Category Archives: Marie Huchzermeyer

Lefèbvre and the periphery: an interview with professor Marie Huchzermeyer

This interview provides a short introduction to some relevant but usually dismissed debates regarding the relationship between Lefèbvre’s oeuvre and peripheral/semi-peripheral regions of the world. By talking about some parallels between South African and Brazilian uses of Lefèbvrian concepts, on the one hand, and about Lefèbvre’s use of the reality of Latin American favelas to develop his own concepts, Professor Marie Huchzermeyer proposes challenges to the established scholar Anglophone view on the role of legal rights in the quest for the ‘right to city’. She alternatively points towards a bottom-up reading of the ‘right to the city’ that goes beyond the famous ‘far and cry’ claim, highlighting the importance of institutional advancements as a means within the Lefèbvrian framework for social change.

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Lefèbvre and the periphery: an interview with Marie Huchzermeyer

Statement by Marie Huchzermeyer on Abahlali baseMjondolo’s decision in 2006 to disrupt the Social Movement Indaba

Statement by Marie Huchzermeyer on Abahlali baseMjondolo’s decision in 2006 to disrupt the Social Movement Indaba

Bandile Mdlalose’s 2014 paper in Politikon continues a line of argument about Abahlali emanating from people aligned to the Centre for Civil Society,  that began in 2006. This line of argument is that ‘white academics’ have been controlling Abahlali and that “the academics and left activists coming from the suburbs found shack-dwellers who could be made to look like their dreams and assumptions”. These arguments began to be made in the media in 2006 when Abahlali took the decision, with the Anti-Eviction Campaign, to disrupt the Social Movement Indaba hosted by the Centre for Civil Society at UKZN. Continue reading →

M&G: Journal publishes and is damned

Marie Huchzermeyer, Mail & Guardian 

An academic row is unfolding around the editorial approach of the official journal of the South African Association of Political Studies, Politikon. On its board are renowned academics and public intellectuals including Adam Habib, Tom Lodge and Susan Booysen. Leading political analyst and public intellectual Steven Friedman has made it clear he will have nothing more to do with the journal. Those on his side include Xolela Mangcu, Jane Duncan and Raymond Suttner. How did it come to this? And why should it be of interest to the public at large? Continue reading →

M&G: New struggle is for ownership of the city

http://mg.co.za/article/2014-10-24-new-struggle-is-for-ownership-of-the-city

Marie Huchzermeyer, Mail & Guardian

The imprint of apartheid is still evident in South African cities. As acknowledged widely by planning academics and recognised in the National Development Plan and draft Integrated Urban Development Framework, urban expansion has engendered new forms of segregation and exclusion.

Apartheid-divided suburbs have their equivalent today in fortified estates catering to an exclusive moneyed minority – a mere 3% of South Africa’s households. More densely packed, walled townhouse complexes cater to the aspiring middle class, which makes up barely 10% of South African households. Continue reading →

Concern about SDI press release

Dear Colleagues

I would like to voice concern with a press release by SDI, also posted on Shelter Norway’s website, about the Nobel Peace Prize nomination of Jockin Arputham. It appears below. I am not questioning the nomination, but the arguments put forward in the press release cannot remain unchallenged.

I’ve copied Mike Davis into this e-mail, as he might like to comment on the way one point in his book ‘Planet of Slums’ is used. In the interpretation of the press release, it is Davis’ notion that violence is guaranteed to arise from within the planet’s ‘slums’, which are therefore a threat to western society. The press release uses this (and reference to western military concerns) to justify or at least highlight the importance of SDI’s pacifying strategies of dialogue rather than ‘confrontation’. The press release, in the tradition of SDI tracts and publications, employs a simplistic dualism between ‘dialogue’ and ‘confrontation’, one good, the other bad; one beneficial, the other damaging; one supportive, the other exploitative;  one promoted by SDI, the other by ‘middle class rights based activists that “never give anything back”’.

Continue reading →