigrant labourers from the SADC who helped build the country’s economy. Is it unreasonable for people to want to share in the fruits of what they helped create?

Xenophobia Still Smouldering

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http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47285

Xenophobia Still Smouldering

CAPE TOWN, Jun 19 (IPS) – “My worry is that my children are going to be slaves because they won’t have anything. These foreign people come to South Africa with nothing, but tomorrow he has cash, third day he owns a shop and fourth day he has a car. Where do these foreign people get this money?”

Small business owners are venting their frustrations on ‘foreign nationals’ – among them many Somalis – who own shops in the country’s townships, causing experts to warn that xenophobic violence could increase.

Businesspeople from four of Cape Town’s impoverished communities – Delft, Masiphumelele, Samora Machel and Gugulethu – held several meetings in late May and early June to discuss ways of ridding their communities of foreign-owned shops.

The meetings echo those held a year ago in the Gauteng townships of Atteridgville and Alexandra, shortly before over 150,000 foreign nationals were displaced by a wave of xenophobic violence that swept the country, killing 62 people with thousands more beaten or raped.

On Jun. 14 this year, an unidentified man delivered letters to all ‘Somali’ shops in Gugulethu, giving the shopkeepers until Jun. 20 to leave the area.

The handwritten, photocopied letters purported to come from the Gugulethu Business Forum, and even though some members distanced themselves from the letters, others accused Somali shopkeepers of having a deliberate agenda to ‘kill off’ local business.

“Somalians want to be the cheapest business people in town. If they see that am also pricing my goods like them they are going to find ways to undercut me,” said one woman shopkeeper who declined to be named for this story.

“At the end of the day there is going to be a lot of trouble in my township. If I had money I would have left long time ago because there is no peace here. And those boys from Somalia have come and created more troubles,” said another, who identified himself only as ‘Boyce’.

Add the plans to remove ‘Somali shopkeepers’ to the steady number of attacks and murders of ‘foreign nationals’ and the mix becomes deadly, says Loren Landau, director of the University of the Witwatersrand’s Forced Migration Studies unit.

“Violence against foreigners is rapidly becoming fully integrated into the standard politics of some townships,” says Landau.

In May 2008, over 150,000 foreign nationals were displaced by a wave of xenophobic violence that swept the country, with thousands being murdered or raped.

But since the “officially recognised” outbreak of xenophobia ended last June, police have not kept official statistics of xenophobia-related murders, claiming instead that any deaths of foreign nationals are the result of South Africa’s generally high crime rate.

This itself has fuelled xenophobia, says the Somali Association of South Africa.

“There is a culture of impunity developing. When Somali traders are murdered the police don’t act on it. There is a perception that if people kill or do whatever to Somalis, nothing will happen to them,” says the Somali Association of South Africa’s Western Cape co-ordinator Hussein Omar.

Omar’s fears appear to be borne out by recent events – in the last fortnight, two young Somali shop assistants were burnt to death, one Zimbabwean and one national of Bangladesh murdered, three shop assistants injured with gunshot wounds in Delft, and another ‘Somali shop’ in the Cape Town suburb Khayelitsha set alight.

Omar is investigating the deaths of the Somali shop assistants – Omar Josef and Hazim Amad, who died when their shop – where they sleep – was set ablaze at two a.m.

The local police told IPS they have already ruled out xenophobia even though the investigation is still under way. Somali residents in the community say the shop was doused with petrol before being set alight but the investigator, Detective Constable Eldoret van der Merwe, would only say “at this stage we can’t say how the fire started”.

In Gugulethu, a local activist group – the Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign – tried for three weeks to convince the Gugulethu Business Forum not to vent their anger on Somali shopkeepers, but instead to ask government why it was not doing more to support small business.

But the Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign’s Mncedisi Twalo says after the businesspeople delivered the threatening letters to ‘Somali’ shops, he was forced to ask the police for a guarantee that they would protect the Somali shopkeepers.

The police have since arranged meetings between local businesspeople and the Somali shopkeepers, which they have closed to the media.

Omar fears that the actions of small groups of local businesspeople could become a catalyst for other people to vent their frustrations on ‘foreign nationals’.

And Landau says that as people come to accept that it is legitimate to plot against “foreign” business people, “the violence will only spread”.