Eternal Urban Youth? Waithood and Agency in Ethiopian and South African settlements

It is often reported that young people in Africa, the Middle East and North African regions are stuck in situations of ‘waithood’, unable to progress to full adulthood. Utilising a series of innovative research methodologies that included life history interviews, surveys, media training and qualitative interviews, the research project’s aim was the co-production of data, in order to delve into the housing and work nexus in two non-central locations in Ethiopia and South Africa. The variety of mixed methods that were used yielded a depth of engagement and allowed the researchers to deepen and nuance ideas of waithood and stuckness. The rich and varied data showed how young people move through moments of stuckness and moments of movement, and that some movement is possible even when faced with difficult and sometimes overwhelming structural challenges. It also demonstrated how co-produced research can assist young people in moving forward and countering the experience of stuckness and waithood

New housing/new crime? Changes in safety, governance and everyday incivilities for residents relocated from informal to formal housing at Hammond's Farm, eThekwini

New state-subsidised ‘RDP’ housing in South Africa aims to provide former informally-housed residents with a better quality of life, stronger community and decreased levels of crime. Despite the state’s ambitions, this process is highly contradictory, increases in safety occurring alongside rising incivilities and tensions. This paper contributes to an emerging set of debates on the socio-political outcomes of state-led housing interventions in the global South, through an illustration of the limitations of efforts to produce ‘safe neighbourhoods’ in contexts of high unemployment alongside high levels of violence. The conceptual framing of ‘Southern Criminology’ (Carrington et al, 2015), centres the significance of histories of colonial and post-colonial violence, inequality, hybrid governance and justice practices, as well as informal living, and is employed to analyse recently housed residents’ experiences of crime and safety in South Africa, in a north eThekwini settlement, Hammond’s Farm. Recognising these ‘Southern’ factors, the paper argues that movement into new formal housing, is typified by significant material changes at the home and neighbourhood scale which foster privacy and safety, formalised governance practices and (partial) improvements in policing services. These occur in conjunction with access to new leisure activities including alcohol consumption and ‘township life’ which alongside ongoing poverty foster urban incivilities. A ‘Southern Criminology’ perspective frames concluding questions about the nature of crime in contexts of urban change, which are persistently shaped by inequality and wider historical and structural factors, challenging the state’s aspirations to achieve crime reduction through housing

Living in state housing: expectations, contradictions and consequences Introduction

This special issue focuses on state housing in Africa as a space of living. This topic is prompted by two factors: firstly, an empirical recognition that increasing numbers of African citizens are living in state-supported housing, particularly in urban areas; and secondly, an academic awareness that there is insufficient scholarship addressing the everyday realities of living in (as opposed to legislating or delivering) state housing. The special issue has a history in a panel session convened by the authors at the 6th European Conference on African Studies held in Paris in July 2015, and we are grateful to the conference organisers for providing the physical and intellectual space for the ideas presented in this special issue to emerge

Gendered Infrastructural Citizenship: Shared Sanitation Facilities in Quarry Road West Informal Settlement, Durban, South Africa

One significant component of the South African citizenship narrative is centred around the right to basic services and corresponding elements, including dignity and a healthy living environment. This paper employs the concept of infrastructural citizenship, which draws on both infrastructure and citizenship discourses to explore how participants experience and challenge public infrastructure and as such engage with questions surrounding citizenship on an everyday basis (Lemanski, 2019a). Adopting a gendered approach, this paper draws on the empirical case of Quarry Road West, an informal settlement located in Durban, and uses a qualitative methodology. Residents have access to Community Ablution Blocks, free shared sanitation facilities provided by the eThekwini Municipality. This paper argues that restricted access to the facilities undermines perceptions of privacy and health and negatively impacts women individually and in the community. Furthermore, this paper evaluates civic responses to inadequate infrastructure in the form of participation, protest and state-directed actions. As such, it examines how women-state relationships are embedded in public infrastructure, and limitations in regards to infrastructure shape interactions and engagements with the state, their experiences of citizenship, actualisation of rights and identities

Vusi Majola: “Walking Until the Shoes Is Finished”

No abstract available

Marginalised men’s emotions: politics and place

Men living in the informal settlement of Cato Crest, Durban, South Africa, where violence and crime are high, are marginalised in a variety of ways, but also cling to patriarchal ideals. These relations of power are witnessed through the expression of a range of emotions which point to the interconnections between emotions, place, politics and performances of masculinity. This paper contributes to debates over the significance of politics in analyses of emotions, as well as broadening attention to geographies of emotions of, and beyond, fear. Using an example from the global South, the particular politics informing marginalisation and their relations with emotion are examined. This is achieved through a focus on three key government policy agendas shaping these men’s lives, namely housing, gender and employment

Millennium development goals and urban informal settlements: unintended consequences

The Millennium Development Goal focusing on improving the lives of slum dwellers is arguably a significant and worthy global objective. Yet its intentions may have unintended consequences, as they may parallel and unwittingly justify state-sponsored evictions of slum dwellers and their settlements. This Viewpoint examines the intersections between the intentions of the MDG and the aesthetic values of some states as well as intersections with businesses interests. The implications of the quantification and target setting approach are considered, and the politics of the negative language of slum reduction is explored. This Viewpoint emphasises the multiple responses by states to the challenges of human settlements, including many progressive policies and plans, as witnessed in South Africa, but argues that the risks of unintended consequences require further research and consideration

Unsettling insurgency: reflections on women's insurgent practices in South Africa

This chapter builds on work which celebrates insurgent planning practices, and which recognises the possibilities for repression inherent within these. Calling for more attention to the practice of so-called repressive insurgencies, it uses two case studies from Durban, South Africa to unsettle some assumptions arguably embedded in notions of “anti-democratic” or repressive insurgency. The cases tell the stories of marginalised women who participate through insurgency in shaping their city. Their contributions to resolving unmet housing and employment needs represent acts of insurgency against a state which has, in part, retreated from the provision of shelter and employment through its commitment to a neoliberal agenda. These insurgent practices parallel other celebrated insurgent contributions to cities. The women, however, also manage crime and violence in their local areas, using a range of strategies, some of which can be considered insurgent, as they directly challenge the authority and competence of the state. These crime management practices are, however, at times very violent, as the women's insurgent practices involve forms of vigilantism to achieve their purposes. Yet given the marginalised status of the women, and the reality of an absent state, trying to make sense of these practices (from the perspective of planning theory) proves challenging. Labelling them anti-democratic and repressive is arguably inadequate. This chapter makes use of this contradiction to unsettle the concept of insurgency and develop further ideas about the difficulties of celebrating or condemning the contributions of the marginalised to diverse and unequal cities