"Because your yard is too big": Squatter struggles, the local state and dual power in Uitgenhage, 1985-1986

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 14 March, 1988By focussing largely on the struggle Langa's squatters waged against forced removal, this chapter will attempt to analyse the complex interactions between local township administrators, the white establishment, employers, community organisations and trade unions. To understand this complexity, the romantic conception of unstratified communities united against a monolithinc state needs to be jettisoned. Instead, the internal workings of both the social movements and state apparatuses must be studied. This cannot be achieved, however, without taking into account the impact social movements have on the state and how the actions of state officials affect the strategies of social movements. Furthermore, this relationship does not exist outside the influence employer interests exert on the local state and the way this influence is mediated by trade union pressure. As this chapter will show, once the object of study is extended in this way, social processes come to light that call into question two teleologies. The first is the optimistic view that social movements are only important to the extent that they contribute to the build-up of a national movement that will, at some moment in the future, detonate the collapse of the state. The second is the pessimistic view that social movements only win those concessions that structural conditions allow ruling class interests to concede (1). In both cases, the impact of local movements and how they determine the terms of social organisation is ignored. For the former, the structure of society will only be transformed when the moment of revolution arrives and not before. As far as the latter is concerned, any changes that do take place, occur on terms determined almost entirely by the ruling class

The Age of Sustainability

With transitions to more sustainable ways of living already underway, this book examines how we understand the underlying dynamics of the transitions that are unfolding. Without this understanding, we enter the future in a state of informed bewilderment. Every day we are bombarded by reports about ecosystem breakdown, social conflict, economic stagnation and a crisis of identity. There is mounting evidence that deeper transitions are underway that suggest we may be entering another period of great transformation equal in significance to the agricultural revolution some 13,000 years ago or the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago. This book helps readers make sense of our global crisis and the dynamics of transition that could result in a shift from the industrial epoch that we live in now to a more sustainable and equitable age. The global renewable energy transition that is already underway holds the key to the wider just transition. However, the evolutionary potential of the present also manifests in the mushrooming of ecocultures, new urban visions, sustainability-oriented developmental states and new ways of learning and researching. Shedding light on the highly complex challenge of a sustainable and just transition, this book is essential reading for anyone concerned with establishing a more sustainable and equitable world. Ultimately, this is a book about hope but without easy answers

The United Democratic Front and township revolt: South Africa

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: The Making of Class, 9-14 February, 198

The power and limits of the emergency state

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented August 1989This paper is an assessment of the strategies, structures and resources that the Emergency State has deployed to fight its battles on the "political terrain" (1). We intend demonstrating that a new set of strategies are being implemented in response to the failure in the face of mass resistance of the early "total strategy" reforms. While capital and the popular classes have pursued in their own ways a range of strategies to transform apartheid, the state (and the interests that dominate it) has been able to mobilise enormous resources and coordinate ambitious policies to respond to these challenges

Urban control and changing forms of political conflict in Uitenhage : 1977-1986

The central question posed in this thesis is as follows: why did the apartheid urban system change over time and in space during the 1980s? Based on a case study of Langa Uitenhage, the changes in this local urban system are explained in terms of the complex and irreducible relations of power that exist within the urban system between three primary sub-systems that interacted at the local level, namely the state agencies (especially local governments and the security forces), community- and workplace-based social movements, and formal business sector, particularly the local branches of large-scale national and multi-national corporations. The primary findings of the thesis are as follows: (i) Uitenhage's urban system changed over time and in space as a result of the complex interactions and transactions between the elements of this local urban system and as a result of the dynamic interplay between this local urban system and the wider non-local urban, socio-economic and political systems within which Uitenhage's local urban system was embedded. (ii) Local urban politics can be explained as the organised expression of those interactions and transactions that resulted from conflicting conceptions of urban meaning and the corresponding urban functions and urban forms that flowed from different urban meanings. (iii) The dynamics of local urban politics cannot be explained as the epiphenomena of underlying structural contradictions. There were key moments when certain interactions occurred that decisively changed the qualitative nature of the relationships between the elements of the local urban system as a whole. Herein lies the importance of such occurances as police massacres of peaceful demonstrators, violent crowd attacks on representatives of the state, local-level negotiations and mass detentions. (iv) This local case study contributes to an explanation of urban system change and the dynamics of urban politics. However, the case study has not been designed to generate another general theory of urban sysem change or urban politics. It only demonstrated the usefulness of systems theory as a guide for case study research

Decision-making on shared sanitation in the informal settlements of Kisumu, Kenya.

Unlike most quantitative studies that investigate decision-making on investing in sanitation, this study adopted a qualitative approach to investigate decision-making on shared sanitation in the informal settlements of Kisumu city, in Kenya. Using a grounded theory approach, landlords and tenants were interviewed to identify sanitation decisions, individuals involved in decision-making and factors influencing decision-making. The results indicate that the main sanitation decisions are on investment, emptying, repair and cleaning. Landlords make investment, emptying and repair decisions, while tenants make cleaning decisions. Absentee landlords are less involved in most decision-making compared to live-in landlords, who rarely consult tenants in decision-making. Tenants make decisions after consultations with a third party and often collectively with other tenants. Sanitation interventions in informal settlements should thus, target landlords and tenants, with investment efforts being directed at landlords and maintenance efforts at tenants

Estimating the Cost and Payment for Sanitation in the Informal Settlements of Kisumu, Kenya: A Cross Sectional Study.

Lack of sanitation facilities is a common occurrence in informal settlements that are common in most developing countries. One challenge with sanitation provision in these settlements is the cost and financing of sanitation. This study aimed at estimating the cost of sanitation, and investigating the social and economic dynamics within Kisumu's informal settlements that hinder provision and uptake of sanitation facilities. Primary data was collected from residents of the settlements, and using logistic and hedonic regression analysis, we identify characteristics of residents with sanitation facilities, and estimate the cost of sanitation as revealed in rental prices. Our study finds that sanitation constitutes approximately 54% of the rent paid in the settlements; and dynamics such as landlords and tenants preferences, and sharing of sanitation facilities influence provision and payment for sanitation. This study contributes to general development by estimating the cost of sanitation, and further identifies barriers and opportunities for improvement including the interplay between landlords and tenants. Provision of sanitation in informal settlements is intertwined in social and economic dynamics, and development approaches should target both landlords and tenants, while also engaging various stakeholders to work together to identify affordable and appropriate sanitation technologies

South Africa's regional political economy: A critical analysis of reform strategy in the 1980s.

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented October, 1985Since the late 1970s the apartheid state has faced a sustained and deepening crisis of legitimation.(1) This crisis has been exacerbated by the attempt, and failure, to implement the post- Soweto 'Total Strategy' reforms - reforms which, in the case of the black people of South Africa, left the territorial and political basis of grand apartheid intact. Since the end of the short-lived boom of 1979-82, the crisis of political legitimacy has been amplified by the slide into economic depression, and the scope for concessionary economic reforms has been drastically curtailed. For some time, the state has been caught up with the immediate threat of escalating opposition in the townships, the symptoms of the deepening economic crisis and spreading international hostility to apartheid. But while this has been happening, elements within the ruling groups, both inside and outside the state, have for some time been attempting to map out a longer-term strategic offensive aimed at defusing political conflict and re-structuring the economy. Faced with a shrinking material basis for concessionary economic reform and growing mobilisation behind the demand for the extension of political rights, the country's ruling groups have begun the search for political solutions to the crisis. The schemes now being formulated take as their starting point the ultimate inevitability of political incorporation of black people into a single national state in South Africa. They aim to meet this in ways that ensure that real power remains in the hands of the ruling classes. The move towards political reforms for black people has gone beyond the stage of discussion and planning in certain areas of policy. Already an important pillar of the emerging strategy has gained expression in local government measures passed in 1985. (2) However much of what is planned has so far only appeared in general policy statements. It is also evident that important facets of the strategy are still in the stage of formulation or are deliberately being held back for the moment. The fluidity of political conditions in South Africa is such that state strategy is the subject matter of open debate and contestation, and is unusually susceptible to official reconsideration and reformulation. Nevertheless we believe it is possible to identify the major contours of an emerging strategy which has been pursued with increasing determination by reformers within the commanding heights of the state since late in 1984. This offensive is significant in that it goes well beyond the policy package associated with the Wiehahn and Riekert Commission reports, the Koornhof Bills, the new constitution, and the confederation of ethnic states - it goes beyond the 'Total Strategy' formulated by PW Botha in the late 1970s. (3) In contrast to these policies, it is based on an abandonment of the political and territorial premises of apartheid, though not necessarily of race or ethnicity, and envisages the eventual reincorporation of the bantustans into a single national South African state. The manner in which this will occur is by no means clear or decided. However, this process of political re-integration of the bantustans is intended ultimately to result in the reorganisation of the territorial basis of South Africa's economic and political system. Central to the reform strategy is the conception that the present provinces and bantustans will be superceded by metropolitan and regionally-based administrative structures through a process of merging, absorption and crosscutting of present geographical boundaries. It is this geographic outcome of the intended reform strategy that has led us to describe the complex of evolving measures as the state's regional strategy. The aim of this article is to describe, anticipate and critically analyse the outlines of the emerging regional strategy. Its three major components are new controls on labour movement and settlement, regional development policies (notably industrial decentralisation), and local and second tier government reforms and corresponding constitutional changes. We examine each of these three components and their interconnections. A central issue taken up in the paper is the debate over the possible construction of a federal system in South Africa. We examine major alternative conceptions of the basis of federalism - geographic and ethnic - and show how they correspond to or contradict other plans to divide South Africa into metropolitan and wider planning and administrative regions. The paper ends with an assessment and critical analysis of the regional strategy

Understanding Living Conditions and Deprivation in Informal Settlements of Kisumu, Kenya

Informal settlements are a common occurrence in developing countries. Each settlement, however, has unique living conditions which require improvement efforts that are specifically tailored to the settlement. This study, carried out in Kisumu’s informal settlements, had two aims: to describe living conditions and to propose areas of improvement within the settlements. The study adopted two approaches: the living conditions framework and the multi-dimensional poverty index. Results indicate that deprivation is widespread at the individual and housing unit level, but the settlements are served with public services such as schools and health centres which residents can access. At the compound level, compounds lack infrastructural services such as water, sanitation and solid waste disposal, and where they are available, these services are shared. This study highlights the importance of basic service provision, upgrading of housing and supporting of existing income-generating opportunities within the settlements. Development efforts should involve all stakeholders, including landlords, tenants, community groups and governmental and non-governmental organisations