Epidemic of Rational Behaviour

(For the archive)

http://mg.co.za/article/2005-05-25-epidemic-of-rational-behaviour

25 May 2005

In March 19, 750 people from the Kennedy Road informal settlement in Clare Estate, Durban, blockaded Kennedy Road with burning tires and mattresses for four hours.

Residents in the informal settlement had been promised for more than a decade that a small spit of land in nearby Elf Road would be made available to them for the development of housing. They were participating in discussions about the development of this housing when bulldozers began clearing the land. People were shocked to be told that a brick factory was being built.

“A meeting was set up with the owner of the factory and the local councillor but they didn’t come,” says local community leader S’bu Zikode. “There was no [brick company], no councillor, no minister, nobody. There was no fighting but the people blocked the road. Then the police came. Then the councillor came. He told the police, ‘These people are criminals, arrest them.’ We were bitten by the dogs, punched and beaten. The Indian police are racist. They told us that our shacks all need fire.”

Fourteen people, including two juveniles, were arrested. On March 21, Human Rights Day, 1 200 people tried to march to the Sydenham police station to demand that either the Kennedy Road 14 be released or the entire community be arrested because “if they are criminal then we are all criminal”. The march was dispersed with dogs and tear gas.

The 14 were released 10 days after their arrest. At the welcome-home party, Zikode held the crowd rapt with the following affirmation of their actions: “The first Nelson Mandela was Jesus Christ. The second was Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. The third Nelson Mandela are the poor people of the world.”

On April 27, Freedom Day, hundreds of people from the Cato Manor informal settlement on the other side of Durban attempted to deliver a memorandum to President Thabo Mbeki, who was speaking at King’s Park stadium. They made it as far as Mayville before there was a confrontation with police and 10 arrests.

On May 13, 3 000 people from Kennedy Road, surrounding settlements and municipal flats, marched to the offices of the local councillor, Yacoob Baig, demanding his resignation. Baig — who began his political career in the National Party, and worked for the Democratic Alliance before joining the African National Congress — now operates on the last fumes of his credibility.

Similar revolts have been happening across the country — most recently in Port Elizabeth, and Harrismith in the Free State where 17-year-old Teboho Mkhonza was shot dead by the police. The increasing frequency of these protests suggests that they are not idiosyncratic events but more systemic and, although they are effectively contained by swift police action, they are clearly getting to the president.

At an imbizo last week, Mbeki went out of his way to note that “We must stop this business of people going into the street to demonstrate about lack of delivery. These are the things that the youth used to do in the struggle against apartheid.” Mbeki is correct to note that at these events, protesters often rail against the failure of service delivery. More precisely, protesters cite not only the failure of service delivery, but the fact that they have constantly been promised delivery and betrayed. The agents of this betrayal are often seen to be local councillors, who receive the lion’s share of resentment. Yet, while portrayed as atavistic outbursts, on closer examination these marches and protests turn out to be rational, democratic engagements given the structures of power within which South Africa’s poor live.

The ANC responses to these outbursts have followed the president’s lead: “the matter should have been referred to appropriate ANC structures”, and the “local leaders of the protest are self-appointed” have been some of the official pronouncements. Ashwin Desai, activist and author of We Are the Poors, contextualises these responses: “When the party structure is solely a top-down mechanism, there are no conditions for people on the ground to be able to have an impact on the policies that affect them. And if that’s the case, then protest is the only recourse they have.” The experience of government failure is not one that can be fixed at ministerial level. The best policies in the world will be deeply compromised if they remain, at the local level, favours to be handed out by local councillors to a mute and impassive population.

The protest in Clare Estate is a revolt of the obedient and the faithful. These are people who have done everything asked of them, who couch their demands in terms of being “loyal citizens of the Republic of South Africa”, and whose legal and organised right to protest was utterly non-violent. They participate in every available consultative process. They care for their sick and dutifully call what they are doing “home- based care”. Many will say they have become entrepreneurs collecting cardboard, plastic or metal for sale to recyclers. They accept that delivery will be slow and that they must take responsibility for their own welfare. They revolt because they have believed and done everything asked of them and they are still poor and because the moment when they ask for their faith to be rewarded is the moment their aspirations for dignity become criminal.

These protests reassert the right of the poor to take to the streets, and of the dignity of the places in which they live. This assertion of dignity and place is dangerous stuff — the rhetoric of elite policies justified in the name of the poor doesn’t function if the poor speak for themselves. In a democracy, this is precisely to be welcomed, and we ought to be ready for more. This is the sound of the third Nelson Mandela clearing its throat.