Making Freedom: Apartheid, Squatter Politics, and the Struggle for Home 0822359669, 9780822359661

Citation preview

Making Freedom

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anne-­m aria makhulu

Making Freedom |  |  |  |  |

A PA R T H E I D , S Q U AT T E R P O L I T I C S , A N D T H E S T R U G ­G L E F O R H O M E

Duke University Press ​|  Durham and London ​| 2015

© 2015 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Ame­rica on acid-­free paper ∞ Typeset in Whitman by Westchester Publishing Services Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Makhulu, Anne-­Maria, [date] author. Making freedom : apartheid, squatter politics, and the struggle for home / Anne-­Maria Makhulu. Pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8223-5947-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-5966-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-7511-1 (e-­book) 1. Squatter settlements—­South Africa—­Cape Town—­History—20th century.  2. Squatters—­Political activity—­South Africa—­Cape Town.  3. Apartheid—­South Africa—­Cape Town.  I. Title.

hd7374.4.c34m35 2015 363.5'109687355—­dc23 2015014082 Cover art: Untitled (Hope Chest series), by Zwelethu Mthethwa, 2012, digital c-­print, dimensions variable. © Zwelethu Mthethwa. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Contents

Ac­know­ledg­ments ​vii Prologue ​ xi Introduction  ​1 Chapter 1 Migrations ​ 27 Chapter 2 Counterinsurgency ​ 63 Chapter 3 Transitions ​ 95 Chapter 4 “Reckoning” ​ 129 Conclusion Making Freedom ​153 notes ​ 1 69 ​references ​199  index ​ 2 21

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Ac­know­ledg­ments

I owe an incalculable debt of thanks to so many. Let me begin with my interlocutors in the city of Cape Town, who made enormous contributions to this book w ­ hether or not they came to appear in the text itself. Those who did and who must remain anonymous and ­were thus renamed include Edith, Evelyn and Evelyn (both), Ezekiel, Gugulethu, Kaizer, Lungile, Max, Naledi, Nelson, Noluthando, Nomalady, Nomasundu, Nombulelo, Ntombinkosi, Samuel, Solomon, Stembiso, Unathi, Winnifred, and Xoliswa. Why they ­were so generous with their time and their stories is anyone’s guess. Besides those living on the city’s perimeter there w ­ ere municipal officials who gave of their time and knowledge. My thanks to those who shared their insights about spatial planning, development, and housing, as well as, on occasion, their recollections of what it meant to work e­ ither for or against the old apartheid regime. My debts to Madeleine Fullard are positively unrepayable. Formerly at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Madeleine’s continued work in the relentless pursuit of the truth on behalf of families of the disappeared is extraordinary. Josette Cole’s longtime commitments to the history of Crossroads have guided me through. I thank her for that. Finally, to my South African ­family in Cape Town and Johannesburg—to my cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews—­what great comfort you afforded me; Antoinette, you, most of all. As with all first books, monographs certainly, this one began as a doctoral pro­ject longer ago than I care to admit. For that and its extended journey

into book form I have my advisers, previously at the University of Chicago, to thank. These include Andrew Apter and Jean and John Comaroff. The Comaroffs issue, as I do, from South Africa, and their encouragement and support to those of us who ­were part of a generation of PhD students able to return, for the first time post-1994, to our homeland was and continues to be immea­sur­able. To them I say “baruti ba me baba tlhaga.” Within Tswana culture the stature of “teacher” is beyond compare. Additional thanks go to Ralph Austen, Marshall Sahlins, David Scott, Raymond Smith, George Stocking, and Terence Turner—­each in his way, in the somber and stimulating context of the U of C, taught me more than I can ever repay. At Prince­ ton, first in the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and then in the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, I was afforded the time and resources to work on Making Freedom and a collection of essays, Hard Work, Hard Times. Special thanks go to Leonard Barkan, Simon Gikandi, Carol Green­house, Mary Harper, and Gyan Prakash, as well as to my “fellow fellows,” as we liked to refer to ourselves. At Duke University, my home of the last so many years, the support and generosity of colleagues, both within the two departments I serve and beyond, have been tremendous. Duke is nothing if not a hot­house of ideas, and I have benefited greatly from the rigorous and energetic exchanges across departments, programs, and centers. In Cultural Anthropology, my primary home, I have been permitted a space both inspiring and unstinting. My thanks go to all my colleagues: Anne Allison, Lee Baker, Engseng Ho, Ralph Litzinger, Randy Matory, Laurie McIntosh, Louise Meintjes, Diane Nelson, Mack O’Barr, Charlie Piot, Irene Silverblatt, Harris Solomon, Orin Starn, Rebecca Stein, and Charlie Thompson. In African and African American Studies my colleagues have been equally supportive. I would like to thank Michaeline Crichlow, Sandy Darity, Tommy DeFrantz, Thavolia Glymph, Kerry Haynie, Karla Holloway, Bayo Holsey, Wahneema Lubiano, Mark Anthony Neal, Charmaine Royal, Karin Shapiro, Stephen Smith, and Maurice Wallace for their encouragement. To my colleagues and friends in the Concilium on Southern Africa, particularly Catherine Admay, our programming and visiting scholars of and from South Africa have provided such inspiration. Finally, I am forever indebted to gradu­ate teaching assistants Joella ­Bitter, Mackenzie Cramblit, and Samuel Shearer. Jacob Johnson, an mba candidate, also offered invaluable support in the figuring of exchange rates, historic inflation, and the real value of wages. viii  |   Ac­k now­l e dg­m e nts

Let me say that editors have the patience of Job; at least mine has had to. Ken Wissoker has been generous beyond compare. He and my anonymous reviewers ­were meticulous in their reading and constructive comments on the varying stages of the book pro­ject. Without them I would have been lost. Portions of the manuscript w ­ ere presented at a variety of conferences, workshops, and lectures over the years. Sites of these have included the University of California, Santa Cruz; the University of Cape Town; cuny Gradu­ate Center; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; the University of North Carolina; the University of Pennsylvania; Rutgers University; the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and the University of the Witwatersrand, as well as the American Anthropological Association, the Society for Cultural Anthropology, and, closer to home, many conferences and workshops on the Duke University campus. I am most grateful to the members of the departments that hosted me and to fellow conferees and workshop participants who read my work closely and charitably. Research is always both time-­consuming and costly, and without the support of a variety of donor institutions, foundations, and my home university, Making Freedom would never have come to print. At ­different stages in my research I benefited from the financial support of the Prince­ton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, the Prince­ton University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences Travel Grant, the Duke University Arts and Sciences Committee on Faculty Research Travel Grant, the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies Research Fellowship, and the Duke University Center for International Studies Research Grant. The Harry Frank Guggenheim Dissertation and Josephine de Kármán ­Fellowships supported the writing of the doctoral thesis. In Cape Town I made many friends, and they opened their homes and lives to me at a time when I most needed a quiet and safe space in the midst of often difficult fieldwork. Some cooked wonderful meals, o­ thers offered wise counsel, and still o­ thers helped me make sense of the things I was seeing and hearing. For their care and friendship I must thank Birthe Bruun, Kelly Gillespie, Patti Henderson, Steffen Jensen, Leigh-­Ann Naidoo, and Elaine Salo. Elaine’s husband, Collin Miller, raised the spirits with late night Cape jazz jam sessions. My many interlocutors ­after the fieldwork was completed made their own contributions to steering me through the thickets. Patrick Bond, Beth Buggenhagen, Lisa Davis, Jack Halberstam, Neville Ac­k now­l e dg­m e nts   |   ix

Hoad, Stephen Jackson, Zolani Ngwane, and Hylton White certainly come to mind. Finally, my ­family: to my f­ ather, who has seen this pro­ject through from start to finish, words cannot express my gratitude to you for your patience and investments in this pro­ject. To Michael, my partner in all things, I promise you this book in any case is done; o­ thers will surely follow, and I know you will always be my greatest support. To Stya, you know who you are; without you Making Freedom would have been impossible. You are my brother, my comrade. This book is dedicated to you.

x  |   Ac­k now­l e dg­m e nts

Prologue

I confess to feeling ambivalent about Cape Town. It is a breathtaking city, framed by ­Table Mountain—­the 1-­kilometer-­high peak with its signature tabletop summit—­and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Beginning in the seventeenth ­century, the “Mo­ther City” became a first port of call for Eu­ro­ pean seafaring traders and in due course home to colonial settlers. I recall looking out from the Rhodes Memorial, which offers panoramic views of the metropolitan area. This was back in 1999, three years ­after the start of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (trc). I was with friends and fellow researchers as well as former members of Umkhonto we Sizwe (mk)—­ the disbanded armed wing of the African National Congress (anc). As we looked out from the T ­ able Mountain Nature Reserve in a spot just above the University of Cape Town campus, I noted how the n2 motorway headed southeast, ­toward the Cape Flats, while the m3 wended its way southwestward, ­toward the so-­called leafy southern suburbs. This physical split in the road said so much about the success of apartheid’s spatial planning strategy to confine blacks and Indians and coloreds to the sandy, barren flatlands leading to the ocean, while white Capetonians enjoyed the lush, green landscape of those suburbs close to the mountain t­ oward Tokai,1 a particularly beautiful suburb situated in the foothills of the Constantiaberg range, ­surrounded by small wineries and pine plantations. It struck me how explicit the “mapping” of race and entitlement was, and I joked that upon landing on the shores of the Cape those very first seafarers in 1652 must

have imagined they had come ashore on God’s land as they looked out on the physical beauty of ­Table Mountain, Helderberg, the Hottentots-­Holland mountain range, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans’ convergence at Cape Point, and the indigenous fynbos and other exotic vegetation. And yet, as I suggested to our friends, those settlers in God’s land appeared to have committed the most ungodly of acts. At first, they stole land, conquered by power of firearms, sold ­human beings into slavery, and then ­later, much ­later, they perpetuated a deeply hierarchical system, in part by splitting and separating space and inevitably forcing the n2 and m3 motorways to diverge. Many ­others have noted the deep social rifts and inequalities in South African society generally and their acute expression in the context of Cape Town, which is known to most outside South Africa as a playground for the affluent (McDonald 2008; McDonald and Smith 2004; Samara 2011; Seekings and Nattrass 2005; Thorn and Oldfield 2011; Watson 2002; cf. Beall, Crankshaw, and Parnell 2002). Tourists come to tee off on some of the best golf courses the country has to offer, dine at some of its finest restaurants, rent or buy luxurious holiday homes along the coastline, get cheap tummy tucks and then recover in the Mount Nelson ­Hotel, and sunbathe for hours on some of the world’s most glorious beaches. Many white Capetonians (not all of course) enjoy the city’s natu­ral beauty, too, and although beaches and other public amenities are no longer legally segregated, they are de facto for the most part. To some extent this has to do with the city’s limited public transport system, which makes getting to the coast or the mountains difficult for those without cars. But the prob­lem is not simply ­whether certain kinds of p­ eople, specifically ­people from the townships and squatter areas, can physically make the trip to Camps Bay or Clifton Beach no. 4, but ­whether they see any purpose in it and w ­ hether they feel comfortable when they do. One needs money in many of these places to feel accepted, and the subtle and not so subtle policing of who is recognizably a consumer and who is not often enough dictates who has access and who d­ oesn’t. The Victoria and Albert Waterfront is a good example. Though strictly speaking open to the public, its combination of shops, galleries, restaurants, and condominium complexes, which gleam with glass and steel in the South African sky, privileges a purchasing power beyond the reach of the average black Capetonian. And while waterfront supermarkets like Pick n Pay and Woolworths suggest that just about anyone might come to do their food shopping, in reality the combination of road access by car and the sprawling shopping complex’s security staff makes this retail space more private than public. xii  |   Prologue

Chatting with friends in Lower Crossroads informal settlement—­only a few weeks a­ fter my trip to the T ­ able Mountain Nature Reserve—­about their weekend plans and w ­ hether ­people would be “­going to town,” I met with a perplexed silence. On further prodding I was reminded that ­everything took money: the long taxi ­ride into town from the Flats, the restaurants and shops that most would not even dare to enter, never mind the museums and galleries. What exactly was it that I thought ­people would “do” in town; what purpose was to be served by ­going on a Saturday ­after­noon; whom would one be visiting? “That’s for white p­ eople to go to town like that,” someone in the group observed. This perhaps distinguishes Cape Town from other cities and, in par­tic­u­lar, Johannesburg, where a growing black m ­ iddle-­class works and plays. But Johannesburg is also, cliché though it may be, genuinely an “African” city in a way that Cape Town isn’t. What­ever ­people’s income brackets and employment status, one rarely has the sense that black residents of Johannesburg feel somehow unwelcome downtown or even in the swank Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton City Shopping Center. ­Johannesburg is abuzz with hip young black p­ eople of every class and income bracket. There’s a vibe about “Jozi” that Cape Town lacks (Bremner 2004a; Nuttall 2004). As Sarah Nuttall and ­others have noted, young African residents of Johannesburg have taken up a loxion kulca (location or township culture) that enables an imagining of possibilities, of cultural expression, of upward mobility. This isn’t to say that the same isn’t true of Cape Town’s townships—­there is a distinct location or township culture there, too—­but Johannesburg does offer the possibility for a kind of continuity between the culture of the location and the culture of the city as a w ­ hole that seems continually foreclosed in Cape Town, where the distinctions between black and white modes of life remain stark. It surely helps that Johannesburg has a long and gritty history of mining and mi­grant work, of polyglossia, and cosmopolitanism. Further, as Lindsey Bremner has argued, “to be black and living on the edge is not necessarily to be poor” (2004b, 42) in Johannesburg, because the city’s edge can very often serve as the link between opportunities and mobility. I’m not convinced the same can be said of Cape Town’s periphery. |  |  |  |  |

In 1979, my ­father moved our ­family to Botswana, where he served as bishop for the Anglican diocese.2 Though a man of the cloth, my f­ather was no stranger to the ins and outs of global refugee politics. Serving on the Africa Prolog u e   |   xiii

Desk at the World Council of Churches in Geneva during the mid-1970s, he worked closely with displaced persons from all across the continent but also took an interest in the growing southern African refugee crisis, especially those fleeing the system of apartheid. These ­were largely young men and ­women who had never been afforded educational opportunities at home ­under the oppressive system of Bantu education, which was designed to “de-­skill” black South Africans en masse. At the time, I was only vaguely aware of my f­ ather’s involvement in the anti-­apartheid strug­gle—­specifically his involvement in a variety of initiatives to funnel assets into South Africa, predominantly from the Norwegian government, and to assist in the escape of dissidents and their resettlement in foreign countries, where many young exiles sought training in military strategy or in higher education. Nor was I fully aware of the intricate details of the refugee networks, their source of funding, or the practicalities of relocating activists, never mind the efforts to support them. Still, I was, in some limited sense, conscious of the enormity of the situation across the border in South Africa and in the adjoining Frontline States. I read newspapers avidly and precociously, including the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, listened to South African radio in all its complicated and not so very complicated censorship and bias, sometimes ending an eve­ning with Our Boys on the Border. A program mostly directed ­toward whites, Our Boys on the Border covered the correspondence and news from young men in combat in Namibia (then South West Africa), Angola, and Mozambique and was both a testament to Cold War anti-­Communist sentiments and a l­ittle old-­fashioned. There ­were late night visits from “friends” and “relatives” seeking refuge on the Botswana side. Some came from Lusaka (headquarters to the African National Congress in exile), and these ­were generally very serious encounters that occasioned discussion in the garden, since my ­father was never sure if the phone or the h ­ ouse was secure. All this sounds like cloak-­and-­dagger subterfuge, and in part it was. But ­really, the frequent reception of ­people coming across at Tlokweng, just to the southwest of Gaborone, or or­ga­niz­ ing for someone to carry cash back into South Africa was mostly done in an effort to attend to the most basic needs of those fighting the good fight on the other side of the border (see, e.g., Schaap 2010). My ­father always opined that revolutionaries had to be fed, clothed, and sheltered and their children cared for; at times, they also needed their bills paid. To the degree that formal organizations and collective action w ­ ere effective, their success was rooted in the most fundamental requisites of xiv  |   Prologue

the ­house­hold. Rather than work against the grain of the funders and supporters of “the strug­gle,” who mostly gave to formal bodies, my ­father tried to get money to members of many ­different groups, as well as individual families, churches, and social ser­vices programs. With the aid of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, money went to vari­ous radical Left and African nationalist organizations, among them the African National Congress, to pay their phone and electricity bills; the Pan Africanist Congress in Dar es Salaam; members of the Black Consciousness movement still operating within South Africa’s borders; and families whose primary breadwinner was in detention and no longer able to put food on the ­table. This ideological agnosticism would ultimately earn my f­ ather the label of an anti-­anc man, but for what it was worth, he held to this position “religiously,” if I may say, and in a sense it became an article of faith. This is where I believe my own interest in the politics of the everyday, both in apartheid and post-­apartheid South Africa, probably finds its original inspiration. I have often described my research on squatters and the phenomenon of urban informal settlement as a kind of theology of the poor, albeit a secular one, a theology in its turn inspired by the writings of that great secular theologian Karl Marx—­certainly the so-­called early humanist Marx—­who aspired to make material a philosophy of pure contemplation and yet at the same time remained a thinker of great philosophical and thus contemplative depth. I have been equally inspired by other social theorists who ­either followed or diverged from Marx’s dialectical materialism (as will become apparent in the pages that follow) and who sought to understand the causes of systemic and emergent in­e­qual­ity and ­were concerned with the forms of consciousness that made the world appear e­ ither as it should be or in great need of transformation. That being said, Marxian analy­sis cannot, by any mea­sure, account for the kinds of politics of life and forms of life to which this book addresses itself. And as will become quite apparent in the course of Making Freedom, class analy­sis, specifically, cannot explain most thoroughly or completely the politics of land grab, illegal settlement, and everyday struggles to survive that together make up what I would like to call a “politics of presence” on the margins of the city of Cape Town. |  |  |  |  |

Apartheid was a constitutionally ordained and legally enforced system of racial discrimination, and those who fought against it became its heroes Prolog u e   |   xv

and martyrs, while the most defiant among them w ­ ere spectacularly victimized, as the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission would ­later reveal. Beginning in 1996 and concluding in 1999–2000, evidence of the state’s hand in detentions, torture, disappearances, and murders built, day ­after day, week ­after week. At the same time, apartheid generated conditions in which blacks, coloreds, and Indians (so-­called non-­whites) suffered materially the consequences of a system that functioned by a logic of racial discrimination to create distinct classes of ­people. Still, despite the many assertions I make about the politics of squatting as having its basis in an urgent “materialism,” Making Freedom is not primarily concerned with conditions of abjection. On the contrary, I argue that notwithstanding the meagerness of life on the periphery of Cape Town (both during apartheid and in the new demo­cratic era), squatters mobilized and continue to mobilize a w ­ hole array of everyday strategies in making lives of tremendous meaning. Such practices, in the past at least, presumed the ­future possibility of emancipation from the strictures of the system of influx controls (those statutes that restricted individual movement). That the horizon along which such cultural practices have been engaged has changed so dramatically since the end of the apartheid era is also the focus of much of what follows. How is it, with demo­cratization and the transition to a constitutional system in which rights and entitlements in citizenship became so critical, that grinding poverty on Cape Town’s periphery not only persisted but also deepened? In part, I propose that South Africa’s turn to democracy in 1994 coincided with the adoption of ­free market reforms that ­were anti-­poor and that neoliberalization in the Mo­ther City (to be distinguished from the neoliberal policies of other cities) followed a very par­tic­u­ lar course—­a point cogently argued by David McDonald in World City Syndrome: Neoliberalism and In­e­qual­ity in Cape Town (2008; also see Brenner and Theodore 2002). Historically deemed a “liberal” city owing to the prominence of so-­called English-­speaking South Africans in economic and po­liti­cal life, white Cape­ tonians ­were nevertheless guilty of the worst forms of racial paternalism (Bickford-­Smith 1995). As Making Freedom tries to show, it was in the Cape that influx controls ­were most stringently enforced, in part owing to a series of preexisting circumstances: long distances between the Cape and the Transkei and Ciskei homelands, which facilitated the exclusion of Africans, as well as job reservation policies that favored colored l­ abor. It surely didn’t xvi  |   Prologue

hurt the city’s reputation that it was distant from the seat of administrative power, Pretoria; nestled between mountain and ocean, Cape Town was a place of great natu­ral beauty and somehow remote enough to give it the appearance of operating above the fray. But Cape Town was no less an apartheid city, what­ever its liberal claims. The racial politics of Cape Town don’t begin and end with black-­white relations, of course. What makes the Cape unique, at least one of the things that makes it unique, is the presence of a large colored population. So what­ ever the parochialisms of the English-­speaking community, Cape Town is actually incredibly diverse. Coloreds have lived almost everywhere in the city and just beyond its limits: in the now rather diminished Bo-­Kaap (formerly the exclusive home of Cape Muslims) bordering the central business district—­much of it sold off to wealthy whites and re-­delimited as the Cape Quarter—on the Flats, long home to colored farmers and, beginning in the mid-1960s, communities displaced from the City Bowl, and finally, beyond the city proper, out in the Winelands t­ oward Stellenbosch. From Cape Malay cuisine to the muezzins’ call to prayer, reaching from the Flats to the center of town, to the old colored fishing families based in Simon’s Town to the very par­tic­u­lar timbre of Cape Afrikaans, Cape Town’s colored population in a sense defines the city. Demographically, coloreds are in a majority given former job reservation (the Coloured Labour Preference Policy), segregation (Group Areas), and pass laws (Natives Urban Areas Act). Language most tellingly indicates something of the force of colored influence: of the province’s population of approximately 4.5 million, 49.7 ­percent speak Afrikaans,3 20.2 ­percent speak En­glish, and 24.7 ­percent speak isiXhosa.4 Quite apart from their cultural impact, coloreds have often perversely influenced the outcome at the ballot box. Since 1994, the province has been led first by the New National Party and, since 2009, the Demo­cratic Alliance against a general tide of anc support across the other provinces. Historically, coloreds w ­ ere molded as a constituency, a community, and a type of citizen through a set of welfare interventions in housing, education, and institutions addressing social “deviance.” In his book about the colored Cape Flats, Steffen Jensen argues that coloreds, beginning in the 1930s, ­were the focus of a series of commissions of inquiry, consistent with a broadly biopo­liti­cal pro­ject in which coloreds ­were “managed” at the level of population. Jensen goes on to propose that such efforts produced a “colored citizen” well integrated into the institutions of welfare, punishment, Prolog u e   |   xvii

and ­labor and that this “management” was quite distinct from the forms of extreme vio­lence and coercion meted out to Africans (Jensen 2008, 21–22, 39; also see Ashforth 1990). Without a doubt black, colored, and white Capetonians experience the city very differently in view of their uneven access to public amenities, institutions, and jobs. In the townships, the commute between home and work is both long and costly. Most making the daily trip to jobs in the suburbs and central business district use the system of kombi taxis, which are expensive and not always roadworthy. The train and bus, while less expensive, are also unsafe, ­either because they have not been ser­viced or because of limited security; many commuters try to avoid the state-­owned train com­ pany (formerly Spoornet and now Transnet Freight Rail), particularly ­after dark, for fear of being mugged or worse. A great deal has been written about the politics of ser­vice delivery and denial (Bond and McInnes 2007; Desai and Pithouse 2004; Gibson 2012; Pithouse 2008), specifically the frequent suspension of electricity and ­water by local authorities in the face of nonpayment by ratepayers on the Flats. The resort by ser­vice providers to prepaid meters has inevitably shut off vital ser­vices to those who cannot afford them. And while nationwide protests against the corporatization of local state functions stem from conditions of poverty that make it virtually impossible for the poor to pay for ser­vices, the general view in official circles is not that market-­orientated reforms may be unsuited to the complex post-­apartheid economic climate but rather that the failure to pay rates is consistent with a “culture of nonpayment,” dating back to the rent and consumer boycotts of the 1980s. This is an astonishing position in the face of the country’s unemployment rate of about 25.6 ­percent,5 Cape Town’s 30 ­percent poverty rate, the highest rate of any city in the country, and a poverty rate of 77 ­percent in the Eastern Cape, the predominant geographic origin of in-­migration to Cape Town and the second poorest province in the country (Bähre 2011, 373). The broader picture is equally uneven. At the national level there remains much evidence of the post-­apartheid state’s efforts to redistribute wealth, if not in the form of a­ ctual reparations, certainly through the development of infrastructure. The state has delivered housing, social grants, and welfare to its citizens, yet at the same time the adoption of market reforms has had, as McDonald and Smith have proposed, “far-­reaching implications for South African cities” (2004, 1461)—­and rarely positive ones xviii  |   Prologue

at that (cf. Ferguson 2007). Housing, for instance, has often been slow on delivery and almost always poor in quality, even though a robust housing policy, a cornerstone of the post-1994 government’s efforts to make restitution for the past, is something on which the anc has long campaigned. This is due partly to the decrease in capital transfers from national to local states and partly to the outsourcing of construction to private companies, whose primary concern is not equity but the bottom line. Cape Town’s winters are cold and damp, and the flood-­prone Flats only add to the constellation of public health challenges, including chest infections, which are widespread and in the most serious cases tubercular, both as a consequence of poor baseline health and the prevalence of hiv/aids (see, e.g., Nattrass 2004; also see Fassin 2007).6 Access to decent schools and hospitals remains uneven across the city, and in the townships these tend to be overcrowded and poorly equipped, with teachers and nurses being inadequately trained. During my first stint in the field, 1998–99, and then again in the early 2000s, I was frequently told that to be hospitalized was a death sentence. The logic was faulty, of course, but in practice to seek medical care was to submit to long waits in casualty, to the possibility of having to sleep out in the corridors, and finally to be sent home with ­little more than a Panado (acetaminophen). Only the very sick ventured to hospital—so, yes, in a sense, to go was to never return home. Early attempts to redistribute assets and reprioritize bud­gets, a “peace dividend” of sorts, never r­eally came to pass, and the Cape metropolitan area remains “remarkably skewed along race and class lines” (McDonald and Smith 2004, 1477). Relatedly, the city has remained a deeply violent place. The Western Cape’s murder rate, for example, was 48.3 per 100,000 for 2013–14 (the last year for which statistics are available), far outpacing Gauteng Province at 26.2 per 100,000, which is perceived, at least, as more dangerous. It also far exceeds the national average of 32.2 murders per 100,000 for the same period.7 South Africa has enjoyed a long and varied relationship with vio­lence, though its codes and meanings have changed over time and as the country transitioned from a colonial to a postcolonial order. If po­liti­cal vio­lence was most common during the 1980s, intermittent taxi wars, gang vio­lence, and more intimate aggressions like domestic vio­lence, murder, and rape have come more recently to characterize the South African scene (Steinberg 2000; cf. Comaroff and Comaroff 2006).8 The debate over ­whether there has been an escalation in violent crime since the end of Prolog u e   |   xix

the old order has never r­ eally been resolved. Some note that South African society has always been shot through with cruelty and aggression—on the shop floor, at the missionary school, prison, ­mental hospital, and home, in the confrontations between a gun-­wielding state and its stone-­throwing insurgents. The role of municipal breweries in raising revenue in the townships, the use of alcohol in the mines to dull fear and encourage ­labor compliance (see Van Onselen 2001), and the shebeen (tavern) brawls that seem to be such a part of daily life in the townships suggest a historically specific relationship between vio­lence and high levels of alcohol consumption. But it is the intimacy of so-­called contact crimes that makes one won­der about the relationship of vio­lence, racism, and poverty. Leslie Bank has cogently argued that f­amily relationships w ­ ere systematically reordered in the 1980s with the rise of the culture of the comrades, or amaqabane. While the mi­grant ­labor system, single-­sex hostels, and the feminization of poverty in the reserves all played their part, it was the intensity of protest politics and how they ­were taken up by young p­ eople (especially men) that informed the changing role of parents and children in relation to one another. Leslie Bank notes that so-­called traditional forms of marriage ­were steadily eclipsed by live-in arrangements (ukuhlalisana), which had a direct bearing not only on the spatial arrangement of domestic space—­the expansion of shack settlements and backyard tenancies where young ­people sought to live independently—­but on the relationships between parents and their teen and young adult children (2011, 130–31). Further, the mobilization of communities via block committees and other civic organs often created continuity between the comrades, the domestic sphere, and township central committees. To the degree that such youth politics w ­ ere ascendant, the role of the comrades in consumer and rent boycotts had a direct impact on matters of home and young male authority. “At each level, disciplinary structures w ­ ere set in place, which dealt with cases ranging from po­liti­cal dissent to domestic disputes as these spheres interpenetrated each other” (93). Bank also proposes that young men ­were dictating not only to parents what they could or could not do but also to wives and partners. They ­were likely to stipulate where relatives and spouses could shop in the context of the consumer boycotts, for example. For some of my interlocutors these questions resonated, and in one instance, a former comrade admitted that he had once forced a w ­ oman who defied the boycott to ingest the contents xx  |   Prologue

of her shopping bag while he watched, including a ­bottle of cooking oil! Those forms of masculinity that emerged in strug­gle, what Clive Glaser has identified as “strug­gle masculinity” (2000), w ­ ere at times threatening and could lead to physical vio­lence, while such excesses of highly sexualized conduct became critical to the very essence of protest politics. Bank and I carried out research in ­different parts of South Africa—he worked in Duncan Village, just outside East London in the Eastern Cape, while I worked on the periphery of Cape Town—­and to the degree that these ­were ­shaped by distinct local histories, the dynamics of the domestic sphere ­were also rather distinct. Bank reasons that the growth of shack areas might be connected quite practicably to ukuhlalisana arrangements in which ­women, in a sense, risked “shacking up” with male partners—­this without guarantees of social respectability afforded by marriage. Beginning in the mid-1970s and early 1980s such arrangements w ­ ere also predominant in Crossroads and Brown’s Farm and other shack areas in Cape Town, but given the stringencies of the system of influx controls in the Western Cape, shack areas became a space of emancipation and possibility for a slightly older generation of mi­grant workers and hostel dwellers, too many of whom desperately hoped to reconstitute preexisting f­amily arrangements with wives and children. I mention such transformations in domestic arrangements because I think these are critical to any understanding of the ways in which vio­lence comes to be expressed in contemporary South Africa. That so much criminal vio­lence is personal, intimate, and physical surely bears some continuity with shifting relations of domesticity and sexuality dating back to at least the 1980s, if not significantly earlier. W ­ hether such shifting relations of intimacy can account for the prevalence of vio­lence in the home in South Africa is unclear, though I would venture to say there is surely a connection between the two. Apartheid was terrifyingly destructive at the level of the everyday; it permeated the social and the intimate. Tellingly, rates of sexual offense, specifically, are extremely high in South Africa. At the same time, qualification is called for: one, the fact that sexual offenses are reported and recorded already speaks volumes of the state of policing and criminal statistics gathering in contrast to other countries, certainly across the continent; two, the expansion of the definition of “sexual offense” in the Sexual Offenses Act of 2003 and 2007 has opened up the possibility for recognizing “that men, w ­ omen, and children are potential victims” (Salo 2010, 36; also Prolog u e   |   xxi

see Salo 2007).9 Still, the question of how to reckon with the fact that rates of sexual vio­lence in the Western Cape, for example, have reached as high as 229.9 per 100,000 (the highest rate across the provinces in 2004–5) remains, what­ever the gender of the victims involved.10 Such considerations had significant bearing on my research—­the places I was able to go (accompanied or alone), how I got to those places (mostly with private transport), and the fact of deeply fractured social relations, such that where I lived and where I worked might as well have been separate worlds. Despite my best efforts to convince friends on the Flats that I should live with them, specifically in Philippi East, and despite offers of rent that most desperately needed to supplement very small or absent h ­ ouse­hold incomes, no one seemed to want the additional responsibility—­that and the fact that space was certainly at a premium because of the average size of rdp core homes. I would eventually move to Observatory, a formerly white working-­ class suburb, close to the city center. From my host, Patti, someone who cares very deeply about South Africa, I learned invaluable lessons about both white and black. Her experience during the anti-­apartheid strug­gle, mostly within the student movement in the 1970s and then in radical theater, taught me other kinds of things about opposition politics, as distinct from the radical street protests of the townships. In any case, what­ever the degrees of separation between South Africans of ­different complexions, I gleaned from living on Arnold Street many things about “white lefties,” about the challenges of living in post-­apartheid South Africa where, in fact, it was becoming harder and harder to reach across the divide separating black, white, colored, and Indian. If in the past “politics” was a reason for gathering, or­ga­niz­ing, and conjoining lives across the racial divide, the urgency that had attended such activities had dissipated, and in Cape Town post-1994 there was a palpable sense of a reimposed separation as ­people retreated into mostly private spaces (Morphet 1995). This was a subject of many late-­night dinner conversations at home and with other researchers and colleagues, including my very good friends Steffen and Birthe; Elaine and her husband, Colin; Madeleine, through whom I gained entrée to the Truth Commission; and many o­ thers besides. Truthfully, at the end of long days in the field in Brown’s Farm, Philippi East, and Crossroads, as well as some of the older nearby townships, including Nyanga and Gugulethu, it was a relief to clamber into my l­ ittle car and head home along the n2 motorway. At the same time, every single night I felt a xxii  |   Prolog ue

pang of conscience for leaving and for what felt, at least at the time, to be the utter impossibility of bringing together the two worlds—of research and postresearch friendship and hospitality. That, of course, changed over time as I met and made fast and furious friendships, shared stories and research findings, and grew to love this magnificent city despite all its injustice and fragmentation. My fieldwork necessarily jumped from site to site and institution to institution, again reflecting how disconnected the city ­really is: from the planning department of the City of Cape Town to the offices of Ikapa to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and, most critically, to those settlements bordering the southern side of Lansdowne Road between Duinefontein Road and the r300. ­Whether such a “method” constitutes a method as such is unclear. What I very quickly intuited, however, was that there had to be a way of drawing lines of connection between other­wise starkly separate spheres of urban life: between the kinds of rhetorical and ideological work of planning and policy; between claims to a participatory pro­cess in urban transformation even as plans continued to be mostly imposed from above; between a past that was defined, in part, by efforts to control populations through removal and displacement and a pre­sent in which the terms of ­human settlement ­were being radically renegotiated. If that meant chatting with civil engineers, councillors, local residents, and self-­appointed “community” representatives, then so be it. If it meant delving into the murky past of insurgency and counterinsurgency efforts on the Flats and I had to hightail it to the archives and finagle my way into the trc, then so be it, too. In the end, this patchwork of “sites,” negotiated by moving up and down the n2 (for that m ­ atter the m3 as well), made for the richest of ethnographic experiences, if on occasion a jolting sense of the disjuncture in perceptions held by such d­ ifferent kinds of ­people. Ultimately, however, it was the significance of those stories of a long and enduring strug­gle to a “right to the city” (see Harvey 2008; Lefebvre 1968) and through this a right to f­amily that seemed most compelling. Over the course of time I spent longer and longer days on the Flats than more or less anywhere ­else. And as I did, the significance of the politics of life and the forms of life that define everyday experience in Cape Town’s informal settlements became the centerpiece of my research efforts. It is equally the central ambition of Making Freedom to understand their po­ liti­cal significance in apartheid and post-­apartheid South Africa.

Prolog u e   |   xxiii

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Introduction

Making Freedom is an ethnographic study of domestic worlds in Cape Town, beginning in the 1970s through the lead-up to the end of the liberation strug­ gle and the start of the transition ­after 1994. By “domestic,” I mean to imply very l­ittle about the internal composition of households—­whether extended or nuclear, patriarchal, or single sex, as in the case of the mining compounds and com­pany hostels (Donham 2011). Rather, my concern rests with the very many necessary risks and labors in constituting a domestic scene of what­ever sort during apartheid in what was then called “metropolitan” South Africa. To that end, I examine the efforts of squatters to anticipate and then live the terms of democracy and how living democracy s­haped the emergence of a politics of home, or ikhaya, as both an affective and material reality. The creation of homes as spaces both implicated in and autonomous of the conditions of apartheid—as a system that most fundamentally manipulated black ­family relations—­provides a win­dow onto a politics of opposition beyond that of the liberation organizations. Homes would become a terrain of strug­gle. And as was evident during fieldwork in Lower Crossroads (located in the Eastern Node) (see map i.1), p­ eople afforded a tremendous amount of effort in the building and maintaining of both shacks and backyard “bungalows” as an expression of genuine care and value for their homes, or emakhaya (the plural form of ikhaya). Notably, emakhaya

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MAP I.1  ​Wetton-­Lansdowne-­Philippi Corridor. Courtesy of Mapping Specialists Ltd.

is both the plural and locative form of home and suggests not simply many homes or the place where homes are located (i.e., the townships or location) but homes in the countryside. In other words, the locative form signals the fact of homes ­here and there, in the city and in the country, and in so ­doing indexes a much longer history of migration and displacement.1 Relatedly, informal settlements without ser­vices, so-­called greenfields, continue to be understood as sites for those more or less cast out of society. Greenfields go by the name ezimbhacwani, which refers to the place for those without claims to home or citizenship; that is, displaced persons (refugees), or imbhacu. This realization of the intimate connection of home, politics, and belonging organizes Making Freedom. In the spirit of home as a place in the city that yet signifies a w ­ hole history of movement between town and country, I open this chapter with a chance meeting, on a return trip to Cape Town in August 2004, with former 2  |   I ntroduc tio n

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Crossroads headman Sam Ndima. Ndima had long maintained a home in the shantytown on the city outskirts, yet before he settled in Crossroads in the mid-1970s he, like many ­others, traveled back and forth between Cape Town and the Eastern Cape. On the morning of our first meeting, Ndima sits in his backyard, quietly holding court, while several womenfolk prepare food and wash clothes. They keep the open fire well stoked, attend to several potjies (three-­legged cast-­iron pots) filled with mielie pap (ground maize) and samp (succotash), and hang mounds of laboriously hand-­washed laundry. Wooden benches line the wattle fence, and the men, mostly se­nior Crossroads men, wait patiently to speak directly with Ndima, who remains closest to the fire. It is late winter, and though the Cape sun warms by midday, the damp that continues to rise from the sandy, waterlogged earth keeps everyone in woollies or overcoats; one or two are wrapped in blankets.2 Ndima had or­ga­nized a gathering of male elders to discuss housing subsidies and site allocations in the township. Twenty years earlier, as a local headman in Crossroads squatter area,3 he had put the same leadership skills to use brokering stays of eviction in the Magistrate’s Court, arranging for the reallocation of plots, and, very often, dealing directly with the Black Local Authority (bla)4 to or­ga­nize shelter and temporary papers for newcomers. For all Ndima’s largesse, then and now, I would come to learn that his advocacy bore a complicated relationship to the state, to apartheid, and indeed, to those who settled along with him on the city limits. He has lived in Crossroads squatter area since 1975, the year of Crossroads founding, when he first settled in the bush at the intersection of Klipfontein and Lansdowne Roads—an intersection from which Crossroads derived its name (see map i.2). Incredibly, he remained in what would l­ ater come to be known as Section One—­this despite apartheid-­era evictions and ­later post1994 efforts to “decant”5 the settlement before plots and road grids ­were laid down and Reconstruction and Development Programme (rdp) homes ­were built as part of an early presidential lead pro­ject following the demo­ cratic transition.6 I was interested in the history of informal settlement in the Western Cape,7 and Ndima was necessarily one of the most prominent past squatter leaders and, more than likely, the longest surviving. Was he a “reliable” witness in the strict sense? Probably not; but he was surely a very real witness to history. And what­ever the nature of his responses to the Truth and Reconciliation I ntrod u ction   |   3

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MAP I.2  ​Old Crossroads. Courtesy of Mapping Specialists Ltd.

Commission (trc) when called upon to testify in 1997 (these ­were vague at best),8 his story and that of those who worked with him had already been corroborated. His role in headman Johnson Ngxobongwana’s Cabinet,9 as well as the part he had played in or­ga­niz­ing attacks against young comrades (youth activists) and their families—­attacks that eventually rid the settlement of 70,000 ­people in 1986—­was well known. Just as well known was his collaboration with the South African Police (sap) and Defence Force (sadf). Much of this had come to light in other depositions and hearings and through the sustained work of the research department at the Commission. Besides, Crossroads interested me not only for the state crackdowns and spectacularly violent conflicts of the mid-1980s and early 1990s but, just as critically, for its deep history of quotidian struggles for residence rights, permits, and a sense of home. While the main focus of Making Freedom is the “quiet encroachment of the ordinary” (Bayat 1997a, 7–8)—­namely, the steady expansion of periurban settlements on the outskirts of the city of Cape Town from the 1970s to the early 2000s—­Ndima serves as a through line of sorts. His involvement with the squatter leadership, coupled with his sustained engagement in squatter struggles, guides my account of the complex politics of illegal occupation and permanent settlement of the urban margins. Making Freedom 4  |   Introduc tio n

is a history of families and communities who defied pass laws and, at times, became embroiled in state counterrevolutionary war. The critical role of po­ liti­cal organizations in the strug­gle to end apartheid—­the African National Congress (anc) and United Demo­cratic Front (udf) among them—­has long been acknowledged. But what Making Freedom highlights is a history of battles for access to the city for and on behalf of African migrants, of their combining of work and domestic life, and of a broad array of everyday practices that ultimately transformed the geography and demography of Cape Town and, eventually, forced changes to apartheid law itself. Africans, by their sheer presence, the book argues, would change the course of history. My turn eventually comes, and Ndima takes me into his rdp cinderblock home, which has been extended in the back, doubling the original floor plan and apparently occupying two plots.10 He perches on a well-­worn sofa and from time to time a rather handsome cockerel struts his way into the living room, flutters his wings enough to alight on the worn armrest, and begins to cluck. Ndima eventually gets up and moves slowly across the room to fetch a bag of feed from which he casually scoops a fistful of seeds and strews them on the linoleum. For now we are left uninterrupted as this bird with fiery russet crown hunts and pecks. I offer my business card. Ndima calls to his dau­gh­ter to bring him his glasses, which are oversized, a relic from the early 1980s. He squints at the fine print. He pauses and then looks over the rims as he comments that he is an uneducated man and that he may not be able to answer my questions. I have already heard this refrain; Ndima is said to have reported much the same thing to one of the trc lawyers burdened with the unfortunate task of deposing him. A form of speech, a mode of deference— or is this a way of refusing to speak of the past by denying full knowledge of it? Ndima’s story of crossing the country in search of work, as I would soon learn, echoes the stories of many black South Africans who faced innumerable challenges in seeking gainful employment in metropolitan South Africa ­under the color bar and ­later formal influx controls (statutes restricting the ­free movement and settlement of Africans). And like many ­others of his fellow countrymen, Ndima had inevitably moved back and forth between the city and the country, in so ­doing not only putting down roots in Cape Town but combining rural and urban lifeways (Comaroff and Comaroff 1987). This way of living both ­here and there—in a continual movement between them—­might account for the wattle fence around the property, his beloved cockerel, and the meeting of male elders I had encountered earlier in the I ntrod u ction   |   5

day. It all had a feel of the “customary” about it, however reinvented and repurposed for city life. Ndima would go on to explain his multiple journeys back and forth between the Transkei and vari­ous cities—­a kind of “culture of mobility” (Ngwane 2003, 683)—an experience that ultimately defined his life and livelihood and the lives and livelihoods of so many blacks during much of the twentieth ­century:11 I was born in the Eastern Cape, once the Transkei, near Willowvale.12 I came to Cape Town many years ago, first settling in Kensington, before Langa was even built.13 I don’t remember the year exactly, but what I do know is that it was a very long time ago. And although I was already an ikrwala [a “new man”]14 I ­wasn’t married, not yet. I came looking for work. Previously, I had traveled to Johannesburg in search of a job. I returned from Johannesburg to the rural Eastern Cape to undergo circumcision. ­Later, ­after several trips back and forth between Jo’burg and the Transkei, I headed for Cape Town—­first working as a construction worker and then as a petrol station attendant. We Africans had to move around in those days. A ­ fter living in Kensington I went to Gugulethu when h ­ ouses ­were first built there.15 I was to be married and was assigned a h ­ ouse and a plot, but I was living with someone ­else, because the ­woman I was supposed to marry was still in the Eastern Cape. She tried to come to the Cape Peninsula but was prevented from ­doing so by law. You see, there was the prob­lem with the police looking around for ­people who didn’t have passes. And so she was repeatedly arrested and sent back to the Transkei. And that forced me to leave Gugulethu, a formal township with brick h ­ ouses, to come to stay in the bushveld (bush or scrub) in Crossroads; it must have been in about 1975, long before Crossroads was settled by so many ­people.16 When I arrived, there ­were only four other shacks in the bush. The ­people who lived there had passes, even though their wives didn’t,17 but the point was that you could come to Crossroads to hide from the authorities. I asked my new neighbors what I ought to do. And they said, “Do you have an ax, because if you have an ax, then you can build a ­house of your own.” A ­ fter that, ­people started to come into the area. At first they ­were few in number and then there w ­ ere more and more. And as long as you had a panga (a scythe) and you could cut away bushveld, you could

6  |   Introduc tio n

build. Soon I had a big yard, and some of the ­people who ­couldn’t afford to buy building materials came to live with me. ­Others built their own structures, and I encouraged them to build them inside my yard.18 Ndima’s early years on the move in the Cape, Transvaal, and Transkei cover a period of monumental transformation in South Africa: the Great Depression years; South African world dominance in gold production; the subsequent abandoning of the fixed gold price (Worden 2007, 65); and the growing war industry. As Nigel Worden has previously argued, the war years afforded black workers increased bargaining power (71), complicating the picture of peasant proletarianization and the notion of surrender to mining and manufacturing interests. The migration of Africans to urban areas said just as much about the weaknesses of an economy unable to control rural ­labor as it did the power of corporate capital. And indeed many chose to leave the confines of the reserves in search of employment in the cities. By the 1970s Africans not only lived temporarily in urban areas; many had settled in the country’s major cities, ­whether legally or not. This was a de­cade of deepening instability as the country became increasingly isolated, immediate neighboring states ­were decolonized, and a global energy crisis significantly affected an already shaken economy. Though cheap black ­labor had long formed the basis of South African corporate profit, racial Fordism (Gelb 1987)—­that very peculiarly South African regime of industrial accumulation—­had begun to break down. If Fordism enabled workers to serve as engines of cap­i­tal­ist growth, assuming both their capacity to produce and to consume goods (see in par­tic­u­lar Keynes [1936] 2008), the system of mi­grant ­labor, job reservation, and influx controls that in part might explain the difficulties Ndima faced in 1975 made that “classic feedback between increased consumption and increased productivity” more or less impossible (White 2012, 400; also see Makhulu 2012). Black workers confronted incredible odds in finding gainful employment, but beyond that many refused the work available to them precisely because of the exploitative relations of the wage and the racism of the shop floor that defined African workplace encounters (Barchiesi 2011). A series of questions follow from the fact of hundreds of thousands of ­Africans settling on the city limits. Where did p­ eople live, how ­were they able to access formal housing and plots? Black Capetonians in the 1970s would not have been the first to respond pragmatically and, on occasion,

I ntrod u ction   |   7

strategically to the machinations of Group Areas (segregationist legislation), influx controls, and the racial hostilities of employers—­a particularly lethal trifecta. Their reactions echo traditions of past urban strug­gle, perhaps the best known of which involved James Mpanza’s bid in the 1940s for land and housing in Johannesburg. He and his supporters would go on to establish Masakeng19 squatter camp in Orlando East. Mpanza was also the founder of the Sofasonke Party (meaning “we will all die”) and championed the cause of better housing for Africans in the city of Johannesburg (see Bonner 1990, 1995; Pithouse 2008; cf. Parnell 2003). In his style of leadership he was hardly distinguishable from Ndima and a series of equally charismatic figures who would emerge in places like Crossroads and Brown’s Farm three de­cades ­later and whose supporters ­were drawn from the settlements themselves. I say this only to outline that a tradition of grassroots politics already existed, one on which Cape Town’s shack dwellers drew e­ ither consciously or unconsciously. It is also the case that such practices have endured in the post-­apartheid era, informing countless protests against the state’s failure to deliver housing, redistribute land, and provide ser­vices (cf. Turner 2013; Walker 2008; also see Walker et al. 2010). There are worrying continuities with apartheid, certainly. Thus, despite the advent of democracy, segregation in neighborhoods and poor housing stock in formerly black Group Areas endure. The reasons for such failures, as we will see, are far thornier than the pat admonition to “speed delivery” would suggest or the notion that the problems the state confronts in ameliorating the injustices of the past are simply issues of complexity or insufficient capacity. For all that, the degree to which housing for the period beginning immediately ­after the war, specifically informally and self-­built housing, sustained the reproduction of l­abor power remains a key question in understanding that paradox of apartheid as a system built on black l­abor that was at one and the same time sequestered at a distance from those centers of industrial production that that very same black laboring class helped to sustain. In the 1970s, the role of in­de­pen­dently built homes and communities was at the center of debates about w ­ hether “aided self-­help” policies, in their most radical guise, might wrest autonomy from the state and capital or ­whether in fact such ideas w ­ ere largely utopian, ignoring that squatting essentially represented a mechanism for subsidizing or even cutting the social wage. Further, the notion that self-­built housing existed solely within circuits of 8  |   I ntroduc tio n

use rather than exchange value and that these ­were not in some way implicated in expanding relations of commodification signaled, for many Marxist scholars in par­tic­u­lar, a radical misconstrual of pro­cesses of urbanization. It was surely a ­mistake, they argued, to imagine, in the spirit of the likes of John F. C. Turner, one among a number of so-­called participatory architects of the 1960s and 1970s, that cities might be understood on their own terms, as if emerging and operating in­de­pen­dently of the modes of production (see in par­tic­u­lar Turner and Fichter 1972; cf. Burgess 1978). Inasmuch as rising inflation and declining living standards in the 1970s constituted the basis of widespread and intensifying discontent, these prompted a range of responses—in the sense not of being reactive but of actions that immediately and directly addressed par­tic­u­lar conditions. Such “contentious politics” (Tilly and Tarrow 2006) would eventually take on ideological and or­gan­i­za­tional form but in the first instance emerged from the daily degradations of deepening poverty.20 To make home or to invest in forms of domesticity demands attention to care of the self and care of ­others—­techniques not only encompassed by the realm of oikos, “mere life,” but also by an emotional and affective disposition suggesting an investment in a social world beyond the strictures of poverty and want (see, e.g., Weeks 2011).21 This was all the more difficult ­under apartheid, and yet shack dwellers, like Ndima, in Crossroads and countless other settlements engaged ordinary practices of home-­and place-­making (Ginsburg 1996). These efforts w ­ ere related yet distinct from the outright confrontations with the state and arguably shed light on the experience of apartheid beyond that offered by other­wise standard accounts of protest politics in the period leading up to the negotiations of the early 1990s (see, e.g., Seekings 2000; cf. Bozzoli 2004). For if official efforts focused primarily on the African ­family—­conceived in broadly heteronormative and patriarchal terms—­sought to disable the ­reproducibility of a population that threatened to overrun the city and to dismantle white privilege, squatters challenged the logic of the reserves as purported sites of African reproduction. Understood in those terms, the biopo­liti­cal function of the state, however uneven, appears to have been the preservation and management of populations with an end to making life into ­labor, object, and reproducible capacity but only insofar as the geo­ graph­i­cal limits of such a pro­ject might be controlled. Beyond that, the state both denied and acknowledged the fundamental value of black life to the I ntrod u ction   |   9

sustainability of the society as a ­whole, insisting that the ­labor of reproduction take place elsewhere, outside the sites of the centers of both economic and po­liti­cal power—­that is, beyond the sightlines of metropolitan South Africa. How one might go about undoing something so utterly flesh and blood, so ge­ne­tic, as the control over the where and how of the reproduction of life remains unanswered by the fact of a new constitution, a new dispensation, and efforts to offer restitution for the past. Beyond questions of po­liti­cal recognition and repre­sen­ta­tion or those of material restitution, South Africa strikes me as struggling with the highly complex work of restoring social relations, beginning in the domestic sphere and building outward to the society as a w ­ hole. This is quite a d­ ifferent claim than, say, that of the Far Right in its efforts to instantiate “­family values” as the building blocks of social values. Arguably, South Africa is haunted by a past in which the domestic sphere was so thoroughly compromised through forced removals, influx controls, and segregation as to make the domestic a space of contestation. This would take on a variety of forms, and as we will see (chapters 1 and 2), generational and gender forms particularly. By now it should be fairly evident that the focus of this book is a domain of life and strug­gle beyond formally or­ga­nized politics. My interest in squatters and their varied strategies for staying put and making home derives precisely from the sense that much of what got done in the midst of the liberation strug­gle—­and in fact contributed to that strug­gle—­occupied a space of the ordinary. It follows that I stress the nature of everyday life not only as a basic strug­gle for survival but as a strug­gle for a full life, a life of plea­sure, and a life of satisfaction precisely motivating those much larger battles against the system of domination. A ­ fter all, as my f­ ather long insisted in those years spent in Botswana, revolutionaries must lay their heads somewhere, wash, eat, and restore themselves for the fight ahead; they require moments of tranquility, joy, and even farce.22 Yet a yawning gap remains between how we understand the pro­cesses of reproducing revolutionaries (in what­ever form) and the pursuit of their cause. In part, I would suggest, this gap can be explained by a long-­term fascination with the “spectacular” in both life and letters in South Africa (see, e.g., Ndebele 1994) in which the “ordinary” has been frequently sidelined. Striking a balance then between the concrete ­legal and economic challenges facing shack dwellers and these moments of beauty, won­der, and decency is the aim h ­ ere (see Ross 2010; also see Boo 2012; Perlman 2010). 10  |   I ntroduc tio n

Making Freedom: The Politics of Domestic Life in Cape Town

In the following pages, I pay par­tic­u­lar attention to practices of settlement and homemaking, identifying what residents of a series of contiguous townships and informal settlements on the city limits regard as a condition of freedom or “having rights” that, though admittedly limited in their scope, transform the terms on which migrants and now former migrants access the city. Even ­today, the “right to the city” is contested, and squatters continue in their battles for access to the urban environment, encountering one another “concretely” (Merrifield 2011, 473) in negotiations over the terms of establishing permanency. Meanwhile, city officials, property o­ wners, and “citizen” taxpayers resist their incursions.23 Ndima’s experience is signal. Through his “politics of encounter” (Merrifield 2011, 473) with o­ thers, particularly in light of what followed his settlement in Crossroads as he built a home in the scrub, Ndima sought the help and counsel of neighbors and extended his yard and guardianship to newcomers, which ultimately served as the building blocks of waves of subsequent settlement. Insofar as such struggles persist ­today they take the form of banal, often antisocial, and illicit activities that range from land occupation through the stealing of electricity to performing upgrades on homes for which title deeds and secure land tenure are lacking (cf. Holston 2008). Together, these practices not only serve to overcome conditions of material deprivation but at the same time enable actors to claim belonging and recognition or, following Holston, a mode of citizenship (Holston 1999). Such practices also have far-­reaching consequences for the very nature of city life, for the form the city takes—­just as direct squatter action forced the hand of apartheid-­era authorities, which left an unmistakable mark on the urban environment and urban politics across the national map. Understanding these marginal spaces as both reflections of political-­economic conditions and as spaces through which identity, citizenship, and alternative social agendas emerge and are fought over remains central to Making Freedom in its effort to better explain urban struggles both before and a­ fter the po­liti­cal transition from apartheid. To that end, the book is or­ga­nized chronologically, beginning with a history of migrancy and dispossession and concluding with an account of certain of the significant transformations that came with demo­cratization in 1994. Geo­graph­i­cally, my observations stem from time spent on the Cape I ntrod u ction   |   11

Flats, that sandy wasteland to which Africans and coloreds w ­ ere previously removed, during a period of research conducted in 1998 and 1999 and then intermittently through 2006. During the course of this study, many of the places in which I initially carried out fieldwork w ­ ere ­either razed entirely or rebuilt, at times bringing original residents back to those settlements and townships and in other instances mandating they move elsewhere entirely. Most of my field research was carried out in an area south of Lans­­ downe Road24 in a number of neighboring informal settlements, including Brown’s Farm, Philippi East, Island, Thabo Mbeki, and Luzuko. North of Lansdowne Road I spent time in what is now referred to as Old Crossroads to distinguish it from New Crossroads, a formal township that was completed in 1981, as well as Nyanga East, Gugulethu, ktc (Kakaza Trading Centre), and Langa (see map i.2). Together this area, which covers wards 33–36, is considered a single subcouncil (subcouncil 13) and functions to deliver municipal ser­vices, including sewage, waste disposal, ­water, health care, roads, traffic safety, and housing. The subcouncil is one of twenty-­four such subcouncils and an outgrowth of the trend ­toward the decentralization of local government functions. Broadly speaking, settlements to the south of Lansdowne Road have tended to be shack settlements; certainly in the late 1990s and early 2000s many w ­ ere still informal, while some of the older brick-­and-­mortar townships lay to the north of this main arterial. In part, I hoped to understand population movement between the older townships and the squatter areas and the ways in which a combination of factors—­including repressive state policies, demographic shifts in the African population, and increasingly strident anti-­apartheid politics—­had together ­shaped residence patterns on the outskirts of the city between the mid-1970s and the early 2000s. Borrowing from Thomas Blom Hansen’s work on Mumbai, my focus on townships and neighborhoods as “objectified units of governance” followed from their dual status as key units of analy­sis and social experience (Hansen 2001, 13). By the 1980s even ­legal residents of the formal townships might opt to strike out into the bush, most often in search of additional space and in­de­ pen­dence from parents and grandparents as township ­house­holds grew two and three generations deep. Additionally, the steady breakdown of influx controls u ­ nder pressure from waves of in-­migration from the countryside had given rise to the need for temporary transit camps. By 1983, overcrowd12  |   I ntroduc tio n

ing in Crossroads and adjacent shantytowns prompted authorities to extend provisional l­egal status to residents willing to decamp to Khayelitsha, approximately twenty-­five miles outside the city, where a tent town was set up in an area referred to as Site C. Khayelitsha has become Cape Town’s largest settlement, with an estimated 400,000–410,000 residents. Combining areas of informal settlement and formal housing, Khayelitsha embodies many of the paradoxes of apartheid urban planning (Mabin 1992; Smith 1992a, 1992b; also see Cook 1992). Though designed as a temporary camp, Khayelitsha ultimately insinuated itself into the deep fabric of the city, incontrovertibly denying apartheid norms of influx control, eviction, and endorsement out to the homelands. Beyond the informal settlements themselves, I spent significant periods in the municipal offices of the city of Cape Town, in the offices of local pro­ject managers (generally civil engineers), at the then headquarters of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Adderley Street, and at the Western Cape Archives on Roeland Street, as well as the University of Cape Town Library. Both dispersed and firmly settled—­one of the contradictions of illegal land occupation—­shack dwellers survive given a careful balancing act between firmly entrenching themselves and at times succumbing to enforced mobility. Recognizing this to be the case, I too moved back and forth across the city, tracing an archive of informal settlement that was both written and unwritten. The Right to the City

If dispossession remains one of South Africa’s most pressing issues, a fundamental question follows: what do we mean by poverty, assuming we intend to transcend standard pathologizing discourses that reduce the poor to a series of aberrant behaviors? To be poor is to experience deprivation and vulnerability, certainly, but those experiences can occur only in a place. Claims for redress from deprivation are also made in or from somewhere—­whether Rio’s favelas (Perlman 2010), St. Petersburg’s squats (Höjdestrand 2009), or on Cape Town’s outskirts (Ross 2010). This also means that how we think about poverty has to be squared with the ways in which it may be ­different to be poor in ­different places, even while conceding that certain ­human needs are universal (cf. Arendt 2006). Such differences of experience are particularly pertinent to the way I want to think about cities generally and I ntrod u ction   |   13

South African cities specifically: as spaces in which citiness itself is very often generated from the margins as much as from the metropolitan center. The poor go to work, they shop, they build neighborhoods and schools, they make ­music and cook, they even dream. They are, in other words, utterly central to the making of city life. In recognizing their centrality I think that we can move some theoretical distance from the tendency to parochialize the poor, to imagine that their struggles are somehow banal, delimited by the local, and that these conditions are essentially self-­inflicted (see, e.g., Booth 1989; Franklin 1997; Himmelfarb 1995; Marx 1990; Wilson 2009). We might consider the ways in which Capetonians on the margins of that city, while living with lack, aspire to worldliness through the renaming of township neighborhoods to reflect a consciousness of elsewheres or a memory of the strug­gle and the condition of exile, as in references to Paris, Khayelitsha, and Lusaka (formerly anc headquarters in Zambia), Nyanga, respectively. I see such aspirations as ultimately claims to universalization (albeit enunciated from some place specific) and a demand for recognition in the terms of national and even global citizenship.25 In South Africa, poverty has a very par­tic­u­lar relationship to its opposite— to the capacity for accumulation—­suggesting that in­e­qual­ity is as defining of urban life as pure lack. In sum, poverty is a politics. Cities everywhere increasingly conform to patterns of extreme inequality—to cities of walls (Caldeira 2000) on one hand and “slums” (Davis 2006) or ghettos on the other—­consistent with circuits of capital that are at once concentrated and uneven (see, e.g., Merrifield 2011).26 Few urban centers offer affordable housing, comprehensive public transport, or ease of access to work. Instead, the working poor travel long distances to places of employment in a proliferation of exurbs and edge cities, their commutes the consequence of “spatial mismatch” between central business districts and dormitory areas. Or prompted by the near total absence of job prospects, many engage in informal work, most often closer to home. This combination of sprawl and delimitation promotes patterns of moving around and staying put. Cape Town is no great exception. To get to work in the city and the formerly white suburbs, most residents of the Flats make use of a costly network of largely un­regu­la­ted kombi taxis or of the overcrowded and sometimes dangerous buses and trains, which are cheaper.27 Large numbers also simply stay put, operating from backyards, homes, and the street to sell food, small wares, haircuts, and phone cards, ­whether from converted shipping containers or 14  |   I ntroduc tio n

home-­based spazas (small shops). To be sure, the expansion of both the informal sector and informal settlements speaks volumes, not only of a rocky po­liti­cal transition and the market reforms that accompanied it but also of an enduring history of black poverty and joblessness that is concentrated in former Group Areas (see Skuse and Cousins 2007; also see Tabak and Crichlow 2000). “We cannot,” in fact, “understand urban growth and settlement in the periphery, or the specificity of urban ecol­ogy, without an explanation of how the informal sector operates” (Keyder 2000, 120). Cities are necessarily sites of the production of “surplus,” both in the sense of a surplus product or value and the production of redundant populations as capital moves increasingly into a speculative phase (Harvey 2008, 2010). One articulation of redundancy centers on those who live on the urban margins beyond modes of formal employment and who live, consequently, with increasing precarity, very often becoming superfluous to the workings of capital (see, e.g., Arendt 1994; Mbembe 2004; cf. Makhulu 2010); that is to say, they are excessive of the pragmatic needs of capital at any given moment. The notion that ­actual communities or populations are rendered redundant also suggests they suffer a general invisibility, making it virtually impossible to make effective rights claims.28 Yet shack dwellers persevere in d­ oing, thinking, feeling, and striving for themselves and those they care for in ways that exceed the concept of superfluity in any straightforward sense. Further, though these modes of living precariously and contingently would indicate very ­little overlap with the ostensibly “productive” work of capital, many are implicated in forms of toil (piecemeal or menial) that represent the building blocks of a much larger structure of or­ga­nized work (see, e.g., Appadurai 2002). Estimates for the late 1990s already signaled that approximately 10.5 billion rand (r) in revenue originated in the informal sector in the sale of clothes (presumably many of them secondhand) as well as food (Yoffie and St. George 1997, 11).29 Evidently, street vendors and ­owners of local township spaza shops ­were remarkably active as small-­time entrepreneurs. In the course of the chapters that follow, the notion of work at times intersects with what is conventionally understood as “class strug­gle,” as in the 2012 miners and Cape farmhand disputes.30 Squatters are also seen to engage questions beyond work itself—­for example, ser­vice delivery, housing, and land, issues that ground (very literally) other­ wise abstract demo­cratic ideals inasmuch as these represent rights claims concerned with material well-­being.31 I ntrod u ction   |   15

All that being said, what do Capetonians do, say, strug­gle over, and claim for themselves? Primary among the demands made by residents of Cape Town’s many periurban settlements and townships is, predictably, the right to housing as well as access to education, health care, jobs, and general welfare. Nationally, such claims have engendered a number of social movements, including the Treatment Action Campaign (tac), South African Homeless ­People’s Federation (sahpf), Landless ­People’s Movement (lpm), Anti-­Privatization Forum (apf), and Anti-­Eviction Campaign (aec),32 all of which derive their energies and motivations from the strug­gle over access to basic and fundamental needs, most notably housing and ser­vices, as well as health care. These struggles differ in some respects from the sorts of struggles articulated in much of the lit­erature on the “right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968, 1996) in which “micro” or “do-­it-­yourself” urbanisms—­ graffiti, community gardens, farmers’ markets, and skate parks—­define a field of practices that are assumed to be transformative even as their small scale and highly local investments make them vulnerable to appropriation by capital. By contrast, South African cities have become sites for pushback against neoliberal policies that relegate the poor to former Group Areas, townships, and informal settlements. In Cape Town, the “vision, investment and strug­gle” (Parnell 1996, 91), in making home and in creating dignity through home, function to challenge the legacy of apartheid, as well as an emergent post-­apartheid geography of private interest. When Lefebvre first conceived of the right to the city in Le droit à la ville (1968), he was not speaking simply of access to the urban environment but to a full life within it (however defined). His work gestured t­oward the possi­ble outcomes of urban struggles, though it never fully articulated what these might be. In other words, the pro­ject was essentially intransitive. Inspired not only by Lefebvre but by Robert Park (the Chicago urban sociologist), David Harvey has since refined the notion of the strug­gle for the city by considering the relationship between h ­ uman life and the urban environment and how remaking the one must, inevitably, involve remaking the other. The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from that of what kind of social ties, relationship to nature, lifestyles, technologies and aesthetic values we desire. The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change

16  |   Introduc tio n

ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends on the exercise of a collective power to reshape the pro­cesses of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our h ­ uman rights. (2008, 23) Cities, as Harvey has noted, offer very par­tic­u­lar opportunities to those making claims to social goods, affording those who agitate for those social goods a space—­a public space for opposition (see, e.g., Brenner, Marcuse, and Mayer 2012; Harvey 2012; Marcuse 2009; McCann 2002; Merrifield 2011; Mitchell 2003; Purcell 2002). But in contrast to the kinds of contentious politics whose central preoccupation is the dismantling of gentrification, private real estate, and the restitution of the commons—­a predominant focus of cities in the “global north”—­growing demands for housing and welfare by postcolonial populations point to the significance of the right to the city for struggles in the “global south” as well (see, e.g., Chatterjee 2004; de Souza 2010; Gidwani and Reddy 2011; Simone 2005; cf. Chakrabarty 2000). If the predominant mode of development in African cities is informal and unplanned, giving rise to new modes of life, livelihood, and leisure beyond the or­ga­niz­ing infrastructures of formal architecture and design (see, e.g., de Boeck 2011; Jackson 2010; Simone 2010), an emergent post­ colonial lit­erature of African urbanism focuses on two divergent if or­ga­niz­ ing principles of city life: crisis and ingenuity (cf. Makhulu, Buggenhagen, and Jackson 2010). African urbanites must continually improvise in the face of uncertainty, insecurity, and general infrastructural breakdown (see, e.g., Larkin 2008), and as a consequence the ways in which their social and po­ liti­cal worlds are constructed relies precisely on the tenuous nature of the built environments in those places (see, e.g., Amin and Thrift 2002). This concern for the African city reflects, in part, a growing consensus that urbanization, even in a developing continent, holds an increasingly im­ por­tant place in social life, as evidenced by the emergence of megacities such as Lagos and Cairo, as well as the rapid growth of secondary cities, including Kigali (Rwanda), Goma (drc), and Kanos (Nigeria), to name only three.33 Interestingly, southern Africanists have long been attuned to the question of urbanization owing largely to the region’s industrialization following

I ntrod u ction   |   17

the discovery of gold, diamonds, and other metals (Gluckman 1958; Mayer 1963; Wilson and Mafeje 1963). But save for the work of a handful of scholars (Abu-­Lughod 1981; Cooper 1983; Ferguson 1999), much of the lit­erature of the last several de­cades reflected, instead, a rural bias, a bias that has only recently shifted to permit a renewed concern with African city life in places as disparate as Johannesburg, Arusha, and Abidjan (Newell 2012; Nuttall and Mbembe 2008; Weiss 2009).34 South Africans, for their part, are engaged in efforts at reimagining an urban form consistent with the constitutional Bill of Rights. The “freedom to make and remake” the city, however, assumes several things. From a social and economic perspective the new po­liti­cal movements—­the Anti-­Eviction Campaign, Anti-­Privatization Forum, and South African Homeless ­People’s Federation, for example—­are necessarily opposed to a second wave of post-­ apartheid reforms that underscores the role of the private sector in development (see, e.g., Maharaj and Ramutsindela 2002).35 From a civil-­political perspective, the per­sis­tence of segregation (though no longer legally enforceable) calls for repairing the Manichean and highly fractured racial form of the urban environment. On the bleeding edge of such a politics, shack dweller organizations, like Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM),36 have developed a practical and “living politics,” which, they argue, serves to humanize the world around them. This is a Fanonian politics in which the forgotten, the marginal, and the disenfranchised are acknowledged and a politics that insists upon a genuinely “demo­cratic” society through housing, land, and other reforms (Gibson 2012; also see Fanon 1963; Pithouse 2006).37 Essentially such a politics hinges on the indissociability of geography and democracy or what I would choose to call “the geography of freedom.”38 Black Capetonians prefigured the new housing politics, beginning in the 1970s, when they defied pass laws and residential zoning by settling in Crossroads, Brown’s Farm, Nyanga, and other parts of the Flats. At the same time, theirs ­were claims about domicile that began in opposition to the state—­specifically, opposition to influx controls and Group Areas legislation—in other words, to apartheid itself, even as such opposition came to be expressed locally and particularly. Or­ga­nized around building and sustaining settlements and battling evictions and de­mo­li­tions, squatters began with basic struggles that ­were complicated by competing allegiances to progressive and liberation organizations and, in some instances, even to covert collaboration with the state. For many, deciding to squat on vacant 18  |   Introduc tio n

land represented the only way of reuniting families in the face of pass laws that prohibited the permanent settlement of most Africans in metropolitan South Africa. This was certainly Ndima’s avowed reason for moving into Crossroads. But beyond that, townships w ­ ere also incredibly crowded, and some families struck out into the bush in search of additional living space, less so because they ­were “illegals” in search of a modicum of cover from the apparatus of surveillance. O ­ thers, mainly younger ­people, chose to escape the strictures of “custom,” leaving parents and grandparents in the townships in order to “shack up” with partners and lovers.39 Through the 1980s, illegal land occupation continued to reshape the urban environment and the conditions for black domestic life. Newer, posttransition organizations doubtless draw on the strategies of pop­u­lar apartheid-­ era protest, including those earlier squatter struggles; they also draw on much longer-­standing traditions of opposition, for example, ­women’s anti-­ pass law re­sis­tance that first emerged in the 1890s. In the provinces, a system of passes and permits was already being instituted in the late nineteenth ­century to track and rec­ord the movements of blacks. Protests against the new pass system drew on an impressive co­ali­tion across ethnic and class lines to collect petitions, to or­ga­nize delegations, to engage in protest marches and public pass burnings. As modes of opposition counting on broad repre­sen­ta­tion that exceeded the assumed limits of a largely African ­middle class, this “culture” of protest spread across the South African countryside (see in par­tic­u­lar Gasa 2007; also see Walker 1982, 1990). It also had intergenerational effects, drawing on the memories of parents and grandparents to communicate to children a sense of the imperatives of earlier struggles that would, in turn, inform their own decisions in the face of injustice. Histories of strug­gle have ­shaped all manner of contentious politics, even those of the so-­called new social movements in contemporary South Africa. Cleaving to a sense of the novel, scholars of those movements have insisted that their emergence has been specific to addressing post-­ apartheid circumstances. Yet as d­ ifferent as democracy and apartheid are, the ­actual repertoires of strug­gle are quite similar. The recruitment and or­gan­i­za­tional strategies of apartheid-­era civic organizations and the new social movements—­the Anti-­Eviction Campaign among them—­are virtually indistinguishable, leading me to further doubt the necessary novelty (and optimism) that seems to inform the scholarship of the pre­sent (see, I ntrod u ction   |   19

e.g., Desai 2002).40 I question too the preoccupation with or­gan­i­za­tional ­membership—an ostensible mea­sure of the size and efficacy of a given group—­raising very par­tic­u­lar questions about what is assumed to constitute ­belonging to a given body ­under conditions that are already so precarious as to dictate continually shifting individual and collective dispositions ­toward belonging to almost anything (see, e.g., Höjdestrand 2009; cf. Bakunin 1972; Coleman 2013). Acknowledging how tenuous such po­liti­cal solidarities and agendas are, this book focuses primarily on other­wise singular efforts to establish and legitimate claims to a place in the city even as these may, at times, overlap or come to be encompassed by the efforts of formally recognized organizations such as the Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor (fedup) with which the South African Homeless ­People’s Federation is affiliated. Arising from the threat of eviction, shaky tenancy, and other daily assaults on domestic security, Making Freedom looks to largely unformalized protests that draw on longer, organic traditions of everyday strug­gle for home. Again, I believe Ndima’s story is instructive. Hacking down bush to make way for a small shack was only a beginning. Ndima re­united with his wife; he also gained some relief from the hypervigilance of the authorities, who regularly raided the townships in search of pass offenders. True, this was a ­gamble, and he swapped the relative comfort of Gugulethu for the freedoms of the bush. But that was only a starting point. Crossroads residents, Ndima included, hauled ­water, hewed wood, built fires, cooked in the open, and went about ablutions and the disposal of night soil. Residents desiring privacy at home led some to erect dividing walls and partitions inside the corrugated shacks they had only recently built. They needed light and airflow and so bought and installed windows, doors, and ceilings, too: markers of distinction and care on the one hand and an investment in a ­future on the other. As Rebecca Ginsburg has argued, p­ eople upgraded homes “defying the spirit and intent of [laws] by renovating their h ­ ouses as though they meant to stay” (Ginsburg 1996, 130). This investment in staying put (by what­ever means), the attention to self-­care and care of ­others—­the nurturing of “deep roots in shallow soil” (Perlman 2010, 24–40)—­remains the key focus of this study.

20  |   Introduc tio n

“The Quiet Encroachment of the Ordinary”

If ­until this point I have argued that the old apartheid legislative framework determined who lived in cities and, more dramatically, where, policies in the Cape Peninsula w ­ ere particularly exacting (see chapter 1). The 1955 Coloured Labour Preference Policy (clpp), which reserved jobs for coloreds, created additional obstacles for Africans seeking work within the provincial boundaries of the Cape, ending at the Eiselen Line.41 Notwithstanding these limitations, the period 1968–72 saw a 200 ­percent increase in available employment as the postwar economy expanded. These opportunities existed, however, in tension with construction freezes in the townships ­after the early 1970s, alongside systematic attempts to remove squatter settlements in the Cape Metropolitan Area, which would come to define the Cape (­later the Western Cape) as a region most especially hostile to Africans. Not only is the Western Cape still home to the country’s largest squatter population,42 Africans remain a minority. In the mid-1970s dozens, then hundreds, and eventually thousands of homeless Capetonians, following a steady “molecular” logic (see Bayat 1997b, 57), flocked to Crossroads and other parts of the Flats, boldly ignoring draconian legislation dictating that African families live their lives apart from one another—­men laboring in the towns, ­women caring for children in the reserves. Indeed, for those who moved to the bush-­at-­the-­crossroads, ­later to take on both national and international significance as a major symbol of defiance, theirs was a largely pragmatic strug­gle, even as the consequences of opposition would eventually redefine the law. Squatters unwittingly made history but not as they might have hoped; rather, d­ oing so “­under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past” (Marx 1991a, 15). Taking up scythes, cutting through the dense undergrowth, and building homes, squatters decisively changed the course of history, reshaped the contours of the city, and ultimately contributed to the demise of pass laws in 1986. A considerable body of recent work on cities focuses on what Asef Bayat has called “quiet encroachment” (Bayat 1997b, 57; 2000) on the urban environment, encroachment very much consistent with long-­standing practices of reclamation of land and residential settlement in apartheid and post-­apartheid South Africa. For Bayat, major global restructuring of relations of work in tandem with the attrition of social subsidies has created I ntrod u ction   |   21

marginalized classes very often living on the city outskirts and engaged in practices of subsistence, casual work, and grassroots activism that impinge on the city. He defines this pro­cess as follows: The types of struggles I describe h ­ ere may best be characterized as “the quiet encroachment of the ordinary”—­a ­silent, patient, protracted, and pervasive advancement of ordinary p­ eople on the propertied and power­ ful in order to survive hardships and better their lives. They are marked by quiet, atomized, and prolonged mobilization with episodic collective ­action—an open and fleeting strug­gle without clear leadership, ideology, or structured or­ga­ni­za­tion, one that produces significant gains for the actors, eventually placing them in counterpoint to the state. (Bayat 1997a, 7–8) Though not exclusively the concern of scholars working in the south, the focus on practices of spatial reappropriation—­a focus that has wed questions of citizenship and urban theory—­has stimulated a rich Southern Hemispheric lit­erature in par­tic­u­lar. Lesley Gill’s book Teetering on the Rim depicts residents of a rapidly encroaching El Alto, on the periphery of the Bolivian capital, La Paz, continually claiming rights of belonging while at the same time negotiating an ever-­restructured space of neoliberal policies and state directives (Gill 2000; also see Lazar 2008; Low 2000). Sarah Nuttall and Achille Mbembe’s account of post-­apartheid Johannesburg depicts a city of migrants, nightlife, consumer desire, and danger, in the sense of a metropolis reimagining and reconstructing itself by way of its margins (Nuttall and Mbembe 2008). James Holston has documented practices of “autoconstruction” on the Brazilian urban periphery to show how these constitute a mode of “insurgent citizenship” as residents maintain their right of tenure and in so d­ oing redefine the terms of post-1985 Brazilian democracy (see Holston 2008). Janice Perlman, similarly, has shown the ways in which favelas (to be distinguished from “slums”) enable claims on property, place, and po­liti­cal recognition (Perlman 2010). Beyond this a growing body of Africanist lit­erature has broadened and enriched the field of urban theory, generally by taking account of the ways that uncertainty and insecurity stand as the basis of innovative and highly adaptive everyday practices (see, e.g., Murray 2008; Robinson 1996, 1998, 2006, 2011; Simone 2010). This newer work, what­ever its geographic focus, in its preoccupation with precarity stresses much more general patterns of urban transformation (see, e.g., Castells 1983; Dawson 2009; Hardoy and Sattherwaite 1989; Kandil 2011; 22  |   Introduc tio n

Perlman 2010; Resnick 2011; Wacquant 2008). Recent un reports, including the un-­Habitat 2006 report43 and un Millennium Goals, likewise emphasize the significance of a global demographic shift as more than half the world’s population (approximately 3.3 billion) urbanizes. These dramatic changes—­ both cause and consequence of conditions of growing marginality—­situate South African cities in a much larger story even as local patterns of segregation, exclusion, and urban management persist in shaping the kind of city that is the subject of Making Freedom (see, e.g., Seekings and Nattrass 2005). Contemporary squatter struggles speak not only to local histories of dispossession, then, but to similar histories elsewhere. Township politics, while representing highly local and particularist battles over resources and recognition (Harvey 1996), si­mul­ta­neously derive many of their energies and anger from conditions of deepening neoliberalization as local markets are opened up to global capital (see in par­tic­u­lar McDonald 2008; cf. Berner 1997). Drawing both on much longer histories of demands for justice in matters of housing and land, as well as contemporary activisms, the arc of strug­gle stretches back de­cades, at the very least to the 1980s,44 and possibly even to the war and early postwar periods. In insisting on a right to the city and a place in the national society, shack dwellers continually remind their fellow citizens of “the importance of the politics of space, the importance of pop­u­lar control over communities and movements, and the importance of [their] criticism of how elites, in and out of the state, on the right and on the left, habitually fail to accept the agency of those who are, in Fanon’s terms, the damned of the earth” (Gibson 2012, 53; also see Fanon 1963, 145). To some, such radical engagements seem po­liti­cally implausible, even as land occupation and anti-­eviction efforts represent a significant social force. This suspicion surrounding urban activism is not new: “tellingly both the African National Congress (anc) and the Communist Party of South Africa (cpsa) tended to approach shack dwellers rather gingerly and remained uncomfortable with the prospect of any serious alliance” (Pithouse 2008, 66), even in the 1980s (the heyday of the strug­gle) when alliance building was essential to the overall success of the liberation movements. The rejection of shack dweller agency as such has generally relied on the drawing of a sharp line between what squatters did in their daily lives and the strategies of po­liti­cal organizations. Yet I was continually struck by ­people’s accounts of their double role, in both or­gan­i­za­tional politics and in the or­ga­ni­za­tion of the squatter camps, and how the interpenetration of I ntrod u ction   |   23

the two domains necessarily drew on an understanding of land occupation as foundational to the possibility of other kinds of claims. Just as living in Crossroads or Brown’s Farm during the apartheid years offered a toehold in the city and a way to seek employment as well as access to an urban life, living in Crossroads in the 1970s and 1980s provided the very terrain of a politics of the street: of pop­u­lar protest, subterfuge, the concealment of activists on the run, and so on (see, e.g., Bundy 1987). In other words, po­liti­cal activism and claims to place ­were interdigitated. The same could be said of the pre­sent. In a time of ongoing negotiations with the state over the provision of housing, the very emplacement of the “camp” signals a relationship between daily practices of life and the claims that squatters make to the rights and benefits of national belonging. During the so-­called time of the comrades (Bank 2011, 32) this interdigitation of home life and the politics of settlement w ­ ere often quite apparent. Nombulelo and Noluthando, both ­women in their early thirties when I first met them in 1998, w ­ ere self-­professed comrades in the 1980s. They spoke of a slow and steady progression ­toward po­liti­cal consciousness from living in Crossroads and g­ oing to school in a neighboring township and through the increasing contact they enjoyed with already well-­seasoned activists, many of whom w ­ ere said to move back and forth across the border, operating in exile in the training camps for Umkhonto we Sizwe (the military wing of the anc) in Angola and Zambia. Yet what eventually propelled them into the ranks of the comrades was Nombulelo’s arrest. She was interrogated in Bishop Lavis Police Station (adjacent to Valhalla Park and Bonteheuwel), while Noluthando was subsequently fingered by a neighbor and picked up on her way home from school. Noluthando’s story was particularly striking for the ways in which her attempt to hide from the police prior to being arrested relied on values of communal help and support by other residents of the squatter area. There are interest­ing parallels ­here with Andrea Muehlebach’s recent framing of voluntarism in post-­Fordist Italy, which she understands in terms of the engagement on the part of a public in a kind of affective ­labor for social good (Muehlebach 2011). In South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, a similar ethic of collective care, though motivated by entirely ­different historical circumstances, was already substantially in play. Noluthando would recall a second incident, in Nyanga Township, during which the police had intervened to break up a gathering, beating ­people with sjamboks (leather whips).45 24  |   I ntroduc tio n

The meeting was held in Nyanga, I don’t remember exactly where, but the police came to the meeting and beat us. We ran away and I tried to hide in the nearby home of a w ­ oman. She was outside gardening and as I passed by her ­house I asked her to please be quiet. I went into the kitchen—­there ­were dishes in the sink and so I started washing the dishes as if I ­were a member of that ­house­hold. The police passed by. You see, these ­were things we ­were ­doing; the things we learned to do. ­Later, I asked Nombulelo and Noluthando ­whether ­people ­were always willing to hide them. Noluthando was equivocal: “It r­eally depended. Some p­ eople ­were willing to hide you; o­ thers just told you to keep g­ oing, to pass their homes and go elsewhere. And that was because ­people ­were frightened.” This sense of a shared pro­ject, if not always leading to willing and total participation on the part of o­ thers, stands in stark opposition to card-­carrying membership or ideological affiliation with, say, Black Consciousness or the African National Congress. The everydayness of politics drew strength from an organic and ever-­evolving set of needs and demands on the part of ordinary ­people in the course of daily life in distinct contrast to the kinds of activisms of the shop floor, mass rally, or public funeral. At the same time, to the degree that squatters w ­ ere themselves members of po­liti­cal organizations, those organizations (as I have already suggested) ­were not always as willing to link arms with squatters. By the late 1990s, following the transition to democracy and with the state’s effort to deliver brick homes, this earlier mode of politics—in which shack dwellers combined housing and formal organizing—­persisted. In observing that “the majority of p­ eople are living in shacks,”46 Noluthando conjoined the necessary activism that went with squatting to the per­sis­tence of “structures” and civic organizations, including the South African Civic Organisation (sanco). “For us, living in the shacks,” she insisted, “we have to have these structures.” To be sure, while sanco and other “civics” survived in form (cf. Lucas 1995), their aims had been completely transformed, not least in view of the role that such organizations played in mediating between communities and the state in the interests of delivering homes and infrastructure and, in so ­doing, they redefined the relationship to the state as one less between individual citizens than with populations. It was as if they had outlined the conditions for “po­liti­cal society” (Chatterjee 2004).

I ntrod u ction   |   25

This returns us to Bayat’s notion of “quiet encroachment.” For Bayat, informally or­ga­nized “disenfranchised groups carry out their activities not as conscious po­liti­cal acts; rather they are driven by the force of necessity—­ the necessity to survive and live a dignified life.” This is in stark contrast to Gramsci’s conception of a passive revolution which ultimately “targets state power” (Bayat 1997b, 58). Instead, the very often protean and “­free-­form activism” of urban militants—­including squatters, street vendors, and ­others—­leads instead to a protest politics based on singular motivations over and above higher-­order imperatives. That over time individuals may formalize their activities coalescing as a group is in itself a significant aspect of this activism-­from-­below. Tellingly, the most power­ful urban social struggles in the early 1990s took the form of land invasions that helped reshape metropolitics, but only insofar as these emerged from singular motivations. Making Freedom is likewise concerned with such efforts by squatters to create domestic lives—­their labors in securing places to build, the ­actual building of homes, the reckoning of accounts both moral and monetary (see, e.g., Guyer 2004; Nelson 2009), and a ­whole series of ongoing negotiations of city life as a right of citizenship (Mumford 1989, 119–57). A Few Words about the Structure of the Book

Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 are or­ga­nized chronologically, tracking in parallel the historical pro­cess by which a cluster of squatter camps emerged on the periphery of Cape Town and the degree to which the movements of individuals and families across the national map from rural outpost to metropolitan center informed the changing demography of the city—­its edges, limits, and politics of informalization. “Migrations,” “Counterinsurgency,” “Transitions,” and “ ‘Reckoning’ ” also situate and ground an emerging politics of illegal migration, struggles both insurgent and counterinsurgent in the context of a broader national level strug­gle against apartheid in the 1980s. Concluding with the demo­cratic transition and a reckoning with its now more than apparent disappointments, Making Freedom ends with a consideration of the consequences of economic liberalization and those modes of accounting—­both material and ethical—­that shore up the gap between the material limitations of lives lived in a post-­wage work age and the per­sis­ tence of dreams of social reproduction and overcoming.

26  |   I ntroduc tio n

chapter 1

Migrations

­People do not always resist the constraints in which they find themselves, nor can they reinvent themselves freely in cultural constructions of their own choosing. Culture refashioning and culture change go forward continually ­under variable, but also highly determinate, circumstances. —­Eric R. Wolf, Eu­rope and the ­People without History

This chapter sets out to describe the experiences of mi­grant workers who traveled hundreds of miles from the Transkei and Ciskei in search of employment, within both the reserves and the republic. Many went back and forth across that artificial line that set white South Africa apart. Some, particularly male heads of h ­ ouse­hold, ­were drawn into industrial work, at times spending as long as a de­cade or more on the move between the Eastern Cape, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and other metropolitan centers before finally establishing h ­ ouse­holds in the city. In so d­ oing, men and w ­ omen refashioned the po­liti­cal economy of work—­despite the challenges of distance, racism, and the law—in order to accommodate ­family and intimacy. If pass laws denied the right to love, illegal migrants resolved to put love ahead of passes: “A black man and a black w ­ oman who met in the urban areas and fell in love,” one Mrs. Mbobosi, a resident of Crossroads in 1978, wryly observed, “would ask only one question—do you have a pass? Does

he have a pass? Does she have a pass? If he says okay and she says okay then they will marry. Not for love, for a pass.”1 Once in Cape Town, migrants invariably drew on networks of kith and kin, “homeboys” and “homegirls,”2 who assisted in the search for jobs and housing, sometimes in the com­pany hostels but more often in the squatter camps where, lacking passbooks (and money), illegals ­were more likely to be able to hide from the authorities. Successive waves of in-­migration pushed and expanded the outskirts, undoing the official logic of so-­called prescribed and nonprescribed3 areas, even as the impulse to squat arose less from a desire for disruption than as a pragmatic response to the demand for jobs, housing, and anonymity. Staying put as long as they could, then fleeing in the face of raids and census takers, squatters acted within a dialectic of “flight and inhabitation” (Moten 2008, 1745), visibility and invisibility. Ironically, those who occupied the city outskirts would inadvertently create continuity with the larger pro­ject of national liberation (cf. James 1989)—­albeit through mundane struggles to maintain homes—­precisely by creating spaces set slightly apart from the routine aggressions of apartheid law (I return to this question in chapters 2 and 3). Squatter camps, however ill conceived, however unplanned, affixed African ­people in urban space. In so ­doing, migrants directly confronted the brute logic of racial biopolitics that stipulated black life should be reproduced beyond metropolitan South Africa—­a point many of those who flocked to Crossroads in the mid-1970s understood all too well. But before we can think about conditions in the camps, we need to consider the conditions of getting to the city. Migration from the rural areas,4 ­legal and illegal, required daring and improvisation (see Arendt 1993) as individuals and families crossed the Eiselen Line5 into the Cape in search of work, shelter, and some semblance of domestic stability. Following the 1955 declaration of the Cape as a Coloured Labour Preference Policy area, in January 1956, the Council of the South African Institute of Race Relations (sairr) met to publicly oppose the enforcement of the removal of Africans west of the line. Perhaps most compelling was the institute’s outspokenness with regard to the deleterious effects on ­family life. The Council has taken note of the “Eiselen Line” policy which has as its object the ultimate removal of Africans from a vast area of the Western Cape, and which involves the exploitation and extension of a system of

28  |   ch ap te r 1

migratory labour. The Council strongly opposes this policy as being contrary to the moral, social, and economic interests of the country and destructive of stable ­family life.6 Varied and fragile as efforts to build homes were—­the homes themselves ­ ere, ­after all, built from cardboard, corrugated iron, plastic, and rusting w nails—­these nevertheless reshaped Cape Town and gave it vitality. The periphery became the city’s lifeblood, the energy driving industry and even its cultural animus. Indeed, as Lewis Nkosi would observe, the township was nothing short of “splendid”; it stood for “dogged defiance against official persecution” (Nkosi 1982, viii). But above all, squatters w ­ ere concerned with self-­care (cf. Foucault 1995) and care of ­others, which forced them to devise ways to realize a certain kind of “ideal domesticity” (Stoler 2002, 1). One supposes such efforts ­were routine enough, though the ­labor of moving and staying put placed domestic lifeworlds very much at risk. For most migrants, influx controls dictated a ­house­hold form that was geo­graph­i­cally unwieldy, dispersing and stretching bud­gets, ­labor, and care across hundreds of miles from the Transkei and Ciskei homelands to the city of Cape Town. As a consequence migrants, male and female alike, moved continually between the two. Squatting breached the distance so that children and partners, siblings and older parents, could live ­under the one roof. These early informal settlements (in the 1950s and 1960s) stood categorically apart from both the rural and the urban, even as they created continuities between the two. If we concede that the township was “naked (ba apogile)” (Comaroff and Comaroff 1987, 202), following the analy­sis that Tswana peoples offered in defense of rural life—­lifeworlds stripped of the appropriate sociality given the imperatives of “rents and wages”—­there was something to recommend the informal settlements as sites of accommodation and self-­realization that fell altogether outside the spatial and semantic opposition of town and country proper. Migrations

Seek the strays, child of Makuka, bring home the ­human strays; do as with the ­cattle you’ve just sought. Search for them by telegraph. Some are heard of in the Cape; write to the Commissioner of Cape Town Migr ations   |   29

and say, “Help us seek, we seek ­people.” ­Others are said to be in Natal, . . . ​Most of them are in Johannesburg. At Rustenburg ­women are increasing; collect the ­women also, let them come. Some ­women have left their husbands, they’ve left the men who wooed them; it’s said they went to acquire cupboards, they went, but ­haven’t brought them back.7 Early in my fieldwork in Lower Crossroads, an informal settlement u ­ ntil the late 1990s, I had identified a series of h ­ ouse­holds in which I hoped to carry out interviews mostly about life in Cape Town and, for those who originally came from the rural areas, about how they had made their way to the city several de­cades before. I had started out by spending much of my time in Unathi’s home on one side of the informal settlement. Her brother, Gugulethu,8 or “Gugs” for short, was a former anti-­apartheid activist and comrade. We had met a month or two into my fieldwork at a local civic association meeting convened to discuss a new phase of the township. Gugs had taken me ­under his wing, inviting me into Unathi’s home, the f­ amily’s hub. Gugs ate most of his meals there, spent hours watching tele­vi­sion, chatting, and sipping beers with Unathi’s husband, Nelson. In his late twenties at the time, Gugs slept elsewhere in his own freestanding room—­what young men referred to as “ghettos”—­a few blocks down the street, while one brother lived next door and a second resided in an adjacent area called Vietnam. ­After a while, we began regularly visiting a makeshift “old folks” fac­ility built from storage containers and where, several days a week, pensioners on fixed incomes came to spend time with one another and eat a f­ ree midday meal. Most days, a small group would gather ­either to take refuge from the summer heat—­sheltered ­under an awning extending out onto a poured concrete patio—or to sun themselves during the winter months by edging their chairs out into the dusty yard. Gugs and I would go and sit and listen as ­people reminisced about the founding of Crossroads, their journeys from the Transkei, and the experiences of some who entertained yearlong contracts that separated them from families left b­ ehind in the countryside. Most ­were in their sixties or seventies, a few in their eighties. Many had

30  |   ch ap te r 1

grandchildren and great grandchildren, which was quite remarkable in the circumstances. These w ­ ere ­people who had labored to make ­family even as they depended on mi­grant wage work that took fathers away into the mines and foundries hundreds of miles away. For an earlier kinship lit­erature, rules and codes, as these relate to sex, gender, and marriage, ­were understood to underwrite the transfer of goods, ­people, and things in the building of lineage, descent, and consanguinity (see, e.g., Evans-­Pritchard 1951; Fox 1983; Lévi-­Strauss 1969; cf. Engels 1971; Meillassoux 1981; Rubin 1975). At the same time, kinship theory discussed ­actual matters of sex very l­ ittle,9 even if at base, a “familist social consciousness” (White 2001a, 458) depends less on the abstractions of cross-­cousin marriage than on the ordinary sex-­gender work of making families and, ­under apartheid, making families through forms of wage-­dependent love. In South Africa, this routine work of creating and sustaining kin has also long been understood as motivated by the continuities between the living, the ancestors, and the unborn (cf. Shipton 2009). This psychic unity is the basis of ubuntu—­a theory of common humanity in which a person is a person through other persons (umntu ngumntu ngabany’ abantu). The more Gugs and I listened, the more evident it became that migration was pragmatic but also moral, establishing ballast for the terms set by apartheid legislation that dictated men’s employment should be found in the city and ­women’s reproductive ­labor should be situated in the country. Inevitably, colonial discourse had distinguished between the “idle” and itinerant nature of peasant l­ abor and industrial work, judging the transition from the one to the other a necessary evolution in African work practices that would ultimately serve to civilize. But inasmuch as the orbit of industrial work would extend its reach into the countryside, which drew increasingly on an African workforce, the conditions of production and reproduction became indissociable. For their part, Africans w ­ ere forced to forfeit rural lifeways in the interests of sustaining homes and homesteads if only from afar and in the pro­cess losing their grip on self-­determination (see, e.g., Bundy 1979). Migration would or­ga­nize so much of black life and consequently generate a wealth of cultural references, idioms, and modes of storytelling of “harrowing exiles by road and rail” (Comaroff and Comaroff 1997, 205). We too heard stories, often enough relayed in ­matter-­of-­fact terms, about the inevitable misadventures of trains and taxis, of railways and byways. ­People lamented the families they left b­ ehind and how much they missed Migr ations   |   31

children, partners, siblings, and newborns. Still o­ thers argued they had been compelled to leave. Perhaps it was the need to make money (to regain dignity in the face of poverty); perhaps new forms of consumer desire served to motivate ­people; and perhaps some ­were ­running away from the troubles of home. What­ever the reasons, migrancy seems to have generated a ­whole cultural lore around the hypermobility of African men leaving the countryside. In the well-­known song “eBenoni,” pop­u­lar­ized by the Blue Notes in the 1960s, listeners are left wondering about the motivations of the protagonist. Were domestic hostilities the root of his hasty departure, or was it that the mi­grant ­labor system itself, cruel as it was, conduced to poor relations and ­family breakdown at home in rural South Africa? Such supplementarities are at the core of the poetic logic of “eBenoni.” My mo­ther robs me, she takes my money; My ­father does not like me, he only likes ­cattle; My brother does not want me, my sister does not care; The day ­after tomorrow I ­ride off to Benoni. oliver alexander and the blue notes 10 The song “provides a poignant pop­u­lar culture perspective on mi­grant labour, one that implicates it in the local generation of imaginations of alternative forms of subjectivity unleashed” (Ngwane 2003, 685) by proletarianization. The supplementarity of wage ­labor—­its capacity to compel and impel—is surely what must have made it so fearsome, so all-­consuming. Then again, home (­whether rural or urban) could only partially shield families from what lay beyond the threshold: the hard l­abor in the mines and the factories; the illegality of raising f­amily in the city; the isolation of w ­ omen left ­behind in the reserves; and the unfair burden they bore for reproducing rural ­house­holds. At the same time, ­women ­were likely to recall compensating for the inevitable loneliness of rural life through savings schemes, burial socie­ties, networks of kin, their local churches, and Mo­ther’s Union groups—­varied forms of mutual aid in the making of ­house­hold lifeworlds central to an associational life through which ­women ­were powerfully conscientized (see, e.g., Kirk 1999; also see Bähre 2007b). I want to be careful in my characterization of gendered experience in the back and forth migrancy demanded. By and large, there have been two approaches in speaking of ­women’s role within the broader po­liti­cal economy 32  |   ch ap te r 1

of apartheid work: (1) as abandoned and isolated; (2) as underwriting a reserve workforce. To be sure, neither of these accounts fully explains the ways in which w ­ omen’s sensibilities to the socialization of children, the making of home, the ethics of obligation and reciprocity that sustained and reproduced ­women’s capacities for strug­gle against the system or­ga­nized life and po­liti­cal consciousness in both the country and the city. Indeed, the value of w ­ omen’s practices of associational life inducted men, children, and extended kin into a very par­tic­u­lar repertoire of advocacy for and on behalf of the domestic, which is just as visible ­today in the so-­called new social movements for ser­vices and housing as it was in the heyday of apartheid when such standards of obligation and care intervened in the structure of forced migration (see, e.g., Gaitskell 2002; Goebel 2011). ­Women’s associations, or “congregations” (ibandla), ­were critical to socializing w ­ omen into protest politics. Still, while never set apart from the “public world of l­abor” (Glymph 2008, 38) or the disputes arising from workplace tensions and racial hostilities, ­house­holds suffered their own sorts of strain. Very few reported that life at home was entirely happy or carefree, even as many identified the ­house as a place of rest and respite away from the cruelties of the po­liti­cal system that lay beyond private space. Critically, however, homes w ­ ere also understood as places of reciprocity and care. Neighbors, for example, could be counted on to look out for one another, to share what l­ittle they had, and collectively watch over neighborhood children. My own ­family, living in the 1950s in Pimville, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, regularly accommodated neighbors, friends, indigent cousins, and a w ­ hole host of distant relatives and hangers-on. Resources ­were always stretched, and many nights there was ­little to eat. In winter my grand­father mixed a concoction of paraffin and candle wax, which he used to coat the children’s skin to keep out the cold when they went to bed on the living room floor. Life was precarious and contingent, and apartheid proved particularly effective in gnawing away at the foundations of home (see Ashforth 2000; cf. Ferguson 1999, 167). |  |  |  |  |

Not every attempt to escape from the cruel conditions of wage l­abor was presaged by flight from rural South Africa, as the Blue Notes’ “eBenoni” Migr ations   |   33

would suggest. As Bonner has argued, significant instability within the urban ­labor market during the early to mid-­twentieth ­century arose from the harsh treatment of workers by white bosses. And while the continual movement of mi­grant ­labor informed in some mea­sure a level of turnover in the unskilled and semiskilled employment sector, racism in the workplace played a key role, too. Writing about the area around Pretoria, Witwatersrand, and Vereeniging (known as the pwv), Bonner goes on to suggest that to explain the high turnover in the unskilled and semiskilled job market purely in terms of an interventionist state would be to ignore a critical reality of the South African workplace in the period even prior to 1948. Beginning in the mid-1930s and ending in the early 1940s, “no less than 30% of job changes ­were the result of dismissal,” which “a ­whole variety of sources indicate are a reflection of an exceptionally racist and despotic pattern of supervision on the factory floor” (Bonner 1995, 118). Samuel Nkampe,11 whom I had first met at the old folks’ fac­ility, witnessed firsthand both the destitution of the countryside and the terror of the urban workplace, which motivated him to change jobs on several occasions and relocate. He was born in the Eastern Cape, in Lady Frere, sometime in the early 1920s or 1930s—no one was quite sure. Growing up on a smallholding (in the reserves) to which the ­family held title12—­the only areas in South Africa where blacks could legally access land in the aftermath of the 1913 Natives Land Act13—­Samuel recalled, too, working from early childhood. Mostly his labors consisted of using a horse-­drawn plow in the fields; at certain times of year, he sheared sheep on his ­family farm and the farms of their black neighbors. Much depended on what could be produced on the smallholding to sustain the ­family since Samuel’s ­father had two wives ­under customary law. Nomparholo, his first wife, had three daughters and two sons; his second wife, Samuel’s mo­ther, Nomtata, had eight girls and boys. As the f­ amily grew, the young men w ­ ere sent to work. In 1940 Samuel, at this point nearing eigh­teen or so, set out for Dordrecht, a small farming town in the Eastern Cape within the borders of the Republic of South Africa; there he worked in a brick-­making factory. It is also quite probable that he made additional wages shearing sheep. Dordrecht is well known for its merino wool production and ­cattle ranching. In time, there would be some disagreement about the sequence of events—it was, a­ fter all, such a long time in the past. For what it is worth, what­ever the order of things, Samuel’s 34  |   ch ap te r 1

movements, both in the Eastern Cape and between the reserve and a number of other cities, was inspired by shifting patterns of mi­grant wage work, the rise and fall of industrial profit, and the impact of World War II on a national economy allied with international circuits of capital. Throughout our conversation, Samuel spoke rarely, if ever, of the brutal working conditions to which he was forced to submit even as, at times, his departure from a given job came in response to harsh conditions. Samuel would eventually return to the Eastern Cape; he then headed to Burgersdorp, in the Orange ­Free State, approximately 140 miles south of Bloemfontein, to work on the railroad. Burgersdorp remained an im­por­tant place, a place he returned to numerous times over the course of more than a de­cade and where he eventually met his wife, Winnifred. They married u ­ nder customary law in 1953, a­ fter which she stayed on in the ­Free State, conceiving all ten of their children during Samuel’s furloughs between l­abor contracts. ­Eager to find more profitable work, Samuel headed to the city of gold, Johannesburg, or Egoli, in 1946. He remembered his recruitment by Crown Mines. If profitability was at stake, Samuel was less than successful. He eventually left the infamous mining concern with virtually nothing to show for the backbreaking work underground. De­cades ­later, Samuel was still in some shock about the conditions in which he had labored. There ­were many young boys, as young as fifteen and sixteen, recruited to work in Crown Mines. Though they ­were far too young, the mining bosses judged their ability to work on how much they weighed, never asking for a birth certificate or proof of adult working age. Samuel recalled that “each month before we ­were paid the com­pany officials would hold obligatory weigh-­ins and if you had lost weight you had to go and see the com­pany doctor. They ­were afraid of tb and black lung, that they would lose money; they cared nothing for us. The mine shafts w ­ ere deep and often unsafe; there ­were so many accidents in those mines, practically every week there was some incident or another, and I worked in fear of d­ ying—of being crushed or trapped in a mine shaft somewhere deep underground. Eventually, I left Crown Mines because of the terrible working conditions and appallingly bad pay. We w ­ ere paid r10 a month (i.e., £5),14 can you imagine, and most often our wages came late, sometimes even as late as a week a­ fter they w ­ ere due. And besides, we r­eally never saw any of that money, because most of us simply remitted our wages through the recruitment office in the Eastern Cape so that our families could benefit directly.” Migr ations   |   35

The low pay also incensed many o­ thers. On August 4, 1946, one thousand miners, members of the African Mine Workers Union, assembled in Johannesburg demanding ten shillings (approximately r1)15 a day in order to bring wages into alignment with those of whites, who, ­until that point, ­were compensated on an order of ten to twelve times the levels paid to blacks. Inevitably the state responded violently as the days went by and tens of thousands of miners put down their tools. Workers w ­ ere eventually forced back down the mines through power of firearms. Yet despite the overall failure of the strike, its symbolism was critical in opening up new possibilities for opposition to state and capital and encouraging the conditions for the emergence of a black solidarity movement or­ga­nized around the question of wage l­abor. Remarkably, Samuel would say nothing of the strike during our conversations together, nor did he make mention of the deaths that resulted at the hands of police. But his indignation at the poor pay and the dreadful working conditions was unmistakable. His outrage echoed a larger, collective sense of the disproportions of the system as black opposition shifted from concession to out-­and-­out strike action (see, e.g., Breckenridge 1995).16 Samuel left Johannesburg for Cape Town in 1949. Traveling by train he alighted in Kraaifontein, ­going on to Worcester, and then to Saldana Bay, where he found employment on the naval base. Once again, the work was uneven and the contracts short-­lived. He headed to Lady Frere for an extended period, then to Burgersdorp, before returning to the Cape in 1957. ­After securing a permanent position as a driver for a fertilizer manufacturer, he relocated again to Langebaan, near Malmesbury, north of Cape Town, in 1960. The com­pany accommodated employees in a series of hostels, which meant that Winnifred could not join him. Thus for several years they lived apart, and Samuel would return to Burgersdorp to be with his wife at the end of a given contract year. In 1966, following the conventions of Roman-­ Dutch law, the c­ ouple would (re)marry in the Methodist Church of South Africa in Langa, Cape Town. For a time, Winnifred stayed in the hostels. But she was habitually forced to hide from the police, and when that became too arduous, she left for the Eastern Cape to be with her children, who had been left in the care of her parents, returning only in 1976, when she gained work permission. Eventually, the ­couple moved into Crossroads with their ten sons and daughters. Just as Ndima had proposed, the Nkampes’ move to the informal settlement afforded them fewer a­ ctual creature comforts than 36  |   ch ap te r 1

some sort of domestic security—­a togetherness that had never been permitted them during the years in which Samuel traipsed back and forth between town and country. If the postwar boom accelerated migration to the Peninsula, the 1960s and 1970s seem to have afforded blacks some economic mobility. Much debated by liberal and neo-­Marxist scholars (see, e.g., Johnstone 1970, 1976; Legassick 1975; Simkins and Hindson 1979), there has been ­little agreement as to the true impact of rapid industrialization on the racial division of ­labor ­after 1945. This period witnessed significant changes in black class formation—­working-­and ­middle-­class mobility in relation to unskilled and semiskilled work—as well as deepening disparities between blacks across mining, manufacturing, and agriculture (see, e.g., Crankshaw 1997; Mariotti 2008). Changes in the industrial and ser­vice sectors ­were especially pronounced, which altered the demand for certain kinds of workers and certain skill sets. These together stimulated significant wage increases for Africans in manufacturing (Seekings and Nattrass 2005, 99–106), a trend that had accelerated by the beginning of the 1970s. The 1956 Industrial Conciliation Act (ica) may go some way to explaining black occupational advancement. Directed at segregating the u ­ nions, the legislation sanctioned the Minister of Labour to reserve jobs on racial grounds, specifically as this related to the reservation of skilled manufacturing jobs for whites. Further, as a consequence of improved levels of education, whites and coloreds saw increased upward mobility, while Africans gained access to more semiskilled and skilled jobs (Crankshaw 1997; Seekings and Nattrass 2005, 106). Africans who enjoyed Section 10 rights (rights of permanent residence in urban areas)17 ­were also far more likely to access better jobs and better wages, a fact that has led several scholars to argue that influx controls, specifically, had a direct impact on a differentiated ­labor force (see, in par­tic­u­lar, Hindson 1987 and Posel 1997). The period leading up to the passing of the ica was critical to this equation, too. Beginning in the 1930s, significant growth per capita, the highest in South Africa’s industrial history, served to raise “black wages in relation to white wages at the most rapid rate ever” (Bond 2013, 589). Still, l­ittle about this picture is clear, which explains an ongoing debate among historians and ­others regarding the nature of black class formation. Thus, for example, estimates of the size of a burgeoning black m ­ iddle and petit bourgeois class vary a great deal because of distinct conceptualizations Migr ations   |   37

of African advancement and occupational structure. Inasmuch as any of these debates are relevant to the kinds of stories of migration covered in this chapter, certainly the Nkampe ­family must be understood, ­after a great deal of trekking back and forth between the reserves and the cities, as having ultimately secured relatively stable employment during that crucial period between about 1965 and 1970. Quite apart from the increase in available skilled and semiskilled jobs for blacks and the wage increases that went along with these, “the capacity of the ‘Native Reserves’ to sustain even subsistence production by the families of mi­grant workers continued to decline” (Wilkinson 1996, 143). Confronted with such severe constraints on life and livelihood, Africans would redouble their efforts to establish homes in urban areas. And while matters of work and wage remained paramount in the calculus of urbanization, the postwar period was marked by African radicalization, too. African workers’ bargaining power increased substantially, but so did their power to strike, which encouraged a new trade u ­ nionism, as we saw in the case of the watershed 1946 miners’ strike. For all that, squatters played a significant role, too. Proletarians-­at-­rest, as I conceive them, they encamped on the city limits in defiance of municipal housing codes and antisquatting legislation, effecting their own centralization of a mi­grant force to be reckoned with at a time when industry was ­doing the same. ­Family, Gender, and the City

The inspiring princi­ple becomes fully manifest only in the performing act itself. —­Hannah Arendt, “What Is Freedom?”

For the tens of thousands who sought refuge in the city, the city quickly became an end in itself. Men and ­women found sanctuary in the relative safety of the bush, creating new living arrangements which, while fragile, ­were very often permanent. No one, however, would have characterized what they did as an attempt to reshape the urban form, even though informal settlements expanded the peripheries of many cities—­Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, and Port Elizabeth among them—­and in so d­ oing, changed the nature of black domestic life. Xhosa migrants ­were primarily committed to building marital homes—­a certain outcome of almost a ­century of missionary attempts to impose Victorian norms on African converts, re38  |   ch ap te r 1

casting the gender and generational terms of h ­ ouse­holds and homesteads (see Comaroff and Comaroff 1997). This quiet, “molecular” (Bayat 1997a) movement on the city edge by migrants followed from myriad individual decisions and the spontaneity to act on those decisions in ways that w ­ ere ­free from any sort of directed po­liti­cal motive or “from its intended goal as a predictable effect” (Arendt 1993, 151). Not unlike “the knowledge that can come only from practical experience” (Scott 1998, 6), migrants acted on a princi­ple that began in the po­liti­cal economy of the ­house­hold, even as what followed fundamentally reordered the regime of space and its associated forms of life.18 John Battersby, a reporter for the Cape Argus, captured the contradictions of African home life in the city, particularly the seemingly insurmountable challenges of pass laws, in an August 1978 article. In it he described the ways in which w ­ omen suffered twofold discriminatory legislation that forced most to seek refuge in Crossroads and other settlements. Mrs. Luke, a local activist, would describe her long ­battle to remain in Cape Town, living illegally in one of the male hostels in Nyanga East during the course of a de­cade: “The buildings ­were always being raided and I spent many nights in hiding—­often having to get up at 3 am and 4 am to evade the officials. In the end, I could take it no longer and deci­ded to move to Crossroads.”19 In a prior interview, Alexandra Luke stressed the challenges of raising a f­ amily in the camp while the threat of eviction perpetually loomed. “Our worry is our children’s ­future. We are not fighting, we are asking. The children write exams in September. If they demolish (shacks) in June, what happens to their education?”20 What­ever the risks, and they ­were many, ­women like Alexandra Luke, Regina Ntongana, Mary Gwabeni, and other activists21 w ­ ere, by their very insistence on staying in the city—­their act of being pre­sent—­subverting the logic of unremunerated female rural l­abor and male urban wage l­abor, a logic that assumed the super-­exploitation of w ­ omen as the basis of industrial profit (cf. Engels 1971). Describing African ­women’s role in subsidizing the social wage, Bond and McInnes observe: The mi­grant “tribal natives” did not, when they ­were young, require companies to pay their parents enough to cover school fees or to pay taxes for government schools to teach workers’ children. When sick or disabled, those workers w ­ ere often shipped back to their rural homes

Migr ations   |   39

­ ntil ready to work again. When the worker was ready to retire, the emu ployer typically left him a pittance, such as a cheap watch, not a pension that allowed the el­derly to survive in dignity. From youth through mid-­ life to illness and old age, capitalists ­were let off the hook. The subsidy covering child-­rearing, recuperation and old age was provided by rural African ­women. (Bond and McInnes 2007, 159) Despite its scale, l­egal implications, and presumably its transformative potential, squatting seems to have had only a limited impact on African nationalist and left thinking (cf. Bonner 1990; Stadler 1979). Was this perhaps because squatters acted only rarely in concert, that their motivations could be understood only in individual terms rather than the terms of po­liti­cal or­ga­niz­ing, and consequently that their actions seemed somehow incongruent with the liberation movement as a collective pro­ject (cf. Pithouse 2008, 66)? In the 1970s, the climate was such that squatters w ­ ere rarely recognized in po­liti­cal terms even as “subsequent historical work drew out the many forgotten modes of re­sis­tance of oppressed ­people, discovering a po­ liti­cal agency among them which liberal (and often nationalist) historians had limited to elites” (Nash 1999, 72). Accordingly, squatter communities remained poorly understood, perceived, as they w ­ ere, as falling outside the ambit of industrial wage work and its associated trade u ­ nionism (see, e.g., Nash 1999; cf. Beinart, Delius and Trapido 1986; Legassick 1976; Lipton 1985; Marks and Rathbone 1982; O’Meara 2009; Saul and Gelb 1981; Wolpe 1972).22 Yet what point-­of-­production thinking seems to have ignored is that large numbers of squatters ­were themselves proletarians. More recently, the National Union of Mineworkers and miners associated with other formations have highlighted the indissociability of working-­class politics and informal settlement; miners’ grievances and wage demands ­were very often fueled in part by poor living conditions in the informal settlements.23 Yet if South African Marxism in that de­cade was capable of thinking the spatiality of uneven development (see, e.g., Wolpe 1975), why was it unable to draw equally radical conclusions about the ways in which ordinary ­people fought back, necessarily undoing the logic of uneven or separate development through their attempts to bridge the city and the country? That was ­after all what illegal migration entailed. Apartheid produced social spaces of exclusion and distinction precisely through its management and control of populations in motion, attempting to fix them in rural reserves on

40  |   ch ap te r 1

the one hand and urban townships on the other (see Lefebvre 1995). Yet in reality, influx controls failed to contain those populations and ­labor; that is, deterritorialized surplus ­labor increasingly came to occupy the space of the city edge. “State-­imposed normality” had apparently made “permanent transgression inevitable” (Lefebvre 1995, 23). A second question—­aside from that of why left radicals and nationalists might have ignored the squatter phenomenon—­concerns what Mark Hunter has recently called the “po­liti­cal economy of intimacy,” by which he implies a ­wholesale shift in ­house­hold structure, dependencies, and affect given the introduction of the masculine wage. How, in fact, could things have been other­wise? “Sometime in the early twentieth c­ entury, perhaps in the 1920s or 1930s, the rural ­house­hold and many of its ritual and emotional practices, including marriage, became overwhelmingly dependent on male wage ­labor.”24 Colonialism, capitalism, and Chris­tian­ity had their role to play, too, Hunter observes, informing the transformation of intimacies. ­Until now I have simply referred to the desire to reconstruct or re­ unite ­house­holds as driving illegal migration, particularly the migration of ­women, mostly in a period several de­cades ­after the 1930s, when male wage labor had already been firmly established. But, of course, the frailties of everyday sex, its enmeshment in new modes of reciprocity, new f­amily structures, and the production of contentious relations that followed are critical to how we might understand the African urban home in the context of a new “footloose” capitalism. Some of the stories that follow suggest initial inroads into understanding these new pro­cesses of making and unmaking intimacy. Certainly the repeated attempts at reconciling customary and Roman-­Dutch law—­a shift that seems to have come about precisely as many arrived in Cape Town—­constitute one high-­water mark. There, couples like the Nkampes felt compelled to legalize customary bonds first made through the transfer of lobola (bride payments) in the Eastern Cape but whose significance shifted in the context of urban South Africa. “The Po­liti­cal Economy of Intimacy”

Approximately 10,000 Africans lived in greater Cape Town in 1900, and most ­were “concentrated in overcrowded tenements and lodging h ­ ouses” (Cole 1987, 5). Hundreds ­were removed from the city center to Uitvlugt (­later renamed Ndabeni)—­a new location on the city outskirts built in Migr ations   |   41

1901—in what Josette Cole suggests was one of the very first forced removals. Within a de­cade most of those removed to Uitvlugt had found their way back to the city or ­were squatting in areas on the outskirts. Cole explains that it was “only through an intensive campaign of raiding and harassment that the local municipality found itself, by 1916, able to increase Ndabeni’s population to 1600” (Cole 1987, 5; cf. Silk 1981). Even then, squatters chose to live in camps in order to avoid official scrutiny, while a lack of adequate housing motivated many o­ thers to move in. With the passing of the Native Urban Areas Act, no. 21 of 1923, South Africa was divided into urban (“prescribed”) and rural (“nonprescribed”) areas, enabling stricter controls on the movement of black men. African responses to the new legislation, however, ­were plain: most refused to submit to registration. As a result, only 12 ­percent of the population was accounted for. Following a now well-­worn colonial script, such attempts at classification ­were forced, in due course, to submit to the realities they purportedly sought to describe, relinquishing a vision of full numerical capture (Stoler 2002). ­After the war, the Native Urban Areas Consolidation Act, no. 25 of 1945, went more or less ignored as the demand for cheap l­ abor in private industry substantially increased. One outcome was the steady growth of the black population of Cape Town. Between 1936 and 1946, the population expanded 9.8 ­percent per annum. In 1948, the estimated squatter population for the Peninsula region had risen to 150,000. By the 1970s, with a slowing economy and a looming po­liti­cal crisis, the state reverted to heavy-­handedness. During this period, the destruction of several squatter camps across the Peninsula, coupled with the government’s move to consolidate the black urban population of the Cape, turned the Crossroads squatter area into a sanctuary for black migrants avoiding evictions and a site to which the local authority sent “surplus p­ eople” destined for “endorsement out” of the Cape. This twofold agenda had unanticipated consequences, particularly for the state, which perceived this small triangular piece of land to the southeast of the city as a “decanting” zone, in which ­legal and illegal blacks might be classified and those without reference books deported. But Africans, without a place to lay their heads, many having already submitted to eviction from other camps, interpreted the state’s instruction to move to Crossroads as an invitation to permanent settlement (cf. Sahlins 1985). The Noquiets,25 like Samuel Nkampe, made the journey from Lady Frere—­ lying approximately twenty-­five miles to the northeast of Queenstown in 42  |   ch ap te r 1

the Eastern Cape—­shortly ­after Stembiso married Naledi in 1956. Naledi followed that November. Once in the Cape, Stembiso quickly found work as a night watchman, which gave him access to accommodation in one of the com­pany-­owned hostels in Maitland. Naledi recalled hiding, usually ­under the bed, during the daytime, for fear of being apprehended by com­pany staff or police. But once she was pregnant, the physical discomfort was so great she could no longer live in seclusion. So in 1958, the ­couple moved to an informal settlement in Kensington (approximately ten miles from Crossroads). They lived in a section of the squatter area that had been declared a transit camp, which decreased the likelihood of their immediate removal. They remained there ­until 1960 when they ­were able to move to Gugulethu, where they secured a brick ­house, located at ny 142.26 By 1967, the c­ ouple moved into a four-­room ­house in the same township, hoping it would accommodate their six sons and daughters. Even so the h ­ ouse was crowded, and before long Naledi’s niece and sister had joined the ­family—­the latter staying home to care for the children while Naledi worked. In 1974 Naledi’s mo­ther fell ill, and Naledi returned to the Eastern Cape for six months to care for her mo­ther before she died. While Naledi was away, things started to fall apart. Her husband was drinking heavily; eventually the ­house in Gugulethu was seized and reassigned. At the same time, her reference book expired, which made it impossible for her to rent a ­house through the local authority. One also suspects that in her absence the f­amily fell into arrears because of the reduction in f­amily income and because Stembiso may have used much of the remaining money for drink. When Naledi returned in 1975, she worked in an old age home in Kalk Bay, a job that eventually earned her Section 10 status in 1978. At that time, she went to work as a “sleep-in” domestic in Constantia, leaving ­behind her husband and children in Crossroads with her sister.27 Again, the temporariness, the very precarity of life on the urban margins, emerges in the Noquiets’ account. In this case, however, it was Naledi who had had to travel back to the Transkei and who would, as a consequence, lose the security of urban rights by the time she returned to Cape Town. Yet remaining in the Eastern Cape was no longer ­viable. There was ­little to sustain as large a h ­ ouse­hold as hers; further, other members of the f­ amily had joined them in the city for want of accommodation, food, and opportunity. Most instructive, though, was the f­ amily’s downward mobility following the seizure of their home in Gugulethu. Crossroads not only satisfied the needs Migr ations   |   43

of the destitute—­those without papers, income, or secure title—it also accommodated young love, satisfied domestic fantasies, and provided for families set ­free from the strictures of the townships and hostels. A ­ fter all, influx controls “encroached on every sphere of life. They even determined potential marriage partners.”28 And as one of the squatter area’s activists, Regina Ntongana, rightly argued, “If a ­woman wanted a ­family life she had to choose her husband from the ‘qualified’ [­legal] men. Even if she was in love with an ‘unqualified’ man she could not marry him.”29 “A law which persecuted ­people living as husbands, wives and children, was not a law at all,”30 Dr. Sam Buti, president of the South African Council of Churches, was wont to observe. Just as the Nkampes and Noquiets had done before them, the Kolisis moved back and forth across the country, finally settling on the perimeters of the city of Cape Town.31 Like many o­ thers, the Kolisis made their way separately to Cape Town. Lungile arrived first in the 1950s and his wife, Xoliswa, followed ­after their marriage ­under customary law in search of medical treatment unavailable in the reserves. That de­cade saw the hardening of already draconian legislation only a few years into the new apartheid regime: pass laws w ­ ere policed with new vigor; racial classification systematically revised the identities of many and formed the basis of extensive forced removals to what w ­ ere to become the so-­called homelands—­ ostensibly cradles of culture distinct one from the next. With the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-­ordination of Documents) Act, no. 67 of 1952,32 pass laws ­were amended to require all black persons over the age of sixteen to carry a “reference book” at all times. ­Women had previously been afforded some leniency. They w ­ ere allowed to move, albeit restrictively, between the reserves and the urban areas, even as they had to demonstrate ­legal employment, usually in domestic ser­vice. Since 1913, multiple types of permits and passes had been imposed upon African w ­ omen at a high cost in order to garner extra revenue for local government. These included “stand permits, residential passes, visitor’s passes, seeking work passes, employment registration certificates, permits to reside on employers’ premises and entertainment permits” (Gasa 2007, 137). Menfolk, like Lungile, came in search of work, drawn by local construction and dockyard opportunities, which would afford relatively secure contracts and, in some cases, Section 10 status, as well as accommodation in what ­were then termed “single-­sex hostels” in the black townships. W ­ omen ­were 44  |   ch ap te r 1

largely barred from urban employment and residence and came most often unlawfully in search of deserter husbands and partners and, of course, in search of work. Originally from Catane, a small town in the Eastern Cape, Lungile valued mi­grant work as an escape from the ruthless relations of employment in the countryside. For a number of years, Lungile worked on a farm in Kirkwood, well known for its fruit agriculture. The conditions w ­ ere very harsh, Lungile recalls. He lived with a number of other laborers in a h ­ ouse without a ceiling and with a floor of packed earth. Throughout the picking season, he was expected to pay rent fortnightly to his employer-­landlord in a punitive rural farm economy in which the farmer effectively took the law into his own hands.33 Though unusual in that rent was routinely pegged to the monthly wage in light of relatively high turnover, some landowners demanded rents in anticipation of the inevitable departure of fleeing contract workers. Recalling the night he left Kirkwood for Cape Town in 1955 Lungile described in considerable detail his planned escape and his daring flight from the police in Port Elizabeth. We only stayed the first fortnight and then fled; we had been forced to eat ­horse, donkey, and ostrich meat, along with our umngqusho34 and to get ­water we had to walk for miles. This place, Kirkwood, was located along the Sundays River basin and we ­were working there creating irrigation channels that would supply the local citrus farms. We realized we ­were close to a train station so we escaped the farm, where we ­were basically imprisoned, with ­little more than our blankets and a few personal belongings. It would have been difficult for us to buy tickets at the station, because we would be immediately identified as ‘escapee’ farm laborers. So we had to find a way to get on the train and then pay for the tickets once we ­were on our way. There ­were three of us and we waited by the signal box, right at the place where the tracks redirect the train one way or another, and as the train passed and we tried to jump on board I was dragged and eventually knocked unconscious. On a second attempt a few hours ­later, we managed to get on another train, but to our horror found ourselves in the first class, “whites only,” car, where we w ­ ere beaten by the train guards who then dragged us into third. Eventually we settled down as the train headed to Port Elizabeth.35

Migr ations   |   45

We arrived at 5:00 in the morning and made our way to ndokwenza (the hostels or men’s quarters); as I recall, these ­were white stone compounds. At 7:00 the Boers [Afrikaners] arrived looking for our passes; it was 1955 and pass laws w ­ ere strictly enforced. Those who didn’t have them had to jump through the windows and run away. The police ­were searching the hostels and ­others ­were standing by the gates blocking access in and out of the compound. So I went to the policemen at the gate and put my hand in my pocket as if I was just about to retrieve my passbook, and then at the very last moment I ran from the compound instead. As I ran, my shoes fell away and I was afraid of being arrested. There was a white policeman, whom the other African police recruits called Sotewu,36 which is a Xhosa name. He was a good runner and he chased ­after me, he also tried to take a shot at me, but I just kept ­running and ­running and eventually managed to lose him. I had never been in Port Elizabeth before, and I had no idea how to get back to the hostel; I was completely lost. Quite late, at 6:00 or so that night, I went to catch a van in order to avoid the train where I would likely have been arrested. These vans, umngunyati (illegal taxis), did a brisk trade transporting migrants between PE and Cape Town. Eventually we ­were intercepted somewhere on the way, near Queenstown; these guys had set up a roadblock, so we got out of the van and then ran into the bushes. The driver called to us, because the bush was very dangerous, it was full of lions he said.37 So we came back and handed ourselves over to the police who then drove us into Queenstown [the last town on the border before leaving the republic and reentering the homelands]. You see, by this point we had been forced to retrace our steps, heading back into the reserves and away from the city; we ­were in despair of being able to reach Cape Town. There was a ­woman who was traveling with us who was carry­ing a Bible and so we told the policemen that we had been on our way to a Christian convention in Cape Town and that we w ­ ere not trying to defy the pass laws, but simply traveling to the city temporarily. So the police released us. It was early in the morning and it would not have been safe to travel during the day for fear of being apprehended a second time. The driver hid the van in the bush and promised to come back and drive us in the eve­ning. True to his word, he returned at nightfall and we made our way to Kensington, a l­ittle to the north of the city of Cape Town. At 46  |   ch ap te r 1

this point we had been without food for almost three days and we ­were hungry and exhausted. It was probably 5:00 in the morning when we arrived and all that was available to eat w ­ ere the cold scrapings of blackened umngqusho at the bottom of the pot—­this is usually fed to pigs in the Eastern Cape, but what could we do? We ­were taken from Kensington to Langa hostels where we saw our homeboys and homegirls [­people we knew from the Eastern Cape] and they paid for the taxi, each contributing something. Some of them helped me with housing and I was eventually able to secure a job through the Langa Town Council. Now in 1960 things started to get ­really difficult. There was a demonstration and subsequently the police shot ­people in Langa Hostels. The events Lungile describes followed the earlier Sharpeville Massacre38 in Johannesburg—­a protest over passbook legislation that resulted in sixty-­ nine deaths, sending ­ripple effects all over the country. The police came and started sjamboking 39 the residents of the hostels;40 there ­were ­people literally jumping out of top floor windows using their mattresses as a way of softening the landing. Some p­ eople died jumping out of those windows. I ran away into the bushes near Langa. Eventually I arrived in Paarl [almost thirty-­five miles outside the city] and located the train station. My money was wrapped around me and I had to go and hide in the toilets in order to retrieve it for the purchase of my ticket to the Eastern Cape—it was so tightly wrapped around my body. Five years ­later, Lungile returned to the Western Cape to work as an operator of a mixer in a concrete factory. He would spend thirty-­three years in that factory, as he put it, “beginning in the period when passes w ­ ere still in use, during the time when those ­were abolished [in 1986], and then during the period when ­people ­were given id documents instead, once Mandela was in power.”41 He would reside in the com­pany hostels in Kuils River and return to the Eastern Cape at the end of a given contract. In the end, he was able to secure Section 10 rights, which permitted him to remain in the city. In due course, Xoliswa would travel to Cape Town in search of medical treatment, which forced the ­couple to take shelter in the bush. They ­were married in 1967 u ­ nder customary law (with the transfer of lobola)42 and ­later ­were remarried u ­ nder Roman-­Dutch law. A ­ fter being evicted from a

Migr ations   |   47

number of other camps (Brackenfell and Brown’s Farm among them), they settled in 1975 in Old Crossroads,43 where they remained ­until 1993, when they ­were again chased out along with other anc sympathizers, when Jeffrey Nongwe, one of the settlement’s most notorious strongmen, sought to clear parts of Crossroads ahead of state-­sponsored redevelopment. ­Nongwe’s collaboration with the state would ultimately earn him eviction at the hands of angry residents. Lungile and Xoliswa’s movements back and forth between the country and the city and within the city between 1955 and 1975 occurred in the context of a system emboldened by new legislation and yet made somewhat powerless to fully police the populations targeted by segre­ gationist and homeland policy. The 1950s, for instance, witnessed consolidation of rural policies with the adoption of the Bantu Authorities Act, no. 68 of 1951, and ­later the Bantu Self-­Government Act of 1959. During the next three de­cades, the legislation, which “abolished the already limited repre­sen­ta­tion for blacks in parliament, and replaced it with ‘local government’ comprising ‘tribal’ chiefs and ‘traditional councils’ ” (Vosloo et al. 1974, 58; cited in Comaroff 1985, 38), led to the removal and relocation of 3.5 million p­ eople, some to the recently established Bantustans. In the pro­cess, powers of self-­governance and quasi sovereignty in the homelands grew as part of a much larger pro­ject of “separate development.” The 1960s have been described as the “­silent de­cade,” largely because of the government’s ban on po­liti­cal organizations, which also forced activists underground and created a dearth of expressive culture. Indeed, the South African novel more or less disappears, to be replaced by poetry, epistolary forms, and other more redacted forms more appropriate to a growing apparatus of censorship.44 Certainly, in my own ­family, post-­Sharpeville, there was a palpable sense of how grave the situation was becoming and that dissent was ­really no longer tolerated. This realization engendered a series of responses, including the departure of many into exile. For all that, the 1960s also reflected a set of changing demands within capital. True, following Sharpeville, the state’s position on urbanization became utterly ­unyielding. “No longer would potentially volatile African settlements be situated near white cities. Township populations would be reduced, eventually all Africans would be relocated permanently in the homelands” (Ginsburg 1996, 129). These would function, in an ideal world, as parallel states 48  |   ch ap te r 1

in which the l­ abor market constituted the sole link with the white republic. Apartheid was nothing if not ambitious. Nevertheless, mass social engineering always seems to run aground given its necessary and inherent contradictions, and in the South African case it would become more and more apparent that while white supremacist policies might dictate the removal of blacks from metropolitan centers, apartheid capital required cheap black ­labor for industry. Thus, Lungile’s renewed attempt to return to Cape Town in 1965 was successful in large mea­sure because of the demands of an expanding postwar industry. Since the beginning of the twentieth ­century, “[e]conomic growth in the Cape was closely linked to mining developments on the East and West Rand. As the construction industry boomed, especially around the docks, an increasing number of migrants entered the city” (Cole 1987, 5) and, from “1968 to 1974, the needs of local capital in the Western Cape led to a reversal of earlier trends” (9) as the postwar economy expanded and the need for cheap black l­abor with it. Establishing Crossroads Squatter Area: Official Directive or Illicit Settlement?

The homelands ­were often associated with radical self-­reliance, lulls between remittances, and at times deep loneliness; and Crossroads represented a possi­ble way out of these and other dilemmas of rural life. In late 1974 and early 1975 migrants and townsfolk occupied a small strip of land adjacent to Nyanga Township, delimited to the south by Lansdowne Road and by Mahobe Drive to the west, with Old Klipfontein Road ­running diagonally northwest to southeast at the upper boundary of the camp (cf. map i.2). Some brought building materials—­shacks previously dismantled elsewhere in the city—­while those fleeing eviction ­orders brought what­ever they could salvage. Inevitably the bush gradually filled with migrants and townspeople from all over the city. Many of the “original settlers came from a nearby squatter camp known as Brown’s Farm, where Coloured and African squatters had lived together for years” (Cole 1987, 11), while o­ thers issued from shantytowns all over the Peninsula as those settlements came ­under threat from municipal bulldozers. Scores of p­ eople came on word of mouth, and soon clusters of informal structures could be seen from the roadside perimeters of the settlement, which quickly came to be known as Migr ations   |   49

Crossroads—­the camp at the fork in the road. Many squatters also came at the behest of local inspectors of the recently established Bantu Affairs Administration Board (baab).45 In late 1970 legislation had divested local municipalities of their authority over black life. “The take-­over by the State of all responsibility for African affairs, including housing, influx control and labour bureaus, from the cities”46 was provided for in the Bantu Affairs Administration Bill. This consolidation of authority in black areas was driven, in part, by the demands of industry and the efforts to relax strict boundaries between baab and non-­baab areas that would facilitate the mobility of “Bantu labour,” an arrangement that parties to a confidential 1972 memorandum described as “­ universally desirable.”47 So while giving the appearance of po­liti­cal reform, baab policy was equally influenced by market forces. Josette Cole has described the 1976–86 period as an era of “reform and repression,” notably in relation to the softening of pass laws, on the one hand, and the hardening of the state in a more general sense as evidenced by its increasing reliance on the use of force, including raids, de­mo­li­tions, and detentions, on the other. The baab legislation falls squarely within the peculiar framing of 1970s and 1980s apartheid politics and the centralization of state power precisely at that moment when so-­called ­people’s power was on the rise. In that spirit, stories of officials assisting squatters in the relocation of their homes and possessions to Crossroads was entirely consistent with both an agenda of tightening controls on growing numbers of Africans living illegally in the Peninsula as well as pushback by squatters. But what ­were officials ­really hoping to achieve? In the first instance, local authorities set about categorizing “qualified” and “unqualified,” deporting those ineligible to remain in the city back to rural South Africa, to Lady Frere and Catane, places with which we are already somewhat familiar, as well as other small and medium-­sized towns beyond the borders of the republic. Though the objective was clearly stated—­that is, the reduction of the African “surplus” in the Cape Metropolitan Area (cma)—in practice, officials underestimated the symbolic power of Crossroads as a space conflated with the notion of reprieve. For many, the informal settlement represented a stepping-­stone to jobs and a new way of life, one unencumbered by the deep poverty and isolation of the countryside. Crossroads was also a space of citizenship and love, surely the antithesis of nonbelonging and destitution. Nozukile, a young ­woman living in Cala in the Transkei, had lived 50  |   ch ap te r 1

seven of the eight years of her married life apart from her husband, a night watchman in the colored suburb of Mitchell’s Plain. The love letters between them, published in the Cape Times in November 1978, speak volumes of the challenges of lives lived apart—of Nozukile’s longing for partnership, her fears of single parenthood, the monthly remittances which bought l­ ittle more than food. But she also spoke of a sense of nonbelonging, of denied citizenship, stuck as she was in Cala: “we will have no place in this country of ours,”48 she lamented. While her husband worked, an el­derly ­woman called Mamqithi, a f­ amily friend from Transkei, looked a­ fter the shack Nozukile’s husband had built. In a poignant correspondence between the two ­women, Mamqithi tries to reassure Nozukile: Dear Nozukile, we received your letter last week. We ­were very pleased to hear from you. We hear that you want to come to Crossroads. Your husband’s shack is still standing. . . . ​That is where we are living, except your husband is most of the time at Mitchell’s Plain. He is the watchman for the place where he is working. He comes to Crossroads over weekends. You can still write to him h ­ ere or at the same address you have for his work. The police are waking us up at night, and they are waiting for us at the taps and even at the office when we go and pay our rents. . . . ​ We do not know ­whether Crossroads is ­going to be demolished but we are not making preparations for leaving. It is now November and we are talking about making special preparations for Christmas. We want to make clothes for the children, and decorations and food. You know that I have no other place to live. This place must be home. We are missing you. Yours, Mamqithi49 Dismissive of the camp’s growing importance for squatters, authorities—­ who conceived of the settlement as a site of reprieve—­labored to convince Africans from across the city to s­ ettle in Crossroads as a first step prior to enumeration (a form of census) and, inevitably, deportation for those without pass documents. There ­were also renewed efforts to impose a policy that would create protections for a colored workforce through the enforcement of already existing legislation that extended “­labor preference” to those designated as “mixed race.” Originally passed in 1955, the Coloured Labour Preference Policy (clpp) had been unevenly applied as the demand for cheap ­labor ­rose in the Migr ations   |   51

postwar years. To the west of the Eiselen Line, ­running north from Port Elizabeth—­a town located along the southeast coast, approximately four hundred miles from Cape Town—­Africans ­were denied employment, even those deemed to enjoy Section 10(1)(a) rights; that is, persons identified as being born in the city and therefore, at least in theory, eligible for permanent rights of residence and employment. Instead, the Coloured Labour Department was to certify that no equivalent colored applicant existed before jobs ­were extended to Africans with the appropriate documentation (see Western 1996, 291). Such policies ­were driven by the perceived threat of a tidal wave of black in-­migration, what authorities referred to as swart gevaar (Afrikaans for “black peril”), and by a pro­ject of colored “upliftment.” The latter was not unrelated to anxi­eties over the economic and social plight of so-­called poor whites, a weak link in the broader white supremacist ideology on which apartheid depended. In 1965 the Western Cape Labour Committee was already debating the challenges of colored upliftment and saw the removal of the Bantu (African) as both a means and an end to their improvement: It is with the Coloured labourer where over-­crowding, squatting, slums, malnutrition and unhygienic living conditions are prevalent, and where the work-­shy and idlers are found. This is the labour source which must satisfy the demand for semi-­and unskilled labour and these are the ­people who have to be uplifted and who offer a challenge to us if we wish to dispense with Bantu labour in the Western Cape.50 The vital misrecognition on which Crossroads relied also reordered or, depending on one’s view of it, reinstantiated Cape liberalism—­a po­liti­cal tradition since at least the nineteenth ­century (see Bickford-­Smith 1995). This part of the country, where residence rights ­were most strictly policed, saw efforts to deny blacks employment and, in turn, contained the single largest squatter population systematically targeted for removal across the republic (Surplus P ­ eople Pro­ject 1984, 9). For all the state’s repressive tactics, however, illegal migrants and their families continued to flow into the region, drawn by a growing demand for ­labor in the city and deepening poverty in the country. Despite efforts to reduce the African population of the province by 5 ­percent per annum, by 1978 there ­were twice as many blacks in the Western Cape as there had been a de­cade before (see Wilson, in Western 1996, 291). By 1980 approximately 101,000 Africans lived in metro52  |   ch ap te r 1

politan Cape Town; “illegals” numbered an additional 60,000 to 100,000 (Morris and Van der Horst 1981, 91).51 Of this number, an estimated 20,000 called Crossroads home.52 That spaces of informal settlement across South Africa w ­ ere po­liti­cally produced goes without saying, responding as they did to a combination of policies, local histories, and mounting pressures: unwieldy influx controls, the very often antithetical imperatives of state and capital, and always, the desires and dreams of ordinary ­people. Yet the specific context of the Cape is also critical to any understanding of the history of informal settlement there. I have already mentioned the peculiarities of job reservation and the demarcation of the Eiselen Line. In addition, construction freezes played a part in deepening forms of housing-­related destitution. In 1972 township housing construction had been halted, partly as a response by the government to a deepening crisis of capital, partly in order to discourage further African in-­migration. Consequently, “not a single ­house for black families had been built in the Peninsula by the Government.”53 But this, combined with the difficulty of policing pass laws, meant that the Cape was already home to tens of thousands of homeless—­both ­legal and illegal. Indeed, “all the original inhabitants of Crossroads came from other squatter camps which ­were being cleared.”54 This suggests a long-­standing prob­lem of illegal migration and homelessness. For at least a de­cade, oversight of housing permits had been ceded to township superintendents who arbitrarily canceled or refused to issue them at all. At the same time so-­called non-­ productive blacks ­were removed from their homes and dispatched to the Bantustans (Ginsburg 1996). By 1975 scarcity of housing stock was reaching critical levels, and the economic forecast promised very ­little relief. As the white consumer market became saturated, rates of profit declined in the manufacturing sector, and the shortage of skilled ­labor, linked to Bantu education policy, created a crucial structural weakness in the economy (see Saul and Gelb 1981). It was not solely the urban homeless—­squatters, that is—­who faced housing shortages, however. Many of the same forces ­shaped a crisis of overcrowding in the townships, where young families opted for the freedoms afforded in the squatter areas that life in the crowded brick homes of parents and grandparents could not. From this perspective, Crossroads quickly became associated with a sense of emancipation, both affective and po­liti­cal. It was, for young lovers at least, a space apart from the domestic scene Migr ations   |   53

controlled by parents in which gender and generational customs might be suspended (Henderson 1999). At the same time, the camp would in due course symbolize a space of po­liti­cal reprieve, too. Certain sections ­were given over to safe zones, or “mini-­exile,” mimicking the logic of the banned organizations and their military training camps located outside the country.55 In those first few weeks and months, “migrants, petty traders, ­women, the aged, youth, the unemployed, the employed and the unemployable all found a home in Crossroads” (Cole 1987, 12). Thrown together arbitrarily yet joined in collective opposition to removal, residents of varying class positions forged a pop­u­lar alliance. While the Kolisis and Noquiets had suffered a series of evictions (from Brown’s Farm, Brackenfell, and Kensington), ­others ­were more or less si­mul­ta­neously evicted from a number of other settlements scattered across the Peninsula; these eventually included Werkgenot and Modderdam, both razed in August 1977, and Unibell (in January 1978), many of whose residents moved directly into Crossroads, even as police ­were stationed to turn them away. According to an or­ga­nizer of the Black Sash’s Athlone Advice Office (a volunteer or­ga­ni­za­tion run by white ­women),56 it was likely that most squatters had filtered into other camps and African townships in the Peninsula. “Many must have moved ­behind the next sand dune.”57 Yet, in so d­ oing, squatters achieved “residential concentration” (Seekings 1988, 199), which in turn facilitated a growing sense of a common experience of oppression.58 It was in practical matters, matters of action, that something akin to a pragmatic politics of community emerged. In June 1976, for example, a two-­roomed temporary school, catering to as many as 250 students, was built, bulldozed, and rebuilt a­ fter the Divisional Council (part of the local authority) conceded that de­mo­li­tion of the school had been unlawful.59 This and many other incidents underscored the fragile ­legal status of the informal settlement. Yet at one and the same time, such insistent efforts to build social institutions underwrote a growing permanency. The notion that Crossroads was somehow merely a transit point on the way to deportation to the Transkei and Ciskei homelands hardly squared with the forms of entrepreneurialism and institution building that seemed to be part and parcel of everyday life in the camp.60 And while many residents established local businesses, many o­ thers also worked in town on the docks or in light manufacturing or domestic ser­vice.61 54  |   ch ap te r 1

to Ca pe

Nyanga Extension MAHOBE DRIVE

Nyanga

Airport To wn

N2

Nyanga Bush

Nyanga East

Old Crossroads

Portland Cement LANSDOWNE RD

Industrial Area

N

MAP 1.1  ​In an aerial photograph, shot in 1985, the satellite camps adjoining Mahobe Drive—­Portland Cement, Nyanga Bush, and Nyanga Extension—­are still visible. Courtesy of Timothy Stallmann.

Responding to mounting concern over the expansion of Crossroads and its environs, the military ordered an aerial survey in 1979. Additional surveys in 1985, 1987, and 1988, shot sequentially in narrow tracks and then pieced together to make a single image, showed that from the air Crossroads appeared as a labyrinth of informally built homes divided into discrete sections and demarcated by small, winding footpaths and broader thoroughfares leading from one end of the camp to the other (see maps 1.1, 3.1, and 3.2).62 Quite unlike the configuration of the formal townships, designed for ease of access for the military and police and difficulty of exit and escape for residents, the shantytown demanded a very par­tic­u­lar on-­the-­ground spatial knowledge—­vernacular knowledge derived from the steady organic pro­cess of clearing bush to make way for shacks, from the hard work of hewing wood and hauling ­water (mostly undertaken by ­women), and from the rebuilding of homes previously located elsewhere. This “dialectics of toil” (Chari 2003) addressed basic material needs and consisted in ­little more than the “­labor” of reproducing life day to day (see Arendt 1998). On the other hand, such efforts laid the groundwork for a radical politics of staying Migr ations   |   55

put that required determination, boldness of plan and execution, and an unwavering commitment to simply trying.63 ­Others, most particularly Josette Cole (1987),64 have written extensively of the early social and po­liti­cal configuration of Crossroads. From the start, ­women took a “vanguardist role,” according to Cole, or­ga­niz­ing along the lines of a mutual-­aid society through a ­Women’s Committee,65 which sought to redress problems specific to ­women and residents in general. “This is not surprising given the hardships many African w ­ omen experienced in the Western Cape, particularly ­after the Nationalist Party came to power. Many of the ­women . . . ​had ­either been forced into an illegal existence in the city’s black townships during the ­bitter years of the 1960s, or had strug­gled to survive alone with their children in the desolate homelands whilst their husbands worked in the cities” (Cole 1987, 14). What stood previously as the countless individual stories of ­people living in hiding seemed to congeal into a sense of a shared experience in Crossroads, an experience on which ­people might draw in order to make claims. Cole argues it was this insistence on staying put that brought into sharp focus new forms of consciousness as ­women or­ga­nized to remain in the city. |  |  |  |  |

Though life in the informal settlement marked a clear and identifiable improvement for many ­women who had previously stayed with their husbands and partners in the male hostels (often resorting to living in hiding for fear of arrest on grounds of pass law violations), in reality the threat of arrest remained, even in the camp. Xoliswa Kolisi, who moved to Crossroads with her husband following a number of prior evictions, nevertheless portrayed the squatter area as genuinely ­different from her previous places of residence. Most critically, she enjoyed a modicum of privacy residing in a freestanding shack with her husband and children. We should recall that many ­women who came to Cape Town from the homelands first stayed in single rooms, sometimes with as many as ten to fifteen men. Culturally, these ­were deemed disgraceful circumstances when privacy was essential to the overall pro­cess of domestic reproduction—to sex, intimacy, child rearing, and so on.66 It also meant that w ­ omen in the hostels w ­ ere very often put to communal work cooking and washing clothes for the men en masse. Though pass raids happened with less frequency than in the hostels, they occurred with sufficient regularity that Xoliswa and other ­women devised 56  |   ch ap te r 1

strategies to avoid arrest. This too was a monumental difference from the experience of living in a com­pany-­owned barracks in Kuils River, where the need to hide militated against the forging of strong alliances with other ­women in similar circumstances. By contrast, in Crossroads, ­women ­were able to work together to avoid arrest. Xoliswa would recount as follows:67 There had been trou­ble with the police. It was probably 1978 or so and Noxolo Primary School served as one of two headquarters for the Men’s Committees that ran Crossroads, along with our ­Women’s Committee. The other headquarters was based at Sizamile Primary School. The police had visited Noxolo and a number of ­people had been threatened and then beaten. The following day the police returned. They ­were walking past my win­dow, early that morning, and knocked at the door. I was in the m ­ iddle of washing and dressing and didn’t want to open up for them. So they kicked the door down. There was a man called Nkuntse, he was an African policeman from Langa. I asked him if he had ever walked in on a ­woman when she was naked, he didn’t respond. Instead he threatened me with arrest and then I realized this man had arrested me on a number of other occasions, not always successfully I might add. You see, there was this understanding that the police ­were not supposed to arrest w ­ omen who ­were still nursing. I don’t know if this was official policy or more a ­matter of concern for bad press, although by 1986 there ­were more children in detention in South Africa than there had ever been before, so I’m not sure what sort of difference such a policy would have made. Still, there had been instances in which very young children ­were taken to prison with their mothers and some of them had died subsequently and the sap [South African Police] became wary of arresting ­women like that, especially if the children w ­ ere very young. We knew this and so ­women in Crossroads, like many other townships, devised a strategy for avoiding arrest. We would round up as many children as we could, it didn’t ­matter ­whether they ­were your own or not, and even the ­little ones knew to place the infants on their backs and come r­ unning as soon as the alarm was raised. Someone would yell from one end of the settlement to the other: “Kubomvu, kubomvu!” Meaning there was a situation, ­whether fire or police or what­ever it might be.68 Anyway, we had trained the children to be aware in this way and so they would come ­running and as the police w ­ ere trying to round ­people up during a pass raid we would grab what­ever small child or baby was available. Migr ations   |   57

The police w ­ ere so angry when they would arrest pass offenders only to find a police van full of children. This made them look very bad and often they would release us because of it. I mean they c­ ouldn’t very well take a van load of breast-­feeding ­women to the pass office in Langa or dump them off at the Magistrate’s Court, I mean r­ eally. Still the arrests ­were frequent and there w ­ ere raids sometimes as many as five days a week and then someone would have to come and bail us out. Well, frankly, this seemed to have far more to do with easy money for the police, who extorted us, than it did with actually policing pass laws. The policemen ­were mostly white, but not exclusively, so sometimes I would have a quarrel with them. My mo­ther was still alive at the time and she was very ill and they would try to arrest her and so I used to shame particularly the African ones into releasing her, saying that they would never dream of arresting their own mothers. So it was these strategies and tactics that we used that over time slowly became a part of our routine ways of avoiding arrest. And you know we had ­little in the way to defend us so what could we do but make use of the things we already had: our way of life, our families, ourselves, the power of shame? Evidently, Xoliswa and many of the other w ­ omen had become conscientized. Xoliswa reported d­ oing the rounds of the squatter settlement, speaking to families about the threat of pass raids; she even spoke to children, telling them that however challenging the situation, when they heard the alarm being raised, they must head to the scene of an arrest and grab onto any adult they could. The Bantu Affairs Administration Board had encouraged squatters to move to Crossroads as nearby settlements ­were razed. Yet even as ­women and their families submitted to baab directives, their lives w ­ ere continually punctuated by pass raids. Many of the w ­ omen reported being afraid to argue with the magistrate when their cases ­were presented to the court to suggest that they had been ordered to move from Brown’s Farm or Brackenfell and to resettle in Crossroads. Further, some had even been deported to the Eastern Cape as a consequence. So the situation was increasingly very difficult for many of them. During the same period, pamphlets ­were distributed throughout the squatter area, directing residents on the Lansdowne Road side of the settlement to leave the camp within three days. The reasons for the order w ­ ere unclear, aside from overcrowding and the heightened visibility that settle-

58  |   ch ap te r 1

ment at the roadside lent to the shantytown. It is also unclear where potential evictees ­were supposed to go, and in any case, everyone knew the moment those old plots ­were vacated other ­people would move onto them in their place, so high was the demand for plots. The eviction order was ignored, and many of those living by Lansdowne Road had their shacks razed a ­little while ­later. Subsequently, the ­Women’s Committee called a meeting, and those pre­sent reached a consensus that if one of them ­were arrested, then a thousand would go to jail with her. Xoliswa recalls: We collected all the pamphlets and set a date to head to the Home Affairs Office in Observatory [in the southern suburbs]. We wanted to give them their pamphlets back. We told the officials that we w ­ ere not guilty of trespassing or of breaking the law in any way because they ­were the ones who had told us to move to the site in the first place. We w ­ ere sick and tired of being chased and arrested, and we knew that since Crossroads had been declared an “emergency camp”69 we had a right, at least in the short term, to stay put. So we demanded that Home Affairs legalize us. I was not in the forefront of any activities in Crossroads, but I was always willing to do things and I had ideas about what needed to be done. I went to meetings, I wanted to help o­ thers, and I tried to inspire p­ eople to fight for things that w ­ ere their due. I would say: “Look at white and black South Africans, whites live together as families, they don’t have to strug­ gle as we do, in fact they take for granted things that we c­ an’t, whereas we are forced to be separated from one another—­women must live in the countryside and men in the city. For us to be with our husbands we have had to come to the city illegally, but we ­can’t give up now.” In a way I suppose I was d­ oing the informal work of consciousness-­raising with ­others, you see. And when we went to that office in Observatory I stood up and said that white p­ eople are able to be pre­sent in the city without concern for their families and that as black ­people we wanted the same opportunities to be pre­sent without anxiety or concern for ourselves or our children. I suppose in some ways I came to be understood as a leader—­someone willing to stand up and be counted. So that was one of the things that I felt was my role. In 1978, ­women still enjoyed a degree of po­liti­cal autonomy, something that would dissipate as patriarchal leadership hardened. But in that moment Xoliswa and the other w ­ omen earned a reprieve, and their visit to Home Migr ations   |   59

Affairs eventually yielded passes for some in the group. Though two men’s committees dominated the po­liti­cal scene in Crossroads, w ­ omen remained vocal and active, particularly in the arena of pass document struggles and in campaigns for basic amenities, including access to public ­water taps. But once those initial battles had been fought and the struggles in Crossroads became refocused on masculine authority, ­women’s and men’s po­liti­cal interests increasingly diverged as power was formalized in the two men’s committees and eventually in a single executive. Drawing on the idioms of “traditional” leadership in the South African countryside, the reach of both patrilineal (i.e., filial) and po­liti­cal ties created cultural exigencies against which w ­ omen fought with great difficulty. Not only did they remain at risk of deportation, but some w ­ ere removed in the face of the death of husbands, forced to return to their childhood homes in the Eastern Cape. Increasingly it seemed there was a distinction to be made between the practical and po­ liti­cal struggles of ­women and the symbolic and ideological politics of men, who ­were mostly concerned with turf, leading as we will see to intensifying internal conflicts over land speculation and power. Conclusion: Freedom of a Kind

Crossroads outlined a space for the “exploration of possi­ble worlds,” however transient (Harvey 2000, 189). As history would show, the ­labor of “staying put” or being pre­sent would yield a certain kind of permanence. In 1986, the state struck influx controls from the statute books, essentially admitting, if only tacitly, that in-­migration from the countryside was unstoppable. This fact played into a deeper sense of a hard-­won victory for squatters that presupposed less a set of predetermined ideas about how to achieve such po­liti­cal ends than simply a princi­ple of action that became fully visible “only in the performing act itself” (Arendt 1993, 152), in the ebb and flow of daily life—­preparing meals in the open air, carry­ing ­water from the public tap, constructing crude corrugated iron and cardboard homes and schools—­and finally, through a constant negotiation and renegotiation of papers, contracts, and stays of eviction. These ­were mundane struggles, but they w ­ ere essential to building an informal settlement over which other struggles, larger ones, might be fought in the f­uture. Distinct from those heroic or­gan­i­za­tional struggles of the anc and other po­liti­cal bodies, squatting had become activism by other means. 60  |   ch ap te r 1

Throughout this chapter I have tried to show the ways in which principles of or aspirations to domesticity—­rarely easy or harmonious, often hindered by coercion both within and beyond the home, yet nevertheless per­sis­tently sought—­came to be expressed in a variety of forms. These included the repeated journeying of migrants back and forth between town and country; the legendary patience of ­women who awaited a partner or husband in the reserves, often waiting as long as a de­cade to be re­united with him in the city; those practices of seclusion and concealment in which many ­women became well versed while hiding in Cape Town’s hostels; and finally all those quotidian rituals of domestic reproduction that made lives lived out in the camp precarious but somehow stable and made possi­ble the constitution of an enduring social formation. What strikes me as particularly remarkable are the “tools” of such practices—­everyday tools, that is—­“our way of life, our families, ourselves, the power of shame,” to cite Xoliswa. At the same time, the oppressive power of what Leslie Bank has referred to as “racial modernism” (2011) weighed down on those moments of self-­assurance. The planning of “suburban” township spaces for blacks that assumed a male-­ headed h ­ ouse­hold and breadwinner based on the mi­grant worker model: this framed and determined a world inside the home connecting so-­called traditional paternalisms and those of the apartheid state itself. Departing from such forms of governmentality, squatter settlements became at one and the same time a terrain on which the mi­grant model was rejected and the very space in which the tensions of the system of wage-­dependent love ­were worked out.

Migr ations   |   61

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chapter 2

Counterinsurgency

The strug­gle for dignity is a complex and never-­ending pro­cess. —­Breyten Breytenbach, “Mandela’s Smile”

This chapter tracks patterns of periurban settlement through the late 1980s and addresses the state’s apparatus of counterinsurgency, which was designed to bring un­regu­la­ted urbanization u ­ nder control. As increasing numbers settled permanently on the edges of the city, the South African state deployed a new development policy—­including the provision of housing and basic infrastructure—as a strategy of divide and rule, turning those with housing against those without it. On occasion, officials would also use development as a carrot-­and-­stick approach to quelling black dissent. Squatters, for their part, persisted in making home informally and illicitly. They honed tactics in the courtrooms; they resisted evictions and deportations; they also engaged in routine activities ranging from the building of homes and makeshift schools and churches to the formation of civic organizations and institutions of local governance. If aggressive rent seeking on the part of local big men incurred significant po­liti­cal and financial costs, squatters, faced with significant hardships, ­were forced to use their bodies in the strug­gle for access to shelter, quite literally occupying space in order to make claims to po­liti­cal entitlements.

Lodging in backyards, some even set up beds in the open air. So-­called bed ­people came to be the extreme face of a daunting pro­ject of establishing the conditions for black domesticity in the city.1 Beyond such initial acts of occupation, squatters demanded latrines, refuse removal, and drinking ­water, giving shape to a material reality in the camps: a form of undeniable presence through infrastructure (cf. Simone 2004). Yet the meaning of infrastructural “upgrading” was both confusing and variable. Development was intended to win hearts and minds, but the introduction of homes and ser­vices also threatened the position of the headmen who controlled access to undeveloped plots. In this sense upgrading was both a gain and a compromise. For their part, planners, ­eager to see the city limits redeveloped, felt a “sense of helplessness” when confronted with squatters, who “­were the ‘most prolific builders’ ” and accustomed to “their own form of land-­use planning.”2 Though the city outskirts, never intended as dormitory areas, offered l­ ittle in the way of amenities, Cape Town’s periurban settlements w ­ ere appealing because of their relative proximity to places of work. They also afforded an alternative to the hostels and com­pany barracks and, for w ­ omen, sanctuary from the brute grip of influx controls. Certainly, in the early days it was ­women who w ­ ere most likely to seek refuge in Crossroads in order to secure homes and to provide some sort of ballast against the rootlessness of the ­mi­grant ­labor system (cf. Hartman 1997). A report by the Southern African Labour Development Research Unit (saldru) in December 1977 noted that “of their sample of 203 wives, 46 ­percent had lived in another area in Cape Town before coming to Crossroads, 26 ­percent had lived in two such areas, 20 ­percent in three and 7 ­percent in four to six other residential areas.” The average length of stay in Cape Town before settling in Crossroads—­ whether in other informal settlements or in com­pany hostels—­ranged from six to twenty years.3 This “gender” pro­ject would eventually run aground as the headmen insinuated themselves into the leadership in Crossroads and other adjacent squatter camps. As rentiers, they monopolized access to plots, drawing income from illegal rents. Some also played an increasingly im­por­tant role in advancing a counterrevolutionary agenda on behalf of the state, dividing the informal settlements between pro-­and anti-­apartheid elements and those with and without homes. Still, for those squatters who succeeded in setting down stakes, certain po­liti­cal privileges and gains followed, as temporary residents converted illegal tenancies into longer-­term 64  |   ch ap te r 2

occupation and, on some occasions, passes. These efforts at presence would, to a degree, serve to reconcile the discontinuity between urban citizenship and the counterfeit citizenship of the Bantustans. |  |  |  |  |

South Africa is not the only place where oppressed peoples have attempted to reconcile claims to the city with rights of recognition. The ancient Greek polis is surely the exemplary instance of politics in space (Calhoun and McGowan 1997, 10; also see Mumford 1989), albeit one claimed by property-­ owning male heads of h ­ ouse­hold who ­were already affirmed and recognized by the system of po­liti­cal repre­sen­ta­tion.4 By contrast, apartheid’s racial and class exclusions positioned the city in a very par­tic­u­lar relationship to the body politic for and on behalf of squatters who fought to justify their rights of settlement in metropolitan South Africa. This relationship between politics and space is still negotiated on the edges of many cities (see, e.g., Bayat 1997a; Desai and Sanyal 2012; Holston 2008; Pieterse 2008), which suggests that the South African story is less than singular, though its excesses are clear. Working and nonworking poor occupy and sometimes even purchase land in marginal zones, committing to building housing and community beyond the reach of public ser­vices and amenities. In so d­ oing, they create a “new realm of participation” (Holston 2008, 6). In Brazil, James Holston notes, this pro­cess, de­cades in the making, has been marked, not a l­ittle ironically, by the ascent of the former head of state, Lula da Silva, who was originally from the urban periphery. But of course, favelas and shantytowns are underwritten by much more enduring, centuries-­long histories of land seizure and indigenous dispossession that predated the establishment of self-­built communities on the edges of cities worldwide. Such histories assume that own­ership is always already linked to the citizenship of elites who previously accessed property through colonial land grants, while their c­ ounter­parts, the indigenous poor, w ­ ere systematically stripped of property rights altogether. It follows that land own­ership now relies at one and the same time on the law, even while those who engage it must work with its deceptions—­specifically, a legacy of paper conquest and theft (cf. Hull 2012). The difficulties of establishing “rightful” own­ership are several, yet for residents of the favelas and squatters on Cape Town’s outskirts, becoming “propertied” is a crucial step in advancing the cause of democracy. Cou nte ri nsu rge ncy   |   65

Notably, the early South African transition period was marked by explicit efforts at reconstruction and development that initially focused on the provision of housing to those millions left destitute by apartheid, as if equating the restoration of the right to shelter, in the most basic form, to a right of South African democracy. But the death of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (rdp) came speedily and, with it, the beginning of a new era in which rights in property ­were once again transferred away from mostly poor black and brown South Africans. South Africa was probably the first announcement of this phenomenon, in which the oppressed appear to assume the moral leadership of society, while cap­i­tal­ist relations become ever more brazen. The dominated classes of South Africa, largely identified with the black population, defeated apartheid—­a regime to compare with the worst of the 20th ­century—­and then surrendered to neoliberalism, as the burgeoning slums . . . ​testify. (de Oliveira 2006, 21) If the rdp sought to use housing as a method of democratization—in the form of a peculiar refiguring of de Soto’s ­legal own­ership theory (de Soto 2000)5—­housing-­related politics had already reached a high point during the de­cade leading up to the transition. With the introduction of the largely discredited Black Local Authorities (blas)6 in the early 1980s, the state raised rents on public housing, encouraging widespread rent boycotts (Chaskalson, Jochelson, and Seekings 1987) and eventually provoking military intervention (Mabin 1998). Hoping to pacify a broad segment of the urban population, the state then reversed its anti-­owner­ship position in order to privatize formerly state-­owned housing stock. Officials anticipated that a black propertied class would divide the broader strug­gle, but privatization only deepened black opposition. That opposition came from many quarters, including the South African National Civic Or­ga­ni­za­tion (sanco), which worked intensively to or­ga­nize black homeowners already disgruntled with the poor quality of formerly state-­owned housing and ­eager to participate in mortgage boycotts. ­Under the weight of pop­u­lar protest, widely discredited town councils collapsed, while lenders, anxious to prevent sustained nonpayment, pressured government to relinquish control of the housing sector altogether. The housing question remains, as does its relationship to the land question; the two are indissociable, and resolving the one requires addressing the 66  |   ch ap te r 2

other, a strategy that, by and large, has not been taken up. For one, the South African Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, while settling 90 ­percent of its approximately 80,000 land claims7 (registered between 1995 and 1998), has operated on the basis of a “willing seller, willing buyer” (wswb) policy, enabling the post-­apartheid state to retreat from direct expropriation mea­sures.8 Neoliberal po­liti­cal economy casts a long shadow ­here. It protects a culture of contract theory at the expense of the country’s landless. Yet South Africa is dealing both with the new ideological climate and the fact that the vast majority of its citizens have been harmed in ways that exceed the routine capacities and cares of the state to address those violations. This tension between the past and the pre­sent imposes on those recently freed a paradoxical responsibility to those who purportedly freed them. This has made it virtually impossible for the South African state to address gross imbalances in land own­ership since the discourse of private property protects the already propertied—­those who stole, those who inherited, those who benefited substantially from the disproportions of colonial and apartheid land policies. One sure indication of this legacy is that, since its inception in 1995, land reform has assumed that only those dispossessed a­ fter 1913 had a right to lodge claims, excluding great numbers of South Africans who ­were expropriated before that date. Hence, by 2008, of the approximately 80 to 85 ­percent of land in white own­ership, only 4 ­percent had been redistributed to blacks, which made the unlawful occupation of land an inevitable feature of much informal settlement given the absence of strong legislation to bolster the rights of squatters. This contrasts with a constitution that stipulates that all South Africans have a right to adequate shelter and that shelter remains a positive responsibility for the state.9 The South African Constitution . . . ​explicitly guarantees the right of access to housing, children’s rights to shelter and prisoners’ rights to accommodation. It also places a duty on the state—in the context of protecting existing property rights—to take reasonable mea­sures within its available resources, to foster conditions which enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis. (de Vos 2005, 85) But of course, while the Constitutional Court remains poised to execute directives that would support and sustain the rights of South Africa’s millions of landless and homeless, the duty of the state is administered “in the Cou nte ri nsu rge ncy   |   67

context of protecting existing property rights.” This conditionality poses very significant constraints on the systematic provision of housing and land to those who have been historically dispossessed. And rather ironically, c­ ounter to de Soto’s notion of the role of formal property rights in promoting strong markets, the protection of existing rights in property has restricted a freer and fuller participation in South Africa’s po­liti­cal economy, leaving the vast majority to l­ abor in the informal sector. The Country in the City: Headmen and “Customary” Authority

It is worth spelling out that squatter settlements in Cape Town, as elsewhere, during the period u ­ nder consideration in this chapter (specifically the 1970s and 1980s), effectively bridged the distance between the city and the reserves. In other words, squatter settlements functioned as categorically hybrid zones. They ­were neither rural nor urban, though regularly described by officials as “farmlike” spaces in need of “cultivation,” which was ­really coded language for a counterstrategy that would co-­opt communities perceived by dint of their rural origins to be culturally and po­liti­cally conservative. The squatter leadership in its turn capitalized on such misperceptions, playing up their “traditional” origins in the countryside, playing too to notions of “custom” and convention ­whether or not they themselves issued immediately from the backwaters of Pondoland or Catane. Something po­liti­cally quite complicated then emerged in the squatter camps, muddying the sharp break that apartheid ideology dictated between so-­called metropolitan South Africa—­namely, the cities and the white body politic—­and the reserves, which w ­ ere given over to “culture” and customary law and w ­ ere consequently understood as sites in which black subjecthood and partial autonomy might play out. To this end, in the mid-­to late 1970s squatters built hybrid po­liti­cal structures. The izibonda (headmen) amalgamated the old and the new, the ostensibly “customary” and “modern.” Replicating the logic of indirect and Bantustan rule, with its emphasis on patriarchal authority, the headmen reinforced cultural and material continuities with the countryside.10 A former resident of Crossroads, Evelyn Nombembe, recalled the styles of rule of both rural chiefs and urban headmen: Leadership in the Transkei was quite d­ ifferent. ­People ­were appointed to serve an area; these p­ eople ­were called izibonda. I grew up on a farm 68  |   ch ap te r 2

and we w ­ ere quite remote from areas where the izibonda ­were in the ­leadership. These ­were ­really far more like chiefs and ­were not elected in the way that the headmen w ­ ere in squatter areas. Chiefs w ­ ere ­lifetime appointees and passed on the position to their children, usually the eldest sons. And yet, even though these w ­ ere permanent positions, in a way they seemed much more demo­cratic than the headmen ever did.11 Fashioning themselves as a gerontocracy,12 the headmen worked through the imbizo (a palaver or community meeting)13 and “cabinet” and gathered monetary tributes to remit to the homelands. They policed access to plots and residence rights inside the squatter camps,14 currying ­favor with those desperate to find a place to build a small home. At once linked to the urban center and the rural reserve, these power­ful men constructed homesteads in the Transkei and Ciskei homelands (or so it was rumored), in a sense inventing a set of forbears that would symbolically reinsert the urban izibonda in the deep lore of the countryside.15 In 1978, a planning expert, Paul Andrew, carried out a ten-­week survey of Crossroads, noting the complexity of grassroots po­liti­cal structures there: One of the most interest­ing characteristics of Crossroads is its ability to administer itself. . . . ​The camp has a three-­tiered local government, with most authority vested in the Main Committee whose concern is for the overall social and civic affairs of the community. The entire area is divided into wards and subwards, each of which elects its own committee which is responsible for ­running its own affairs.16 By 1979 the most prominent headman, Johnson Ngxobongwana, had been “popularly” elected “mayor” of Crossroads. Previously, he had served as chair of the Executive Committee, a central Crossroads structure, but even earlier his po­liti­cal ambitions ­were already apparent. During an interview, one of the founding members of the first Men’s Committee in Crossroads recalled: “We first noticed Ngxobongwana because he used to have a small bakkie and did odd jobs for ­people. One thing he did was to help take the schoolchildren on outings. One day we asked him how much we should pay him for his help. But he refused. So we thought to ourselves, ‘Hey, this man can be useful to us.’ It was then that we elected him onto the Noxolo School Committee as a secretary and how he came to be on our Committee.”17 Cou nte r i nsu rge ncy   |   69

We might note the parallels with Ndima’s story of settling in Crossroads dating back to 1975—­the advice extended to him by squatters who ­were already there and the “hospitality” he afforded those who settled l­ater. As he put it: “Soon, I had a big yard, and some of the p­ eople who c­ ouldn’t afford to buy building materials came to live with me. ­Others built their own structures, and I encouraged them to build them inside my yard.” Evidently, the “gift” or ­favor solidified relations between neighbors and eventually those with constituents. Ngxobongwana was also disposed to “helping” ­others: he used his bakkie (a small pickup truck) for transporting schoolchildren and, in the many accounts of his apparent goodwill, el­derly folk in need of transport, too. Ngxobongwana, as several p­ eople noted, was not formally employed and could therefore spend the time walking the settlement and reporting on events (pass raids, who had been picked up, where they had been sent, which police station). He was also noted for his quasi traditionalism: he herded livestock in the environs of the camp and generally ­comported himself in a way that suggested close ties to the Transkei. In time, the Noxolo Committee realigned, as old members ­were removed and Ngxobongwana’s autocratic style brooked no dissent. Sam Ndima, who headed the Noxolo “homeguards” (an informal patrol about the camp), would become his closest ally. Writing about South Africa’s late colonial state, Mamdani argues that po­liti­cal institutions such as “tribal leadership [­were] ­either selectively reconstituted as the hierarchy of local state or freshly imposed where none had existed” (Mamdani 1996, 17). Essential to the efficacy of colonial hegemony, chiefships sustained the l­ egal dualism that constructed Eu­ro­pean and “native” worlds through colonial and customary law, respectively. But quite apart from the law, overrule depended on the ascription of difference through territorial fragmentation, first in the reserves and, l­ater, ­under the homeland system, where tradition was reclaimed. Much responsibility rests with the notorious 1913 Natives Land Act—­the starkest ­attempt by the government to create discriminatory rights to property on the basis of race. The act encouraged the formation of the homeland system, which ultimately divested blacks of claims to citizenship within the so-­called Republic of South Africa ­after 1948 by limiting “African holdings to ‘scheduled native areas,’ largely the existing reserves, and initiat[ing] the complex legislative basis for the ­future apartheid system” (Comaroff 1985, 37). 70  |   ch ap te r 2

By contrast, in urban areas, the headmanship is thought to have emerged through the transfer of certain managerial practices from the mi­grant hostels to the squatter camps, confirming a view shared by some that this was an urban institution whose basic logic, though to all appearances rural in origin, derived only minimally from the “traditions” of the South African countryside (Car­ter 1993; Cole 1987; du Toit and Gagiano 1993; Emmett 1992; Hansson 1990; Haysom 1990; Jellema n.d.; Robins 1998).18 In the 1940s, for example, the Chamber of Mines adopted something akin to the headman system in or­ga­niz­ing the mining barracks where induna (a Zulu term) worked as managers. They enjoyed certain privileges consonant with elevated status: a “sergeant’s” uniform, separate married accommodations, and ­family-­size food rations. These w ­ ere significant concessions in a system largely given over to the exploitation of single black wage laborers.19 Captains of industry, much like government, had apparently apprised themselves of the most effective techniques of control. The apparent rejection of modernity by chiefs and, ­later, by Bantustan leaders was “itself a highly motivated response” (White 2001b, 8), of course. They reacted to par­tic­u­lar aspects of overrule, facilitating new forms of quasi sovereignty in the homelands. In places like Crossroads, the izibonda ­were equally motivated to establish themselves in the gap left by the modern state apparatus. With the help of local homeguard patrols, they policed settlement and section boundaries. Ndima, as we have already noted, ran the homeguard for the Noxolo section. They w ­ ere also responsible for adjudicating ­family and communal disputes, much as chiefs did in the rural assemblies, or intlanganiso. In time, some headmen, most especially Ngxobongwana, would profess support for the state, mobilizing the logic of customary rule against anti-­apartheid agitators. As annexations of the countryside in the city, the informal settlements w ­ ere vulnerable to the same strug­gles for legitimacy that, in their worst guise, refashioned the homelands as dummy states.20 A much longer history of marking difference precedes those pro­cesses of increasing differentiation in the squatter areas during the 1970s. Beginning in the prior c­ entury, missionaries, traders, and colonial administrators transformed African lifeways and cultural forms through religious conversion, education, and induction into the marketplace. Africans, some anyway, ­were reinvented as God-­fearing members of a nascent petit bourgeois class, while ­others remained “heathen,” “red,”21 and “savage” on the other side of a line that divided civility from incivility, modernity from tradition. Cou nte ri nsu rge ncy   |   71

In practice, such distinctions ­were rarely so stark. Instead, the dialectics of colonial encounter (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991) produced a universe of meaning—of contrast and contradiction—­one in which gender, generation, complexion, and class w ­ ere central to the negotiations between state and nonstate actors. With time and experience, colonized peoples invariably develop an ever more acute sense of the logic of the colonizing culture. Usually, too, their attempts to come to terms with it grow increasingly diverse. In the Tswana case the historical dialectic of challenge and riposte, of cultures in contest, became ever more closely tied to local pro­cesses of class formation [and] distinctions of ideology and cultural style wrought by the colonial encounter tended to follow the deepening lines of social ­differentiation. (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991, 229–30) For our purposes, the politics of land and urban access reframe the question of difference as a question of identity in space—of turf and power— in which “space enhances societal distinction” (Western 1996, 254). If the homelands represented the “birthplace” of African cultures (note the plural form) and a solution to the perceived ills of city life, what better way to justify the removal of millions during the course of almost three de­cades? The prob­lem of black influx into urban areas could be remedied by arguing the loss of culture—­the “detribalization” of rural “natives” in the city—­for which the only alternative was their relocation to the homelands. Worse still, cultural nationalism might be made to justify the cruelties of the po­ liti­cal economy of mi­grant work. Cultural distinction (and presumably national in­de­pen­dence in due course) would become a m ­ atter of some exigency by late 1978. A previously “secret” plan to relocate as many as 20,000 squatters from Cape Town (mostly from Crossroads and surrounding settlements) went public when Chief Kaiser Mantanzima of Transkei (­later state president and a staunch supporter of a black federalist system) demanded a meeting with the South African government. Headlines read “Removal: SA and Transkei to Meet,”22 replicating the conventions of “international” talks between in­de­pen­dent nations. An area on the Kei River near Queenstown had apparently been earmarked as a dumping ground for those removed from the Cape Peninsula. As Mantanzima was quick to remark, the area was in a region slated for incorporation into the Transkei; this was clearly a forced removal, and as 72  |   ch ap te r 2

the chief went on to note, “they (the South Africans) wanted to hide it from the world.” Mantanzima’s brother George (then deputy prime minister) argued, “South Africa d­ oesn’t seem to be satisfied with the amount of trou­ble it already has. Moving these ­people to Transkei can only bring more.”23 This notion that South Africa was somehow set apart from the Transkei secured a perception of the Bantustan as sovereign—­all too clear a signal of the prob­ lem of movement between the republic and the homelands as a prob­lem of citizenship ­either enforced or denied. Yet in reality, those subjected to deportation while enjoying ties to rural South Africa generally understood themselves as “urban.” The chairwoman of the Crossroads committee, as constituted in October 1978 (­women ­were ousted soon thereafter), told the press, “we know that most of these ­people have been in Cape Town for ten to twenty years. Many feel that they are urbanized Capetonians. Some have no roots elsewhere.”24 Even a parliamentarian, Dr. F. van Zyl Slabbert, declared blacks in the Peninsula virtually permanent. In a parliamentary debate that very same year, Slabbert attempted to clarify the situation as it related to settled blacks in the Peninsula. Referring to Crossroads, he argued: Hon. members will also find that those ­people did not sneak ­here from the Transkei or the Ciskei yesterday, or the day before yesterday, that they did not turn up overnight, but that more than 33 ­percent of the ­people at Crossroads have been in the Western Cape since 1949. They will also find that 59 ­percent of the males among those p­ eople have been ­here in the Peninsula since 1959.25 For all that, officials in the Cape had long advocated stringent enforcement of deportation ­orders, especially the deportation of ­women (see Lee 2009). The repatriation of African p­ eople was a specific policy focus in the region. Colored job reservation established the Peninsula as the frontier in the displacement of Africans. In other municipalities, by contrast, Section 10 legislation was mostly used to deport “undesirable ­women”—­unmarried ­women, ­women drawing income from the illegal sale of liquor, and so on. But between 1959 and 1962, the city of Cape Town evicted tens of thousands. By 1964, ­under the Bantu Laws Amendment Act, officials saw fit to deport even those with Section 10 rights. If a ­woman was unable to prove ­legal entry into the Peninsula or was residing with someone other than a qualified male partner, she was summarily dispatched. Cou nte r i nsu rge ncy   |   73

It is estimated that forced removals uprooted 3.5 million p­ eople, or more than 10 ­percent of the South African population—­labor tenants, farm squatters, and city residents—­between 1960 and 1985. In addition, a further 327,000 township residents ­were brought ­under the control of indirect rule Bantustan authorities as entire townships ­were incorporated into the boundaries of neighboring Bantustans, mainly KwaZulu. . . . ​ This is why, unlike in the reserves, where apartheid seemed more an administrative reform designed to restore the autonomy of tribal authorities, there could be no mistaking apartheid in the urban areas as anything but a frontal assault on the residual rights of the African population. (Mamdani 1996, 102) Slum Clearance and “Class Action”

In the face of such forceful attempts to wrest away land, property, and urban rights, squatters fought back u ­ nder the system of law designed to punish and exclude them. In the absence of a politics or­ga­nized around the point of production (a class politics), squatters exploited a number of ­legal loopholes, or­ga­niz­ing their efforts through class action.26 Between February 1975, when newcomers first built shanties in Crossroads, and June 1976,27 when residents made successful application to the courts and Crossroads was declared an “emergency camp,” settlers there ­were submitted to raids, arrests, evictions, and deportations. Desperate to build homes and to live with their families, squatters quickly adopted new ­legal strategies against the courts. In March 1976, a parliamentary amendment to the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act established heavy penalties for landowners who permitted illegal squatting on their land. Additionally, the courts struck mandatory stays of eviction and de­mo­li­tion, which left squatters vulnerable to arbitrary action by the authorities. Following the amendment, the Divisional Council applied to the Supreme Court for permission to raze the camp in anticipation of the ratification of the law. Crossroads residents opposed the application, exploiting a small win­dow before the law was gazetted in August. At the same time, they presented evidence in support of Crossroads’ status as an “emergency camp.” The Divisional Council was subsequently forced to provide ­water taps, refuse removal, and sanitation, while a r10 levy was imposed on all ­house­holds in the form of monthly ser­vice dues.28 ­After con74  |   ch ap te r 2

siderable back-­and-­forth between the council and lawyers representing the Crossroads squatters, the levy was eventually reduced.29 In correspondence with Messrs. Mallinick, Ress, Richman and Co., Attorneys, dated November 24, 1976, they argue for reducing rates. In Langa, a nearby township, a four-­room brick home rented for r10.17 a month, while in Nyanga the rents ­were even lower (r9.70) despite the fact that these included indoor bathrooms and taps—­a far cry from the “wood and iron structures erected by or on behalf of the occupants”30 of the squatter camps. Crossroads sat at a ­legal juncture given a prior dispute between the Divisional Council and the newly formed Bantu Affairs Administration Board (baab). In effect, the court application for Crossroads’ de­mo­li­tion amounted to a squabble between the two authorities over which was responsible for razing the camp. Crossroads was in the exceptional position of being an African residential community in the Cape Peninsula. “Unlike other black townships, it was not subject to the constraints which operated in these areas—­for example lodger permits, trading licences and strict po­ liti­cal control” (Cole 1987, 17). As a consequence, the settlement became something of a f­ ree zone, one all the more appealing to those in search of a place in which to hide from the authorities. The everyday difficulties of living in the camp could not be overstated, however. Bathing children, readying for work, or cooking meals with limited access to ­water—­never mind overflowing latrines—­were practical realities. They compelled squatters to or­ga­nize. The alternatives ­were few if any; in the Transkei there was “no work, no land, and nothing to live on.”31 While the authorities invoked the threat to public health,32 squatters argued along similar lines, demanding amenities to prevent the outbreak of cholera and other conditions linked to high-­density settlements. In a court submission and affidavit, Ntoyi Johnson Ndayi, one of the very first residents and a spokesperson on behalf of the squatter area, insisted: “If inadequate ­water, latrine and refuse facilities exist, then any community affected will become a health hazard and Crossroads is no exception. On the other hand, if these facilities are installed, the health hazard will, I submit with res­pect, be removed in a very short space of time.”33 Ndayi was certainly right that Crossroads was in no way exceptional; in fact, the status of emergency was fast becoming the rule (Agamben 2005; Benjamin 1996; Schmitt 1928). The neighboring squatter settlement, ktc, was declared an emergency camp in 1959 and then subsequently formalized; Cou nte ri nsu rge ncy   |   75

it was one of many such camps.34 Across the city, settlements w ­ ere ­either declared emergency or “transit” areas, as officials increasingly sought to ware­house squatters. Even in the late 1990s, a few such transitional spaces still existed; for example, Lower Crossroads, the camp just south of Lans­ downe Road, to which many Old Crossroads residents fled in 1991 and then again in 1993 (see chapter 1). In any event, Ndayi’s claims about the need for sanitation and other ser­ vices ­were eventually acknowledged. In a February 1976 letter addressed to the Chief Bantu Affairs Commissioner, the Medical Officer recommended the immunization of all squatters against typhoid and the installation of standpipes and pit latrines—­a request that had been ignored the year before by the Minister of Bantu Administration and Development, the Honorable M. C. Botha, who called for the removal of the squatters. The Medical Officer argued: It was originally agreed that 25 blocks of 6 latrines each would be provided to serve this area. An inspection carried out during the week ending 24th January 1976 revealed that only 33 seats had been provided, and of these 12 ­were out of action due to the pits being full. 3 standpipes have been provided for ­water supply and due to low ­water pressure and the large numbers of persons having to draw w ­ ater, it often entails individuals having to wait 6/7 hours before any w ­ ater can be drawn.35 Divisional Council and baab motivations amounted most immediately to slum clearance (cf. Campkin and Cox 2007; Jephson 1907; Jones 1971; O’Day 1993; Ross 1993; Yelling 1986), while their larger concern was the effective policing of pass laws. Responding to the imminent threat of clearance, Crossroads squatters in the mid-1970s redirected the discourse of public risk, claiming they too merited the care and attention of a ­whole apparatus of public health. They placed l­ittle emphasis on the po­liti­cal and economic dimensions of social hygiene. Instead, squatters focused on the environment and on insalubrity, factors that might be addressed scientifically as opposed to po­liti­cally (see, e.g., Wright 1991). If discourses of slum clearance are in part animated by anxi­eties over the fixity of undesirable populations, rootlessness and vagrancy are just as much a concern. Vagrant bodies—­bodies out of place, that is—­represent a travesty of the property regime. The privilege of being able to stay put 76  |   ch ap te r 2

is, of course, tied to own­ership of immovable property and the rights and privileges that come with inalienability. In this sense, squatters’ demands to the right to both mobility and settlement—­a condition of being both out of place and in place—­profoundly undermined the normative arrangements of race and own­ership. “Historically, vagrancy has been outlawed all over the modern world (Foucault 1977; Humphreys 1999; Torpey 2000); as noted by numerous researchers on contemporary unsettled or uprooted social categories such as the homeless, refugees, or traveling ethnic groups, their spatial indeterminacy is inexorably associated with moral elusiveness and symbolic ­pollution in Douglas’ sense (Malkki 1992; Sibley 1995; Stephenson 2006)” (Höjdestrand 2009, 9). Marx had already noted the apprehension surrounding vagrants in his analy­sis of the En­glish poor laws of the sixteenth ­century, which essentially criminalized populations on the move (Marx 1990). ­After all, territorial transgression detaches ordinary p­ eople from the normative associations of work and home. In the 1970s, Crossroads residents ­were likewise condemned to living with impermanency—at once committed to staying put, then forced to take flight. Populating “the social margins of the centers of wealth” (Höjdestrand 2009, 29), they w ­ ere condemned for posing a threat not only to the white body politic but to a w ­ hole machinery of privilege in which securing shelter distinguished squatters from the movable property they ­were other­wise assumed to be. ­After June 1976, a period of relative calm followed. The Divisional Council persisted in policing the area, demolishing newly erected shacks and those belonging to h ­ ouse­holds in heavy arrears. By the beginning of 1978, however, the rate of de­mo­li­tions had increased, and several individuals brought proceedings in the Supreme Court seeking interdiction against the Divisional Council. Eventually an out-­of-­court settlement was reached, and a more “equitable policy . . . ​thrashed out allowing latitude for those who fell ­behind in payment of their monthly levies” (nusas n.d., 35). By ­later that year, however, the po­liti­cal climate was hardening, and in September the police launched “crime prevention” raids, which rounded up hundreds on statutory offenses, mostly passbook infractions. A second round of raids resulted in the shooting death of one area resident and the arrest of fifty ­others. In response, hundreds held a prayer vigil and w ­ ere subsequently detained ­under the Riotous Assemblies Act, no. 17 of 1956. It seemed this was the dawn of a new era—of both “reform and repression” (Cole 1987). Cou nte ri nsu rge ncy   |   77

“Reform and Repression”

The government shouldn’t be selective in deciding who should get rights. We are not visitors ­here. We ­haven’t even crossed the sea. We are all South Africans. —­Crossroads resident, 1985

If 1978 was a decisive year—­squatters built a second primary school (Sizamile) and launched a “Save Crossroads” campaign (a petition with 35,000 cosignatories)—1979 was one of uncertainty. Efforts to manage squatters increasingly turned on two approaches: concessions in exchange for cooperation and the use of force when concessions failed. In due course, a full-­ blown counterinsurgency strategy emerged as Crossroads’ defiance came to symbolize the failures of controlled urbanization, which forced officials to take decisive action. In the short term, Piet Koornhof, the Minister of Plural Relations and Development,36 was appointed to execute a plan to staunch the flow of illegal migration into the Cape. That such a responsibility should be assigned to a department largely concerned with homeland policy is noteworthy. The informal settlements w ­ ere not solely an urban prob­lem, of course; their continuity with the homelands and the capacity to control rural-­urban migration rested, in part, on the management of squatter settlements as extensions of the countryside. This, officials recognized all too well, built on a long-­standing tradition of linking antisquatting and influx control policies. Though illegal urbanization was a generalized phenomenon, Koornhof treated the Crossroads situation as if it ­were unique—­one instance of breakdown in the system of urban controls—­and requiring unusual or, in his words, ad hoc methods. He understood the larger prob­lem of urban influx, but he calculated that if these par­tic­u­lar squatters in this par­tic­u­lar camp ­were afforded special treatment, they might be distinguished from the larger prob­lem of illegal urbanization. More cynically, some of the squatters might even be convinced to work on behalf of the state. For the minister “the key to a constructive solution to the Crossroads prob­lem [lay] in the proper rehousing within the Peninsula, of the balance of the community”;37 that is, those with eligibility what­ever its basis: in Section 10(1)(a) or (b) rights38 or as contract workers, non-­contract workers in ­legal (if informal) employment, or “families who by reason of having been uprooted or through other circumstances deserve[d] special consider78  |   ch ap te r 2

ation with a view to avoiding hardship.”39 The latter w ­ ere extended temporary, renewable permits for as long as they remained gainfully employed and ­until such time as a comprehensive determination of their qualifications for permanent status could be made.40 In essence, the minister created a strategy reliant on the separation of “citizens and subjects.” Furthermore, beyond the boundaries of Crossroads and New Crossroads—­the aptly named new township, which would accommodate 2,575 homes (or so planners assumed)41—­the usual rigorous enforcement of influx controls would persist. The majority would be endorsed out of the Cape altogether and exiled in the Transkei and Ciskei. By late September 1979, Koornhof’s Deputy Minister, Dr. G. de V. Morrison, had expelled more than 3,500 families, roughly half of those from Crossroads.42 By the 1980s, the frequent declaration of settlements as “transit” camps enabled officials to ware­house squatters awaiting deportation. Some with eligibility might be extended temporary residence permits—­playing on the deepest vulnerabilities of families hoping to remain in the Cape long term—­ while o­ thers ­were summarily dispatched. Advocacy organizations w ­ ere quick to point out that antisquatting legislation and influx controls ­were ­really two sides of a single coin.43 The Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act (1951), amended in 1989, essentially complemented already well established influx control policies. As Kobus Pienaar of the L ­ egal Resources Centre (Port Elizabeth) observed, the legislation might just as easily be referred to as the “Emergency Land Control Act.”44 Indeed, “the degree to which influx control succeeded in stemming urban population growth must also be understood in relation to the Nationalists’ early antisquatting drive” (Posel 1997, 143). E. G. Jansen,45 the first Minister of Native Affairs beginning in 1948, had recognized that shantytowns w ­ ere “focal points of uncontrolled urbanisation.” He was, in fact, responsible for introducing the original 1951 antisquatter legislation, which authorized “the removal of ‘anyone who has entered an African location or village, or anyone who remains on land despite warning to depart’ ” (Posel 1997, 143). “Legals” who remained ­were duly accommodated in “site-­and-­service schemes” (essentially toilet and tap projects) while awaiting formal housing. Remarkably, post-­apartheid policy has since followed a very similar path, making use of site-­and-­service as a short-­to long-­term mea­sure in managing communities lacking proper homes. Still, for all the vari­ous ­legal mea­sures, reducing the black population of the Peninsula proved difficult. Most challenging was the enforcement of Cou nte ri nsu rge ncy   |   79

­ omen’s movements. “According to the official census data, the percentage w increase in the number of African females resident in the urban areas between 1951 and 1960 (59.59 per cent) exceeded the corresponding percentage increase for men (40.48 per cent)” (Posel 1997, 144). Notwithstanding migrational patterns generally, masculinity ratios in the Western Cape remained excessively high46 (see, e.g., Wilson and Mafeje 1963; also see Posel 1997, 146). These inevitably shifted as w ­ omen joined men in greater numbers, substantiating the degree to which Africans w ­ ere living “­under ­family conditions as de facto permanent residents” (Posel 1997, 144), what­ever the official line. The state would eventually turn to “covert and unorthodox actions,”47 which w ­ ere coordinated via a network of military, police, local authorities, and other structures that reached all the way up to the office of the state president, P. W. Botha. Borrowing from a Vietnam-­era counterinsurgency method known as “oilspot” strategy, the main focus was orderly urbanization and development, which necessarily targeted the informal settlements in par­tic­u­lar. In exchange for cooperation, local communities w ­ ere given incentives ranging from homes, bulk earthworks, standpipes, and other essential infrastructure. In testimony delivered to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1997, Ulrich Schelhase, former Crossroads Town Clerk, argued that “communities w ­ ere given preferential treatment for housing and schools.” He added that “the strategy was approved by former defense minister Magnus Malan, the then national security systems chairman Roelf Meyer and law and order Minister Adriaan Vlok at a briefing in 1986.”48 Crossroads was one of over thirty areas in which opposition called for stern intervention. Through local government restructuring and the co-­optation of grassroots leaders (see, e.g., Hansson 1990; also see Greenwell 2001), the reach of the state, as already noted, extended as far as the state president’s office. We might consider for a moment the consequences: in practical terms, the executive functions of civil government had been handed over to the military consistent with a progressively paranoid police state. L ­ ittle escaped the scrutiny of the security apparatus, not least the highly sinister National Security Management System (nsms), which was established in 1983.49 Any and all state projects, even those in collaboration with the private sector, ­were overseen or infiltrated by institutions of security. Development projects, including those lying within an area that came to be known as “Crossroads and Its Environs,”50 ­were directly overseen by the nsms. 80  |   ch ap te r 2

When the Department of Plural Relations began its survey of ­house­holds ­ nder Koornhof’s direction, a ­whole machinery of population monitoring, u counting, and surveillance was set in motion. In the first instance, applicants had to be bona fide Crossroads residents prior to December 31, 1978. Knowledge of f­amily composition, public health, and length of sojourn in the city was also required, and this information was used to identify those eligible for urban rights. The survey asked where and when squatters ­were born, their education levels, their occupations, employers, income, ­family size, and permit status, ­whether they belonged to local churches and social or sports clubs, ­whether they sought formal housing or w ­ ere content to live as lodgers in the backyards of o­ thers. Those who satisfied the vari­ous criteria ­were granted temporary residency permits (of three to six months), while those who could afford it w ­ ere relocated to the township of New Crossroads. Interviewers went from h ­ ouse to ­house, and once the survey was completed, each structure had a number painted on it to indicate the completion of the survey. Echoing Foucault’s account of the early biopo­ liti­cal state, squatters w ­ ere forced to submit to new forms of “surveillance based on a system of permanent registration” (Foucault 1995, 196). Already in May 1977, in a letter addressed to the Black Sash, Athlone Office, concerning the reduction of levies, attorneys representing Crossroads squatters had listed regulations consistent with the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act of 1951 (amended in 1989). The local authority (the Division) was responsible for ensuring that at the level of population squatters w ­ ere counted and accounted for. The Division must number each structure, paint or write the number thereon and keep the numbers in a legible condition. The head of each h ­ ouse­hold must pay r10 per month to the Division “in connection with any ser­vices provided by the Council (i.e. the Division) in terms of these regulations.” The Division’s Medical Officer of Health or Health Inspector shall report every January and July in regard to the health and sanitary conditions in the area.51 The 1979 survey inevitably divided the Crossroads cause: “offering an ‘ad hoc’ solution to one community and not to the millions of other ‘illegal’ blacks [meant] dividing the Crossroads strug­gle from the broader one” (Cole 1987, 37). Should residents stand together ­under threat of a compromise Cou nte ri nsu rge ncy   |   81

that would spell the “repatriation” of as many as 12,000 to the Eastern Cape? In a memorandum circulated to the committee appointed to oversee the move to New Crossroads, P. S. Pietersen, liaison officer for Crossroads, advised that “financial assistance would be given to any resident who wishes to forward hut material by rail to their places of origin,”52 implying that urban blacks belonged in the homelands and denying the deeply urban roots of many. Gender, Generation, and Conflict

Noluthando Mafilika, who lived in Crossroads during the enumeration pro­ cess, detailed the ways in which the state had engineered discord in the settlement, which eventually led to armed conflict. Her analy­sis of the strategies of divide and rule adopted by the apartheid state and quickly transmitted to those in local power, namely Johnson Ngxobongwana and the other headmen, showed keen insight into the workings of pro­cesses styled on indirect rule, referencing at one and the same time practices of ethnic distinction and their carryover into the arena of urban politics. Crossroads is a good example for the entire Western Cape for division . . . ​ done by the state. If we go back in history during the times of the great kings (Zulu, Xhosa) whites came in and saw that p­ eople ­were much more connected by their culture. . . . ​[P]eople in Old Crossroads ­were much more united before, but the [apartheid government] intervened and they built a New Crossroads. The state tried to communicate with those residents that those staying in shacks in Old Crossroads ­were inferior; that those p­ eople in Crossroads “had minds as rusty as their shacks.” This is also why the state spoke to the headmen and used them to push state policies through bribes.53 As officials began the task of determining residential eligibility, within Crossroads the leadership began its own pro­cess of sorting wheat from chaff. ­Women ­were barred from active membership on the Executive Committee, while their work with the Black Sash was discouraged. From early on, ­women had been in the forefront of struggles to gain access to rights to the city, first on an individual basis and then in time as a group seeking advice and l­egal defense through the Black Sash and the lawyers with whom they worked. As chair of the Crossroads W ­ omen’s Committee, Mama 82  |   ch ap te r 2

Yanta played a particularly critical role devising a set of standard operating procedures for protecting “illegals” against shack de­mo­li­tions and deportations. She and one Mrs. Lutango worked systematically to advocate for ­women, traveling to the advice office in Mowbray and meeting with lawyers in nearby Rondebosch (Benson 2009). “Masculinities and femininities are always forged in relation to one ­another” (Hunter 2010, 51), and in Crossroads, the emergence of a “traditionalist” leadership depended on the dissolution of a feminine base—­that “gender” work referred to in chapter 1. Gender lines hardened most blatantly in matters of local governance, as two separate men’s committees ­were conjoined and w ­ omen’s membership was effectively barred. These realignments coincided with the opening of New Crossroads in 1980, which offered some squatters a way into formal housing. Masculine power and authority was thus specifically articulated through control of land and lots—­ what might be called “rentierism in the masculine mode”—­against the backdrop of a growing and desperate need for shelter that placed ordinary ­people in the most precarious of positions in relation to both state officials and emerging male hardliners (see, e.g., de Certeau 1988). Yet despite male opposition to ­women’s or­ga­niz­ing and the disbanding of the early Crossroads W ­ omen’s Committee, w ­ omen continued to represent the rights and interests of squatter residents. Interestingly, their characterization differed from the notion of an activist or or­ga­nizer. They regarded themselves instead as “ ‘Committee ­women,’ as ‘leaders’ or ‘at the front’ ” (Benson 2009, 37), which suggests a fair degree of consciousness of their chosen and distinct course from that of o­ thers, including the comrades (youth aligned with the liberation movement), and as a group set apart from the Executive and its work of overseeing Koornhof’s socioeconomic survey.54 Meanwhile, the reor­ga­ni­za­tion of the Crossroads committee involved the appointment of Johnson Ngxobongwana, soon to be elected “mayor” of Crossroads,55 as chair and of Sam Ndima as his deputy. These w ­ ere extraordinary times, and as I argued in the prologue, young men, duly affected by their involvement in grassroots politics, became emboldened to speak back to traditional forms of authority and to do away with older generational hierarchies, just as young men (and young w ­ omen) took the lead in street politics. In d­ oing so, they articulated new forms of subjectivity detached from the immediate associations of kin. In the strug­ gle for shelter, ­women had served as the advanced guard in the squatter Cou nte ri nsu rge ncy   |   83

settlements, and very often their activism led to confrontation with the authorities. To be sure, such reversals are generally followed by the reaffirmation of prior social norms (Bakhtin 1968). ­Women’s vanguardist role—­their critical contributions to the founding of Crossroads—­was denied in due course. Young men, for their part, tended to reassert their authority, dictating not only to parents what they could or could not do but also to wives and partners, which in turn deepened preexisting patriarchal relations. “Strug­ gle masculinity” (Glaser 2000; cf. Bundy 1987) was threatening and led, at times, to physical vio­lence. Justified in terms of the pro­ject of liberation, “strug­gle masculinity” was necessary, critical even, to the very essence of protest politics. But gender and generational discord w ­ ere nothing new. The mi­grant ­labor system, the increased autonomy of ­women ­after the war, and in the 1980s, shifts in the structure of work and politics “reconfigured expectations, emotions, dreams and intimate relations that for generations had been profoundly ­shaped by the joint but contested pro­ject” of making a home (Hunter 2010, 86; cf. Mayer 1963; Wilson and Mafeje 1963).56 To be clear, this domestic pro­ject looked ­different in ­different parts of South Africa. As I proposed earlier, the forces or­ga­niz­ing work, migration, and ­family ­were quite distinctive in the Western Cape (cf. Bank 2011). Mark Hunter likewise acknowledges the changing outlines of intimate life in Mandeni (located midway between Durban and Richards Bay) in the 1970s and 1980s and the emergence of increasing numbers of ­women-­headed ­house­holds, representing a demographic shift that was partly motivated by heightened male unemployment. Yet black work opportunities in the Cape ­were actually on the rise through the early 1970s, which encouraged ­women to join men in the city. Where such differing accounts (Hunter’s and my own) find congruence, however, is in the following de­cade, as a now familiar pattern of single, female-­headed domestic units and a “growing number of one-­or two-­occupant” ­house­holds took hold in many urban contexts (Hunter 2010, 86). What Hunter has called “provider love”—­forged in the trenches of mining and manufacturing work through the early 1970s—­was on the wane by the time of the Crossroads survey. “Enmeshed in a set of profoundly im­por­tant gender expectations that came to hinge on men’s rapidly growing dependence on wage ­labor” (Hunter 2010, 16), such expectations ­were already being reordered in the context of struggles over shelter and the 84  |   ch ap te r 2

right to the city. It is worth considering that amid the turmoil of the early 1980s, the very foundation of a prior masculinity crumbled precisely in tandem with the emergence of a younger masculine power that was defined through street politics. Further, if the conceit of men’s work was steadily coming undone, the centrality of ­women migrants’ contributions to informal settlement life made the city limits a space of growing gender tension and contradiction that would have specific consequences for the pro­ject of making domesticity. By this mea­sure, Sam Ndima’s early account of the settlement might be somewhat rescripted. We may recall that he had reckoned settling and building a home in Crossroads as an accommodation to his wife, who feared deportation to the Eastern Cape. Ndima argued that Crossroads afforded them the possibility of living together ­under one roof. I moved there because my wife came and because I did have a pass and she didn’t have one and she was not included and this time I came back from work, I would find her arrested. Then I deci­ded I must go to an informal settlement for her sake.57 ­ omen’s self-­representation would force us to draw somewhat d­ ifferent W conclusions however. Naledi Noquiet (see chapter 1) arrived in the city not only to join her husband but also to enter the wage economy (as a domestic), just as many of her ­women friends and neighbors did before her. ­Others, including Xoliswa Kolisi, became po­liti­cally active, or­ga­niz­ing against frequent pass raids and, with the support of the Black Sash, securing bail and ­legal repre­sen­ta­tion for arrestees. ­Women in Crossroads ­were wont to observe that they w ­ ere pioneers in the formation of the settlement: “It was the ­women who created Crossroads. When the pot was cooked, the men came to dish it up. They do not know from where the fire came and therefore cannot rekindle it” (Reynolds 1989, 97). The most prominent, self-­appointed female activists ­were surely the members of Imfuduso (The Exodus)—­a group or­ga­nized in strug­gle against the pass laws and its restrictions and, at the same time, members of the theatrical production of the same name that eventually toured South Africa (see figure 2.1). Tracing the story of one w ­ oman’s experience of exile to the Transkei, the play, as Geoffrey Davis has argued, depended on the shared knowledge of pass law oppression and re­sis­tance as the very raison d’être of the play as a response (Davis 2003, 64). Cou nte ri nsu rge ncy   |   85

FIGURE 2.1  ​Cast of Imfuduso. Courtesy of Josette Cole.

Kinship is always mutable, of course. Yet to the degree to which apartheid manipulated ­family to conform to a specific po­liti­cal economy, ­family became a privileged site of strug­gle for those fighting to maintain their hold on the city. It follows that po­liti­cal alignments and loyalties ­were expressed in gender and intergenerational terms. Adhering to “traditional” ways and modes of “rural consciousness,” parents took issue with their increasingly vocal children, who decried their refusal to engage the strug­gle. Likewise, patriarchal authority ran up against youth-­organized ­people’s courts and other parallel institutions that challenged apartheid and, equally, the day-­to-­day routines of township and settlement life. Intergenerational strains played out in such a way that parental authority was pitted against the radicalism of children, which in time led to a backlash on the part of so-­ called elders and fathers, other terms for the headmen and their followers, who went on to collaborate with the state. Historical motivation is hard to understand, and my aim is less to pinpoint a par­tic­u­lar set of incentives for migration than to highlight the multiple and very often competing desires that brought w ­ omen (and men) to 86  |   ch ap te r 2

the city. Wage ­labor, as I argued in chapter 1, both compelled and impelled men and ­women to leave rural South Africa, which in turn contributed to the conditions of destitution in the countryside that motivated o­ thers to flee. The poetic logic of the Blue Notes’ “eBenoni” seemed to imply the desire to leave domestic troubles ­behind and the possibility that those troubles might have been instigated by the very system of mobility that induced the protagonist to abandon the countryside in the first place. Such supplementarities further complicate how we might think about the motivations and imperatives of migration. They might equally complicate how we think about domesticity as a prized aim of urban settlement. Ngxobongwana’s “State within a State”

The headmen eventually took to “selling” plots. They collected “taxes” (tribute), which paid for “community cars,”58 Ngxobongwana’s salary, and the salaries of other so-­called officials, as well as the bail and l­ egal costs that came with pass raids and arrests (Cole 1987, 87). Rents ­were hiked, too, and many squatters, with l­ittle more than beds or tents to sleep in, remained both homeless and hostage to bribes. “Residents alleged that the ‘bed ­people’ paid r10 for the right to occupy land in Old Crossroads (see figure 2.2). It was not surprising that the population . . . ​was permitted to grow in leaps and bounds” (Cole 1987, 87). Max Sokhetye, a former Cape Youth Congress (cayco) activist, remembered the outrage over the headmen’s “fund-­ raising” activities. It was like “bleeding a stone,” as headmen routinely collected small donations from squatter ­house­holds and at times “as much as r50 for bail.” Comrades w ­ ere invested in the larger pro­ject of liberation, not simply the local politics of squatting. “We’re not only fighting for a portion of the vine, but the ­whole vine including the roots and its fruits,” they argued.59 The situation worsened with time. Oscar Mpetha, a well-­known ­labor ­union or­ga­nizer and United Demo­cratic Front (udf) copresident, would publicly denounce Ngxobongwana. The chairman of the Executive Committee had previously tried to help squatters, working with officials to secure passbooks and temporary permits, and as chairman of the Western Cape Civic Association (wcca), a udf affiliate, he had advanced a progressive agenda. But in 1985, Ngxobongwana was arrested and subsequently disappeared in detention. He was ostensibly held on charges of participating in an “illegal gathering.” Upon his release, he seemed quite “changed,” Max Cou nte ri nsu rge ncy   |   87

FIGURE 2.2  ​Beds in Old Crossroads. Courtesy of Josette Cole.

recalled, and Mpetha and o­ thers could only conclude that Ngxobongwana had sold out to the state.60 Evelyn had arrived in Crossroads ­after the December 1978 deadline. Because she lacked a pass, she was considered an imbhacu, a refugee. Imbhacu is a foundational concept. It not only signifies varying forms of exclusion; it relies on an intentional conflation of a right to the city with the right of citizenship, of passbooks and passports. “Notably it (imbhacu) transcends traditional interpretations of exile by positing that the prohibitive restrictions imposed on black South Africans amounted to exile of a special type. Hence the figure of the mi­grant worker, an ‘alien’ in his or her own land, looms large. . . .”61 Further, ezimbhacwani (the place for those without claims to home or citizenship) also specifies those spaces to which p­ eople ­were cast out on the very limits of the city—­unserviced sites without formal housing or amenities of any sort. Again, the continuity between making home and claiming citizenship is quite explicit.62 “I attended meetings,” Evelyn recalls, where the ­matter of refugees or iiMbhacu [plural form] was discussed. You see, in 1976 a­ fter the Soweto uprising, some p­ eople left the country and became refugees. L ­ ater, the term was adopted to refer to internally

88  |   ch ap te r 2

displaced ­people, including squatters who arrived in settlements ­after about 1975. Then when the Cape Provincial Administration (cpa) built and allocated brick ­houses and enumerated residents of the shack areas, those p­ eople who arrived a­ fter that pro­cess was completed found themselves without a place to live and without a documentary rec­ord of who they ­were and so they came to be understood as iiMbhacu. Even I was considered a refugee, in Old Crossroads that is, because I only arrived in 1979 ­after Koornhof’s deadline. In one of the meetings we discussed a way of collecting money amongst ourselves in order to buy paint in sufficient quantities that the local officials, ­really, the leadership [the Executive Committee], could come to each and every h ­ ouse and mark it with a number. In other words we ­were asking to be considered ­legal even if we ­were not. You see originally, I was a lodger in Section IV, but then the p­ eople with whom I was staying left to s­ ettle in New Crossroads, and I didn’t have materials to build my own shack, so I moved to Section II and lodged there instead. At that time the leadership acknowledged the presence of iiMbhacu and so I was allowed to build a makeshift structure, which was the best I could do. You know, we w ­ ere staying in between other, larger, formally enumerated shacks—in the backyards, in very small pondokkies [Afrikaans for a shack or hovel], even in tents erected on a frame of tree branches and draped with plastic sheeting or tarpaulin or what­ ever we could find. Eventually we ­were also given numbers. You ask me how and from whom I got a number—­I had to buy it! It was given to me by the izibonda, the leadership. I’m not quite sure w ­ hether it was a “real” number, nevertheless we ­were charged for them in the form of additional rent. Maybe Ngxobongwana was given permission to hand out numbers by the Divisional Council; I ­really don’t know. We didn’t ask such questions. You see Ngxobongwana r­eally built a “state within a state” in Old Crossroads. There was a parliament of Crossroads, and that parliament so to speak was called the “white ­house.” It backed onto Klipfontein Road, just across from the colored area, in Section I. There was an old man, with a hunchback, who worked in the white ­house; even ­today he works in the old Nyanga Home Affairs building. Now I realize that most legally enumerated residents of Crossroads paid rent in the Home Affairs office, and their rent was r7.50, and mine was r11.50, but I ­wasn’t ­going to Cou nte ri nsu rge ncy   |   89

FIGURE 2.3  ​Rent receipt from Old Crossroads. Courtesy of Anne-­Maria Makhulu.

dispute ­either the amount or where I paid it for fear of losing rights in Crossroads altogether. [see figure 2.3] Conclusion

Mimicking “security of title” (Holston 2008, 123), enumeration in both its formal and informal guise projected a sense of entitlement to land. ­Little won­der that the numbers of lodgers, both individuals and families living in ­others’ backyards, increased exponentially during the 1980s. Crossroads had become an urban gateway, and struggles over land, lots, and ­labor became priorities over and above the orderly day-­to-­day ­running of the settlement. Lodgers w ­ ere a particularly vulnerable group, and when New Crossroads’ first phase was completed and squatters with claims to stands moved into formal housing in the new township, many ­others ­were left ­behind in backyards. Officials ­were instructed to clear stands of remaining shacks. Those who stayed found themselves in a very real predicament: they lacked proper accommodation and permits. By 1983, “there ­were hundreds of homeless ­people ‘squatting’ in Old Crossroads” (Cole 1987, 85), and most owned ­little more than a sleeping pallet. The resettlement pro­cess quickly broke down, too. Phase 1 happened less section by section, as had been dictated by the Ministry of Cooperation and Development, than on a discretionary basis. Residents of nearby townships and squatter areas took over a number of homes in New Crossroads, as did lodgers who had never been a part of the original survey. In the minutes of a meeting held with the Cape Town Community Council in July 1982, Councillor Lubelwana contended that some lodgers had been prioritized over and above long-­term community residents, who w ­ ere only now being placed on the official waiting list. P ­ eople from Crossroads had been given ­until June 4, 1982, to occupy assigned homes in the new development, ­after which time remaining ­houses ­were offered to residents of ktc, Gugulethu, Nyanga, and Langa. Koornhof had also encouraged Johnson Ngxobongwana to move to New Crossroads by the date indicated and henceforth “to refrain from any intimidatory activity.”63 Presumably, this referred to both his manipulation of waiting lists and the original survey. But the minister’s instructions w ­ ere ignored, and by July, “lodgers w ­ ere being allocated ­houses and the residents of Crossroads ­were not being moved section by section,” Councillor Lubelwana informed the Community Council. Cou nte r insu rge ncy   |   91

The situation was “heartbreaking,” he said, and he went on to argue “that Cape Town was for mi­grant labourers and not for ­legal ­people.”64 Lubelwana’s position was not, however, very d­ ifferent from that of the headmen, who held to the notion of controlled urbanization but only to the degree that such policies advanced their search for profit through rents. Beyond their accumulationist strategies—­headmen sought capital, constituents, and territory (rentierism in the masculine mode)—­urban expansion itself continued more or less relentlessly. The city limits ­were increasingly accessible: through migration, through relocation from township to squatter camp, through lodging, and even through negotiation with the izibonda, as well as through bribes and rent payments and through a complex tussle involving both those fighting for freedom and those intent on placing impediments in freedom’s path. Encompassing material and immaterial struggles—­struggles over land and the regime’s anticipated end—­these turf wars brought into sharp focus the paradoxes of apartheid. Though the informal settlements may have appeared marginal to the larger pro­ject of undoing the regime, in congealing its foundational premises and contradictions—­its racist prescriptions and denials of basic rights to place—­the camps participated in the system’s undoing. As such, headmen, comrades, ­women activists, and ­others, together if in tension, brought on apartheid’s demise. Securing daily, hourly victories in the bid for stands and shacks, land and lots, squatters eluded state prescriptions and disciplinary strategies, laying the groundwork for democracy. They ­were, in effect, “making freedom.” “Spatial practices,” de Certeau tells us, “secretly structure the determining conditions of social life” (1988, 96); they likewise determine the conditions ­under which institutions of control may emerge or disintegrate. Thus, although the headmen w ­ ere power­ful, often destructive, and ultimately murderous (as the conflicts of the next de­cade would show), they operated at the same time with those forces of liberation that set in motion a pro­cess of expansion on the city limits from which many made claims to citizenship. Culture, in the sense of culture in contest or hegemony, was refined, reworked, and worked out in the pro­cess of encounter between squatters and the state, between traditionalists and nontraditionalists, and between pro-­and anti-­apartheid actors. When we first read of Sam Ndima in the opening pages of the introduction, I proposed that he had unwittingly changed the course of history. What started as a small camp offering safe haven, u ­ nder cover of heavy 92  |   ch ap te r 2

bush, to a handful of squatters had grown by late 1979 and early 1980 into a dense complex of several tens of thousands, where successful demands had brought ­water taps and refuse removal ser­vices as well as a degree of recognition by the Divisional Council and Bantu Affairs Administration Board. Despite poor drainage and a tendency to flooding during the winter rainy season, the squatter population on the Cape Flats continued to increase. Corrugated iron shanties and individual stands ­were built closer together; narrow walkways offered access to homes several shacks deep in the m ­ iddle of a block, while at strategic points larger thoroughfares marked out the separation between sections. Echoing Appadurai’s concept of “deep democracy” and the role of the urban poor in mediating structural contradictions in the bid for citizenship, the informal settlement had become nothing short of a “pass” on the homeland system (Appadurai 2002, 25).

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chapter 3

Transitions

The obstinate multitude yields last; ­others vacillate endlessly. —­Apocryphal (early modern)

This chapter sets the stage for South Africa’s first demo­cratic elections. In the de­cade leading up to 1994, the regime turned increasingly to the use of vio­lence, rolling out several states of emergency in 1985 and 1986 and detaining tens of thousands. On the face of it, this was a period of deepening repression, but the state made certain concessions, too—­through the transfer of titles to black tenants and the de facto “graying” (racial integration) of some urban neighborhoods. Influx controls (see chapter 1) ­were struck in 1986, and with their removal African in-­migration to cities pushed demand for housing. Yet most attempts to accommodate African p­ eople in the city came in the form of site-­and-­service, which confined blacks on the city limits and only reinscribed older patterns of exclusion. The Urban Foundation (uf) delivered many of the schemes and, in so ­doing, prefigured the early post-­apartheid Reconstruction and Development Programme, which through the late 1990s persisted in building low-­cost, low-­quality housing in former Group Areas (Hamill 1998, 84; also see Marks 1998; Ward 1998).1 With demo­cratization, spatial planning paradigms shifted to incorporate new values of inclusion, equality, and integration. But the ideal of a just city was marred by technical and po­liti­cal problems and remained more a vision

than a reality in a moment now famously described by the ­legal scholar Etienne Mureinik as a shift from “a culture of authority” to “a culture of justification” (1994, 32). The immediate posttransition moment seemed haunted by a near past and the close proximity of history only replicated and intensified existing social in­e­qual­ity (Arrighi 1994; cf. Baucom 2005, 22–28; also see Benjamin 1999). The state’s new emphasis on liberalization (less so liberation) fueled hostilities t­oward squatters, a constituency perceived as somehow antithetical to values of private property and, therefore, a threat to a w ­ hole social order built on relations of contract. Pro-­market policies such as the Growth, Employment and Re­distribution (gear) macroeconomic strategy, “willing seller, willing buyer” agreements in land reform, and a generally anti-­poor social climate steadily chipped away at the promised benefits of demo­cratization, including adequate housing. Before I address the place of history in the pre­sent, I begin by turning again to the near past, the mid-­to late 1980s, when the city limits and the country as a ­whole faced a period of heightened strug­gle. |  |  |  |  |

Launched in Mitchell’s Plain (Cape Town) in 1983, the United Demo­cratic Front (udf) was founded in response to the planned formation of a Tricameral Parliament, an exclusionary legislature representing whites, coloreds, and Indians that came to stand for a general and significant shift in a broadly oppositional politics. As a nonracial co­ali­tion encompassing civic, student, religious, and other organizations, the udf represented over 700 affiliates at its height in 1987. The liberation strug­gle was intensifying, and there was a palpable sense of urgency, from the grassroots to the highest levels of or­ga­ nized opposition. Young ­people, “young lions” (comrades), took to the streets in increasing numbers, and while their methods ­were varied and not always terribly well coordinated, their energies ­were indispensable. They engaged mostly in a low-­intensity war: manning barricades, attending mass funerals and public rallies, and or­ga­niz­ing consumer and rent boycotts. “­People’s courts” set up by the comrades adjudicated local, community disputes—­ cases of petty thievery and domestic vio­lence—as well as highly politicized “­trials” of alleged in­for­mants, or askaris.2 Squatters in Crossroads involved themselves in both efforts at preserving the camp and pop­u­lar protests—­ “higher-­order” activities in the push for apartheid’s collapse.3 96  |   ch ap te r 3

In practical terms, the form in which a national movement for liberation took shape on the ground in Cape Town’s squatter areas was already informed by local events, less so by some overarching national-­level agenda. Even in Crossroads, which given its status as an in­de­pen­dent municipality ­after 19874 was to some degree isolated from broader anti-­apartheid efforts, po­liti­cal activities remained closely linked to the larger strug­gle. Squatters, for instance, attended po­liti­cal meetings in the neighboring townships of Nyanga and Gugulethu, while anc comrades came to Crossroads to hide from the authorities. At the same time, internal differences (between “fathers,” “elders,” big men, and “youth”) highlighted the concrete and immediate problems of access to land and housing as those felt grievances around which p­ eople could—­and did—­organize. In making concrete the abstract values of justice, equity, and “non-­racialism,” such grievances gave direction to an array of possi­ble responses. In any case, to assume there was a singular “black experience” derived from universal conditions of oppression would be to ignore the unevenness of apartheid (and the system’s inefficiencies), as well as its tendency to differentiate not only on the basis of complexion but also on the grounds of ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and geography.5 My broader point is that squatters w ­ ere not simply squatters; they ­were ­unionists and members of banned organizations, and their activism operated through preexisting institutions. At the same time, they ­were as likely to set up their own organizations, which redrew the pa­ram­e­ters of a national liberation strug­gle by scaling down its aims and objectives. Crossroads Youth Brigade, for instance, served a similar function to that of the Cape Youth Congress (cayco): resolving common local disagreements—­ marital disputes, problems between neighbors, and so on—­through a relatively effective system of pop­u­lar justice (Schärf and Ngcokoto 1990) in the absence of proper policing (cf. Steinberg 2008). Beyond Crossroads, however, the Youth Brigade was viewed with suspicion; neither the udf nor cayco would endorse it, presumably for fear of interference by the headmen. What­ever their or­gan­i­za­tional affiliations, with cayco or smaller local bodies, young p­ eople stood in the forefront of day-­to-­day conflicts partly because young ­people are generally more willing to take on heightened levels of risk (Bundy 1987; Niehaus 1998; Seekings 1993). Already categorically singled out as “youth,” particularly a­ fter the 1976 Soweto uprising, on the Cape Flats young activists ­were cast in opposition to so-­called traditionalists. Tr a nsitions   |   97

Gugulethu Sokothi, a regular fixture at community meetings and pop­u­lar with local ­people, was highly active in Crossroads and other townships as a teen in the 1980s. His efforts involved conscientizing school students. In the late 1990s, fully a de­cade and a half ­after the events in question, he recalled both the sense of urgency in or­ga­niz­ing young ­people and its difficulties, particularly in the informal settlements. He told me that the state made a point of stressing the differences between rural ­people and urban, educated ­people, largely by labeling squatter areas as places akin to farmland, backward even, which made it “impossible for those living in shacks, on one hand, and brick homes, on the other, to share the same broader set of po­liti­cal interests in liberation.”6 As comrades built alliances with squatters, headmen came to regard the young freedom fighters as threats. Here, Chatterjee’s notion of the essential “rule of colonial difference” extended to generation (Chatterjee 1993, 18–25). This had not always been the case. A de­cade earlier squatters and their leaders had worked together to create a community on the fringes, experimenting with forms of self-­organ­ization that at least gestured at a model of democracy as it “might be.” This prefigurative politics proved unsustainable. By the 1980s, community building had given way to dissension and armed conflict (Makhulu 2003). In turn, grassroots struggles ­were overtaken by larger events, as Crossroads and surrounding communities became a battleground in South Africa’s revolutionary and counterrevolutionary war. By the end of the de­cade, vast swaths of the squatter camp lay vacant, the outcome of a terrifying campaign of arson that left shacks burned to the ground and their occupants without shelter. Several such operations that seemed to arise from local tensions, specifically between young radicals and the headmen, on closer examination amounted to a state-­engineered removal. The pro­cess of informalization, as a pro­cess of producing new social spaces, had become inevitably agonistic (Calhoun and McGowan 1997, 10). Despite the Crossroads “burnout” (to which I return below), efforts to reduce the squatter population in the Cape Peninsula failed, largely because a great number fled to other parts of the city, most notably Brown’s Farm and Nyanga and other vacant lots scattered across the Flats, rather than travel back to rural South Africa. The townships and settlements to which many fled ­were mostly receptive: community activists secured temporary accommodation for evictees, arranged public protests against forced removals, and secured additional aid, shelter, and even h ­ uman rights monitoring through 98  |   ch ap te r 3

local ngos.7 All in all, however, the movement of populations across greater metropolitan Cape Town resulted in a consolidation of unwanted and surplus Xhosa-­speaking communities. “Density has its consequences—­and for a colonial regime, its dangers” (Cooper 2002, 34). African p­ eople in the city had been driven, to “flight” and “inhabitation” (Moten 2008, 1745), which ­shaped shared, if varied, experiences of oppression that now served as a catalyst for growing opposition. Development

In chapter 2, I touched briefly on the security state’s involvement in development. Winning hearts and minds depended largely on wagering po­liti­ cal compromises in exchange for ordinary material resources. And in Cape Town, particularly on the Flats, the need for basic infrastructure was acute, most of all pipes and retention ponds to address problems of waterlogging and poor drainage. At the forefront of such efforts was the Urban Foundation (uf). Established in the wake of the 1976 Soweto uprising, the uf ostensibly set out to improve the quality of black life in the areas of health, education, housing, and welfare. It brought together both English-­and Afrikaans-­speaking members of the business sector, as well as African business ­people ­under the aegis of “Anglo-­American’s Harry Oppenheimer as chairperson, and the doyen of Afrikaans business, Anton Rupert, as deputy” (Smit 1992, 36). W ­ hether the membership was aware of it or not, its task was to work to deliver the development projects that the security state sought to use as a proverbial carrot in winning over opposition. The uf went on to deliver homes, bulk earthworks, and standpipes, relying on the professional expertise of its membership in the areas of civil engineering and planning as well as in the raising of capital, while the security apparatus deployed these in their war of counterinsurgency.8 The foundation’s initial task was to convince companies registered on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange to donate 2 ­percent of their posttax income (Hill 1983). Representing a spectrum of po­liti­cal opinion, the foundation was nevertheless essentially reformist and ventured very l­ittle to stake any kind of radical claim against the state. Instead, it promoted f­ ree enterprise as a way to extend equal opportunity to all racial groups.9 Any attempts at transformation w ­ ere effected through legislative and institutional channels Tr ansitions   |   99

rather than po­liti­cal ones, while ­actual development work focused on “avoiding ‘hand-­outs’ and instead promoting self-­sustaining enablement” (Smit 1992, 36). Housing was central to both the foundation’s reformist pro­ject and a series of state reforms that came into play during the 1980s. By the early 1990s, township municipalities across South Africa had reintroduced rights of ninety-­nine-­year-­leasehold (banks also wrote 200,000 mortgages for township homes during the same period), and many tenants saw housing deeds transferred to them. Such transfers ­were motivated by a desire to unburden overhead costs—­the economy went into recession between 1989 and 1993—­more so than by some moral imperative to make blacks homeowners.10 Previously, the uf had argued quite volubly for the abolition of influx controls—­again, less out of a sense of altruism than a commitment to aligning the interests of mono­poly capital with those of black migrants who, to all intents and purposes, had long been settled in South Africa’s cities. To this end, the uf advocated a new “positive urbanisation” strategy. One consequence was that it took on a significant role in the delivery of low-­income housing, including site-­and-­service schemes, schemes that provided plots and infrastructure in the absence of bricks and mortar. The driving princi­ ple was that government, ngos, and the private sector should serve as “enablers” of development rather than “providers.”11 The uf had a spectrum of opinion, ranging from business interests of a conventional sort to more radical thinkers. Nevertheless, there was agreement amongst most that the business sector had a part to play in bringing about change in South Africa and not merely defending its own interests and ensuring a place at the t­able should a new order emerge in the ­future. And development was the mechanism by which the uf imagined it could accomplish such ends.12 In an Urban Foundation internal memo circulated in July 1980, directors outlined a preliminary proposal to establish a housing utility com­pany (hutco) in order to finance f­ uture housing provision in Crossroads. Though these plans are not particularly surprising in and of themselves, the specific language of the proposal is striking in its ­free-­market aspirations. Private sector concerns such as tenant nonpayment and fiscal discipline preoccupy hutco’s mission, even as the provision of housing was intended to improve the conditions of black life and interrupt a long historical pro­cess of dispos100  |   ch ap te r 3

session. “The objectives for which the com­pany is formed is [sic] to alleviate the considerable backlog in Black housing, create a limited ­free market situation, and to create a mechanism by which financial security can be extended to Black citizens.” The memo goes on to list a series of “operating principles” that would encourage pride of own­ership and fiscal responsibility. Evidently, the Urban Foundation and its business partners equated citizenship with home own­ership and tenancy.13 There are im­por­tant implications here—­not only for the late 1980s and early 1990s but also for the transition and posttransition periods. The uf remained steadfast in its commitment to mobilizing active private sector support, while advocating neither a pro-­poor nor a poverty-­eradication program. One way to align ­free enterprise with community development, according to the foundation, was to recast informal settlements as the very solution to the problems of apartheid urbanism. Informal settlements, like Crossroads, offered the “potential beginnings of a constructive resolution to the serious contradiction in South Africa’s urbanisation pro­cess and its rural-­urban policies” (Schlemmer 1985, ­168). Site-­and-­service, by this mea­sure, was essentially a formalization of practices of informal land use, which fell precisely in line with principles of self-­enablement. The uf’s “monetarist disposition” thus relieved “the state of its responsibility to provide for the poor” (Smit 1992, 37; cf. Bond 1991), devolving that very same responsibility onto local communities (see, e.g., Davis 2006). Such a distinct and limited developmental path inevitably lowered squatters’ expectations and forced them to accommodate a far less ambitious course, a course that has been pursued on the other side of the transition, as evidenced by the inadequate delivery of housing. While endorsing such minor physical improvements in black living conditions, the apartheid regime also fought aggressively to reduce urban influx (Cole 1987; Lester 1998). This was primarily achieved through a strategy of “deconcentration” in urban areas and an intensification of border industries, essentially manufacturing zones located within the Republic of South Africa but situated very proximately to the homelands. Coupled with the redrawing of homeland boundaries, “industrial decentralization” created a new black “commuter” class (Lelyveld 1986). Mi­grant workers, for instance, might live in KwaZulu but travel daily into the republic for work. The state offered investors exemptions and tax concessions and built large townships “on patches of bantustan land adjacent to growth points” (Hart Tr ansitions   |   101

2002, 136). Deconcentration, a pro­cess well u ­ nder way since the 1960s, was nonetheless never a terribly effective strategy in keeping black mi­grant workers outside the republic. A mere 20 ­percent of South African manufacturing, for instance, operated at the borders by the 1980s.14 Increasing numbers of arrests, detentions, and deportations of activists and illegals spoke of the growing strength of the liberation organizations and their work in creating a climate of “ungovernability” (following Oliver Tambo’s famous call to ordinary South Africans, July 22, 1985, on Radio Freedom). Events also spoke of the waning ability of the state—­despite its best efforts—to control black urbanization. A state of emergency was d­ eclared in 1985, which covered the Eastern Cape and Pretoria-­Witwatersrand-­ Vereeniging region (the pwv) and, ­later that year, was extended to the Western Cape (cf. Hussain 2003). The Internal Security Act, no. 74 of 1982—­a parliamentary act that consolidated earlier security legislation—­ afforded police and military sweeping powers. By June 1986 the state of emergency covered the w ­ hole country. This diverse array of strategies by the state for managing opposition and a growing black urban base goes some way to explaining the confusing politics of accommodation and mass removal in Crossroads, as well as the spectacular evictions that followed. Winning hearts and minds would soon turn from the promise of material concessions to out-­and-­out vio­lence. The Burnout

By 1986, Portland Cement, Nyanga Bush, and Nyanga Extension—­“satellites” adjoining Old Crossroads—­had been burned to the ground; ktc, a camp adjacent to Nyanga Township, had been more or less completely destroyed as well (see maps 1.1, 3.1, and 3.2).15 Were these consequences of mere turf battles, or was there something larger in play? In Old Crossroads, festering resentments over satellite squatters—­“latecomers”16 who had settled on the perimeters of Old Crossroads ­after 1979, sidestepping Koornhof’s census takers—­might explain the unspeakable events of May and June. But that implied that squatters’ homes had been destroyed because they had not complied with apartheid proceduralism (Koornhof’s “ad hoc” methods). As for ktc’s destruction, rising tensions within the Crossroads leadership had led to a split two years before, and Albert Memani, Ngxobongwana’s former vice-­chairman, had sub­ sequently fled to ktc with a number of personal supporters. By 1986, Ngxo102  |   ch ap te r 3

bongwana once again set to consolidating his power base in Old Crossroads. He used a range of tactics including arson, physical vio­lence, and murder, eventually clearing ground that would l­ater be redeveloped. The leaders in the satellites17 and ktc evidently posed a threat to Ngxobongwana’s mono­poly on ground rents. Yet plans for state-­sponsored upgrading in those very areas that w ­ ere destroyed suggested state involvement—­state-­sponsored vio­lence, too—not simply squabbling between headmen. From the outset witdoeke—­Crossroads headmen and their followers—­ donned white scarves and armbands (wit doeke, from the Afrikaans) so as to be mutually identifiable as they roved the settlement. They professed to being “fathers,” “elders,” “traditionalists,” and cultural “conservatives” intent on disciplining young “boys” who rejected customary authority. Undoubtedly, Xhosa initiation of young men into full adulthood through rites of circumcision (addressed in chapter 4) played a significant allegorical role ­here inasmuch as the disciplining of young comrades assumed they ­were not quite men. Yet the headmen’s central purpose appears to have been to clear the satellites of shack dwellers regardless of their cultural or generational filiations. And while such distinctions played their part, Old Crossroads and the satellites ­were quickly redefined in broadly pro-­and anti-­apartheid terms, respectively. The days following May 17, 1986, w ­ ere marked by vio­lence: Scores of township residents, especially those who lived along, or nearby, Mahobe Drive—­separating the Crossroads complex from Nyanga East—­ had joined refugee squatters in ­running battles with “witdoeke”18 and police. For most of Monday this area resembled a war zone. Militant youths, some of whom reportedly carried handguns and ak-47s, tried repeatedly to beat back the constantly approaching “witdoeke.” By the end of the day, the outcome of this b­ attle was, to say the least, devastating— at least 13 ­people ­were dead; 75 injured; an estimated 20,000 squatters ­were homeless; and approximately two-­thirds of the h ­ ouses in the area (2000) had been burnt. (Cole 1987, 135) We will recall that Ngxobongwana had been detained the year before the conflict. Upon his release, he switched po­liti­cal allegiances, forfeiting his position as chair of the Western Cape Civic Association, which was a udf affiliate. There was no clearer evidence of his changed loyalties than the support his henchmen received from riot police during the unrest in May Tr a nsitions   |   103

and June. For his part, Ngxobongwana left for the Eastern Cape shortly before the fighting broke out, leaving Ndima to lead the offensive. Predictably the security forces denied having been involved, while liberal newspapers ran stories that placed police and soldiers at the scene of the worst of the vio­lence.19 The most serious allegations drew attention to the presence of unmarked riot vehicles standing watch over attacks on squatters. Casspirs20 had been used to seal off the squatter settlement, which prevented residents from fleeing the vio­lence and prevented those squatters desperate to salvage their possessions from returning. There ­were additional reports that armed men had targeted young African National Congress supporters,21 destroying their shacks and ­going on to necklace22 some of them. Sam Ndima was centrally involved in orchestrating the attacks on activists and their families, as well as in destroying dozens of homes in the satellites. One eyewitness recalls: At 6 am on Sunday morning Sam Ndima called the men to go to Noxolo Primary School with their weapons. ­After that about 11 am I saw smoke at Mr. Toise’s area, and shooting. The ­people from that area ­were coming to our section at Old Crossroads. They say the witdoeke w ­ ere burning their shacks with the casspirs helping them. I started to get ner­vous and I deci­ded to go to ktc without anything from my shack because the witdoeke ­were standing in front of it watching me . . . ​at that time the fight was getting hot near Mr. Yamile’s area and there was smoke everywhere in Crossroads. I saw casspirs moving inside the settlement. I thought they ­were there to stop the fighting, only to find out they ­were helping the witdoeke.23 The destruction of large areas of the informal settlement served two purposes. Once cleared, the satellites would provide the state with much-­ needed space for a new township. More importantly, however, the satellites’ destruction fully isolated Crossroads and established the preconditions for its declaration as an in­de­pen­dent municipality.24 Months before the conflict, tensions between the headmen and anti-­ apartheid sympathizers w ­ ere already ­running high. In the first weeks of January, the press reported a series of clashes between headmen and young activists in Old Crossroads. And in one episode, a group of ­women was abducted and then held for several days in a series of makeshift cells, fashioned from shipping containers, before being released. The four w ­ omen activists, according to the Cape Times, had been detained for three days. 104  |   ch ap te r 3

Following their release, Sam Ndima, in his role as “community spokesman,” reported to the press that the ­women had been “helping the comrades to cause trou­ble and to fight the ‘fathers’ . . . ​the maqabane [comrades] have to stop making petrol bombs and holding ‘kangaroo courts.’ We will not allow them to beat and punish their own p­ eople.”25 One of the detainees, Mrs. Mankosi, held to an entirely d­ ifferent version of events: “I am scared of being taken again. The real reason why I was taken is that the ‘fathers’ are scared of the organizations in the townships. They are trying to keep us quiet. The trou­ble is g­ oing to flare up again. Our children are not involved in ‘kangaroo courts’ and are against the beating of ­others, but the ‘fathers’ still accuse them.”26 In a signed affidavit, dated July 9, 1987, John Njwele, a resident of Nyanga Extension and member of the Nyanga Extension committee, attested to Ndima’s collaboration with the authorities. Ndima had apparently warned residents that he would track down comrades in the extension. He also claimed that Warrant Officer Barnard, a much-­feared member of a special security unit, had armed him to “accomplish this task.”27 More boldly still, the minutes of a community meeting that brought the leaders of many of the squatter camps together (Site C,28 Old Crossroads, and the satellites) in the months following the burnout suggest that Ndima was quite open about his hostilities. At the meeting, a much-­beleaguered Alfred Siphika (headman for Nyanga Extension) had apparently taken the floor to indict those who had instigated the vio­lence in May and June 1986. He called for a period of détente and reflection. “My views on the ­matter,” he said, “are that we should go to Nontsumpa Bush area [the location of the Home Affairs office], and call the ­people there, and ask them as the group of leaders that are h ­ ere, to appreciate the gravity of the m ­ atter and to appreciate that it is a bad thing and to be stopped forthwith.”29 To which Ndima responded: I am glad that these men are not well disposed to what is happening there, because I had already deci­ded with the Boers [the Afrikaners, the authorities] to fix that place up as even previously comrades from Crossroads had made the streets dirty and they [the Boers]30 cleaned the place. That is how I brought an end to the comrades of Crossroads. And even in that place [Nontsumpa Bush] I do not have a prob­lem as such. My own personal decision that comes from my heart is that I am g­ oing to beat up and burn in that area of Nontsumpa Bush ­until nothing is left. If they should escape to another area I am g­ oing to hunt and hound them and I Tr ansitions   |   105

will even trample on an old comrade—­the likes of Siphika [sic] because I have already been supported by Barnard and provided with 600 guns. I went to Mr. Barnard and asked to be helped with weapons in order to accomplish this ­whole task. I will even go to Mr. Yamile and Toise beating up, burning because they too are comrades.31 Ndima could not have been any clearer. His intentions ­were to rid Crossroads and the satellites of anc sympathizers with the assistance of the security forces. At the same time, there w ­ ere inconsistencies and confusions all along the line: ­were all residents of the satellites radicals and anc loyalists; surely not. As ktc burned, squatters there remained hostile to both the witdoeke and the udf. As for the headmen, even those satellite leaders who aligned with the comrades w ­ ere likely to govern as “traditionalists.” As “techniques of empowerment and modes of collective repre­sen­ta­tion” (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991, 229) these varied politics, traditions (in­ven­ ted and other­wise), and generational differences played out complexly on a terrain—­both literal and figurative—­over which there ­were so many claims: by the state, by a class of rentiers, by squatters themselves. Redevelopment

For quite some time, the Western Cape Regional Directorate of the Urban Foundation had been involved in delivering housing in Crossroads, mostly a combination of rental and for-­purchase estates. But with news of the burnout, which displaced a total of 70,000, the foundation withdrew in fear of condoning vio­lence as a method of allotting homes. Instead, the uf sent staff into the field to serve as h ­ uman rights monitors.32 In an interview with Colin Appleton, previously regional director, he expressed concern about the foundation’s involvement during that period:33 The uf had an office in Crossroads at the time and it was so clear to us that Ngxobs [pronounced “Knobs,” an abbreviation of Ngxobongwana] was getting assistance and protection from the security forces and that the opposing side was getting hammered by the authorities. Government then took a decision that those who ­were being driven out should not be allowed to return to the squatter area as a way of consolidating Ngxobs’ power in Crossroads. Those who fled started settling on vacant lots scattered across the Flats. The state c­ ouldn’t move them and the communities in those areas rallied around them. There ­were 106  |   ch ap te r 3

all sorts of protests, boycotts, e­ tc., and the ngos moved in to try to help ­people as well. The uf’s response was “we ­can’t go ahead with upgrading on a ­matter of princi­ple. If we did we would be supporting the forced removal of p­ eople, one; and two, we would be offering upgrading and housing to those who had been responsible for the forced removal; three, this would in no way account for those who had been pushed out and ­were being prevented from returning.” It was a completely nonsensical position and so the uf withdrew. Government in turn worked with Ngxobs to begin upgrading land left vacant by the burnout in the satellite areas. He insisted that the h ­ ouses that w ­ ere built there, with cross-­ subsidies from the private sector [including Seef, Stocks and Stocks, and a number of other construction companies], should be of a certain quality such that he ­wouldn’t lose face with his supporters. But of course very few if any of his followers could actually afford those ­houses, which ­were supposed to be built just ­behind Section IV [adjacent to the satellite camps] and would comprise Phase 1 of the new pro­ject.34 So eventually ­people from other areas ­were allocated the ­houses and there was a lot of dissatisfaction amongst Crossroads residents. . . .35 By the time Unathi [the new development] was completed there w ­ ere so many p­ eople living in the adjacent area, it was so much more densely populated than it had been, that Unathi ­couldn’t accommodate such great numbers. And the w ­ hole upgrading pro­ject became a m ­ atter of . . . ​­whether ­people could afford the housing or not—­creating a division between haves and have-­nots. Further, Ngxobs and his henchmen ­were d­ oing the allocations and so there ­were charges of corruption and meanwhile there was an ongoing fight between the ­people in Boystown and the ­people in Unathi. Those ­houses on the very edge of Unathi ­were being continually burnt down.36 ­People ­were incredibly disaffected not least those who had been reallocated into tent towns. That was the situation ­until the late 1980s. Then the Cape Provincial Administration [cpa] took over and attempted to develop the next phase of the pro­ject. By that time Ngxobs himself had been driven out of Crossroads and one of his henchmen, Jeffrey Nongwe, had taken over. Ngxobs headed to Driftsands and eventually to Green Park—an area on the very city limit.37 How exactly Appleton reckoned his work with the foundation given the broader po­liti­cal strug­gle remains unclear. For, in many ways, Crossroads had been intentionally isolated (spatially and administratively), and so Tr ansitions   |   107

the conflict took on the appearance of a singular episode, even as similar conflicts unfolded across the country. It was easy to argue that the cultural particularism of the headmen was principally at issue rather than recognize the ways in which the problems of Crossroads—­problems of influx, illegal migration, and urbanization—­were merely aspects of apartheid city life (cf. Hindson, Byerley, and Morris 1994; also see Murray 1994, 2008). If Appleton’s po­liti­cal stance—as distinct from his pragmatism and business sense—­remained unclear, his approach to development revealed not only a great deal about the imagined role of the private sector in the mid-1980s but what role the private sector might play in the transition. Appleton had identified “affordability” as the central issue, determining access to new housing, as if affordability ­were somehow neutral, unintentional, and ideologically void. The pricing of homes, however, was set in relation to a pro-­market strategy in which many of the costs of housing ­were intentionally passed on to occupants. Long a­ fter the construction of Unathi, the market basis for delivering low-­income housing persisted and, what is more, anticipated those strategies of urban neoliberalism—­shallow subsidies and piecemeal consolidation loans—­that emerged post-1994 (see, e.g., McDonald 2008). The efforts of the Urban Foundation to ameliorate the material conditions of black life had essentially realigned with the interests of mono­poly capital. This was a victory for the “econocrats.” As a result, the period between 1985 and 1994 was pivotal, understood as it was as a moment in which the interests of the private sector w ­ ere secured.38 The South African economy had already started to stagnate in the 1970s. This eventually led to the withdrawal of lines of credit previously extended to the regime by major global banks, the closing of the stock market, and the imposition of exchange controls in 1985. The apartheid regime was in financial trou­ble, and a series of bailouts and intensified imf intervention ultimately drew South Africa more closely into the neoliberal orbit (Bond 2013, 575). The outlines of a post-­apartheid regime centered on markets had already emerged (cf. Van der Walt 2001). The period was marked by a power shift away from 1980s-­era sanctions-­ induced dirigisme carried out by the militaristic “securocrats,” ­toward verligte (enlightened) Afrikaner economic bureaucrats in the Trea­sury and central bank (“econocrats”). They ­were strongly supported with advice and renewed legitimation by white English-­speaking business inter-

108  |   ch ap te r 3

ests and their think tanks (eg [sic] the Urban Foundation, Consultative Business Movement) as well as the Bretton Woods Institutions (Bond 2013, 576). As we have seen, squatters and their leaders suffered from “land hunger”—­ the outcome of colonial theft and the legacy of policies of subsequent land dispossession. To the degree this was the case, each was motivated by self-­ interest to improve their lot. Some turned to rent seeking; o­ thers simply searched for a place to rest their heads. In this sense, squatters and their leaders constituted a moral community, regardless of their differing po­liti­ cal interests. Chatterjee similarly views the nature of squatter communities in India as deriving from certain binding qualities of po­liti­cal society. He proposes that “[t]his is an equally crucial part of the politics of the governed: to give to the empirical form of a population group the moral attributes of a community” (Chatterjee 2004, 57). Indeed, late twentieth-­century South African squatters acted inconsistently, and faction leaders and their followers refused to cohere as a single-­minded class of any sort. But this should not leave us with the impression that the politics of staying put, of being pre­sent, was not radically insurgent in its own way. If squatters cohered as a group at all, they did so out of a shared conviction in their right to domesticity, to being in the city—in short, to a right to citizenship.39 Squatters ­were called upon to marshal ordinary strategies of home building, affective ­labor, community or­ga­niz­ing, and ­legal representation—­work that seemed to bear only a limited resemblance to the “ideological heroism” (Greenblatt 2004) of the liberation movement’s most prominent cadres. Yet the implications w ­ ere im­mense: squatters would take on the fundamental issue of the right to the city as a commons. A historical episode to compare, I would argue (following David Harvey), with the forces of demo­cratic pop­ u­lism that drove the temporary experiment in self-­government in the Paris Commune during the spring of 1871, where tussles over authority w ­ ere also articulated through the social production of space (see Harvey 2003a). “There is . . . ​a dissident and influential view of the Commune that says it was not a proletarian uprising or a class-­based movement at all, but an urban social movement that was reclaiming citizenship rights and the right to the city” (Harvey 2012, 128). This recognition of the power of place or, indeed, the po­liti­cal nature of “city air” (117) shifts the focus of an older class politics situated in the factory and at the point of production or, in

Tra nsitions   |   109

the instance of the South African liberation strug­gle, at the point of politics itself, which permitted the politics of life, of social reproduction, of domesticity to also be regarded as sites of activism. Squatters, ­after all, highlighted the material u ­ nder­pinnings of ­labor in production (housing, transport, and access to ser­vices) as keen weapons in the strug­gle for liberation. The collapse of influx controls surely laid the groundwork for growing ac­cep­tance of African ­people in the city, even if they remained confined to designated Group Areas. By 1986, Crossroads h ­ oused 100,000, and in-­ migration from the countryside continued to rise u ­ ntil an estimated 1,000 ­were arriving daily in the Peninsula.40 These preconditions for protest—­the sheer numbers of African ­people—­dramatically transformed the po­liti­cal climate of the city. Only three years ­later, in the lead-up to the 1989 Tricameral Parliament elections, Cape Town became the focus of revitalized re­sis­ tance. Some even speculated that the city was “the ‘tinderbox’ which would set the rest of the country alight” (Watson 2002, 18). On September 13 Cape Town witnessed the first l­ egal demonstration of its kind—30,000 strong, representing ­people of all races, and marching ­behind the anc flag. Envisioning the Post-­Apartheid City

That pro­cess of “encroachment” I described in the introduction was due in part to in-­migration from the rural areas. But internal movements also underwrote a steady “molecular” growth on the city outskirts. For new arrivals, Crossroads remained a gateway to the city, but turf battles and state-­driven counterwar continued to create conditions ­under which squatters ­were just as likely to be expelled. Some forced to leave resettled south of Lansdowne Road. Situated less than a mile from Old Crossroads, Lower Crossroads was first established in the early 1990s as one small temporary “transit” camp. ­People reported sleeping ­under the stars those first few nights and even weeks. They had no benefit of ­running ­water, save for one or two communal spigots—­that and a “system” of bucket toilets.41 In 1998, when I first began my field research, Ward 35,42 inclusive of Lower Crossroads and a number of other adjacent residential and commercial areas, accommodated approximately 30,000, while 2001 census figures put the total population at slightly over 28,800. These figures w ­ ere subsequently revised following the 2011 census. By that time the ward boundaries had been redrawn and a recalculation of the earlier census data indicated, there ­were 25,264 residents in toto in 2001, and with the 2011 census ac110  |   ch ap te r 3

counting for 40,067, the population had increased by fully 59 ­percent in a single de­cade.43 During the five years between 1996 and 2001, the city of Cape Town likewise gauged a significant increase in population on its outskirts. Approximately 6,000 newcomers had made their home in Ward 35, a 20 ­percent increase for the period.44 Though there was certainly significant in-­migration to Cape Town from the Eastern Cape, as well as some illegal migration from across South Africa’s borders, the internal movement of p­ eople across the greater metropolitan area also accounted, in some mea­ sure, for this significant demographic shift. By the late 1990s, following the identification by the Cape Provincial Administration (cpa) of the southeastern metropolitan region as a black development area, Lower Crossroads was comprehensively upgraded. The informal settlement was also part of an early Special Integrated Presidential Pro­ject, which involved twenty-­six communities, covered fifty housing projects, and spanned two municipalities for which funding was provided to deliver housing. Linking the efforts of spatial planners through both the Metropolitan Spatial Development Framework (msdf) and the Department of Local Government and Housing,45 Ward 35 was the epicenter of a potentially transformative series of initiatives. And yet the desires, hopes, and concerns of local constituents seemed most often lost in the midst of debates about land use, densification, transport hubs, and so on. Never mind that development had long been used as a weapon of counterrevolutionary pacification of which those civil servants and technocrats assigned to the redevelopment of the southeastern corridor seemed summarily unaware. Originally conceived in 1991, following a pro­cess of broad “consultation” and the subsequent formation of a pro­ject forum consisting of community-­ based organizations and local and regional organs of government, the Integrated Ser­viced Land Pro­ject (islp) planned to deliver as many as 41,000 new homes within a five-­year period. The specific projections for Ward 35 amounted to 8,000 core structures.46 Arguing that the pro­ject area had historically been subjected to policies that incited dislocation, struggles over land and housing, and, most significantly, episodic vio­lence,47 the islp acknowledged a responsibility to redress some of the very worst aspects of apartheid urbanism. A 1997 business plan, for instance, noted that the dreadful conditions of blight across metropolitan Cape Town w ­ ere a consequence of “the enormous imbalances in the demand and supply of urban resources, the lack of inclusive participation in development projects, the piecemeal nature of development projects and alleged corruption in the Tra nsitions   |   111

allocation of sites by autocratic elements within communities.”48 Again, there was no mention of the state’s hand in instigating conflict and sponsoring counterinsurgents. Yet even as the report acknowledged long-­standing patterns of vio­lence within the southeastern corridor, which in turn informed problems of inadequate housing and infrastructure, the report largely ignored the significance of an extended history of displacement and dispossession for a pro­ject that inevitably tried to undo enduring logics of racism, segregation, and poverty. Passing reference to “denied l­egal access to the city, to employment opportunities and to land”49 certainly framed the islp policy proposal. However, the focus on delivering ser­vices and some housing on the city outskirts ignored the ways in which apartheid had previously reshaped the city’s edge to accommodate ware­housed and racinated populations (see, e.g., Goldberg 2002; also see Saff 1998). In other words, the islp did l­ittle to address the prob­lem of segregation and remained largely blind to the ways in which the new planning approach echoed past methods of preparing sites and providing homes on the city’s edge. Strikingly, of the fifty housing projects, all of them lead presidential projects, a total of half relied on the use of greenfields (virgin land), which, in the technical language of the business plan, would provide “overflow capacity” on the city periphery. Many scholars have noted the discursive framing entailed in policy—­ providing reasonable if always limited po­liti­cal and historical context for projects that si­mul­ta­neously seek to redress histories of injury while ignoring those very histories. Following James Ferguson (1990; cf. Li 2007), this “anti-­politics” reduces significant events, the memory of such events, and, to be sure, the lingering effects of such events to banal and commonsense language, robbing history of its urgency. This strategy of depoliticization ultimately serves to foreground another kind of politics, w ­ hether of international aid agencies, ngos, private investors, or civil servants and governments, in attempts to paper over pasts far too challenging to genuinely redress (Büscher 2013). So by the late 1990s, it was apparent that beyond building housing there was ­little vision of a ­different kind of city—­a city in which African ­people ­were no longer peripheralized. There was certainly no attempt to dismantle Group Areas, and Cape Town remained de facto if not de jure segregated while housing provision and township upgrading was relegated to the margins, to those “greenfields,” as the plan indicated—to spaces not dissimilar from those that had served as sites of destitution and confinement 112  |   ch ap te r 3

in the past. As I argued in the introduction, not only w ­ ere greenfields situated on the city outskirts, but they ­were understood by the ­people who ­were forced to live within them as ezimbhacwani; that is to say, the place for iiMbhacu (refugees), those lacking entitlements. The islp, with its sights trained on the idea of housing delivery, could at any time defer provision of homes through what it referred to as “an incremental housing pro­cess.”50 What did this say about the new demo­cratic citizenship and its purported values of inclusion? At the same time, the centrality of housing policy to the new democracy is undeniable. In theory it affords citizens an effective right to housing, while the tremendous needs of the poor, coupled with significant shortages of adequate shelter, have forced the state to prioritize the delivery of homes to mostly low-­income communities. The Housing Act of 1997, no. 107, directly addresses the special needs of the poor. While all h ­ ouse­holds earning r3,500 (approximately $350) or less per month qualify for subsidies, more than 90 ­percent of all subsidies to date have been extended to those ­house­holds earning less than r1,500 (approximately $150)51 a month.52 Most residents of Ward 35 work within contingent and informal l­abor markets, earning just enough to satisfy the most basic conditions of daily life, and so not surprisingly almost all homes in the ward ­were built with subsidies (see, e.g., Wilson and Dugard 2011). We know from Foucault’s public lectures of 1978 and 1979, concerning the rise of biopolitics beginning in the eigh­teenth ­century, that “biopolitics,” as an effort on the part of governments to rationalize those problems associated with “living beings forming a population,” included “health, hygiene, birthrate, life expectancy, race . . .” (Foucault 2008, 317). I have suggested thus far that the apartheid state had its own biopo­liti­cal functions, particularly as these concerned the management of populations moving between town and country. But what I had not argued ­until now was the continuity in the management of populations, particularly as this concerns the provision of housing, across the transition from the old to the new ­orders. In the late 1990s, despite a general exuberance about good planning and its promises, a strong push to see previously underserved populations addressed as populations dominated the planning field. In the case of varying lead presidential and other projects, including the one intended for Lower Crossroads, the mission was to forge a “social compact”—to circumscribe local populations and categorically define them as “communities” of consensus, a consensus t­oward every facet of development, from matters of housing allocation to problems of relocation of entire settlements. Tra nsitions   |   113

To this end, “community” forums operated to do the work of “consensus building.” Yet the aims of government notwithstanding, forum members spoke less in the language of social compacts than through idioms of development as ukuphuhlisa. Ukuphuhlisa is not only development in the sense of infrastructural upgrading but is associated with a notion of uplift in one’s lived condition—of dignity and rising up. Recalling chapter 1 in par­ tic­u­lar, it is ­little won­der that ­women, formerly in the forefront of squatter struggles, ­were the most visible in forum meetings. The “private, domestic, personal” (Holston 2008, 312) sphere, the realm of “mere” life, or oikos, had long ago been politicized, and w ­ omen who had sought to make domestic lives in the apartheid city ­were not about to relinquish control over how, where, and when to build homes in the “new” South Africa.53 The homes that ­were subsequently built54 amounted to ­little more than 160 square feet (15–17 m2, 20 at most). Before long, housing beneficiaries coined the expression vez’inyau to describe post-­apartheid homes that w ­ ere even smaller and more poorly constructed than apartheid-era “matchboxes.” The vez’inyau ­were said to be so small that to sit against the wall in the back of the ­house one’s feet protruded through the front door. The term derives from the notion of showing or revealing leg (vezinyawo or vez’nyawo). Development discourse, by contrast, was far less idiomatic. Instead, developmentalist rhe­toric took on a pragmatist, pro-­market character as squatters became “stakeholders” in a pro­cess of “public participation,” and all parties to the t­able spoke of the need for “transparency” and good governance—­the language of the new regime. Yet in many other respects, the islp55 was simply the evolution of a pro­ject previously known as the Ser­viced Land Pro­ject (slp). The origins of the acronym are critical to a longer history of development and housing delivery in this part of the city of Cape Town. Originally conceived as the Crossroads and Its Environs Pro­ ject, the slp and islp are a legacy of the Urban Foundation’s involvement in Crossroads in the 1980s. Very ­little in the new lead presidential projects differed from their antecedents, even if planners fought to distinguish the islp from the old model of site-­and-­service to focus instead on housing alongside multi-­land-­use and to think beyond basic shelter to the provision of civic buildings, hospitals, and schools. Yet even as the development field opened up a­ fter 1994, the continuities with the past ­were con­spic­u­ous, both in terms of a history of site-­and-­ service and a cadre of “experts” (Mitchell 2002; cf. Li 2007) who, in the face 114  |   ch ap te r 3

of the transition, now sought to move into an ostensibly reformed housing policy arena, bringing with them some of the dominant assumptions that had guided apartheid-­era housing provision. Referring to the relationship between the Urban Foundation and In­de­pen­dent Development Trust (idt) in the late apartheid years, Patrick Bond has argued theirs w ­ ere a set of projects inspired not only by World Bank policy—­a “less is more model” of poverty alleviation through which welfare responsibility devolves onto individuals and publics—­but by a desire to undercut radical grassroots activism.

uf strategists ­were inspired by the World Bank, especially during the late 1980s/early 1990s drafting of the uf Urban Futures policy series. One direct result of the uf lobbying was a r750 million site-­and-­service programme—­which quickly became known as toilets-­in-­the-­veld—­ implemented by the In­de­pen­dent Development Trust (idt). . . . ​The idt was given r2 billion to foster local social contracts in townships and rural areas, concomitant with the rapid liberalization then underway. It was, quite explicitly, a fund for buying out or at least deflecting militant grassroots opposition, an update of the Botha regime’s mid-­late 1980s “oilspot” strategy of pouring oil on troubled ­water. (Bond 2000, 129) The progress of housing reform was thus practically and ideologically ambivalent, resting on a set of foundational principles borrowed from the late apartheid era. In some communities, the islp brought ser­vices and housing; there ­were also attempts at integrative land use that combined commercial, residential, and religious functions. Yet the greater challenge of connecting far-­flung, historically segregated communities to the central business district and greater metropolitan region went unmet in most instances. In other areas already ser­viced plots gained by the delivery of so-­ called “top structures.” This practice of “consolidation” involved the funding of homes through reduced subsidies, while the delivery of what went beneath and what went aboveground was financed with larger subventions. In 1998 state subsidies w ­ ere capped at r17,250 (approximately $3,000 at the time) for the development of both infrastructure and housing units. Subsidies ­were raised in 2002 to r20,300 for beneficiaries earning less than r1,500 a month and to r22,800 for pensioners and the unemployed.56 Although the new planning and development emphasis was on compact and efficient urban environments, the fact that housing was funded through “shallow subsidies” (one-­time, limited payments) effectively “pointed in the Tra nsitions   |   115

opposite direction, towards a sea of site-­and-­service schemes on the urban periphery” (Mabin 1998, E6; emphasis mine). |  |  |  |  |

Inevitably, transformation confronted or­gan­i­za­tional difficulties as well: the city’s bureaucracy had been restructured into six new municipalities and a metropolitan council. Following the transition, many civil servants took early retirement, and the very culture of civil ser­vice shifted. Officials and councillors complained of transformation fatigue, and my visits to the city’s planning department reinforced this view. ­People referred to the frustrating and often opaque pro­cess of “unbundling,” the local term for decentralization. As if to underscore these efforts, most city council departments conspicuously displayed the organograms and flowcharts that portended municipal reor­ga­ni­za­tion. There ­were also tensions between older, apartheid-­era stalwarts and a younger generation of progressive civil servants who saw an opportunity to implement significant changes in a new climate of demo­cratic transparency. Finally, even as decentralization went ahead, the pro­cess remained something of a paradox: the city for which decentralization was being instituted was struggling to devise a comprehensive spatial plan, which left administrative reor­ga­ni­za­tion at odds with the vision of a unified city (cf. Christopher 1994; Tomlinson et al. 2003). But of course, Cape Town was far from unified. It was—­and remains—­a city divided. The affluence and access to opportunity of those neighborhoods in the city bowl and nestling on the slopes of T ­ able Mountain, as well as the Afrikaans-­speaking suburbs of Tableview and Welgemoed, contrast dramatically with zones of widespread poverty and joblessness on the Flats. So how to make for a just, equitable, and sustainable city? How to achieve economic and social integration, to balance the needs of long-­term urban expansion and densification? These ­were the questions planners addressed, not only in the city of Cape Town but in cities all across the country through a series of local, regional, and national planning frameworks that ­were drafted to address the challenges of realizing the post-­apartheid city (Harrison, Todes, and Watson 2008, 38). The Metropolitan Spatial Development Framework (msdf), the consequence of lengthy deliberation on the part of the Western Cape Economic Development Forum in the first part of the de­cade, offered a ­future spatial vision for the city that was decidedly d­ ifferent from the racially exclusion116  |   ch ap te r 3

ary planning paradigm common ­under apartheid. “The redistributionary and basic needs thrust of the msdf was [entirely] in keeping with the spirit of the time, and in par­tic­u­lar with the national policy position reflected in the Reconstruction and Development Programme, or rdp (1994)” (Watson 2002, 98). This was “in contrast to a commonly held view that growth and development, or growth and re­distribution are pro­cesses that contradict each other. Growth—­the mea­sur­able increase in the output of the modern industrial economy—is commonly seen as the priority that must precede development. Development is portrayed as a marginal effort of re­ distribution to areas of urban and rural poverty” (anc 1994, 6). The msdf was “a heroic, modernist plan” (Watson 2002, 98), and not unlike plans for major cities almost anywhere, it remained mostly in the realm of the conceptual, engaging a set of abstract principles that proved rather more challenging to implement in practice (cf. Holston and Appadurai 1996). In rejecting the old methods of racial zoning, planners hoped to devise a new city form that would respond to certain technical rather than purely ideological imperatives, even as such technical inclinations ­were driven by the broader context of the country’s recent demo­cratization. South African cities had followed trends in Eu­rope and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, when “deconcentration” (suburbanization) was hugely pop­u­ lar. While such trends w ­ ere necessarily associated with “white flight” and deindustrialization, they purported to promote improved quality of life outside the city. In South Africa deconcentration was explicitly used as a technique in advancing the ideological imperatives of segregation and separate development.57 During those de­cades, South African cities sprawled to accommodate a growing African population prohibited from living proximately to sites of industry and employment. The city of Cape Town extended southeastward in 1983 with the establishment of Khayelitsha (“New Home”), a predominantly greenfields pro­ject that t­oday accommodates several hundreds of thousands.58 Its settlement, as I suggested in the introduction, represented a concession by Dr. Koornhof and his department to those without passes who had agreed to leave Crossroads in exchange for six-­month temporary permits. For the most part, however, the formal spatial plan for Cape Town involved a multinodal arrangement of dormitory areas to the north and east of the city—in Atlantis, Paarl, Stellenbosch, and Somerset West. Of these areas, Atlantis is perhaps the bleakest (see map 3.3). Designed as a colored Tr a nsitions   |   117

Nyanga East

New Road

MAHOBE DRIVE

Nyanga

Airport To wn

Constructio n

to Ca pe

N2

Area Cleared for “Upgrading” Old Crossroads LANSDOWNE RD

Industrial Area

N

MAP 3.1  ​In 1987, with the western section of Crossroads cleared following a state-­backed counterinsurgency operation, upgrading is ­under way, as evidenced by the presence of road grids and sewage lines. Mahobe Drive is also extended southward to connect with Lans­ downe Road—­a major arterial leading directly into Wynberg. Courtesy of Timothy Stallmann.

to Ca pe

MAHOBE DRIVE

Nyanga Second Area Cleared

Bo ys to wn

Nyanga East

Airport To wn

N2

Old Crossroads LANSDOWNE RD

N

Industrial Area

MAP 3.2  ​By 1988 additional land has been cleared; completed in 1989, the new development, Unathi, is opened by P. W. Botha, then the state president. This aerial photograph also captures a new section of Crossroads. Backing onto Klipfontein Road, Boystown features row upon row of small informal structures. Courtesy of Timothy Stallmann.

0

5 Kilometers

0

5 Miles

R307

N7

R45 R315

Darling

N7

R315

Malmesbury R307

Mamre Riverlands

AT LANT I S N7

R302

Philadelphia Van Riebeeckstrand

R304

Melkbosstrand

Vissershok

R27 N7

Table View

Durbanville Rosendal N1

R27

Parow R102

N1

Kuilsrivier

C APE TOWN N2

Silver Sands

MAP 3.3  ​Atlantis. Courtesy of Mapping Specialists Ltd., 2014.

Scottville

city thirty miles north of the metropolitan area, it never grew to support the necessary jobs and housing. By the late 1980s, Atlantis was home on the one hand to mass unemployment and on the other to a commuter class forced to travel every day to Cape Town to jobs. Proposing to set such asymmetries to rights, the msdf Technical Report pursued a strategy of compaction, containment, and re­distribution in the city. The old multinodal plan would be replaced by a system of nodes (areas of concentrated economic and social activity) lying within the city boundaries rather than beyond them, corridors (connecting the vari­ous nodes), and a concept of edges, which in the best case would prevent the city from expanding beyond its pre­sent limits. The Cape Flats, certainly the southeasternmost point, ­were at the crossroads of many of these developments. The Lansdowne Road, extending northwestward to Wynberg (a transport hub and center of commerce), was a zone of high activity, traffic flows, and movements of p­ eople, and the council identified it as an ideal corridor pro­ ject area, one that could be mobilized to effect socioeconomic reintegration (see map i.1). Fostering the conditions for a bustling “high street” culture at the southeastern end, where “hawkers” (informal traders) and formal businesses might operate cheek by jowl, planners imagined creating continuity between those commercial activities and Wetton and Wynberg, even as social integration would pose a much greater hurdle. Shopping was not, ­after all, the same thing as desegregation. Numerous actors with varying agendas converged in the effort to apply what ­were genuinely noble principles to a city much in need of noble principles. At the same time, technocrats had d­ ifferent purviews and visions, as in the case of transport planners who sought to redefine corridors as high-­volume, highly mobile access routes incorporating freeways and who in a sense both ignored the limited private mobility of most Capetonians and at the same time rightly exalted the benefits of a comprehensive public transport system, though a plan for such a system did not exist and still does not. Cape Town and the Peninsula region, fauna-­and flora-­rich environments, are home to penguin colonies and schools of dolphins, ­whales, and other sea creatures, as well as some of the richest bird and plant life in the world. Environmentalists rightfully saw an opportunity to design new and innovative environmental management policies that would drive housing developments; in so d­ oing they came into competition with those who favored a much more straightforward plan of action for relieving poverty and 120  |   ch ap te r 3

homelessness. There ­were the naysayers who refused to acknowledge the need for a transformation in planning ideology at all, who refused to break with a past of segregationism and in­e­qual­ity. By the early 2000s, ten years into South Africa’s demo­cratic experiment, the continuities with apartheid urban development w ­ ere striking, particularly, “the perpetuation of past settlement patterns” (Harrison, Todes, and Watson 2008, 167). While critics argued that planners had not been attentive to questions of sustainability in the design of townships, planners responded they ­were limited by a reliance on shallow one-­time subsidies—­ this sort of financial model was utterly insufficient. Beyond that, housing policy itself was largely to blame given its substantial dependence on greenfields. Minimum standards for housing quality and ser­vices meant that the new “matchboxes” represented only the most marginal improvement on the shacks they ­were replacing. And it was telling that in settlements like Lower Crossroads, shack dwellers w ­ ere very often keen to relocate and rebuild shanties on rdp plots rather than dismantle their homes permanently ahead of receiving rdp core structures. Shacks tended to be larger and in a sense “custom” built to the needs of a given h ­ ouse­hold. For all that, discussions of housing size, sustainability, and good or bad planning—­discussions that ­were largely self-­referential—­denied or ignored that what was centrally at issue was a longer history of uneven development. Uneven development and uneven accumulation persist in South Africa (cf. Bond 2013; Fine and Rustomjee 1997; Gelb 1987; Marais 1999, 2011; Wolpe 1972; also see Makhulu 2012), and they have tended to cancel out efforts at reducing in­e­qual­ity, including the other­wise aspirational work of planners. Additionally, neoliberal policies, such as gear (the pro-­market policy framework introduced in 1996), have played a part, too. Some commentators have mistaken the South African state’s involvement in housing and other forms of supposed welfarism for a rolling back of pro-­market policies. But as David McDonald has argued, the extension of the South African state’s participation, its “strength,” is in fact entirely consistent with neoliberalism. On the one hand the focus has been “cost recovery and other forms of social and economic discipline,” which “remain the primary objectives” of the state (McDonald 2008, 75). On the other hand, welfare—­ including housing provision, anti-­retroviral rollout, and the massive system of social grants (Ferguson 2007)—­while marking an increased presence by the state, must be understood in historical perspective. South African Tr ansitions   |   121

neoliberalism has to be distinguished from other forms of neoliberalism in other places. “The most obvious difference,” McDonald argues, “is that the welfarism of apartheid was highly skewed along racial (and to some extent ethnic) lines, complicating the moments of neoliberal destruction and creation” (75). Put differently, for the inadequacies of welfare for Africans in the past, the introduction of new welfare policies in the post-1994 period has been mostly suggestive of a kind of historical adjustment, less so of the expansion of a large welfare apparatus as such. Conclusion: When Plans Fail

By the South African winter of 2004, I had returned to Cape Town. I was keen to see a number of completed housing developments, and Gugulethu (Gugs) and I had made a plan to drive around the construction sites and so-­ called model villages (rdp homes on show; see figure 3.1)—­Potemkin villages ­really. Representing a limited menu of options since most homes w ­ ere designed as a single small room, beneficiaries ­were essentially being asked to choose between virtually identical models. Why was it that construction and engineering firms felt compelled to both reduce and exaggerate the choices to hand? Something about the relationship of miniaturization and development was at stake ­here, and though distinct from James Scott’s claims about the function of the model in representing a comprehensive if as yet unrealized reality, there was still a sense in which the “model village” promised something, albeit not “a visually complete example of what the ­future looks like” (Scott 1998, 258). Gugs and I had both long been interested in the foundational, material practices of home building on the Flats, which amounted very often to recycling old materials—a point to which I will return in the Conclusion— to the “raw seam connecting past and pre­sent” when new homes and old shacks are welded together. Looking back at some of my earliest fieldwork interviews in the late 1990s, I noted that respondents had very often focused on access to building materials, w ­ hether bought, gleaned, or donated, the last by local contractors in instances where old shacks ­were relocated and reerected while awaiting formal housing. In one instance a local firm, Martin and East, had handed out sheets of corrugated iron, known as “zincs,” to the great excitement of housing beneficiaries, while a fellow contractor down the street distributed r100 bills and some nails and sent p­ eople pack122  |   ch ap te r 3

FIGURE 3.1  ​Houses ­under construction in Lower Crossroads. Courtesy of Anne-­Maria Makhulu.

ing. Symptomatic of a growing contradiction in housing delivery—­rapid provision (relative to the apartheid years anyway) and declining building standards—­many beneficiaries ­were forced to wait for long periods before receiving homes. Additionally, most core structures ­were steadily downsized to as ­little as ten to twelve square meters in order to cut costs. These changes appear to have coincided with increasing currency volatility: the South African rand crashed fully six times between the mid-1990s and 1998 (following the Asian economic crisis). Additionally, between 1997 and 2008 the country’s urban real estate market saw an inflation-­adjusted price rise of almost 400 ­percent, exceeding even the Irish property boom and bust (Bond 2010, 18). Most noteworthy w ­ ere the ways in which the regime of uneven accumulation affected the bottommost rungs of the society, as increased ser­vice costs led to rising levels of “non-­payment” and, in turn, increasing rates of ser­vice cutoffs. Patrick Bond has noted the correlation between overaccumulation and growing in­e­qual­ity during this period and indeed the vociferous response of communities mea­sured by rising levels of service-­related protests. He suggests that “increased costs due to the implementation of neoliberal policies have resulted in higher nonpayment rates, higher disconnection levels (affecting 1.5 million ­people per year for ­water, according to officials), and lower consumption levels by poor Tr a nsitions   |   123

p­ eople in such cities as Durban, where, from 1998 to 2004, the doubling of real w ­ ater prices led the poorest third of residents to drop consumption from 22,000 to 15,000 liters per month” (Bond 2010, 17). As disparities across housing projects grew and made the work of solidifying social compacts more challenging than ever, residents within the islp pro­ject area came to recognize the unevenness across ­different phases of a given pro­ject and across projects overall. Homes completed in Old Crossroads in 1998 and 1999 ­were significantly larger and better built than those delivered in Lower Crossroads only a year or two l­ater. There ­were all manner of conspiracy theories about the per­sis­tent power of the headmen: that the remaining leadership in Old Crossroads was in cahoots with provincial and local government and that this explained the differences in housing stock. Meantime, many shack dwellers resorted to building their own homes. An astounding array of building techniques persist, shoring up the gap between state-­subsidized housing and the long delays between groundbreaking and completed homes, as well as the problems of size and quality. Some search for bricks on construction sites and at brick factories, o­ thers ingeniously build two-­story shack structures to maximize limited plot space, still o­ thers are required to move from site to site with the promise of nothing more than a tap and toilet. On the new plots, p­ eople literally “resurrect” the past rebuilding structures that have traveled and been resituated countless times. The Zion Christian Church (zcc), first built in Old Crossroads in 1975 and moved on several occasions, was permanently relocated on a “religious” plot in Lower Crossroads, where it remains. Save for an extension, the materials (including the original nails) have been lovingly reused (see figure 3.2). One morning in early July,59 Gugs and I head to the local anc offices in Brown’s Farm, the township adjacent to Lower Crossroads. Ezekiel, a friend of Gugs’s and the chairperson of the local anc branch, has promised to visit with us at a site where housing allocation will be taking place that very day—­translating the abstraction of the beneficiary list into the living, breathing, flesh, and blood struggles of a­ ctual ­people ready to step forward and claim their assigned stands. There is something ­else: “a stone ­house” we may wish to see (see figure 3.3).60 Ezekiel and I had visited earlier in the week; I commented on the structure, built from rubble and rocks in all likelihood collected at a number of building sites and dumps. The h ­ ouse itself sits low and almost crouched against the elements. In places where the stonework is at risk of caving in, large-­gauge wire mesh has been used 124  |   ch ap te r 3

FIGURE 3.2  ​Zion Christian Church in Lower Crossroads. Courtesy of Anne-­Maria Makhulu.

to create a “skin” in which the rocks and rubble have been lodged. The roof is composed of uneven pieces of corrugated asbestos (vibracrete)61 arranged in such a way that sections overlap. In a ­couple of places the stone walls give way to openings that are boarded up, and a front door at the back of the plot faces the yard and away from the street. When we arrive, a crowd is milling about the engineer’s office; a shipping container with a covered carport and a number of bulldozers and other heavy machinery are parked in front. Gugs points to the crowd and explains that ­people are waiting to hear their names called so they can walk to their newly assigned plots and claim them, as he had done a year or so before. Just at that moment, as we look out over a stretch of vacant land that backs onto Lansdowne Road, we see individuals and families moving across the area and taking up positions immediately next to plastic standpipes poking out from beneath the ground. These connect to the sewer and will eventually attach to an outdoor flush toilet. For all the discussion of community participation, social compacts, subsidies, beneficiary lists—­the trappings of reconstruction and development—­until that moment I have never been witness to the reading of the beneficiary roster and the assignment of plots. For many, this represents a historic victory against the 1913 Natives Land Act, rural dispossession, the mi­grant ­labor system, and influx controls—all Tr a nsitions   |   125

FIGURE 3.3  ​The stone ­house. Courtesy of Anne-­Maria Makhulu.

the injustices of apartheid and more encapsulated in that one, ­simple act of walking forward and claiming a stand but done with such calm, such l­ittle fanfare, ­after so long a wait. A few blocks over, construction has already begun, and it is h ­ ere that we return to the stone ­house. This time we find its own­er: a man, probably in his thirties, sporting an anorak with the hood pulled low, walking up and down the pavement and speaking with an imaginary companion. He asks for a cigarette and then, placing the invisible filter to his lips, inhales deeply, thanking the friend we cannot see. He speaks si­mul­ta­neously of how cigarettes are made—­“do ­people know how cigarettes are made,” he asks, and then demands that he be given a cigarette, by whom is unclear. We enter the yard and call out to someone living in the shack in the back of the stand. A young man comes out to greet us, along with what appears to be a neighbor. We ask about the stone h ­ ouse. It seems that the occupant is the man’s brother; “he’s not right you know, but he built this h ­ ouse,” the brother tells us. Then he goes on to explain that there was a very real prob­lem with its location, because the stone structure straddles two properties—­the one, a ­family plot where the man in the anorak, his brother, and his ­father reside; the other, a church stand. The parish apparently planned to have the “madman removed,” at the very least to have his home dismantled. He of course refused, 126  |   ch ap te r 3

and there was no reasoning with him given his state of “unreason.” There was intervention from the block committee, and eventually the ­matter was raised at a weekly meeting of the South African National Civic Organisation (sanco). But there was still no resolution. The brother goes on to explain the laborious pro­cess by which his sibling built the ­house of stone, straddling two plots, resolute in its stone and rock immovability and contravening new and old legislation—in other words, refusing the threatened act of removal. The h ­ ouse was constructed rock by rock, stone by stone, without help of a wheelbarrow or any machinery. Roaming the townships for rocks and rubble, even the concrete for the boundary wall had been brought home on his sibling’s back, slab by slab; in so d­ oing he had upset the l­egal stipulation that one plot have a residential function, the other a religious one. For all the talk of occupying space, bounding, and defining it now and in the past, the spatial order was now thoroughly disrupted in the face of a radical act of sacrifice on the part of one man and his invisible companion. Even as the insanities of the old system ­were exposed, the new system seemed to have produced new irrationalities to which at least this one man responded with his own form of reason and unreason. |  |  |  |  |

Some of what motivates South Africans on the margins is a keen sense that the law cannot be trusted and that only the “rule of the p­ eople” will serve them. There have been too many compromises made on the part of those who have spent lifetimes struggling for access to the city and to the right to domestic life in it. With demo­cratization, the majority of South Africans assumed they would enjoy new rights and entitlements. But even the Constitutional Court has shown itself slow to rally to the cause of those the constitution itself claims to protect. The 2009 Phiri decision is one poignant example. A ­water rights case that dragged on for five years, the Constitutional Court eventually ruled that the use of prepaid ­water meters was lawful, even as the court’s ruling signaled not only a ­future of increased ser­vice cutoffs in poor communities but also necessary decreases in ­water usage as ­house­holds accommodated the cost of inefficiencies and the commodification of a basic good (Bond and Dugard 2008; also see Egan and Wafer 2004; Hart 2013; Narsiah 2011). This is surely a paradox of South African Tr a nsitions   |   127

democracy: that precisely with the advent of a system of genuine lawfulness, the fact of a liberal constitution, a functioning court system, the elevation of demo­cratic ideals, these together should conjure a fear “that the rule of law might preempt the rule of the p­ eople.”62 Phiri and its aftermath have certainly confirmed this fact. ­Little won­der that South Africa is now home to over 8,000 pop­u­lar protests over ser­vice cuts and stalled housing provision annually—­the highest rate per capita worldwide. “How did this happen,” Bond asks, “in a society that, during the 1980s, boasted one of the world’s greatest urban social movements” (Bond 2010, 17–18)? Demands for the decommodification of basic needs are one expression of growing discontent, building homes illegally another. From this perspective the “stone ­house” and its “master builder” stand out for their continuity with longer-­ standing social and spatial practices, practices of built form, dwelling, and land occupation—­“situated practices and their associated power relations, meanings and forms of knowledge and experience” (Pred 1995, 1076)—­that represent attempts, however small, to transform the city a­ fter apartheid. Likewise, defiance in the face of the Phiri case, mostly by Soweto-­based activists, has ultimately raised the ­house­hold allotment of “­free basic ­water,” while sabotaging municipal meters continues to thwart the city of Johannesburg’s attempts to commodify a fundamental good. In Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, and other urban centers these contestations over the right to the city and access to its benefits persist.

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chapter 4

“Reckoning”

reck·on·ing \ 'rekəni NG\ n 1: the action or pro­cess of calculating or estimating something: last year was not, by any reckoning, a particularly good one; the system of time reckoning in Babylon 2: a person’s view, opinion, or judgment: by ancient reckoning, bacteria are plants 3: archaic, a bill or account, or its settlement 4: the avenging or punishing of past mistakes or misdeeds: the fear of being brought to reckoning; there will be a terrible reckoning. —­Oxford En­glish Dictionary

This chapter considers the prob­lem of the posttransition moment and its continuities with the old regime.1 Nadine Gordimer had already anticipated the question of historical continuity in the prescient epigraph to her 1982 novel July’s ­People. She invoked Gramsci’s interregnum, with its “morbid symptoms” and the fact that the old was d­ ying while the new could not be born (Gordimer 1982). More recently, Jennifer Wenzel has similarly noted that the “new” South Africa bears all too common a resemblance to its past: the pre­sent has, regrettably, become “the changing face of old oppressions” (Wenzel 2009, 159). If apartheid obsessed over ethnic, cultural, and racial differences, radical class differences have largely defined the post-­apartheid era. The new unfettered market capitalism has widened the gap between

rich and poor, promoting the interests of an antidemo­cratic ruling class (cf. Piketty 2014) over the more thoroughly demo­cratic values of dignity, equality, and freedom for all, as stipulated in the South African Bill of Rights. By aligning with transnational capital, the new black bourgeoisie (some of them former “strug­gle elite”)2 has distanced itself from those with whom it previously aligned in the liberation movements and created not only a yawning socioeconomic gap between itself and those without access to circuits of capital but a po­liti­cal gap, too. For their part, those beyond such circuits of financial and po­liti­cal patronage, including those who live on the edges of the city of Cape Town, continue to do ­battle, taking up struggles for ­water and electricity, adequate housing, and health care. Even more mundane are their day-­to-­day “money struggles” (Guyer, Denzer and Agbaje 2002; also see Breckenridge 1995)—­battles to economize, to bud­get, and to reckon with the reproduction of ­house­holds. In this chapter, I turn then to the question of “reckoning,” in the sense of both moral and practical accounting. Squatters not only persist in fighting for their right to the city, engaging questions of dispossession and marginalization (moral questions); they also engage banal, everyday activities of getting by and making do—­what Guyer has called “marginal gains” (2004; also see Guyer, Khan, and Obarrio 2010). Routinely, as we have seen, squatters ­labor to produce small incremental gains. Indeed, again and again squatters or­ga­nized their lives around such strategies, ranging from the critical if minute estimations of the cost of building a shack—­the ­actual construction materials and the monthly “rents” due the headmen—to the calculus of urban wages and their remittance to rural ­house­holds, as well as a ­whole host of small but pragmatic appraisals of the “material-­possi­ble.” These in turn laid the foundations of a precarious hope (cf. Allison 2013; Standing 2011) for ­family and for a ­future. By the late 1990s, it was pop­u­lar to argue that South Africa’s transition could be achieved through “truth and reconciliation.” But as numerous commentators have since observed, the limits of truth telling—­the degree to which revelation was genuine and the degree to which it provided the ground for forgiveness (largely theological notions)—­rarely touched on questions of how, exactly, ­people would live post-­apartheid and do so together (see, e.g., Du Bois and Du Bois-­Pedain 2008; Ross 2003; Sitze 2013; Wilson 2001). Living u ­ nder the old regime, the po­liti­cal lines ­were drawn quite starkly; ­after all, apartheid or­ga­nized and “encompass[ed] in a solidarity of 130  |   ch ap te r 4

suffering” (Ashforth 2000, 101) virtually everyone—­which is not to deny that there ­were traitors to the cause and that they blurred the moral lines. A ­ fter apartheid, however, ­little seemed clear. Adam Ashforth has noted the emergence of a general “spiritual insecurity” among black South Africans related to the precariousness of daily life and most often expressed in and through accusations of “witchcraft” (Ashforth 2000, 17). The pre­sent seems to have exacerbated preexisting anxi­eties and insecurities, not only about state vio­lence (see, e.g., Chipkin 2003, 2004) but also about structural vio­lence as the primary legacy of apartheid: the poverty that has proven impossible to eradicate and the per­sis­tence of dispossession. In Crossroads and Lower Crossroads, troubling new questions have emerged about the trustworthiness of neighbors, friends, kin, all in the context of diminishing material resources. Noting a similar pattern of suspicions in Guatemala, where few have been brought to book for the atrocities of the civil war, Diane Nelson has argued that the continuity between older histories and the pre­sent are critical to how ­people perceive ordinary suspicions—­the stuff of the dark night of the soul (2009, xv). But aside from such moral accounting, practical, daily bookkeeping has been central to how p­ eople negotiate the challenges of the new era. I was first struck by such practices of daily accounting when Evelyn (Dube), in the course of an interview, presented a receipt for rent paid on her shack in Old Crossroads from August 1987. Fully twelve years l­ ater, she remained in possession of a now much dog-­eared piece of paper that proved she had fulfilled her obligation for r7 in rent for the month (see figure 2.3). I noted too all the ways in which ­people thought about and planned ­house­hold bud­gets, “not to mention worrying (that is, producing a folk theory)” that took “more time and imagination than much ­else” (Guyer 1995, 5–6). By now, we have noted a wide variety of practices of reckoning—­the calculations of life, rents, shack materials, and the like. In Old Crossroads, headmen collected from each ­house­hold frequent “levies,” usually r10 or so, which they most often pocketed but on occasion used for bail for those arrested in pass raids. Another frequent calculation was the cost of transportation: the commute to jobs, coupled with train rides home to the rural areas between ­labor contracts. In the past, at every turn accounting demanded attention. In the pre­sent, as we will see, such demands of daily bookkeeping have endured, as squatters continue to engage in projects of making home. “ R eckon i ng ”   |   131

“Money Matters”

The poor [are those] whose means are barely sufficient for decent in­de­pen­dent life . . . ​according to the usual standard of life in this country. —­Charles Booth, 1889

Over the course of a de­cade, I became fairly well acquainted with a number of families on the north and south sides of Lansdowne Road, and one ­family in par­tic­u­lar, the Mfeketos. In 2006, Edith, her husband, Solomon, their four children, and a granddaughter lived in a small Reconstruction and Development Programme (rdp) ­house set back from the main road leading out of Lower Crossroads onto Sheffield Road. Previously a small informal settlement, Lower Crossroads now boasted a population of approximately 8,000.3 The Mfeketos’ h ­ ouse, or­ga­nized around a central living space, had two bedrooms and a kitchen; while the front of the ­house was built from brick, the rooms in the rear ­were pieced together with corrugated iron, cardboard, and plastic sheeting, the remnants of a much older structure. Recycling building materials is a not uncommon practice. Across Cape Town, in both formal townships and informal settlements, the city’s history of vio­lence and displacement remains visible. The joining of ityotyombe (shack)4 and endlini (brick home; see figure 4.1) signal a past of illegal migration in the city (see, e.g., Ndebele 2003). As I suggested in chapter 3, homes are often a combination of new and old, bricks and mortar, cardboard and tarpaulin; they are reminders of a legacy of housing restrictions and the contradictions of current policies. Even two de­cades ­after demo­cratization hybrid homes, like the Mfeketos’, continue to stand as a response to the limitations of post-1994 planned housing delivery. In some provinces, bud­gets have been ­either over-­or underspent, public funds have gone to private contractors operating with minimal oversight, and in general, despite government targets—­famously, the claim to a million low-­cost homes in the first five years of democracy—­enormous backlogs remain, while the quality of completed homes, their size and structural integrity in par­tic­u­lar, is suspect at best.5 John Matshikiza, a journalist at the Mail and Guardian, describes the peculiar relationship of the townships to the vision of a postmillennial South Africa:

132  |   ch ap te r 4

FIGURE 4.1  ​Shack and brick home (ityotyombe and endlini). Courtesy of Anne-­Maria Makhulu.

The townships are not shrinking or being dissolved into the greater reality of South African urban culture of the Third Millennium. On the contrary, they are growing. A million new township h ­ ouses have been added to the existing stock by our new Rainbow Government since 1994. Each unit seems to be even tinier than the housing units we grew up in—­attracting to themselves the colloquial name of vez’inyau, meaning “show your feet”—­[because] the dwelling is so small that when you sit with your back to the wall at one end of the ­house, your feet will be sticking out at the other.6 While the state reckons its progress in units built, the South African public focuses on size. One expression of the miniaturization of post-­apartheid development is the vez’inyau (cf. Scott 1998); Unos (Fiat cars), Smarties (similar to m&ms), and even “kennels” are also invoked in describing the rdp starter homes. Two de­cades of neoliberalization have reinforced the monetarist logic that drove development even before 1994 and in large mea­ sure still explains problems of quality and size in the city. In the de­cade following demo­cratization, funding for the construction of new homes was so limited (approximately r16,000 per unit) that developers and government never saw the point in building big—or well. But this is nothing new. As Re“ R eckon i ng ”   |   133

becca Ginsburg reminds us, in the 1950s the state built “quickly and ruthlessly. . . . ​Construction crews placed floors directly over boulders, stones, and anything e­ lse in their paths. Some h ­ ouses ­were left with field grass growing inside and cement often remained hanging between unevenly laid bricks” (Ginsburg 1996, 129). The betrayals of apartheid urbanism require more than delivering housing, of course. A ­ fter all, in the period post-1948, approximately 3.5 million South Africans ­were forcibly removed,7 while mandatory construction freezes in African areas created artificial housing shortages and discouraged urban settlement. These policies complemented a longer-­standing pro­cess of land seizure (following the 1913 Natives Land Act) that stripped Africans of private property and secure land tenure across urban and rural areas.8 The new unfettered market capitalism, the aligning of the new black elite with circuits of transnational capital, the realignment of po­liti­cal interests in the years since 1994—­together, these have placed a very par­tic­u­lar burden on those already living so precariously: the urban and rural poor, squatters, and more generally, ordinary South Africans. Privatization has exacerbated, albeit unwittingly, the racism, classism, and exclusion of the old regime. This isomorphic relationship between official policy and everyday life is central to a set of questions this chapter means to address, specifically through the conjuncture of kinship and po­liti­cal economy (White 2001a), the politics of domestic life, and politics more broadly. What sort of practice and politics of life and forms of life does this conjuncture foreground, and what connections might these have to a much broader set of global forces? Practices of fiscal austerity (the bookkeeping to which I previously referred) strike at the core of households—­not only on the peripheries of South African cities, of course, but in cities everywhere—­and raise vexing questions about the link between housing and the reproduction of ­labor power in contexts in which housing tenure is less than secure. The overall po­liti­cal and economic climate has set policy on a par­tic­u­ lar course of “less ambitious . . . ​public and private intervention” consistent with the movement away from top-­down reformist strategies of the postwar period and the “championing [of] privatization of housing supply . . . ​ and micro-­entrepreneurial solutions to urban poverty” (Davis 2006, 71; also see de Soto 2000). Further, ­free market strategies tend to encourage “private and personal responsibility and initiative” (Harvey 2001, 108) and 134  |   ch ap te r 4

thereby deny collective obligation for a much longer history of colonial dispossession. ­Women, as Edith’s story reveals, most often bear the greatest responsibility: for community, for kin, for ­house­hold. They expertly reckon the material and social costs of life by depending on established networks of mutual reliance; this follows a long tradition of domestic management, thrift, and financial resourcefulness in African communities (Bähre 2007a). Even in the early days in Old Crossroads, when infrastructure was minimal, there ­were undertakers, makeshift churches, schools, and crèches—­all signs of a nascent entrepreneurialism and self-­sufficiency. Some locations boasted photog­raphers’ studios much like the one brilliantly described in Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (Fugard, Kani, and Ntshona 1974). More ubiquitously, the local spaza shop—­the corner store run out of someone’s home—­has long sold bread and milk and sweets, homemade foods, and other con­ve­niences.9 In 2006, Edith ran just such a sweet and snack shop from her front yard, in Lower Crossroads, where she prepared small fried foods and seasoned chicken feet for her husband to sell from an outdoor stand, along with loose cigarettes, small packets of crisps, and an assortment of sweets. Edith’s “survivalist” business provided her ­family with its main source of income, bringing in the equivalent of a few dollars a day.10 Spaza shops occupy a precarious niche within the larger township economy: they are responsive at once to extreme competition from local shopping malls (the Shoprite near Lower Crossroads is less than half a mile away) and to smaller, immigrant-­ owned businesses (Somali, Ethiopian, and Zimbabwean) that tend to undercut local competition by remaining open late and catering to customers’ whims. “Foreigners” are perceived to be hardworking, ready to throw in given the relative stability and prosperity afforded them in South Africa. Predictably, perhaps, local South Africans misidentify immigrant small business ­owners as the source of larger problems of structural unemployment; occasionally such sentiments fuel violent attacks against suspected illegals, or what are known as makwerek­were,11 as was the case in 2008. It follows, then, that for many residents of Lower Crossroads, so-­called informal businesses make up in no small part for the lack of wage-­paying jobs. This fact raises fundamental questions about the salience of the “informal” as an analytic in explaining hybrid zones of productive activity within the national economy (the largest in Africa), yet whose associated workforce is regarded as largely superfluous to the formal l­abor market. This “ R eckon i ng ”   |   135

r­elationship between formal and informal sectors echoes a broader regional and continent-­wide phenomenon: forces of globalization have resulted less in the seamless integration of national economies into the global system and more in “capital flows and markets [at] once lightning fast, [patchy] and incomplete” (Ferguson 2006, 49). Rather than a failure of the developmentalist telos, however, such unevenness marks the success of a new and sophisticated world system (Ferguson 2005, 380). In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt writes about the concept of superfluity: how workers ­were drawn from all over the world by South ­Africa’s gold rush and industrial revolution, workers who would have other­wise had ­little “use or function” (Arendt 1994, 189) in the ­labor market had it not been for the color of their skins and the preferential treatment afforded white workers. For Arendt, forms of surplus ­labor and surplus populations—­ populations conceived as subjects for elimination—­were inextricably linked. In this sense, Arendt anticipated Foucault’s biopo­liti­cal state, even while the concept was never more than implicit in her own work. By the early 2000s, ­house­holds across South Africa, including those on the Cape Flats, w ­ ere caught in the crosshairs of market reform, which left many without formal employment and nostalgic for a past of financial certainties (including apartheid wage work), minimal as these must have been. Solomon Mfeketo’s story was hardly unusual. He had lost his job in a leather tannery in December 1999, when the industry downsized. Even then, five years into South Africa’s demo­cratic transition, unemployment rates ­were rapidly increasing (reaching 38.6 ­percent in 1998),12 and by the end of that first de­ cade, approximately one million jobs had been lost in mining, manufacturing, and agriculture. These retrenchments ­were consistent with the state’s implementation of structural reforms (ironically, self-­imposed), while deregulation saw the financial sector expand to approximately 21 ­percent of gdp even while employing only a small fraction of the active workforce (see e.g., Ashman, Fine, and Newman 2011a, 186). There are many interventions to be made in the debate over the success or failure of post-­apartheid economic policy—­whether rapid growth has sustained or undermined development or ­whether eschewing job creation has in fact dealt a fatal blow. It is certainly fair to say the poor have been sidelined by a “mode of globalized economics that produces socioeconomic growth without a commensurate increase in regular wage-­paying work” (Murray 2011, 149–50). The rapid growth path aside, volatility in the South 136  |   ch ap te r 4

African economy and growing in­e­qual­ity seem particularly pressing. Both strike hardest at the already vulnerable—­those without shelter or jobs and the city itself as a site of both surplus production and struggles over access to surplus, surplus which is in turn deployed in developing urban infrastructure. At the other pole, lack of access to capital produces spaces in which neither adequate infrastructure nor a formal housing market (on which to speculate) exists, as in those many peripheral zones that border the city of Cape Town. These dual forces have not only produced marginality; they have sustained preexisting marginal relations predating 1994. Many of South Africa’s economic problems first emerged during the crisis years of the 1970s, a period of overaccumulation of capital, and have worsened with the country’s belated insertion into the world financial system (cf. Arrighi 1994; Harvey 2003b). Financialization tends to intensify preexisting uneven relations given the propensity of specific circuits of capital to expand at much faster rates than o­ thers and in so d­ oing create two quite distinct tendencies—­the one speculative and volatile, the other given to decline (Ashman, Fine, and Newman 2011a). In an economy once or­ga­ nized around “uneven and combined development”—as left scholars w ­ ere already arguing in the 1970s in view of the relation of the reserves to the country’s cities (see, e.g., Wolpe 1972, 1975)—­financialization exacerbates existing unevenness.13 Taken together (a history of radical in­e­qual­ity and financialization), South Africa has become not only one of the most unequal socie­ties but, in response and of necessity, the protest capital of the world. Volatile or unstable, then, in both po­liti­cal and economic senses, South Africa has sustained fully six currency crashes between 1996 and 2011 and a sizable real estate ­bubble. The ­bubble has led to an expansion of the consumer credit market, mortgages specifically (see, e.g., Desai and Pithouse 2004), and unsustainable lending driven by consumerism. High interest rates set by the Reserve Bank—­a strategy for belatedly integrating South Africa into the global financial system—­have generated unser­viceable levels of debt for ordinary borrowers (cf. Lazzarato 2011) and, in many instances, served as the grounds for eviction from homes with underwater mortgages. During the mid-­to late 1990s, as ­labor-­intensive industries (and the production of real goods) gave way to a focus on financial markets and corporate trea­suries turned to finance capital in search of higher returns, unemployment levels increased. Those who remained gainfully employed now “ R eckon i ng ”   |   137

bore the added responsibility of supporting multiple dependents, which strained already fragile networks of kin (see, e.g., Barchiesi 2011).14 For a majority of black ­house­holds, this translated into a renewed reliance on the informal economy, informal circuits of lending and borrowing (including loan-­sharking), consumer credit, and an emerging welfare apparatus. Long a staple of township life, growing structural unemployment suggested increased de­pen­dency on informal financial institutions, broadly understood as “financial mutuals.” Early in the new millennium, while black ­house­holds renewed efforts in self-­reliance, the cities in which they lived, Cape Town included, listed from crisis to crisis—in housing and ser­vice delivery as well as in the employment sector—­and yet these ­were somehow secondary considerations for city managers and local government officials, who turned their attentions, instead, beyond South Africa. A (failed) bid for the 2004 Summer Olympics was quickly followed by a successful bid to host the 2010 soccer World Cup. In a new world of “global cities” and competition with faraway rivals, municipal responsibilities w ­ ere seemingly reduced to concerns for international tourism revenue. Thus, by 2010, rather than fulfilling promises of job creation and public spending, the state was instead placing the finishing touches on costly stadia ahead of the World Cup. In the year preceding the World Cup alone, South Africa lost an additional 1.3 million jobs (Bond 2013, 577). And in due course, fifa transformed Cape Town into a “world class” city, trumping any vision of post-­apartheid planning and commitments to welfare and equality. Alongside all the consequences of the new liberalization—­significant job losses, a renewed focus on growth, and global competitiveness—­the state rolled out a fairly comprehensive system of social assistance, directed precisely ­toward undoing the “racial welfarism” of the past (McDonald and Smith 2004, 1461). A paradox? “Handouts” are not generally regarded as consistent with efforts directed ­toward shrinking government. In which case, ­were the market reforms in South Africa, including gear, genuinely neoliberal? Social grants (including state pensions and child welfare support), widely acknowledged as their benefits may be,15 need not be inconsistent with certain neoliberal tendencies, including corporatization. Public goods (­water and electricity) ­were now delivered with the assumption of full cost recovery—­a princi­ple that would have been antithetical to the old apartheid welfare system but was certainly in line with corporate ideology—­ 138  |   ch ap te r 4

highlighting the ways in which many “benefits” of the new South African state ­were being offset by costs. Ferguson has argued that the extensive apparatus of social grants (based on disability, parental status, or age eligibility) and the proposed basic income grant (big), are “both pro-­poor and neoliberal” (Ferguson 2007, 79) and as such ideologically incoherent. Though social grants undeniably sustain ­house­holds, their capacity for genuine poverty reduction is questionable, not least because economic policy in South Africa has largely neglected the need for job creation leading to a significant decline in ­labor’s portion of the social surplus. In this sense, social grants can hardly be said to be “pro-­poor” or poverty alleviating, even if many South Africans have become heavily dependent on them.16 The Wage Puzzle

At sixty-­five, Solomon began collecting a state pension, approximately r800 a month ($120 at the time).17 Three of his children, all of whom w ­ ere of working age, could not find work, and his fourth child was still in school. Within a few months, his pension became his primary source of income, which made the Mfeketo ­house­hold more or less indistinguishable from ­house­holds across South Africa, in townships and squatter settlements, rural villages and remote homesteads, where jobs are scarce and prospects for reemployment are practically non­ex­is­tent. ­Little won­der that mutual aid and burial socie­ties and savings schemes—­im­por­tant as these had always been in black social life—­were becoming absolutely essential. David Scott has noted the new “blackmail of democracy” (Scott n.d.; also see Scott 1999), a ruse that depends on linking good governance and market reforms, and in South Africa that “blackmail” quickly saw postrevolutionary promises of a caring state cede place to fiscal conservatism. With so much of the world’s population reliant on informal sources of income and with no apparent substantive means of social reproduction, how ­people survive, what their h ­ ouse­hold earnings and patterns of consumption consist of—­questions that are a central focus of formal economics—­seem more pressing than ever (see Davis 2006; also see Ferguson 2006; Hutchinson 1996; Piot 1999; Sayer and Walker 1992; Weiss 2004). One attempt to unravel what economists refer to as the “wage puzzle” has come in the form of a South African study18 that argues that the nation’s poor make use of a “R eckon i ng ”   |   139

dizzying array of both formal and informal financial instruments for the purposes of surviving one financial year to the next (see Collins, Morduch, Rutherford, and Ruthven 2009; cf. Roitman 2005). The study showcases a combination of mechanisms for saving, banking, borrowing, lending, and channeling money into socially reproductive ­labor. As in many other parts of the world, pop­u­lar rotating credit and savings schemes offer two advantages: (1) increased purchasing power, in that members generally pool resources when looking to make large ­house­hold purchases; and (2) promotion of fairly consistent saving by encouraging members to do so as a group. The study rightly concludes that while poor h ­ ouse­holds may have very ­little money “this [­doesn’t] mean that they [don’t] manage what they have.” In South Africa, financial mutuals have a relatively extended history. In the second half of the nineteenth-­century, following the discovery of gold and diamonds and the advent of mi­grant work, families confronted the prob­lem of retaining the integrity of ­house­holds that ­were essentially scattered across significant geo­graph­i­cal distances. Burial socie­ties, for example, functioned in part to assure the return of the deceased to the ancestral home; then and now they accommodated mi­grant groups issuing from a given region—­in the case of Xhosas whether Cala, Lady Frere, or Pondoland. Similarly the stokvel or umgalelo, the savings scheme, guaranteed a degree of financial security in the face of long-­distance migration, the inevitable lean times in a given year, and the general uncertainties of living outside the formal banking system. With proletarianization and forced resettlement, families ­were less able to depend on one another, which often made financial mutuals—­literally the reliance on kin and nonkin—­their best option. Such informal institutions and funds remain hugely pop­u­lar in South Africa and by all accounts are responsible for upward of r1 to 2 billion in annual turnover (Bähre 2007a). That residents of both Old and Lower Crossroads still maintained ties to the rural Eastern Cape and w ­ ere inured to a tradition of financial mutuals meant that many ­were members of all manner of schemes even in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For several years, Edith belonged to a savings scheme, along with nine other members. Thandu ‘Xolo (Lover of Peace) was a formal association that boasted a written constitution with strict regulations. Over the course of eleven months—­January through November—­the group made monthly contributions of r30 (approximately $4.50 in 2006) per member. December was set aside as a time for cashing out and preparing for the following year: paying annual school fees, buying uniforms 140  |   ch ap te r 4

and books, making the journey to the rural areas, and attending to general home maintenance, such as roofing and repainting. The “December holidays” ­were not so much associated with religious celebrations per se, even as ­people exchanged Christmas gifts, as they ­were with both the ritual and practical reproduction of the ­house­hold, symbolically marked by the circumcision of young men. Indeed, trips to the rural Eastern Cape w ­ ere linked to the desire to see young boys enter circumcision schools (abakwetha) close to familial homesteads, which effectively renewed connections between town and country and shared lifeworlds separated by hundreds of miles. At the same time, young boys destined to become “new men,” or amakrwala (through the central rite of passage), spoke of the generational aspects of social reproduction as critical to their complete integration into the world of adults and all its attendant privileges and responsibilities. The group members shared a fixed-­deposit19 (or savings) account, though only three members served as cosignatories. Once a month, ­after collecting contributions from the group, the three ­women would deposit the money in the bank. As cosignatories, they ­were responsible for maintaining a minimum balance in the association’s account and notifying the bank of large withdrawals, which usually occurred at the end of November. To the uninitiated, collective savings groups pre­sent no par­tic­u­lar advantages over individual banking. But those who participate in what are locally referred to as umgalelos argue that saving together is much more rewarding than trying to save alone. Members who pool resources in a fixed-­deposit account see their savings appreciate incrementally with interest earnings compared to the much smaller sums they might deposit individually. The interest earnings on fixed accounts, for example, ­were approximately 7.0 to 7.3 ­percent in 2006 (based on annual deposits of r10,000 or less). While Edith was unsure of the exact rate, she insisted she had made considerable interest earnings in the prior year, though given a spike in inflation, her real rate of return would have been negative. Perhaps just as significant, pooled deposits demand a very par­tic­u­lar form of fiscal discipline. In Edith’s case, the association restricts the withdrawal of funds, which sacrifices individual consumer desire in ­favor of collective domestic security. Underwriting such discipline is the logic of delayed gratification, through which lump sums are converted into a steady trickle—­what Karl Polanyi thought of as redistributive and reciprocative systems, or “re­distribution writ small” (cf. Polanyi 2001). “R eckon i ng ”   |   141

These activities depend on the constitution of a certain kind of self-­ regulating subject—­a “responsible and moral individual and economic-­ rational actor” (Lemke 2001, 201). Members of Edith’s association often spoke of “­belt-­tightening” strategies, comments consistent with discourses of self-­ empowerment that have become pervasive in the context of the devolution of state welfare functions. While it is easy enough to argue that these ­were compensations for the failures of the market in South Africa, such discourses w ­ ere just as likely the means through which Edith and the other ­women in Thandu ‘Xolo transcended very real constraints. Thus, on one hand, their narratives of self-­restraint and frugality suggested very real limitations to the work of making and maintaining homes and families; on the other, their active reckoning of what was possi­ble also served to reshape the very structures of austerity and fiscal discipline in which they w ­ ere implicated. These are not only moral-­ rational subjects, then, but subjects with a highly pragmatic orientation to lived circumstances (Comaroff and Comaroff 1997, 66). When I first knew her, Edith’s umgalelo had been in operation for almost fifteen years. Established in Old Crossroads, the scheme moved when its members ­were relocated to a transit camp in Lower Crossroads in the early 1990s, following their ouster from Crossroads by headman Jeffrey Nongwe. Not all such schemes are this stable, of course, and many function without formal banking instruments. Participants in such schemes make contributions to one another on a rotating basis throughout the year, and recipients have discretion in the use of funds.20 Both systems have their advantages, although generally those making use of the banking system are more resilient and their schemes have greater longevity. The same is equally true of burial socie­ties, and the presence or absence of a fund determines methods of payment to members, the size of membership, and myriad aspects of the burial or­ga­ni­za­tion. The Mfeketos had certainly reaped small but meaningful benefits over time. The seats in the living room, a kitchen unit, fridge, bed, school fees, and uniforms had all been paid for through Edith’s hard work and due diligence. She was the first to acknowledge that without the savings scheme and the support of her fellow members, it would have been virtually impossible to extend the kind of moral and financial support to her f­ amily. If self-­imposed austerity mea­sures can be understood as part and parcel of a new neoliberal logic—­a mode of self-­regulation and of “savings as ‘spirit’ or ‘moral’ discipline” (Khan and Pieterse 2004, 30)—­the broader context in which acts of deferral and austerity ­were and continue to be enacted is just as critical to understanding responses to hardship.21 142  |   ch ap te r 4

Consider the caprice of the Reserve Bank; specifically, its wild fluctuations in interest rates, which undercut rates of return and real purchasing power. Consider, too, the increasingly speculative nature of the South African economy as the productive sector gave way to financial ser­vices. In this climate of uncertainty, umgalelos have taken on a distinct purpose: to surmount the seemingly impossible challenges of living on the social margins. Yet in so ­doing, the schemes have ironically replicated the logic of microentrepreneurialism, which is integral to sustaining the privatization regime. In Cape Town, for example, efforts at “encouraging” practices of saving among low-­income ­house­holds have demonstrated a complete ignorance of enduring practices of economization. For beneficiaries of housing subsidies, the consequences are significant. Those lacking the financial means to provide their own homes have been, for the very first time since the implementation of a post-­apartheid housing program, obliged to make statutory top-up payments, drawn from savings, on other­wise ­free benefits. A similar logic informs the introduction of school fees. Small contributions are said to promote a sense of “own­ership” in public education, though this argument ignores the challenges such contributions pose for out-­of-­work parents. Debt and the Search for Financial Sovereignty

My focus on the domestic space as a site of uncertain reciprocative and redistributive work highlights the challenges facing South Africans living on the margins of the new democracy.22 The uncertainty that comes with efforts to socially reproduce ­house­holds translates into a general anxiety that ­little can be brought to completion. The conditions of possibility for life itself are at once virtually impossible and inevitable, regardless of how extreme the situation. Families like the Mfeketos and o­ thers continually invent and reinvent the worlds they occupy in ways that both deftly acknowledge and ignore the “crisis” that seems to engulf them, a fact that seems to suggest that the word crisis is not particularly useful in explaining how lives severely circumscribed by need are often si­mul­ta­neously filled with aspiration and hope. Hoping for something and willing its realization are grounds for a certain ­future and keeping ruin at bay. Such hopes translate into directed attempts at transformation, if only minute ones, through the melding of old shacks with new rdp h ­ ouses, through small and enterprising survivalist businesses, through the dispatching of school-­age children “ R eckon i ng ”   |   143

to the countryside to be cared for by extended ­family. The broader question implied by these observations, however, concerns the ways in which social actors, while limited by poverty, nonetheless find ways to outdo the conditions of their own existence, if only in small ways, by connecting new and old forms, essentially risking what is already known (Sahlins 1995, 247) in order to redefine the possi­ble within the constraints of dominant structures. Again, this is probably most evident in the amalgamation of brick homes and shanties. |  |  |  |  |

No progressive observer of the US economy can fail to be startled by the high level of debt borne by the bulk of the population. These are folk who borrow not for luxury, but for survival. —­Vijay Prashad, Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, and Workfare

Scholars of South Africa have noted the peculiar synergy between the formal and informal economies (see, e.g., Ashman, Fine, and Newman 2011a, 2011b; Bond 2013)—­heightened speculation in financial and real estate markets on one hand and the use of (consumer) credit among the poor on the other. One of the critical sites of continuity between formal and informal sectors arises precisely in the extension of “unsecured credit” by banks to the nominally employed. Joining with microfinance institutions and the pervasive township loan shark (or gooi-­gooi) scheme (i.e., a pyramid scheme),23 banks encourage overleveraging, leading to aggressive debt collection down the line. If the poor are prone to spiraling debt and depend on loan-­sharking and other brokerage relations that offer practical, if limited, solutions to the nonproductive nature of postwage work, the “casino economy, with all its financial speculation and fictitious capital formation (much of it unbacked by any growth in real production)” (Harvey 1989, 332), replicates some of the very same strategic errors. Both border on an occult faith in the generative properties of transactions involving e­ ither money or capital and on what seems a general princi­ple: that value can be conjured out of nothing; at least, out of that which is immaterial. Just as derivatives derive value from other assets, other things, the movement ­toward finance seems to depend on producing redundant populations for “capture” by a growing subprime industry. 144  |   ch ap te r 4

Marx was surely intrigued by the occult properties of capital; John Wesley likewise acknowledged the peculiar potential of money, referring to “the hidden, incestuous breeding of cash without exertion” as “pariah” capitalism (see Wesley 1985, 271, 276, in Comaroff and Comaroff 1997, 172; also see Harvey 1982; Marx 1991b). Both men, a c­ entury apart, recognized that money could be “worth more money” and value could be “greater than itself” (Marx 1990, 257). My concern h ­ ere begins with the prob­lem of what happens in a society, in this case South Africa, when the productive sector gives way to financial ser­vices, when financialization gives rise to the conditions for job shedding, when industrial work is no longer a possibility. The prominence of finance capital in the twenty-­first ­century is hard to ignore, as is the sphere of circulation that makes it so profitable. Certainly, the emergence of circulation “as the cutting edge of capitalism” has transformed aspects of our modern market economy in quite radical ways, decoupling capital from sites of production while the forces of circulation have tended to reor­ga­nize national borders, the integrity of national economies, and the very functions of the liberal state (LiPuma and Lee 2004, 9).24 ­Labor’s apparent disappearance—­that is, through a series of geo­graph­i­ cal displacements (what Arrighi and o­ thers have termed “spatial fixes”; see Arrighi 1994)25—is paralleled by the very real experience of absent wage work and the concomitant spiraling of extremes of wealth and poverty. In such circumstances experiences of the everyday are transformed, just as the shape and scope of the narratives describing such experiences take on strange and new form, too. It is particularly striking then that in two entirely distinct sectors of the economy—­the one financial and hence “formal,” the other “informal,” for want of a better term—­wage work has become more or less dissolute. In the one instance fewer and fewer ­actual workers are required to drive the culture of circulation, while structural unemployment has given rise to an ever-­expanding informal sector as a manifest expression of systemic redundancy. But is this ­really a crisis or something more permanent? As Janet Roitman recently observed, by common ac­know­ledg­ment (in both banking circles and among neo-­Marxists), systemic risk is built into the market system (Roitman 2014, 72–73), belying discourses of redundancy that tend to mask the very mechanisms by which superfluous populations are necessarily produced (see Arendt 1994; Mbembe 2004). Edith and Unathi have not been alone in waxing nostalgic about the days when their husbands had full-­time wage-­paying jobs. The new post-­apartheid “ R eckon i ng ”   |   145

state has been equally invested in the notion of the “worker-­citizen” (Barchiesi 2011)—­a power­ful, if anachronistic, symbol now deployed to define the new demo­cratic citizenship. Job losses have accompanied the po­liti­cal transition and stand in stark contrast to the rapid growth path advocated by neoliberal ideologues. Admitting then that the idea of the laboring subject is something of a holdover contingent on an older theory of l­ abor once realized through travel to urban areas from the countryside and through access to wage work, what purchase do such reveries have on the pre­sent? This yearning for apartheid wage work presumably stripped of repressive politics—­a desire for “sweat” as a precondition of material security—in my view is also linked to an increasing debt burden in most ­house­holds (see, e.g., Lazzarato 2011).26 Further, debt and indebtedness, while substantially increasing much as they have elsewhere (see Makhulu, Buggenhagen, and Jackson 2010), not least in the United States, begin to gesture at other kinds of desubstantiation, such as the concrete world of material objects, including homes, the brick-­and-­mortar basis of fundamental security and its meta­phorical foundation, too. Finally, I want to highlight the contrast in the pop­u­lar imaginary of a difficult near past of work and oppression and a pre­sent in which “freedom” has come but cannot be practically enjoyed. In such a case, what are the alternatives by which freedom—in both a po­liti­cal and material sense—­might be achieved? For residents of Lower Crossroads and similar townships and squatter areas across the Flats, the options come in a variety of forms. One in par­tic­u­lar continues to fascinate and perplex me: the quest for a kind of financial autonomy by si­mul­ta­neously arcane and practical means. The financial markets, as we know, continually seek new alternatives to instruments and sectors that no longer generate the kinds of profits they once did. To be sure, what Adam Smith called “prodigals and projectors” (1977), those players in the market who w ­ ere likely to promote risky speculation (instrumental players in the collapse of the credit markets in September 2008, for instance), are a far cry from the “errors of undue optimism” (Pigou 1929) with which South Africa’s working poor engage ­today. |  |  |  |  |

What kinds of new subjectivities emerge in the face of the partial disarticulation of daily life from circuits of capital and commodities, not least wage 146  |   ch ap te r 4

work? What forms of desire are ­shaped by austerity, and how does austerity refigure, often enough, complex practices of money exchange, lending, and abstention? For example, how is it that in contexts of spiraling debt, exorbitant interest rates, and land speculation—­all symptoms of the transnationalization of cities—­that institutions of money lending, saving, and banking among the poor come to correspond to certain aspects of the larger po­liti­cal economy, specifically to heightened levels of personal indebtedness. Notably, in poorer ­house­holds, the resort to both formal and informal credit instruments has taken on critical dimensions. As the Financial Sector Campaign Coalition on Financial Sector Transformation noted in 2004, while the “richest South Africans pay on average 20% interest for credit per annum, [the] poorest pay on average 175%! The state of indebtedness of our ­people is at crisis point. Only [recently] the Constitutional Court dealt with the plight of Karoo residents who lost their ­houses for miserable debts of as ­little as r198 for buying food on credit.”27 The Gquma ­Family

In the early 2000s Nomasundu Gquma was a member of a large umgalelo called Masakhane (“Let’s build each other [up]”), or­ga­nized around four separate but interconnected groups—­hereafter identified as groups A, B, C, and D. While operating in­de­pen­dently to make contributions to each of their members, the groups also came together at regular intervals in order to make intergroup contributions. Members drew a distinction between the two types of “giving”: intragroup contributions ­were referred to as “stickers” or “stickering,” and intergroup contributions as “scores” or “scoring.” Stickers alluded to the idea of a “price,” which was set by the group, while “scores” suggested something akin to a playful competition that ranged widely in sum and frequency. By mid-2006, when I interviewed the Gquma ­family,28 the scheme had already been in operation for four years, during which time its structure and size had changed considerably. Previously the umgalelo was or­ga­nized around two groups, each of which included twelve members. The scheme had recently expanded to four groups with eleven members apiece, almost doubling the total membership. Neighbors in a ­middle-­class section of Khayelitsha, most members worked as teachers, nurses, or police officers, or ran small local businesses. These ­were ­middle-­class families to the extent that someone earned a regular salary, even if the salary range was quite limited. “ R eckon i ng ”   |   147

When I first met Nomasundu, the regulations for the scheme had just been rewritten to accommodate the growing demands of the December holidays. ­After the change in bylaws, contributions w ­ ere made from January to November, even as the sticker price was raised from r1,00029 a month (for twelve months) to r1,200 (for eleven months) and the total value of January-­to-­November contributions came to exceed the total amount contributed in previous years. Having a scheme or­ga­nized around four distinct but interconnected groups expanded the possibilities for making and receiving contributions by amplifying investment possibilities, much as in the field of formal ­finance. While regulations on stickering ­were relatively strict, scores, or contributions made to other members across the four groups (A–­D), varied enormously, both in size and regularity. And although contributions ­were smaller (approximately r200 on average), individuals could score as often as they liked. Group members did so with the understanding that the person with whom they scored could ­either match or increase the amount wagered. A member of group A, for example, might score a member of group C in the amount of r150. The return wager could ­either equal the original score or exceed it by as l­ittle as r10 or as much as could be afforded. Additionally, those who scored with one another tended to remain attached to their scoring partner during the lifetime of their membership, recalling the sorts of fixed relations Malinowski described for Kula ring partners (Malinowski 1984). Indeed, scoring operated similarly to the forms of competitive gifting associated with potlatch and other modes of gift exchange more generally (see Mauss 1990; cf. Sahlins 1972). Yet while Mauss’s conception of a total system of giving is in some mea­ sure relevant h ­ ere, “­free market” logic was also at work in the Masakhane scheme, significantly transforming the classic mantra, “I give so that you may give.”30 The wager or score seemed to depend on giving in order to secure surplus value, which made possi­ble the accumulation of money and commodities, including new furniture, ­house­hold items, and building materials. In other words, this was not merely about giving and receiving in some purely reciprocal sense; rather, it was a transaction made in an effort to create a surplus or excess. As in Mauss’s The Gift, the lag between the act of scoring and the counterwager ­were critical. The scheme operated without the use of a fixed-­deposit account. Instead, group members banked contributions separately, thereby gaining access to 148  |   ch ap te r 4

interest earnings as individuals and not as a group as members of Thandu ‘Xolo did. On occasion, Masakhane members chose to spend money earned from the scheme more or less immediately. For the most part, however, they acted with a certain prudence—­for instance, setting aside additional funds for the December holiday period. Amounts varied, but in a good year they ran anywhere from approximately r13,000 to r20,000 (even r30,000) in cases where members successfully wagered competitively with one another. In the previous year, two members had even raised funds through scoring in order to make sizable down payments on new cars. While such large financial commitments threatened the stability of the scheme, members ­were also likely to borrow from third parties, usually loan sharks (mashonisa), or enlisted in similar schemes from which funds ­were borrowed to cover regular payments.31 Thus, at least in theory Masakhane members ­were able to meet their financial responsibilities to their primary scheme while presumably defaulting elsewhere. Again, at least in princi­ple, members made less use of credit instruments, relying instead on cash whenever possi­ble. Yet even while occupying a certain income bracket (member families had at least one steady wage or salary earner), new ­middle-­class aspirations to consumer goods tended to exceed members’ regular earnings. Plans to build extensions on small rdp homes, purchase new furniture, and redecorate homes ­were frequent topics of discussion, while in practice such projects happened only rarely or over the course of several years. Again, as in other savings schemes, references to ­belt-­tightening and self-­imposed austerity ­were common. The emergence of this sort of ­middle class is quite distinct from the new black entrepreneurial elite, whose money derives from financial ventures in the new Black Economic Empowerment (bee) sector. The status of these men and ­women generally arises from membership in the old “strug­gle aristocracy” (see Seekings and Nattrass 2005; also see Mangcu et al. 2007). By contrast, Nomasundu and her neighbors faced significant challenges in realizing their aspirations, which w ­ ere conspicuously on display in newspapers and pop­u­lar magazines, such as Drum, and on a soap opera like Generations and in the pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion drama The Lab, which portrays the fast-­paced world of high finance. To some degree the discourse of purchasing power and the self-­regulation of consumer desire went hand in hand with an ac­know­ledg­ment of the very real limits of class mobility. This contradiction between aspirations to “ R eckon i ng ”   |   149

material wealth and the practical realization of desires arguably informed a systematic denial of the use of loans and credit in the acquisition of ­consumer goods by the members of Masakhane. Even as borrowing and indebtedness ­were often the preconditions of heightened consumer expenditure, members spoke of the savings scheme in terms of a purely cash economy. Thus “hire purchase”32 and other forms of borrowing from beyond the scheme ­were generally discredited or denied; members nevertheless made frequent use of them. In many respects Masakhane was of a piece with a ­whole apparatus of strategies for tapping into the vast purchasing power of the country’s poor, including high-­priced layaway, credit and microfinance, credit control repossessions, and absurd markups on sales to low-­volume consumers in low-­income areas across South Africa. The structure of Masakhane relied on two sets of assumptions: the first relates to the connection between the four segments and the virtually infinite combination of intergroup wagers that could be made across A, B, C, and D groups. These ­were infinite insofar as they assumed a completely deregulated space freed from the restrictions of other, more systematic patterns of contribution within groups. Not only did members score with unlimited frequency, but amounts they wagered and the incremental increases in counterwagers ­were unlimited, too. Much as Edith’s home attested to her due diligence and participation in Thandu ‘Xolo, Nomasundu’s home spoke explicitly of her participation in the Masakhane scheme. While her husband brought in a steady salary from his job as a policeman and provided medical aid (health insurance) for the ­family, Nomasundu operated, from the vacant carport that adjoined the home, a shebeen (a tavern), where she sold beer, brandy, and a limited range of other cheap spirits while charging r1 for a game of pool. She contributed her earnings from the shebeen directly to the umgalelo. In the time she belonged to Masakhane, she had acquired a dining-­room ­table set, with sideboard and cabinets for storing dinnerware, new tiles for the living room and dining room floors, a set of built-in kitchen cabinets, a large fridge, and stove. She even managed to build an extension on the h ­ ouse, and as she proudly pointed out, she still had savings in the bank. This took four long years of scrupulous bud­geting on her part, all with the aim of making a home. Previously, Nomasundu worked in Site B, an informal area of Khayelitsha, selling bags and suitcases from a street stand. She spoke of that experience 150  |   ch ap te r 4

in terms of great hardship but also as a time in which her efforts paid very few dividends: On rainy days she sat in the rain; on baking hot days she sat in the sun. At the end of a year she might have r400 left in the bank. “I ­couldn’t see where I was ­going,” she told me. “Without the scheme, there was nothing to stop me from withdrawing money from the bank whenever I needed to or felt inclined. Instead I wanted to ‘grow.’ ” Now, with a fixed-­ deposit account she saved, in large mea­sure because the bank prevented her from withdrawing money except at year’s end. “You have to tighten your ­belt a few notches or eat bread with no butter throughout the year, because you want something.” Nomasundu had readily responded to the perceived ideals of a consumer culture in which desire drives the acquisition of goods. She cleaved to the narrative of “self-­empowerment,” swapping a street stand for a shebeen and “investment opportunities.” And though their relative class positions ­were d­ ifferent, both the Mfeketos and Gqumas persisted in the hard work of reckoning daily the conditions for life—­engaging in “money struggles” (Guyer, Denzer, and Agbaje 2002)—­perpetuating cycles of domestic reproduction that black Capetonians had long ago set in motion, even as both families had to negotiate the disruptions and vio­lence of migrancy, influx controls, and dispossession. They had, in sum, found a way to realize the “material-­possi­ble.” Conclusion

While South Africa’s transition from minority to majority rule has been popularly held up as an extraordinary feat, the enjoyment of democracy’s benefits has, in practice, been limited to a small minority—­what Thomas C. Holt, following the emancipation of Jamaica in 1838, called a “ ‘freedom’ drained of the power of genuine self-­determination” (1992, xxv). Granted, ordinary South Africans now make all manner of claims on the state, and the majority enjoys rights of full citizenship for the first time, now that the old Bantustans and ­labor reserves have been dismantled and legalized racial discrimination has been struck from the statute books. And yet, not insignificant numbers of South Africans remain ­under threat of eviction and live in communities with limited access to state resources, in areas of the country where jobs are scarce and schools and primary health care are practically inaccessible. These are long-­standing problems that no government, “ R eckon i ng ”   |   151

regardless of its ideological commitments, could secret away in the space of two de­cades. At the grassroots level, ­people have responded by or­ga­niz­ing against the privatization of basic needs, stressing instead the decommodification of access to ­water, electricity, housing, and other benefits and ser­vices. In turn, the state’s rejoinder has been less than predictable—­further evidence of the confusing and complex continuities between state and capital. It would seem that neoliberalism “works by multiplying sites for regulation and domination through the creation of autonomous entities of government that are not part of the formal state apparatus and are guided by enterprise logic” (Sharma and Gupta 2006, 277). If sites for regulation and domination have multiplied, sites of protest politics have multiplied too alongside practices of ­belt-­tightening and austerity, as Edith’s and Nomasundu’s accounts reveal.33 Of course, constitutional democracies privilege the rule of law, often ignoring the vast gap between formal and substantive citizenship. Further, many new democracies must come to terms with recent histories of colonial overrule that necessarily bring into question the very foundational assumptions of the “procedural republics” (Sandel 1984) they seek to conjure—­namely, the degree to which jurisprudence can actually serve the cause of justice. The wide rift between formal and substantive citizenship is therefore perhaps most visible in postrevolutionary socie­ties. Yet hyperconscious of the discrepancy in definitions of citizenship, communities of protest across South Africa have been quick to take up rights talk in order to make demands on the state, demonstrating a dexterity of po­liti­cal strategy. While this may be a cause for some optimism, it is equally clear that socioeconomic rights have become “the main terrain of strug­gle”34 between the state and civil society and, as such, signal an ever-­widening ideological gulf between the presumed values of po­liti­cal emancipation and market freedoms. The reckoning continues.

152  |   ch ap te r 4

Conclusion M A K I N G F R E E D OM

­After all, we tell ourselves that the new order has made a decisive break with the essential logic of apartheid, as we are driving shack dwellers and street traders out of our cities at gunpoint. We tell ourselves that we have a new order founded on ­human rights and protected by the best constitution in the world as we exclude migrants and the poor from that order. We tell ourselves that building stadiums and “eradicating” street traders and shack settlements will bring us into a new era of prosperity while we are actively and often violently making the poor poorer. —­Richard Pithouse, “Hold the Prawns”

In a brief article titled “Hold the Prawns,” Richard Pithouse writes of the plight of the aliens hovering above the city of Johannesburg in District 9. The film, possibly the first sci-fi blockbuster to be made by a South African director (Neill Blomkamp), is set against the backdrop of the early post-­ apartheid era. The great strength of District 9, Pithouse argues, lies not only in the unmistakable parallels between aliens and squatters (cf. Huchzermeyer 2004) but also in the film’s murky temporality. Things seem to change and stay the same. In fact, it is rather unclear when precisely the story

unfolds or ­whether South Africa is freed from the clutches of a previously repressive regime. The encroachments of the private corporation, referred to as Multinational United, seem as menacing and authoritarian as those of a violent state. District 9 opens in documentary style, as if attempting to capture the film’s historic reality—­what transpired twenty years before when an alien spacecraft first arrived and began to hover above the city. The film leaves unexplained that period between the 1980s and the pre­sent, a period of both po­liti­cal and economic upheaval in the real South Africa. It concludes with the departure of the space ship and its alien cargo in what must surely be the post-­apartheid pre­sent. I say “unexplained” because despite the stress on transition and discontinuity, Blomkamp rightly blurs the lines between the past and the pre­sent. On balance, how ordinary South Africans respond to the attempt at a partial integration of the alien population (squatters?) recalls nothing so much as the darkest days of apartheid: a time of forced removals, detentions, torture, and even macabre experiments in chemical warfare and “antiterrorism.” In a sense, District 9 leaves unanswered the status of South Africa’s fragile pre­sent—­its democracy, the place of its cities, and the varied and diverse populations that inhabit them. South Africa’s ­actual transition still has a similar air of incompletion (see, e.g., Maharaj and Ramutsindela 2002; Tomlinson 1990; also see McCann 2002). Apartheid was many things: a fantasy dreamed up by white supremacists, a system of racial capitalism, and even a perverse po­liti­cal theology based on the Old Testament and the princi­ple of divine election. To the degree that apartheid was defined by its segregationism and prejudice, however, attempts to unravel the legacy of spatial engineering—of dictating the whereabouts of whites and blacks, migrants and illegals—­has proven nearly impossible to overcome in the two de­cades since the end of the old regime. Here, perhaps, are some of the reasons why. In the early 1960s, the South African Communist Party (sacp) had already coined the term colonialism of a special type to describe the system of apartheid (see sacp 1962; cf. Bundy 1989; Marais 1999). Strange and arcane strug­gle-­era terminology certainly, yet when apartheid collapsed, colonialism in southern Africa was finally, totally defeated—­a significant event in a continent that took so long to decolonize. When South Africans went to the ballot box in April 1994, however, to mark a break with the old apartheid order and to set in motion a critical transition to postcolonialism, the language of the ballot captured the atten154  |   Co nclusio n

tion of the world instead of the more foundational claim that South A ­ frica had been liberated. I take this as more than simply a semantic difficulty or a prob­lem of relevancy: the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s ­were the crucial de­ cades for national liberation in Africa, but by 1994 this sort of language was no longer relevant or appropriate. Instead, South Africa’s demo­cratization seems to relate to the renewed significance of democracy as a self-­reflexive category denoting its own importance, even as the prominence of the ballot box has been more or less inversely proportional to the transparency of many African postcolonial states and to constitutional democracies elsewhere. States of this sort are increasingly emptied of formal functions and resources (see, e.g., Bayart 1993; Bayart, Ellis, and Hibou 1999; de Sardan 1999); the vote thus is ­little more than “the occasional exercise of choice among competing, often indistinguishable alternatives” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2006, 3; cf. Apter 2005). This reflexivity is also articulated in the discourse of “good governance,” a strategy favored by supranational institutions, which tend to force the issue of debt relief and “­free and fair” elections, implying the disappearance of material realities (homes, public health, and the general welfare) “­behind the ballot box” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2006, 4; also see Harvey 2005; Ong 2006; Tsing 2005). Space, Citizenship, and Self-­Determination

My analy­sis of late twentieth-­and early twenty-­first ­century Cape Town, specifically its outlying periurban zones, has been concerned with “spatial or­ga­ni­za­tion, built form” (Comaroff 1985, 124), and the everyday. In the course of this book, I focused on the shift from one system of rule to another—­from apartheid to democracy or, differently expressed, from colonialism to postcolonialism. Together these transformations highlight some of the consequences for squatter citizens perched on the limits of the Mo­ther City: their battles for inclusion in the national society and their right to the city. That South Africa’s po­liti­cal transition was both necessary and inevitable is not in question; nevertheless, my inquiry has been informed by a strong skepticism apropos the nature and ideological premise of the new democracy, which arose in the early to mid-1990s in conjunction with an accelerated uptick in neoliberal reforms. As struggles for self-­determination drove the expansion of periurban zones across apartheid South Africa, their material inadequacies—­the precarity Conclusion   |   155

of living conditions in the camps, the absence of permits and ­legal status, the scarcity of jobs—­nevertheless spoke of spatial struggles for home that trumped the falsities of the homelands. Defined through their defiance of apartheid prohibitions, informal settlements became liberated zones, and hence new geographies of freedom. The squatter areas stood apart from the rural and the urban, even as the settlements created continuities between the two. If we concede that the townships and hostels ­were “naked” (Comaroff and Comaroff 1987, 202)—­lifeworlds stripped of the appropriate sociality because of the imperatives of “rents and wages”—­then informal settlements fell outside the spatial and semantic opposition of town and country as sites of accommodation and self-­realization. And as I argued in both the prologue and the introduction, the new “live-in” arrangements in Crossroads and other settlements provided a domestic space, which reordered social and familial relations in defiance of influx controls (see, e.g., Roux 1964). ­Today, by contrast, the freedoms afforded by the new democracy have brought new challenges for ­people on the margins of the city. Mr. Kakaza, a longtime small business owner in ktc, for instance, wryly remarked on one occasion that to be a member of the black community in the new South Africa was ­really to be “a displaced citizen in white South Africa,” without access to education, investment opportunities, or infrastructure.1 Mr. Kakaza, owner of Kakaza Trading Center (from which the township derived its name), pinpointed land dispossession as the primary challenge. He connected the predicament of landlessness to a sense of marginalization that exceeded questions of surplus l­abor or redundancy. For him, the new citizenship, should it take on substantive form, would not only afford him the right to do business but also realize his role as a consumer—an interest­ing take on the new citizenship ­under neoliberalism. Still, his point was well taken. Beyond criticism of the new market reforms, there might also be room to argue for inclusion within them. What, then, would “market citizenship” look like as communities fight over the privatization of ­water, electricity, and other ser­vices (see, e.g., Desai and Pithouse 2003; cf. Koch 1983)? If nothing ­else, Mr. Kakaza was pointing to the near impossibility of forming a black ­middle class. Claims for full citizenship have mostly tended to involve emergent institutions of po­liti­cal society—of shack dweller organizations ready to take on the state. Asked about the parallels with the anti-­apartheid strug­gle, my longtime friend Noluthando reflected on what she called “structures,” or 156  |   Co nclusio n

civic associations of one sort or another. “For us, we are black South Africans, you will see that the majority of the p­ eople are living in shacks. And there are some who have ­middle-­class jobs. For us living in the shacks, we have to have these structures.”2 While such street-­level organizations survived the transition to democracy, their purpose changed significantly. ­Civics now made demands on the state for basic infrastructure on behalf of communities (populations in need of biopo­liti­cal management) in the face of the state’s failure to fully recognize the individual citizen, who was most often poor and black (cf. Chatterjee 2004; also see Gramsci 1971). Such structures are hardly subversive, though at times they may spill over onto a more explicitly po­liti­cal terrain (cf. Bayat 2000; McKinley and Naidoo 2004; Mitlin and Sattherwaite 2004). In 2009 Patrick Bond, director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu Natal, remarked in a postgeneral election op-ed that “Police statistics show there are about 8,000 protests a year in South Africa, mainly over ser­vice delivery issues like access to ­water, housing, land, education and health. Per person, this is the highest number of protests in the world. They are part of the re­ sis­tance culture”3 (cf. Mottiar and Bond 2012). To some, this may seem merely a reflection of a vigorous civil society where demo­cratic freedoms are alive and well and go virtually uncensored. The denial of basic material necessities to a great majority of South Africans, however, implies a repudiation of demo­cratic ideals and a turn ­toward a new era of “hegemony in reverse” (de Oliveira 2006) in which those who ­were historically discriminated against continue to engage in struggles reminiscent of those against white minority rule. So while “burning barricades, ­running battles with the security forces and attacks on the home [sic] of anc officials”4 persist unabated, the city continues to represent a site of highly contested claims to the most basic requirements for a decent life. Most troubling is that current events have come to echo the 1970s and 1980s, as struggles over housing (and land) persist and post-­apartheid authorities remain mostly hostile to the demands of ­people without adequate ­shelter. Post-­Apartheid Housing Policy

In chapters 1, 2, and 3, I signaled the relationship between a long history of land dispossession and the rise of illegal settlement in cities across South Africa. Arguing that homelessness had to be understood in relation to Conclusion   |   157

questions of landlessness, I showed how squatting stood for a critical response to both dispossession and enforced migration. By chapter 4, which covered the lead-up to 1994 and the transition to democracy, that “quiet encroachment” on the city edge was somehow no longer justifiable. The radicalism I had been so concerned to highlight in the early chapters of Making Freedom was now out of step with the new neoliberal order. What had happened to so utterly transform the po­liti­cal terrain? How was it that squatters ­were increasingly viewed with disdain—an impediment, even, to the new pro-­market democracy? Were squatters not part of the new demo­ cratic society? Were they not justified in their insistence on gaining access to housing, electricity, potable w ­ ater, and the city itself? These claims now competed with the new corporate culture: the privatization of local government functions, practices of cost containment, and “ring fencing” (a financial loss-­gain model) in the provision of ser­vices. As if ignoring long-­ standing neglect in black residential areas, municipalities w ­ ere turning to “financially driven per­for­mance targets” (McDonald and Smith 2004, 1470) for city managers and other officials. And in the ­matter of rate payments to local councils, this bottom-­line thinking served to punish the poor for “non-­payment,” usually through ser­vice cutoffs. It had taken less than a de­cade for the new state’s priorities to shift and for its promises of re­distribution to dissolve. In 1992, the National Housing Forum brought together civil society organizations, government, the business sector, and po­liti­cal parties. The central mission of the forum was to focus on the ways in which housing might restore dignity, justice, and equality. The 1994 white paper on housing strategy notes that housing is likely the central challenge of the new post-­apartheid government. The extent of the challenge derives not only from the enormous size of the housing backlog and the desperation and impatience of the homeless, but stems also from the extremely complicated bureaucratic, administrative, financial and institutional framework inherited from the previous government.5 Yet even immediately following the 1994 adoption of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (rdp), whose primary task was meeting the basic needs of the poor and underserved through “jobs, land, housing, ­water, electricity . . . ​health care and social welfare,” the rdp ran into all manner of difficulty. The land question, in par­tic­u­lar, would prove intractable 158  |   Co nclusio n

even as it remained the key to resolving fundamental social problems that ­were a direct legacy of apartheid. Gillian Hart has noted that the liberation organizations had long neglected the powerfully “emotive force of the ‘land question’ ” (Hart 2002, 227), which might in some ways explain the symbolic weight afforded housing (over land) provision in rdp policy. The focus on the po­liti­cal economy of housing concealed the deeper, structural prob­lem of landlessness that emerged from the old mi­grant ­labor system. Similarly, Martin Murray argues that “purposefully vague anti-­cap­i­tal­ist rhe­toric gave the anc leadership considerable ideological leeway” in the early interim period (Murray 1994, 18), laying the groundwork for reconstruction on one hand and limited re­distribution on the other. Drafted just before the country’s transition to democracy, the rdp Base Document merely gestured at issues of social and economic justice. Its power of conviction resided in its ability to imagine and pro­ject a vision firmly rooted in a much older liberation politics. It drew its ideological content from the 1955 Freedom Charter, a manifesto in which African nationalist sentiments ­were conjoined with broadly left principles. In d­ oing so, the charter outlined guidelines for a postrevolutionary society.6 This strong link between the Freedom Charter and the rdp Base Document produced continuity with the national liberation strug­gle and a unity of purpose for those implementing the country’s po­liti­cal transition. “Indeed, it is within the nation-­building pro­ject,” Hein Marais suggested, “that the rdp’s utility is manifest. Here it functions as an axis around which the principles of inclusion, conciliation and stability can be promoted in tangible form. Within its ambit, disparate interests are seen to become reconciled in a unifying ‘national endeavour.’ ”7 But in 19998 the South African government dissolved the program, even as it represented the only major state effort to address widespread poverty and other structural inequities stemming from the policies of the previous regime. In 1996 the rdp Ministry office had already been closed by executive order, and its remaining funds transferred back to Trea­sury. President Mandela’s decision to close the office may well have been informed by the failures of the housing program, though he was more likely swayed by shifting ideological tides that moved the general rhe­toric from liberation to liberalization. Hence, despite concrete housing targets—300,000 units per year and no fewer than 1 million in the first five years—an estimated additional 2 to 3 million homes are still required to accommodate homeless South Africans. ­After the closure, all ongoing projects Conclusion   |   159

­were entrusted to the office of the deputy president. In a sense the rdp had become nothing more than a “wish list” (Hamill 1998; also see Marks 1998; Ward 1998). Squatter activism—­consisting of land occupation, claims to rights of settlement, and the benefits of basic services—­now stands in opposition to broad pro­cesses of privatization, including land consolidation, following introduction of the Growth, Employment and Re­distribution macroeconomic policy (gear) in 1996, the same year the rdp Ministry closed.9 This is despite the work of the South African Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, which was established to reverse the effects of the 1913 Natives Land Act (see, e.g., Plaatje 1982). Although the new constitution, specifically its Bill of Rights, guarantees protection of economic and cultural rights in addition to so-­called first generation rights of equality, freedom, and ­human dignity,10 the country’s new po­liti­cal freedoms are instead best understood through the lens of the market. Clearly, gear has moved away from the spirit of the Bill of Rights, stimulating job shedding and jobless growth and leading antipoverty activists to accuse its advocates of “greed, exploitation and no re­distribution” (cf. Bond 2005; see also Bond and Khosa 1999). |  |  |  |  |

Invariably, transitions are precarious and inspired, seldom the abrupt ruptures they purport to be. More often than not, they bear strong resemblance to the pasts they claim to have left ­behind. Transitions are also very frequently anticipated, and the predictions that set those transitions in motion tend to have a life a­ fter the realization of the ideas and po­liti­cal fantasies they helped conjure. Hylton White’s work on post-­apartheid haunting emphasizes the prob­lem of domestic life, specifically the relationship between the South African pre­sent and past and the ancestors who are at odds with the world. He argues that the demanding dead repeatedly attempt to reconcile the differences between themselves and the living, especially as this concerns restitution for past suffering in a pre­sent stripped of the resources and capacities to satisfy such demands (White 2010). Not coincidentally, many of the dead seem to be negotiating the distance between town and country on one hand and, on the other, the sort of home worth inhabiting—­whether a “traditional” mud and thatch or a post-­apartheid rdp ­house. 160  |   Co nclusio n

Making Freedom, then, is one among many interventions in the peculiar space and time of contemporary South Africa, a time when the outlines of liberation have become blurred and many of its promises have been dashed. South Africans continue to protest the absence of housing, their eviction from the ones they sought to purchase, the disconnection of w ­ ater and electricity, delays in delivery—­all assaults on those values of “equality, freedom, and dignity” ostensibly held up by the constitution.11 Perhaps ordinary South Africans must transcend that common-­sense logic of believing in the “inevitability of modernity” and “the centrality of government in effecting its progress” and instead emphasize the making of progress and history by their own means (Comaroff 2002, 110). If so, Making Freedom represents one small attempt to explore experiments in building liberty through the building of home. “The House That Race Built”: Settlement, Citizenship, and Land

It takes expertise to build brick and mortar homes (ezindlini).12 The same is true of shacks (amatyotyombe). In the years since South Africa’s new demo­ cratic order, tens of thousands have set about building new homes in Cape Town’s informal settlements (ematyotyombeni),13 both legally and illegally, often evading official scrutiny by planning land invasions on weekends and public holidays. By law the de­mo­li­tion of homes that have been standing for forty-­eight hours or more is prohibited: “No one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made ­after considering all the relevant circumstances. No legislation may permit arbitrary evictions.”14 Shack construction requires specific know-­how and ingenuity, too, particularly in the absence of sturdy materials. In reality, most of what goes into building informal structures consists of material recycled from previously dismantled homes, stressing the relationship between the ongoing search for vacant land, land seizure, and home construction as part of a much longer history of movement, displacement, and reuse. Corrugated iron sheeting and nails, for instance, are used and reused accordingly, while what needs replacing is purchased in the nearby industrial areas, where supplies can be bought at retail, even from local w ­ holesalers, for whom squatters have become something of a niche market. Win­dow frames, occasionally burglar bars cut to size, bags of cement, and other building miscellany are laboriously Conclusion   |   161

transported in old shopping carts that have found their way into the settlements. Local scrap dealers tend to carry old locks, reusable panes of glass, and the like, which they convey from township to township in Shoprite or Pick n Pay trolleys, often pushing them down the motorway from a nearby supermarket. To start, small wooden stakes demarcate the boundaries of the stand. Additional stakes are then placed along what will eventually become the perimeter wall. The earth is smoothed and leveled without use of a plumb line or earth compactor or any equipment for pouring a proper foundation. Cement is mixed with liberal amounts of ­water (to stretch materials) and then poured; l­ ater, linoleum is laid to create the semblance of a proper floor. Once the foundation is dried and set, strips of lumber are used to build a frame to which corrugated iron sheeting, known as “zincs,” is nailed. Similarly, sheeting is used for the roof, which is attached to the wooden frame and then pinned with heavy rocks and discarded tires or large plastic ­water storage containers, which are used for capturing rainwater. During the summer months, the winds pick up across the Peninsula, particularly on the Flats. The so-­called Cape Doctor is a power­ful southeasterly; it blows over ­Table Mountain and down into the city bowl,15 and p­ eople invariably complain that the wind wracks their homes, the zincs creak, and sometimes the roof threatens to blow away altogether despite the tires, rocks, and ­water storage containers. Winter brings its fair share of difficulties as well, mostly flooding. Many shanty interiors are lined with cardboard, plastic sheeting, even newspaper, while the absence of costly ceiling boards makes for draughty winters and stifling hot summers. Still, a great deal of attention is paid to domestic details. Apart from the materials bought from local w ­ holesalers, ­people scour the rubbish dumps and factory yards in search of objects that can be put to new use. Koo fruit and vegetable labels, for instance, are picked up from the local canning factories16 and market stalls in the townships and taxi ranks that resell discarded offprints—­long strips of labels for tinned peas and corn, guavas in heavy syrup, and so on. The labels are used as wall­paper, along with paint found on building sites and occasionally picked up at the dump in Pinelands (see figure c.1). In larger homes, divider walls and occasionally doors mark off a bedroom from the main living space. ­After all, privacy is at a premium and itself highly significant to a w ­ hole history of squatting as a practice of acquiring 162  |   Co nclusio n

FIGURE C.1  ​Fruit stand in Lower Crossroads. Courtesy of Anne-­ Maria Makhulu.

personal space in the transition from living in the male barracks. Amateur electricians draw from the power grid, installing switches and overhead lights (usually a single bulb) in the living room and kitchen. The most inventive will even put in a built-in sink despite the absence of indoor plumbing. Using a large plastic washbowl, p­ eople draw ­water from the outdoor taps for dishes or bathing, while laundry is washed in the yard. Kaizer, who previously lived in Crossroads ­until he was forced to relocate to the other side of Lansdowne Road and into Lower Crossroads, Phase 1, in April 1993, shares a home with his parents and extended ­family. Built on a relatively large stand, the home is quite elaborately decorated; the walls are papered with Golden Glory apricot and peach labels, while an old plaster figurine sits on a worktable in the ­middle of the main living space. The Conclusion   |   163

f­ amily is in the “fruit and veg” business, selling from a stall outside the home, and from time to time Kaizer can be found sorting through w ­ holesale produce (the earthy smell of potatoes and pungent onions taking over the entire home) while a sibling sits counting the day’s takings, mostly r1 and r2 coins. Some folk are gardeners and devise ways to nurture small vegetable patches; ­others build planters and mount them on windowsills. Evelyn (Dube) has the most impressive patch of garden. “I do like to do gardening,” she told me on one occasion. “What I used to do was to look a­ fter my garden and do some irrigation, also to tell my kids that they must keep the yard clean. I am also ­doing that if they aren’t around because I like cleanliness.”17 Though raised in Dordrecht, in the Eastern Cape, Evelyn remembers ­little about plowing; growing vegetables and mielies (corn) are now remote memories. Her garden is reserved for relaxation, and Evelyn is often seen sitting outdoors on warm days, chatting with her neighbors. She is equally proud of her home, which consists of a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and an additional room that adjoins the main h ­ ouse, though it has a separate entrance. Her son, Zanoxolo, uses it as his own private living space—­ what local boys refer to as a “ghetto,” a space given over to young men and, very often, their girlfriends in ukuhlalisana, or live-in arrangements. His two sisters, Nosiphiwo and Nomhle, live in the main h ­ ouse with their mo­ ther. Evelyn has framed all of their birth certificates and mounted them on the living room wall, as she puts it, “so my children will grow up to know what is beautiful.”18 Her efforts in child rearing and in homemaking have largely been rewarded, though money is tight and the loss of her eldest son (at the hands of a pac activist) in the 1990s has left her laboring to make do. Regularly, she takes in neighbors’ washing, stretching resources as best she can. As we saw in chapter 4, such concerns and the institutional practices of savings and loans they engender have a very long history. Noluthando is in her midthirties, a single mo­ther of two. She lives in Lower Crossroads and is probably the most entrepreneurial of all the ­people I know in the settlement. A member of a number of savings schemes, she built a sizable home, a combination of brick and mortar and shack extension, down the street from Kaizer in Phase 1. A discarded porcelain bathtub is her pièce de résistance. Set up in her yard, it connects to the outdoor tap via a rubber tube. In princi­ple this means the children can take full immersion baths if they can stand the chilly w ­ ater. The tub also makes for an ef164  |   Co nclusio n

ficient way of getting through the piles and piles of washing she and her two children seem to generate week in week out, never mind that her nieces and nephews often stay at the h ­ ouse as well. ­Women neighbors come by to use the bath for their own laundry and in exchange watch the youn­gest while Noluthando goes out shopping. They also reciprocate by passing on additional food, bringing over vetkoek (“fat cakes”) or a ­little pap (stiff cornmeal), and tomato-­onion gravy. Noluthando also offers the ser­vices of her “deep freeze,” which is powered by a line ­running to the electricity pole on the street. Oblong and cavernous, the deep freeze is the kind of appliance you might find in a suburban garage. It provides safe storage for w ­ holesale meat purchased for the holiday season and, of course, the rare surplus in other ­house­holds. It takes pride of place in one corner of Noluthando’s ample kitchen, festooned with lace doilies and pot plants. |  |  |  |  |

Cape Town remains most thickly built up with squatter camps that line the n2 from the airport, spreading across the Flats into Tygerberg municipality and beyond. As Fredric Jameson reminds us, the “living pre­sent is scarcely as self-­sufficient as it claims to be; . . . ​we would do well not to count on its density and solidity, which might ­under exceptional circumstances betray us” (Jameson 1995, 86). In other words, the prob­lem is not simply with the past but with its repression and the ways in which this repression produces a condition of living in the untimely (also see Derrida 1994). The attempt at coconstructing homes and citizenship, squatting and self-­determination, has emerged in contemporary South Africa through efforts to build shacks on illegally occupied land, homes ­shaped by a past in which land was strategically withheld on both racial and economic grounds, with the specific effect of restricting squatters’ and migrants’ access to national belonging. In a telling 2008 standoff between local government and residents of Joe Slovo settlement (aptly named for the first minister of housing ­after 1994), squatters noted the long history of struggles for housing, land, and dignity: “All my life I’ve been poor and homeless, fighting for the right to be heard and consulted. We should be in Cape Town celebrating the birthday of the United Demo­cratic Front. Now, not even this Constitutional Court gives me the comfort that the poor ­people’s strug­gle for dignity is over. The road Conclusion   |   165

of the poor and homeless is long—­our story is a test for democracy and our Constitution and ­we’re still struggling.”19 Hybrid and conjoined, shack and brick (ityotyombe and endlini) homes on the Cape Flats stand defiant against history and against those who would revoke the rights of all South Africans to a place in the city. At the same time, their foundations are literally and figuratively shallow. The Flats are sandy, which poses very real structural challenges, and squatters continue to prevail on a state that is generous in emotive rhe­toric but stingy with the rights of all South Africans to housing without conflict. |  |  |  |  |

Old Crossroads has been redeveloped since the apartheid era ended (see figures c.2 and c.3). New “matchbox” ­houses now sit in orderly rows, arranged street by street, block by block. The occasional crescent or cul-­ de-­sac, built on the ruins of the former squatter area, hints at efforts to disturb the monotony of the township’s master plan. In uncanny form, the road grid reproduces the apartheid planning logic of the “locations” once at the heart of the system of segregation and ­labor migration—­that orderly configuration of homes and streets that apartheid planners modeled on Ebenezer Howard’s “garden city” (Howard 1946)—­during a period in which “the landscape assumed its distinctive appearance: row upon row of small, boxy ­houses” (Ginsburg 1996, 129). Intended as a self-­contained model of community surrounded by greenbelts, the “garden city” was, as Howard proposed, a kind of midway point between town and country. How ironic that this model, appropriated both in the design of white suburban areas and black townships, underwrote the mi­grant ­labor system, that condition betwixt and between the rural and the urban—­but of course with one major difference. The townships that apartheid devised ­were not surrounded by greenways; rather, strict containment mea­sures ­were used in an effort at managing the city’s black population and segregating it from other population groups. The township’s few entrances and exits ensured control as well as easy access for the security state; in the most literal sense it was a way of policing communities from within. It is doubtless this use of space for coercive purposes to which squatter settlements in some mea­sure offered ­viable alternatives. As spaces authored by those who lived in them and who shared a desire for relative autonomy 166  |   Co nclusio n

FIGURE C.2  ​Old Crossroads, Section IV. Courtesy of Mads Vestergaard.

FIGURE C.3  ​Old Crossroads redeveloped. Courtesy of Mads Vestergaard.

(see, e.g., Kalyvas 2005). With their tangled paths, organic arrangement of shacks and other buildings—­a spatial pattern that defied total securitization and complete lockdown—­the settlements proposed themselves as spaces apart from those formally devised for the accommodation of the city’s black population. It made sense that activists from the townships would repair to the squatter camps, seeking refuge in what many referred to as “mini exile,” an exile distinct from that beyond the sovereign boundaries of the Republic of South Africa to which asylum seekers and ­others escaped. On the one hand, squatters have engaged in “toil” and the creation of “specific structural and social historical relations” of place (Chari 2003, 181). On the other, squatters have always been conscious of those “concrete potentialities and capacities” immanent in what they already have (Merrifield 2002, 153; cf. Pieterse 2005). These notions of hard work in relation to the world and a consciousness of the task at hand have critically informed my thinking in Making Freedom and about the importance of making home contingently and precariously, ­whether during or ­after apartheid (also see Bloch 2000).

168  |   Co nclusio n

Notes

Prologue

1. The Cape Flats would serve as a dumping ground for Africans and coloreds removed from the city. Geologically unsound—­that is, sandy and therefore unconducive to high-­density, high-­rise settlements—­the Flats can accommodate only low-­rise sprawl. The area is also continually threatened by flooding because of its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and has poor drainage owing to the sandy terrain. 2. He ­later served jointly as bishop (in Botswana) and archbishop of the province of Central Africa. 3. See “Census 2011: Census in Brief,” accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​ .­statssa​.­gov​.­za​/­census2011​/­Products​/­Census​_­2011​_­Census​_­in​_­brief​.­pdf. 4. Xhosa language. 5. See the 2013 “Quarterly Labour Force Survey: Quarter 3.” Significant drops in the unemployment rate since 2003, when unemployment was almost 40 ­percent, are difficult to assess insofar as government statistics account only for those looking for work, as opposed to those no longer seeking employment. 6. Southern Africa has some of the highest levels of hiv-­related tb (World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion Tuberculosis Report 2005). 7. See “rsa: April to March 2004–2014: Provincial and National Figures and Ratios,” accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­saps​.­gov​.­za​/­resource​_­centre​ /­publications​/­statistics​/­crimestats​/­2014​/­crime​_­stats​.­php. At the same time, as the South African Police Ser­vice (saps) is ­eager to publicize, the murder rate in South Africa has actually dropped 50 ­percent since 1995–96. 8. The rate of “sexual offenses” in the Western Cape for 2013–14 was 134 per 100,000, again far exceeding rates for Gauteng Province where “sexual offenses”

totaled 86.6 per 100,000. See “rsa: April to March 2004–2014: Provincial and National Figures and Ratios,” accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­saps​.­gov​.­za​ /­resource​_­centre​/­publications​/­statistics​/­crimestats​/­2014​/­crime​_­stats​.­php. 9. The Criminal Law (Sexual Offenses and Related Matters) Amendment Act, no. 32 of 2007, came into effect in mid-­December 2007. It adds to the earlier sexual offenses legislation by repealing the archaic common law offense of rape with a newly expanded statutory offense of rape. There are newly expanded definitions of sexual offense against both children and the mentally disabled as well as a broadened definition of sexual penetration irrespective of gender. Introduction

1. My thanks go to W. P. K. Makhulu for this last insight. 2. Field notes, August 4, 2004. 3. I use the terms squatter area, shantytown, and informal settlement somewhat interchangeably in the course of this text. My primary intention is to follow the conventions of an era; e.g., “shantytown” tends to be an apartheid-­era term, “informal settlement” a post-­apartheid-­era term. Beyond such historical distinctions, the question remains: what exactly is an informal settlement, and what is its relationship to the city more generally? While it is clearly the case that informally built environments arise with or alongside conditions of informal economic activity, some recent Africanist lit­erature would suggest that the relationship is also cultural and po­liti­cal and that informal settlements are not simply spaces located beyond the state’s regulatory oversight but function, too, in ways that challenge conventional po­liti­cal authority and from which emerge alternative forms of self-­government and practices of the everyday (see, e.g., Hansen and Vaa 2004; also see Simone 2010). 4. Black local authorities ­were established as dummy local government structures; they offered the appearance of black leadership while being directed by the apartheid state. 5. Decanting is a planning term (or euphemism) describing the pro­cess of clearance or dedensification of a given area. 6. The now defunct Reconstruction and Development Programme was established in the early post-1994 period to address housing shortages, urban reconstruction, and a broad slate of infrastructural needs. 7. For a comprehensive account of the use of the term informal in relation to the economy and its necessary corollary, informal settlement, see Myers (2011). Myers, whose central interest is African cities, rightly suggests that the genealogy of the concept of an informal economy has to be understood in order to understand the rise of informal settlements across the continent. Additionally, Keith Hart’s seminal essay is instructive (Hart 1973, 2010; also see Keyder 2005). 8. See “Truth and Reconciliation Commission ­Human Rights Violations Submissions: Questions and Answers,” June 10, 1997, Sam Ndima, ktc Hearings, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­justice​.­gov​.­za​/­trc​/­hrvtrans​/­ktc​/­ndima​.­htm. 9. I return to the story of Johnson Ngxobongwana in chapter 2.

170  |   notes to pro log ue

10. How this came about was unclear. Perhaps Ndima and his extended f­ amily had registered for adjacent plots; certainly the home seemed to function as a f­ amily compound. 11. What follows is based on my interview with Sam Ndima, August 4, 2004, and one subsequent informal conversation two weeks ­later. 12. Willowvale District was annexed to the Cape, then ­under British control, during the late 1880s. 13. With the passing of the Urban Areas Act of 1923, Africans living in Ndabeni, District Six, Retreat, Kensington, and many other parts of the city w ­ ere forced to move to Langa—­a new African “location” on the city outskirts. Langa was completed in 1927. Though Ndima claims to have arrived in Cape Town before Langa was built, he likely arrived in the early 1930s and may simply have confused the chain of events. 14. The Xhosa term denotes the passage from childhood to adulthood via the rite of circumcision. 15. Gugulethu, formerly Nyanga West, was built in 1958 in response to severe overcrowding in Langa. At first, so-­called single-­sex hostels ­were provided for mi­ grant working men from the Transkei and Ciskei homelands. But over time, many ­women came to Cape Town to join their husbands and partners, settling illegally in the already overcrowded hostels. Families shared a bathroom and kitchen, and in particularly extreme situations, beds ­were rented by the work shift (Ramphele 1993). 16. Official estimates of the population of Crossroads in the mid-­to late 1980s suggest that as many as 100,000 ­people lived in and around this small triangular tract of land (spanning approximately 90 hectares), making it one of the most densely populated urban communities in the world at that time. Recent recalculations using Google Earth show that the original 90-­hectare footprint has expanded to approximately 110 hectares and, inclusive of Boy’s Town (Section Five), is as large as 140 hectares. This in itself speaks volumes of, one, the expansion of Cape Town’s informal settlements and, two, the enduring nature of settlement despite all the efforts at removal and slum clearance. 17. The Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act denied the urban homeless the right to squat. Carl Schmitt’s concept of the “state of exception,” taken up in the work of Giorgio Agamben, passes over its possi­ble relevance for the colonial context. Despite this, I believe the concept has some limited applicability for the prob­lem of law in South Africa. South African jurisprudence sought to create forms of po­liti­cal sovereignty within its own borders—­a gesture counterintuitive to the majority of nation-­states—­through the formation of the Bantustans, or “homelands.” The state also produced enclaves within urban areas in which anti­squatter legislation was suspended. Crossroads was one such settlement, which derived a strange, if fictive, autonomy from its status as an “emergency camp.” In a sense the peculiar l­ egal status of settlements across the country tested the very “threshold” of the law, its “limit concept” (see Agamben 2005). It is this question of the threshold of the law with which Agamben is concerned and which forms the basis of his theorization of the state of exception.

notes to I ntrod u ction   |   171

18. In referring to a large yard on which ­others settled, Ndima was clearly conscious of the power of land in a context of land scarcity. Evidently his efforts to build a squatter constituency began quite early in the history of such settlements on the Cape Flats. 19. Masakeng literally denotes “the place of sacks” and refers to the use of jute sacking in the construction of temporary tentlike structures in the very early phases of the occupation of Orlando East. 20. I think this is a point well worth emphasizing t­ oday in the face of recent wildcat strikes and protests in the mining and agricultural sectors that have taken on a form rather distinct from the kinds of actions over which or­ga­nized ­labor might lay claim. Both in the case of the notorious Marikana Massacre at Lonmin’s platinum fields in August 2012 and the strike actions of workers in the Cape Winelands l­ ater in the year the major ­union organizations (the National Union of Mineworkers and Congress of South African Trade Unions) ­were largely sidelined. Instead, the protests grew organically out of local conditions. See, e.g., “Marikana Victims Named South Africans of the Year,” accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­guardian​.­co​.­uk​ /­world​/­2012​/­dec​/­10​/s­ outh​-­africa​-­marikana​-­victims. Also see “Farm Workers’ Strike: Vio­lence was a Long Time Coming,” accessed February 11, 2015, http://­mg​.­co​.­za​ /­article​/­2012–11–16–00​-­farm​-­workers​-­strike​-v­ iolence​-­was​-­a​-­long​-­time​-­coming. 21. My thanks to Sarah Nuttall for her incredibly helpful comments on questions of home and domesticity. 22. One very personal example immediately comes to mind. My grand­father, who worked as a porter in downtown Johannesburg in the fruit and vegetable market in the Market Square, honed all manner of self-­taught skills at home on his smallholding in Pimville. He raised a dairy cow for milk, cured meats for the lean months, and from time to time was known to scour the city of Johannesburg for a pineapple or choco­late or some other rare treat—­this amid much want and need. 23. This is what Merrifield, following Lefebvre, refers to as a “politics of encounter,” i.e., a politics that transcends the other­wise abstract rights–­speak previously assumed to be the basis of Lefebvre’s original 1968 essay “Le droit à la ville.” Cf. “Quand la ville se perd dans une métamorphose planétaire,” Le Monde Diplomatique (1989), accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­monde​-­diplomatique​.­fr​/­1989​/­05​ /­LEFEBVRE​/­41710. 24. Lansdowne is a major arterial road stretching from Wynberg, one of Cape Town’s “leafy” southern suburbs, out to Khayelitsha, the city’s largest township and informal settlement. Lansdowne functions as a transport route for commuters moving back and forth between the Cape Flats and the city; it is also an eco­nom­ically active thoroughfare with commercial operations ranging from street vending (hawking) to ­wholesale businesses. 25. Thanks to Sarah Nuttall for her brilliant reading of my work and her willingness to push me to explore theoretically the limits of what can be said about the metropolitan poor in South Africa or indeed anywhere. This gesture also points in the direction of an emerging trend in “favela chic” and “slum cosmopolitanism” (see, e.g., Perlman 2010).

172  |   notes to I ntroduc tio n

26. For a trenchant critique of the inherent Eurocentrism of urban policymaking and its one-­size-­fits-­all approach to planning globally, see McCann and Ward (2011). 27. Golden Arrow Bus Ser­vices (a privately owned com­pany) and Transnet Freight Rail (formerly Spoornet, a parastatal) are the two major companies offering transport to Capetonians. The train is regarded as particularly unsafe, and residents of Khayelitsha, which is such a distance from the center of Cape Town, complain of the lack of security staff to protect passengers from muggings and even physical assault. 28. Arguably there has been a movement in the direction of “imperceptibility” among postcolonial, feminist, and anarchist thinkers and activists. These include Anonymous, the Zapatistas, Pussy Riot, Tiqqun, and the Invisible Committee. I am grateful to the organizers of the one-­day symposium Invisibility, Illegibility, Imperceptibility: On Po­liti­cal Refusals of Recognition, at Duke University, April 5, 2013, for making questions of invisibility so central to their discussion. 29. It is noteworthy that the informal sector accounted for upward of 30 ­percent of the total value of formal food sales, while clothing represented an additional 10 ­percent of formal retail sector sales of footwear, clothing, and the like. 30. See, e.g., “South Africa Mine Massacre Photos Prompt Claims of Official Cover-­Up,” accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­guardian​.­co​.­uk​/­world​/­2012​/­nov​ /­06​/­south​-­africa​-­mine​-­massacre​-­marikana. 31. In an open letter dated October 13, 2012, Kay Sexwale, dau­gh­ter of the former anti-­apartheid activist Tokyo Sexwale, argues that the conditions of South African emancipation have been squandered by corruption and po­liti­cal shortsightedness on the part of the African National Congress leadership. Some indication of how troubled the South African situation is can be mea­sured in the frequency of ­labor disputes over wage increases that have required police intervention, including Marikana, and ser­vice delivery protests, which numbered as many as 372 between January and the end of May 2012. See “Open Letter to the Surviving Rivonia Trialists,” accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­citypress​.­co​.­za​/­Columnists​/­Open​-­letter​ -­to​-­the​-­surviving​-­Rivonia​-­Trialists​-­20121013. 32. The aec is an umbrella or­ga­ni­za­tion, originally based in the Western Cape, founded to fight not only evictions but ­water and electricity cutoffs and to seek better public health and other ser­vices. 33. A more comprehensive list would include other cities in Congo (Kisangani, Lubumbashi, Mbuji-­Mayi, and Kikwit), Angola (Huambo and Lucapa), Nigeria (Abuja), Tanzania (Arusha), and ­Kenya (Mombasa). Interestingly, such a list of rapidly growing secondary cities might be compiled by tracing two main sources of capital flow: mining and ports. My thanks to Samuel Shearer, inveterate research assistant and ­bearer of great insights about African urbanism! These cities, he argues, are for the most part former colonial centers in instances where these abut ports, whereas mining towns appear to spring from nowhere more or less overnight. 34. Thanks to Samuel Shearer for stressing this decades-­long trend in the Africanist lit­erature and for outlining its trajectory.

notes to I ntrod u ction   |   173

35. This “second-­wave” of reforms refers to the Growth, Employment and Re­ distribution (gear) macroeconomic strategy adopted in 1996. 36. Previously a Durban-­based or­ga­ni­za­tion; AbM now has members in Cape Town and a number of other cities. That being said, to “quantify” membership is as complicated as the issues of homelessness and shelter with which AbM is concerned. Serving a highly mobile population makes or­gan­i­za­tional registration and repre­sen­ta­tion difficult. 37. For Fanon, apartheid represented the purest form of colonial spatial politics. 38. The recent National Development Plan suggests that even the state has come to some recognition of the very problems that shack dwellers and the poor, more generally, have long perceived. Addressing South Africa’s shaky developmentalist path since 1994 (and the adoption of the Reconstruction and Development Programme), the plan acknowledges that the upgrading of informal settlements will have to take priority between now and 2030. The plan also acknowledges a post-­ apartheid pattern of locating the poor on the city outskirts. See National Development Plan: Vision for 2030. 39. Some would even claim that the squatter areas afforded a degree of economic autonomy or “financial citizenship” (Appadurai 2002, 33). True, local headmen w ­ ere notorious for collecting illicit ground rent from squatters. At the same time, those “rents” might be used to subsidize the or­ga­ni­za­tion of home guards (in the absence of formal policing) or the building of schools and other civic institutions, which ­under other circumstances would have been administered by local government. To be sure, ­under apartheid black Group Areas ­were regarded as self-­funding, and revenue for their upkeep was drawn directly from the Native Revenue Account (nra), into which rents and profits from ser­vices as well as the municipal mono­poly on so-­called Kaffir beer (see Stadler 1979, 116) ­were paid. Without taxes on industry (­until the early 1950s), and with wages kept artificially low, Africans had effectively subsidized the social wage. 40. See, e.g., “I Thus Caught That Colonial Mindset at Work: The Misrepre­sen­ta­ tion of Post-­Apartheid Social Movements,” accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​ .­pambazuka​.­org​/­en​/­category​/­features​/­81483​/­print. Also see “Ventriloquism, Fanon and the Social Movement Hustle,” accessed February 11, 2015, http://­qwasha​.­org​.­za​ /­archive​/­items​/­show​/­192. Most recently, the alignment of AbM with the da (Demo­ cratic Alliance Party) ahead of the 2014 general elections brought on another wave of criticism directed ­toward those scholars who had previously singled out Abahlali baseMjondolo for its radicalism. The da is the party of white business, and its relationship with AbM has been a source of considerable consternation. 41. The intention in establishing a boundary around the Cape Province was the ­wholesale removal of Africans, and this, coupled with a spatial concentration of colored ­people in the region, went some way to making the province predominantly white and colored. One consequence has been the dominance of Afrikaans since Afrikaners and coloreds have the language in common. Even now in the Western Cape, approximately 50 ­percent of residents claim Afrikaans as a first language. See

174  |   notes to I ntroduc tio n

in par­tic­u­lar the South African Institute of Race Relations (sairr) Annual Survey 1954–55, 90–92. 42. See “Forced Removals in South Africa, 1977–1978,” International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa Report to United Nations Commission on H ­ uman Rights, 6. 43. See un-­Habitat 2006; also see Worldwatch Institute 2007. 44. The de­cade of the 1980s was a period of rent boycotts, public demonstrations, mass funerals, miners’ strikes, and squatter actions. 45. The following is excerpted from an interview conducted on February 2, 1999, as well as a series of other more informal conversations in Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 46. Interview with Noluthando, February 22, 1999, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. Chapter 1: Migrations

1. See “Crossroads Wife Tells of Broken Families,” Bob Molloy, Cape Times, October 28, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 2. These refer to friends and relatives originally from the homelands. 3. Refer to the Native Urban Areas Act, no. 21, of 1923, in which the state officially designated urban (“prescribed”) and rural (“nonprescribed”) areas. 4. It should be noted that many who settled in Crossroads came from other squatter areas and townships adjacent to the newly founded camp and that much of the history of movement and mobility within the Cape Flats is a history of internal displacements—­a history very often occluded by the significance afforded forced removals of colored communities from the City Bowl as well as the histories of migrants from the rural Eastern Cape. 5. Refer to note 43 in the introduction. 6. See the South African Institute of Race Relations (sairr) Annual Survey 1955–56, 131. 7. This is drawn from a Kgatla praise poem, composed by Klaas Segogwane and recorded by Hendrik Molefi in 1931 (see Schapera 1965, 117) [permission from Clarendon Press]. 8. Not to be confused with Gugulethu, which is the township adjoining Nyanga. 9. As Gayle Rubin has noted, traditional kinship theory, though undeniably inseparable from sex, hardly concerns itself with sex at all (1975). 10. Cited in Ngwane 2003, 681. 11. Interview, January 26, 1999, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 12. During the 1930s the state increased the amount of land set aside for blacks from 7.5 ­percent to 13 ­percent through the Native Trust and Land Act, no. 18 of 1936. This figure, which remained unchanged through the end of the apartheid era, gave rise to the oft-­quoted relationship between the 13 ­percent of the land accessible to blacks and the fact that all “non-­whites” made up squarely 87 ­percent of the population of South Africa. There is still much debate over these numbers, particularly in

notes to Ch apte r   1   |   175

light of varied attempts to redistribute land through a “willing buyer, willing seller” princi­ple—­the subject of President Zuma’s 2015 State of the Nation address—­and now ­under official discussion with the possibility of a shift to an expropriation princi­ple. The amendment to the original Restitution of Land Rights Act is also up for discussion. 13. The Natives Land Act, no. 27 of 1913, was dramatic both in its scale and intent in dispossessing Africans of rights in land own­ership. It was subsequently renamed the Bantu and then ­later Black Land Act. 14. I have to assume that Samuel was quoting rand values in lieu of pounds and shillings, as I saw ­people do many times when casting their minds back to the era before the introduction of the rand and the transition to decimalization. He, like many ­others, seems to have converted the old figures for the period before 1961. 15. In 1941, when the African Mine Workers Union was founded, African miners earned approximately r70 a year, or £35, well below the average of r850 earned by white mine workers (see, e.g., Roux 1964). If in fact Samuel accurately recalled his wages, by 1946 these had almost doubled from 1941 levels. Still, the average rural ­house­hold dependent on mi­grant remittances continued to draw on the order of £20 annually from male migrants working and residing in the city, and as Samuel would attest, he remitted the bulk of his wages home to the Eastern Cape (sairr Annual Survey 1955–56, 160). One way or another, the sum of r120, or £60, a year was not a great deal, nor could it compensate for the dangers and hard work of mining in par­ tic­u­lar. As a point of comparison, in the early 1950s, working as an “errand boy” for an accounting firm in downtown Johannesburg, my ­father earned £2 a week ­(£8, or r16, a month). 16. By the mid-1950s efforts by the mining ­houses to improve housing, diet, “recreation,” and the like had contributed to fairly sizable increases in overhead, even as the mines themselves ­were more productive owing to technological innovations, among other things. Responding to rising costs, the mines, increasingly looking beyond South Africa’s borders, recruited from “High Commission” and “tropical” territories (see sairr Annual Survey 1955–56, 170). 17. The Native (Urban Areas) Act was originally promulgated in 1923 and was subsequently amended several times. See Posel 1997 on pre-­apartheid and apartheid legislation. A passage from the Black Urban Areas Act of 1945 follows: restriction of right of black to remain in certain areas 10(1) No Black shall remain for more than seventy-­two hours in a prescribed area ­unless he produces proof in the manner prescribed: (a) he has since birth, resided continuously in such area; or (b) he has worked continuously in such area for one employer for a period of not less than ten years or has lawfully resided continuously in such area for a period of not less than fifteen years and has thereafter continued to reside in such area and is not employed outside such area and has not during e­ ither period or thereafter been sentenced to a fine exceeding r500 or to imprisonment for a period exceeding six months; or

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(c) such Black is the wife, the unmarried dau­gh­ter, or the son ­under the age of eigh­teen years, of any Black mentioned in paragraph (a) or (b) of this subsection and, ­after lawful entry into such prescribed area, ordinarily resides with that Black in such area; or (d) in the case of any other Black, permission so to remain has been granted by an officer appointed to manage a labour bureau in terms of provisions of paragraph (a) of subsection (6) of section 21 0f the Black Labour Regulation Act, 1911 (act no. 15 of 1911), due regard being had to availability of accommodation in a Black residential area. 18. The epigraph at the beginning of this section is drawn from Arendt’s Between Past and ­Future. Not a ­little ironically, her concept of action echoes, in some respects, a par­tic­u­lar branch within an other­wise highly diverse anarchical tradition in which no individual should be the instrument of another individual’s will (see Calhoun and McGowan 1997; Curtis 1997). Her conception of ­human diversity, similarly, celebrates the notion of individual action and “active citizenship” (D’Entrèves 1994, 2), which, needless to say, differs considerably from theories of communitarianism or even social anarchism (see, e.g., Bakunin 1972; Kropotkin 2002; Proudhon 1876). 19. See “Crossroads Squatters: We Will Not Move,” John Battersby, Cape Argus, August 17, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 20. See Keri Swift, “The ­Women: We Are Not ­Going to Fight with the Law, We Are Not Moving,” Cape Argus, June 12, 1978, 8, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 21. These ­were prominent early activists in Crossroads. 22. In “The Moment of Western Marxism in South Africa,” Andrew Nash takes a fairly cynical view of the role played by Richard Turner in the debates over the shift from 1960s to 1970s Marxism, inspired as this shift was by the “practical demands of the burgeoning trade ­union movement, on one hand, and by the in­de­pen­dent development of a new Marxist historiography of South Africa, on the other” (Nash 1999, 68). 23. This was certainly true of the miners who struck on Lonmin platinum fields in the lead-up to the August 16, 2012, Marikana Massacre. Many of the miners demanding wage increases ­were not only highly indebted but ­were living in near destitution in a local squatter settlement called Nkaneng. 24. See Hunter 2010, 37. 25. Interview, February 19, 1999, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 26. ny stands for “Native Yard” and was used by planners in signposting roads in Cape Town’s townships ­under apartheid. Though there have been attempts at name changes, the ny designation seems to have remained, at least for Gugulethu. 27. By the time the Noquiets ­were forced to move to Crossroads, rents in Gugulethu had risen from their 1967 level of r7 a month (approximately r630 in 2013 rands) to anywhere between r15 and r18 a month (approximately r570–­r685 in 2013 rands) in 1978, which many found unaffordable. Still, higher rents w ­ ere not the

notes to Ch apte r   1   |   177

primary reason that ­people gave for leaving the formal townships. Many families, ­under generational pressure, moved to Crossroads mostly owing to overcrowding. Younger couples also recognized the advantages of a certain freedom from “custom”—­the necessary codes of conduct in relation to elders—as well as the escape from much tighter official controls on reference books, employment, and ­legal status. My thanks go to Mackenzie Cramblit (Cultural Anthropology, Duke University) and Jacob Johnson (formerly Fuqua School of Business) for crunching the numbers and coming up with historic compound inflation calculations. Also, see http://­www​.­inflation​.­eu​/­inflation​-­rates​/­south​-­africa​/­historic​-­inflation​/­cpi​-­inflation​ -­south​-­africa​.­aspx (accessed February 11, 2015). 28. See “Crossroads Squatters,” John Battersby, Cape Argus, August 17, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 29. See “Crossroads Squatters,” John Battersby, Cape Argus, August 17, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 30. See “4,000 at Crossroads Meeting,” Cape Times, July 31, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 31. Formal interviews ­were carried out between March 2, 1999, and March 9, 1999, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 32. The period following the rise of the Nationalists in 1948 saw the intensification of the anti-­apartheid strug­gle and a shift from moderation to militancy within the African National Congress and other po­liti­cal organizations. From 1950 to 1952 this new strategy yielded new tactics of mass action—­boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience—­culminating in the 1952 Defiance Campaign, which was the largest nonviolent campaign of re­sis­tance against the state pursued by groups across the racial spectrum (see, e.g., Feit 1967; Lodge 1983; Nasson 1990; also see Worden 2007). 33. Lungile mentioned paying r2 in rent fortnightly. What we know is that in the early 1950s, average ­family income for Africans working on farms (defined as mixed farming on tribal land or unsupervised irrigation schemes) ranged from £39.4 to £43 per annum, while work on supervised irrigation schemes could amount to as much as £115.5 (see sairr Annual Survey 1955–56, 160). These figures included pensions as well as remittances from mi­grant workers. ­Whether or not Lungile was converting pounds and shillings into rand (the rand was adopted in 1961), a rough calculation suggests that r1 was equivalent to 10 shillings, r2 to 20 shillings (£1). While it seems unlikely that he would have been charged as much as £2 a month in rent—­possibly almost half his yearly wage—­ultimately, the point is that he was highlighting the deeply exploitative nature of the rural wage relation (see, e.g., Taussig 1987). 34. Also referred to as “samp,” umngqusho is similar to corn mush or hominy. 35. The railways ­were in fact segregated, though as the sairr Annual Survey 1947–48 notes, u­ ntil 1948 the Cape had not issued regulations providing “for a mea­ sure of segregation.” Indeed the Cape was the only part of the Union u ­ ntil that point

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that had not extended segregationist legislation to the railway, specifically suburban trains. See sairr Annual Survey 1947–48. 36. This reference to Sotewu is extraordinary. ­Whether or not this was the “­actual” man it seems there was a policeman, a Transkeian captain of great notoriety, who was much feared by residents of Port Elizabeth. “Sotewu” was allegedly a nickname, however. Not unlike many accounts of Warrant Officer Barnard in Cape Town, his ubiquity in the public memory suggests both the fact of the man himself, his cruelty, and his vio­lence, as well as a growing sense of the far reach of the police state (see, e.g., Baines 2005; cf. Matyu 1996). 37. David Bunn, who is currently working on a history of Kruger National Park, has suggested that the reference to lions in Lungile Kolisi’s story of journeying to Cape Town from the Eastern Cape is likely more about a sense of danger and risk than the ­actual presence of lions, which in any case are not common in that part of the country. My thanks to David for his comments and for his extraordinary talk “Steady States: Emerging Conservation Management Landscapes of the Early Kruger National Park,” Concilium on Southern Africa, Duke University, February 7, 2012. 38. On March 21, 1960, in protest against pass laws, demonstrators presented themselves at the local police station in Sharpeville, a township in the area of the Rand known as Vereeniging. The police opened fire on the crowd; 69 p­ eople died, and countless ­others ­were injured. ­Later the protest spread to Cape Town, to the township of Langa, where police used tear gas and eventually ammunition against protestors; 3 ­people ­were shot. Sharpeville marked the end of civil disobedience and the beginning of armed strug­gle for the liberation organizations, including the Pan-­Africanist Congress, which had been at the forefront of or­ga­niz­ing the original protest. 39. This is derived from the word sjambok, “whip.” 40. Langa’s hostels are well known for their significant size and the fact that unlike many barracks dating from this era, they are tall, multistory structures. 41. ­After South Africa’s first demo­cratic elections in 1994, the old passbooks ­were replaced with new national identity books. But among an older generation there is often a conflation, and some even carry their new id books in plastic covers resembling in no small mea­sure the design of the old passbook. 42. Lobola refers to bride payments, traditionally made in head of ­cattle. 43. As we will see in chapter 2, in 1980, following a state-­mandated census of Crossroads (in 1979), some residents of the informal settlement w ­ ere assigned formal housing in a nearby, newly completed township. New Crossroads represented the first phase of a development abutting Nyanga East across Mahobe Drive from what some now referred to as Old Crossroads—­i.e., the original squatter settlement. New Crossroads was understood to be a first phase in Crossroads’ (or Old Crossroads’) overall redevelopment, but the second half of the newly established township was never completed, creating difficulties in the assigning of homes: one, because these ­were far too costly for most (the rent was close to double that charged for plots in Old Crossroads) and, two, because there ­were only slightly more than 1,500 completed units out of 2,575 planned stands or plots. Crossroads was already home

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to tens of thousands of ­people (by some estimates as many as 40,000–50,000), all seeking both permanent ­legal status and formal housing. 44. My thanks go to Simon Gikandi for making me aware of the fortunes of South African letters during this period. 45. Following the passage of the Black Affairs Administration Act, no. 45, in 1971, twenty-­two Bantu Administration Boards w ­ ere established in the following year, taking over responsibility for the administration of black local authorities from white local authority structures. The act was intended to provide for black self-­government in the townships, though the boards in no way afforded anything akin to po­liti­cal autonomy. 46. See Cape Argus, December 15, 1970, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 47. See confidential memorandum concerning the redistricting of the South Peninsula, 1972. 48. See Janet Graaff, “From Cala to Crossroads and Back?” Cape Times, November 25, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 49. See Janet Graaff, “From Cala to Crossroads and Back?” Cape Times, November 25, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 50. See Circular no. 7 addressed to the Local Committee re: Labour in the Western Cape, February 17, 1965, State Archive, Cape Town, awc 2/15. 51. The “enumeration” of the African population in Cape Town, as elsewhere, was a complicated business, owing in large mea­sure to the hypergeographic mobility of most blacks, who regularly traveled between town and country. The Surplus P ­ eople Pro­ject, a national nongovernmental or­ga­ni­za­tion, which ­under apartheid functioned to document and represent the plight of removed peoples, estimates the African population of Cape Town to have been 250,000 by 1984 (Surplus P ­ eople Pro­ject 1984). By contrast, the Bantu Affairs Administration Board had previously counted a total of 17 squatter camps housing slightly over 51,000 blacks across the Peninsula. See Financial Mail, January 20, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 52. See, e.g., Keri Swift, “The ­Women,” Cape Argus, June 12, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 53. See Francis Wilson, “Influx Control Is Not the Key,” Cape Argus, September 15, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 54. See R. N. Robb (Athlone Advice Office), “Where Did the Crossroads P ­ eople Come From?” Cape Argus (Letters to the Editor section), August 18, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 55. Personal communication with Gugulethu (Gugs) Sokothi, July 1999, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town.

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56. Members of the Black Sash, a nonviolent, volunteer or­ga­ni­za­tion run by white ­women, ­were actively involved in seeking ­legal repre­sen­ta­tion for Crossroads residents, offering counsel in matters of pass law infractions, including the raising of bail, and extending support to ­women squatters in par­tic­u­lar. 57. See “Unibell Has Gone but Squatters Have Not,” Cape Times, January 21, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). The Black Sash was founded in 1955. Among their many strategies, white ­women members sought to or­ga­nize against pass laws by assisting African ­women who faced deportation. 58. ­Whether this constituted a sense of class consciousness (eine Klasse für Sich) in the strict sense is less clear. 59. See “School Goes Up Again,” The Argus, June 11, 1976, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 60. See “­Little Crime at Crossroads,” Ted Olsen, Cape Times, August 8, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 61. See “Crossroads,” David Albino, Cape Argus, May 6, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 62. See the Cape Metropolitan Council Photogrammetry Department’s “Aerial Photography” collection. The ­later surveys also show the upgrading of the westernmost end of the settlement with the redevelopment of Unathi and the Nyanga Bush section of Crossroads. 63. This is where I find great difficulty in Hannah Arendt’s schema of the “­human condition”: in her assertion that ­labor is merely reproductive—­i.e., of biological life. Work, on the other hand, appears productive of something; it has an end point and enables correspondence between the world and ­people. Surely such distinctions ignore the bleed-­through between projects that begin as, say, “purely” ­labor and conclude in work. 64. Cole’s monograph, published in 1987, might be best described as a microhistory. As a witness to events as they unfolded during a de­cade or so, Cole’s pro­ject remained primarily that of “documenting” ­women’s struggles and the micropolitics that ultimately wrested authority from early female residents of Crossroads. That is to say, her telling of the stories of the ­women she worked with is both the strength and weakness of a book whose commitments lie in bearing witness to events as they unfolded. Crossroads, rooted in a deeply local history, attends less to the unfolding of broader events across the country. Nor does it attend to the possi­ble theoretical implications that writing in the post-­postcolonial studies moment has afforded many of us fully three de­cades ­later. And so the book cannot address the post-­apartheid era and the question of continuity and rupture in squatter struggles across the transition. 65. The eventual dissolution of the ­Women’s Committee in the face of the emergence of so-­called male traditionalists is covered in chapter 2. For a comprehensive

notes to Ch apte r   1   |   181

account of the history of the Crossroads committees, see Cole 1987. This early history of the settlement is also covered in the papers of the Urban Foundation. 66. Personal communication with Gugulethu (Gugs) Sokothi, April 2013, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 67. Interview with Xoliswa Kolisi, March 9, 1999, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 68. A literal translation is “red.” 69. Emergency Camp status won through the courts in 1976 made Crossroads something of a liberated zone. Chapter 2: Counterinsurgency

1. See “Tent of Misery,” Linda Vergnani, Cape Argus, July 5, 1982, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 2. See “Crossroads Development Needs Residents’ ‘Approval,’ ” Cape Times, April 18, 1986, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 3. See “Where Did the Crossroads ­People Come From,” (Mrs.) R. N. Robb, Director, Athlone Advice Office (Letters to the Editor Section), Cape Argus, August 18, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 4. The power of the ­father, or patria potestas in Roman law, accords the patriarch authority over f­ amily and property. Notably, in The Birth of Biopolitics the “law of the ­house­hold” is the originary basis of governmentality (see Foucault 2008). 5. The Mystery of Capital would lead us to believe that the forces of formal property relations, once unleashed, eradicate in­e­qual­ity and dissolve the parallel property market. Yet South Africa’s neoliberal turn has achieved precisely the opposite: condemning the majority to a vast and ever-­expanding informal sphere. Also see Locke (1980) on property and the social contract. 6. The blas operated as municipal structures within a larger system catering separately to ­different racial groups defined ­under apartheid legislation. 7. Exactly 79,649 land claims have been settled since 1995. 8. While “willing seller, willing buyer” (wswb) principles dominated the discourse of land reform in South Africa u ­ ntil 2005, when the national Land Summit chose to adopt new legislation, in princi­ple this earlier policy was never ­really abandoned in ­favor of ­viable alternatives. In South Africa wswb principles have actually empowered landowners to sell to the highest bidder and to veto sales, a policy that favors the landed over the landless (Lahiff 2005). 9. See Constitution of the Republic of South Africa of 1996, Section 26. 10. See, e.g., “Crossroads ‘Mayor’ Has a Landslide Win,” Cape Argus, August 13, 1979, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 11. Interview with Evelyn Nombembe, February 15, 1999, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town.

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12. I use the term gerontocracy with some hesitation, insofar as the leadership was not so much “older” in the sense of concrete age; rather, it was, in some symbolic sense, fully adult compared with those who claimed “youth activism” as an identity. 13. The imbizo is a forum in which headmen in Crossroads came together. It shares certain features with the Tswana kgotla—­a meeting of the chiefs and older men—or the village indaba, which is a call to the community, tribe, or village. At times inclusive, at times limited to headmen, such meetings in Crossroads squatter camps functioned both to consolidate the power of the izibonda and to create opportunities for public participation. 14. Consider the parallels with the rural chieftaincy and the responsibility of chiefs in the adjudication of land distribution and decisions relating to the location of homesteads within the boundaries of the chieftaincy. 15. For inasmuch as many Africans who ­were removed to the homelands confronted for the first time a culture and identity assigned to them through removal, why would such an artificial pro­cess not operate in the construction of in­ven­ted practices of purported rural origin brought to the city? It is in a sense merely a reversal of the flow and circulation of signs and symbols from the country to the city and the city to the country. 16. See “Africa Bureau Fact Sheet 57,” in X-­Ray: Current Affairs in Southern Africa, September–­October 1978. 17. See Cole 1987, 44, based on an interview in New Crossroads in 1986. 18. Based on interviews with early residents of Crossroads, Fullard (n.d.) suggests that Crossroads was the first place in Cape Town in which the headman system was fully articulated. Also see Comaroff and Comaroff (1997) on Barolong institutions in 1940s Johannesburg. 19. My sincere thanks go to W. P. K. Makhulu for his insightful interpretation of the workings of local government in urban South Africa just prior to and immediately following the establishment of the apartheid state. 20. Even ­today, across South Africa, many informal settlements are contralesa strongholds (the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa), stressing the continuity between the urban edge and forms of traditional authority. 21. “Red” refers specifically to the Xhosa distinction between those who are schooled and those who are not, as signaled by the use of red clay face paint. 22. See Cape Times, October 3, 1978. Also see “Squatters Reject Transkei Border Resettlement Plan,” Cape Times, October 9, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 23. “Removal: sa and Transkei to Meet,” Cape Times, October 3, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 24. “Removal: sa and Transkei to Meet,” Cape Times, October 3, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 25. See Hansard (Parliamentary Debates), vol. 73, 6136, Tuesday, May 2, 1978.

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26. My thanks go to John Comaroff for his astute observation that what squatters lacked in the way of a politics rooted in class, they very often made up for by way of “class action.” 27. Of course, June 1976 was a watershed in the anti-­apartheid strug­gle. On June 16, students marched in protest against Afrikaans language instruction, laid out in the provisions of the Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974, which stipulated the use of Afrikaans and En­glish in equal mea­sure as languages of instruction. In confrontation with the security forces, during what had been intended as a peaceful march, police shot and killed several hundred (figures vary widely between an official tally of 23 and 200 by eyewitnesses) and arrested and detained countless o­ thers (somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 students and young ­people are thought to have marched). The Truth and Reconciliation Commission report rec­ords 575 fatalities and 2,380 wounded. Most w ­ ere ­under twenty-­five and many ­were school children. It should be noted that the organizers always intended for the demonstrations to be peaceable, and to this day there is no evidence to suggest that students w ­ ere ­either armed or in any way ­battle ready. See Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1998, 3, 555. While there ­were ­ripple effects across South Africa, the protests in places like Cape Town ­were on a much-­reduced scale. That squatters ­were fighting in the courts for rights to settlement during this period was ­later recounted as an apt demonstration of their lack of real po­liti­cal will, and their efforts to stay in the Western Cape ­were understood merely as questions of bread-­and-­butter struggles. 28. In 1970, average wage levels for blacks had risen to r566 annually from r84 in 1935. Despite the increase black wages continued to lag b­ ehind those of white workers, who earned nearly 5.5 times as much. See sairr Annual Survey 1970, 79–80. Further, a sairr memorandum published for the Natal region estimated that the poverty line for African families in Durban at that time ranged from r69.35 to r104.25 a month (or the minimum effective level; sairr Annual Survey 1970, 81). This calculation, albeit for Durban, offers some relative sense of what portion of monthly income r10 represented. Notably, the average African ­house­hold income ­after 1975 was approximately r72 per month, well below any poverty datum estimates for the period. See the sairr Annual Survey 1976, 276. 29. See letter to the Divisional Council from Messrs. Mallinick, Ress, Richman & Co., Attorneys, May 27, 1977. 30. See letter to one A. Dalling, an attorney at Messrs Fuller, Moore & Son, from Messrs. Mallinick, Ress, Richman & Co., Attorneys, November 24, 1976. 31. See “Crossroads Wife Tells of Broken Families,” Bob Molloy, Cape Times, October 28, 1978, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 32. In practice the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act was indissociable from influx controls, which sought to limit African urbanization. See Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1998, 3, 555. 33. See “In the Magistrate’s Court for the District of Wynberg,” in the Application of the Divisional Council of the Cape, in terms of Section 5 of Act 52 of 1951, Affidavit, Ntoyi Johnson Ndayi, May 20, 1976.

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34. ktc, or Kakaza Trading Center, is a shack area bordering Gugulethu to the west and Nyanga to the east. Explicitly established to serve illegal migrants awaiting deportation to the homelands, ktc eventually grew so large it could not be removed. 35. See letter addressed to the Chief Bantu Affairs Commissioner from the Medical Officer of Health, February 2, 1976. 36. The Department of Bantu Administration and Development ­until 1978, then Plural Relations and Development, circa 1984 the department was renamed the Department of Cooperation and Development. “The state bureaucracy that oversaw the implementation of most apartheid policies had many ­different names over the de­cades. The Department of Native Affairs, a small department that predated apartheid, became a ‘great super-­ministry whose tentacles extended into every aspect of government policy’ ” (O’Meara 1996, 68); it then became the Department of Bantu Affairs ­under Prime Minister Verwoerd, then the Department of Bantu Administration and Development in the 1970s, and briefly, the Department of Plural Relations and Development; in the 1980s it was euphemistically called the Department of Cooperation and Development (Cole 1987; cited in Gordon 2006, 294). 37. “Statement on Crossroads by Dr. the Honourable PGJ Koornhof, mp, Minister of Plural Relations and Development,” April 5, 1979, 1. 38. That is, residents in the city since birth or through long-­term work, respectively. 39. “Statement on Crossroads by Dr. the Honourable PGJ Koornhof, mp, Minister of Plural Relations and Development,” April 5, 1979, 2. 40. See “Squatter Camp Gets 6-­Month Reprieve,” Cape Times, July 18, 1979, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 41. In actuality, only 1,731 homes ­were eventually built in a first phase, while phase two was never completed. 42. See “Crossroads Demand for New Talks,” Cape Times, September 27, 1979, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 43. See “A Short Summary of the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act, no. 52 of 1951, as Amended on 8 February 1989,” Black Sash “Forced Removals Symposium 1989,” State Archive bc 668, Black Sash, E Special Projects. 44. Kobus Pienaar, ­Legal Resources Centre (Port Elizabeth), April 1989. 45. E. G. Jansen was the first Minister of Native Affairs ­after the rise to power of the Nationalists in 1948 and the introduction of apartheid. 46. A masculinity ratio is a sex ratio imbalance favoring men. In the Western Cape, where masculinity ratios ­were especially high, men numbered as many as 200 to 100 ­women. 47. See “Security Force Involvement in Covert or Unorthodox Actions in the Western Cape,” Truth and Reconciliation Commission archive. 48. See “Truth and Reconciliation Commission ­Human Rights Violations Submissions: Questions and Answers,” June 11, 1997, Ulrich Schelhase, ktc Hearings, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­justice​.­gov​.­za​/­trc​/­hrvtrans​/­ktc​/­schel​.­htm. Also

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see “np Cabinet Ministers ‘Approved Support for Witdoeke,’ ” South African Press Association, June 11, 1997, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­doj​.­gov​.­za​/­trc​ /­media​/­1997​/­9706​/­s970611a​.­htm. 49. The National Security Management System was ­later renamed the National Management System. 50. As we will see in chapter 3, “Crossroads and Its Environs” was eventually renamed and broadened in scope, becoming the Ser­viced Land Pro­ject (slp) and then the Integrated Ser­viced Land Pro­ject (islp) by the early 1990s. The islp essentially constituted the pro­ject area for the Reconstruction and Development Programme in the Peninsula; it encompassed those townships and informal settlements previously subjected to harsh deportation and removal policies. Many of the settlements w ­ ere site-­and-­service schemes. 51. See letter to the Black Sash Athlone Office from Messrs. Mallinick, Ress, Richman & Co., Attorneys, May 9, 1977. 52. An informational letter circulated to all heads of ­house­holds, Crossroads, October 29, 1980, State Archive, pacg, vol. 869. 53. Interview with Noluthando Mafilika, March 22, 1999, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 54. In addition to administering the original survey, the executive also administered a second and highly contentious survey to approximately 600 residents who had been absent from Crossroads in the Transkei and Ciskei in 1979. 55. See “Crossroads ‘Mayor’ Sworn In,” Cape Argus, August 20, 1979, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 56. Working in East London in the late 1950s, Philip Mayer had observed the cleavages of gender and generation among African migrants. In what began as a community-­policing initiative in Amalinda Ward in 1958, Mayer concluded that the presence of rural migrants in the location made it likely “that any general conflict between men and boys might shape itself as a conflict between a mi­grant and a town faction” (Mayer 1963, 85; my emphasis). In this view, the cultural conservatism of many migrants informed commonly shared attitudes about generational tensions as well. 57. See “Truth and Reconciliation Commission ­Human Rights Violations Submissions: Questions and Answers,” June 10, 1997, Sam Ndima, ktc Hearings, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­justice​.­gov​.­za​/­trc​/­hrvtrans​/­ktc​/­ndima​.­htm. 58. By some accounts community cars w ­ ere used in transporting el­derly Crossroads residents to and from the Home Affairs office near Klipfontein Road, but in practice these ­were mostly for the headmen’s private use. 59. Personal communication, Max Sokhetye, July 15, 2004, Crossroads, Cape Town. 60. Ngxobongwana’s politics are not easily pigeonholed; while he was responsible for setting up the Western Cape Civic Association (wcca), which had strong connections to the African National Congress (anc), every indication is that by the mid-­to late 1980s he was working for the state.

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61. See “Imbacu,” Mario Pissarra, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­ artsouthafrica​.­com​/­archives​/­archived​-­reviews​/­213​-­main​-­archive​/­archived​-­reviews​ /­1696​-­imbacu​.­html. 62. What follows is drawn from an interview carried out on February 15, 1999, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 63. Minutes of the Cape Town Community Council, July 1982, State Archive, pacg, vol. 869. 64. Minutes of the Cape Town Community Council, July 1982, State Archive, pacg, vol. 869. Chapter 3: Transitions

Epigraph: Cited in The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Pop­u­lar Politics in Most of the World by Partha Chatterjee, 2004. 1. See also “rip the rdp Committee,” Barry Streek, Mail and Guardian, August 20, 1999, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­mg​.­co​.­za​/­article​/1­ 999–08–20​-­rip​-­the​-­rdp​ -­committee. 2. Rightly or wrongly, the ­people’s courts are perhaps best known for the practice of “necklacing”—­immolation by placing a tire doused with gasoline around the neck of the “accused” and then setting it alight. 3. Many ­people expressed a sense of local pride in the fact of the udf’s founding in Cape Town; though hardly insignificant to the liberation movements, the city had perhaps not been seen as strategically critical till that point. 4. Local government officials created a flag and Crossroads crest, and “municipal workers” within the squatter area ­were issued uniforms to distinguish them from municipal employees working for the city of Cape Town. Interview with Andries Wessels (former Crossroads Acting Town Clerk), April 28, 1999, Cape Town. 5. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report is or­ga­nized around the findings of the three committees—on ­human rights violations, amnesty claims, and steps ­toward reparation and rehabilitation. In addition, the commission focuses on regional reporting. These later findings are particularly interest­ing insofar as they underline a reality of the anti-­apartheid strug­gle, specifically its variations and differentiation across regions and interest groups. To be sure, the or­ga­niz­ing discourse of the liberation movement(s) was that the impetus to fight the state was unified—­a necessity in order to build strength and numbers in the ranks (see, e.g., Ashforth 2000). But what volume 3 of the commission’s final report also suggests is that on the ground, highly par­tic­u­lar historical factors informed the methods and responses of activists and ordinary ­people to state dictates and repression. The Western Cape and other regions in the country appear to follow very similar paths through the mid-1970s. Likewise for the period beginning in 1983 and marking the launch of the United Demo­cratic Front, things appear to unfold in parallel across the region and the country, though there is some implication that the Western Cape very often responds somewhat belatedly to crises playing out elsewhere. The very real differences of strategic response become quite apparent in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Po­liti­cal vio­lence abated in the Western Cape in the few

notes to Ch apte r   3   |   187

years leading up to demo­cratization, while in regions such as Natal and the Northern Transvaal conflict surged. However, what is probably most telling is that at the tail end of the 1980s, vio­lence in the Western Cape took on a very distinct form in response to counterinsurgency. “The state’s strategy of contra-­mobilisation sought both to build anti-­liberation movement forces by covert means and to foster divisions within communities. In the Western Cape . . . ​[f]rom 1986 onward the state poured resources into those sectors of the townships that w ­ ere prepared to adopt a pro-­government stance. Illegal actions committed by these groups w ­ ere permitted, ignored and promoted, particularly if they targeted supporters of the liberation movements” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission 1998, volume 3, 463; also see Truth and Reconciliation Commission 2002–3). 6. Gugulethu Sokothi, personal communication, Lower Crossroads, July 15–16, 1999. 7. See Greenwell 2001. 8. Following the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, the South African military began stockpiling equipment and expanding its ground and naval forces. Only a de­ cade ­later, the establishment of the Bureau of State Security (boss) to gather and coordinate intelligence marked a significant shift in military strategy. Notably, boss was financed through a “security ser­vices special account” beyond parliamentary scrutiny (see Ahmad 1972, 10). 9. In an interview with Colin Appleton, former uf regional director for the Western Cape, January 26, 1999, he conceded having had ­little or no awareness of the broader implications of the uf’s role in the redevelopment of Crossroads. Subsequently he readily withdrew uf support for the Crossroads pro­ject ­after the burnout in 1986, on grounds that to go ahead would be to support state-­sponsored vio­lence against Crossroads residents. Also see court depositions by Appleton: December 7, 1987, February 10, 1988, and an addendum following the events of 1986, Colin Appleton Private Papers. 10. Cape Town had a number of such Transfer of Residential Property Initiative programs, on which local civil engineering firms bid for contracts. These included Hill, Kaplan, Scott (hks), Gibb Africa Pty., and bks. This last served as pro­ject ­manager, while other firms ­were assigned “territories” to administer—­Crossroads and Lower Crossroads among them (personal communication, Rieger van Rooyen, June 1, 1999, Cape Town). 11. To be sure, severe recession eventually hamstrung infrastructural reform (Watson 2002, 19). 12. Interview with Colin Appleton, former uf Western Cape regional director, January 26, 1999, Cape Town. 13. See “Internal Memo,” Urban Foundation, July 3, 1980, 3, Colin Appleton Private Papers. 14. My thanks to Patrick Bond for stressing the Urban Foundation and Development Bank of Southern Africa’s opposition to such policies of deconcentration. 15. Cole’s account of events in 1986 is surely authoritative. She was a witness to much of what happened, as ­were ­human rights monitors, members of the Black

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Sash, and the press. Cole had a significant degree of access and so she was also able to conduct a great number of follow-up interviews. My approach h ­ ere differs inasmuch as I am particularly interested in the continuities in housing politics across that de­cade and the ways in which site-­and-­service schemes continued to dominate the development field even ­after the end of apartheid. As I try to show, the market-­driven model of the Urban Foundation would carry over into the work of the Reconstruction and Development Programme post-1994. 16. Squatters in the satellites ­were regarded as iiMbhacu, “refugees.” 17. These included Melford Yamile, Alfred Siphika, and Christopher Toise. 18. The witdoeke (an Afrikaans term) wore white rags to identify themselves in the field of ­battle. 19. See, e.g., “Call to Stop Removals,” Tony Weaver, Peter Dennehy, and Marianne Thamm, Cape Times, May 26, 1986, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 20. Casspir is a term derived from two separate but related acronyms, the first being sap, the South African Police, the second being csir, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. The csir was established in 1945; its research and development focus covered a number of sectors including defense and security. 21. Comrades ­were dedicated to both peaceful demonstration and violent action. These young men and ­women served as ground troops on behalf of the exiled anc (African National Congress), pac (Pan Africanist Congress), and other banned organizations. 22. There ­were also reports of ­people being hacked to death with pangas (large scythelike weapons), while some of those who had been shot w ­ ere mutilated postmortem (see Urban Foundation Monitoring Reports for June 19, 1986, and June 24, 1986, Colin Appleton Private Papers). 23. See written statement to the Urban Foundation, May 18, 1986, Colin Appleton Private Papers. Also see “Crossroads: Urban Foundation Quits,” Lester Venter, The Argus, May 29, 1986, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 24. Remarkably, the administration of Crossroads remained quite distinct even through the late 1990s, when I interviewed Isolde Schelhase (March 12, 1999, Cape Town), wife of the former Crossroads Town Clerk, Ulrich Schelhase, who continued in the post of financial administrator to Crossroads within Cape Town City Council (ccc). 25. See “ ‘Fathers’ ­Free 4 Prisoners,” Malcolm Fried and James Melliar, Cape Times, July 1, 1986, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 26. See “ ‘Fathers’ ­Free 4 Prisoners,” Malcolm Fried and James Melliar, Cape Times, July 1, 1986, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). 27. Affidavit made by John Njwele, July 9, 1987 (bc 991, ktc Trial Witnesses Statements, d2 Other Residents). 28. Established in 1983, beginning with a tent town in Site C section, Khayelitsha is Cape Town’s largest township ­today.

notes to Ch apte r   3   |   189

29. The reference to Nontsumpa Bush is an interest­ing one. Encompassing the area adjacent to the satellite camps and the site of the old Home Affairs office, kwaNontsumpa was understood as the place where the officials or authorities ­were based, and yet the name derives from intsumpa, “warts.” The transcript of the meeting at which Ndima and Siphika spoke would suggest that the satellites and Nontsumpa w ­ ere used interchangeably to describe a broad area bordering Old Crossroads. 30. The original transcript includes a note from the translator that reads, “I should think he refers to the Boers.” 31. See “Minutes of the Meeting of the Leaders of the Area Site C, Old Crossroads, Nyanga Bush, Nyanga Extension and Portland Cement Works,” November 5, 1986 (bc 991, ktc Trial Witnesses Statements, d2 Other Residents). 32. See “Crossroads: Urban Foundation Quits,” Lester Venter, The Argus, May 29, 1986, University of Cape Town Library, Special Collections, Press Clippings, Black Sash Collection (African Studies Library). Also see written statement to the Urban Foundation, May 18, 1986, Colin Appleton Private Papers. 33. The following interview with Colin Appleton, former Urban Foundation Western Cape Regional Director, was conducted on January 26, 1999, Cape Town. 34. From Colin Appleton’s description this was likely an area known as Emavundleni, now the site of a new hiv/aids and tb center. 35. The redevelopment of Crossroads was originally projected to occur in three separate “phases.” The first phase—­planned in two parts, together constituting the new township of New Crossroads—­was never completed. Additionally, the second and third phases ­were to be built in ktc. ­After the 1986 “burnout,” which cleared ground within Crossroads, ­houses ­were erected where the satellites had previously been located, along Mahobe Drive. The newly developed township opened in 1989 and was renamed Unathi. Previously there had been a pro­ject to build homes for purchase: Bester homes, so named for the com­pany that built them. They ­were completed sometime ­after the burnout (ca. 1987). 36. Even fully ten to fifteen years ­later, Unathi still bore the physical signs of repeated po­liti­cal vio­lence. Homes that bordered on Sections II, III, and IV of Crossroads ­were pockmarked with bullet holes from firefights between young comrades and headmen. Comrades regularly hid out in a number of safe h ­ ouses in Unathi and referred to the area as “mini-­exile” (personal communication, Gugulethu Sokothi). 37. ­After 1994 Ngxobongwana went on to win supporters in Driftsands, from where he ran a campaign on behalf of the Nationalists (apartheid’s architects) in the early transition years; in due course he became an mp for the New National Party. Though his po­liti­cal stature was much diminished, he persisted in the clientelism that had made him so power­ful in the 1980s, even as his position on the city outskirts suggested a deepening marginalization as he moved farther and farther out onto the urban limit. 38. My thanks to Patrick Bond for helping me better understand this relationship between the state and the private sector. 39. See Goldstone Commission 1993.

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40. By 1990 the Urban Foundation estimated that the black urban population would grow from 13 million (53 ­percent of its total) in 1985 to 33 million (69 ­percent of its total) by 2010 (Smith 1992a, 8), making the African population of a city like Cape Town, where Africans had historically been a minority, an im­por­tant constituency for the first time. However, there has been a long-­standing dispute over the foundation’s assessment of urban migration. ­After the 1990 census the foundation was forced to retract some of its earlier claims about in-­migration. Were their systematic overestimations self-­interested; had these motivated additional development and upgrading projects (see in par­tic­u­lar McCarthy and Bernstein 1995; cf. Cross, Bekker, and Clark 1994)? Sincere thanks go to Patrick Bond for drawing my attention to the debate. 41. Interview with Ntombinkosi Tshatani, December 9, 1998, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 42. Lower Crossroads, Klipfontein, Luzuko, Mandalay, Philippi Industrial, Philippi East, and Thabo Mbeki ­were officially listed as part of Ward 35 in the leadup to the 2001 census. Island, Heinz Park, and The Leagues, though not individually listed, ­were and continue to be located in the Philippi East area, while part of Old Crossroads also fell at the time within the general ward boundary (personal communication, Gugulethu Sokothi, September 12, 2013). These are unevenly upgraded dormitory areas—­some have amenities, ­others continue to wait for ­running ­water, electricity, and housing. And even in places like Lower Crossroads, with comprehensive redevelopment projects ­under way, not all beneficiaries have received homes. See http://­www​.­capetown​.­gov​.­za​/­en​/­stats​/­2001census​/­Documents​/­2006%20 Ward035​.­htm (accessed February 11, 2015). 43. By the time of the 2011 census, as Mandalay and Philippi East w ­ ere no longer deemed to fall within the Ward 35 boundaries, both the 2001 and 2011 calculations of local population shifted. See City of Cape Town 2013. 44. The ward was also originally accounted for in numbers of h ­ ouse­holds even though the council could not satisfactorily establish an accurate definition of a given ­house­hold unit. Were these freestanding structures (shacks and lean-­tos), or ­were ­house­holds more accurately counted in terms of those members of an extended kin network spanning several “homes” who regularly broke bread together? 45. This department has since split into two entities—­the Department of Local Government and the National Department of ­Human Settlement. 46. Available statistics (emphasis on available) indicate only 5,492 homes ­were completed through the early 2000s. Though falling short in absolute terms these numbers are relatively impressive, given the broader context of delivery. Data derived from bks, a multidisciplinary engineering and pro­ject management firm operating in Ward 35. 47. See Goldstone Commission 1993. 48. See “Integrated Ser­viced Land Pro­ject: Business Plan,” February 1997, 2. 49. See “Integrated Ser­viced Land Pro­ject: Business Plan,” February 1997, 3. 50. See “Integrated Ser­viced Land Pro­ject: Business Plan,” February 1997, 4. 51. The exchange rate as of September 11, 2013, was r9.90 to $1.

notes to Ch apte r   3   |   191

52. See the Housing Act, no. 107 of 1997. 53. I would attend countless rdp forum meetings, usually held on Wednesday eve­nings in the Mandela Clinic, Lower Crossroads, in 1998 and 1999, before the rdp was quietly dismantled. 54. Eligibility is determined on the basis of age—­the beneficiary must be at least 21—­income, and status as a head of ­house­hold who extends care to dependents, ­whether these are children or grandchildren ­under the age of 21. 55. It is noteworthy that the lower case i in islp should come to stand for the relative insignificance of the “integration” piece of the new development paradigm. While it was argued that “integrated development” was essential to the creation of a desegregated and compact city form, very ­little in the islp and other similar projects went any distance ­toward advancing such goals, even as “integration” came to be understood mostly in relation to diverse land use. 56. Subsidies ­were raised again in 2003, this time to r23,100; then with the establishment of the ­People’s Housing Pro­cess (php), subsidies ­were linked to individual contributions of approximately r2,500—­that or sweat equity in a php pro­ject, ­under­lying Mike Davis’s point that more and more development is modeled on a “poverty alleviation” paradigm in which the poor themselves become the engines of poverty alleviation (see Davis 2006)! By 2008–9 subsidies had almost doubled from 2002 across income thresholds, types of subsidies (rural, individual, pro­ject-­based, consolidated, and institutional), as well as ­house size, averaging somewhere between approximately r41,000 and r43,000 per beneficiary. 57. This happened alongside the industrial decentralization I referred to earlier in this chapter. 58. See “The Population Register Update: Khayelitsha, 2005” (2006, 69). Between 2001, the year of the last census, and 2005, the year the study was carried out, Khayelitsha’s overall population increased by 23.7 ­percent. 59. July is the dead of the South African winter; the Flats can be both damp from constant rain and bitterly cold in the early mornings and eve­nings. Shack dwellers complain about the propensity for flooding and chill in this part of the Peninsula, which is well known for chest infections and other respiratory conditions. That is to say, living in shacks is like living in the open. 60. Interview with Ezekiel Sdinana, July 3, 2004, Brown’s Farm, Cape Town. 61. Commonly used in low-­cost housing construction, vibracrete is precast concrete; it comes in slabs, sheets, and corrugated form. 62. I draw ­here on the work of Hylton White and his comments during “African Ubuntu and South African Constitutionalism: Constructing a New L ­ egal Culture,” a panel session with former Constitutional Court Justice Yvonne Mokgoro, John Comaroff (Harvard University), Hylton White (University of the Witwatersrand), and hosted by the Concilium on Southern Africa (cosa), Duke University, April 17, 2009.

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Chapter 4: “Reckoning”

1. See Nelson 2009. 2. Some, not all, members of the “strug­gle elite” went into exile, only returning to South Africa in the lead-up to the po­liti­cal transition, when they very quickly entered positions in government and industry. 3. Information is derived from bks’ data source. Also see the Ward 35 demographic profile derived from 2001 census data, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­ www​.­capetown​.­gov​.­za​/­en​/­stats​/­2001census​/­Documents​/­2006%20Ward035​.­htm. 4. Note that the plural form of ityotyombe, amatyotyombe, refers to a shack settlement, not to many shacks. 5. As previously noted in the introduction, the Western Cape Province faces some of the greatest challenges in housing delivery. Its backlog, estimated at close to 500,000, makes it the province with the greatest increase in housing demand. 6. See John Matshikiza, “Johannesburg: Shanty City, Instant City,” Open Democracy, December 13, 2002, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­opendemocracy​ .­net​/­people​-­africa​_­democracy​/­article​_­835​.­jsp. 7. See Commission on Restitution of Land Rights Annual Report, 2012–2013. 8. Since 1994 black own­ership of land has increased from 13 ­percent to 16 ­percent. See Abhik Kumar Chanda, “ ‘Good Response’ to Land-­Reform Initiative,” Mail and Guardian, August 16, 2006, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­mg​.c­ o​.­za​ /­article​/­2006–08–16​-­good​-­response​-­to​-­landreform​-­initiative. 9. Interviews with Edith and Solomon Mfeketo, June–­August 2006, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 10. For an interest­ing discussion of the dollar-­a-­day calculation of poverty, see Reddy 2004. 11. A pejorative for foreign immigrants, the word makwerek­were ostensibly mimics the sound of those who speak other languages. On the question of South African xenophobia, see, e.g., Neocosmos 2011. 12. While 2013 third-­quarter estimates of unemployment hover at 25 ­percent, for the period with which the latter half of my field research was concerned, 2001 census data are particularly relevant; see http://­www​.­statssa​.­gov​.­za​/­publications​/­P0211​ /­P02113rdQuarter2013​.­pdf (accessed February 11, 2015). Data disaggregated for Ward 35 indicate that approximately 48 ­percent of ­people between 15 and 65 ­were employed during the period; see http://­www​.­capetown​.­gov​.­za​/­en​/­stats​/­2001census​ /­Documents​/­2006%20Ward035​.­htm (accessed February 11, 2015). It should be emphasized that the South African government has opted for a “narrow” definition of unemployment, one covering only those seeking jobs rather than all those of working age desiring work. Notwithstanding this fact, that almost 52 ­percent of working age ­people in Ward 35 ­were unemployed at the time speaks volumes of the unevenness in joblessness rates across the country and the ways in which unemployment is concentrated in informal settlements and rural areas. 13. The expansion of the financial ser­vices industry and the focus on shareholder value in driving corporate profits is a trend largely dating back to the 1980s.

notes to Ch ap te r   4   |   193

14. The aftermath of the Marikana miners’ strike and subsequent massacre in August 2012 quickly showed not only that miners who demanded wage increases w ­ ere living in squalid conditions in nearby squatter settlements but that most supported upward of forty dependents on meager wages. Franco Barchiesi has rightly argued that beyond the prob­lem of growing structural unemployment in South Africa, wageworkers bear a par­tic­u­lar risk (2011). Not only are they superexploited in the mining and agricultural sectors in par­tic­u­lar; they also carry those who have fallen out of the wage ­labor market altogether. See, e.g., Lisa Steyn, “Marikana Miners in Debt Sinkhole,” Mail and Guardian, September 7, 2012, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­mg​.­co​.­za​/­article​/­2012–09–07–00​-­marikana​-­miners​-­in​-­debt​ -­sinkhole. 15. See, e.g., Rebecca Davis, “New Study Again Proves Worth of Social Grants in South Africa,” Daily Maverick, November 27, 2013, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­dailymaverick​.­co​.­za​/­article​/­2013–11–27​-­new​-­study​-­again​-­proves​-­worth​ -­of​-­social​-­grants​-­in​-­south​-­africa​/­#​.­VQCXw8ZDRpk. 16. In 2005 the total consumer expenditure for the bottom 60 ­percent of South Africans was slightly less than that of the top 5.7 ­percent, which totaled over r172 billion. Further, despite a newly deracialized welfare system, the level of many subsidies fell dramatically between 1994 and 1999. Child grants, for example, dropped by 40 ­percent. 17. A series of interviews ­were conducted between June and August 2006, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 18. The “Financial Diaries” survey, probably one of the most extensive studies of financial practices among the poor, was in part motivated by government and financial industry awareness of the need to offer financial ser­vices to poor ­house­holds in South Africa; see www​.­financialdiaries​.­com (accessed February 11, 2015). 19. Note that a so-­called Standard Bank Society Scheme is geared precisely to umgalelos and encourages group savings. 20. See Christina Scott, “Finance–­South Africa: Rare Insights into Poor ­People’s Bank,” Inter Press Ser­vice News Agency, Sunday, January 7, 2007, accessed February 11, 2015, www​.­ipsnews​.­net​/­print​.­asp​?­idnews​=2­ 8818. 21. I want to be cautious in suggesting that poor ­people are not consumers; they are. In fact, as Walmart and other low-­end chains demonstrate, the poor are a tremendous source of profit, largely by volume over price. Rather, my point is that the mechanisms of “­belt-­tightening” to which many respondents referred, indicated on one hand patterns of delayed consumption (waiting till December to make large purchases and so on) but on the other a very carefully drawn distinction between basic needs and notions of desire. These are not universal in any way, but at every turn ­house­holds necessarily negotiate a fine line between them. Moreover, this is not an argument based on assumptions about utility. Consider Helen Meintjes’s work on Soweto ­house­wives and the uses to which so-­called luxury appliances are put (or not) in the ­running of ­house­holds and what conceptions of useful and highly valued ­labor are at stake in decisions about washing clothes by hand while, e.g., owning a washing machine (2001).

194  |   notes to Ch apte r 4

22. I borrow the term financial sovereignty from the film Bamako. Directed by Malian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako, Bamako sits squarely in the tradition of “J’accuse” and sets the stage for a trial of the World Bank by members of African society. 23. Gooi-­gooi refers to an in-­and-­out investment. 24. Also see Lee and LiPuma (2002) on “cultures of circulation.” 25. One such example would be the emergence of ­free enterprise zones, which sit “outside” the borders of nation-­states and effectively conceal or displace sites of production. 26. Here, “debt” covers a ­whole range of brokerage relations, including store credit, credit card debt, informal loans, even loan sharking; in other words, moneys owed in both formal and informal sectors. 27. See “Statement by the Financial Sector Campaign Co­ali­tion on Financial Sector Transformation,” May 26, 2004, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­sacp​.­org​ .­za​/­main​.­php​?­ID​=­2459. Also see the “Financial Diaries” study, which suggests that in ­house­holds surveyed, an “average ­house­hold portfolio ha[d] 4 savings instruments, 2 insurance instruments and 11 credit instruments,” a mea­sure of the degree to which credit and indebtedness are critical to day-­to-­day survival. 28. Nomasundu Gquma was 36, her husband, Steven, 46, when I first met them in 2006. They had four daughters ranging in age from 4 to 17 and cared for a “niece,” Celimpilo. Celimpilo was Nomasundu’s sister’s grandchild. Nomasundu’s sister was 47 when both her dau­gh­ter and her dau­gh­ter’s husband died of aids, leaving Celimpilo parentless. Nomasundu’s sister lived in Johannesburg and worked odd jobs. A series of interviews ­were conducted between June and August 2006, Khayelitsha, Cape Town. 29. All figures are provided in the local currency, the South African rand. In 2006 the exchange rate oscillated between r6.50 and r7 to the U.S. dollar. As of late 2013, the rand had depreciated to between r10 and almost r11 to the U.S. dollar. 30. This is based on Hubert and Mauss’s reading of a Vedic princi­ple relating to sacrifice, in which the act of sacrifice represents a gift to compel the god to reciprocate (see Douglas, in Mauss 1990, x). 31. Nomasundu also noted that some members borrowed from a third party outside the scheme in such cases, but by and large the group was highly “disciplined,” routinely made payments and contributions on time, and had rarely caused a prob­lem. The only exception to this was a member who died and a w ­ oman who on divorcing her husband was left with nothing. 32. “Hire purchase,” unlike “layaway,” enables consumers to take the item home ­after leaving a small deposit on the total cost of the purchase; with layaway the item is literally “laid away” by the seller ­until such time as the consumer has paid the entire cost of the item (plus a transaction fee). Both systems, financial vehicles if you will, enable consumers to buy items without having to pay for them in full at the outset. In the case of hire purchase, an agreed-­upon installment plan—­actually “hiring” or renting the goods on a monthly basis with interest—is agreed to, at the end of which the item may be bought outright or returned.

notes to Ch apte r   4   |   195

33. See Bheko Madlala, “Frustration Boils Over in Protests: Community Angered at Snail Pace Ser­vice Delivery,” Daily News (Durban), October 14, 2005, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­abahlali​.­org​/­node​/­172​/­; “66 Cops Injured in Illegal Ser­vice Delivery Protests,” Cape Argus, October 13, 2005, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­ abahlali​.­org​/­node​/­172​. 34. See “fxi’s Anti-­Censorship Programme Releases Sixth Progress Report,” accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­fxi​.­org​.­za​/­pages​/­Anti​-­censorship​/­Progress%20 Reports​/­ACP​_­6th%20Progress%20Report​.­html. The Freedom of Expression Institute (fxi) notes that the Minister of Safety and Security, Charles Nqakula, reported 5,085 ­legal and 881 illegal protests in South Africa in the 2004–5 financial year. Conclusion

1. Mr. Kakaza, personal communication, October 15, 1998, ktc, Cape Town. 2. Noluthando Mafilika, personal communication, March 22, 1999, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 3. See Farouk Chothia, “Analy­sis: Zuma’s Challenge,” bbc News, April 25, 2009, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­news​.­bbc​.­co​.­uk​/­1​/­mobile​/­world​/­africa​/­8018267​.­stm. 4. See Farouk Chothia, “Analy­sis: Zuma’s Challenge,” bbc News, April 25, 2009, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­news​.­bbc​.­co​.­uk​/­1​/­mobile​/­world​/­africa​/­8018267​.­stm. 5. Preamble to “A New Housing Policy and Strategy for South Africa,” Department of Housing white paper, 1994. 6. The Charterist movement, which was inspired by the original 1955 Freedom Charter, propounded a racially unified national identity transcending differences of race, ethnicity, language, and culture in its strug­gle against apartheid. Following the launch of the United Demo­cratic Front in 1983, the movement was essentially or­ga­nized ­under a broad banner, yet the very success of the front in advancing the Charterist cause—in securing for itself the status of a single body representing all sections of the population—­ultimately triggered hostility ­toward the front by the Charterists and led to the breakup of the or­ga­ni­za­tion. 7. See Hein Marais, “Is the rdp Mutating . . . ,” Mail and Guardian, May 16, 1997, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­mg​.­co​.­za​/­article​/­1997–05–16​-­is​-­the​-­rdp​-­mutating. 8. The rdp’s last remaining structure, the National Assembly’s rdp portfolio committee, was quietly dismantled without so much as a ­ripple of protest. 9. The privatization pro­cess may be characterized in a number of ways, but certainly land speculation and consolidation have been two major features. Indeed, upward of 30 ­percent of land in South Africa is owned by large agricultural concerns and is only increasing as small and medium farming operations are squeezed out (personal communication, John Buley, former head of J. P. Morgan’s Principal Investing for Social Finance, an emerging markets unit, March 2013). 10. See Albany Law Review, 2003, 67 Alb. L. Rev. 565, “Constitutional Claims for Gender Equality in South Africa: A Judicial Response.” 11. See, e.g., http://­www​.­aljazeera​.c­ om​/­news​/­africa​/­2013​/­02​ /­2013214182923684588​.­html (accessed February 11, 2015). 12. The section title is a reference to Lubiano 1998.

196  |   notes to Chap te r 4

13. As distinct from amatyotyombe, which refers to shacks (pl.); hence many shacks and therefore the informal settlements; ematyotyombeni, the locative case, refers to the place of shacks. 14. See the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (Act no. 108 of 1996), Bill of Rights, Section 26. 15. Capetonians believe the wind has the capacity to disperse pollutants that hover above central Cape Town. 16. Operational canneries are located in Killarney Gardens, Parow, as well as Paarl, which is outside Cape Town. 17. Interview with Mrs. Dube, February 18, 1999, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 18. Interview with Mrs. Dube, February 18, 1999, Lower Crossroads, Cape Town. 19. Pearlie Joubert, “It’s Our Duty Not to Be ­Silent,” Mail and Guardian, August 24, 2008, accessed February 11, 2015, http://­www​.­mg​.­co​.­za​/­article​/­2008–08–24​-­its​-­our​ -­duty​-­not​-­to​-­be​-­silent.

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Index

Page numbers followed by f indicate illustrations. Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), 18, 174n40 Abolition of Passes and Co-­ordination of Documents Act (Natives Act, 1952), 44 activism: anti-­apartheid, xiv, xiv–xv, xxii, 12, 71, 97, 156–57, 178n32, 184n27, 187n5; anti-­pass law, 19; culture of protest, 19, 26, 157; interdigitation with place, 24; against privatization, 160; rent boycotts, 66; of women, 19, 39–40, 56–60, 83–85; of youth, 97–98 aec. See Anti-­Eviction Campaign African Mine Workers Union, 36 African National Congress (anc), xi, xv, 5; in Crossroads, 97; in exile, xiv; on reconstruction/redistribution, 159; shift to militancy, 178n32; on squatters, 23; support for, xvii Afrikaans language, xvii, 174n41 Afrikaners (population), 174n41 anc. See African National Congress (anc) anti-­apartheid movement, xiv–xv, xxii, 12, 71, 97, 156–57, 178n32, 184n27, ­187n5

Anti-­Eviction Campaign (aec), 16, 1­ 8 anti-­pass law re­sis­tance, 1­ 9 Anti-­Privatization Forum (apf), 16, 18 apartheid: collapse of, 154; defined, xv–­ xvi, 1, 8, 154; differentiation by, 97; financial difficulties, 108; politics of home and, 1–2, 33, 86, 168; property rights and, 66; refugees from, xiv; urban migration and, 48–49, 101; urban planning under, xi–­xii, 13, 166; violence of, xxi apf. See Anti-­Privatization Forum Appleton, Colin, 106–8 Arendt, Hannah, 38, 136, 177n18, 181n63 Ashforth, Adam, 131 Atlantis development, 117–20, 119f baab. See Bantu Affairs Administration Board Bank, Leslie, xx–­xxi, 61 Bantu Affairs Administration Board (baab), 50, 58, 75, 76, 93 Bantu Authorities Act (1951), 48 Bantu labor, 50–53

Bantu Laws Amendment Act (1964), 73 Bantu Self-­Government Act (1959), 48 Battersby, John, 39 Bayat, Asef, 21–22, 26 bee. See Black Economic Empowerment Bill of Rights, 160 biopolitics, racial, 9–10, 113, 136 bla. See Black Local Authority Black Affairs Administration Act (1971), 180n45 Black Consciousness movement, xv Black Economic Empowerment (bee), 149 Black Local Authority (bla), 3, 66 blacks (population), xi, xvi, 59; black peril (swart gevaar), 52; bourgeoisie, 130, 134; citizenship and, 156–57; class formation, 37–38; dispossession, 100–101; family relations, 1, 61; local authority over, 50; middle class, 156; movement controls on, 42; population reduction, 79–80; state on value of, 9–10 Black Sash, 54, 81, 82–83, 85 Black Urban Areas Act. See Natives Urban Areas Consolidation Act (1945) Blomkamp, Neill, 153–54 Blue Notes (music group), 32, 87 Bond, Patrick, 39–40, 115, 123–24, 128, 157 Bonner, Philip L., 34 Botha, M. C., 76 Botha, P. W., 80, 118 Brackenfell settlement, 58 Bremner, Lindsey, xiii Breytenbach, Breyten, 63 Brown’s Farm settlement, xxi, 49, 58, 98 burial societies, 32, 139–42 Buti, Sam, 44 Cape Argus (newspaper), 39 Cape Flats, xi, 11–12, 93, 97–98, 120, 136, 166, 175n4 Cape Provincial Administration (cpa), 89, 107, 111

222  |   In de x

Cape Town: as apartheid city, xvi–­xvii; culture in, xiii; development in, 99, 117–18; diversity of, xvii; map, 2f; as Mother City, xi; neoliberalization in, xvi, 16; overcrowding in, 41–42; segregation in, 112–13, 116; tourism, xii. See also specific areas Cape Youth Congress (cayco), 97–98 cayco. See Cape Youth Congress censorship, xiv, 48 Charterist movement, 196n6 Chatterjee, Partha, 98, 109 Ciskei: deportation to, 54, 79; migration from, 27, 29, 171n15 citizenship: active, 177n18; counterfeit, 65; formal vs. substantive, 152; home own­ership and, 101; illicit activities and, 11, 174n39; informal settlements and, 50–51, 161–65; insurgent, 22; market, 156; right to, 14, 26, 51, 71, 88, 92–93, 109; space and, 155–57 clpp. See Coloured Labour Preference Policy Cole, Josette, 41–42, 50, 56, 188–89n15 collective care, 24 colonialism, 41, 154, 155 coloreds (population), xi, xvi, xvii–­xviii, 11–12, 21, 37, 96, 174n41 Coloured Labour Preference Policy (clpp), xvi, 21, 28, 51–52 Communist Party of South Africa (cpsa), 23, 154 communities of consensus, 113–14 comrades, culture of (amaqabane), xx, 24, 84, 87, 96–98, 104–6 consumerism, xii, 123, 137, 149–50, 194n21 counterinsurgency, xxiii, 63, 78, 80, 99, 112, 118, 188n5 cpa. See Cape Provincial Administration cpsa. See Communist Party of South Africa Criminal Law Amendment Act (2007), 170n9

Crossroads settlement, 3, 118f, 177–78n27; activism in, 56–60, 74–77; burnout, 98, 102–6; deportation from, 58; establishment of, 49–60; investment in, 20; migration to, 42, 49–50, 58; overcrowding in, 12–13, 53, 58–59; population statistics, 179–80n43; redevelopment of, 106–21, 190n35; reform/repression in, 78–82; “Save Crossroads” campaign, 78; slum clearance, 76–77; women in, 57–60. See also Lower Crossroads settlement; New Crossroads township; Old Crossroads settlement Crossroads Youth Brigade, 97 da. See Demo­cratic Alliance debt, 143–47 democracy. See South African democracy Demo­cratic Alliance (da), xvii, 174n40 Department of Local Government and Housing, 111 discrimination. See racial discrimination displaced persons. See refugees (imbhacu) District 9 (film), 153–54 Divisional Council, 54, 74–75, 76, 77, 93 domesticity: as compromised, 10; influx controls and, 29, 44; mere life (oikos), 9, 114; migration and, 38–41, 151; mobility and, 87; politics of, 11–13; self-­care and, 29; squatter settlements, xx–­xxi, 29, 43–44, 53–54, 61, 156 “eBenoni” (song), 32, 87 education, access to, xix, 16, 53 Eiselen Line, 21, 28–29, 52 employment, access to, 16, 21, 37, 44–45, 52 En­glish language, xvii entitlement, xi–­xii, 63, 91, 113, 127 environmentalism, 120–21

ezimbhacwani. See greenfields Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor (fedup), 20 fedup. See Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor Ferguson, James, 112, 139 financialization, 137, 145 financial mutuals, 139–43 Fordism, racial, 7 Foucault, Michel, 81, 113, 136 Freedom Charter (1955), 159 gear. See Growth, Employment and Redistribution gender: migration and, 31–32, 80, 84; rights in settlements, 82–87 geography of freedom, 18 Gill, Lesley, 22 Ginsburg, Rebecca, 20, 133–34 Glaser, Clive, xxi globalization, 135–36 Gordimer, Nadine, 129 Gquma family, 147–51 Gramsci, Antonio, 26, 129 grassroots politics, 8, 69, 80, 83–84, 115, 152 greenfields (ezimbhacwani), 2, 112–13, 117, 121 Group Areas, xvi, 7–8, 15, 18 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (gear), 96, 121, 138, 160 Gugulethu township, 12, 43–44, 91, 171n15, 177–78n27 Guyer, Jane I., 130 Hart, Gillian, 158–59 Harvey, David, 16–17 headmen (izibonda), 3, 64, 68–74, 87, 92, 98, 103, 124. See also Mpanza, James; Ndima, Sam; Ngxobongwana, Johnson; Nongwe, Jeffrey health care, access to, xix, 16, 76 hiv/aids, xix Holston, James, 22, 65

I n d e x   |   223

Holt, Thomas C., 151 housing: as demo­cratization, 66–68, 95–96; development, failure of, 122–28; development, state role, 99–102, 106–21; divisive tactics, 63; financing, 100–101; politics of home (ikhaya), 1–2, 63; post-­apartheid development, 133–34, 157–61; quality standards, 121, 122–23; reforms, xviii–­xix, 110–21; right to, 16–19, 23; scarcity of, 53; self-­built, 8–9, 29, 38 Housing Act (1997), 113 Howard, Ebenezer, 166 humanity, common (ubuntu), 31 Hunter, Mark, 41, 84 ica. See Industrial Conciliation Act (1956) idt. See In­de­pen­dent Development Trust imf. See International Monetary Fund imbhacu, 2, 88–89, 113 Imfuduso, 85, 86f In­de­pen­dent Development Trust (idt), 115 Indians (population), xi, xvi, 96 Industrial Conciliation Act (1956), 37 in­e­qual­ity, xii, xv; marginality and, 136–37; overaccumulation and, 123; patterns of, 14, 96; in planning, 120–21 influx controls, xvi, xxi, 5, 7–8, 10, 50; as antisquatting, 78–79; breakdown of, 12, 41, 110; culture loss and, 72; deconcentration strategy, 100–101, 117; domesticity and, 29, 44; impact on labor, 37; opposition to, 18, 100, 156; removal of, 60, 95 informal settlements, use of term, xv, 170n3. See also squatter settlements Integrated Ser­viced Land Project (islp), 111–14 integration, de facto, 95 Internal Security Act (1982), 102 International Monetary Fund (imf), 108 isiXhosa, xvii islp. See Integrated Ser­viced Land Project

224  |   In de x

Jameson, Fredric, 165 Jansen, E. G., 79 Jensen, Steffen, xvii–­xviii job reservation, xvi, 7, 73 Joe Slovo settlement, 165 Johannesburg, culture in, xiii Kakaza Trading Centre (ktc) settlement, 12, 75–76, 91, 102–4, 106 Khayelitsha settlement, 13, 14, 117, 147, 150, 189n28 kinship theory, 31 Kolisi family, 44–48, 56–59, 85 kombi taxis, xviii, 14 Koornhof, Piet, 78, 81, 83, 91, 102, 117 ktc. See Kakaza Trading Centre land grants, 65 Landless People’s Movement (lpm), 16 Langa township, 12, 75, 91, 171n13, 171n15 language, xvii, 174n41 Lefebvre, Henri, 16, 172n23 liberalization, 26, 96, 115, 138, 1­ 59 live-in arrangements (ukuhlalisana), xx, xxi, 156, 164 Lower Crossroads settlement, xiii, 76, 123f, 125f, 163f; fieldwork, 1–2, 30, 110–11; financial schemes, 140–43, 146; planning projects, 113; suspicion in, 131; uneven development in, 121, 124, 132, 135–36 lpm. See Landless People’s Movement Lubelwana (councillor), 91–92 Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio, 65 Lusaka, xiv Malan, Magnus, 80 Mamdani, Mahmood, 70 Mandela, Nelson, 159 Mantanzima, George, 73 Mantanzima, Kaiser, 72–73 Marais, Hein, 159 market capitalism, xviii–­xix, 129–30, 134, 136, 145 marriage, traditional, xx

Marx, Karl, xv, 77, 145 Marxism: neo-­, 37; South African, 40; Western, 177n22 Masakeng squatter settlement, 8 Masakhane umgalelo, 147–51 Matshikiza, John, 132–33 Mayer, Philip, 186n56 Mbembe, Achille, 22 McDonald, David A., xvi, xviii–­xix, 121–22 McInnes, Peter, 39–40 Memani, Albert, 102 Metropolitan Spatial Development Framework (msdf), 111, 116–17, 120 Meyer, Roelf, 80 Mfeketo family, 132, 135, 142, 145–46 migration: exclusion and, 40–41, 165; forced, 33, 41–42, 158; gender practices, 31–32, 80, 84; illegal taxis, 46; in-­ migration, xviii, 12, 28, 52–53, 60, 78, 95, 110–11; poem, 29–30; reasons for, 7; women and, 32–33, 41, 61, 64, 80, 84–87. See also influx controls; mobility mining industry, 35–36, 71 mk. See Umkhonto we Sizwe mobility: Bantu, 50; culture of, 6–7, 32, 72, 175n4; domesticity and, 87; economic, 37; enforced, 13; right to, 76. See also migration Modderdam settlement, 54 Morrison, G. de V., 79 Mpanza, James, 8 Mpetha, Oscar, 87–88 msdf. See Metropolitan Spatial Development Framework Muehlebach, Andrea, 24 Mureinik, Etienne, 96 Murray, Martin, 159

Natives Land Act (1913), 70, 124–25, 134, 160, 176n13 Natives Urban Areas Consolidation Act (1945), xvi, 42, 44, 171n13, 176–77n17 Native Trust and Land Act (1936), 175n12 Ndayi, Ntoyi Johnson, 75 Ndima, Sam, 2–8, 11, 19, 20, 70–71, 83, 85, 92, 103–6 Nelson, Diane, 131 neoliberalization, xvi, 16, 23, 66, 121–22, 123–24, 152, 156 New Crossroads township, 12, 79, 81, 82, 83, 91, 179n43, 190n35 New National Party, xvii Ngxobongwana, Johnson, 4, 69–70, 71, 82, 83, 87–91, 102–4, 106–7, 190n37 Nkampe family, 34–37 Nkosi, Lewis, 29 Nombembe, Evelyn, 68–69 Nongwe, Jeffrey, 48, 142 Noquiet family, 42–43, 85 Norwegian Foreign Ministry, xv nsms. See National Security Management System Ntongana, Regina, 44 Nuttall, Sarah, xiii, 22 Nyanga East township, 12, 39, 55f, 103, 179n43 Nyanga township, 12, 24–25, 49, 75, 91, 98, 102 Nyanga West. See Gugulethu township

National Development Plan, 174n38 National Housing Forum, 158 Nationalist Party, 56, 79, 178n32, 190n37 National Security Management System (nsms), 80 National Union of Mineworkers, 40, 172n20

Pan Africanist Congress, xv pass laws, xvii; demise of, 21; enforcement of, 39, 44, 46, 53, 56, 58, 76; intimacy and, 27–28; re­sis­tance to, 4–5, 18–19, 47, 85, 179n38; softening of, 50 Perlman, Janice, 22 Phiri decision, 127–28

Old Crossroads settlement, 4f, 12, 55f, 82, 88f, 89–91, 102, 166, 167f, 179n43 Oppenheimer, Harry, 99 Our Boys on the Border (radio program), xiv

I n d e x   |   225

Pienaar, Kobus, 79 Pietersen, P. S., 82 Pithouse, Richard, 153 Polanyi, Karl, 141 politics of home (ikhaya), 1–2, 33, 86, ­168 post-­apartheid haunting, 160 postcolonialism, xix, 17, 154–55, 173n28 poverty: defined, 132; feminization of, xx; financial survival, 139–43; per­sis­tence of, xvi, 131; as po­liti­cal, 13–15; poor whites, 52; ser­vices, payment for, xviii Prashad, Vijay, 144 Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act (1951), 74, 79, 81, 171n17 privatization, 66, 134–35, 143, 152, 156, 158, 160 protest. See activism public transport, xii, xviii, 14, 110, 111, 120, 131, 172n24, 173n27 race: Fordism, 7; mapping of, xi–­xii racial discrimination, xvi, 37, 151. See also apartheid rdp core homes. See Reconstruction and Development Programme (rdp) ­houses reckoning, defined, 129, 130 Reconstruction and Development Programme (rdp) ­houses, xxii, 3, 66, 117, 121, 132–33, 158–60 refugees (imbhacu), 2, 113; defined, 88–89; networks, xiv, 28. See also migration; mobility rent boycotts, 66 Reserve Bank, 143 rights: to citizenship, 14, 26, 51, 71, 88, 92–93, 109; economic/cultural, 160; gender and, 82–87; to housing, 16–19, 23, 66–68; land/property, 65, 66–67, 91; right to the city (concept), xxiii, 11, 16–17, 23, 84–85, 88, 109, 128, 130, 155; in squatter settlements, 11, 67–68, 78–87, 109, 130, 160, 166

226  |   I n de x

Riotous Assemblies Act (1956), 77 Roitman, Janet, 145 Rupert, Anton, 99 sadf. See South African Defense Force sahpf. See South African Homeless People’s Federation sairr. See South African Institute of Race Relations saldru. See South African Labour Development Research Unit sanco. See South African National Civic Organisation sap. See South African Police Schelhase, Ulrich, 80, 189n24 Scott, David, 139 segregation: apartheid and, 154; de facto, xii, 112–13; domestic space and, 10; per­sis­tence of, 8, 18, 112, 116–17 self-­determination, 155–57 Ser­viced Land Project (slp), 114 Sexual Offenses Act (2003/2007), xxi–­xxii shantytowns, use of term, 170n3. See also squatter settlements Sharpeville Massacre (Johannesburg, 1960), 47, 48 Siphika, Alfred, ­105 site-­and-­service, 95, 101, 115–16 slp. See Ser­viced Land Project Smith, Adam, 146 Smith, Laïla, xviii social compacts, 114 social grants, 138–39 Sofasonke Party, 8 Sokhetye, Max, 87–88 Sokothi, Gugulethu, 97–98 Soto, Hernando de, 66, 68 South African Bill of Rights, 129–30 South African Civic Organisation (sanco), 25, 127 South African Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, 67, 160

South African Communist Party (sacp), 23, 154 South African Defense Force (sadf), 4 South African democracy: neoliberalization and, xvi, 16; politics of home (ikhaya), 1; promise of, 127; as self-­ reflexive, 155; Tricameral Parliament, 96, 110 South African Homeless People’s Federation (sahpf), 16, 18, 20 South African Institute of Race Relations (sairr), 28–29 South African Labour Development Research Unit (saldru), 64 South African National Civic Organisation (sanco), 66 South African Police (sap), 4 Soweto uprising (1976), 88, 97, 99 Special Integrated Presidential Project, 111 squatter settlements, xii, xv, 1; agency and, 23–24; bed people, 64; citizenship and, 161–65; conflict in, 82–87; development of, 18–19, 38–39; domesticity in, xx–­xxi, 29, 43–44, 53–54, 61, 156; financial schemes, 132–39, 140–43, 146; forced removal, 10, 21, 41–43, 98, 110; generational hierarchies in, 83–84; headmen (izibonda) and, 64, 68–74, 82–87, 98; land hunger and, 109; in leftist thinking, 40–41; liberalization and, 96; as liberated zones, 156; living democracy in, 1; mini-­exile in, 54, 168, 190n36; national belonging and, 165; po­liti­cal struggles, 4–5, 9–10, 11, 15–16, 23–26, 38, 60, 64–65, 92–93, 97, 158, 165–66; population movement, 12; redevelopment, 106–10; rights, 11, 67–68, 74–82, 109, 130, 160, 166; satellites, 102–6; self-­care and, 29; strategies of, 10; use of term, 170n3; visibility/ invisibility in, 15, 28. See also specific settlements superfluity, 136 surveillance, xii, 80–81

tac. See Treatment Action Campaign Thandu ‘Xolo, 140–42, 149, 150 townships, xii; culture (loxion kulca), xiii; growth in, 132–33; overcrowding in, 12–13, 19, 48, 53. See also specific townships Transkei: deportation to, 54, 72–73, 79; leadership in, 68–69, 72; migration from, 27, 29, 75, 171n15 transnationalization, 147 trc. See Truth and Reconciliation Commission Treatment Action Campaign (tac), 16 trustworthiness, 131 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (trc), xi, xv–­xvi, 3–4, 80, 187n5 Turner, John F. C., 9 udf. See United Demo­cratic Front uf. See Urban Foundation Uitvlugt settlement, 41–42 umgalelo, 140–43, 147–51, 194n19 Umkhonto we Sizwe (mk), xi, 24 Unathi development, 107, 118f, 190nn35–36 unemployment rates, xviii, 84, 120, 136, 137–38, 145, 169n5, 1­ 93n12 un-­Habitat 2006 report, 23 United Demo­cratic Front (udf), 5, 87, 96, 165 un Millennium Goals, 23 Urban Foundation (uf), 95, 99–101, 114–15, 191n40; Western Cape Regional Directorate, 106–8 urbanism/urbanization, 16–18, 21–23, 100 Victoria and Albert Waterfront, xii–­xiii violence, xix–­xxi, 95, 102–6, 131 Vlok, Adriaan, 80 voluntarism, 24 water rights, 127–28 wcca. See Western Cape Civic Association wealth redistribution, xviii, xix welfare, access to, 121, 138–39

I n d e x   |   227

Wenzel, Jennifer, 129 Werkgenot settlement, 54 Wesley, John, 145 Western Cape Civic Association (wcca), 87, 103, 186n60 Western Cape Economic Development Forum, 116–17 Western Cape Labour Committee, 52 White, Hylton, 160 whites (population), xvii, 36, 37, 52, 59, 96 Wolf, Eric R., 27 women: activism of, 19, 39–40, 56–60, 83–85; associations (ibandla), 33;

228  |   In de x

employment of, 44–45; feminization of poverty, xx; live-in arrangements (ukuhlalisana), xx, xxi; migration and, 32–33, 41, 61, 64, 80, 84–87; passes required, 44; rights in settlements, 82–87 Worden, Nigel, 7 World Bank, 115 World Cup (2010), 138 Yanta, Mama, 82–83 Zion Christian Church (zcc), 124, 125f Zyl Slabbert, F. van, 73

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